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Computer Build, Upgrade & Buying Resource Thread - Page 246

Forum Index > Tech Support
Post a Reply
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When using this resource, please read the 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.
y0su
Profile Blog Joined September 2011
Finland7871 Posts
Last Edited: 2014-03-10 14:25:32
March 10 2014 13:32 GMT
#4901
On March 10 2014 22:13 wussleeQ wrote:
so pretty upset that my cpu cooler got bent by someone while i sent my mobo in for an rma but can this be bent back into place? and will it affect the cooling in any way?

+ Show Spoiler +
[image loading]

funny that the fins didn't get bent...

You should be able to bend it back (or use it like that if the fan/cooler fit). Just make sure that if fins get bent you try to straighten them out to maximize airflow surface area

edit: can't exactly see if the pipe is messing with the heatsink surface... That would be my only concern at this point. As long as you're able to get a smooth flat surface for maximum heat transfer with the cpu the rest should be fine.
Thaniri
Profile Blog Joined March 2011
1264 Posts
March 11 2014 04:15 GMT
#4902
My power supply has started dying for the third time on my current rig, so I'm going to build myself a new one.

I'm going to salvage the solid state drives (2) and graphics card (Nvidia Geforce GTX 660) from my current rig. I can get away with salvaging the RAM as well, but I might give this PC to someone else so I don't necessarily want to do that.

I have some questions, is getting a dedicated sound card worth it?
Does spending extra on an optical drive give any appreciable benefit?

What is your budget?
$1,000, this budget doesn't need to be filled though, whatever it takes to never lag in Starcraft on competitive settings. I want to be cheap, so things like a pretty case I don't want.

What is your monitor's native resolution?
1920x1080

What games do you intend to play on this computer? What settings?
Starcraft 2 competitive settings, Dota 2 minimum, CS:GO maximum.

I MAY stream in the future if I ever get a fiber optic connection.

What do you intend to use the computer for besides gaming?
lots of photoshop and video editting.

Do you intend to overclock?
no

Do you intend to do SLI / Crossfire?
no

Do you need an operating system?
yes

Do you need a monitor or any other peripherals and is this part of your budget?
no

If you have any requirements or brand preferences, please specify.
no

What country will you be buying your parts in?
Canada

If you have any retailer preferences, please specify.
NCIX.ca
Cyro
Profile Blog Joined June 2011
United Kingdom20323 Posts
March 11 2014 04:54 GMT
#4903
On March 11 2014 13:15 Thaniri wrote:
My power supply has started dying for the third time on my current rig, so I'm going to build myself a new one.

I'm going to salvage the solid state drives (2) and graphics card (Nvidia Geforce GTX 660) from my current rig. I can get away with salvaging the RAM as well, but I might give this PC to someone else so I don't necessarily want to do that.

I have some questions, is getting a dedicated sound card worth it?
Does spending extra on an optical drive give any appreciable benefit?

What is your budget?
$1,000, this budget doesn't need to be filled though, whatever it takes to never lag in Starcraft on competitive settings. I want to be cheap, so things like a pretty case I don't want.

What is your monitor's native resolution?
1920x1080

What games do you intend to play on this computer? What settings?
Starcraft 2 competitive settings, Dota 2 minimum, CS:GO maximum.

I MAY stream in the future if I ever get a fiber optic connection.

What do you intend to use the computer for besides gaming?
lots of photoshop and video editting.

Do you intend to overclock?
no

Do you intend to do SLI / Crossfire?
no

Do you need an operating system?
yes

Do you need a monitor or any other peripherals and is this part of your budget?
no

If you have any requirements or brand preferences, please specify.
no

What country will you be buying your parts in?
Canada

If you have any retailer preferences, please specify.
NCIX.ca


What CPU/mobo do you have on that system?
"oh my god my overclock... I got a single WHEA error on the 23rd hour, 9 minutes" -Belial88
Thaniri
Profile Blog Joined March 2011
1264 Posts
Last Edited: 2014-03-11 04:57:58
March 11 2014 04:57 GMT
#4904
On March 11 2014 13:54 Cyro wrote:
Show nested quote +
On March 11 2014 13:15 Thaniri wrote:
My power supply has started dying for the third time on my current rig, so I'm going to build myself a new one.

I'm going to salvage the solid state drives (2) and graphics card (Nvidia Geforce GTX 660) from my current rig. I can get away with salvaging the RAM as well, but I might give this PC to someone else so I don't necessarily want to do that.

I have some questions, is getting a dedicated sound card worth it?
Does spending extra on an optical drive give any appreciable benefit?

What is your budget?
$1,000, this budget doesn't need to be filled though, whatever it takes to never lag in Starcraft on competitive settings. I want to be cheap, so things like a pretty case I don't want.

What is your monitor's native resolution?
1920x1080

What games do you intend to play on this computer? What settings?
Starcraft 2 competitive settings, Dota 2 minimum, CS:GO maximum.

I MAY stream in the future if I ever get a fiber optic connection.

What do you intend to use the computer for besides gaming?
lots of photoshop and video editting.

Do you intend to overclock?
no

Do you intend to do SLI / Crossfire?
no

Do you need an operating system?
yes

Do you need a monitor or any other peripherals and is this part of your budget?
no

If you have any requirements or brand preferences, please specify.
no

What country will you be buying your parts in?
Canada

If you have any retailer preferences, please specify.
NCIX.ca


What CPU/mobo do you have on that system?


The CPU is in dire need of replacement, its a quad core intel q8300, i've since forgotten the motherboard model but I don't think it can use an ivy bridge processor.
Cyro
Profile Blog Joined June 2011
United Kingdom20323 Posts
Last Edited: 2014-03-11 06:53:18
March 11 2014 06:42 GMT
#4905
On March 11 2014 13:57 Thaniri wrote:
Show nested quote +
On March 11 2014 13:54 Cyro wrote:
On March 11 2014 13:15 Thaniri wrote:
My power supply has started dying for the third time on my current rig, so I'm going to build myself a new one.

I'm going to salvage the solid state drives (2) and graphics card (Nvidia Geforce GTX 660) from my current rig. I can get away with salvaging the RAM as well, but I might give this PC to someone else so I don't necessarily want to do that.

I have some questions, is getting a dedicated sound card worth it?
Does spending extra on an optical drive give any appreciable benefit?

What is your budget?
$1,000, this budget doesn't need to be filled though, whatever it takes to never lag in Starcraft on competitive settings. I want to be cheap, so things like a pretty case I don't want.

What is your monitor's native resolution?
1920x1080

What games do you intend to play on this computer? What settings?
Starcraft 2 competitive settings, Dota 2 minimum, CS:GO maximum.

I MAY stream in the future if I ever get a fiber optic connection.

What do you intend to use the computer for besides gaming?
lots of photoshop and video editting.

Do you intend to overclock?
no

Do you intend to do SLI / Crossfire?
no

Do you need an operating system?
yes

Do you need a monitor or any other peripherals and is this part of your budget?
no

If you have any requirements or brand preferences, please specify.
no

What country will you be buying your parts in?
Canada

If you have any retailer preferences, please specify.
NCIX.ca


What CPU/mobo do you have on that system?


The CPU is in dire need of replacement, its a quad core intel q8300, i've since forgotten the motherboard model but I don't think it can use an ivy bridge processor.


Haswell is current gen, sounds like you want a 4670

whatever it takes to never lag in Starcraft on competitive settings.


It's impossible to make sc2 run amazingly or even great under certain circumstances, you can make it run pretty good compared to weaker CPU's though. If you're not overclocking, the 4670 is best thing out there for running it. Since it's not expensive, it seems like an easy choice vs taking one of the cheaper haswell i3's (to have 4 cores and perform a bit better core-for-core due to extra cache and the turbo boost feature that i3 does not have), unless you really want to save money.

If you already have a 660 and two ssd's, i have no idea where you would want to spend even a fraction of that budget, aside from important stuff like case (but you said cheap) and a decent power supply
"oh my god my overclock... I got a single WHEA error on the 23rd hour, 9 minutes" -Belial88
iTzSnypah
Profile Blog Joined February 2011
United States1738 Posts
March 11 2014 06:55 GMT
#4906
Unfortunately the Q8300 is a bad CPU to OC. It's BLCK is 333Mhz and the majority of motherboards that it's in is usually has the G41 Chipset which means it has the terrible ICH7 (which top out at ~350BLCK) so you can't even OC it 10% (2.625Ghz vs 2.5Ghz).

It's the same reason I choose the E7500 instead of the superior E8600 when I upgraded from my X6800. The lower base BLCK means you can OC much further.
Team Liquid needs more Terrans.
Incognoto
Profile Blog Joined May 2010
France10239 Posts
March 11 2014 11:53 GMT
#4907
Oh, by the way guys, why do we never hear about the quad-core Xeons?

Is there any particular reason they don't get a lot of attention?
maru lover forever
Cyro
Profile Blog Joined June 2011
United Kingdom20323 Posts
March 11 2014 12:19 GMT
#4908
People who need more multithreaded performance than 4670 would generally want.. 4670k
"oh my god my overclock... I got a single WHEA error on the 23rd hour, 9 minutes" -Belial88
Incognoto
Profile Blog Joined May 2010
France10239 Posts
March 11 2014 16:33 GMT
#4909
On March 11 2014 21:19 Cyro wrote:
People who need more multithreaded performance than 4670 would generally want.. 4670k


So it's not that the Xeons are bad or anything, it's just that there's no reason to get them over a 4670k ?
maru lover forever
Myrmidon
Profile Blog Joined December 2004
United States9452 Posts
March 11 2014 16:46 GMT
#4910
If you mean socket 1150 Xeons, server platform support (ECC Ram, etc.), possibly higher reliability / binning? Haswell k-series are missing some virtualization features and TSX.

For ordinary desktop / gaming / prosumer use, generally an overclocked Core i5 is going to be better than the comparably priced Xeon with hyperthreading. And an overclocked i7 is going to straight-up be faster.

If you're not overclocking because of reliability, stability, power consumption, temperatures, effort, motherboard support, or other reasons, and hyperthreading would help you, you should look at some of the Xeons because for whatever reason you can get Xeons with hyperthreading for a lower price than the Core i7s that pretty much have a subset of their features and perform the same.
Incognoto
Profile Blog Joined May 2010
France10239 Posts
March 11 2014 16:53 GMT
#4911
That answers the question quite nicely, thank you.
maru lover forever
Thaniri
Profile Blog Joined March 2011
1264 Posts
March 11 2014 19:52 GMT
#4912
On March 12 2014 01:46 Myrmidon wrote:
If you mean socket 1150 Xeons, server platform support (ECC Ram, etc.), possibly higher reliability / binning? Haswell k-series are missing some virtualization features and TSX.

For ordinary desktop / gaming / prosumer use, generally an overclocked Core i5 is going to be better than the comparably priced Xeon with hyperthreading. And an overclocked i7 is going to straight-up be faster.

If you're not overclocking because of reliability, stability, power consumption, temperatures, effort, motherboard support, or other reasons, and hyperthreading would help you, you should look at some of the Xeons because for whatever reason you can get Xeons with hyperthreading for a lower price than the Core i7s that pretty much have a subset of their features and perform the same.


Excellent answer, I'll probably go for the 4670k thanks guys.

I don't plan on overclocking because I know I'm really bad for leaving it on for days on end and degrading everything to a pulp. My processor used to be able to run SC2 on competitive settings at 60fps steady all game, and i was using a radeon 4450 (or maybe it was 4550, been a while) and now I get 20 fps in 200/200 battles on minimum settings and im on the geforce gtx 660.

My old q8300 will be glad to never see me again, especially after dozens of power supply related crashes.
y0su
Profile Blog Joined September 2011
Finland7871 Posts
March 11 2014 21:50 GMT
#4913
On March 12 2014 04:52 Thaniri wrote:
Show nested quote +
On March 12 2014 01:46 Myrmidon wrote:
If you mean socket 1150 Xeons, server platform support (ECC Ram, etc.), possibly higher reliability / binning? Haswell k-series are missing some virtualization features and TSX.

For ordinary desktop / gaming / prosumer use, generally an overclocked Core i5 is going to be better than the comparably priced Xeon with hyperthreading. And an overclocked i7 is going to straight-up be faster.

If you're not overclocking because of reliability, stability, power consumption, temperatures, effort, motherboard support, or other reasons, and hyperthreading would help you, you should look at some of the Xeons because for whatever reason you can get Xeons with hyperthreading for a lower price than the Core i7s that pretty much have a subset of their features and perform the same.


Excellent answer, I'll probably go for the 4670k thanks guys.

I don't plan on overclocking because I know I'm really bad for leaving it on for days on end and degrading everything to a pulp. My processor used to be able to run SC2 on competitive settings at 60fps steady all game, and i was using a radeon 4450 (or maybe it was 4550, been a while) and now I get 20 fps in 200/200 battles on minimum settings and im on the geforce gtx 660.

My old q8300 will be glad to never see me again, especially after dozens of power supply related crashes.

If you don't plan on overclocking save money and get the 4670 (non k).
Cyro
Profile Blog Joined June 2011
United Kingdom20323 Posts
Last Edited: 2014-03-12 07:52:06
March 12 2014 07:32 GMT
#4914
Excellent answer, I'll probably go for the 4670k thanks guys.

I don't plan on overclocking because I know I'm really bad for leaving it on for days on end and degrading everything to a pulp. My processor used to be able to run SC2 on competitive settings at 60fps steady all game, and i was using a radeon 4450 (or maybe it was 4550, been a while) and now I get 20 fps in 200/200 battles on minimum settings and im on the geforce gtx 660.


1; Performance does not degrade like this, it's most likely just your perception. I had a better CPU than you in WOL and that simply didn't really happen. A lot of people seem to convince themselves that performance is better than it is, and they usually don't benchmark to back it up, it's really surprisingly common around here. Sc2 chokes with lots of units, it always has done and a lot of people really don't check FPS very much, are just too busy when there's maxed armies running around to notice it unless it's really bad, or just check performance in one fight and assume others will be the same when max ling+baneling might have 1/4 the perfomance of maxing with thors. Also, >depending on the map or type of fight<, reflections can be a big performance hit. Effects can too, HOTS physics will wreck FPS in some cases. That's all optional, though.

Unless you're waiting on etc a hard drive which has not been defragmented or your components are literally thermal throttling (which is easy to check and fix) then you won't lose performance in this way

2; GPU doesn't really matter, especially for min FPS in sc2. On med/low settings (competitive) i've seen 770 below 10% load

3; If you're not under a high load with a 4670k, it'll just sit at 800mhz and 0.7v or less. c6/c7 idle state and integrated voltage regulator are great for this, it's one of the main advancements that intel worked for years for on this CPU release. I'm oc'd, yet voltages are only >1.0vcore like 10% of the time; there's really no danger here

[image loading]

4; [image loading]

^Your choice ;P
"oh my god my overclock... I got a single WHEA error on the 23rd hour, 9 minutes" -Belial88
Craton
Profile Blog Joined December 2009
United States17275 Posts
March 12 2014 07:58 GMT
#4915
Those unlabeled axes. Somewhere a math major just threw his laptop into the wall.
twitch.tv/cratonz
Cyro
Profile Blog Joined June 2011
United Kingdom20323 Posts
Last Edited: 2014-03-12 11:15:35
March 12 2014 08:46 GMT
#4916
I'd rather spend my time gathering the data than learning how to display it properly

edit: HDD just died, will probably have to do something about storage at some point because my ssd went 90% estimated lifetime used to 92% in a couple weeks and i don't have enough storage space any more to do basic tasks. I may check the write amplification thing in the near future but i don't see what it would actually do to help me, unless there's a miracle fix
"oh my god my overclock... I got a single WHEA error on the 23rd hour, 9 minutes" -Belial88
Incognoto
Profile Blog Joined May 2010
France10239 Posts
March 12 2014 11:36 GMT
#4917
fuck that sucks

what brand was the hdd? seagatE?
maru lover forever
Cyro
Profile Blog Joined June 2011
United Kingdom20323 Posts
Last Edited: 2014-03-12 12:24:51
March 12 2014 12:19 GMT
#4918
it was a seagate barracuda with 25k hours on it (mostly idle, as it was just desktop use often left on overnight to upload gigabytes of stuff at 40KB/s, etc), reallocated a chunk of sectors like a year ago then a few more over time until suddenly not able to read/write/modify and then undetected
"oh my god my overclock... I got a single WHEA error on the 23rd hour, 9 minutes" -Belial88
felisconcolori
Profile Blog Joined October 2011
United States6168 Posts
March 12 2014 18:58 GMT
#4919
That's actually not bad - not up to the MTBF, I think, but not bad. Then again, I have drives that are over 10 years old that seem to be okay - except they haven't been running all 10 years.
Yes, I email sponsors... to thank them. Don't post drunk, kids. My king, what has become of you?
Cyro
Profile Blog Joined June 2011
United Kingdom20323 Posts
Last Edited: 2014-03-12 19:54:10
March 12 2014 19:12 GMT
#4920
I think it's wrong atm to expect a used hdd to last more than 2-3 years - anything more than that is a bonus, unless you're a lighter user

Even if i had a job atm, i'd probably be at desk 4+ hours a day with a bunch of idle time
"oh my god my overclock... I got a single WHEA error on the 23rd hour, 9 minutes" -Belial88
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