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United States9452 Posts
On August 18 2014 23:50 DeadlyDaddy wrote:+ Show Spoiler +
Hello everyone, this is my first real post and I am hoping to get some direction and assistance with determining which direction I need to go in to meet my needs. I filled below the answers to the basic informational questions posted at the top of this thread but if that is not enough I have also tried to elaborate on my intentions for this PC. Thank you in advance for any and all your suggestions.
What is your budget?
Must be under $1,000
What is your monitor's native resolution?
1920x1080
What games do you intend to play on this computer? What settings?
League of Legends and any newer next gen MMOBA game
What do you intend to use the computer for besides gaming?
Streaming various websites like NBC, USA, FOX etc along with Netflix. This PC will be streaming any where from 4-12 hours a day
Do you intend to overclock?
I do not intend to but I am not opposed to it if it will not damage the PC or shorten it's life span
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?
Only a mouse, do not need to include this in the budget
If you have any requirements or brand preferences, please specify.
No preferences
What country will you be buying your parts in?
USA
If you have any retailer preferences, please specify.
No preferences
Just to elaborate again, this PC will mainly be used to stream video from the internet and display it on my HDTV in my living room (about 6-8 hours daily). I noted that I would also be playing LOL and other next gen MMOBA games but that is a rare occasion but would like the capability to do so. I really don't have much experience customizing PCs for this purpose, I am not even sure that a PC is the best solution for it. Please let me know if there are any other devices (not google's chromecast or Roku stuff though) that could fill this need.
-DeadlyDaddy
$1000 is pretty overkill to accomplish that. Would you rather spend as little as possible, go premium with all $1000, or something in the middle?
Would you need or want Wi-Fi? Blutooth?
Do you need or prefer something quieter? Smaller? What form factor?
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Building a new pc. When I plug everything in the green led in the mobo will light up, but pressing the power button won't do anything. If I try to short the power pins with a screwdriver nothing happens either.
Tested the PSU with another PC which worked fine. tried with/without GPU, RAM. Even removed the I/O plate because I thought it might be shorting something.
All I could think of is a faulty MOBO perhaps?
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On August 19 2014 02:26 Intact wrote:
Building a new pc. When I plug everything in the green led in the mobo will light up, but pressing the power button won't do anything. If I try to short the power pins with a screwdriver nothing happens either.
Tested the PSU with another PC which worked fine. tried with/without GPU, RAM. Even removed the I/O plate because I thought it might be shorting something.
All I could think of is a faulty MOBO perhaps?
Do you have the 4+4pin (sometimes just a 4pin) connector plugged in near the CPU socket on the motherboard?
Is the heatsink fan plugged into the CPU_Fan header near the CPU socket on the motherboard?
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On August 19 2014 02:33 skyR wrote:Show nested quote +On August 19 2014 02:26 Intact wrote:
Building a new pc. When I plug everything in the green led in the mobo will light up, but pressing the power button won't do anything. If I try to short the power pins with a screwdriver nothing happens either.
Tested the PSU with another PC which worked fine. tried with/without GPU, RAM. Even removed the I/O plate because I thought it might be shorting something.
All I could think of is a faulty MOBO perhaps? Do you have the 4+4pin (sometimes just a 4pin) connector plugged in near the CPU socket on the motherboard? Is the heatsink fan plugged into the CPU_Fan header near the CPU socket on the motherboard?
Both those are connected. What makes no sense to me is that the mobo led is green, indicating that there is some kind of power but shorting the power contacts does nothing
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The standby LED indicates nothing besides there being 5v power.
You are mounting the motherboard on standoffs? Reseat everything and build outside the case to rule out a short. If all fails, time to RMA the motherboard I guess.
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On August 19 2014 02:50 skyR wrote:
The standby LED indicates nothing besides there being 5v power.
You are mounting the motherboard on standoffs? Reseat everything and build outside the case to rule out a short. If all fails, time to RMA the motherboard I guess.
Tried pulling the the mobo out and boot outside of the case, same result. I guess I'll call the store support tomorrow, they did offer free returns right now so that's convenient.
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On August 19 2014 02:48 Intact wrote:Show nested quote +On August 19 2014 02:33 skyR wrote:On August 19 2014 02:26 Intact wrote:
Building a new pc. When I plug everything in the green led in the mobo will light up, but pressing the power button won't do anything. If I try to short the power pins with a screwdriver nothing happens either.
Tested the PSU with another PC which worked fine. tried with/without GPU, RAM. Even removed the I/O plate because I thought it might be shorting something.
All I could think of is a faulty MOBO perhaps? Do you have the 4+4pin (sometimes just a 4pin) connector plugged in near the CPU socket on the motherboard? Is the heatsink fan plugged into the CPU_Fan header near the CPU socket on the motherboard? Both those are connected. What makes no sense to me is that the mobo led is green, indicating that there is some kind of power but shorting the power contacts does nothing
Did you connect the case front panel? I once had issues with that in a board. I don't really remember for sure, but I think it didn't work when the LEDs were connected the wrong way (they have a positive and negative side), and it also wouldn't work without the LEDs connected at all.
That second part I probably remember wrong because it seems a bit ridiculous to not work at all without those LEDs connected but you never know. It was an OEM board, wasn't sold directly to consumers, and might have actually been like that to make sure factory workers don't make mistakes connecting the case front panel or something.
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On August 19 2014 00:38 Myrmidon wrote:Show nested quote +On August 18 2014 23:50 DeadlyDaddy wrote:+ Show Spoiler +
Hello everyone, this is my first real post and I am hoping to get some direction and assistance with determining which direction I need to go in to meet my needs. I filled below the answers to the basic informational questions posted at the top of this thread but if that is not enough I have also tried to elaborate on my intentions for this PC. Thank you in advance for any and all your suggestions.
What is your budget?
Must be under $1,000
What is your monitor's native resolution?
1920x1080
What games do you intend to play on this computer? What settings?
League of Legends and any newer next gen MMOBA game
What do you intend to use the computer for besides gaming?
Streaming various websites like NBC, USA, FOX etc along with Netflix. This PC will be streaming any where from 4-12 hours a day
Do you intend to overclock?
I do not intend to but I am not opposed to it if it will not damage the PC or shorten it's life span
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?
Only a mouse, do not need to include this in the budget
If you have any requirements or brand preferences, please specify.
No preferences
What country will you be buying your parts in?
USA
If you have any retailer preferences, please specify.
No preferences
Just to elaborate again, this PC will mainly be used to stream video from the internet and display it on my HDTV in my living room (about 6-8 hours daily). I noted that I would also be playing LOL and other next gen MMOBA games but that is a rare occasion but would like the capability to do so. I really don't have much experience customizing PCs for this purpose, I am not even sure that a PC is the best solution for it. Please let me know if there are any other devices (not google's chromecast or Roku stuff though) that could fill this need.
-DeadlyDaddy
$1000 is pretty overkill to accomplish that. Would you rather spend as little as possible, go premium with all $1000, or something in the middle? Would you need or want Wi-Fi? Blutooth? Do you need or prefer something quieter? Smaller? What form factor?
The $1,000 is max budget, I would like to keep it lower and as cost effective as possible. I guess that translates to somewhere in middle??
Wi-Fi is possible with my current network setup but not required as the location I would install this PC is right next to my router in the living room.
Since it is going to be sitting in my living room basically in the place of a Television Cable box it would be ideal for it to be smaller, but more importantly quieter which I didn't consider before. Thanks for that suggestion
I hope this helps with recommending a good build for this application. Thanks again for your timely feedback/suggestions.
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United States9452 Posts
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On August 17 2014 16:39 Cyro wrote:Show nested quote +My CPU is supposedly 3.2 ghz and I bought this roughly 4 years ago, I'm seeing a lot of CPUs are still only at 3.5 - 3.6 ghz. What kind of performance benefits would upgrading to a new mobo and CPU get me? Newer CPU's are significantly faster at the same clock speed - A Haswell quad core at like 2.4ghz for example could beat yours at 3.2
I'm trying to google for articles that can explain this to me so I can get up to speed on the hardware side of things. Can you recommend any? Is this because a Haswell has L1-L4 caches and 22nm fab, whereas my CPU is a Bloomfield and only has a L2 and L3 cache and 45 nm fab?
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On August 19 2014 06:17 fishjie wrote:Show nested quote +On August 17 2014 16:39 Cyro wrote:My CPU is supposedly 3.2 ghz and I bought this roughly 4 years ago, I'm seeing a lot of CPUs are still only at 3.5 - 3.6 ghz. What kind of performance benefits would upgrading to a new mobo and CPU get me? Newer CPU's are significantly faster at the same clock speed - A Haswell quad core at like 2.4ghz for example could beat yours at 3.2 I'm trying to google for articles that can explain this to me so I can get up to speed on the hardware side of things. Can you recommend any? Is this because a Haswell has L1-L4 caches and 22nm fab, whereas my CPU is a Bloomfield and only has a L2 and L3 cache and 45 nm fab?
I think the difference is a lot of small tweaks adding up. The caches you mention are surely improved, but there are other complicated and hard to understand parts in the CPU like the instruction pipeline: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instruction_pipeline. That Wikipedia article lists the problems that this instruction pipeline idea runs into. Those are probably massive in today's CPUs. The pipeline is 14 to 19 steps for Haswell according to the Haswell article. All the problems are areas where things can be tweaked, and the end result is that Haswell can eat through any list of instructions faster than Bloomfield did.
There's also new instructions introduced with each new generation that can improve things if programs use them. Using those newly introduced instructions is something very rare as developers would rather have their stuff run the same code everywhere (so most code will be compiled for old CPUs), but a few programs will still use the new stuff like AVX2, and that does something very real if it's for a task like video encoding where you have to wait a long time for it to complete and AVX2 can make a big difference, an hour less waiting etc.
That instruction pipeline stuff is actually a lot more complicated in practice compared to that example from the Wikipedia article. Here's a short article that goes a bit into the details about Haswell: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/05/a-look-at-haswell/
Here's something about Sandy Bridge which Haswell is based on: http://arstechnica.com/business/2010/09/intels-next-must-have-upgrade-a-look-at-sandy-bridge/
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Thanks guys. Intuitively it makes sense, clock cycles mean different things in different architectures because otherwise its not an apples to apples comparison. So since looking at clock speed isn't really a reliable indicator of performance, are benchmarks the only legitimate way to do an apples to apples comparison?
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Yes, you need to look at real world benchmarks. Don't use synthetic benchmarks like passmark unless you intend to use the CPU for running passmark.
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Generally speaking, envision things you'll actually be doing and then look for those. Things like playing X games, streaming, encoding, etc.
For example, if you don't do much video encoding, you probably don't give a damn if cpu 1 out-encodes cpu 2, but if you play games then you probably do care that cpu 1 beats cpu 2, or gpu 1 beats gpu 2 for said game(s).
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United Kingdom20345 Posts
Also be aware that there are several horrifically out of date benchmarks for x264 out there (video encoder that's probably best to use right now, featured in OBS, Handbrake etc)
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On August 19 2014 03:11 Ropid wrote:Show nested quote +On August 19 2014 02:48 Intact wrote:On August 19 2014 02:33 skyR wrote:On August 19 2014 02:26 Intact wrote:
Building a new pc. When I plug everything in the green led in the mobo will light up, but pressing the power button won't do anything. If I try to short the power pins with a screwdriver nothing happens either.
Tested the PSU with another PC which worked fine. tried with/without GPU, RAM. Even removed the I/O plate because I thought it might be shorting something.
All I could think of is a faulty MOBO perhaps? Do you have the 4+4pin (sometimes just a 4pin) connector plugged in near the CPU socket on the motherboard? Is the heatsink fan plugged into the CPU_Fan header near the CPU socket on the motherboard? Both those are connected. What makes no sense to me is that the mobo led is green, indicating that there is some kind of power but shorting the power contacts does nothing Did you connect the case front panel? I once had issues with that in a board. I don't really remember for sure, but I think it didn't work when the LEDs were connected the wrong way (they have a positive and negative side), and it also wouldn't work without the LEDs connected at all. That second part I probably remember wrong because it seems a bit ridiculous to not work at all without those LEDs connected but you never know. It was an OEM board, wasn't sold directly to consumers, and might have actually been like that to make sure factory workers don't make mistakes connecting the case front panel or something.
Might be the PSU after all. Plugged it in to a different pc again, noticed only the cpu fan was spinning and a boot beep. GPU did not spin and PSU did not spin either. Paperclip test also failed.
Now I'm seriously confused. Tried a different PSU. Tried both shorting the MOBO and using the button, both inside and outside of the case. Still nothing. Seems unlikely that both the PSU and mobo are DOA?
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Current build:
12gb ram
GPU: Geforce GTX 460 (had two, one broke)
CPU: intel core i7-930 Quad Processor
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R
128gb ssd
1gb TB HDD
2560x1440 + 1920x1200 screens.
I want to be able to run dota/sc2 at the highest quality at 60 fps.¨
$1000 budget? More if I find something worth the money.
Swapping to the 2560x1440 screen obv hurt my performance a lot, and the GPU breaking. However, should I have less than 60 fps at medium graphics in sc2 lategame in engagements?
Any good/obvious upgrades I can do?
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United Kingdom20345 Posts
A 460 is very weak for 1440p. It's quite easy to upgrade, as even a gtx750ti would be a step up, but if you had it for that long then we might have better options for GPU in a few months
However, should I have less than 60 fps at medium graphics in sc2 lategame in engagements?
Yes. The game does that even on the best processors~
930 at default runs at 2.8ghz, maybe turbo to 3.06 depending on amount of cores used and some other variables - depending on the stepping of the CPU, you could buy a cooler for not too much cost and overclock it to maybe 3.6 or 4.0ghz (d0 cpu's achieved higher frequency than c0) which would help you out. It's not a revolutionary performance change though, just a big boost (particularly the 2.8 to 4ghz if that's possible, that's big enough to really make a difference)
I upgraded last june from a 950 @3.8ghz to a Haswell CPU at 4.6ghz and i got like 1.5x FPS in sc2 and some other CPU bound games. Pretty big, to gain 15% higher achievable clock speeds while the CPU also performs 30%-ish better at the same speed. Not sure of exact number right now but it's somewhere around that.
An OC Haswell setup costs maybe 120 euros for mobo, 170 euros for i5 4690k and 30-40 euros for a strong cooler, just off the top of my head
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What is your budget?
1000 USD
What is your monitor's native resolution?
1920x1080p
What games do you intend to play on this computer? What settings?
League of Feeders/DOTA/CSGO/Maplestory 2?
What do you intend to use the computer for besides gaming?
Nothing specific/professional.
Do you intend to overclock?
No.
Do you intend to do SLI / Crossfire?
No.
Do you need an operating system?
No.
Do you need a monitor or any other peripherals and is this part of your budget?
Will need a monitor.
If you have any requirements or brand preferences, please specify.
EVGA if possible, though not required.
What country will you be buying your parts in?
USA
If you have any retailer preferences, please specify.
Have a microcenter and frys nearby, though newegg is always fine.
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EPT
