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.
Oh, last question(s). Since I haven't actually assembled a computer for half a decade, is there any decent tutorial/guide or whatever to help jog my memory? I've got an Indian friend of mine that I can call if need be. Considering I did it myself when I was a wee child, I'm sure I can do it now, but it never hurts to ask.
And to confirm, the 560 Ti 448 is not worth the extra cash compared to the 560 Ti right? If it is one of those purely theoretical benchmarking improvement upgrades, that's not what I'm looking for.
and nice one with the VESA mount, never thought of that....
On January 06 2012 14:25 Elegy wrote: Oh, last question(s). Since I haven't actually assembled a computer for half a decade, is there any decent tutorial/guide or whatever to help jog my memory? I've got an Indian friend of mine that I can call if need be. Considering I did it myself when I was a wee child, I'm sure I can do it now, but it never hurts to ask.
And to confirm, the 560 Ti 448 is not worth the extra cash compared to the 560 Ti right? If it is one of those purely theoretical benchmarking improvement upgrades, that's not what I'm looking for.
and nice one with the VESA mount, never thought of that....
Guide? Your posting in it!
And 560ti w/448 is a mixed bag. It definitely makes sense over a 570 (it actually is a cut down 570, almost same performance) but sometimes recommending it over a 6950 can be hard. The prices for one seem to be all over the place.
GTX 560 Ti 448 is arguable. Think maybe like 15-20% better than normal GTX 560 Ti, but if prices are like $280+ instead of $210 for that particular GTX 560 Ti model (which is lower than typical), I don't think that's worth it? It depends. You can go for it if you want.
Bitcoin is spiking and I am thinking about taking the chance to upgrade to a 78xx card soon (Ill pick it up later) and a good 120hz monitor.
What monitor can about $350 get me? I don't understand monitors that well.
My needs are:
Vidya games. Watching my hash rates on all of my miners. Spinning around cackling in my chair.
I don't give a shit about: Viewing angle. Unless its so bad there is no viewing angle. How it looks on my desk. TN or IPS technology, Im in it for whatever handles gaming the best.
I have some leeway on budget.
The Samsung that was used at WCG. The 950D? I think that goes for close to $500 though.
On January 06 2012 14:25 Elegy wrote: Oh, last question(s). Since I haven't actually assembled a computer for half a decade, is there any decent tutorial/guide or whatever to help jog my memory? I've got an Indian friend of mine that I can call if need be. Considering I did it myself when I was a wee child, I'm sure I can do it now, but it never hurts to ask.
And to confirm, the 560 Ti 448 is not worth the extra cash compared to the 560 Ti right? If it is one of those purely theoretical benchmarking improvement upgrades, that's not what I'm looking for.
and nice one with the VESA mount, never thought of that....
A GTX 560 Ti already allows you to play most games on reasonably high settings at 1080p. If you want to play on ultra with AA and AF than I guess it's worth it. Best to just look at benchmarks and decide for yourself:
Bitcoin is spiking and I am thinking about taking the chance to upgrade to a 78xx card soon (Ill pick it up later) and a good 120hz monitor.
What monitor can about $350 get me? I don't understand monitors that well.
My needs are:
Vidya games. Watching my hash rates on all of my miners. Spinning around cackling in my chair.
I don't give a shit about: Viewing angle. Unless its so bad there is no viewing angle. How it looks on my desk. TN or IPS technology, Im in it for whatever handles gaming the best.
I have some leeway on budget.
The Samsung that was used at WCG. The 950D? I think that goes for close to $500 though.
On January 06 2012 14:13 Medrea wrote: Bitcoin is spiking and I am thinking about taking the chance to upgrade to a 78xx card soon (Ill pick it up later) and a good 120hz monitor.
What monitor can about $350 get me? I don't understand monitors that well.
My needs are:
Vidya games. Watching my hash rates on all of my miners. Spinning around cackling in my chair.
I don't give a shit about: Viewing angle. Unless its so bad there is no viewing angle. How it looks on my desk. TN or IPS technology, Im in it for whatever handles gaming the best.
I have some leeway on budget.
If $350 is all you have, you can pretty much only get the Dell Ultrasharp U2412M/U2312HM or Asus ProArt PA238Q. The Ultrasharp U2312HM has, by far, the lowest input lag but has some minor overdrive overshoot; the Asus ProArt PA238Q has higher input lag (still negligibly low) but allows you to tweak the overdrive amount to suit your needs. The Dell U2412M is a 16:10 monitor so you get more vertical room to play with and is an all round better screen than the U2312HM.
Spend ~$450 and you can get a Samsung S27A750D or BenQ XL2420T . They're the cheapest 120hz monitors that don't suck. No idea if there's a package that doesn't come with the 3D glasses but I'm guessing not and I doubt the removal of the 3D glasses would lower the price by much.
Bitcoin is spiking and I am thinking about taking the chance to upgrade to a 78xx card soon (Ill pick it up later) and a good 120hz monitor.
What monitor can about $350 get me? I don't understand monitors that well.
My needs are:
Vidya games. Watching my hash rates on all of my miners. Spinning around cackling in my chair.
I don't give a shit about: Viewing angle. Unless its so bad there is no viewing angle. How it looks on my desk. TN or IPS technology, Im in it for whatever handles gaming the best.
I have some leeway on budget.
The Samsung that was used at WCG. The 950D? I think that goes for close to $500 though.
Depends how the game works. If its retarded like Starcraft 2, you won't but most of the time you'll still get more viewing space.
Oohh. Does that mean I can give it time and prices will drop and quality will increase?
Are we close to another breakpoint in the technology?
Au Optronics claims to have 120hz VA panels. That's kind of laughable because AUO has slow as shit VA panels, so despite how huge their contrast can be, it'll still suck for gaming. Some people think they'll be 120hz IPS panels but who the hell is going to buy that?
Besides that, a lot of fools seem to hold OLEDs as the next great thing that will magically solve our problems. The only problem is that the only benefit of them is the amazing contrast: they still do the sample-and-hold all LCDs do, they have limited lifespans, and they suffer from burn in which is a problem for a desktop for obvious reasons. They also tend to lack retina burning brightness too.
I honestly cant think of any game that gives more vertical viewing space for monitors like 4:3 and 16:10.
Can you name one? Diablo3 WoW SC2 all give the same height. Most FPS give the same height. etc etc
On January 06 2012 14:47 Womwomwom wrote: Depends how the game works. If its retarded like Starcraft 2, you won't but most of the time you'll still get more viewing space.
Oohh. Does that mean I can give it time and prices will drop and quality will increase?
Are we close to another breakpoint in the technology?
Au Optronics claims to have 120hz VA panels. That's kind of laughable because AUO has slow as shit VA panels, despite how huge their contrast can be. Some people think they'll be 120hz IPS panels but who the hell is going to buy that?
Besides that, a lot of fools seem to hold OLEDs as the next great thing that will magically solve our problems. The only problem is that the only benefit of them is the amazing contrast: they still do the sample-and-hold all LCDs do, they have limited lifespans, and they suffer from burn in which is a problem for a desktop for obvious reasons. They also tend to lack retina burning brightness too.
Also blue OLEDS arent very bright and last even shorter.
Pretty sure The Witcher 2 can do 16:10 properly. Probably a bunch of other PC titles too.
Edit: If its just for gaming, 16: 9 is a good enough option. Personally I don't really care about the aspect ratios, since I have a 2560x1440 monitor, but 16:10 is still the better ratio for work thanks to thick as hell toolbars in Windows applications.
Just to explain why I think the U2412M is a better screen than the U2312HM, its more to do with the contrast and larger pixel pitch rather than the aspect ratio. Responsiveness is more or less the same, its input lag is still very low, but it has far better contrast (like 200:1 more!) and better black depth when calibrated. The larger pixel pitch makes the thick anti-glare less intrusive.
Hi, I'm looking to buy a new computer very soon as I'm not honestly sure how much longer my current one will last. I will be mostly using it for gaming (Starcraft II & Skyrim) and watching streams. I'm looking at a 1920x1080 resolution, I won't be overclocking or adding a second GPU and my upgrade cycle will more than likely be in excess of two years.
I will be shopping from http://www.umart.com.au/newindex2.phtml?bid=6 as they are local to me. The build I've come up with on their website (using their customer configure system) is $1437 Australian including Windows 7 64bit, a new monitor and the ~$80 assembly and install fee. The most I'm looking to spend is $1500 so there is a +$60 wiggle room atm.
I apologize in advance for not linking the items directly, umart doesn't seem to let me do that.
CPU - Intel Core i5 2500K Processor LGA1155 3.3GHz CPU Cooling - Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO w Transparent 12cm Mobo - Asus P8Z68-V Socket 1155 Intel Z68 Chipset RAM - G Skill 4G(2x2G) DDR3 1600Mhz PC12800 RL 9-9-9-24(CL9D-4GBRL) Hard Disk - Western Digital 1TB SATA3 64M IntelliPowe CaviarGreen WD10EARX Graphics - Asus GTX560TI 1GDDR5 256BIT DDR5 2DVI HDMI FAN PCIE ATX Monitor - LG E2341V-BN 23"LED 16 : 9 HDMI D-Sub DVI-D 5ms 3yr PixelPerfectWty DVDRW - Samsung 22X DVDRW Black SATA (SH-S223C-BL) Case - CoolerMaster RC-912A-KWN1 HAF912 Advance Ver w Window PSU - CoolerMaster 700W Extreme Plus OS - Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit OEM
I'm pretty clueless when it comes to computers and I loosely based this build around umart's prebuilt i5 2500k system and tailored it to myself. For some reason I'm pretty adamant about the i5 2500k and the GTX560TI but I may be convinced otherwise =p. The other parts I honestly have no idea about, especially the motherboard as there seems to be an infinite amount of z68 ones to choose from. I'd just like a little guidance as to what to change to make sure that it's all going to be compatible, all fit in the case and last a while etc etc. I'm completely open to choosing a different manufacturer of all the parts listed too.
Thanks in advance for any help and suggestions. It's really appreciated. ^_^
If you have no intention of overclocking than you're throwing money away at a core i5 2500k since K suffix processors have an unlocked multiplier and they're begging you to overclock them. You'll want a non-K suffix processor such as a core i5 2500 or core i5 2400 if you aren't overclocking.
The P8Z68-V is also a pretty high end board designed for a multi-GPU configuration and overclocking. If you're not overclocking than you'll want a H61 or H67 motherboard.
H61 and H67 motherboards can't use 1600MHz memory so you'll want 1333MHz memory or whatever is the least expensive memory (may be 1600MHz in your case). The difference between the two is not noticeable.
Coolermaster Extreme Plus 700w isn't a very good power supply. And even an overclocked 2500k and SLI GTX 560 Ti configuration does not need 700w of power. A ~500w unit is fine for any non-overclocked core i5 and GTX 560 Ti configuration as your specific configuration will never exceed 300w. Coolermaster in general isn't very good for power supplies. Antec Neo Eco 520 would be a better choice: http://www.umart.com.au/newindex2.phtml?bid=6
You also don't need an aftermarket heatsink if you're not overclocking. The Intel provided stock heatsink is fine.
You also don't want a Caviar Green HDD to be your only HDD since you're be using it as a boot drive and application drive. Caviar Green are slow HDDs meant for storage only. You want a 7200 RPM HDD such as a Caviar Blue.
Thanks for the quick response. Is there any difference in life expectancy if I opt for the i5 2500 and a H61 or H67 motherboard over the 2500k and the z68? I'll make sure to choose a different PSU too.
I did not know that about HDD's either so thanks. Will any 7200 RPM HDD do, such as Seagate SATA3 1TB 7200RPM 32mb Cache? As I'm definitely looking to get 1TB but only really want to pay around $100 and Western Digital don't seem to have any for that price, only in excess of $200. Maybe there is a reason for that? Lol.
No there is no difference in life expectancy in a perfect world. But we don't live in a perfect world so no product is identical to another and quality control does fail its job sometimes But seriously, both will last well beyond their usefulness (for playing the latest games). If you're talking about performance life expectancy than well the overclocked configuration will last slightly longer since it's going to be clocked moderately higher.
Any 7200 RPM HDD is fine. Your retailer doesn't carry a Caviar Blue 1TB. All they carry are Caviar Blacks and Enterprise HDDs which both comes at a premium due to their five year warranty (as opposed to Seagate's one year and Caviar Blue's two year) and other things.
Okay, one last question. Are there any particular H61 or H67 motherboards that you would suggest? Their descriptions mean nothing to me and I'd hate to choose something that won't be compatible with something else.
Hey guys, posted here a while ago about upgrading my GPU, I decided to put that off and instead go for a processor upgrade with all the relevant extras.
My current build is: Motherboard - Gigabyte GA-MA790FX-DQ6 socket AM2+ motherboard CPU - AMD Phenom 9950 quad core socket AM2+ processor Case - Antec Twelve Hundred Gamers case PSU - ANTEC PSU/TruePower Quattro 1000W 80+ PSU GPU - Sapphire 4870 x 2 2Gb PCI-Express graphics card RAM - Kingston 6GB 800MHz (2x2GB kit) Fully Buffered DDR2 RAM
Now from what I understand the i5 2500k is currently the way to go for anyone who is being both performance and budget conscious (please correct me if I'm wrong), im in the UK and I've chosen to go with this supplier (if there is someone better please suggest).
Now the part which I'm struggling to deal with is the motherboard. I originally bought my motherboard because I wanted it to last and I was being a bit stupid, thinking i'd do crazy overclocking but really didnt know much at the time and I didn't really research it much, now im here with a once expensive motherboard which is socket AM2+, which nothing uses... Now today I am being more considerate of my budget but at the same time I've been a keen gamer for some time and as I'm nearing graduation this year I would hope that a good job would allow me to become some kind of enthusiast, which would require me to learn more about overclocking, performance etc
To me it seems there are two choices H61 v P67.
H61 seems to be the safe, budget option where I just buy it, plug stuff in and be done with it, you can overclock the GPU if you want. You can get them for around £50 or less:
There seems to be an issue with SATA on these, I haven't read a whole bunch but it would seem that if I were to consider getting SSD at some point or trying to use RAID I would have issues, is this correct? (this MSI board seems to have a feature to deal with that?) This isn't a huge deal for me at present, however as I wish to learn more it may become an issue.
Then theres P67, I gather this is the board that allows you to overclock the CPU, run multiple GPUs and generally play around a bit more, as well as RAID support etc
I've left out H67 because it seems pointless to me, I dont need extra USB and other features don't have much of an appeal, unless you feel I'm wrong, it feels like I'd be better off getting the cheaper P67 than any H67.
So what advice can you give me? Stick with the cheapest or expand out a bit. I am keen to learn the subtleties of performance tweaking, I have a great PSU and case which support these things however I'm not a beastly enthusiast yet, I don't need all the features and I'm happy just learning things as I go over the years at a comfortable pace, so is it worth spending that bit extra for the P67? Would I learn something useful and extend the life of my PC, or just burn a bigger hole? I want to save money but I don't want to shoot myself in the foot down the line. Do you think 1155 will still be relevant in 2,3 or 4 years? Am I likely to need to buy another mobo when I wish to upgrade again? (this would push me towards a cheaper option now)
I guess one final thing I may have overlooked is cooling, I forget if CPU's come with heatsinks etc, I assume they do but would you recommend anything on that website (or any other UK supplier if its worth the extra shipping). If I were getting the P67 to overclock it would seem that improved cooling would be something to look into, although I'm not looking for anything crazy.
Hey guys, posted here a while ago about upgrading my GPU, I decided to put that off and instead go for a processor upgrade with all the relevant extras.
My current build is: Motherboard - Gigabyte GA-MA790FX-DQ6 socket AM2+ motherboard CPU - AMD Phenom 9950 quad core socket AM2+ processor Case - Antec Twelve Hundred Gamers case PSU - ANTEC PSU/TruePower Quattro 1000W 80+ PSU GPU - Sapphire 4870 x 2 2Gb PCI-Express graphics card RAM - Kingston 6GB 800MHz (2x2GB kit) Fully Buffered DDR2 RAM
Now from what I understand the i5 2500k is currently the way to go for anyone who is being both performance and budget conscious (please correct me if I'm wrong), im in the UK and I've chosen to go with this supplier (if there is someone better please suggest).
Now the part which I'm struggling to deal with is the motherboard. I originally bought my motherboard because I wanted it to last and I was being a bit stupid, thinking i'd do crazy overclocking but really didnt know much at the time and I didn't really research it much, now im here with a once expensive motherboard which is socket AM2+, which nothing uses... Now today I am being more considerate of my budget but at the same time I've been a keen gamer for some time and as I'm nearing graduation this year I would hope that a good job would allow me to become some kind of enthusiast, which would require me to learn more about overclocking, performance etc
To me it seems there are two choices H61 v P67.
H61 seems to be the safe, budget option where I just buy it, plug stuff in and be done with it, you can overclock the GPU if you want. You can get them for around £50 or less:
There seems to be an issue with SATA on these, I haven't read a whole bunch but it would seem that if I were to consider getting SSD at some point or trying to use RAID I would have issues, is this correct? (this MSI board seems to have a feature to deal with that?) This isn't a huge deal for me at present, however as I wish to learn more it may become an issue.
Then theres P67, I gather this is the board that allows you to overclock the CPU, run multiple GPUs and generally play around a bit more, as well as RAID support etc
I've left out H67 because it seems pointless to me, I dont need extra USB and other features don't have much of an appeal, unless you feel I'm wrong, it feels like I'd be better off getting the cheaper P67 than any H67.
So what advice can you give me? Stick with the cheapest or expand out a bit. I am keen to learn the subtleties of performance tweaking, I have a great PSU and case which support these things however I'm not a beastly enthusiast yet, I don't need all the features and I'm happy just learning things as I go over the years at a comfortable pace, so is it worth spending that bit extra for the P67? Would I learn something useful and extend the life of my PC, or just burn a bigger hole? I want to save money but I don't want to shoot myself in the foot down the line. Do you think 1155 will still be relevant in 2,3 or 4 years? Am I likely to need to buy another mobo when I wish to upgrade again? (this would push me towards a cheaper option now)
I guess one final thing I may have overlooked is cooling, I forget if CPU's come with heatsinks etc, I assume they do but would you recommend anything on that website (or any other UK supplier if its worth the extra shipping). If I were getting the P67 to overclock it would seem that improved cooling would be something to look into, although I'm not looking for anything crazy.
The core i5 2500K is for overclockers and it's not really a budget processor but it is the only processor to get if you intend to overclock and game.
There are four consumer chipsets. H61 being the most basic. H67 being slightly better by offering SATA 6Gbps. Though some manufacturers opt to equip their H61 board with third party SATA 6Gbps chipsets as well. Both of these do not allow for overclocking. If you are not overclocking than you would get one of these boards and pair it with a non-K suffix processor (core i5 2500, core i5 2400, etc). P67 and Z68 boards are for overclocking and multi-GPU configurations. You want one of these if you are getting a core i5 2500K since you'll going to be overclocking it. Z68 has some extra features such as allowing you to use the integrated graphics (which in turn allows for Lucid - useless, Quick Sync - useless for the majority) and allows for SSD caching (also useless). Entry P67 and Z68 boards are fine if you have no intention of doing something crazy such as 4.5GHz, if you want to go higher than you may want something better.
So you select your motherboard based on whether you want to overclock or not. Then you decide on which of the two chipset you want. Then you decide on what you want / need in a motherboard and go from there.
Your retailer doesn't really have much for inexpensive P67 / Z68 motherboards. I'd probably go with the Z68 Pro3 / ASUS P8Z68-V LX, MSI P67A-C45 or MSI P67A G53. You'll learn something from overclocking and it'll extend performance life a bit but it's fine if you don't want to overclock at all. You're not exactly burning money on an entry level P67 / Z68 board. You would be burning money if you were to get a more premium board such as the ASUS P8P67 Pro
The SATA issue is a year old and has already been resolved. All motherboards available at retailers are of B3 revision - the revision that has the problem fixed.
LGA1155 only has another year left in it. Haswell (which comes out next year) will be using LGA1150. The two will not be compatible so yes if you intend to upgrade to Skylake / Skymont in four years, you'll need a new motherboard.
A Coolermaster Hyper 212+ or similar inexpensive heatsink is perfectly adequate for up to 5GHz.
A Coolermaster Hyper 212+ or similar inexpensive heatsink is perfectly adequate for up to 5GHz.
Maybe if you get a golden chip that can do close to 5GHz with ~1.4Vcore or less, but unless you like to see high 80's/90s in stress testing a 212+ isn't going to get you that far with most chips...
BTW I wouldn't recommend an MSI mobo to anyone if only because they have very limited options for overclocking. No offset Vcore is a huge turn-off.
I'm pretty sure everybody's GD5x / Pro / UD3 / whatever $140+ motherboard lets you set VCore manually, and likely some under those levels and prices as well. Probably G45 and below for MSI does not let you, but everything higher should?
On January 07 2012 04:21 Myrmidon wrote: I'm pretty sure everybody's GD5x / Pro / UD3 / whatever $140+ motherboard lets you set VCore manually, and likely some under those levels and prices as well. Probably G45 and below for MSI does not let you, but everything higher should?
I'm talking about offset. Even my POS C43 lets me set it manually, but if you want to have lower VCore during Idle/low use such as me watching SC2 streams for hours on end, then you either use Auto (which gives an absurd VCore for load compared to what's actually requred for stability) or you set a manual value (which obviously doesn't down-volt at all). This is where ASUS, ASRock, and Gigabyte shine.
Alright so this is a build my brother built for me and I thought I would post it here to get your opinions. The reason there is no video card is because I already bought a 6870 and 600w PSU on boxing week when it was on sale.
This all totals to $583.56. My budget howerver, Is $520 CAD. So on to my question, is this a good build to begin with? Are there better components out there that I could find for a cheaper price?