Help Me Build My PC Catch-All

JC wrote:

Cross posting in case someone is looking for an almost complete PC

Corsair 650D case, MSI Z77Motherboard, Intel 3770k 3.5GHz, 16GB Corsair DDR3 1600 Ram, Corsair Hydro H100

$500 and shipping... This is a steal.

I wish I needed these components...

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/3PPFK

Parts ordered!
(already have a 660Ti vid card.)

Cayne wrote:

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/3PPFK

Parts ordered!
(already have a 660Ti vid card.)

Looks good except for the 32GB of memory. I'd just stick to 16GB for now, but the time you need more than that you'll be ready for a new computer.

Gumbie wrote:
Cayne wrote:

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/3PPFK

Parts ordered!
(already have a 660Ti vid card.)

Looks good except for the 32GB of memory. I'd just stick to 16GB for now, but the time you need more than that you'll be ready for a new computer.

Yeah I agree with that. Speaking as a guy who has 32gb of memory... unless you KNOW you can use it (like having multiple VM's open, 3D design, huge files in Photoshop), then 16gb would be more than sufficient for your standard user or gamer.

Ah well too late Besides it's so cheap, and you have to forgive me the last time i got a new computer was my junior year of college in 2004 roughly. (with minor upgrades till about 2008)

Cayne wrote:

Ah well too late Besides it's so cheap, and you have to forgive me the last time i got a new computer was my junior year of college in 2004 roughly. (with minor upgrades till about 2008)

Heh, it's still a lot more expensive than it was about 3 years ago when I built my system. I still get a bit of sticker shock on current ram prices.

It's probably not stupid to buy 32 gigs; it probably won't get that much cheaper, and we'll be transitioning to DDR4 within a year or so, at which point it will become very expensive.

Quite likely, this is close to being as cheap as it ever will be in this technology, and it's not like DDR4 is going to be any better. It'll have more bandwidth, but bandwidth isn't the problem, it's latency, and latency in RAM has just barely changed in the last fifteen years. (DDR4 will likely support more CPU cores, but there's not much software that will take advantage.)

Further, with the extreme slowdown in processor advancement, a machine bought today might last a decade. Maybe not as a primary gaming machine, but a powerful 2014 computer is likely to still be very useful in 2024.

32 gigs of RAM won't be all that much, ten years from now.

MannishBoy wrote:
Cayne wrote:

Ah well too late Besides it's so cheap, and you have to forgive me the last time i got a new computer was my junior year of college in 2004 roughly. (with minor upgrades till about 2008)

Heh, it's still a lot more expensive than it was about 3 years ago when I built my system. I still get a bit of sticker shock on current ram prices.

Cayne wrote:

Ah well too late Besides it's so cheap, and you have to forgive me the last time i got a new computer was my junior year of college in 2004 roughly. (with minor upgrades till about 2008)

I looked at the build again this morning and I noticed the 550w power supply. That's fine for the 660ti you have now but keep in mind if you want to upgrade that video card down the road it may need more juice. Or if we're lucky and the fab/die sizes keep getting smaller less juice.

It's ALIVE!! and running at 4.6ghz to boot!

IMAGE(http://i425.photobucket.com/albums/pp334/Jfedorczyk/IMG_1911_zps0a243d0f.jpg?t=1404996542)

IMAGE(http://i425.photobucket.com/albums/pp334/Jfedorczyk/IMG_1912_zps1ee976fe.jpg?t=1405082855)

Sexy!!

Thanks. Last PC I build for quite some time.

Asus Maximus Forula VI
I7 4790k (OC'd to 4.6)
Corsair H100i
16GB of corsair dominator 2133mhz
2 EVGA GTX780 6GB
Corsair HX1050 PSU
Custom Corsair Air 540 case (modified window with 200mm fan)
Carbon fiber wrapped interior
3 Corsair 140mm fans.
Bitfenix sleeved cables

That's some kinda fan there. 4.6GHz beast. I really need to buy your previous gear.

EDIT: Fixed number because important.

Where did you get the modified window? Or did you do it yourself? Just curious.

Did it myself with a dremel and the circle cutter add on. It wasn't difficult, just time consuming as the cordless dremel that I have doesn't allow much RPM variation (high and lo) so it was melting the plastic of the window. So cut a few inches, stop, clean the drill bit, repeat.

It's time for a PC upgrade. Mine is crashy. And old. Old and Crashy.

Anyway, I have a case, a 1tb HDD, an SSD with Win 8.1 installed, and I just bought a new PSU. I thought the crashiness might be from power issues.

So what I need is a new mobo, cpu and GPU. Possibly RAM. I have 8GB in there now, but I honestly don't remember if it's DDR3.

RNG put together a list for me, with a rough budget of $700, but suggested getting feedback here as well.

List

  • Intel Core i5-4440 3.1GHz Quad-Core Processor
  • ASRock H97 PRO4 ATX LGA1150 Motherboard
  • Crucial Ballistix Sport XT 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory
  • Gigabyte Radeon R9 280X 3GB WINDFORCE Video Card
Garden Ninja wrote:

It's time for a PC upgrade. Mine is crashy. And old. Old and Crashy.

Anyway, I have a case, a 1tb HDD, an SSD with Win 8.1 installed, and I just bought a new PSU. I thought the crashiness might be from power issues.

So what I need is a new mobo, cpu and GPU. Possibly RAM. I have 8GB in there now, but I honestly don't remember if it's DDR3.

RNG put together a list for me, with a rough budget of $700, but suggested getting feedback here as well.

List

  • Intel Core i5-4440 3.1GHz Quad-Core Processor
  • ASRock H97 PRO4 ATX LGA1150 Motherboard
  • Crucial Ballistix Sport XT 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory
  • Gigabyte Radeon R9 280X 3GB WINDFORCE Video Card

Not bad. If you're interested I know a guy who might be selling a very gently used Asus Direct CUII Radeon 290 for $300. zerokfe bought one from him last month. Last time I checked he had one left for sale...I'll check and see if he still has it.

The guy selling the 290s is sold out

BUT Amazon Warehouse deals has some "like new" 290s for $342 and "very good" for $335. The good thing about using Amazon warehouse is you get the standard Amazon return policy if anything's wrong with it.

MSI's here

http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listi...

and

Gigabyte's here
http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listi...

RoughneckGeek wrote:

Gumbie, those are both the same link.

Garden Ninja, one of those would be worth the extra little bit of change. You'll get nearly 290X performance out of them for not much more than you're spending on a new 280X.

Whoops, I got it fixed now.

Garden Ninja

I forgot Malor is selling an EVGA 680 GTX that is on par or slightly faster than a 280x for $150 + $20 shipping. That's an absolute steal.

http://gpuboss.com/gpus/Radeon-R9-28...

If i may, you should consider a -k chip for "unlocked" so you can overclock that bad boy of a chip.

Well, upgrading to the 290 for a not-terribly-large cost difference seems worthwhile, especially since I have Amazon credit to use. I didn't remember to open up the box and see if my current RAM is DDR3. I should do that tonight, because if it is, forgoing the RAM on the pcpartpicker list would cover the price difference on the GPU.

Cayne wrote:

If i may, you should consider a -k chip for "unlocked" so you can overclock that bad boy of a chip.

I've never OC'd before. Aside from the crashiness, I was mostly satisfied with the performance of my current rig. What does overclocking actually get me, and how does it change the cooling requirements?

Overclocking with the modern "K" chips is really easy, and in my experience, with even decent cooling, can get you a pretty big bump. I went from 3.4Ghz to 4.4Ghz on my Sandy Bridge i7 2600K. Not sure what the newer chips are seeing, but I don't think as a percentage they've been quite as good. Ivy Bridge had less effective heat transfer due to the chip design that lowered overclocking potential, but I think they've gone back to a more effective process since.

Basically, you flip a setting in many of the good motherboards, it just does about everything for you. You can tweak things like voltages if you want to go the harder route, but they really have made it pretty easy if you just want easy.

What does overclocking actually get me, and how does it change the cooling requirements?

A K chip can boost its "Turbo mode" by a fair bit, giving you quite a bit more CPU muscle if and when you need it. The vast majority of games are more bound by your video card than your processor, however; using a K chip with most games will just mean the CPU will wait faster. With some titles, though, the boost from the K can be very nice; Blizzard games, Dwarf Fortress, and emulation all come to mind.

I tend to think of it as a lifespan-increasing option, more than one for raw performance. When you overclock a CPU, you're usually going to be shortening its life, especially if you're increasing voltages. So my typical recommendation is to start at the default speed, and then wait until it starts to feel slow. Once you actually need the speed for something, then do the overclock. If you put the CPU into high-wear mode late in its service life, then you won't care very much if it fails: you were going to replace it anyway, so any time you gain from the overclock is pure win.

CPUs are not moving quickly at all, anymore; they're still getting smaller, but they're not getting much faster. A 20% boost from an overclock could easily add a year or two to the machine's useful gaming life.

And, of course, if you actually do want to play Dwarf Fortress, crank that sucker up now. You certainly don't have to wait: I'm running on a nicely OCed machine, and have been for three and a half years, and I love the performance I've gotten out of it. 3.5 years later, my computer (at 4.4GHz) is still quite comparable to a fast machine you'd buy today, but I had it in January or February of 2011.

You'll want to also add aftermarket cooling; as Roughneck Geek suggests, the Hyper 212 series coolers are good, typically $25 to $30. Be aware, however, that they come with a sleeve bearing fan (part of why those nice big chunks of metal are so cheap), which will frequently fail within 2 to 3 years, at least if you run the machine a lot.

The replacement won't cost much, so that's not a big deal, but be sure to plug that fan into the motherboard, and be sure to enable the BIOS monitoring, so you'll get a warning when it starts to slow down.

Can we lock this thread and point people at the new one?

rofl

Wait, there's a new thread?

What if I have a question related to hardware older than 2014? Must you insist on silencing my voice?

Silence! New thread.