Help me build my PC 2016 Edition Catch All

JohnKillo wrote:

Not completely dead. I plug the hub into another USB 3 and worked great. I tested a USB C cable and that worked but the keyboard was no bueno.

That's odd. Is it a separate usb3 port on your machine? Or connected to the others? You could start with making sure the drivers are correct. It's possible an update installed incorrectly, but that theory only holds water if that is A standalone usb3 port on your machine.

JC wrote:
JohnKillo wrote:

Not completely dead. I plug the hub into another USB 3 and worked great. I tested a USB C cable and that worked but the keyboard was no bueno.

That's odd. Is it a separate usb3 port on your machine? Or connected to the others? You could start with making sure the drivers are correct. It's possible an update installed incorrectly, but that theory only holds water if that is A standalone usb3 port on your machine.

It is the only USB 3.1 on the board. The board is an Asus Z170. I will try to update drivers and see if that works.

Dans a4 is now...going to ship sometime in the next 3-4 weeks.
THE WAITING.

Alright, now that a few clients paid me over the holiday season, I have some funds to buy a new PC for myself.

I game at 1920x1080, not really interested in moving to higher resolution in the next 2 years due to budget constraints. Also not into water cooling as I probably won't OC anything more than what it comes from out of the box.

This is the build I am seriously considering at the moment.

My logic in putting it together (it is somewhat close to Gamingguru's sub-$1000 rig from the OP, but AUD works out just breaking over A$2000):

- Kaby Lake, although not a big improvement, is one generation newer and not a huge price difference
- EVGA GTX 1060 is plenty for a 1920x1080 gamer like me (I can't see a major difference between a single fan downsized card to the twin fan full size, in any event going for a full tower and space should be okay)
- Apparently Kaby Lake can take advantage of DDR5 @ 3000+

I do think there is scope to cut back on a few things, like possibly a smaller PSU and downgrading the motherboard. Would love to have the goodjer collective's feedback.

Bfgp wrote:

Alright, now that a few clients paid me over the holiday season, I have some funds to buy a new PC for myself.

I game at 1920x1080, not really interested in moving to higher resolution in the next 2 years due to budget constraints. Also not into water cooling as I probably won't OC anything more than what it comes from out of the box.

This is the build I am seriously considering at the moment.

My logic in putting it together (it is somewhat close to Gamingguru's sub-$1000 rig from the OP, but AUD works out just breaking over A$2000):

- Kaby Lake, although not a big improvement, is one generation newer and not a huge price difference
- EVGA GTX 1060 is plenty for a 1920x1080 gamer like me (I can't see a major difference between a single fan downsized card to the twin fan full size, in any event going for a full tower and space should be okay)
- Apparently Kaby Lake can take advantage of DDR5 @ 3000+

I do think there is scope to cut back on a few things, like possibly a smaller PSU and downgrading the motherboard. Would love to have the goodjer collective's feedback.

Went downstairs to speak to the friendly PC store people downstairs from work, made some minor tweaks to the build here.

Basically he said the motherboard was excessive, just go with Gigabyte's H series, and unless overclocking, no need for the DDR5 3000 as you would need to unlock and or otherwise it would run at 2133; he also said I was better off buying an RX480.

It seems like some games scale fairly well with faster RAM. Such as Witcher 3. There was a video posted in this thread earlier comparing 2600K vs 6700K I believe, where they also tested memory scaling.
Price seems more or less the same as slower memory (up until 3000 or so)

Bfgp wrote:
Bfgp wrote:

Alright, now that a few clients paid me over the holiday season, I have some funds to buy a new PC for myself.

I game at 1920x1080, not really interested in moving to higher resolution in the next 2 years due to budget constraints. Also not into water cooling as I probably won't OC anything more than what it comes from out of the box.

This is the build I am seriously considering at the moment.

My logic in putting it together (it is somewhat close to Gamingguru's sub-$1000 rig from the OP, but AUD works out just breaking over A$2000):

- Kaby Lake, although not a big improvement, is one generation newer and not a huge price difference
- EVGA GTX 1060 is plenty for a 1920x1080 gamer like me (I can't see a major difference between a single fan downsized card to the twin fan full size, in any event going for a full tower and space should be okay)
- Apparently Kaby Lake can take advantage of DDR5 @ 3000+

I do think there is scope to cut back on a few things, like possibly a smaller PSU and downgrading the motherboard. Would love to have the goodjer collective's feedback.

Went downstairs to speak to the friendly PC store people downstairs from work, made some minor tweaks to the build here.

Basically he said the motherboard was excessive, just go with Gigabyte's H series, and unless overclocking, no need for the DDR5 3000 as you would need to unlock and or otherwise it would run at 2133; he also said I was better off buying an RX480.

Is there a reason you went with that particular case? You could probably save a bit if you went with a Corsair mid tower as opposed to a full tower. Take that savings into a 4TB 7200 RPM Hard Disk so you have some secondary storage. Otherwise the build looks good

No particular reason for the case other than aesthetics and extra space to mount more HDDs; the strategic thinking is that in a few years I may retire the machine to my work office where it'll live out the rest of its days as the backup machine/glorified file storage network drive.

Speaking of cases, I'm very much in the dark when it comes to heat dissipation etc. Is it better to have a roomy space internally or is it better to pack things in but get the benefit of the intake and outflow vents more closely located to each other? The former was one reason I was thinking of using a full tower.

As Guru pointed out, that's a lot of $ for a case. If you're not getting it purely because you're in love with the aesthetics there are plenty of perfectly good cases for less than 1/2 of what you'd pay for the corsair. Definitely buy something with an eye for longevity, but you can find something really close to that for a LOT less.

They've only got the black variant in stock so I guess I'll move to a mid sized case instead. I'm struggling to find a nice white case design with good front air intake and rear/top outflow slots. Oh man, the store downstairs quoted me over $300 more than two other stores...they must be struggling on volumes if they can't offer a competitive quote.

Check out Enthoo and NZXT. They make good cases

or just type in "White Mid-tower PC case"

Hmm, the mid sized cases which I am now considering are:

- NZXT Manta ($196)

- NZXT H440 (2015) ($190)

- Corsair 230T ($110)

- Corsair Carbide Series 500R ($169)

- Corsair Crystal Series 460X RGB Compact ($199)

Would be grateful to hear if anyone's had experience with these cases and feedback.

So, relevant to the discussion about AIO cooler radiator placement earlier:

For those without time, and keep in mind both CPU and GPU are Overclocked.

Top radiator placement, 2 front intake fans, Blower style GPU: 77C CPU and 83C GPU
Top radiator placement, 2 front intake fans, Open style GPU: 86C CPU and 71C GPU

Front radiator placement, 2 top exhaust fans, Blower style GPU: 76C CPU and 84C GPU
Front radiator placement, 2 top exhaust fans, Open style GPU: 76C CPU and 71C GPU

Now obviously this will vary based on the case. Some will deal better than others, but the general conclusion is that if you have a blower style cooler on your graphics card you can do whichever and only see very small differences. If on the other hand you have a more common custom multiple fan cooler videocard from one of the many board partners... put your radiator in the front. 10C is a huge difference in CPU temperature for just relocating the radiator.

Regarding moving games between drives, it sounds like this was added to steam very recently.
"Game install folders can be moved to other Steam Library folders under Properties / Local Files"

Shadout wrote:

Regarding moving games between drives, it sounds like this was added to steam very recently.
"Game install folders can be moved to other Steam Library folders under Properties / Local Files"

Are you on a Steam beta client? I don't see it.

I don't see it either. Just read patch notes. No idea if it is out yet, or if you have to do anything to make it work.

http://store.steampowered.com/news/?...

MannishBoy wrote:
Shadout wrote:

Regarding moving games between drives, it sounds like this was added to steam very recently.
"Game install folders can be moved to other Steam Library folders under Properties / Local Files"

Are you on a Steam beta client? I don't see it.

They must be rolling it out gradually. I'm not using the beta, but I have the option.

misplacedbravado wrote:
MannishBoy wrote:
Shadout wrote:

Regarding moving games between drives, it sounds like this was added to steam very recently.
"Game install folders can be moved to other Steam Library folders under Properties / Local Files"

Are you on a Steam beta client? I don't see it.

They must be rolling it out gradually. I'm not using the beta, but I have the option.

I just closed and restarted Steam to get the update. See it now. Thanks.

Seems like the feature was just added: http://lifehacker.com/steam-quietly-...

Thin_J wrote:

If on the other hand you have a more common custom multiple fan cooler videocard from one of the many board partners... put your radiator in the front. 10C is a huge difference in CPU temperature for just relocating the radiator.

It might be more accurate to say 'put your CPU radiator in front of the intake, wherever it gets the coolest air.' On a modern PC, the CPU will be putting out, at most, half the heat the GPU is (75-85 CPU watts on most desktops, compared to 150-200 for the video card) and with typical game loads, a fourth is quite likely.

Cooling the CPU first adds less of a load to an internal GPU cooler than the GPU cooler would add to the CPU. But when you've got a self-exhausting GPU cooler, there's not much difference.

Over 5 years ago you guys helped me build a PC and it was a really satisfying experience. Since then, I've helped friends and family build PC's and yesterday, I upgraded mine.

The main bits:
i5 2500k -> i7 7770k
GTX 570 -> GTX 770 -> GTX 1070
256gb Samsung 830 EVO -> 525gb Intel 600p

Reused my case (Fractal Design R3) and drives.

Couple of random things doing the upgrade:

- NVMe M.2 drives are tiny!
IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/TY6BEmB.png)
- I had to bend my case slightly to comfortably get the 1070 in
IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/uDLLMir.png)
- The CM 212 EVO was just as much of a pain in the ass to install as my previous 212+. I wanted to go with the Cryorig H7 but the MicroCenter near me doesn't sell it and didn't want to wait for shipping.
- What's up with all the LEDs on things now? I need to figure out how to turn this stuff off.
- When taking out my old motherboard, I realized that I forgot to peel the plastic off the chipset
- I was getting funky crackling sounds from the audio but updating the BIOS fixed it.
- While doing that, I realized my ram wasn't at the advertised speed. Did some googling and realized I had to enable XMP in the BIOS. It makes me wonder how many buy faster ram but forget to do that step as well.

That sort of new PC feel

BNice wrote:

- NVMe M.2 drives are tiny!

Yep, received mine a few days ago. Was nearly afraid to hold it. They look so fragile.

Still waiting on the motherboard to arrive sadly. Shop keeps saying they will get it tomorrow. Day after day

Not used to building PCs myself, only done it once for my previous PC. Surely the CPU cooler I'm most worried about. They always seem to be a pain to install.

Shadout wrote:
BNice wrote:

- NVMe M.2 drives are tiny!

Yep, received mine a few days ago. Was nearly afraid to hold it. They look so fragile.

I was ok getting it out of the box, but definitely got nervous once it came to installing it.

BNice wrote:

- What's up with all the LEDs on things now? I need to figure out how to turn this stuff off.

No kidding. Like I remember this was a stupid thing back in the 90's/2000's and it only seems to have gotten worse.

Congrats on the new rig! MicroCenter's pretty sweet

shoptroll wrote:

Congrats on the new rig! MicroCenter's pretty sweet :)

Thanks.

I haven't been to Microcenter for over 5 years and man, that place is so awesome. I felt like a kid walking through there. "Drones! Woah, those circuit things for kids! 3D printers! An entire wall of case fans!" And it's clear the enthusiast market is booming since high end gaming stuff is everywhere.

It makes me wonder how much inadvertent business pcpartpicker has given the entire pc echo system and stores like MicroCenter.

Hey all. So I'm at my wit's end. A couple weeks ago I splurged and built the suggested Sub-2k build on the first post of this thread ( Sub 2k build ).

Worked perfectly for a few days, then I started getting several frequent issues: regular crashes upon logging into Windows 10's desktop (or mid game after the system had been running a while), and occasional freezes on the Asus BIOS screen (unable to access BIOS and requires hard shutdown). During sleep mode it will either have crashed or crashes upon trying to wake it up. Sometimes after a crash, the system wont post anything to screen at all for quite a while afterward when trying to reboot it.

From what I can gather online, it's likely a problem with the Asus z170 pro gaming MB not being entirely compatible with the Crucial Ballistix Sport LT 32GB (2 x 16GB) DDR4-2400 Memory. It appears the Asus site for the z170 doesn't list this memory as being supported, though the Crucial website does. It appears others have had issues with this combination of MB and memory.

I've updated my BIOS to the latest version and tried the ram in multiple configurations in the 4 available ram slots, and all my drivers and such for the entire rest of the build are up to date. Nothing seems to have helped. I haven't messed with any voltage settings or anything, I'm a novice at this. Any further suggestions? Is there anything I can do to make these two components play nice together?

If not, and I have to purchase a different memory brand, what would be the proper 32GB alternative from among the z170's listed compatible options? ( page 1 --9 of this manual Asus z170 pro gaming ) .

Thanks for your time, all.

Did you buy 4 sticks? Or just two? I have had issues with Asus motherboards and 4 sticks of ram before. It sucks, but usually just using two works fine. You could always try and RMA the Ram and try to get a different brand that works.

Gaald wrote:

Did you buy 4 sticks? Or just two? I have had issues with Asus motherboards and 4 sticks of ram before. It sucks, but usually just using two works fine. You could always try and RMA the Ram and try to get a different brand that works.

Nope, 2 sticks of 16, so that isn't the issue. I'm probably at the point where I need to replace with another brand, but I'm not experienced enough in ram specs to know what I should be aiming for as a suitable replacement. Any suggestions based off the compatible list I linked above?

*removed*

Stumpyia wrote:

Hey all. So I'm at my wit's end. A couple weeks ago I splurged and built the suggested Sub-2k build on the first post of this thread ( Sub 2k build ).

Worked perfectly for a few days, then I started getting several frequent issues: regular crashes upon logging into Windows 10's desktop (or mid game after the system had been running a while), and occasional freezes on the Asus BIOS screen (unable to access BIOS and requires hard shutdown). During sleep mode it will either have crashed or crashes upon trying to wake it up. Sometimes after a crash, the system wont post anything to screen at all for quite a while afterward when trying to reboot it.

From what I can gather online, it's likely a problem with the Asus z170 pro gaming MB not being entirely compatible with the Crucial Ballistix Sport LT 32GB (2 x 16GB) DDR4-2400 Memory. It appears the Asus site for the z170 doesn't list this memory as being supported, though the Crucial website does. It appears others have had issues with this combination of MB and memory.

I've updated my BIOS to the latest version and tried the ram in multiple configurations in the 4 available ram slots, and all my drivers and such for the entire rest of the build are up to date. Nothing seems to have helped. I haven't messed with any voltage settings or anything, I'm a novice at this. Any further suggestions? Is there anything I can do to make these two components play nice together?

If not, and I have to purchase a different memory brand, what would be the proper 32GB alternative from among the z170's listed compatible options? ( page 1 --9 of this manual Asus z170 pro gaming ) .

Thanks for your time, all.

Did you enable Intel XMP in the Bios? That usually will set timings and voltage correctly. I've never had an issue with multiple types of ram using 16GB modules in a z170 board.. all of them should support 64GB of ram.