Computer Build Resource Thread - Page 1099

On May 16 2012 16:55 Rollin wrote:

Have you tried monitoring your gpu usage with MSI afterburner? Does the room heat up rapidly when the computer is idle, or only when the gpu is under intentional heavy loads?

GPUs are supposed to get hot underload, and shunt that heat externally. Keep in mind they may consume up to like 200W (a top end gpu) under full load, and this is almost exclusively released as excess heat (essentially a small radiator heater when you take into account the fan).

On May 17 2012 00:03 Nizzy wrote:
Hello everyone, just before getting into my post that I really appreciate anyone taking the time to read/help me out. I've put a decent amount of time into the research of what I want/would fit my budget. Some quick back-story to help let you know where I'm at in my life/what I need/what my goals of this are.

-----This part isn't necessary to read just some backstory on what my situation is-----

-I turn 25 years old next month, just finished 6 years of college, this will be my graduation present/birthday present to myself as neither of my parents or friends gave me a party for graduating Got a decent job after college and have some legit money to spend on my only hobby in life (computer gaming!!)
-I would like this desktop to last 5 years almost exactly. Will be saving for a house directly after buying/paying this off, and I'm sure the GF might want locked up in a few years/kids coming up in a few years so this desktop needs to get me til I'm 30 at least.
-Bought my first computer when I was 16 with my own money from my first job from Ibuypower.com, lasted me around 4-5 years, bought my 2nd one from Ibuypower as well, lasted me a good 3 years.
-For the past 1.5-2 years almost I used a cheap dell i5 that I got a decent deal from a dell online vendor that I've since sold off because I was dead certain I wanted "an all around laptop/gaming laptop". I bought the gaming laptop, and just didn't get the performance FPS that I wanted at all. Really disappointed, but I sold it and got 90% of the original price back and now I'm going back to my roots and getting my 3rd desktop from Ibuypower.com. I've just been really pleased from the amount of usage I've gotten out of the first 2 and its great to see them put so much money back into esports (especially sponsoring sc2 stuff like NASL, etc)

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*Note* The item parts in BOLD are the items I'm considering at the moment, PLEASE feel free <3<3<3 to suggest/argue why I should go with something different. Thank you all again!

Budget, I just want to stay under around 1800, I would say that is the limit. Somewhere around 1200-1500 would be ideal but to last me 5 years I might have to chip in a few more bucks for some tweaks to get more time out of it.

Resolution

I don't have any monitors picked out, will do this last, as long as its 16 - 9 ratio so I can see all of starcraft 2's battlefield during game play its fine. I'll probably get 2 LED's around 20-24 inches after buying the desktop. So I guess 1920×1080 or whatever the larger resolution for 16 - 9 is.

Processor Intel Brand Only

This is probably what I've put the most time into recently. I've narrowed it down to 3 procs. Before I get into them, from what I've found out is that the 3rd gen Ivy Bridge processors are really just a smaller version of the 2nd gen Sandy Bridge. In addition from the Wiki, that the Ivy Bridge processors can overheat to 20 degree's C higher than the Sandy Bridge which is a concern. I would feel more comfortable going with the stable, slightly older Proc, over the newer one that might have some bugs/issues with it just coming out. I'm not concerned with overclocking or anything. I simply don't think the system will need it, and I'd rather let it last long term instead of risking it getting worn down. My final 3 for price/performance:

i7 3820 - Sandy Bridge 2nd gen - 4 cores (8 threads) - 10mb L3 Cache - 3.6 GHz - LGA2011 - Quad Channel 1600 = $294.00
i7 2700K - Sandy Bridge 2nd gen - 4 cores (8 threads) - 8mb L3 Cache - 3.5 Ghz - LGA1155 - Dual Channel 1333 = $332
i7 3770K - Ivy Bridge 3rd gen - 4 cores (8 threads) - 8mb L3 Cache - 3.5 Ghz - LGA115 - Dual Channel 1600 = $322

Logic here is that, the 10 L3 Cache might be a big difference, plus the Quad Channel 1600 support. I'm just not sure why its cheaper than the other 2, if anyone could explain/recommend best PROC that would be great!

Motherboard ASUS Brand Only

From researching the gist that I got was for Sandy Bridge 2nd gen processors you go with a X79 MOBO, and for a 3rd gen Ivy Proc you go with the Z77. So assuming everyone agrees that I should go with the 2nd gen Sandy Bridge 3820 or 2700K i7, the ASUS motherboard that fit my budget the most was the:

ASUS Sabertooth X79 -- 4x SATA 6GB/s, 4x USB 3.0, Quad Channel, 8 Memory DDR3 (I'm assuming it can handle 1600 ram sticks), Also says CrossfireX Support (I'm assuming that means 2 video cards SLI)

It's really between that and the Rampage, but the Rampage IV is 100 bucks more. I'm not sure its worth the extra for it.

Memory - No perference

Probably just going to get 8GB of Kingston HyperX, actually looks like the cheapest on this site. Going to wait until I find some good deal for like 16gb-24gb additional ram and just upgrade it later on, but 8GB should be enough for the initial purchase. As long as its DDR3 1600

Video Cards - NVIDIA Geforce Only

I used this nvidia performance chart graph a lot when breaking down the performance measurements/prices for a single card and or SLI and what I thought were the best deals for my budget:



3. NVidia GeForce GTX680 (single card) 2 GB - $499 (performance rating 40,000) price is a little steep imo
2. NVidia GeForce GTX670 (single card) 2 GB - $399 (performance rating 36,000) price is a little bit better
1. NVidia GeForce GTX560 (SLI dual cards) 2GB x 2, 4GB Total - $420 Total (combined dual card performance rating 42,000)

Now before you comment I've never done SLI before and I'm completely assuming that using the 2 cards together simply combines their performance output. I'm fully aware that might be ignorant and incorrect. please correct me if this is so. Looking at those 3 cards I think I get the best value from the 2 560's. Plus if one goes bad I can just replace one, instead of if I just have 1 card and it goes bad, I don't even have a card .

I don't think the 100 extra bucks to go from the GTX670 to the GTX680 is worth the slight boost. If you guys don't think SLI 560's is that great, then I'll probably go with the GTX670. Let me know what you think please! Thanks

Power Supply - No Pref

Website says for SLI if I go that route that I need at least 800W power supply. Is that more than enough? It's +35 bucks to upgrade to 1000w power supply. Is that overkill?

Hard Drives - No Pref

I don't know much about SSD at all but looking at the numbers it reads/writes in 0.01ms compared to a standard HDD that is at like 5ms for similar things. Its looking like the best price is a Kingston 60 GB ssd harddrive for installing games on that drive. Then I'll just have a 1TB HDD for files/music/etc. Anyone have any other preferences?

Other stuff:

ASUS DG sound card +30 bucks, is having a dedicated sound card worth it? Looks like you can hook up speakers/sub to the back of it and IBUYPOWER has a nice free throw in of 2 speakers/1sub.

Noise reducer. Harmony SRS Sound Reduction System Reduce System Noise +50 bucks. Not sure if its worth it, but I would like to have a quiet tower. Any suggestions about upgrading to silent fans or anything? Is it worth it? Should I upgrade for like 15 bucks more for ARC Dual Silent High Performance Fan Upgrade (Push-Pull Airflow)

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I believe that's pretty much it, just going to get a standard black Ibuypower case, Don't really care for the looks/neon lights, anything I need to make sure it has? It was all around 1700 when It was all said and done but I wanted to ask others first before I purchase.

Thanks so much for reading/suggestions everyone!! <3<3

On May 17 2012 02:34 Shauni wrote:

You shouldn't plan your whole life ahead. Where is the excitement in that? Anyhow on to some questions:
SLI does not scale 100% and even if it did there are other issues more alarming than the scaling. Get the 670, or 680 if you dont want a defect card.
800w is unrealistic for 560ti SLI, which barely pulls over 500w.
CPUs for the x79 platform should be more expensive than the sandy/ivy counterparts. I'm not an expert on usa pricing but 300 dollar + sounds expensive for 2600k.

On May 17 2012 02:56 Shauni wrote:
Because they like throwing money away. They consider the cost between a 600w and 800w psu minimal. Also, psus often have the best efficiency between 50-80% load. I don't think you should look blindly on wattage rating, there are other way more important factors to consider. Manufacturers just have some general ratings they should stay inside of, they can and often will for example relabel a 500w unit as 600w.

On May 15 2012 23:52 Wabbit wrote:


Either mobo is fine. Not getting the Ivy Bridge i5 3570K is odd though. Why not take advantage of the (very good) native USB 3.0 of Z77? It won't work with a 2500K. And you don't want to be "upgrading" from (presumably) Sandy Bridge i5 to an Ivy Bridge i5. That would be a huge waste of money for a negligible (~5-10%) performance increase, or maybe even none at all if you get a 2500K which OC's high. Just get a 3570K.

By the way, the GPU is not a big not-value-for-the-money part. It's only a HD 7850, not a HD 7970 or GTX 680. Arguably, it's the CPU and mobo and CPU cooler combination which are initially a poor value for the money, seeing as overclocking the CPU will give you exactly 0 frames per second increase in the vast majority of games. Few games benefit from CPU overclocking as much as Starcraft 2, Skyrim, and very few others. Overclocking will be more useful in the future when you can just get ~30% more performance without breaking a sweat or having to replace the motherboard and CPU (which requires operating system re-installation, painful) at the extra cost of aftermarket CPU cooling (and the initial cost of "K" CPU and Z77 vs B75/H77)

If I were you and really wanted to get closer to max all games (without regard to "performance per dollar") I'd just skip the CPU cooling for now and buy it in the future (but still get the 3570K and Z77 mobo) and go up to a HD 7870. It's ~20% stronger than a 7850.

The rest of your build is okay. Idk if you plan to Crossfire, but if you do and it's 7870's instead of 7850's, you'll want to make sure that PSU has 4x6pin pci-e cables or you're okay with using adapters. And stick with the ASRock board, or get the MSI Z77 G45 not G43, which (correction) can't do crossfireX well (low bandwidth for 2nd slot, and blocked SATA ports).

On May 17 2012 03:47 skyR wrote:
Seasonic X is fully modular, 80PLUS Gold, and covers the spectrum of wattages... you'll see most people have a Corsair AX or Seasonic X. The lower wattage units weren't released until later so keep this in mind if you're going to judge... Let's not forget that both Seasonic and Corsair are highly regarded in the industry. I have a Seasonic X as well fyi.

ASUS is very well regarded in the industry... people have P8P67, P8Z68-V, P8Z77-V, and so on because all of the ASUS boards below that suck... Let's not forget about the Advanced RMA and Intel NIC available on the higher-end models.

What choice is there in CPU, there's really not much besides a 2500k or a 2600k... basically a core i5 vs a core i7 -__-

Memory is all the same? Ripjaws or Vengeance, who cares?

Heatsink is either a Noctua or Corsair... the only two that stand out in the industry, what's your point?

Storage.. no one cares.

And of course some people have too much money than brains.