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Officially building new PC! I need advice!


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just wanted to throw a sobering thought into the mix , and its kind of a reality check in regard to spending thousands of pounds or dollars on a new pc for gaming

 

Bioshock is out - a game like most games , took a few years to make - it yields about 20 hours gameplay max , some have finished it already quicker ! wtf ?

 

so be realistic in terms of spending an insane amount of money on a new pc , to be able to play next gen pc titles like crysis and other hyped titles - you may find the hours of gameplay divided by the cost of your new beast pc , may prove to be very expensive on an hourly rate !

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FIRST PLACE TO CHECK SINCE 2001 FOR HARDWARE.

 

http://www.pcper.com/hwlb.php

 

Some of the best reviews on hardware on the net are done here. They have also started doing Podcasts round table meetings on the current tech and hardware that you can click a link and listen to. No I dont work for them, just been there for 7 years.

 

There is some good hardware advice there.

Asus P8Z68-V GEN3/ 2500k 4.4ghz / Corsair 64gb SSD Cache / Corsair 8g 1600 ddr3 / 2 x 320gb RE3 Raid 0 /Corsair 950w/ Zotac 560TI AMP 1gb / Zalman GS1200 case /G940/

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Push your limits a little bit Kuky :blow:

 

naaa :smartass: Even if I get it to run at 3.6GHz LockOn minimal framerate will increase by 2-3 FPS... not worth the required vCore increase and temperature:pilotfly:

 

my vCore is 1.325V, idle the CPU is about 40°C and playing LockOn temperature is always under 50°C. That's alright for me for a 24/7 system. If I go few mV higher and o/c more, temperature goes up considerably and I don't like that.

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No longer active in DCS...

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I took about 2 mins to find it out by myself. It will do the same QX6850 clock easy. A good Cooling system is imperative though. Mines on air.

 

It looks like ill be going with the Qx6850 for sure. Cooling is not going to be on air for me. I am going to find water cooling.

|Windows 8 64bit|I7-950| |X58Mobo| |1T HDD| |18gigs PC3-16000 TC 2000mhz||Nvidia GTX 660 Ti Graphics||Cougar HOTAS-CHPedals/TIR5ProClip|

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It looks like ill be going with the Qx6850 for sure. Cooling is not going to be on air for me. I am going to find water cooling.

 

I bought a Thermaltake Kandalf LCS a few months back, and it's brilliant. It's basically got the BigWater cooling-system from Thermaltake, but the entire front-door holds the 360x120mm radiator. Took some pics (poor ones) from the building-process, but you get an idea of the pure size of the enclosure and such things through them.

 

http://www.home.no/fjordmonkey/Images/Kandalf/

 

The only problems with the case: weight (about 25kg), price (cost me about $300 here in Norway), and sheer size. It's also NOT soundless, mostly due to the 3x12cm fans that cool the radiator, and the single 12cm fan in the back. You can, if you want to, put another 12cm in the front to cool the 3,5"-bays there plus two 9cm's in the upper back and up top, but that will bounce your noiselevels higher. There's also the little detail about it using Ethylene Glycol, which is poisonous to most living things. Leaks = definately not good. Neither for you nor your hardware :P

 

But cool the CPU? Hell yes. I've been able to push the Core-temperatures of my stock-clocked E6300 up to 45c, but that's on a hot day and after four hours of Prime95 Torture-testing.

Regards

Fjordmonkey

Clustermunitions is just another way of saying that you don't like someone.

 

I used to like people, then people ruined that for me.

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It looks like ill be going with the Qx6850 for sure. Cooling is not going to be on air for me. I am going to find water cooling.

 

One doesn't need to watercool a non overclocked CPU unless you're planning on keeping the CPU for about 10 years... this makes very little sense.

 

Am i wrong? Could be I guess...

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I'd say that watercooling may cost more, but you'll help the overall heat-management inside the case regardless if you overclock or not since that's what'll kill components faster than most other things. This is especially true if you have a small and cramped case like for example the Coolermaster Centurion 534 or other midi-towers with similar layouts and similar lack of suficcient airflow :) In the end, though, it comes down to what you're willing to pay for and personal preference.

Regards

Fjordmonkey

Clustermunitions is just another way of saying that you don't like someone.

 

I used to like people, then people ruined that for me.

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One doesn't need to watercool a non overclocked CPU unless you're planning on keeping the CPU for about 10 years... this makes very little sense.

 

Am i wrong? Could be I guess...

 

Oops but im dropping the quad core because i found out and some of yall probably mentioned this but quad core only supports applications and dont really overclock that much and most games use single threading which quad does not do that!

 

WOW so this changes everything and im actually going for Dual core now. Which means i will upgrade as soon as the core 3 the Pen. comes out.

 

I noticed that if you overclock then you degrade the life of that hardware. Does that mean the dangers of destroying it or does it mean the wear and tear on the hardware to loose the life quicker?

Nevertheless i want water cool just incase i get into a situation where my room in the barracks looses AC, because my last deployment i came back and the AC was down and was down for a long ass time. It was miserable.

Our barracks are very old and have constant problems.

 

Its going to be a pain in how to install water cooling and other stuff. Its been a long time since i did this but i know it shoulnt be that hard to do it. Just need alot of time and patience to do everything correctly. From I read of articles in magazines and they almost every time stress the heat in all hardware and list alot of solutions. They say fan are not useless and there actually do a great job cooling. They also say that water cooling is expensive and worth having with the fans installed for safety of the expensive hardware. They say theres no need in water cooling because if you know the right procedure in how to install fans to do the proper way to intake air and push hot air out of the motherboard then you should have no problems of having major heat issues!

|Windows 8 64bit|I7-950| |X58Mobo| |1T HDD| |18gigs PC3-16000 TC 2000mhz||Nvidia GTX 660 Ti Graphics||Cougar HOTAS-CHPedals/TIR5ProClip|

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CORRECTION!!! I posted something but i looked at some and had to erase this post because it dont go with what i just found out and changing to.

|Windows 8 64bit|I7-950| |X58Mobo| |1T HDD| |18gigs PC3-16000 TC 2000mhz||Nvidia GTX 660 Ti Graphics||Cougar HOTAS-CHPedals/TIR5ProClip|

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I changed my mind to Dual Core E6850 processor. I need feed back in what yall think of this. I know i just saved S*&% load of money :):):)

 

I am for sure going to overclock! Oh will this make me need to find other motherboard than the Striker or Asus P5N-E SLI??

 

Hey once again thank you for all the support and advice. I am still looking over all of the links yall gave me.

 

Now i can concentrate on MOBO, PSU, and WC.

|Windows 8 64bit|I7-950| |X58Mobo| |1T HDD| |18gigs PC3-16000 TC 2000mhz||Nvidia GTX 660 Ti Graphics||Cougar HOTAS-CHPedals/TIR5ProClip|

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I bought a Thermaltake Kandalf LCS a few months back, and it's brilliant. It's basically got the BigWater cooling-system from Thermaltake, but the entire front-door holds the 360x120mm radiator. Took some pics (poor ones) from the building-process, but you get an idea of the pure size of the enclosure and such things through them.

 

http://www.home.no/fjordmonkey/Images/Kandalf/

 

The only problems with the case: weight (about 25kg), price (cost me about $300 here in Norway), and sheer size. It's also NOT soundless, mostly due to the 3x12cm fans that cool the radiator, and the single 12cm fan in the back. You can, if you want to, put another 12cm in the front to cool the 3,5"-bays there plus two 9cm's in the upper back and up top, but that will bounce your noiselevels higher. There's also the little detail about it using Ethylene Glycol, which is poisonous to most living things. Leaks = definately not good. Neither for you nor your hardware :P

 

But cool the CPU? Hell yes. I've been able to push the Core-temperatures of my stock-clocked E6300 up to 45c, but that's on a hot day and after four hours of Prime95 Torture-testing.

 

Very nice case. LOL i know theres about millions of cases out there.

 

My preference is easy installion of motherboards, lots of room to put fans, and cooling system and extra usb features, and probably more. Hey i need a better magazine to look out and ill do the internet when i get some more time.

 

Thanks for the pictures though, pretty neat looking tower. I dont really care how much it weights as long it meets all the cooling and working room for my hardware ill be installing!

|Windows 8 64bit|I7-950| |X58Mobo| |1T HDD| |18gigs PC3-16000 TC 2000mhz||Nvidia GTX 660 Ti Graphics||Cougar HOTAS-CHPedals/TIR5ProClip|

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Ok then... Having watercooling in a scenario where you may loose AC and the cooped up inside temperature is 50c is a more compelling reason I guess... I see what you mean now. You just added more learning and build time for the water cooling though lol.

 

More compelling though... not an outright reason to do it.

 

Ok now that you have flipped over the thought of OCing I really must say that a P35 like the Asus P5K-D has been tremendous at OCing Quads (which you say you'll eventually get.) That board is nearly perfect except there's no SLI. If you're set on SLI then do it at the start and grab the P5N-E/Nvidia 650i family... To tell the truth, I have always waivered most on the motherboard more so that other things... Everything else is easy except that.

 

One last thing about OCing... If you have really decided then I would ditch PC6400 Ram and get PC8000 sticks... its more room to play with your OC given the same set of RAM timings.

 

As for being talked out of the Quad and going for a E6850... Yes, indeed most apps are not multithreaded but why not have 4 cores at 3.0Ghz as opposed to 2 at 3.0Ghz.

 

To me the absolute "what should I get chip" right now is the Q6600 GO stepping (You're guaranteed to get the GO stepping from ClubIt or TankGuys (Both reputable.)) It's not a big deal though... You can always upgrade later ;)

 

As a new again builder, be sure to post the full layout before you press "buy" we can spot potential problems...

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Nevertheless i want water cool just incase i get into a situation where my room in the barracks looses AC, because my last deployment i came back and the AC was down and was down for a long ass time. It was miserable. Our barracks are very old and have constant problems.
Water cooling will not solve the problem of having your computer in a hot environment. ShadowXP's nice watercooling setup only cooled the CPU. You can get more expensive watercooling setups that also cool the northbridge and video card. But the other system parts besides the CPU and GPU that are heat sensitive, the power supply, RAM, voltage capacitors/regulators (and more motherboard components) and hard drives, don't benefit at all from water cooling setups.

The key to cooling is passing enough "cooler" air over the hot components to transfer heat and then move the heated air out of the case. When the "cooler" air on the outside is already very warm the transfer inside the case doesn't work as well letting heat build up faster.

If it's 35C in your room (about 95F) it could easily be 45C in your case and some of the actual components might be even hotter. If there is any type of air flow restriction / air flow shadow caused by large video cards, flat ribbon cables, case partitions, etc., it's possible there could be hot spots.

 

CPUs and GPUs have overheat protection. If they get too hot they order the CPU or GPU fans to spin faster. If that doesnt work they start slowing down automatically. The better motherboards have "health monitoring" options. They measure the CPU and motherboard temps and if they get too high the system can alert you. So when the computer tells you its too hot you'll know its time to take a break. Asus has PC Probe II software to do that.

 

Now that you are thinking about over clocking and we know there are environmental concerns I'm going to toss another motherboard option at you. ASUS P5N32-E SLI LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI @ ~$205. Right between the Striker Extreme and P5N-E SLI. It doesnt have many of the bells and whistles the Striker has but is similar in almost every other respect. It also has more overclocking options than the P5N-E. And it has the "health monitoring" options that the P5N-E doesn't have.

 

Now as bad as heat can be on PCs - problems with the electrical power probably do more damage than any other cause. Spikes, surges, brown outs (sags), line noise and power outages can put your PC at risk. A decent UPS (uninterruptible power supply) will clean up most power problems and provide a few minutes of backup battery time to do a safe shut down in case the power doesnt come back on right away.

About the worst case scenario would be to be in the middle of a hot & heavy PC workload (like gaming) and have a power outage that stops the CPU and GPU fans and lets temps spike all over you system. And then have power return with a hefty spike or surge. Good UPSs also filter the data line from the cable/DSL modem and can even auto-shutdown your PC while you're away. A couple UPS examples. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Productcompare.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2013140072+1123414387+4027&StoreType=7&CompareItemList=N82E16842102085%2cN82E16842102034%2cN82E16842107112&bop=And

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naaa :smartass: Even if I get it to run at 3.6GHz LockOn minimal framerate will increase by 2-3 FPS... not worth the required vCore increase and temperature:pilotfly:

 

As you know that Lock-On is CPU limited so 500Mhz will get you more than 2-3 FPS. I didn't test it yet, but If you ask me easily 10-12FPS. Don't forget you can force your FSB speed up to 430Mhz normally by E6600.

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One last thing about OCing... If you have really decided then I would ditch PC6400 Ram and get PC8000 sticks... its more room to play with your OC given the same set of RAM timings.

 

As for being talked out of the Quad and going for a E6850... Yes, indeed most apps are not multithreaded but why not have 4 cores at 3.0Ghz as opposed to 2 at 3.0Ghz.

 

Reading Toms Hardware Article made me change my mind and ill be saving alot of money towards the new 3 core 45nm processor that intels got for us soon. But i wont buy it right as soon it gets out, i will get the most of my e6850 from overclocking and learn from it!

 

E6850 processor i will be sticking with for sure!

|Windows 8 64bit|I7-950| |X58Mobo| |1T HDD| |18gigs PC3-16000 TC 2000mhz||Nvidia GTX 660 Ti Graphics||Cougar HOTAS-CHPedals/TIR5ProClip|

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Water cooling will not solve the problem of having your computer in a hot environment. ShadowXP's nice watercooling setup only cooled the CPU. You can get more expensive watercooling setups that also cool the northbridge and video card. But the other system parts besides the CPU and GPU that are heat sensitive, the power supply, RAM, voltage capacitors/regulators (and more motherboard components) and hard drives, don't benefit at all from water cooling setups.

The key to cooling is passing enough "cooler" air over the hot components to transfer heat and then move the heated air out of the case. When the "cooler" air on the outside is already very warm the transfer inside the case doesn't work as well letting heat build up faster.

If it's 35C in your room (about 95F) it could easily be 45C in your case and some of the actual components might be even hotter. If there is any type of air flow restriction / air flow shadow caused by large video cards, flat ribbon cables, case partitions, etc., it's possible there could be hot spots.

 

CPUs and GPUs have overheat protection. If they get too hot they order the CPU or GPU fans to spin faster. If that doesnt work they start slowing down automatically. The better motherboards have "health monitoring" options. They measure the CPU and motherboard temps and if they get too high the system can alert you. So when the computer tells you its too hot you'll know its time to take a break. Asus has PC Probe II software to do that.

 

Now that you are thinking about over clocking and we know there are environmental concerns I'm going to toss another motherboard option at you. ASUS P5N32-E SLI LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI @ ~$205. Right between the Striker Extreme and P5N-E SLI. It doesnt have many of the bells and whistles the Striker has but is similar in almost every other respect. It also has more overclocking options than the P5N-E. And it has the "health monitoring" options that the P5N-E doesn't have.

 

Now as bad as heat can be on PCs - problems with the electrical power probably do more damage than any other cause. Spikes, surges, brown outs (sags), line noise and power outages can put your PC at risk. A decent UPS (uninterruptible power supply) will clean up most power problems and provide a few minutes of backup battery time to do a safe shut down in case the power doesnt come back on right away.

About the worst case scenario would be to be in the middle of a hot & heavy PC workload (like gaming) and have a power outage that stops the CPU and GPU fans and lets temps spike all over you system. And then have power return with a hefty spike or surge. Good UPSs also filter the data line from the cable/DSL modem and can even auto-shutdown your PC while you're away. A couple UPS examples. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Productcompare.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2013140072+1123414387+4027&StoreType=7&CompareItemList=N82E16842102085%2cN82E16842102034%2cN82E16842107112&bop=And

 

I was reading a whole article in MAXIMIUM PC magazine yesterday all about the heat production by the motherboard. They used a thermal imaging camera and it show everything that has max heat. In a diagram, color coded every inch of the motherboard in side a medium size case. Like you said the south and north bridge have alot of heat, they showed everything.

 

Thank you for the link ill check it out and the motherboard. But i im going with e6850 processor just to let you know.

|Windows 8 64bit|I7-950| |X58Mobo| |1T HDD| |18gigs PC3-16000 TC 2000mhz||Nvidia GTX 660 Ti Graphics||Cougar HOTAS-CHPedals/TIR5ProClip|

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well sometime next week i will have my e6850 cpu new pc , and i will be doing alot of gaming - i have about 40 titles to test and play , with i have never seen running on my old / current pc , along with older titles i intend to revisit and replay , with everything maxxed out detail wise , with aa and af x 16 on the 8800 gtx vid card - so i will be in gaming heaven overload i hope )

 

the deal i have struck with the wife tho - is after i have the pc all set up , my 1st priority is to convert to dvd the 8 hours of avi video footage i have of my 2 yr old daughter , once this task is complete i am free to game away in my free time )

 

the last pc game i played on this old rig to completion a few months ago was prey - i will revisit this title and replay for sure sometime on the new pc e6850 cpu

 

anyway - i will post some feedback on my experience and hopefully satisfaction when i get gaming on the new rig )

 

Roger

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yep no worries i will report my impresions

 

- i am hoping for a big wow factor on the new cpu and vid card - especially as this old pc i am on now - is amd athlon 1900 @ 1.6ghz , and 3d card is gf4 ti 4200 @128mbs - so a 7 year gap in technology and speed !

 

i have not even been able to play proper dx9 pc games for quite a while ,becoz of the old dx8 gf4 3d vid card , so i have at least 40 titles to check out here , for example battlefield 2 had corrupted texures , other games would not run at all eg hitman 3 and many others

 

the game i played some before prey was just cause - and it ran surprisingly well on this old rig - fabby looking virtual world too - so the new pc cpu and the gtx 8800 768mb can only i hope make things awesome - i am expecting big things in terms of speed , visual look and fluidity with all details maxxed out and buckets full of aa and af )

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I just bought a new PC :D.

 

Here are my new system specs;

 

-Intel Core 2 QUAD Q6600 2.4G 2x4MB 65NM 1066MHZ

-Asus SKT.775 Intel P35 ATX

-Mushkin 2GB 2X1GB Dual HP2-6400

-EVGA GeForce8800GTS 320MB DDR3, DVI, TV-OUT

-SEAGATE 160GB STAII 8MB

-LG GSA H54N 18X MULTI-DVD-RW BLACK

-ANTEC Nine Hundred Ultimate GAMER CASE

-CREATIVE X-FI XTREME Audio

-Thermaltake Pure power 500W

 

1300$ Canadian besides the taxes, still, I think I had a good deal.

 

Presently re installing all my stuff. Re testing Vista since now I have DX10 capabilities :smilewink:

 

Bring on Blackshark. I think I'm up to snuff, lol :thumbup:

 

nine-hundred.jpg

 

 

 

Cheers S!

PA-Moose

 

I'm a happy camper:smilewink:

Antec 900 gaming tower, PSU: Corsair 750W, Q6600, Asus P5K, 8Gig Mushkin, Nvidia eVGA 280 GTX Superclocked 1G DDR3, SSDNOW200 Kingston Drive, TrackIr 3000+Vector, Logitech Extreme 3D Pro joystick, Saitek rudder pedals pro, Sharp 42" inch LCD Aquo. OS: windows 7 64bit.

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Okay still looking around some motherboards, PSU, RAM.

 

I decided the e6850 processor then upgrade later.

 

WhiskeyRomeo-

 

I did look around for the power surges on the website you gave me and will probably get one soon. I dont use my computer during storms or we dont have hardly any power surges. Good power surge protector is a very good idea.

 

Okay heres an update of changes of hardware and i need feed back on this.

 

I was thinking of getting two ATI 2900 HD graphic cards and link them.

I was reading reviews on this and they say that two of them linked is way better than one 8800 ultra in ram size, fsb speed, and pretty much everything else. The price is about 300 for each including tax thats all most same as the nvidia 8800 ultra card price.

 

I know its going to take up space in the motherboard and wont really have room for more upgrades but its worth it until something better comes out by ATI or Nvidia! Anyways that much performance should keep you accupied for a long time before trying to upgrade or maybe im wrong?

 

I dont have much knowledge on how the linking works so i need some user feed back or advice from any one that knows about it and how to do it. Pretty much any advice would be appreciated.;):D:D:thumbup:

|Windows 8 64bit|I7-950| |X58Mobo| |1T HDD| |18gigs PC3-16000 TC 2000mhz||Nvidia GTX 660 Ti Graphics||Cougar HOTAS-CHPedals/TIR5ProClip|

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Hey Moose thats a nice case i did see that same on one of my magazines. Can you tell me about it? The magazine lists little about the case!

|Windows 8 64bit|I7-950| |X58Mobo| |1T HDD| |18gigs PC3-16000 TC 2000mhz||Nvidia GTX 660 Ti Graphics||Cougar HOTAS-CHPedals/TIR5ProClip|

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Hey Moose thats a nice case i did see that same on one of my magazines. Can you tell me about it? The magazine lists little about the case!

 

 

Personaly I love this tower, here are some urls.

Just need to google it.

 

http://www.tweaknews.net/reviews/antecninehundred/

http://www.antec.com/us/productDetails.php?ProdID=15900

http://www.bigbruin.com/2007/antec900_1

 

Regards

Antec 900 gaming tower, PSU: Corsair 750W, Q6600, Asus P5K, 8Gig Mushkin, Nvidia eVGA 280 GTX Superclocked 1G DDR3, SSDNOW200 Kingston Drive, TrackIr 3000+Vector, Logitech Extreme 3D Pro joystick, Saitek rudder pedals pro, Sharp 42" inch LCD Aquo. OS: windows 7 64bit.

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