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BurritoJustice
Oct 9, 2012

z06ck posted:

That's pretty funny cause the 3770 is not 8 core

The FX8350 isn't a proper 8 core either, so they are probably just counting logical cores.

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BurritoJustice
Oct 9, 2012

Also if you are Aussie, nanoxia cases are a cracking deal in Australia. You pay roughly equal prices AUD-USD, and that isn't even taking into account the higher general prices in Australia. For example you can get a DS4 (keeping with mATX) for a full 50 dollars cheaper than that 350D, or you could get a DS1 (midtower ATX) or DS5 (full tower ATX) for 15-20 bucks cheaper. Check them out, they are great cases

BurritoJustice
Oct 9, 2012

While the xonar is likely the best internal solution, you'd be better off getting a schiit magni/modi stack if you are spending that much money. It is about as much as most people will ever need. The biggest kicker is the 10 ohm output impedance of the xonar, which makes it unsuitable for lower impedance headphones. The schiit stack has an output impedance of .1 ohm.

BurritoJustice
Oct 9, 2012

The MSI card is the better buy in basically every category. It cools better and is quieter and cheaper than the EVGA card. The only reason to go with an EVGA 780 is if you like their support. The ASUS cools better on the stock fan profile, which is very aggressive and is why it is louder. For similar reasons, the MSI cooler can actually reach similar levels of cooling because by default it runs at minimum speed basically all the time. Honestly the levels of cooling is redundant as every custom 780 will be limited by the stock BIOS's voltages way before being temp limited.




Those are load volumes. At idle the MSI card makes 24dB(!!), which is also quieter than other 780s by 3-6dB.

EDIT: Also a classified 780 is ridiculously redundant unless you are doing exotic cooling and are ok with voiding your warranty, as you need to BIOS mod to get additional voltage anyway as the classified is still locked at stock. The overbuilt PCB of the classy only comes into play with those much higher voltages, with matching exotic cooling.

BurritoJustice fucked around with this message at 06:55 on Apr 20, 2014

BurritoJustice
Oct 9, 2012

Really if the OP adds something about custom cooler recommendations, the MSI should be at the top of the list for every card model. It is a similar situ for the 760 as well,



It is pretty much inaudible all the time while maintaining temperatures that are even cooler than you would ever need.

BurritoJustice
Oct 9, 2012

What are you talking about, the MSI cooler performs 3°c cooler in that table you just responded too. How is the EVGA card "much cooler" when it is 3 degrees hotter.

BurritoJustice
Oct 9, 2012

The Lord Bude posted:

It would be interesting to see a comparison with both Coolers being forced to 100% fan speed. I'm still fairly sure you can potentially get a better overclock out of EVGA cards (I'm talking about the regular SC editions, not classified) compared to MSI; But unless you really really care about getting your card as fast as possible I personally would still go with MSI.

Honestly I am curious as to why you think this, apart from just anecdotes. Neither card, or indeed any card using custom air cooling, will ever be thermally limited using the stock BIOS. The huge overhead of the custom coolers allows them to control any overclock on the stock voltages easily. The limiting factor on overclocking Nvidia cards is always the voltage, which is the same between all cards due to Greenlight. The ONLY real factor that will actually, directly, affect your computing experience between custom cards is the noise.

Binning differences between manufacturers is entirely hearsay for their standard cards. While flagship, custom PCB, cards from various companies (Classy, Lightning, HOF being the big ones) are known to be binned to a degree, this makes little difference to their mean aircooled overclocks.

And for the record, EVGA "Super Clocked" cards are, by and large, a waste of money. EVGA simply goes into the BIOS and increases the clock by a marginal amount, and then goes and adds :10bux: to the price. Various people on overclock.net et al have shown, by inspecting the vBIOS files directly, that the only difference in their BIOS's is the increased base clock; with no evidence of "Super Clocked" cards consistently overclocking better.


E: Fixed :10bux: emote lol.

BurritoJustice fucked around with this message at 09:41 on Apr 20, 2014

BurritoJustice
Oct 9, 2012


Differences in memory overclocks is basically 100% dependant on the brand of memory used. Traditionally, Elpida (the cheapest and hence most commonly used) memory has barely overclocked if at all, while Hynix (great) and Samsung (best) ram clocks way way better. Because all do the stock frequencies, they are all just fine as variation under greenlight. Elpida doesn't exist any more though so differences between brand's memory choices are basically a non-issue now.

BurritoJustice
Oct 9, 2012

From memory you've repasted your cards, so you aren't new to taking your cooler off. If you are interested in what memory you have, you can check as the modules have the brand physically printed on them.

BurritoJustice
Oct 9, 2012


Your recommendations are great and all, but make sure to mention with a D15 recommendation that it will block the top slot of the motherboard (the one the graphics card usually goes in). Or just don't recommended a D15 because it is ridiculously large to the point of excess, a PH-TC14PE will provide similar cooping with the same noise level without being so stupidly large.

BurritoJustice
Oct 9, 2012

Ignoarints posted:

Vram is not necessary for high res.

VRAM limits, by and large, do not create differences in FPS. They do, however, change the experience hugely because VRAM stutter is loving bullshit and constant at high res low ram. For example, I have sli 570s and play at 1440p. On ultra I average 50fps in BioShock infinite but the game is literally unplayable with the amount if VRAM stutter happening. For basically all games I run low texture quality now as VRAM stutter is a game ruining experience.


EDIT: Cards with too low VRAM at higher resolution look like the the pink line in this
http://media.bestofmicro.com/K/J/432307/original/assassins-creed-ftv-sample.png

Don't recommend low VRAM cards for high res, and certainly don't say it doesn't matter.

BurritoJustice fucked around with this message at 00:31 on Apr 24, 2014

BurritoJustice
Oct 9, 2012

I totally agree crackbone. It is why nvidia fits their cards intended for 1440p with 3GB buffers, and AMD with 4GB buffers. Their lower tier 1080p cards are expected to be used at 1080p and hence they have a smaller bus by default. But then they offer the larger bus for those cards specifically if you are going to be running two of them for 1440p (it is expected for it to be two of them as the performance is little for 1440p anyway.). The message I replied to in the first place was a recommendation of two 2GB 760s for 1440p. While in well scaled games, 760*2≈780, the experience will not be as good because of the limiting buffer. Seriously with the price cuts on 780s it is just better to just get one rather than gently caress around with 760 sli anymore.

BurritoJustice
Oct 9, 2012

Have you considered buying from someone in Aus and weathering the shipping? Because those prices are batshit insane compared to PCCG in Aus.

BurritoJustice
Oct 9, 2012

Ignoarints posted:

I said if there was any benefit SLI should show it, although I'm having a hard time finding that info.

And I'm very much aware that if you literally don't have enough vram its going to play like poo poo. My question was, specifically with the 760/770 level of cards, is there ever a point where 4gb is better than 2gb before you run into other limiting factors?

http://alienbabeltech.com/main/gtx-770-4gb-vs-2gb-tested/3/

http://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Video-Card-Performance-2GB-vs-4GB-Memory-154/ not as good, but they are watching for frame variance

For 760's: http://www.legitreviews.com/gigabyte-geforce-gtx-760-4gb-video-card-review-2gb-4gb_129062/4


The only answer where anybody ever actually tries it on otherwise identical cards so far is: 3x monitors, sort of. Although nobody does this test with SLI'd cards.

Anyways, as of now, I can't recommend spending 25% more on a 760 or 770 when there is zero proof I can find that these cards make any actual use of twice the ram. I can't comment on older generations where vram might very well be the culprit. It stands to reason that perhaps in the future games will make use of 4gb, but that's why I'm trying to find out if vram is the bottleneck at all in these specific cards.

Honestly, from the performance metrics provided it is likely that the worst VRAM stutter is in sli situations. You only have single card benches there. It is hard to find examples of low VRAM sli cards in higher resolutions, but the examples I can find are damning and match with my (admittedly anecdotal) experience. Going through this techPowerUp review shows a clear trend of the low VRAM 690 (which IS two 2GB 770s basically) having terrible frame timing which TPU links to the lower buffer. I know that is at 4k, but it is more about a situation where the buffer will be filled. And believe me 1440p max settings will fill the hell out of 2GB as much as 4k will.

It would never be a good idea to buy a larger VRAM bus of a card unless you are sli-ing, as a 760 or 770 will be bad for 1440p on it's own with either the 2GB or 4GB buffer. But if you are going to sli to achieve good performance in 1440p with 760s or 770s, the 2GB buffer will grow to be a detriment to your experience.

BurritoJustice
Oct 9, 2012

The Lord Bude posted:

That case sounds like you have an airport sitting next to your desk, and lights up the room like a disco.

get a Nanoxia DS1, or if you can't get hold of one of those, then get a fractal design define R4.

If you plan on overclocking and want more airflow then get a corsair obsidian 450d - it will still be plenty quiet.

If he has a beefy enough heatsink, the DS1 will be absolutely fine on airflow to feed it. The increased airflow of bigger/more expensive cases is seldom a factor in overclocking unless you are going insane. My friend does 1.3v just fine on his 4670K in a DS1, temps around 40c. He has a TC14PE which is a hell of a heatsink mind, but his computer manages to never make noise while having that cooling headroom. It will be a similar situation with a beefy Noctua, if even better because no aussie ambients. The 450D is a fine case, but air cooling is not really a reason to upgrade to it over a DS1, the only thing a DS1 really lacks is the WC support that the 450D has (plus you lose all the sweet features of the DS1 like the dampening foam and dual fan controllers).

BurritoJustice
Oct 9, 2012

Torabi posted:

Well, I had to buy an older one anyway since like I said, the new ones don't fit with the i7 920 socket. But it's still a kickass cooler (then again, anything is compared to what I haven now) from what I can tell. Gonna install it later today with a friend.

If you contact Noctua support they supply mounting gear for 775 and 1366 for any of their heatsinks for free.

^^Spectre Pro 200mm. 200mm fans are few and far between.

BurritoJustice
Oct 9, 2012

The HCG-M series are fantastic, they are bronze modular seasonic units for a great price. But if you can get an X or XP series unit for similar money it is a no brainer.

BurritoJustice
Oct 9, 2012

Corsair will bring no more piece of mind, while they are generally good, Seasonic make the best in the business. Buy the best Seasonic you are willing to spend money on. You don't *need* efficiency above bronze, as the money saved will generally not overtake the premium paid unless you are talking 5+ years, but higher efficiency means a cooler, quieter PSU in general.

EDIT: Actually a quick check confirms that the HX650 is another seasonic unit as well. From the G series to be precise. Don't pay the corsair premium, check around if your local shop has any good seasonics for the money, or if you willing to drop 100+ on a PSU, head online and buy a top tier seasonic.

BurritoJustice fucked around with this message at 15:48 on Apr 27, 2014

BurritoJustice
Oct 9, 2012

You probably know it way better than me, but my comment on seasonic was more that they make the best in the price range that most people are looking at in this thread. While there are power supplies that are indubitably better than the top seasonic platinums (such as corsairs top AXi units, which are digital and from memory made by flextronics), seasonic makes some of the best bronze rated units that are dead set reliable. I might be biased as I make computers for people in Australia, and in Australia there is a hefty price increase on corsair parts whereas the HCG power supplies can be had for not much more than explosive shitboxes and are very solid.

It was a poor comment on my part, but to be fair Seasonics are heavily recommended in this thread due to their consistent stability at a reasonable price.

BurritoJustice
Oct 9, 2012

Sli on mATX is suboptimal with open air coolers as there is no gap in between the cards like you get on ATX boards. Unless the savings are great or you want to go with a mATX case, stick to the full size board.
Also have a look into the Nanoxia DS1, it is similar to the fractal but with some sweet features like dual included fan controllers, and is a top notch case. Replacing all your fans with Noctua's is not going to give you enough benefit to spend the 100++ dollars it would take. If anything, just grab some Nanoxia deep silence case fans like the ones that come with the DS1 and fill the extra fan holes. Completely silent fans, push a good amount of air and cost a third of Noctua fans (which are overpriced as hell because branding generally).
Air coolers ARE better than water coolers on noise/performance ratio by a mile, and the top tier air coolers are hugely competitive on performance (as much as you would need to get the max overclocking out of your 4770k on safe voltages). Look at the Noctua U14 as a starter, or jump up to the Phanteks TC14PE if you want the current king of coolers.

BurritoJustice
Oct 9, 2012

The Lord Bude posted:

Also the Noctua NH-D15. Pretty sure it would outperform the TC14PE.

Marginally. Initial reviews I read had the D15 winning by half a degree to a full degree in some tests, and the TC14PE winning others. Most tests they were roughly equal. The D15 is more expensive, harder to get right now, and limits expansion options due to it's immense size. Honest I don't see it being worth it unless you are a hardcore Noctua fanboy, or you really must have the coolest air cooler (situationally and not to a degree that will change anything).

BurritoJustice
Oct 9, 2012

The Lord Bude posted:

There are actually numerous motherboards where it doesn't obstruct the first x16 slot. Including the mITX motherboard Asrock z87E-ITX (and every other *-Extreme* Asrock motherboard). And we were talking about a full ATX motherboard (the Hero) where it does fit in any case.

The D15 isn't in the OP because it didn't exist when the OP was written. Obviously we need to look at what motherboard people have selected before we recommend it.

You just recommended a D15 to someone you also recommended a MVI Gene to. You lose the 16x Slot on that mobo with the D15 (ruining the original poster's idea of SLI). You'd lose the top 1x slot on the MVI Hero, which is conveniently the best place to put an addon card while having two GPUs.

Most of the motherboards where it does not block the top 16x slot is because there is a 1x slot above, that Noctua conveniently ignores in their compatibility lists.

I honestly see no reason to recommend a D15 basically ever.

BurritoJustice
Oct 9, 2012

Khagan posted:

Since were on the topic of heatsinks, judging from reviews i have read that performance wise D-15 > (TC14PE = U-14S).

Also, Gentle Typhoons AP-15s or AP-45s are still the performance+silence fan of choice right? Provided you can find someone that sells them.

The TC14PE beats the U14S by a healthy margin. The D15 is the overall coolest, by as our discussion just covered, it isn't worth it unless you really must have that extra degree (and don't mind loosing twenty bucks and an expansion slot to get it).

GTs still stomp on everything else by quite the margin, if you can find them (if you cannot find AP-15s, either get AP-14s or get some of the higher RPM models and downvolt them, AP-15s are hard to find as they sit right on the noise curve where most people want). An alternative to the GTs is Noiseblocker eloop B12s (not as good but still readily availible), but they are very expensive and cannot be used in pull on rads. Noctua NF-F12s are also an option, but they are more than twice as loud as GTs.

BurritoJustice
Oct 9, 2012

The Lord Bude posted:

No, I suggested it as another alternative in response to your post, in which you suggested he just stick to full ATX and then listed some coolers. In context, my recommendation should have been interpreted as 'well if you're sticking with the Hero, then the sky's the limit and you should look into everything including the D15'. I should have made that more clear. It may not be the best value for money cooler, but it is the top performer, if only slightly, and people should be made aware that it is an option that exists. And since there are any number of motherboards that will take a d15 without losing a PCIe slot, saying 'well you'll lose a slot if you buy a D15' is patently false, there are any number of good motherboards that are compatible.

At the end of the day, value is subjective, and some people are willing to pay more for the best, so they should have all the options presented to them.

The list of Z87 boards that will not lose a slot on Noctua's website is heavily skewed as they don't consider losing the top PCI-E 1x slot on ATX boards to be noteworthy. With how fullsize ATX boards are spaced, you will lose the top slot on every single one. So the only boards from the list, which for everyone's reference is here, that you can be sure won't lose a slot is mATX/mITX boards that are listed as compatible, as the top slot of them is always a PCI-E 16x (and hence Noctua registers this). This is literally just the Asrock and EVGA mATX/ITX Z87 boards.

With all these trade offs, it is great that the temperature difference is huge, isn't it?

wait


...poo poo

BurritoJustice
Oct 9, 2012

That top slot is great if you have two GPUs and still want expansion (sound/raid cards, anything really). Not the end of the world, but it is a fair comment to say that you lose expansion with a D15 as that top slot becomes basically the only slot once you have SLI going. Again, the loss of expansion is subjective in how much someone cares, hence why I lumped it in with the extra 20 dollars (I was basically saying the same thing you did afterwards, the D15 is an option and these are the subjective downsides). My personal opinion is that the downsides HUGELY outweigh the upsides, and I object to it being recommended.

BurritoJustice
Oct 9, 2012

aeverous posted:

Here's a partlist i'm pretty set on:

CPU: Intel Core i5-4670K 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor ($234.98 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: Asus Maximus VI Hero ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($189.99 @ NCIX US)
Memory: Kingston Fury Black Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($139.99 @ NCIX US)
Storage: Samsung 840 Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Disk ($199.98 @ SuperBiiz)
Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 770 2GB TWIN FROZR Video Card ($319.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Fractal Design Define R4 (Black Pearl) ATX Mid Tower Case ($99.99 @ Micro Center)
Power Supply: Corsair RM 650W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($119.33 @ OutletPC)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8.1 (OEM) (64-bit) ($89.99 @ NCIX US)
Case Fan: Fractal Design FD-FAN-SSR2-140 66.0 CFM 140mm Fan ($12.13 @ NCIX US)
Total: $1406.37

I'll be buying a Noctua NH-D15 for CPU cooling as well, but it wasn't on PCPartspicker.

Anything I've missed?

Hey man, scroll back through the thread a bit we've just had a bit of a discussion about the D15. Long story short the Phanteks TC14PE is 99-100% of the performance for 20 bucks less, and without all the ridiculous case and motherboard compatibility problems so you can save money there as well. I mean if you need that extra half a degree of cooling the D15 offers (you don't), more power to you.

I know I've been talking about this a lot in this thread but people really need to know that the D15 isn't automatically a good choice because "it's Noctua".

Edit: The rest of your list looks good, but for alternatives you can look into; the Nanoxia DS1 is a psuedo-clone of the R4 that is nicer in a few ways (better stock fans, dual fan controller, toggle-able top vent) if you can find it. Also with reference to the RM650, you don't need 650 watts (not that it hurts anything but your wallet to have a PSU too large) and the RM series has also been knocked a bit for build quality not matching their price. You can probably find a solid 550-650 watt seasonic OEM or corsair PSU for less (I'm not in america so I can't easily comment on similarly priced options).

Edit: You can get this 550 watt gold seasonic for a good 40 bucks cheaper.

BurritoJustice fucked around with this message at 02:23 on May 2, 2014

BurritoJustice
Oct 9, 2012

Peacec posted:

Just looking for some input on parts. I'm trying to keep it in the budget / sweet spot range. Any suggestions for changes?

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: AMD FX-6300 3.5GHz 6-Core Processor ($109.99 @ Newegg)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler ($29.95 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: Asus M5A97 R2.0 ATX AM3+ Motherboard ($88.79 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill Ares Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($68.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Seagate 600 Series 240GB 2.5" Solid State Disk ($147.00 @ Amazon)
Video Card: MSI Radeon R7 265 2GB Video Card ($149.99 @ Amazon)
Case: Corsair 200R ATX Mid Tower Case ($59.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: EVGA 430W 80+ Certified ATX Power Supply ($38.24 @ Amazon)
Optical Drive: Asus DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS DVD/CD Writer ($23.15 @ Amazon)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8.1 (OEM) (64-bit) ($99.99 @ Newegg)
Monitor: Asus VE228H 21.5" Monitor ($134.99 @ Amazon)
Total: $951.07

Thread title :). A dual core Intel i3-4130 will convincingly beat that FX-6300 in games (by large margins in most) for around the same money, and draw half the power. The rest of your list seems mostly fine, except for that crap tier power supply. PSU is not a place to cut corners in a build. The Seagate 600 is a fine drive but nothing spectacular, look into a thread recommended 840 EVO if it isn't too much more money.

BurritoJustice
Oct 9, 2012

The Lord Bude posted:

It kinda feels strange to me that you're going for Serious overclocking, but getting a silence oriented case with relatively lackluster cooling. A Nanoxia Deep Silence 1 or 5 would be plenty quiet, and have better cooling. A fractal Design Arc would be a little noisier, but have significantly better cooling. Fractal design fans aren't brilliant, you could replace all the fans with Noctua fans to make any case quieter and cooler.

Spending $120+ on fans is not a smart move. I totally agree he should go with a DS1 over a fractal case, mostly because of the stock fans. The stock fans in the DS1 are great, and will provide more than enough airflow for his GPU and CPU to hit the best overclock they are going to get under air. Case airflow is like power supply wattage, once you have enough more is not going to do anything. The amount of money spent on a load of Noctua fans will in no way translate to a performance increase worthy of the huge investment, and more fans will likely be louder as the stock nanoxia fans already make basically no noise. For the same money he could almost change his 770 for a cheap 780.

I've mentioned this anecdotally in this thread before, but it is relevant; I have a friend with a 780 (running at 1440MHz) and a 4670k+TC14PE(running at 4.6GHz) in a stock DS1, and maxing out voltages on both his CPU and GPU he never has any problems with temps, and his system is completely inaudible under all loads. And this is in Australia.

BurritoJustice
Oct 9, 2012

The Lord Bude posted:

I should have been clearer - Nanoxia fans are much better than Fractal Design fans; I was talking more about replacing fans in the Define or the Arc. Unfortunately Nanoxia fans seem to be much harder to get hold of in America than they are for us here - even the cases are hard to find - so I go with Noctua fans. Replacing case fans with better ones is not a recommendation I make to anyone, but when someone is buying a top grade cooler and an expensive overclockers motherboard I go with the assumption that he may be interested in replacing fans as well.

Oh wow you're right on the availability front, Nanoxia fans are 9AUD here, and 20USD there. Jesus. DS5 is 105AUD here, 140-150USD there.

I think it is less that Nanoxia stuff is hugely overpriced in America, and more that Nanoxia stuff is such a ridiculous deal in Aus that their cases outstrip basically everything else (for example, a 350D is 150 dollars over here).

BurritoJustice
Oct 9, 2012

notwithoutmyanus posted:

You can stream on AMD now (raptr has it built in shadowplay style for 77xx and up) and the Linux drivers aren't terrible anymore.

Yes but it is just traditional streaming, big performance loss and all. You've always been able to stream on any graphics setup, so it is nothing fancy. Shadowplay is fancy due to the onboard h.264 encoder on Nvidia GPUs hence the performance loss being low enough that it can run all the time, which is a big bonus for shadowplay (something cool happened and you weren't recording? push one button and it's saved!).

BurritoJustice
Oct 9, 2012

deimos posted:

Encoding has nothing to do with why shadowplay is amazing.

Can you elaborate on this? It is the reason that shadowplay has such a negligible performance hit, which I thought was the main reason it is amazing?

BurritoJustice
Oct 9, 2012

notwithoutmyanus posted:

Wrong.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/1w4di9/howto_shadowplay_1080p_30fps60fps_h264_game/

This is h264 encoding based recording and will take some time to polish before it matches featuresets 100%, but that's no different than shadowplay which isn't exactly complete yet.

Also this has been since 77xx cards so this is obviously not new.

You see raptr has inbuilt shadowplay now just follow these simple 10 steps that don't involve raptr at all...

:confused:

While it is cool as hell that AMD has onboard h.264 (and news to me I'll admit, why has AMD not been advertising or exploiting this more?), and that it is being exploited now by third parties is awesome, your original post had nothing to do with the proof you have just linked?

BurritoJustice
Oct 9, 2012

That mPCI-E WiFi card would be a pain, as it doesn't come with an antenna, and his motherboard would have no holes on the IO panel to get the antenna (which he would have to buy separately) through. Really his best bet is to just get a mITX board with onboard WiFi as it saves a lot of trouble. From memory the MSI H87i is the only H87 board with WiFi built in (it is usually a feature on the z87 boards as you mentioned).

BurritoJustice
Oct 9, 2012

The Lord Bude posted:

An mATX mobo has up to 4 expansion slots. Depending on the exact layout of the board you could quite easily have 2 Dual slot GPUs and a wifi card, or a GPU and 3 other single slot things, some boards even come with wifi so you don't need to waste a slot. Very very few people actually need anything larger.

Then of course there is that fact that beyond wifi and GPUs there is gently caress all that needs to be put in an expansion slot these days. Most people don't need a soundcard, and those with serious needs will be using an external DAC anyhow, every motherboard comes with a NIC, sometimes two, your average mATX based PC has more USB ports than you could possibly need.

How exactly could you fit in any more PCI-E cards while having two GPUs on mATX? 4 slots, 2 taken by each card. The only way you could work it would be weird PCI-E riser stuff. GPU and three other cards wouldn't work either, as you lose the slot next to the one you plug the GPU in. Sli/CF on mATX is also undeniably suboptimal. It is fine if you are going with mATX for using a smaller case, but if someone is intending on going to sli/cf and is using an ATX case, an ATX board is a no brainer. Sli on ATX allows three free slots, critically one in between the GPUs which allows a lot more freedom.

Sure, poo poo all needs to be in PCI-E slots anymore. WiFi is pretty much the only one apart from GPUs that I'd put in a system, with RAID cards being a niche edge case, or a soundcard as a budget fix for faulty onboard sound (high end soundcards are stupid). But ATX is more of a difference for expandability than you admit, not that it is usually needed.

BurritoJustice
Oct 9, 2012

Even crossfiring the shittiest GPUs you can buy, PCIE2 4x is not cool. And a case with more than 4 slots would be an ATX case(unless there are weird slight-larger-than-mATX cases I haven't heard of). At which point jesus just spend the extra 10 bucks for a ATX board.

mATX motherboards are good for two things, mATX cases and cutting costs. If you are putting more than one GPU + WiFi into your computer, cutting costs is less of an issue.

Edit: mATX + dual blowers works perfectly and looks cool in its total use of space IMO, so I'll agree there :D

BurritoJustice fucked around with this message at 16:09 on May 5, 2014

BurritoJustice
Oct 9, 2012

To be fair, the drives in the Backblaze writeup were in conditions that no consumer will ever have their drives in (large rattly hotboxes at 100% load 24/7). Also they are comparing seagates regular 7200rpm desktop drives (barracudas) to WD's NAS optimised 5400rpm drives (reds with a few greens) which are obviously better off in the poo poo conditions. You really shouldn't draw much from that data. I believe Linus covered it in one of his WAN streams, and the basic idea was that it was utter crap.

BurritoJustice
Oct 9, 2012

notwithoutmyanus posted:

Nice build.

Goons, Can this be done with an R9 280x and/or GTX 770 or is there not enough room? Just curious, because if so this would mostly be my build of choice as well, except for a different SSD (I have an intel 530 240GB) and already having a WD red 3TB.

If you take out the top drive bay (leaving two 3.5" and numerous 2.5" mounts), you can fit every GPU on the market in there up to a R9 295x2, so yes.

BurritoJustice
Oct 9, 2012

Differences in overclocking between boards are very minor, in that there won't be a difference when you are just doing normal overclocking (Vcore up + multi up), the difference generally comes from the added options for heavy tweakers etc that are already using voltages out of the range of normal use. Changes in VRM etc. have an almost negligible effect in consumer situations, the biggest different will come from the chip lottery. The Asrock he has is just fine, and he certainly doesn't need a fan controller for two low speed fans. The biggest boon for fan controllers is higher speed fans that are usually quite noise under full load, so you can throttle them when needed, as well as supporting huge piles of fans for large builds (6+). His motherboard fan control will work just fine if he swaps out the front fan for a 230mm (which I would heartily recommend as it lowers noise and improves airflow), as spectre pro's are super quiet anyway.

Buy motherboards for features and expansion, and not for OC potential unless you are busting out custom water/nitrogen.

BurritoJustice
Oct 9, 2012

The Lord Bude posted:

Spectre Pros aren't that quiet. The 230mm one is very noisy at full speed, and because it's a 3 pin fan the Asus bios fan controls have a minimum speed of 60% which is still louder than I'd like mine to be when idling. A fan controller would let you turn them down even further.

Wow I had no clue about the minimum 60% speed thing. I don't have that limitation using 3 pin fans on my P8Z77-v. Still, I think I'd soon recommend just plugging the 230mm into the PSU using a resistor cable to just have it at a constant low speed before dropping the money on a fan controller

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BurritoJustice
Oct 9, 2012

notwithoutmyanus posted:

I guess I should have checked that build before I just went with it, quite a bit more.

I'm not really looking for a fan for overclocking as much as I want a fan that will keep thermal temperatures in better control, without having to make this build excessively loud. I also made the mistake of not explaining that I'm not going to be overclocking. If MSI has a quieter cooler for graphics cards and/or is more efficient, I may consider that. I've had good luck with Sapphire cards as far as coolness.

Revision 1, so to speak: http://pcpartpicker.com/user/notwithoutmyanus/saved/4ASf

Thoughts? I went with a 80+ platinum power supply for efficiency and figured that would be a good bet for the extra $20 or whatever.

A U14s is overkill for noise reduction, but it will work (if a pain to get into a Prodigy because it is huge). The MSI has a quieter cooler if you are looking for the quietest build. Looks fine otherwise

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