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Factory Factory posted:Holy crap, did you really spend $200 for a 750 Ti? That same card is $150 - $20 rebate at Newegg. E: Listen to ^^^^ on which card to get instead. OK, thanks for the clarification (you too Sir Unimaginative). I bought the card at the store (for more money) in the event that I would need to return it. Good thing I didn't open any of the interior packaging. I'll go ahead and order that other card.
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Oct 13, 2014 05:59
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So just to be real sure, can someone look over this list and tell me if there's going to be any problems, such as the motherboard and the CPU not having the right ports for each other, or the power supply not being big enough? This is going to be my first build and and I'm really paranoid that I'm going to buy the wrong thing and have to deal with that whole mess. PC Part Picker didn't throw any warnings other than the video card may block a drive bay, but I'm not sure how much that can be trusted. Sorry to be such a bother but I'm just pretty nervous about dropping close to 1k on this, only for it to not work because of something dumb. Thanks. PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant CPU: Intel Core i5-4460 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor ($189.99 @ Newegg) Motherboard: ASRock H97M PRO4 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($81.98 @ Newegg) Memory: Team Vulcan 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($68.99 @ Newegg) Storage: Intel 530 Series 240GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($119.99 @ Newegg) Storage: Western Digital RE4-GP 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($82.00 @ Amazon) Video Card: HIS Radeon R9 280X 3GB IceQ X² Video Card ($229.99 @ Newegg) Case: NZXT Source 210 Elite (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case ($49.99 @ Amazon) Power Supply: EVGA 500W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($45.00 @ Amazon) Total: $867.93 Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-10-13 01:01 EDT-0400 Also that video card seems to be out of stock on Newegg, does anyone know how often they restock things like that?
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Oct 13, 2014 06:10
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Billy Black posted:I've run a few Malware scans. I was starting to think the hard drive might be failing, but I don't know what it is. If there's no malware infection and the hard drive is ok, there are a few other things that could be causing the slowdown. It could be too many startup programs running in the background or it could be heat related. I suppose it could just be a hardware bottleneck, but if it's unusably slow I would suspect that something else is going on. It's an option in the BIOS. Where it is exactly varies from BIOS to BIOS, but it's often called "SATA Mode" and the options are usually IDE, AHCI and RAID. This may be found in Advanced Settings or Drive Settings or something, but it does vary. Any new motherboard you get will support AHCI, and it's almost always selected by default.
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Oct 13, 2014 06:20
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Factory Factory posted:While the process of overclocking is fairly straightforward, I worry that the context background to make sense of it and execute it with a minimum of frustration is not something we can ask of someone just for the sake of saving $40 or $60. You gotta want it. Money is tight for me and I'm looking to come in from the AMD X6 cold, if it's mostly for games and the occasional video transcode am I going to get to the point where just 2 cores is going to cause issues in the next couple years? I've got about 500 bucks to play with and the only thing that would come along for a new build is my 760, and maybe a DVD drive that I still use on occasion. GoatSeeGuy fucked around with this message at 06:41 on Oct 13, 2014 |
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Oct 13, 2014 06:35
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We're not mindreaders, but it shouldn't. That 'shouldn't' is why the Pentium G3258 + [Z97 board worth a crap] works: overclocking makes it hyper-relevant now and anything weird happens before Skylake (or even up to a few months into the Skylake market era) that makes a dual-core chip untenable, a 4690K is a drop-in upgrade.
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Oct 13, 2014 06:41
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No Gravitas posted:Which actually reminds me. Why does everyone buy a case? Do old cases break down or something? I mean, besides maybe the front ports and the fashion factor, nothing ever rots in a good case. Seems like a great source of savings. Engineering advances. Today's cheap cases run like the $200-$300 luxury cases of 8 years ago in terms of cooling potential and noise, and they're incredibly easy to work with. Let's compare my past three cases: The Antec Sonata III, the Corsair Graphite 600T, and the Bitfenix Prodigy. Here's a Sonata III (not mine):  You can see it's fairly compact, despite being an ATX case. In 2008, "midtower" meant something slightly different. It's a "quiet" case. It's positioned roughly where the Fractal Design Define R4 and its ilk are today. Structurally, it's got sharp metal (on more than one occasion, I gave the machine a blood sacrifice), a top-mounted power supply, a structural brace bar, fixed drive cages, and some drive trays. The drives have to be screwed into the trays. There are no cable management features except for jamming unused power supply cables into unused drive bays. The left side of the case is fixed and the motherboard mounts to it directly. A screwdriver is required for all maintenance. 5.25" drives are required to have mounting rails attached. Cooling fans are a 120mm intake mount and a 120mm exhaust populated with a three-speed fan. The fan has a selector switch that you can operate when the case is open. This was before the time of closed-loop liquid coolers, so you can't really mark it down for being too cramped to fit even a 120mm radiator. There is a not-great dust filter on the front intake. By default it is a negative-pressure fan setup. The front of the Sonata has a pair of USB 2.0 ports and headphone and microphone jacks. When I moved to Sandy Bridge, I got a Corsair Graphite 600T:  This one is mine, or was. Structurally, it's much sturdier steel. It's a much larger case, of course, but even so there are no brace bars here to get in the way of installing components. All of the metal is finished and edges are rounded and safe to touch. The 3.5" drive cages are removable, as are the individual trays (which don't require screws). All of the screws are thumbscrews, so you can do everything but the motherboard and fans tool-less. The power supply is now bottom-mounted with lots of room, so spare cables (if any, now that we're in the age of modular power supplies) do not need to dangle all over your other components, and the unit can intake cooler air. The 5.25" bays are also tool-less - they have integrated mount thingies. And it's difficult to see but you can just make it out - the center post on the motherboard isn't a screw, but rather an alignment post, so that the motherboard is always perfectly aligned when installing it. There is space below the motherboard for routing cables with lots of channels from side to side, and the other side of the case comes off to get access. There is a cut-out under the CPU socket so you can work on the CPU cooler without having to dismount the motherboard. Fan setup is 200mm fans in front and up top, with 120mm in the rear. The top mount can accommodate a 240mm radiator, and the rear mount has enough room for a 140mm rounded fan (e.g. Noctua NF-P14) or a 120mm radiator. Negative pressure by default. All major air holes save the rear exhaust have not-great dust filters. The input panel has four USB 2.0 ports, a USB 3.0 port, and a fan controller. The fan controller has a big, friendly knob that can control up to four fans. If you're familiar with cases, it should be obvious how much buttfuckin' better the Corsair 600T is than the Sonata III, except for the downsides of being larger. It's built better, you can service most of it with your bare hands, it's easy to build in and work with, the stock cooling is tons better, and the cooling potential is through-the-roof better. It's also quieter. Larger fans do not have to spin as fast to move air through a case, so the 200mm fans make the Corsair case quieter than the Sonata ever was even while moving multiple times the air. With a case that good, why would I ever change, you ask? Here's my Prodigy:  Well. Bigger that is not. Nor do I put a lot of effort into cable management. I admit this. But what an incredible use of space for such good results. Most of the build quality tricks in the Corsair case are still present - finished, sturdy steel; rounded edges; removable drive cages (one removed), thumb screws and tool-less access to a lot of common fiddling points. There are under-motherboard cable routing holes, bottom-mounted PSU with isolated airflow, and not-great dust filters all over. Fans and cooling also take the "bigger is better" approach. Stock fans are just a 120mm intake and exhaust, but the front fan mount can take up to a 230mm fan (pictured). The rear exhaust can take a 140mm fan. The top can take two 120mm fans. All fan spots can take radiators - 140mm rear and 120mm top pictured, but you can also do 240mm top and 240mm front (and you'd still have two to four places to mount SSDs and laptop hard drives). Stock is neutral pressure, but it's extremely easy to create a positive-pressure setup. Side panel input has two USB 3.0 ports and headphone/mic jacks. A step back from the Corsair's nice array of ports. This case is incredibly flexible. You can remove the middle cage and effortlessly fit your micro-ATX build into the case just by switching up the motherboard. If you use a short video card to allow for the middle drive cage to remain, you can mount five 3.5" drives, four 2.5" drives, and a 5.25" bay device. You can remove all of the drive cages and fit cooling out the wazoo. And you can probably fit the entire case into the motherboard compartment of the 600T. And noise? I've got two Prodigies in service. One has my NAS/HTPC - drive cage installed, stock intake and exhaust controlled by the motherboard, fanless Intel Atom CPU. It is dead silent. It's not just couch-silent, it's on-top-of-desk silent. The blue one with my gaming PC there? It runs at full bore like the 600T did at idle, which in turn had run at fill bore the way the Sonata III had at idle (with CrossFire GPUs in the 600T, I might add). My GPU and CPU temps never break 60 C despite hefty overclocks. And while, yes, I put a LOT of aftermarket cooling in this thing to accomplish that, the fact that it was possible at all is nothing short of amazing to me. And yet even so, I'm dissatisfied. I want it even quieter, drat it! But I think I'm limited by the modded mesh cutout on the side panel (because the old window choked the GPU's fan), the fact that the rear fan isn't PWM (although it is voltage-limited to 9V), and the unfortunate reality of pump noise. Realistically, I'd have to move back up to mATX (e.g. a DS4 or Define R4) to get this any quieter. Or just give up and put it under my desk instead of on top. This apartment is a lot quieter than the last one. So, why get a new case? Because they are SO MUCH BETTER now. Unless you bought a top-of-the-line case way back when, modern cases just outclass the old stuff. Yes, you can re-use the old case and save money. A Sonata III could probably handle a stock-clocks i5 and a moderate power-draw GPU like a 760 or 970 decently if you added a front fan. And if you were used to the noise and hadn't minded it for years prior, you'll probably keep not-minding it. But it's a compromise in so many ways. E: I thought the default [img] tags restricted image sizes now to prevent table breaks. Do they not, or are my extensions just loving things up? Factory Factory fucked around with this message at 07:28 on Oct 13, 2014 |
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Oct 13, 2014 07:13
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With the sonata 3, you could actually route unused cable/cable length behind the motherboard tray. Theres all kinds of hooks back there to zip tie to. I know this because I did it in a Sonata 2. Unfortunately I didn't realize this until I rebuilt an old PC to give to my mom. But basically Factory is right. Cases are changing to meet the changing demands of builders. Hardly anyone is using multiple 5.25" drives anymore. Gone are the days of having a DVD drive and a cd burner. A lot of newer cases are only including space for one 5.25" or even including a built in slim line drive. 2.5" drives are making their way in to cases, as pretty much all SSDs are this form factor now, so you need a place to mount them. Using an adapter to put one into a 3.5" or 5.5" space creates wasted space, weight and obstructs air flow. Air flow is being improved all around, and filters are being added to intakes. One thing I'd like to see more of, though, is challenging the Atx standard. BTX had some neat ideas that never really caught on. And now we see Apple using some of the same concepts with the Mac Pro. A singular air channel is a great idea, and also utilized by the silver stone fortress and raven series cases as well as others in sure. Apple took that concept one step further and combined not only the air channels, but also the heat sinks. For those of you who are unfamiliar, the processor and both SLI video cards are a heat sink and there's only one fan pushing air though it, from top to bottom. This type of innovation is what makes me so interested in mini itx builds. Putting the most powerful hardware into the smallest space possible while keeping it cool and quiet. I'm actually quite surprised it's taken this long for riser cards to come into the picture. Unfortunately, there are a lot of companies that don't actually look to improve the actual engineering of cases, but just try to make them look like a call of duty ammo box or the front of a BMW. But anyway, if you're happy with your case, you can reuse it. It just might not be as light, small, cool, quiet, well cable routed, etc as a new case.
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Oct 13, 2014 07:52
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Stupid question, but I got the supernova EVGA 750W power supply, and it has an ECO switch, I am assuming I want to just leave that set to 'off' correct?
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Oct 13, 2014 09:05
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It's just a fan curve toggle. On means the unit will run a smidge hotter but in return the fan won't spin at low loads. In a modern case with good airflow, it's a non-issue to turn it on and you'll save some noise. That kind of thing is default behavior for high-end units. I didn't know any supplies offered a toggle between one way and another.
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Oct 13, 2014 09:09
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Hi thread, I have the below melange of computer parts, assembled into a PC. Now, it works fine currently, runs modern games on medium or better at 1920x1080 and MMOs at very high. Problem is, the failure prone components were all bought in Jan 2009, and are therefore presumably very close to failing? CAS: CoolerMaster Centurion 590 Black Case CPU: (Quad-Core)Intel® Core™ i7 920 @ 2.66GHz 8 MB cache LGA1366 CD: SONY DUAL FORMAT 20X DVD±R/±RW + CD-R/RW DRIVE DUAL LAYER (BLACK COLOR) FAN: Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme CPU Cooler for Intel 1366 HDD: Samsung 1TB SATA-II 3.0Gb/s 32M Cache 7200RPM Hard Drive SSD: OCZ Vertex 120GB SSD MOTHERBOARD: Asus P6T Deluxe Intel X58 Chipset MEMORY: 18GB G.SKILL NQ Series w/Heat Spreader POWERSUPPLY: CoolerMaster Real Power PRO 850W Modular PSU SLI Ready VIDEO: Sapphire Radeon 7870Ghz edition Monitor: Dell U2312HM DP I imagine I need to replace the PSU and both the HDDs imminently? The HDDs seem easy, Samsung Evo and the cheapest WD Red/Hitachi, as I can quite easily shove the Evo in, install the firmware upgrade and then faff about cloning my old SSD into the new one. I'm tying myself in knots over what PSU I need. Following the OP rules, 7870 draws 175W, i7 920 draws 130W, 50W for overhead, x1.2 for overheads is 420W? That seems really low for such an old system that I think needs 2 PCI-E cables. I was pretty much planning on buying the lowest wattage possible Seasonic PSU that was gold and fully/semi modular, but I'm really not sure what that should be. Given that I imagine I'll want to replace the CPU/mobo/graphics card within a year or two, is it safer just to buy a slight overkill PSU (say 550W with 2 connectors)?
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Oct 13, 2014 10:31
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Trizophenie posted:Anything glaringly wrong with the following build? If you look at a picture on nanoxia's website, you can see that the drive trays have two distinct sections - the top one gets pulled out. IIRC there are also SSD mounting points elsewhere in addition to the 3.5" bays.
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Oct 13, 2014 11:00
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Cardboard Box A posted:Yeah I've seen this review and it makes it look great, and I linked to the bit-tech review which makes it sound great (temperature results aside), but it's not out yet. It might still be worth waiting for yet, sure, it's just the bit-tech review which made me consider asking if it was still going to be worth waiting for. I meant all the current horizontal motherboard mATX cube cases have issues, whether it be shoddy build quality on the Xigmatek, or poor fan ventilation and lack of adequate dust filtering on the DS cube. The mATX prodigy is pretty decent, but honestly my recommendation is still 'Phanteks Enthoo Evolv.' As far as I've read it comes out in 3 days. I think you are grossly overestimating the amount of airflow you need to everything your heart desires with your PC. 120mm fans are loud. My idea of best practise in a case is not to have any fans smaller than 140mm. 3 fans is plenty, 2 is fine if the intake fan is a 200mm+ model.
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Oct 13, 2014 11:08
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:I'm trying to advise a friend on how to build a computer to play Divinity: Original Sin for under $650. I certainly wouldn't cut back the GPU any further. In fact I'd try and squeeze more budget space for the gpu, if your friend has ambitions to play more graphically demanding games - Original sin isn't demanding in the slightest. I certainly wouldn't spend 136 dollars on a 750ti - not when 156 dollars gets you the vastly more powerful R9-280, which edges out the gtx760: http://pcpartpicker.com/part/msi-video-card-r9280gaming3g I'd drop down to the highest speed i3 you can get, and then upgrade the gpu to the 280 above. You can get the coolermaster N200 instead of the N300, since your motherboard is mATX. If overclocking is a realistic option, a far better choice is the pentium G3258 + cheap z97 board - you can take these to 4.2-4.5ghz, at which point they will outperform an i3 at most tasks. One thing I would do is get a different PSU - Corsair CSM series is ok, but not great and overpriced. You can get an excellent XFX unit or an excellent rosewill capstone for that price.
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Oct 13, 2014 11:15
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Billy Black posted:I can't really afford to do all of it at the moment, but it's seriously reminding me of using dial up over a lovely connection. I can't take it much longer, or I may go insane. Only because best practise would be to reinstall windows if you're replacing your CPU/motherboard - you'd have to go through that twice if you bought an SSD now and then upgraded the rest later. If you don't mind then by all means get an SSD, do a clean install of windows on it, and then save up for a new computer and carry the SSD across when you have the money. Outside of gaming, the SSD will be the single largest improvement you can make to your PC.
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Oct 13, 2014 11:18
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Ape Has Killed Ape posted:I'm looking at building a PC for the first time, and this is the place to go for help, I guess. There are a few odd choices there - In particular the PSU, SSD, Harddrive and Case are a mistake. This is what I'd be doing with your approximate budget (note that the CPU cooler is an optional extra for noise reduction. This is the first thing you would trim to save money): PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant CPU: Intel Core i5-4690 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor ($209.99 @ Amazon) CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler ($28.99 @ Micro Center) Motherboard: ASRock H97M PRO4 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($81.98 @ Newegg) Memory: Team Vulcan 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($68.99 @ Newegg) Storage: Samsung 840 EVO 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($128.99 @ Amazon) Storage: Western Digital Red 2TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive ($97.99 @ Adorama) Video Card: MSI Radeon R9 280 3GB TWIN FROZR Video Card ($156.00 @ Newegg) Power Supply: Rosewill Capstone 450W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($59.99 @ Newegg) Optical Drive: Asus DRW-24F1ST DVD/CD Writer ($14.99 @ Amazon) Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8.1 (OEM) (64-bit) ($89.98 @ OutletPC) Wireless Network Adapter: Intel 7260HMWDTX1 802.11a/b/g/n/ac PCI-Express x1 Wi-Fi Adapter ($45.99 @ SuperBiiz) Total: $983.88 Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-10-13 06:25 EDT-0400 Note that I've included the cost of windows here, if you intend to reuse a windows 7 licence or something you can do that. I also added wifi but you can ditch that if you won't need it. You can upgrade to a Nanoxia DS4 if you want a more premium, quiet case.
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Oct 13, 2014 11:27
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Feed Me A Cat posted:Thanks for saving me from my attention span; I even went with the DS4 with the express thought "Wow, youtube videos show people fitting the TC14PE in the DS4 with analogous hardware setups, I should get that!" The DS4 is listed as having 160mm of cpu clearance; the TC14PE is 171mm tall; so I'm kinda sceptical on that one - are you sure these videos aren't depicting the smaller TC12DX? that would definitely fit, and be a perfectly decent performer.
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Oct 13, 2014 11:32
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tarbrush posted:Hi thread, 450w would be fine, 550w would still be within reason - that being said, given how old everything already is, why not just buy an entire new PC all at once a year from now or whenever you want to do it? Now wouldn't be unreasonable if you have the money - the only relatively recent thing in that is the GPU and that's a low end model. If something dies between now and when you decide to do the replacement you can just bring the whole thing forward. Also don't forget to replace that abomination of a case.
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Oct 13, 2014 11:41
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Hi thread Cheers for help with the sound issue the other day, unfortunately have another problem with this new build. Been looking through my device manager and my SM Bus doesn't seem to be installed, nor can the auto search find a driver online. I've been picking through pages on the intel website and googling but with no joy so far. There seem to have been others with this issue, however not with the latest range of processors. Relevant specs are: Gigabyte H87-HD3 i5 4590 Any ideas?
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Oct 13, 2014 11:41
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I built my last PC back in 2007 or so, I've been putting together a list of parts and I've been wondering about one thing regarding SSDs. What's the difference between M.2, 2.5" and mSATA? Is one faster than the others? I see the M.2 has no protective case around the drive.
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Oct 13, 2014 11:42
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The Lord Bude posted:450w would be fine, 550w would still be within reason - that being said, given how old everything already is, why not just buy an entire new PC all at once a year from now or whenever you want to do it? Now wouldn't be unreasonable if you have the money - the only relatively recent thing in that is the GPU and that's a low end model. If something dies between now and when you decide to do the replacement you can just bring the whole thing forward. Can't afford to do the whole thing at once. The idea being I'd replace it in three phases; end of life stuff, CPU/mobo/RAM etc, graphics card. If you think the HDDs and PSU will survive another year then I'll leave it. I was mainly working on the principle that losing all my data from a failing HDD or PSU would be a pain. And yes, a replacement case is very high on my list of priorities
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Oct 13, 2014 11:48
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tarbrush posted:Can't afford to do the whole thing at once. The idea being I'd replace it in three phases; end of life stuff, CPU/mobo/RAM etc, graphics card. If you think the HDDs and PSU will survive another year then I'll leave it. I was mainly working on the principle that losing all my data from a failing HDD or PSU would be a pain. Having a decent backup routine is pretty important - why not get an external drive now, and get into the habit of doing backups. That way if something fails it isn't a big deal, and you'll be able to continue using the external drive for backups with your new computer.
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Oct 13, 2014 12:03
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I am looking to build a new system. My budget is around $1000 and I would like to order all of the parts off of Amazon, even if they are a couple bucks more. I also already have a GTX 660 that I will be reusing until I can grab a 970 that isn't a problem child. I use it mostly for surfing/streaming/gaming. Here is what I have put together so far. PCPartPicker part list Intel Core i5-4690 $209.99 Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO $33.24 Asus Z97M-PLUS Micro ATX LGA1150 $126.99 Team Zeus Red 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3-1600 $87.99 Samsung 840 EVO 500GB 2.5" SSD $235.00 Corsair 350D MicroATX Mid Tower $99.99 Rosewill Capstone 450W 80+ Gold $59.99 Microsoft Windows 8.1 Full Version $109.02 Total $962.21 Again, I am not worried about spending a few extra bucks and of course these prices could change a bit here or there. I would like to know if there are any glaring errors in this set-up. Let me know what you think.
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Oct 13, 2014 15:09
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What's good backup software to synchronize a local done with a mounted network drive?
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Oct 13, 2014 15:18
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cregets posted:I am looking to build a new system. My budget is around $1000 and I would like to order all of the parts off of Amazon, even if they are a couple bucks more. I also already have a GTX 660 that I will be reusing until I can grab a 970 that isn't a problem child. I use it mostly for surfing/streaming/gaming. Here is what I have put together so far. Are you intending to overclock? If so you need an i5-4690K; and probably a better CPU cooler; If not you are getting a z97 board for no reason and should probably just get an Asrock H97m-pro4. Personally I think it would be worth spending more on the Nanoxia DS4 case (if you value silence) or the Corsair Obsidian 450D (a little bigger than the 350D, but comes with a second intake fan, better fan intake ventilation, and proper dust filters for the vents on top) There is also the phanteks Enthoo Evolv which looks set to be fabulous, but won't be out for a few days. If you stick with the 350D I'd encourage you to get a demciflex dust filter for the top panel at least. There's no reason you couldn't go the mITX route in a prodigy or something as well if you wanted. The Asus and Gigabyte 970s are currently perfectly fine (the Asus is the better card) no need to wait on anything. Did you intend to get the pro version of Windows? You should carefully examine the differences to see if you could save $20 by getting the regular version. Otherwise I'm happy.
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Oct 13, 2014 15:33
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Before I post this, I acknowledge that I've read the entire OP (and the OP of the previous thread). I'm looking to begin a tiered upgrade to a new system (I just don't have $1k right now to dive in). Would it be worth diving into getting a GTX 970 with the following system:
I mean, reading the OP I did my first upgrade a year or so ago with the SSD, which was a giant leap. My PSU is about 3 years old now, so should be fine but I plan to knock that out with a Seasonic ~400-500w shortly after Christmas. I suppose the real question is if the new GPU would be fine with the i5-2500k or not? Again, this is to start building into a new PC over the course of the next year or so.
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Oct 13, 2014 15:41
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Psyker posted:Before I post this, I acknowledge that I've read the entire OP (and the OP of the previous thread). Certainly you can get a gtx970 without a problem. CPU performance hasn't increased enough to justify an upgrade from a 2500K - that thing overclocks really well and you should slap a decent cooler on it and overclock it if you haven't already. It's easily good for another year or possibly 2. Your current PSU is already a good unit - The TX550 and 750 are CWT built but the TX650 that you have is actually built by Seasonic - and it has a five year warranty - If it was around 5 years old, I'd suggest replacing it, if you were building a whole new PC, I'd probably say you might as well, but for now I'd suggest not wasting your money replacing it. In a year or two when you do a CPU/mobo/ram etc replacement, that would be the time to replace it. The Lord Bude fucked around with this message at 15:57 on Oct 13, 2014 |
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Oct 13, 2014 15:51
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Ape Has Killed Ape posted:So just to be real sure, can someone look over this list and tell me if there's going to be any problems, such as the motherboard and the CPU not having the right ports for each other, or the power supply not being big enough? This is going to be my first build and and I'm really paranoid that I'm going to buy the wrong thing and have to deal with that whole mess. PC Part Picker didn't throw any warnings other than the video card may block a drive bay, but I'm not sure how much that can be trusted. Sorry to be such a bother but I'm just pretty nervous about dropping close to 1k on this, only for it to not work because of something dumb. Thanks. Am I losing my mind or is this the second time in 24 hours that someone picked that Micro ATX motherboard to go with a full ATX midtower?
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Oct 13, 2014 15:57
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Zero VGS posted:Am I losing my mind or is this the second time in 24 hours that someone picked that Micro ATX motherboard to go with a full ATX midtower? Well to be fair if you have some desperate desire for a larger case (not that I'm in any way advocating the Source 210 as a thing people should actually buy) but don't actually need an ATX mobo there is no reason you couldn't save money and put an mATX mobo in there.
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Oct 13, 2014 15:59
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Are there any serious drawbacks to fanless PSUs like this Seasonic from the OP?
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Oct 13, 2014 16:13
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The Lord Bude posted:Only because best practise would be to reinstall windows if you're replacing your CPU/motherboard - you'd have to go through that twice if you bought an SSD now and then upgraded the rest later. If you don't mind then by all means get an SSD, do a clean install of windows on it, and then save up for a new computer and carry the SSD across when you have the money. Outside of gaming, the SSD will be the single largest improvement you can make to your PC. My computer is on the verge of 100% unusable, so I wouldn't mind sitting through a complete Windows install more than once. But the SSD's are so small (in the affordable price range), that I would have to use my current hard drive alongside it. I read on these forums that if your hard drive is over a few years old, then you should look into replacing it. Should I be replacing the old hard drive as well? Or will it be enough to just back up my files?
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Oct 13, 2014 16:38
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at the date posted:Are there any serious drawbacks to fanless PSUs like this Seasonic from the OP? There's no drawback unless your case has poor airflow. If you can't get a gentle breeze passing through that PSU when it is at load, it could still overheat. There are less pricey power supplies with the same quality/efficiency that also include a very quiet fan which can't be heard over louder components like the GPU fans. Some of those, for example the one I use: http://www.microcenter.com/product/429766/supernova_nex750g_750_watt_g2_atx_12v_power_supply can be set to have the fan only turn on if it's above around 50% load. Basically most PSU fans are already really quiet, as quiet as any of the other quietest fans in a system. If you have a super low power CPU and no GPUs, you might be able to use a Pico PSU which is cheaper and also fanless.
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Oct 13, 2014 17:07
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at the date posted:Are there any serious drawbacks to fanless PSUs like this Seasonic from the OP? I can't speak to that particular PSU, but I have a Seasonic SS-660XP2 in my PC, which is a beefier PSU in the same product line. It's so efficient that it runs with the fan off most of the time, even under full load in a system with a Core i5-4690 and a GTX 760, and I've never had a problem with it. The SS-520FL2 should be fine, as well, so long as you have some kind of active cooling elsewhere in your PC.
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Oct 13, 2014 17:11
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I can't even tell there's a fan running in my Corsair RM650. It's definitely the quietest fan in my computer.
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Oct 13, 2014 18:29
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I have an Antec Three Two Hundred case. In the manual it says I can install 4 more optional fans: 2 x 120mm front intake fans 1 x 120mm exhaust fans behind motherboard 1 x 120mm side panel fans to cool graphic cards Should I install all 4? I can just get any 120mm fans right? This seems like a good option?
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Oct 13, 2014 18:34
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tarbrush posted:Hi thread, Relax, if the system is fine and you'll be replacing parts soon, you don't have to act just yet. The guidelines are more about planning than they are about guaranteed disaster. The failure rate for 5 year old hard drives goes up significantly, from 2% for a properly functioning drive up until that point to a ~15-40% chance per year. But that doesn't mean that your drive *will* die. In fact, new drives have about a 10-15% failure rate for the first six month to a year of operation (including DOAs). There are plenty of drives that will run for a decade - not a majority by far, but enough that it's not surprising.  A five year old hard drive shouldn't be relied on... but then, no hard drive should. You should always keep a backup. But if a couple days of downtime won't hurt you if it fails, and if it's working now, it's okay to treat the drive as fully functional because, hey, it is. SSDs, we aren't sure exactly how and why they fail. But they don't suffer mechanical failure the same way. Don't replace it just for the sake of replacing it. That said, the Samsung drive is four times the size, supports TRIM, and is outrageously faster. So, you know, other reasons to upgrade. Go for it. Power-wise, the CPU + GPU + 50 rule-of-thumb is only for modern machines. Around 2011, motherboard and chipset power draw dropped hugely from 50-100 W to 5-40W. First-gen i7s also had enormous CPU power draw - if you really loaded on the volts when overclocking, you could push that 130W CPU to well over 400W (Intel's slides on Nehalem were power use increasing proportionally to the cube of voltage. So a power supply for your existing system would have to be huge compared to one for a new system. Even at stock clocks, the 550W you suggest is much more appropriate as a minimum. Luckily, your unit is already huge. An 850W power supply is a lot of capacity even for a fully-overclocked first-gen i7. If you've been running at stock clocks or if your system hasn't been running 24/7... then it's fine. The more over-large a unit is, the less applicable the five-year rule of thumb is. That PSU was made before the age of actually-useful power supply reviews, so who knows how good it really is. But again, if it works, don't replace it just to replace it when you'll be doing a full rebuild soon anyway.
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Oct 13, 2014 18:43
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Factory Factory posted:Relax, if the system is fine and you'll be replacing parts soon, you don't have to act just yet. The guidelines are more about planning than they are about guaranteed disaster. Perfect, thanks to both of you. Time to start saving my pennies.
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Oct 13, 2014 19:00
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lordfrikk posted:I built my last PC back in 2007 or so, I've been putting together a list of parts and I've been wondering about one thing regarding SSDs. What's the difference between M.2, 2.5" and mSATA? Is one faster than the others? I see the M.2 has no protective case around the drive. 2.5" is... a small box. That's the best way I can describe it in this context. When hard drives were the dominant storage technology, 2.5" was an intermediate size that worked well for laptops and some datacenter drives without being quite as gut-wrenchingly slow as a 1.8" drive or microdrive. But SSDs don't need all the space in a 2.5" box. Here's an 840 EVO with the case opened:  mSATA is basically the same thing but getting rid of all the empty space on that PCB. The connector is tiny (it's physically the same connector as mini-PCIe, which allows either-or combo slots for PCIe x1 and mSATA). Electrically, the connector is identical to the SATA signal and power cables on the 2.5" drive. Same drive, just smaller. m.2 is an evolution of the PCIe/mSATA combo slot. It'll do up to PCIe x4 or regular SATA. It's even smaller in terms of width, but it supports longer drives, too, so the same slot and connector can be used for ultra-portables with tiny drives while still holding larger, high-performance drives. The PCIe upgrades in m.2 are backported to 2.5" drives through SATA Express (although at PCIe x2 per drive maximum). That's it. It's just size and optional uses for the connector besides SATA.
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Oct 13, 2014 19:02
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So i've been looking into building a new PC since i've definitely reached EOL with my AMD 960 BE and 265 GTX the OP was just recently updated but I was wondering how well listing performs when it comes to streaming? I've used the previous few posts and came up with this, it's nothing out of the ordinary by any means but i'm trying to keep it near 750-800. I plan on using my older hard drives as storage (i have a couple of 7200 1TB drives.) PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant CPU: Intel Core i5-4590 3.3GHz Quad-Core Processor ($194.99 @ NCIX US) CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler ($28.99 @ Micro Center) Motherboard: ASRock H97M PRO4 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($81.98 @ Newegg) Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($72.00 @ Newegg) Storage: Samsung 840 EVO 120GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($79.98 @ OutletPC) Video Card: MSI Radeon R9 280 3GB TWIN FROZR Video Card ($156.00 @ Newegg) Case: Cooler Master N200 MicroATX Mid Tower Case ($44.99 @ Mwave) Power Supply: SeaSonic G 550W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($79.99 @ Amazon) Total: $738.92 Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-10-13 14:09 EDT-0400
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Oct 13, 2014 19:11
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Thanks! That was very informative. I'd like to build a small-ish value gaming PC, so I'm looking at mini-ATX case. I presume the m.2 would be the best fit for that due to its small size, right? You said it can do up to PCIe x4 or regular SATA, does that mean it's actually slower than the the other two? Sorry if it's a dumb question, but I only know the PCIe goes up to 16x and that's for graphics card so my knowledge is severely lacking.
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Oct 13, 2014 19:14
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| # ? Apr 27, 2024 17:28 |
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Both AMD and Nvidia video cards have integrated streaming capability using the video decode block integrated on the graphics card. Of these, Nvidia's Shadowplay works better. If you look up Shadowplay (and AMD Gaming Evolved) and their Twitch integration doesn't suit you, then streaming with a lot of CPU encoding is a viable use case for a Core i7-4790(K) instead. Steam Home Streaming is a non-issue since it can use AMD, Nvidia, and Intel GPU encode blocks and any new system will have one or two of these options. Other than the possible change to your video card given the above, the rest of the build looks fine.
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Oct 13, 2014 19:18
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