Help Me Build My PC Catch-All

That is something we're gonna have to keep an eye on, though. The 780 is at 250 watts, and the higher-end R9 290X is up to 300. (!) Our usual thumbnail of '~200 watts for one video card' isn't applying in the high end anymore.

If they keep going this way, we may have to start recommending bigger supplies. A quality single-rail 550 is still okay for one overclocked Intel CPU with one non-OCed video card, but if the video card is a 290X, that's getting awfully close to the limit. I think I'd rather start pointing people at a 650 for that scenario.

Wonder if the 300 watt envelope will stick, or if the market will decide it doesn't like cards that hot and loud?

Heat is always going to be the deciding factor I would think. It influences everything else. You can only dissipate so much heat via air cooling before it starts sounding like a vacuum cleaner or you run out of space.

Well, you can move a lot of heat out of a computer case pretty quietly, if you've got big fans, spinning slowly. But there's not a lot of room on a video card for fans, and they can't depend on case airflow, so they usually have to use small fans, spinning fast, which is horrible for noise.

If you could somehow guarantee case airflow over a video card heatsink, cooling 300 watts silently wouldn't be that much of an issue; they could just put lots of radiator surface area on the card, and skip the fans. But I don't see that happening with the ATX standard. So, I suspect that this idea of using high TDP to get more performance is probably going to be a brief flirtation, like the earlier NVidia dustbusters. But we'll see.

Thanks for all the thoughts/ideas. Unfortunately, I haven't had a chance to dig back in; hope to do so tomorrow night. Updates to come and thanks again.

JC wrote:

What are you outputting your video to? 9 times out of 10 this is a simple video display issue. As they've mentioned check your video connections and make sure you've got the monitor set to the right input as well.

When it beeps are all the fans running? CPU, VGA, case. Does it stay on or shut off?

I'll definitely double check the video display issue. Something simple is likely what I'm missing.

All fans were running. I left it on for about 5 minutes and all fans ran the entire time.

I wouldn't start taking things apart yet as some have suggested. the fact that the PC is apparently running means you don't have a short or anything like that.

You did remember to plug power cables into the video card right?

I would definitely make sure your monitor is reset to defaults and boot the PC.

JC wrote:

I wouldn't start taking things apart yet as some have suggested. the fact that the PC is apparently running means you don't have a short or anything like that.

You did remember to plug power cables into the video card right?

I would definitely make sure your monitor is reset to defaults and boot the PC.

Highlighting the plural there for emphasis.

And double posting for extra extra emphasis!

Weird.

MannishBoy wrote:
JC wrote:

I wouldn't start taking things apart yet as some have suggested. the fact that the PC is apparently running means you don't have a short or anything like that.

You did remember to plug power cables into the video card right?

I would definitely make sure your monitor is reset to defaults and boot the PC.

Highlighting the plural there for emphasis.

Oh yeah, that was the only thing that really threw me off this time from a hardware perspective. I'd been out of the game so long that I'd never considered that the video card would have its own power.

But, remember, he tried this without the video card at all, so the chance that it's video card power cables is not high.

The fact that the PC is apparently running means you don't have a short or anything like that.

Unfortunately, that's not true. Power supplies will detect some shorts, and stop the machine from powering up, but not all of them.

Oh, I just thought of something else:

I'll definitely double check the video display issue.

Really dumb idea, but just in case: you do have the monitor set to the correct input?

Most Asus mobo's have a two digit display that will show a code if you are getting a post beep. You can look up the error in the user manual/web. Additionally there are a series of 3 small indicator lights that will light up (usually near the digit display) that also will give you some early feedback. They can be useful in diagnosing your issues.

Any chance I could get some advice on this thread?

My dilemma: Trying to upgrade both Moto's and my pc with new Video Cards and SSD's. I have $500 to spend but would like to stay under budget.

For the video card, I am looking at either a HD7870 ($170) or R9 270X ($240). https://secure.newegg.com/WishList/MySavedWishDetail.aspx?ID=23918406

For the SSD I am looking at 120GB ($80) or 240GB ($130) (both systems have a 1TB drive currently) https://secure.newegg.com/WishList/MySavedWishDetail.aspx?ID=32318848

Moto's current video card is an HD5870 1GB and mine is an HD6950 2GB and we both run at 1920x1080 (23" monitors) in all games played. I have many options I can go, but I am not sure what would be best overall. Looking for some input.

1. Is 120GB a big enough SSD? (Steam, BF4, DayZ, Minecraft)
2. Since the 7870 and 270X and virtually the same card performance wise, would it be smarter to get the 7870?
3. Since our current video cards play our current games with medium to high settings (50-70fps is typical), should I only worry about SSD's?
4. Any other thoughts?

KEA_Lightning wrote:

My dilemma: Trying to upgrade both Moto's and my pc with new Video Cards and SSD's. I have $500 to spend but would like to stay under budget.

For the video card, I am looking at either a HD7870 ($170) or R9 270X ($240). https://secure.newegg.com/WishList/MySavedWishDetail.aspx?ID=23918406

For the SSD I am looking at 120GB ($80) or 240GB ($130) (both systems have a 1TB drive currently) https://secure.newegg.com/WishList/MySavedWishDetail.aspx?ID=32318848

Moto's current video card is an HD5870 1GB and mine is an HD6950 2GB and we both run at 1920x1080 (23" monitors) in all games played. I have many options I can go, but I am not sure what would be best overall. Looking for some input.

1. Is 120GB a big enough SSD? (Steam, BF4, DayZ, Minecraft)
2. Since the 7870 and 270X and virtually the same card performance wise, would it be smarter to get the 7870?
3. Since our current video cards play our current games with medium to high settings (50-70fps is typical), should I only worry about SSD's?
4. Any other thoughts?

What is the goal of your upgrades? SSDs are only going to improve load-times in games, not actual in-game performance. I love my SSDs for sure, but if I only had a limited budget and gaming performance was my top priority, I would invest all of it into a GPUs. Get two $250 cards and you'll be able to max out almost everything at 1080p.

Yeah, I agree. The current best use for SSD's is as an OS drive for applications. If you're just putting games on it it's not really a worthwhile upgrade if you're interested in faster game performance. Throw it all into videocards.

Also, you're talking about 120gb SSD's? BF4 will, by the time they get done with DLC, take probably over a third or even close to half of that all by itself. It's already 30GB and they've only released one map pack. The last one was what, 8GB? Assume a similar size for the next four packs and you're over 50GB on just one game.

120gb doesn't go very far with game installs these days.

I would skip 120GB drives and go for 250 or higher. If your PC was for just email and internet 120 would be fine, but as soon as you start adding things to the mix you're going to run out of space quickly.

Well, you know, both those cards are really quite good at 1920x1080, at least if the drivers are still working well. I abandoned my 5870 because of driver issues with old games, mostly, and the fact that AMD was changing architectures completely in the 7XXX series... I figured the drivers were going to be getting worse, not better. But if they're holding up, that hardware is still quite strong... maybe not enough to run Battlefield 4 at max settings, but most games should still look darn good.

Since the 7870 and 270X and virtually the same card performance wise, would it be smarter to get the 7870?

It's my understanding that they aren't virtually the same card, they are the same card, with different nameplates. So, yeah, buy a 7870 if you're going to buy one. But I'm not sure the 7870/270X is really going to be much faster than what you have. I think you'd have to go up to a much more expensive ($350) 280X to be certain you were truly upgrading. That 5870 was expensive as heck, and it was really a beast for the generation it was in. Your 6950 doesn't have quite as much muscle, but it's still a very strong card.

Since our current video cards play our current games with medium to high settings (50-70fps is typical), should I only worry about SSD's?

Yeah, that's probably the direction I'd focus more. I think you'd need to get into the $350 video card bracket to get a significant upgrade, and that's way out of your budget range.

Is 120GB a big enough SSD? (Steam, BF4, DayZ, Minecraft)

Um, well, I don't think so. I was on a 160 gigger for quite awhile, and that just wasn't quite big enough. I was always having to think about space, and it would be much worse in 120. The 240 I'm currently running, on the other hand, is dramatically better.... that extra 80 gigs made a tremendous difference for me. I rarely need to think about space on a 240.... I just naturally remove old games fast enough to keep enough space free.

Your mileage may vary, of course, but I think I'd nudge you toward a pair of 240-gig SSDs, probably Intel 530s, and suggest waiting awhile yet on the video cards. Wait until either you've got more money saved up, if you just want an upgrade for the sake of upgrading, or until you're not able to get the kind of graphics you want out of new games.

Good points. Boot and Load time are the only factors for looking at SSD's. A BF4 map can take roughly 60-90 seconds (sometime longer) to load.

Another way of explaining it: the 5870 was the flagship card of the 5XXX series. It was the fastest card you could buy. The 6XXX series was not a huge jump forward in performance terms, only a minor bump. But AMD did some wacky stuff with numbering, so that the old 57XX became 68XX in the new gen, and 58XX became 69XX... they added 1100, not a thousand. So your 6950 is a slightly cut-down version of the 5870... with the slight improvements in the silicon, it ends up being pretty similar, probably a little weaker overall.

But now you're looking at a 7870/270X, which is a performance class down from where you've been. The 7000 series is on a smaller process, so it has more transistors and runs faster (unlike the 5000->6000 transition), so there is definitely an improvement between comparable cards across generations. But the 7870 is not a comparable card to what you have: it's much cheaper. The 5870 was about a $400 card, and your 6950 was probably about $350, and you're talking about replacing them with a $200 class offering. The new generation is faster, but not that much faster.

The 280X is the rebadged version of the 7970, which is a direct descendant of the 5870. It would be a definite upgrade for both your cards. But it's about $350. Sadly, there's really nothing in the AMD lineup between the $200 270X and the $350 280X.

On the NVidia side, the 760 slots in nicely at $250, and is a fair bit stronger than the 270X. But I think that card would probably about match the cards you have, rather than upgrade them.

This is still progress: the same performance is quite a bit cheaper than it was two years ago. But it's not the giant strides that we were seeing eight or ten years ago.

Also, FPS is not a priority as long as I can maintain 50-70 fps and the game still looks good. Jumping to a 7870/R9 270X or even a GTX760 would allow us to run on High/Ultra settings well above 60 fps. That would be a plus, but map load time would make me smile more. The cost of our current cards was not an issue at the time, now they are. I still need to think about power budget though as I believe both pc's are only 550 watt. I need to check that later tonight.

KEA_Lightning wrote:

Good points. Boot and Load time are the only factors for looking at SSD's. A BF4 map can take roughly 60-90 seconds (sometime longer) to load.

Look, I have BF4 on an SSD, but that's because I'm already running an SLI setup. I've put as much money as I'm going to into videocards. While I do tend to be one of the first few people into a map if not the first, it's really not worth it if you have any urge at all for a videocard upgrade. Just put the money there. It'll be a much more noticeable effect.

Currently, I'm waiting until I can get a quality 500GB or higher SSD for $250. The Samsung EVO is currently pushing down toward $300. Soon as I can pick up one of those or a better one for that $250 price my Steam drive gets replaced.

But I'm doing that for pretty specific reasons. Basically, the fewer standard HD's I have in my rig the happier I'll be. If I can get rid of one more I can remove a hard drive cage and clean up my case a little better.

The only way for me to do that with my current drive setup is to buy a new case, which I really don't want to do

I dunno, I hate the load times too. BF4 maps are brutally slow to load off an HDD. China Rising maps seem to load quicker than the core maps, though, similar to what happened with BF3. If you're content with your current framerates I'd probably do the SSDs first.

I've been having an issue with my very old machine that a buddy suspects might be bad RAM. It's frequently (but not always) incredibly slow to boot into Windows (15-20 minutes). Once in Windows, things seem fine, except that transparency effects are massively slow. Sometimes, boot time and Windows performance is fine.

I'm going to try pulling various RAM sticks and see if having one out stops the problem from happening. Unfortunately, I don't have any known good sticks to test in there. I've got two 1gb sticks and two 500meg sticks, so I'm actually not sure how well it'll run with just 1gb of RAM, so maybe this won't be the best test anyway...

Now, if it does turn out to be bad RAM, does anyone have an idea where to get DDR2 for a reasonable price? Amazon has some shady-looking stuff for $40 for 4gb, and Newegg has name brand stuff for double that. I can justify $40 to keep this thing limping along until I can upgrade, but probably not $80.

Also, would it hurt anything to test by pulling one stick at a time? I know RAM used to have to run in pairs, but was DDR2 past that point? I haven't mucked around in hardware-land for a while.

Chaz wrote:

Also, would it hurt anything to test by pulling one stick at a time? I know RAM used to have to run in pairs, but was DDR2 past that point? I haven't mucked around in hardware-land for a while.

It is perfectly OK to test each RAM stick one at a time.

Double post

Cool, I figured, but wanted to check anyway.

Also realized that unless I somehow have one bad stick in each pair, I'd only need to get 2gb of new RAM anyway, since only one pair would need to be replaced.

I've been having an issue with my very old machine that a buddy suspects might be bad RAM. It's frequently (but not always) incredibly slow to boot into Windows (15-20 minutes). Once in Windows, things seem fine, except that transparency effects are massively slow. Sometimes, boot time and Windows performance is fine.

That could also be a heat problem; you might want to use CoreTemp to check what temps you're seeing under load. A good load program is the Intel Burn Test. If you set IBT into the largest memory mode you can manage, it will also test your RAM indirectly... if you get errors from it, then either your CPU or RAM is malfunctioning.

Note that, with CoreTemp, you want one of the alternate downloaders; the main link has (optional) crapware in it.

Microcenter has these for $90.

I was thinking about getting 2 or 3, 2 for my overstuffed data and 1 as a backup. I've never heard of this line before, can anyone weigh in?

They're actively hiding the RPM rating, so they're probably quite slow, and they have a short warranty, only two years. If you decide to use them, make sure you make backups, preferably onto drives of a different make and model.

Should be fine for bulk storage, but there's a good chance they'll kind of suck for trying to run programs from.

Thank you, that's what I was afraid of.

Any recommendations for a lot of storage but still have a decent enough speed for data access?