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On April 12 2015 15:09 Cyro wrote:Maybe you can get more pci-e cables for the v650, IDK Show nested quote +Looking for advice on whether it makes sense to do so, or can just stay with 1 exhaust. It's better to have positive pressure airflow, but intake fans (especially lower rpm ones) are restricted a lot because they have to deal with dust filters and stuff like that drive cage. There's no big need for another exhaust - it might maybe even be good to run a top intake (the slot closest to the front) if you want to run more fans. You can remove those white slot covers under the GPU (all of them) to improve airflow a little bit at the cost of a little more noise. They're like mine, so you can easily store them and screw them back in at some point if you ever had a reason for it, though i can't imagine wanting to do it myself dust filter on exhaust hurts you without helping you. It blocks airflow and creates additional noise but at that point you're only collecting dust which has already been through your whole system and stuck on whatever it's gonna stick on. The general idea is to run positive pressure (so air can only enter your case through the intakes) and then filter the intakes, and while that's often ignored it's actually quite important to get at least kinda right. You can clean thermal paste with a little bit of water and a kitchen cloth and/or a t-shirt - you're just not really supposed to :D in reality if it's shiny clean then the little imperfections and cloth fibers/whatever don't actually hurt performance in a notable way AFAIK. At the very least, badly applying thermal paste will kill your temperatures a lot more :D gz on the build btw, the fans on the motherboard fan control are probably by default set to vary RPM by CPU temperature. That has a few issues though, it might not be particularly sensitive for spinning up - and CPU temperatures are not at all strongly representative of case air temperatures, which is the actual thing that you base airflow around. It's a good, simple and cheap way to get quiet idle speeds though.
Thanks again Cyro.
Didn't realize dust filter could be bad. My thought is that if the exhaust is at the top, I dont want any random objects to fall into the case and potentially damage internal components. The side window view is really disappointing, as I think side panel fan would have been better. I think may be can try to see how systems temperature are like with NH-D15 is installed and decide whether to add 2nd exhaust or not.
I dont know if my friend minds the noise but the air-conditioner in his room runs pretty loud and I couldn't even here the JetFlo120 noise at full speed.
Wont removing those white expansion slot cover allow more dust getting into the case? not like fan holes dont let dust in but more holes more dust :p
about the motherboard controller, those Cooler Master fans headers cant fit into the case fan controller headers, and PSU only has 4pin Molex left so cant do much. I think I will try to look for molex-to-whatever adapter for the case fan may be.
On April 12 2015 15:25 Incognoto wrote:
Use 90% Alcohol with Q-tips and a micro-fiber cloth. That's what I used to clean up thermal paste multiple times. Q-tips don't leave too much fiber if you're careful and micro-fiber leaves nothing
Yeah, but all I have yesterday were Qtips and 45% Vodka XD
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United Kingdom20297 Posts
Wont removing those white expansion slot cover allow more dust getting into the case? not like fan holes dont let dust in but more holes more dust :p
With positive pressure, air can only exit there. With the system shut down then more dust would enter - but dust doesn't just randomly pile up. It's a very tiny amount of dust compared to the amount that you'd get when forcing 100-200 cubic feet of fresh air through your case per minute, there's naturally almost no flow without the fans pushing it
I think may be can try to see how systems temperature are like with NH-D15 is installed and decide whether to add 2nd exhaust or not.
To do that, i would run a good CPU 100% load (like a video encoder, i use specific packaged x264 stress thing) paired with 100% GPU load. It's actually a little tricky to do properly, probably needs low priority set on the CPU test and high priority on the GPU test, and then ensuring that both are loaded. With that done, you can leave it for ~15 minutes and then take the side of case off and feel the air temperature inside at various places.
I recorded some GPU temps from a load test a little while ago, using a static fan speed and a static GPU load (power limited at 250w and always right there, so the lowest variance in GPU heat output possible)
GPU temps @ idle: 25c
after load:
1 min = 55c
2 min = 60c
3 min = 63c
4 min = 65c
5 min = 66c
6 min = 66c
GPU and CPU temps will level off extremely quickly, but case temperature can rise for 10-15 minutes (or even longer, if you have worse airflow) which will cause CPU and GPU temperatures to steadily rise. A normal deviation between pretty great airflow and pretty bad but still kinda alright would be maybe ~10c or so, particularly on the GPU as that tends to be the most heat dense area and doesn't have as many fans directly close to it as the CPU. There's usually a hot pocket of air that forms around the GPU area particularly if you have a high powered GPU, but with msi 970 (~200w and a lot of it gets exhausted from rear of case directly) it wouldn't be as dramatic of an effect.
At stock, you're looking at maybe ~60w from the CPU, ~170w from the GPU. At overclocks though, GPU would only rise to ~200w typically but CPU would be ~120w ish or even closer to 150w. That's due to the CPU having a lot of voltage headroom, but the GPU shipping at already pretty much the max voltage that it makes sense to use. It uses way more power than neccesary for the stock clock speeds, but then that number doesn't rise and you can literally often add 200mhz using the overkill "stock" voltage for almost no power cost.
That wattage number is what determines how hot the case will get (the temperature of the part is not the same thing as the heat output of the part, which is a very important thing to remember)
Yeah, but all I have yesterday were Qtips and 45% Vodka XD
A slightly damp cloth is fine enough, it's just not very "proper" :D (if you wanted to set up without waiting days for shipping)
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Thanks for the details, it gave me some ideas where to start, I will keep that in mind and research more on it another day. Currently the system is run all at base speed. No overclocking is done yet as I didn't have time and finals are coming up as well T_T.
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United Kingdom20297 Posts
GPU is easy, you just have to remember to fall back a bit on clock speeds if you're not gonna be actively using the system and be able to adjust.
For example like +140, +500 seems to work for me in pretty quick tests - but with a period of a week narrowing down on occasional soft crashes, ~+110, +400 is about as far as i can go solidly.
The msi 970 should have a core clock at load at around 1316mhz at stock, with ~1.225v. They'll do ~1500ish (so ~+200), so you just have to grab something like unigine heaven 4.0, pass a loop with a certain core clock and then drop it by 50mhz to be safe for a quick OC.
Memory clock gives a lot of performance, but some cards can only OC to 7400 mem while others go a fair way into the 8000's
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Since we're on airflow discussion (seems to come up a few times a year) I have some questions.
I have a Bitfenix Phantom M case, a handful of 120mm fans (2-3 left from a coolermaster 4 pack) and 2 that came with the case. I'm running a i5-4670 with stock fan and 650t gpu.
Wondering if anyone has strong opinions on what would be the best/most optimal fan setup? (I think I only have 3 available fan plugs - including a Y split). Also, single HDD so all fan slots are potentially usable.
here's a image search for inspiration =D
e: at the moment my PSU is facing the front so it's essentially not interacting with the internal airflow
e2: most pics show a watercooled cpu, + Show Spoiler [this] + shows more what my setup is like - thoughts on the exhaust fan and CPU fan competing for the same air?
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United Kingdom20297 Posts
You could run everything intake aside from exhaust above GPU
When people run GPU's in those cases that actually output a lot of heat, it's usually the blower-style cooler - and you want to intake into those, they then blow air through heatsink and out of the back of the case.
For the style of GPU cooler you have though, it's fine or even better to run an exhaust next to them instead of an intake, but you're supposed to have positive pressure when doing that. Overall though you're dealing with parts that output very little heat and fans that maybe don't move a huge amount of air (they won't if they're quiet enough to match the rest of the system), so it doesn't matter that much and the difference between a terrible setup and a perfect one won't be that large.
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On April 12 2015 15:49 bluegarfield wrote:
Yeah, but all I have yesterday were Qtips and 45% Vodka XD
The vodka would have worked fine, you'd just have to be careful to wipe up any remaining water. 
For the future, 90% Isopropyl alcohol is generally extremely cheap and available at any store that sells basic first aid stuff. (Supermarket, pharmacy, etc.) Just don't drink it!
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What is your budget?
$1100-1300~ CAD
What is your monitor's native resolution?
1920x1080 (2 monitors but I intend to only use one to play games.)
What games do you intend to play on this computer? What settings?
CS:GO, DotA2, Starcraft 2, High settings.
What do you intend to use the computer for besides gaming?
Potentially stream to some friends while maintaing 150fps in CS:GO and 60fps in Starcraft 2.
Do you intend to overclock?
Maybe
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?
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.
Newegg, NCIX, Canadacomputers, though I'll use anything that's reputable.
I have 2 builds I'm looking at atm, the main difference being whether to go for an i5-4690K or an E3-1231 v3. I would have to look for a CPU fan if I'm thinking of overclocking the i5-4690K. If I'm not looking to overclock should I just go for a non k series i5 instead of the E3-1231 v3 to save some money. Also, the PSU I have right now is the best one I could find for it's value atm but I might switch it out for a fully modular one instead and pay the premium.
http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/p/gWTCVn
http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/p/qWskP6
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United Kingdom20297 Posts
You should get the 4690k. I do not know of dota 2, but sc2 and csgo will be CPU bound whenever you're dropping near those framerates with even a 960 (which is like, 1.65x weaker than 970)
Even if you had a situation where you could get a CPU with HT and more encoding performance, game streaming performance hits are wonky and the CPU that simply runs the game the fastest in the first place (this can be a fast dual core for some games, or an oc'd 4690k instead of i7 etc) is generally what you want for the highest ingame FPS while streaming.
In this case though, 4690k + OC is not only faster for running the games, but also has more encoding performance because the clock speed gap is big enough. It's the obvious choice.
Also NVENC should be good for you (on the nvidia GPU's). A few button-clicks away in OBS and configured properly, the upgraded NVENC on newer maxwell GPU's is actually very good. You're basically just trading off some encoding quality for zero CPU load(*1) and often more importantly - no real performance hit(*2)
*1 - all encoding done with NVENC on the GPU, it's an additional encoder so the GPU performance itself is also unaffected
*2 - you need a consistent benchmark to even show a performance hit in many situations and you can't feel that it's there, even if CPU encoding with OBS, Xsplit or similar programs can make games feel weirdly laggy at times
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Hi,
as Cyro answered my main questions, I started putting things together. I'm not sure with many smaller things, so I qould appreciate someone looking over everything, and any comments are welcome. First the list:
What is your budget? > 1000 €
What is your monitor's native resolution? will probably be 1920x1080
What games do you intend to play on this computer? What settings?
I want to be able to play stuff which comes out the next three years, or so. Settings are less important.
What do you intend to use the computer for besides gaming? Nothing comparably demanding.
Do you intend to overclock? No.
Do you intend to do SLI / Crossfire? No.
Do you need an operating system? No (should be linux compatible).
What country will you be buying your parts in? Germany.
I want to have a silent and power efficient pc more than max fps in general. And it doesn't have to be from a certain vendor, I just looked at one shop mainly, I will compare and look if it's cheaper somewhere else later. (Can do that myself.  )
What I would choose atm.:
Tower: Fractal Define R5 - I like the plain design and it looks quite thought-out and well built inside. I do not like that the connections are on the top, they are bound to be dust traps...
CPU: i5 4590 - I know that the boxed version is a bit cheaper (I don't understand why), but I just don't need the stuff... Don't think the 4690 would make much of a difference.
MoBo: ASRock H97 Pro4 - Don't know too much on what to look here...as alternative I'm thinking about an ASUS Board, as I liked the one I had in my last computer...
GPU: I'm still not fully decided here...but now rather between the GTX 960 and the GTX 970. Will there be a point where I will be able to play games on the 970, which won't run on the 960? Will I need the 4GB (or the 3.5 you really only want to use on the 970) on "only" a FullHD Monitor? I chose the EVGAs because I liked them most from some tests...
PSU: Either be quiet! for it being Haswell compatible, or Corsair being cheaper, or Enermax, having the best efficiency...hmm...
RAM: 2*4GB of...? What frequency do I need, and are there manufacturers to (not) go for?
HDD
SSD: Samsung 850 Evo - I read a review saying it was good, but it was just one - if anyone knows more about SSDs...?
Heatsink: be quiet! - should suffice...
Chassis Fan - noctua, one should be enough, I guess...
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United Kingdom20297 Posts
The 970 is ~1.65x faster than 960 and has 75% more VRAM - so yes, it's a big enough jump for you to want to do things on one GPU, but not the other. Several games already hit 3.5GB of VRAM on 1080p if you're trying to max settings, so 2GB is probably quite limiting unless you dont mind dropping textures often and maybe some other settings~
Pretty much all of the decent CPU's are haswell c7 compatible. Look at the superflower golden green hx450.
without overclocking mobo, you can't use more than 1600mhz. 1600c9@1.5v without tall plastic sticking off the top (for no reason other than aesthetics, but blocking some parts sometimes) is good.
51 euros is pretty excessive for a CPU heatsink if you're not overclocking. I hear the stock cooler is quite quiet, but it's probably a little annoying with CPU at high loads. There should be cheaper CPU heatsinks with better-than-stock performance and fans that don't have to spin up to high RPM's.
That noctua fan in particular has very thin fan blades and maxes out at 800rpm. It's probably completely inaudible - but it simply wouldn't move ANY air unless you placed it on an unrestricted, unblocked, unfiltered fan position. It'd be useless for getting air into your case, a 17 euro paperweight. If you want to go down the hey noctua we have the most expensive fans that are actually quite good route, at least grab an NF-F12 - the fan blades are better for static pressure and it CAN do 1500rpm (a quiet, good sounding 1500rpm) though it doesn't have to.
I chose the EVGAs because I liked them most from some tests...
This statement hurts my brain a little when you have not decided which GPU you're getting yet. Even with the same graphics card generation, there are big variances in quality.
For example, just random names - EVGA 960 might be far better than gigabytes, but evga's 970 might be awful. You can compare company to company based on warranty and such - but when you go comparing GPU's, you need to look at individual cards.
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Thanks Cyro
I've decided to come up with this http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/p/psNPHx. It's a little bit more because I had to add a case fan also I changed the power supply to a modular one only con about this power supply is that there has been complaints about noise. Find the R4 $60 cheaper than the R5 gonna pick that up instead. I think this is probably gonna be my final build unless anyone has any other recommendations to change.
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On April 12 2015 15:25 Incognoto wrote:
Use 90% Alcohol with Q-tips and a micro-fiber cloth. That's what I used to clean up thermal paste multiple times. Q-tips don't leave too much fiber if you're careful and micro-fiber leaves nothing
I usually use paper towel / qtips to get the bulk off and then finish with some form of lint-free cloth. Saves the good cloth and doesn't seem to leave any bits around (whatever's left from the paper towel / qtip get's picked up by the final wipes).
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Thx a lot!
I will look for another heatsink and fan, not set on anything here. To make your brain feel better - I read tests for both cards (actually to the 4GB variant of the 960), they both sounded good. I think it's because the same cooling unit is used for both cards (there are different models)...
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United Kingdom20297 Posts
I think it's because the same cooling unit is used for both cards (there are different models)...
but the 960 and 970's use different coolers :D
2GB vs 4GB is just changing the memory chips to be 1GB instead of 512MB (there are four of them)
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Anyone with experience overclocking 970's got some tips for me?
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+ Show Spoiler +On March 19 2015 10:50 SlayerS_BunkiE wrote:Hi guys, attempting a first build here, any help is much appreciated... What is your budget?CAD 1,000 What is your monitor's native resolution?I intend to buy a 1080p monitor What games do you intend to play on this computer? What settings?StarCraft 2, Dota 2, Hearthstone, Dead Space 3, Euro Truck Simulator 2, Civilization 5, CS:GO, Sim City, Battlefield 3, NBA 2K15, and future Resident Evil games. I intend to play at max settings. Would be okay with medium settings if I ever actually buy the newer AAA games. What do you intend to use the computer for besides gaming?Just general browsing and spreadsheeting Do you intend to overclock?No Do you intend to do SLI / Crossfire?No Do you need an operating system?Yes. Windows 7/8 Do you need a monitor or any other peripherals and is this part of your budget?I need a 1080p monitor and it would be great if it could be squeezed into this budget, but it would be okay if it wasn't If you have any requirements or brand preferences, please specify.Not really What country will you be buying your parts in?Canada If you have any retailer preferences, please specify.Not really I have a rough build in mind -- http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/p/hcsRhMMonitor not included there, any recommendations would be welcome. I think this build is a little too much for what I currently intend to play. Although investing in a quad core (vs an i3) seems okay because I might need to change the mobo if I want to upgrade down the road (broadwell/skylake isn't supported by my budget mobo?). Also, I might want to make use of game streaming so I have the option of playing in the living room TV (a quad core is recommended by Steam). GPU-wise, I think I would be okay with something less powerful than a 960, but the cheaper cards don't seem to have the same bang for your buck -- thoughts?? Thanks in advance
Hey guys. Did my build last Saturday. Just finished installing drivers last night. Everything went okay considering it was my first build.
Thanks to those who responded
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United Kingdom20297 Posts
On April 14 2015 18:52 DarthPunk wrote:
Anyone with experience overclocking 970's got some tips for me?
Standard GPU OC. Which 970 do you have?
Max power limit. Probably max voltage. Leave memory at stock until other stuff is done with OC
check core clock under load and max boost, then raise offset until it's ~1440mhz, then load test with at least a few GPU bound games for some hours. You can set it to some steps like ~1460, 1500, 1540 to get a quick idea of what will work and what will horribly break, but you need hours at a setting to say if it will really work long-term or not.
I was making small adjustments recently, a certain setting worked for weeks but 10mhz higher and soft crashes started happening
~1500@1.225v is about normal but some do less and some do a lot more (over 1600 on golden chips)
you can experiment with memory with core clock at stock, but to be safe it's best not to adjust both memory and core clock at the same time, unless you're sure that the other clock is solid. For example if you test 1460 core for 6 hours and then set core to 1420 while playing with memory.
Changing the voltage will change the base clock. You're offsetting from the base clock, so 1.2v at +100 might give 1450 core for example, while 1.25v at +100 might give 1470. You have to be aware of that to avoid confusing results.
Keep temperatures below 77c at all times, shouldn't be hard for you. I use a fan curve like this:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/4yGXitP.png)
minimum @52c, 100% at 82c - though i can go over 82c without throttle, many cards can't on stock bios. Minimum @30-50c, max at 77c is good. Hysteresis ~5-10c is good also, that stops the fan toggling off and on and off and on when idling and it stops it spinning up and down like crazy every few seconds at load if you have a steep curve.
My minimum is very high (52c) because of idle behavior with 144hz not working, my idle temperatures are 15-20c hotter than they're supposed to be unless i toggle to 120hz. That makes the curve more steep than otherwise neccesary, so you should avoid that and set minimum a bit lower if you can (~40c)
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On April 14 2015 21:10 Cyro wrote:Show nested quote +On April 14 2015 18:52 DarthPunk wrote:
Anyone with experience overclocking 970's got some tips for me? Standard GPU OC. Which 970 do you have?
I have the EVGA FTW +
I'm using Precision X currently stable at 1316 core 1480 boost. Memory at 3611 Mhz
Im kinda interested in just some like general limits to not push over.
Edit:
Holy shit they go that high? is that 1500 mhz core or boost?
Edit 2: I'm kinda scared of touching voltages. I am a conservative overclocker as a rule. Like I only went to 4.2 ghz on my 4670k
I'll set the memory to stock and see how far i can go with stock voltages. My cards asic rating is only 66% so I suspect not that far.
Ok I insta crashed at 1440 1380
OK it seems like going from 1316 to 1360 lowered my boost (which it seems to run at all the time) from 1480 to 1467 with 7 degrees temp increase.
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United Kingdom20297 Posts
On April 14 2015 21:21 DarthPunk wrote:Show nested quote +On April 14 2015 21:10 Cyro wrote:On April 14 2015 18:52 DarthPunk wrote:
Anyone with experience overclocking 970's got some tips for me? Standard GPU OC. Which 970 do you have? I have the EVGA FTW + I'm using Precision X currently stable at 1316 core 1480 boost. Memory at 3611 Mhz Im kinda interested in just some like general limits to not push over. Edit: Holy shit they go that high? is that 1500 mhz core or boost? Edit 2: I'm kinda scared of touching voltages. I am a conservative overclocker as a rule. Like I only went to 4.2 ghz on my 4670k I'll set the memory to stock and see how far i can go with stock voltages. My cards asic rating is only 66% so I suspect not that far.
ASIC rating is irrelevant, there's some pretty wild speculation about what it means but there's no notable correlation between OCability on any cooling. Other effects seem to dominate if it's OCable or not a lot more. ASIC rating is not really a "silicon lottery indicator"~
I'm using Precision X currently stable at 1316 core 1480 boost.
You're looking at the wrong numbers. "core" and "boost" clocks are just indicators of some clocks used in various situations. You'll never be using either of those, the value you need is the "max boost clock" and it's not shown in any program. You just have to look at msi afterburner or gpu-z while a load is applied and check the core clock.
Memory is displayed in many ways, that 3600mhz is 7200mhz (with the advertised values)
you shouldn't be scared of touching voltages with how hard nvidia has limited people. If their board partners are selling stuff stock at 1.225v, i have no fears at all of 1.225 or 1.25v. This is on the same process from the last 2 years and people have ran ~1.35v kinda long term, with ~1.5v short term with temperatures around ~30-40c. If you're only gaming on it, the load is nothing compared to running something like folding@home or mining 24/7.
Yes, my g1 980 is pretty bad because it can only do about 1500@1.25v.
Ok I insta crashed at 1440.
looking at the wrong number probably.
On the Haswell CPU - Intel's fine selling 4790k's going to ~1.25-1.3 vcore running at ~90-95c. My CPU does 4.2ghz at around 1.1vcore and if i ran 1.3vcore, i can do it with encoding temps around 70. It's much healthier than the abuse that Intel gives on their CPU that they guarantee a no strings attached replacement for if it becomes unstable at those settings within 3 years.
Not only that, you can get the overclockers warranty. It costs like $15 and if you do ANYTHING short of physically damaging your CPU (including setting lethal voltages in bios) you can just send it back and they'll replace it. It's just kinda silly to run such a low OC. You don't technically need this, but it's the legal way of going about replacing a CPU that's been rekt if you can't read some instructions and adjust safely, without having to lie to Intel.
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OK it seems like going from 1316 to 1360 lowered my boost (which it seems to run at all the time) from 1480 to 1467 with 7 degrees temp increase.
The important values that you should look at there are core clock, core temperature and voltage. gpu-z and msi afterburner both display all of those for me.
In certain situations, GPU boost will drop 1 (or in extreme cases, 2) voltage bin. It might drop from 1.225v to 1.2v for example. One trigger for that can be exceeding a certain temperature threshold, on my msi 970 it was 70c (but kinda sensitive, i'd have to keep it below ~68 on the readings). That naturally drops the clock a little bit, as 1.2v has a different point on the clock speed curve than 1.225v.
You can see those voltages, and you can manually raise V so that if you want it to use a higher value at load (up to the cap) then it will. The cap should be 1.225v or 1.25v for you, dropping by ~0.025 - 0.05v depending on the load and temperatures from that value. That's completely fine to use.
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EPT![[image loading]](http://extreme.pcgameshardware.de/attachments/784093d1415529707-erfahrungsbericht-bitfenix-prodigy-m-airflow-optimieren-bf1.0.jpg)
