New PC build - Review

[Ryanhabs]

I never skimp on ram. I either buy Mushkin redline or G.skill top of the line. I rarely end up with a faulty stick, handles great for OC builds and both ask for modest voltage. As you stated though, its all personal preference.

[gregathit]

Yea, I have waffled back and forth between Mushkin, Corsair and OCZ. At the end of the day I went with whichever had the best latency ratings for the least money. At times I built several computers for myself (I was rich at the time....wonder why I am not now.... ) and used different brands of pretty much everything in both and couldn't feed a flea on the differences in benchmarking.

 

What I did notice is the difference of the hardware itself over the years as I upgraded one machine or the other.

 

It used to be that RAM was the key (remember sim savers?), but now it is wise not to skimp anywhere - Not even in the case!! Used to just grab any old one....remember those days???

 

CPU, GPU, Power supply, MOB, and RAM are equally important.

 

With HD's you really only see big jumps if you use solid state stuff. Someday I will convince myself to buy one......

[Ryanhabs]

I myself just saw a huge difference in the case as I just put together a "spare parts" system for fun. I figured why not seeing I had an Intel Core 2 Extreme Qx9650 sitting around. Bought a cheapy Asus p5n-D mobo to slap it in and I grabbed 8GB of G.skill DDR2 1100 pc2 8800 ram. popped it in an old steel full tower I had (god that thing is heavy!) Plugged it up to a 600 watt psu from Xion and the temps inside the case were killing my ability to OC it. Enter the Nvidia edition Haf X! Tossed it all in that fired it up and ran prime for 16 hrs with cpu oc'd from 3.0 to 3.83Ghz on air with an artic cooling freezer 7 pro! haha!

 

Needless to say I just ordered a V10 cooler and my next goal is to hit 4.2Ghz on air. Sould be doable seeing its vcore is .15V over stock and temps under full load were no higher than 56 to 58 degrees C after 16hrs of prime95 torture tests.

 

This will be my new gaming rig for as long as I can make it last although I have my eyes on a p45 chipset mobo in the near future. Hate to say it but the nvidia 750i chipset sort of sucks for FSB stability.

 

a pic of the "junker" LOL

 

 

 

I double sleeved the cables to give it a faux watercooled look.

 

 

[gregathit]

Looks fantastic!!!

 

My current system just has a water cooled cpu. My next will have both cpu and gpu water cooled (unless of course they come out with something better).

 

I agree cases now a days are just as critical as all the other parts as airflow is a big show stopper for OCing. I was just remembering the good old days in my previous post of when the critical factors on case selection were cost and looks

 

I also had a all stainless case (got it from a friend for cheap who was moving away) and DAMN that thing weighed a ton!!!! I got 10 bucks when I turned it in at a scrap yard when it was no longer functional (only had one fan slot).

[Jerbsinator]

Ya G. Skill sticks have a Lifetime warranty so definitely a good product.

[Mashi]

Meh. I had my old 560 vaporize itself in a blaze of glory(I mentioned that in this thread, I got the confirmation report back from EVGA just before I went overseas--oddly mentioning that, I can't seem to connect to LL from SkyInet(PH internet provider), I have to tunnel back to my work machine and use my VPN to connect), that it was a GPU failure. And then my evga 560ti fpb superclocked died within 3 or 4 days fresh out of the box, brand new.

 

Anyway, I've seen catastrophic failures on both sides, it all comes down to personal preference. I think that's been mentioned a few dozen times and is worth repeating, I've always believed in swapping GPU's every other generation just because. Next gen cards will be ATI for me. AMD/Intel stuff? I'm a cheap ass, if I can build a rig that preforms close to, but costs me 1/3 less I'll build it for my gaming machine because I don't need "top" I just need above the bar.

[sora3]

I should post a pic what's in my box. Probably won't be as good as most people here.

[Mashi]

I should post a pic what's in my box. Probably won't be as good as most people here.

 

Go for it Sora. This is the case, that I'm using. Uses thumbs screws, and quick latches for drive mounts. My only real complaint about it is, it's a bit cramped. But I do like the low-mount design for the PSU, especially for the newer 700+watt jobs out now. I probably should have gone full tower instead of mid-tower. But it does have back panel access to get at the CPU to swap out the cooler easily after the board is mounted.

[Jerbsinator]

Cooler Master has fantastic products. This is my case. Love it.

 

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119216&Tpk=COOLER%20MASTER%20RC-692-KKN2%20CM690%20II%20Advanced%20Black

[sora3]

@ Mashi, my motherboard barely fits in the previous case. In this case, it covers the holes for cable management so some creative thinking is necessary...

[Mashi]

@Jerbsinator

That's a nice case. Coolmaster does make some nice looking, and well vented cases. One that I always wanted to get one of those Lian Li cases, but damn bloody expensive. Pretty but stupidly expensive.

 

@Sora3, I've had a mini atx cases like that, I swore I'd never go through that mess again after paying the blood sacrifice and slicing my fingers open. I hated that case. Heh

[toastybake]

Glad you didn't go with that motherboard you had on your first post, I bought that very same motherboard and the damn thing was DOA! I then read on many forums that the motherboard is a real bad apple, had a field day with newegg trying to just get it replaced, now a month later i finally have a new one in it's box ready to sell (lol I bought a better Gigabyte board and have not looked back)

 

 

[Tenka]

Got a new system a few weeks ago (for Skyrim basically, otherwise I just play old games)

 

Antec tower case

8 gig ram

Sapphire 6870

i5

Gigabyte Z68A

120gb SSD for system and installed games

 

 

It was a HUGE step up from my old (winXP) box and I love how it runs

[Ryanhabs]

I gotta say.. just got a better heatsink for the "junker" (a coolermaster hyper 212 evo) dropped my idle temps from low 40's C. to mid 20's C. @ 4.3Ghz. Under full load if never breaks 60C. Also swapped my other machine over to an evga x79 classified mobo and an i-7 x3960 and 24GB of G.skill ripjaws. This baby is purring @ 5.2Ghz and its like a crazy difference in every command. Everything actually appears to be faster so I ran some benches and just wow!

[Jerbsinator]

I gotta say.. just got a better heatsink for the "junker" (a coolermaster hyper 212 evo) dropped my idle temps from low 40's C. to mid 20's C. @ 4.3Ghz. Under full load if never breaks 60C. Also swapped my other machine over to an evga x79 classified mobo and an i-7 x3960 and 24GB of G.skill ripjaws. This baby is purring @ 5.2Ghz and its like a crazy difference in every command. Everything actually appears to be faster so I ran some benches and just wow!

 

Hmm, I bought a Hyper 212 Plus and it doesn't seem like a junker to me. My temps never go over 51C on full load. 32C when idle. Maybe the Evo is different? Not sure, I would recommend a 212 plus to anyone though it works great.

[Ryanhabs]

No no... my pc's nickname is the junker. I call it that because I built it from spare parts I had.

cpu: Intel core 2 extreme qx9650 w/ hyper 212 evo (2 fans in push pull set up)

mobo: Asus Maximus formula II

graphics: evga gtx 560 ti 448 cores

hdd: 1x 160GB raptor 4x WD 500GB caviar Black

ram: 16GB (4x4GB)G.skill DDR2

psu: EVGA sr-2 1200w

case: Coolermaster nvidia edition HAF x

 

I call it my junker because my main pc is just leaps and bounds over its performance. In all honesty I have to say the 212 evo was the best 40 bucks I ever spent on a cooler. this cpu is just about ready to push up to 4.5Ghz on air with the hyper 212 evo and its barely scratching 60 celcius after 4+ hours of prime95. I would tell anyone not wanting water cooling to pick one of these up.

[Jerbsinator]

How much of a difference would adding another fan to my heatsink give me? I'm only using the one included and it gets good cooling but I guess more cooling is never a bad thing.

[Ryanhabs]

depends on if you have the clearance for a 2nd fan, how much airflow your case currently has, how good are you with splicing wires and insulating them. a push pull setup will typically help any heatsink as it moves more air over the heatpipes. in all honesty I don't know if you need a second. You said your temps never break 51C. unless your looking to push your processor a bit via a heavy oc.

[Dreamer102]

And once again....lol Ati. 4 years of that crap made me realize the hell I was going through after going green. You either pay the premium rip off tax and get Nvidia but at the same time get a piece of mind or go cheap and get Ati' date=' all the while praying you dont BSOD on fecking youtube. I dont think southern islands is gonna change anything with regards to Ati's wonky card issues. If you've been using Ati for years and havent had any issues then good for you, you're one of the lucky ones. But there are enough horror stories on the web with Ati cards for me not to add my own.

 

You could try downgrading your GPU driver firmware and see if it helps. Ati's drivers are known to be less and less compatible with older games with each new release. Of course that puts you in a rock and a hard place; Downgrade driver for better Oblivion but lose Skyrim performance or stick with current driver and no Oblivianz for yuu.

 

Wow. To add insult to injury you even went with AMD for your cpu.....its like you hate money or something.

 

[/quote']

 

I won't be making that mistake with the next build.

I'm going intel and nVidia.

 

 

[reae]

If anybody have problems with ati/amd gfx, usually first step is sweeping amd drivers and going with drivers downloaded from card producer. If one has Powercolor, drivers should be Powercolor's too, if somebody has crappy MSI laptop with hd3200, MSI is the answer. So far I had little to no problems with drivers, from r9200se, through 9550, 9800, x1950 and 6970, so it's possible.

 

Sadly amd is no competitive to intel, unless somebody needs cpu for media processing.

[demongoat]

And once again....lol Ati. 4 years of that crap made me realize the hell I was going through after going green. You either pay the premium rip off tax and get Nvidia but at the same time get a piece of mind or go cheap and get Ati' date=' all the while praying you dont BSOD on fecking youtube. I dont think southern islands is gonna change anything with regards to Ati's wonky card issues. If you've been using Ati for years and havent had any issues then good for you, you're one of the lucky ones. But there are enough horror stories on the web with Ati cards for me not to add my own.

 

You could try downgrading your GPU driver firmware and see if it helps. Ati's drivers are known to be less and less compatible with older games with each new release. Of course that puts you in a rock and a hard place; Downgrade driver for better Oblivion but lose Skyrim performance or stick with current driver and no Oblivianz for yuu.

 

Wow. To add insult to injury you even went with AMD for your cpu.....its like you hate money or something.

 

[/quote']

 

whats wrong with amd procs? other than amd kind of failing at bulldozer, they are pretty good.

my hex core at the time i bought it, was closest to the high end intel proc that clocked in at one grand.

this was right before the lower end sandys came out, and i was looking for a six core to do parallel computing stuff, or that was my desire to at the time.

 

yeah amd kind of failed with the new procs, they are way too underpowered for the hype they gave them.

i gave up on amd video cards because they didn't really support what i wanted to do, i was going to run freebsd and amd doesn't have a freebsd video driver that works very well.

the open source driver is okay but wouldn't work well for running freebsd as a desktop.

so back to nvidia, i hope they have better support for my "560 ti with 448 cores" as they call it soon.

i don't trust beta drivers

[Ryanhabs]

Okay, so for the first time in my pc building career I actually have an issue with an EVGA / Nvidia card. My "daily driver" system which was build for moderate gaming using 2 GTX 560's in sli had an issue yesterday. It seems both video cards have started to fail when under a decent load. They were the basic editions as I had planned on doing an overclock on them myself but never got around to it. Once I noticed the issue I decided to run some tests and it seems that they can not keep their temps under control anymore. Its been 6 months since they were installed. EVGA is shipping advanced replacements to me after a quick few emails back and forth to tech services so no issue there but since I was more concerned that these were running normal out of the box factory settings and just up and failed on me for no real reason I decided to jump the gun like I always do and just swap them out with a different card. So in the next few days I will have 2 gtx 560's to replace the failing ones but they wont be needed as Thursday my 2 GTX 580 classified ultras will be here.

 

I mostly wrote this to show why I preach EVGA cards. Even though I have never had any issues in the past they are so quick to resolve any issues that come up to keep people happy with their products. I have been so happy owith EVGA over the years that I didn't even bat an eyelash at the thought of giving them another 1100 bucks of my money. The classifieds come with a lifetime warrenty and I have no doubt that evga will do their best to make good on that fact.

[Ryanhabs]

Ahh! gotta love it! 1 new GTX 580 classified installed in the spare parts machine... sadly while the p45 chipset ran 2 GTX 560 sc's with the SLi patch, it's having an issue with running 2 GTX 580's. So for now just one is installed until I can figure out what the problem is.

 

 

 

 

 

FYI: This thing is epic!

[cyanure]

it may have been s&aid already,but I think it will be better if you raise the ram,more in the 8 giga range,like 2 X 4 Giga or 4 x 2 giga,in 64 bits it will be a savior if you do heavy renders work and it may be needed for some games to come.