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On September 24 2013 12:58 maggle wrote: Final list! (I decided to drop the sound card as per Rollin's advice - I'll get one if the onboard disappoints)
Intel Core i5 4670K LGA1150 CPU 3.4Ghz 6Mb Cache Haswell - 270 Gigabyte Z87-D3HP 4x DDR3 4xPCI-E 2xPCI 6xSATA3 10xUSB3.0 HDMI D-SUB - 155 Sapphire Radeon HD7870 GHz Edition OC 2GB - 229 G.Skill Ripjaws X F3-17000CL11D-8GBXL (2x4GB) - 92 Samsung 250GB SSD 840 EVO SATA III 6Gbs 2.5 7mm 540MB/s/520MB/s -189 Western Digital Blue 1TB SATA3 HDD 64M Caviar Blue WD10EZEX - 68 Antec 520W High Current Gamer PSU Modular Extreme - 89 Fractal Design ARC R2 Mid Tower Case Black ( USB3.0 ) - 125 LiteON SATA DVD-RW 24X Black - 19 Samsung S22B300B LED 21.5" Wide, 1920x1080, 5ms, DVI, D-sub - 139 Noctua NH-U14S Multi Socket CPU Cooler - 85 Total: 1460 AUD
Definitely more than what I had originally planned to spend but I looked at a non-OC build and I was only saving ~$130 so I decided to just go with the overclocking option.
Thanks for the advice guys - will update once I have built it!
On September 24 2013 12:58 maggle wrote: Final list! (I decided to drop the sound card as per Rollin's advice - I'll get one if the onboard disappoints)
Intel Core i5 4670K LGA1150 CPU 3.4Ghz 6Mb Cache Haswell - 270 Gigabyte Z87-D3HP 4x DDR3 4xPCI-E 2xPCI 6xSATA3 10xUSB3.0 HDMI D-SUB - 155 Sapphire Radeon HD7870 GHz Edition OC 2GB - 229 G.Skill Ripjaws X F3-17000CL11D-8GBXL (2x4GB) - 92 Samsung 250GB SSD 840 EVO SATA III 6Gbs 2.5 7mm 540MB/s/520MB/s -189 Western Digital Blue 1TB SATA3 HDD 64M Caviar Blue WD10EZEX - 68 Antec 520W High Current Gamer PSU Modular Extreme - 89 Fractal Design ARC R2 Mid Tower Case Black ( USB3.0 ) - 125 LiteON SATA DVD-RW 24X Black - 19 Samsung S22B300B LED 21.5" Wide, 1920x1080, 5ms, DVI, D-sub - 139 Noctua NH-U14S Multi Socket CPU Cooler - 85 Total: 1460 AUD
Definitely more than what I had originally planned to spend but I looked at a non-OC build and I was only saving ~$130 so I decided to just go with the overclocking option.
Thanks for the advice guys - will update once I have built it!
Honestly, I don't have a real purpose for overclocking aside from curiousity and learning more. I guess it's more of a 'why not?' question for me (aside from the $130 spent).
What games do you intend to play on this computer? What settings?
Mostly modern RTS games and FPS, high as possible.
What do you intend to use the computer for besides gaming?
General work stuff, no streaming plans or anything. I do a lot of SEO stuff and marketing work, but that's not really relevant to hardware specs I suppose
Do you intend to overclock?
nope
Do you intend to do SLI / Crossfire?
nope, not unless the performance is cost effective for future proofing?
Do you need an operating system?
nope, have a few installs of windows 7 left on my product key
Do you need a monitor or any other peripherals and is this part of your budget?
nope
If you have any requirements or brand preferences, please specify.
nope
What country will you be buying your parts in?
USA
If you have any retailer preferences, please specify.
Newegg, simply because I have had the best experience with them in the past building computers before.
I've been out of the hardware loop for a couple years, but I'm looking to drop around 1200 USD on a new rig that will last me through some occasional rome total war 2 and random shenanigans. I don't game as much as I used to, but I'll definitely pay for a quality rig for when I do have time. I was originally going to just go for the "gaming enthusiast sample build", but i figured I'd see if you lads had any changes or anything to that list
Also, I'm debating whether or not I want to drop 1200 or so on parts BEFORE taxes or after...hmm. What a world.
Core i3-2120 MSI B75-P45 2x4 GB Kingston HyperX blue (this is about 3 weeks old, got it in a sale for 45 euro's) MSI R7850 Twin Frozr 2GD5/OC clocked @1050MHz Corsair CX430v2
What is your monitor's native resolution?
1920x1080. I'll be moving soon and will be able to have 2 of those, but I won't game on them simultaneously.
Why do you want to upgrade? What do you want to achieve with the upgrade?
Because I'm noticing my current processor is having difficulties playing SC2 and LoL during big fights, and is not capable of running Rome 2 or newer games on the settings I'd like. I'd also like to be able to stream League, since I play that game most competitively and I think it would be pretty easy to stream LoL as it's not a very demanding game.
So the goal of my rig would be to be able to go for +- 2 years minimum (GPU is an exception, will probably replace that in 6-12 months) and be able to stream LoL and play every other game at high processor settings. As said, GPU will be upgraded later on.
What is your budget?
Kinda depending on the moving thing, about 400 euro's.
What country will you be buying your parts in?
Netherlands
I'm mostly looking for a check on the upgrade I thought would be best for me and a little bit of help deciding which motherboard would be my best choice. I will be overclocking the CPU, goal is about 4.2 GHz. If I can get higher, I will of course.
CPU: i5-4670K CPU cooler: It's a tossup between the Cooler Master Hyper 412S and the Gelid Tranquillo rev. 2 atm. I think I prefer the latter because of the 4-pin connector, thus being quieter in general. Not really sure though. This is where any extra budget will go to get better cooling performance, but these are the two most basic options I thought would be good enough for my OC goal. Motherboard: Any good motherboard between €100-140. Mostly looking at the MSI G43 and G45. G45 would be better for the colour scheme, has a better network card and better sound card. Will probably make use of both of those, so that's my main option. Any good alternatives you guys know will be considered though. PSU I'm looking to get the XFX Pro Series 550W Core. Think that's one of the best value/money PSU's on the market right now, especially in the +-500W range. Again, any suggestions are welcome.
I think that's pretty much all I need now. Upgrading my GPU as well would be too expensive now, so looking to do that when I have enough money. All dependent on how expensive university will turn out to be though;)
I would stay with the Corsair CX430 V2. [EDIT: I looked it up and I'm somewhat worried, but I'd still try it. It should work. It will just turn off if you pull too much. It doesn't explode or anything. I would defer buying a different PSU to the point of the GPU upgrade.]
I think the base cooler you should look at in Europe is the Thermalright HR-02 Macho Rev.A B/W.
You have to be careful about the cooler. This is a battle about a handful of degrees Celsius, and any tiny inefficiency in the design of the cooler makes it a waste of money when compared to better competition. The annoying thing about this to me is, any later upgrade involving this will only get you a tiny bit better temperatures, so not choosing something close to the best from the start feels like a complete waste of money.
I don't know about the MSI boards. They are objectively lesser quality in the parts involved with overclocking, but this will not matter in practice, I'm pretty sure. Gigabyte is good regarding the actual board, but their BIOS seems to be suspicious and always a little buggy. You might want to take a good look at what you can get from ASRock, those seem to know very well how to build cheap boards.
The annoying thing with Haswell is not being able to deviate far from stock voltage.
4.2 would be an undervolt for me. What's the point of z87 (assuming h87 bios oc works) or a greater than stock cooler? It'll run like stock temperatures, because voltage is far far far far more important for temperatures and power draw than frequency is. If you agree with stock temperatures or not is another issue.
High end air will be encoding hot by like 1.3v and there's no way you can pass an avx stress test, can't beat it significantly without a custom water loop, maybe a 240/280 rad clc with four nice fans like scythes or sp120's will pull ahead a bit, but cost two or three times as much - low end cooling is worse by a decent margin
With Haswell, you're basically taking stock clocks, which is effectively 4.0-4.3ghz, and then fighting for like 400mhz more with OC. There's basically no headroom, just an illusion of it created by stock clocks being set way lower than they have to be
Also i feel kinda bad about not replying to some people, feels like there's more who have to repost or don't get helped much recently but it's a lot of work and often isn't actually much help unless you can provide the best info
@Elgy: something asked for something very similar to what you just asked on pages 33 or 34 (can't remember), might wanna check out the answers he got.
or try proposing something yourself.
great thing about this thread is that you can propose something and people will very nicely tell you what could be improved and it's actually a pretty fun thing to do, picking out each part. :p
What games do you intend to play on this computer? What settings?
Mostly modern RTS games and FPS, high as possible.
What do you intend to use the computer for besides gaming?
General work stuff, no streaming plans or anything. I do a lot of SEO stuff and marketing work, but that's not really relevant to hardware specs I suppose
Do you intend to overclock?
nope
Do you intend to do SLI / Crossfire?
nope, not unless the performance is cost effective for future proofing?
Do you need an operating system?
nope, have a few installs of windows 7 left on my product key
Do you need a monitor or any other peripherals and is this part of your budget?
nope
If you have any requirements or brand preferences, please specify.
nope
What country will you be buying your parts in?
USA
If you have any retailer preferences, please specify.
Newegg, simply because I have had the best experience with them in the past building computers before.
I've been out of the hardware loop for a couple years, but I'm looking to drop around 1200 USD on a new rig that will last me through some occasional rome total war 2 and random shenanigans. I don't game as much as I used to, but I'll definitely pay for a quality rig for when I do have time. I was originally going to just go for the "gaming enthusiast sample build", but i figured I'd see if you lads had any changes or anything to that list
Also, I'm debating whether or not I want to drop 1200 or so on parts BEFORE taxes or after...hmm. What a world.
Thanks!
There is no reason to buy an OC build if you don't plan to.
$965 Since you aren't overclocking I went with the highest clocked versions. The TX3 isn't anything special but for a non-oc it will keep the CPU quiet, something the stock Intel fan won't; also the tower design of the heatsink will work a lot better than the downdraft style of the stock unit in the case I selected (side note: 120mm tower coolers don't fit). GTX 760 isn't the best value when compared to a 7950 however it will be quieter, which is the main theme of the build. You notice the case however doesn't have 'sound dampening material', that is because a silent cases are a terrible gimmick that make gaming builds loud.
Large towers fit in PS07 / TJ-08. What's going on? btw Hyper T4 at $20 looks like a decent deal.
Also, "silent" / quiet cases are quieter for single-GPU gaming builds as long as you choose a graphics card with a decent cooler and adjust the fan profile. In some instances you also may need extra fans and some effort (not doing stock configurations with noisy coolers like AnandTech or whoever tests with). For example, you definitely wouldn't use the EVGA GTX 760 SC ACX, which defeats the purpose of anything you're trying to do with the CPU cooler except when looking at heavy CPU load + GPU idle.
But anyway, that wasn't listed as an objective for the build, so I guess it's all a tangent.
Well, there's usually some kind of room between the stock fan profile and one that burns up hardware, especially on a cooler that is decent (and furthermore if downvolted a bit).
PS07 / TJ-08E have a 120mm fan on the back panel. There's pretty much no way to have a 120mm fan on the back panel and not support standard-height 120mm fan coolers unless there's interference from an existing side panel fan or something else like that. As mentioned above, 165mm is Silverstone's spec. Minor detail, but Hyper 212 is more like 159mm tall.
The bigger issue is running the heatsink into the hard drive wiring if using standard 3.5" hard drives in the cage, but slimmer towers should be okay. And if they're not, you can reverse the fan and have it pulling (which is admittedly a bad idea for some fan designs, and it's worse overall). It's a real issue for those Silver Arrow / NH-D14 / etc. that have been stuffed in there.
On September 25 2013 04:11 Myrmidon wrote: Well, there's usually some kind of room between the stock fan profile and one that burns up hardware, especially on a cooler that is decent (and furthermore if downvolted a bit).
PS07 / TJ-08E have a 120mm fan on the back panel. There's pretty much no way to have a 120mm fan on the back panel and not support standard-height 120mm fan coolers unless there's interference from an existing side panel fan or something else like that. As mentioned above, 165mm is Silverstone's spec. Minor detail, but Hyper 212 is more like 159mm tall.
The bigger issue is running the heatsink into the hard drive wiring if using standard 3.5" hard drives in the cage, but slimmer towers should be okay. And if they're not, you can reverse the fan and have it pulling (which is admittedly a bad idea for some fan designs, and it's worse overall). It's a real issue for those Silver Arrow / NH-D14 / etc. that have been stuffed in there.
I can't get my 7850 to downvolt, what ever I set the voltage at it returns to 1.138v when it switches to 3D mode (aka full clocks), yet it will let me overvolt just fine. I really don't like that because I bet the card is stable at <1v at stock clocks.
I always thought having a fan pulling is more efficient than pushing as the dead zone behind the motor is reduced. Anyways I've tested fan orientation on my CPU cooler both ways (currently pulling) and I have the same load temps so I really don't think it's that big of a deal.
EPT
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