When using this resource, please read FragKrag's opening post. The Tech Support forum regulars have helped create countless of desktop systems without any compensation. The least you can do is provide all of the information required for them to help you properly.
Ok, I guess this is a little off topic but it's so strange I need a place to talk about it :DDD
So some months ago I noticed that my ISP was limiting my bandwidth (mine and all its other customers), so youtube, twitch were not usable, anyway long story short I changed ISP, I went from ADSL to cable and since everything is working fine. Working fine that is, until last week, when streams started to lag and I had to use 480p but hey, I thought it was just an temporary ISP problem. But it got worse and worse until today where my internet just died, or well 99% died, sometime TL would load, sometime not, sometime I could see some twitch at 240p, but not for long.
anyway, I changed my DNS, rebooted, in short tried everything I could on my end before thinking it was my ISP so I was decided to wait. But I tried to unplug the modem RJ45 to replug it on another port, when I took a big electric shock touching it (it hurt :o). I tried again with the same result. On the same electrical plug of my modem I have an electric kettle (is that the correct word, I put water in it, it boils so I can prepare tea or coffee). Last week to test the water heat I put a finger in it, and again I got electric shocked. So that made me remember it, I unplugged the kettle, and instantly my internet is back at 100%.
I've been waffling over whether or not to get the new 770, and the 760 versions came out about 70$ cheaper than I expected. That, combined with a pretty good SLI review from guru3d, and I'm strongly leaning towards 2 of MSI's 760's. A couple of questions regarding compatibility:
1) I'm pretty sure I'll have space, but the specs say they take 2 slots each. Does anyone know if they'll fit in slots 1 and 2? (I think slot 3 is too close to the PSU, but I'm not positive).
2) My PSU is going on 5 years old, it's a corsair 750 watt (sorry, I don't have a model number atm.) This should be enough juice on paper, but would it be safer to get a newer PSU?
3) The motherboard specs list the 3 PCI-E slots as x16,x8,x4. Will this hurt my SLI performance? Would both cards be underclocked to "x8"? I'm not even sure what those figures mean, I'm guessing it's referring to the PCI-E bandwidth on the bus. I'm open to getting a new motherboard with this upgrade if it will help me out, 2 of my memory slots fritzed and I've been on 2x8gb single channel for 6 months now. I've been looking for an excuse to get a new motherboard anyway.
If it's relevant, I'm upgrading from a gtx460. I use it for modern FPS, CUDA, SC2.
1. There are 7 slots total. If you count the first one as 1 starting from the top, then the full-length PCIe slots are 2, 5, and 7. You want to use 2 and 5.
2. IIRC the only Corsair 750W that old is the old CWT PSH-based TX750. It should be fine.
3. If you use slots 2 and 5, the 8 lanes of connectivity are routed from the CPU to slot 2, and 8 more are routed from the CPU to slot 5. On Lynnfield, Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge (yours), and Haswell systems, there are 16 lanes coming from on the CPU die itself. These get split to x8/x8 on motherboards that support SLI. Yes, performance is slightly compromised as opposed to x16/x16, but it makes next to no difference for gaming workloads. And it's not a possibility on these systems without third-party chips. i.e. even if you upgraded, you'd still be running x8/x8.
On June 27 2013 02:45 Myrmidon wrote: 1. There are 7 slots total. If you count the first one as 1 starting from the top, then the full-length PCIe slots are 2, 5, and 7. You want to use 2 and 5.
2. IIRC the only Corsair 750W that old is the old CWT PSH-based TX750. It should be fine.
3. If you use slots 2 and 5, the 8 lanes of connectivity are routed from the CPU to slot 2, and 8 more are routed from the CPU to slot 5. On Lynnfield, Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge (yours), and Haswell systems, there are 16 lanes coming from on the CPU die itself. These get split to x8/x8 on motherboards that support SLI. Yes, performance is slightly compromised as opposed to x16/x16, but it makes next to no difference for gaming workloads. And it's not a possibility on these systems without third-party chips. i.e. even if you upgraded, you'd still be running x8/x8.
Ok, I think I'm going to pull the trigger then. Thanks for the info!
On June 27 2013 03:18 Myrmidon wrote: Sure, but isn't that kind of GPU compute power pretty overkill even for the more demanding FPS titles these days?
That is, without some greater than 1080p or 60 Hz monitor.
Even if that's completely off, doesn't look like we will have >80fps for consistent good frametimes on a 1920x1080 60hz monitor quite so easily
On June 26 2013 23:26 MrCon wrote: Ok, I guess this is a little off topic but it's so strange I need a place to talk about it :DDD
So some months ago I noticed that my ISP was limiting my bandwidth (mine and all its other customers), so youtube, twitch were not usable, anyway long story short I changed ISP, I went from ADSL to cable and since everything is working fine. Working fine that is, until last week, when streams started to lag and I had to use 480p but hey, I thought it was just an temporary ISP problem. But it got worse and worse until today where my internet just died, or well 99% died, sometime TL would load, sometime not, sometime I could see some twitch at 240p, but not for long.
anyway, I changed my DNS, rebooted, in short tried everything I could on my end before thinking it was my ISP so I was decided to wait. But I tried to unplug the modem RJ45 to replug it on another port, when I took a big electric shock touching it (it hurt :o). I tried again with the same result. On the same electrical plug of my modem I have an electric kettle (is that the correct word, I put water in it, it boils so I can prepare tea or coffee). Last week to test the water heat I put a finger in it, and again I got electric shocked. So that made me remember it, I unplugged the kettle, and instantly my internet is back at 100%.
It was like a twilight zone episode :O
I would probably get an electrician in the asap before your house burns down or something O_o
It's releasing in like, 3 months with the new consoles, and i'm sure it's horribly optimized alpha and messed up numbers due to aa etc
I mean, if you can run it on a really shitty jaguar CPU and the gpu portion of APU which is like a midrange desktop card for consoles at 1920x1080, i'm sure desktop will do fine with settings turned down
On June 27 2013 04:01 Myrmidon wrote: Oh, they're already making that? I'm behind the times. That's with 4x MSAA though. Though point taken.
Gotta keep Nvidia and AMD happy pushing the boundaries.
I think that stuff should always be pushed ahead of the curve, so that you need to turn settings DOWN to get the framerates you want on a single card (even more so if you are a 120-144hz gamer) but there should be plenty of options to do so.
If a "next gen" (new engine) game can be maxed on a midrange card with AA at a comfortable framerate and consistency for playing an FPS game at the time of its release, then the engine is not pushing visuals hard enough IMO.
Now all I am missing is optical drive and GPU. with a 1080p monitor whats the best value card i can get for play sc2 on. I'm willing to spend 400 on a card but i feel that might be overkill for sc2 like a gtx 770. I kinda want to get a cheaper card now and wait till the new generation of gpu's come out next year.
Someone mentioned earlier, the sound card you chose does not have a headphone amp. That might be important to know for you.
You could skip the sound card. Take a look at the ASRock Z87 Extreme4 as an example. It has much improved onboard audio, and it is on a part of the board protected from EM noise. http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/Z87 Extreme4/
I think it also happens to be cheaper than the board you chose.
There's got to be cheaper memory somewhere.
You should look at the GTX 650 Ti for SC2 at 1080p. The "650", "650 Ti", "650 Ti Boost" are all different. I heard the GTX 650 Ti Boost is mainly better for antialiasing, but that's maybe not interesting for SC2. The "650" without "Ti" is too weak, I think.
I don't know about AMD GPUs, don't know what to recommend to look at from AMD.
You can go for a smaller PSU. With a normal GPU, the PC should use something around 300 W when overclocked and GPU running at full load. You could try to find a quality PSU rated for around 450 W, see if that is cheaper.
People might suggest to look at a stronger CPU cooler, but I feel I don't know enough about that. I think I've seen someone find the Zalman CNPS14x for about $30-35 in the last few pages of this thread, so maybe look into that (the Zalman CNPS14x isn't on partpicker). It should also be more quiet than the Hyper212 which might be very interesting. The Hyper212 won't be quiet if it has to ramp up speed.
900-1000 Canadian including a monitor and operating system.
What is your resolution?
Probably 1920 x 1080
What are you using it for?
Main game will be Sc2 but will pick up the occasional new release. Bioshock Infinite and Borderlands 2 being the most recent.
What is your upgrade cycle?
3-4 years. Not against upgrading a part or two occasionally.
When do you plan on building it?
Would like to order parts in the next week or so. If it isn't ridiculous I'd like to order all the parts from NCIX.ca so that I can do the 50 dollar build that they do.
Do you plan on overclocking?
I'm not against it but the 4th generation overclocking seems a lot more complicated than the 3rd gen. Value wise it seems well worth it to get a post market fan and overclock it though. Might just not do it right away.
Do you need an Operating System?
Yes
Do you plan to add a second GPU for SLI or Crossfire?
No
Where are you buying your parts from?
Preferably all from the NCIX canada site. For simplicity sake I'd like if they build it as I haven't built a computer before, and I have no replacement parts whatsoever if trouble shooting needs to happen.
Note: I'm fine buying the monitor elsewhere as it isn't a necessary component for them to build it.
Now all I am missing is optical drive and GPU. with a 1080p monitor whats the best value card i can get for play sc2 on. I'm willing to spend 400 on a card but i feel that might be overkill for sc2 like a gtx 770. I kinda want to get a cheaper card now and wait till the new generation of gpu's come out next year.
any suggestions?
At anywhere near this kind of budget you 1000% want a better CPU cooler. Mid-high range air probably, the 212 is low end. Very appropriate for sandy bridge maybe, but not so much for ivy and even less so for Haswell - Get a u12s/u14s/nhd14 if you can though there's some more budget friendly stuff available, the weaker you go the lower OC you'll have at the same temps. There's no reason to compromise on cooler unless you literally don't care to go past like 4.2-4.3ghz at all (or you want to save money and sacrifice performance), and i don't think that's the mindset appropriate when investing in an unlocked cpu, a good z87 motherboard etc when the CPU turbo's to 3.7-3.9ghz 24/7 depending on how many cores highly loaded anyway. You won't find anything on air that will be good enough to give the temps you want at a high but still safe voltage, so you are always compromising, just much more so with a weak cooler. + Show Spoiler +
With the max temps this thing gives me, you'd have ~4.6ghz on an average 4770k or 4.7 on 4670k, cooler is always better. If you can get 4.7ghz with a max temp of 93c, that means you can get 4.6, 4.5 with a much lower absolute max temp and lower average temps, which is never a bad thing. It might also look loud, but it's not, the case fans are throttled down when i am not loading CPU, GPU highly, and the CPU fans do not even spin at idle or web browsing etc because of the way i set fan speed curve
There's a lot of really bad heatsink reviews out there. Remember that you are trying to have a case with good airflow, simulating a test bench, not simulating a closed, metal box with lots of heat generating components and stagnant air massively increasing the temperature in the case (which is an example of how many people test heatsinks in reviews which is just really silly)
If you can afford a ud3h and even go anywhere near mentioning a GPU over $150 i think it's not even a decision to spend $40-70 on a cpu heatsink and invest a bit in good case and good case airflow. You'll clock significantly higher with the same temperatures, temps will hold down with high sustained load on cpu and/or gpu, good high airflow also = quiet because fans on GPU for example even at full load, don't have to ramp up nearly as much as they would in a hot case. The best air coolers are big, lots of size, surface area, they typically have very quiet fans and insane cooling to noise ratio's
The RAM you chose seems really expensive and also has big heatspreaders, so it's not the best kit to get. A cheap 1600 kit or a step to 2200-2400+mhz on no higher than cas12 latency (lower is better) is better option, faster RAM can be had often for only a small price markup and you can get significant gains from it (5-10% in sc2 from 1600 ram to 2400 which is like adding 200+mhz to cpu oc)
I'd consider myself still pretty awful at dealing with low budget builds but i think i'm pretty good at knowing what to do at these budgets, maybe because that's right where i am in terms of build goals, i'l be on ud3h, 4770k, silver arrow, 770 when it arrives tommorow
You wanna play only sc2? Get a 7770 or something. GPU budget exists for pleasing other game engines, not really this one. There's a ton of benchmarks showing higher FPS with one GPU, but nobody really knows how to test properly aparantly. Your minimum's will be unchanged with a better GPU. Look at this, even though they are measuring averages, with a decent benchmark the results are obvious
The case you chose also seems to be excellent
Advanced Cooling System : -Front 1x 230mm Red LED Fan (pre-installed) -Rear 1x 140mm Fan (pre-installed) -Top 1x 230mm Fan (pre-installed) or 2x 120/140mm Fan (option) -Side 1x 230mm Fan (pre-installed) or 4x 120mm Fan (option) -Bottom 1x 120/140mm Fan (option)
Three 230mm fans and a 140mm default with the case? Aww yeaaah. Probably quiet and pulls/pushes a crazy amount of air. I wish i had something like one of those things. When i saw the side i was like huh, wait, does that actually - yep, four 120mm fans on the side panel.. or a single 230mm, which is also badass
900-1000 Canadian including a monitor and operating system.
What is your resolution?
Probably 1920 x 1080
What are you using it for?
Main game will be Sc2 but will pick up the occasional new release. Bioshock Infinite and Borderlands 2 being the most recent.
What is your upgrade cycle?
3-4 years. Not against upgrading a part or two occasionally.
When do you plan on building it?
Would like to order parts in the next week or so. If it isn't ridiculous I'd like to order all the parts from NCIX.ca so that I can do the 50 dollar build that they do.
Do you plan on overclocking?
I'm not against it but the 4th generation overclocking seems a lot more complicated than the 3rd gen. Value wise it seems well worth it to get a post market fan and overclock it though. Might just not do it right away.
Do you need an Operating System?
Yes
Do you plan to add a second GPU for SLI or Crossfire?
No
Where are you buying your parts from?
Preferably all from the NCIX canada site. For simplicity sake I'd like if they build it as I haven't built a computer before, and I have no replacement parts whatsoever if trouble shooting needs to happen.
Note: I'm fine buying the monitor elsewhere as it isn't a necessary component for them to build it.
Thanks for any help/ advice.
This budget is kind of low for a Haswell overclocking build, just saying. I wouldn't recommend it. You can allocate differently, like get 4gb of memory and CX430 (instead of the XFX) in exchange for a better case. I originally had a Fractal Design Define R4, Samsung 840, Seasonic G, etc and then realized your budget was only ~$800ish doh.
This is $880 which leaves you only $120 for a monitor which isn't going to get you anything good. And it's too bad you missed out on the Dell Ultrasharp U2312HM for $170 last week, that was one of the hottest deal you'll see all year.
If you want a burner then you can add that on for ~$16.
Now all I am missing is optical drive and GPU. with a 1080p monitor whats the best value card i can get for play sc2 on. I'm willing to spend 400 on a card but i feel that might be overkill for sc2 like a gtx 770. I kinda want to get a cheaper card now and wait till the new generation of gpu's come out next year.
any suggestions?
At anywhere near this kind of budget you 1000% want a better CPU cooler. Mid-high range air probably, the 212 is low end. Very appropriate for sandy bridge maybe, but not so much for ivy and even less so for Haswell - Get a u12s/u14s/nhd14 if you can though there's some more budget friendly stuff available, the weaker you go the lower OC you'll have at the same temps. There's no reason to compromise on cooler unless you literally don't care to go past like 4.2-4.3ghz at all (or you want to save money and sacrifice performance), and i don't think that's the mindset appropriate when investing in an unlocked cpu, a good z87 motherboard etc when the CPU turbo's to 3.7-3.9ghz 24/7 depending on how many cores highly loaded anyway. You won't find anything on air that will be good enough to give the temps you want at a high but still safe voltage, so you are always compromising, just much more so with a weak cooler. + Show Spoiler +
With the max temps this thing gives me, you'd have ~4.6ghz on an average 4770k or 4.7 on 4670k, cooler is always better. If you can get 4.7ghz with a max temp of 93c, that means you can get 4.6, 4.5 with a much lower absolute max temp and lower average temps, which is never a bad thing. It might also look loud, but it's not, the case fans are throttled down when i am not loading CPU, GPU highly, and the CPU fans do not even spin at idle or web browsing etc because of the way i set fan speed curve
There's a lot of really bad heatsink reviews out there. Remember that you are trying to have a case with good airflow, simulating a test bench, not simulating a closed, metal box with lots of heat generating components and stagnant air massively increasing the temperature in the case (which is an example of how many people test heatsinks in reviews which is just really silly)
If you can afford a ud3h and even go anywhere near mentioning a GPU over $150 i think it's not even a decision to spend $40-70 on a cpu heatsink and invest a bit in good case and good case airflow. You'll clock significantly higher with the same temperatures, temps will hold down with high sustained load on cpu and/or gpu, good high airflow also = quiet because fans on GPU for example even at full load, don't have to ramp up nearly as much as they would in a hot case. The best air coolers are big, lots of size, surface area, they typically have very quiet fans and insane cooling to noise ratio's
The RAM you chose seems really expensive and also has big heatspreaders, so it's not the best kit to get. A cheap 1600 kit or a step to 2200-2400+mhz on no higher than cas12 latency (lower is better) is better option, faster RAM can be had often for only a small price markup and you can get significant gains from it (5-10% in sc2 from 1600 ram to 2400 which is like adding 200+mhz to cpu oc)
I'd consider myself still pretty awful at dealing with low budget builds but i think i'm pretty good at knowing what to do at these budgets, maybe because that's right where i am in terms of build goals, i'l be on ud3h, 4770k, silver arrow, 770 when it arrives tommorow
You wanna play only sc2? Get a 7770 or something. GPU budget exists for pleasing other game engines, not really this one. There's a ton of benchmarks showing higher FPS with one GPU, but nobody really knows how to test properly aparantly. Your minimum's will be unchanged with a better GPU. Look at this, even though they are measuring averages, with a decent benchmark the results are obvious
Advanced Cooling System : -Front 1x 230mm Red LED Fan (pre-installed) -Rear 1x 140mm Fan (pre-installed) -Top 1x 230mm Fan (pre-installed) or 2x 120/140mm Fan (option) -Side 1x 230mm Fan (pre-installed) or 4x 120mm Fan (option) -Bottom 1x 120/140mm Fan (option)
Three 230mm fans and a 140mm default with the case? Aww yeaaah. Probably quiet and pulls/pushes a crazy amount of air. I wish i had something like one of those things. When i saw the side i was like huh, wait, does that actually - yep, four 120mm fans on the side panel.. or a single 230mm, which is also badass
SO are you saying i should go liquid cooling? any recommendations. Is the Noctua NH-D14 still considered "always compromising"? (thanks for the thorough as F*** assessment on my build, I really appreciate it!)
Liquid cooling is not really better, if you mean like random closed loops etc. A corsair h110 or swiftech h220 (especially with custom fans) can give you significantly better performance than high end air, but you gotta spend a lot to get real improvements. A h80i for example is a liquid cooler, but notably worse than high end air cooling and a lot louder too, especially in single fan config. When i said that, i kinda meant you are never gonna get perfect results no matter what you get within reason, as opposed to some CPU's before (sandy bridge) where you could clock really high, much closer to the limits of the CPU, with a low end cooler. It's best to spend more, but going extreme is more for high end enthusiasts pushing every 100mhz etc, not really suited for a general build unless it's really high budget. A strong cooler in $40-80 is best for targetting good OC performance i think, like you can get significantly significantly better (and quieter even maybe at the same time?) than a 212, you're not really compromising as much. nh-d14 can probably let you take ~1.35vcore (average cpu ~4.7ghz?) through a haswell i5 with absolute max temp of 90c stress testing (and averages much lower) assuming ok case air flow, u14s is almost the same performance and u12s is a bit worse AFAIK and after that, you're starting to head into voltage territories that might not be great for running an overclock for 2-5+ years on high temps with haswell, it's not really clear yet how high you can run. Ivy bridge seemed to be able to take a ton of voltage without degadation, it seems less so for Haswell
u12s and u14s are really sweet, small but still close to the best air, nh-d14 is pretty much best you can get, i got a Silver Arrow because there was an offer on that week. There's a few good cheaper offerings probably (u12s, u14s and nh-d14 all have big price tags..), i don't know the heatsink market in US very well, it's much better in UK i think where you have for example the HR-02 Macho at ~£37 which is a great heatsink, before NH-d14 and silver arrow come in at ~£55-60
EPT![[image loading]](http://cdn.overclock.net/c/c4/c436885b_bf419204x.jpeg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/rA0wnYO.jpg)
With the max temps this thing gives me, you'd have ~4.6ghz on an average 4770k or 4.7 on 4670k, cooler is always better. If you can get 4.7ghz with a max temp of 93c, that means you can get 4.6, 4.5 with a much lower absolute max temp and lower average temps, which is never a bad thing. It might also look loud, but it's not, the case fans are throttled down when i am not loading CPU, GPU highly, and the CPU fans do not even spin at idle or web browsing etc because of the way i set fan speed curve
