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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. |
On October 24 2014 03:56 Incognoto wrote:A 550W PSU is overkill for a system such as that one, a good 450W supply unit is sufficient. http://www.mindfactory.de/product_info.php/450-Watt-XFX-Core-Edition-V2-Non-Modular-80--Bronze_759250.htmlIf you still want modular PSU, I think I like the Cooler Master G550M more than the Corsair CS550M. €53 instead of €60, 5 year warranty and it performs decently enough ( source). http://www.mindfactory.de/product_info.php/550-Watt-CoolerMaster-G550M-Modular_937512.htmlFor the SSD, you don't really need PRO SSD from Samsung, those are overpriced for daily usage. The MX100 from Crucial is much cheaper and serves the same purpose. http://www.mindfactory.de/product_info.php/256GB-Crucial-MX100-2-5Zoll--6-4cm--SATA-6Gb-s-MLC--CT256MX100SSD1-_964957.htmlNot sure about blu-ray my own thoughts on GPU / reallocating budget: + Show Spoiler +That GPU is fine for the kind of usage you're describing however if you want to keep your rig for 5 years, maybe you put more money into the GPU. I know I would, though this is personal preference; I'm someone who thinks most of the budget of a gaming rig should go to GPU and after that the CPU. A GTX 970 is one of the nicer cards to get at the moment. If you want to shave off € on the other parts to get such a card, it's possible. You do it by getting quality budget parts on the Case, PSU and motherboard. You also get Haswell instead of Haswell refresh. the system you end up getting performs pretty much the same as the one you posted. the main difference is that this budget rig is much less flexible in terms of upgrades than the rig you have. oh and you lose the blu-ray drive as well, which kind of sucks. forgot about that. http://www.mindfactory.de/product_info.php/4096MB-MSI-GeForce-GTX-970-Gaming-4G-Aktiv-PCIe-3-0-x16--Retail-_976948.htmlhttp://de.pcpartpicker.com/p/JLxJNG
Thanks for your help. I'll definitely get the Crucial SSD since it's much better value/cost.
I don't like the idea of too many cables lieing around when building my first pc, so I still get a modular PSU, but the extra warranty and similar performance means the Coolermaster seems really better.
On October 24 2014 22:36 y0su wrote:Show nested quote +On October 24 2014 03:56 Incognoto wrote:my own thoughts on GPU / reallocating budget: + Show Spoiler +That GPU is fine for the kind of usage you're describing however if you want to keep your rig for 5 years, maybe you put more money into the GPU. I know I would, though this is personal preference; I'm someone who thinks most of the budget of a gaming rig should go to GPU and after that the CPU. A GTX 970 is one of the nicer cards to get at the moment. If you want to shave off € on the other parts to get such a card, it's possible. You do it by getting quality budget parts on the Case, PSU and motherboard. You also get Haswell instead of Haswell refresh. the system you end up getting performs pretty much the same as the one you posted. the main difference is that this budget rig is much less flexible in terms of upgrades than the rig you have. oh and you lose the blu-ray drive as well, which kind of sucks. forgot about that. http://www.mindfactory.de/product_info.php/4096MB-MSI-GeForce-GTX-970-Gaming-4G-Aktiv-PCIe-3-0-x16--Retail-_976948.htmlhttp://de.pcpartpicker.com/p/JLxJNG Just to provide another opinion... (from someone cheap). Doubling your GPU budget just so it lasts longer makes little sense. IMO the GPU is the easiest thing to replace and upgrade. The most likely scenario (and how it's worked out for me in the past) is to buy something "decent" (like the 760 you're looking at) and if you end up needing to upgrade at any point you also have something that can easily transfer to your next build.
I really thought about going overbudget and getting a better GPU, but then I realised the last AAA title I bought was SC2 and I already have been playing SC2 and DotA2 on lower settings for years, so even if I even buy a new game with high requirements I likely just play it on lower settings or as you said have to buy a new GPU.
Overall i thank both of you for your input so I guess I'm gonna buy the following:
CPU: Intel Core i5-4690
GPU: Geforce GTX 760
Mainboard: ASRock H97 Pro4
SSD: Crucial MX100 256 GB
HDD: WD Blue 1TB
RAM: Crucial 2x4GB
PSU: Coolermaster G550M
Case: Fractal Design Core 3300
Optical Drive: LG BH16NS40
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On October 24 2014 22:36 y0su wrote:Show nested quote +On October 24 2014 03:56 Incognoto wrote:my own thoughts on GPU / reallocating budget: + Show Spoiler +That GPU is fine for the kind of usage you're describing however if you want to keep your rig for 5 years, maybe you put more money into the GPU. I know I would, though this is personal preference; I'm someone who thinks most of the budget of a gaming rig should go to GPU and after that the CPU. A GTX 970 is one of the nicer cards to get at the moment. If you want to shave off € on the other parts to get such a card, it's possible. You do it by getting quality budget parts on the Case, PSU and motherboard. You also get Haswell instead of Haswell refresh. the system you end up getting performs pretty much the same as the one you posted. the main difference is that this budget rig is much less flexible in terms of upgrades than the rig you have. oh and you lose the blu-ray drive as well, which kind of sucks. forgot about that. http://www.mindfactory.de/product_info.php/4096MB-MSI-GeForce-GTX-970-Gaming-4G-Aktiv-PCIe-3-0-x16--Retail-_976948.htmlhttp://de.pcpartpicker.com/p/JLxJNG Just to provide another opinion... (from someone cheap). Doubling your GPU budget just so it lasts longer makes little sense. IMO the GPU is the easiest thing to replace and upgrade. The most likely scenario (and how it's worked out for me in the past) is to buy something "decent" (like the 760 you're looking at) and if you end up needing to upgrade at any point you also have something that can easily transfer to your next build.
But then you have a €185 graphics card lying around doing nothing after you upgrade. i'm not a fan of selling a card you're using. if I sold the 7970 I got for €300 today, I would get maybe €170-200 for it. That's €100 lost if I sell today. The good thing about the 7970 is that it's a card that is going to cater my needs for 1080p gaming for quite a while, so I don't need to sell it at all
the overall cost becomes €185 + the money you spent on the new card - the amount you sold your gtx 760. it's that or just a flat €360 which will last you quite a while (since let's face it, these cards are insane) while giving you huge gpu power from the get-go. OP also said something about not upgrading for 5 years. a gtx 760 might last for 5 years if you make big concessions on in-game settings, a GTX 970 will do quite well for a while.
well, I just chipped in my 2 cents, though i totally see your point. ideas are meant to be discussed and bounced around after all.
E: ah yes well, in that case, yeah the gtx 760 makes sense. that's the nice thing about building PCs, you can really tailor 'em to your needs
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So quick question...
I never really noticed until recently, and I actually don't know if it's a big deal or not or if CPU-Z is even reporting it correctly, but when I enable the various haswell states the voltage doesn't drop along with the clock speed. Even when my bios got reset from updating it and everything was back to default aside from my multiplier / voltage settings, the core voltage stays at 1.29 despite it running at 800mhz or 4.5ghz.
MB: Gigabyte Z87 UD3H
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Normally Cyro anwers this, but I'm going to venture at trying this one.
Can you enable C7 in the BIOS? i.e. you go to the BIOS, look for a "Cstates" setting and set that to "C7".
source, ctrl+f "power saving info": http://www.overclock.net/t/1411077/haswell-overclocking-guide-with-statistics
you can also go to
computer / control panel / power options / advanced power options / processor power management
then mess around with those settings, i think.
I know that doing this got me 0.716 V on VID when my computer isn't doing anything (24-28°C idle with 19°C ambient :o), then again I have an MSI board with a locked processor
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United Kingdom20322 Posts
It's probably because s/he is using wrong version of CPU-Z which isn't actually reading the Vcore sensor. It's been broken on all of the versions past 1.64.0 for a LOT of Haswell motherboards. I've answered that one probably 200 times in the last 16 months 
If it's not that, then steps above are good
I know that doing this got me 0.716 V
on Haswell, the one that reports ~0.7v isn't the deepest idle state, but 0.7v 800mhz is still good. If you're on auto volts and seeing 0.7v, that might mean that you're looking at wrong sensor too - VID is often quite representative of Vcore, but it's not very good to look at it with Haswell. It's wrong for both load and idle voltages and it doesn't show changes correctly unless you're on auto or offset voltage mode (which is only used for stock settings)
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I'm using HWinfo though, shouldn't that be accurate?
0.7v 800mhz is also what I'm getting, is there a way to make it go even lower? :o I've been curious about undervolting my CPU. most people overclock and raise the voltage to maintain stability. i'm stuck at stock clocks, yes, however i'm sure I could lower the Vcore voltage and remain stable.
I did that with my 7970, I can lower core voltage from 1175 mV to 1070 mV and remain stable at 1000 mhz (stock clock) in heaven benchmark. I found that pretty nifty. Temperatures gains are there but not incredible, 59°C with 53% fanspeed with 19°C ambient. my card is a terrible overclocker though, can't get past 1150 mhz stable in crysis for instance, even with 1300 mV on core.
well, it's fun to mess around with this sort of stuff.
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United Kingdom20322 Posts
The Hwinfo Vcore sensor is accurate for many people. It doesn't work for every board though, and a ton of people that download Hwinfo look at the big flashy "VID" voltages near the top, not knowing that it's not the same as Vcore which is buried somewhere underneath on the sensors window
I'm not sure if you can lower voltages on a non-oc board or how particularly to go about doing it, but my CPU vcore was pretty close to what it could have been - ~1.08 at 3.7ghz - about 200-300mhz higher, and it'd start failing the extremely intensive tests like avx2 linpack or newer prime. Sometimes there's a ton of room for voltage or speed adjustment though, it's probably pretty random chip to chip and there are occasionally things that regularly use way too much stock voltage
It's a big thing on factory overclocked GPU's too, everyone throws 1.2 - 1.225v at 970's, but my Msi Gaming is only at ~1316mhz out of the box, max boost with it. I can add right around 200mhz on the voltage that they set - if it's not a stock reference card, it's using some arbitrary voltage and clock speed set by whoever is selling it to you
On that topic, it's pretty much a crime to look at stock 970 benchmarks. I'm seeing numbers like 1200mhz used, while pretty much all 970's effortlessly do 1500, quite a lot hit 1550 and some exceptional chips break 1600 on air with 1.25v limit. They -actually scale- with the OC, too, more than some other cards, from both core and memory. It's not difficult to cool either (at all)
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Yeah it is kind of strange that they clearly underclock 970s like that for some reason. Not sure what to think of it. It's going to be really interesting to see what happens when people get their hands on BIOSes (is that the correct plural form?) to allow for unlocked voltage..
On a not too unrelated topic, prices keep dropping on 290 and 290X cards though. It's getting harder and harder to resist not getting one.
€290 R9 290 Tri-X: http://www.materiel.net/carte-graphique/sapphire-radeon-r9-290-tri-x-oc-uefi-4-go-99073.html
This is like the best time ever to be making a ~high end gaming PC. You could get a 1440p gaming rig for maybe €900 if you choose your parts correctly (excluding the price of an actual 1440p monitor, heh).
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United Kingdom20322 Posts
I'm not very interested in >1.25v because the scaling isn't that great (maybe 1.35v would mean ~1620mhz instead of 1526-1539), it's dangerous for the chip at that point if kepler is anything to go by (on air, at least.. water can laugh and run at 45c with 250w card, while air is usually stuck at like 70's) and also, if you have anything aside from a g1, the VRM cooling is pretty underbuilt, it's not designed for more than 1.2-1.25v. MSI also warranties any OC in afterburner AFAIK, including the +25mv for 1.225 to 1.25 (and even if they didn't, they wouldn't know the difference) but custom bios, voltage controller hacking etc is more of a problem
the biggest gain from custom bios etc is getting rid of silly power limits. GM204 is a 200w chip yet they slapped a 145w label on entire card power (including memory, fan power, LED's etc) and it's limiting people on the reference cards and some of the non reference ones (that's why g1 is the best card for some power hungry benchmarks; the msi gaming 970 throttles a little at 1.25v and most of the others like the strix throttle more, if they can even set 1.25v)
290 euro tri-x 290 doesn't seem particularly appealing to me, you can get a 970 for around there and my friend said there was quite a few used 7970's below £100 - he got a reference one for £90 that supposedly had not been mined on etc. That's not quite 1/3'rd of the price, but it's close.
I did a scaling test on Heaven and got 22% performance improvement for 27.6% increase in core clock speed at 900p
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Do the newer NVIDIA cards like these GTX 970 show the VRM temperature in software like HWINFO like what AMD cards do?
I ask because on my old GTX 560 Ti, there's no temperature reading for the VRM, but I think there actually is a sensor as there seems to be some sort of temperature protection for the VRM. It might just not be exposed to the outside for software to read.
This summer, I managed to make everything shut down in my experiments with increased voltage. That's why I think there's some sort of temperature sensor in the VRM. What was annoying was that the GPU wasn't that hot. There was still room to play with more voltage according to its temperature sensor. For the VRM I can only guess, but at least things are super hot on the back of the card.
So at least on my old card, the VRM situation is definitely worrying and looking at the GPU temperature does not help at all to guess if things are fine or not. I really could use a separate temperature reading for the VRM.
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United Kingdom20322 Posts
They do not, but there are tests like the guru3d thermal imaging camera that show pretty nasty temps on most cards aside from the g1
stock, load temps
g1:
We reach ~60 degrees C on the GPU (M1), on par with what is expected.
At M2/M3 (Measure Points) the VRM area can be spotted. It runs at roughly 60~65 Degrees C on that spot and the rest of the measurement points
msi gaming:
We reach ~65 degrees C on the GPU (M1), on par with what is expected.
At M2/M3 (Measure Points) the GDDR5 can be spotted. It runs at roughly 75~82 Degrees C, a little high. At M4 we read out the VRM area which is at 87 Degrees C
strix:
We reach ~70 degrees C on the GPU (M2), on par with what is expected. Luckily the back-plate has some gaps in it so we can measure this at all. At M4 (Measure Points) the VRM Area can be spotted. It runs at roughly 80 Degrees C
They are quite concerning readings from the MSI card but i think vrm will be fine with high fan speeds even after demanding the extra ~20% power from it compared to factory OC (the default fan speeds are very quiet as you only need like 600-800rpm to run the gpu below 80c at factory oc) - i'm curious if you can add heatsinks or do anything for the uncooled VRAM though. I think there are four chips on the back and one on the front that are uncooled
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Processor: AMD Phenom(tm) II X6 1090T Processor
Manufacturer: AMD
Speed: 3.2 GHz
Number of Cores: 4
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTS 450
Manufacturer: NVIDIA
Chipset: GeForce GTS 450
Dedicated Memory 1.0 GB
Total Memory: 4.0 GB
Memory: 8.2 GB
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium Edition Service Pack 1 (build 7601), 64-bit
Service Pack: 1
Size 64 Bit
Edition Home Premium
Display Maximum Resolution: 1920 x 1200
DVD HL-DT-ST BD-RE BH10LS30 ATA Device
CD HL-DT-ST BD-RE BH10LS30 ATA Device
Drive 1
Size 465.8 GB
Free 400.1 GB
Drive 2
Size 74.4 GB
Free 13.5 GB
Hello, I've had some issues with my computer using SC2 and I'm looking to upgrade or change some things on it. My issue is that while running SC2 late game engages i go down to around 20-40 fps on low - medium settings. I also can only run 4 of my 6 cores at a time or my computer will crash. It still crashes every once in a while but it has been pretty stable. Does anyone know what I should upgrade or what my problem is?
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On October 25 2014 18:09 Cyro wrote:It's probably because s/he is using wrong version of CPU-Z which isn't actually reading the Vcore sensor. It's been broken on all of the versions past 1.64.0 for a LOT of Haswell motherboards. I've answered that one probably 200 times in the last 16 months If it's not that, then steps above are good on Haswell, the one that reports ~0.7v isn't the deepest idle state, but 0.7v 800mhz is still good. If you're on auto volts and seeing 0.7v, that might mean that you're looking at wrong sensor too - VID is often quite representative of Vcore, but it's not very good to look at it with Haswell. It's wrong for both load and idle voltages and it doesn't show changes correctly unless you're on auto or offset voltage mode (which is only used for stock settings)
That would be the reason, and since I really don't monitor this thread all that much unless I am in the market for some sort of upgrade, I was totally unaware that it was broken
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/Szm1q9h.png)
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Cyro was talking about the haswell overclocking thread on oc.net, not this thread, don't worry. ^^
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United Kingdom20322 Posts
Yea :D
Hwinfo better than hwmonitor - www.hwinfo.com
What's with that +0.3v Ring offset? Is that correct, what settings do you have on bios for uncore/ring? I just ask because that has potential to be dangerous if it's at certain levels, 1.4-1.5 ring is significantly worse than 1.4-1.5vcore. If you're using offset voltage on it, you should probably go back to Manual (which drops at idle anyway)
On October 26 2014 04:22 NoFlexZone wrote:
Processor: AMD Phenom(tm) II X6 1090T Processor
Manufacturer: AMD
Speed: 3.2 GHz
Number of Cores: 4
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTS 450
Manufacturer: NVIDIA
Chipset: GeForce GTS 450
Dedicated Memory 1.0 GB
Total Memory: 4.0 GB
Memory: 8.2 GB
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium Edition Service Pack 1 (build 7601), 64-bit
Service Pack: 1
Size 64 Bit
Edition Home Premium
Display Maximum Resolution: 1920 x 1200
DVD HL-DT-ST BD-RE BH10LS30 ATA Device
CD HL-DT-ST BD-RE BH10LS30 ATA Device
Drive 1
Size 465.8 GB
Free 400.1 GB
Drive 2
Size 74.4 GB
Free 13.5 GB
Hello, I've had some issues with my computer using SC2 and I'm looking to upgrade or change some things on it. My issue is that while running SC2 late game engages i go down to around 20-40 fps on low - medium settings. I also can only run 4 of my 6 cores at a time or my computer will crash. It still crashes every once in a while but it has been pretty stable. Does anyone know what I should upgrade or what my problem is?
Sc2 does that, FPS is pretty much the same on low or max settings when there are lots of units around (aside from physics, effects, reflections which will always hurt fps) - it's very normal. You could upgrade CPU, but with only a gts450 the system would be quite lopsided
the cores thing, i can't really say why you would crash. You can maybe check cooling and CPU temperatures, if they're ok then do some stability testing (prime95?) and see which errors specifically you get on the crashes
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Hi guys I'm looking at buying a new PC around Christmas and below are the components I've chosen. I will be building it, so can you please help me out and let me know if there is something I can improve or save money from? My budget is £800.
Case: Cooler Master Elite 110(Mini ITX)
Motherboad: Gigabyte H97N-WIFI Intel LGA1150 H97 Mini-ITX Motherboard
CPU: Intel i5 4460 (3.2 GHz)
GPU: MSI Geforce GTX 970 4GB
SSD: Kingston Technology 240GB SSD
PSU: Corsair Builder Series CX 430W
RAM: Corsair Vengeance 8GB 1600Mhz CL9 (2x4GB)
Promos on some of the components are ongoing and currently it stands at around £730 and I might spend extra on a Windows 8.1 license (currently I am on Win 7). Any feedback is greatly appreciated!
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United Kingdom20322 Posts
On October 27 2014 06:34 Inex wrote:
Hi guys I'm looking at buying a new PC around Christmas and below are the components I've chosen. I will be building it, so can you please help me out and let me know if there is something I can improve or save money from? My budget is £800.
Case: Cooler Master Elite 110(Mini ITX)
Motherboad: Gigabyte H97N-WIFI Intel LGA1150 H97 Mini-ITX Motherboard
CPU: Intel i5 4460 (3.2 GHz)
GPU: MSI Geforce GTX 970 4GB
SSD: Kingston Technology 240GB SSD
PSU: Corsair Builder Series CX 430W
RAM: Corsair Vengeance 8GB 1600Mhz CL9 (2x4GB)
Promos on some of the components are ongoing and currently it stands at around £730 and I might spend extra on a Windows 8.1 license (currently I am on Win 7). Any feedback is greatly appreciated!
The GPU won't fit in that case. Why do you want M-ITX exactly? That changes the build quite a bit and maybe costs extra or impacts performance
hard to judge stuff without you listing individual prices, also deals and stuff change all the time. 1 week is a long time when dealing with price fluctuations
This is a quick build only from amazon (i was going to do amazon/ocuk, but not really worth)
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant
CPU: Intel Core i5-4590 3.3GHz Quad-Core Processor (£148.33 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: ASRock Fatal1ty H97 Killer ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (£55.99 @ Amazon UK)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£64.24 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Crucial MX100 256GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£74.98 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: Zotac GeForce GTX 970 4GB Video Card (£257.99 @ Amazon UK)
Case: Corsair 200R ATX Mid Tower Case (£44.99 @ Amazon UK)
Power Supply: Corsair Builder 430W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply (£36.93 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £683.45
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-10-26 22:09 GMT+0000
If you get mini-itx, i don't know if there are any more limits other than getting appropriate GPU - http://www.tomshardware.com/news/gigabyte-mini-itx-gtx970-oc,27915.html
There are three somewhat common sizes, ATX (normal/full) - matx (small) and m-itx (very small and more limited, usually has cost and performance implications) - usually stuff is atx or matx i think
For PSU i would consider going to £50 for a Superflower Golden Green HX550 on ocuk because it's a way better PSU. £13 isn't much for that difference, but ~£5 shipping is a factor too. Those prices will probably change all the time though
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Many thanks for your quick reply Cyro.
I was looking at mitx because I've been moving a lot in the past few years and I will most likely have to find a new flat soon. I dont want to move around with a huge tower, plus desktops take too much space. The matx sounds like the way to go as there are cases which will comfortably fit the zotac geforce gtx 970, and ill follow your advice for the other components. Two questions though:
• why the zotac geforce? I thought Msi is the recommended one.
• why going for a 550w psu? Isn't that a waste of money/energy considering the wattage requirement is about 330w for this system?
Thank you once again.
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United Kingdom20322 Posts
The g1 is better than MSI, but both are those are ~£300-290 + shipping. The Zotac card is £258 shipped right now, so it's effectively ~£40 less
550w just for keeping it for a long time and having a much better quality unit than something like a cx430. You wouldn't even draw 330w
there are some good matx cases and even cheaper mobos than that for matx, stock CPU, single GPU
Other stuff there is not particularly important; it was just the cheapest 1600c9 1.5v RAM, a good cheap case (though full atx size so you probably dont want that one), a pretty random ATX motherboard, cheap PSU. The SSD is good though
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All the pricing is going to be slightly different around Christmas anyway.
btw in UK and some countries in EU, the cheapest XFX power supply is about the cost of Corsair CX and better than it, usually. Also, not like it really matters that much, but CX430 and most other stuff in this range only has one PCIe power connector, and that and most GTX 970 variants need two (so an adapter would be necessary).
Also, most mATX builds are a lot larger than something around the CM 110. Though actually, shoebox style, Silverstone SG05 / 06 (and upcoming? 12/13) are even smaller. As for video card length, by that time stuff like this will be available probably in most markets:
www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=5252
Actually, that model does use a single 8-pin connector for power, so...
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EPT
