601 replies to this topic

[Goose]

Kuritaclan, on 10 January 2015 - 06:09 PM, said:

@ Goose your rig is okayish; i would recommand:
a better cooler for maxing the oc on the amd cpu

Amazing how few AMD guys have read up on the '70s …

[Kuritaclan]

Catamount, on 10 January 2015 - 07:51 PM, said:

Given that Johnnyguru measured the PSUs you're recommending as being vastly more "noisy" than Seasonic's cheaper offerings (as in 50mv of 12v ripple for the Be Quiet! unit and 25 for the Seasonic unit, quite a stark difference), I would question that reasoning as justification Okay, they hit back in voltage regulation, but not by much, and frankly I'm more concerned about ripple anyways. Since you mention "noise" you are too it seems. By that standard, the Seasonic is a vastly superior PSU, and would be even if it was the same price, or more expensive. That it also happens to be cheaper as well isn't a bad reason to consider either.

But that's neither here nor there. Forgetting the fact that 50mv ripple isn't even stellar in the first place, and that many 80Plus Bronze units manage that, the simple fact is that if you're not OCing, you only need a PSU that's not going to physically break the components. Do you have evidence that something that merely meets or somewhat exceeds ATX12v standards will actually endanger a Maxwell card? If it's just "playing it safe", then why not set the bar way higher than you have? Why is one arbirary place the correct place to set it (even if those Be Quiet! units' mediocre performance doesn't set it enormously high)?

It might be nitpicky, but then, aren't you being nitpicky for criticizing the choice of 80+ Bronze units that are perfectly adequate and 1/3 the price of your suggestions? There's no evidence they'll fail to more than adequately power anything.

The be Quite power supplys are a suggestion - as i said the Seasonic is a good DC-DC power supply. What makes the power supply in usa that expensiv is for most the exchange - what makes the power supply it self that expensiv - warranty, components circuits and the fan (a silent wing 2 fan costs alone 15€ on the aftermarket and the silent wing 3 fans arn't on the market jet since they are only used in the powersupplys right now)

If you are concerned about the ripple you should look up the be quiet! Dark Power Pro 10. Well more expensiv in the united states. Anyhow the limits of the ripple arn't reached for the SP 10. It is a very good consumer psu with silent attitude.

Yes ATX12V standards are also matched by china crackers. But this doesn't say they blast after one or two years since the capacitors make the dingdong. Since Seasonic for example produce their psu themself they have good quality. There arn't that much psu manufactures who provide good quality. Some like HEC even have problems with solder quality. Or the pcb material where the componets soldered on get crispy after a certain time.

And yeah we like to discuss psu's and other hardware related stuff - by no mean i'm a expert in this topic - but we have a couple of people whom are employed by psu manufacturers. http://extreme.pcgam...netzteilen.html (Thread with 1255 pages and 12546 posts) I have more knowledge in motherboards.

Here is a german article of Maxwell power consumption and how powersaving is achived. http://www.tomshardw...-241646-11.html
look it up with google translation

There are flanks of 100 to 350W in a millisecond. The voltage have to stay on 12V or the current would break components. The vrm of the grapic card stabilize it but it has a feedback back into the power supply. Therfore you should go for a good modern psu if you by such a gpu.

Catamount, on 10 January 2015 - 07:51 PM, said:

Well if you think that, you might as well just recommend everyone buy a WD Green, since apparently names that designate design differences are just marketing. What? They're 5400RPM drives? Eh, it's just a marketing number. Amirite?

Of course the answer is no. There are significant differences, not just in peak throughput but in random reads, between drives in both sequential and random read/write performance. Samsung Spinpoint F1s actually beat out just about anything on the market for 7200RPM drives, but unlike Caviar Blacks, tend to be very expensive drives, instead of just moderately more expensive than the cheapest thing you can possibly get your hands on.

My storage drives tend to see heavy use for more than just dumping one's terrabyte torrented movie collection, so I tend to care if it can hold up well to secondary gaming storage use and the like. You may not, and that's fair, but...

You are right about that, but you have conditions in the use for your hdd's - yes the WD Series differs a bit in read/write/wattage consumption/noise but this is nothing a usual consumer is up to his needs, since for him it is only storage, and this should be as cheap in capacity to price. If you don't have special needs for it you can go for a cheap shot

Catamount, on 10 January 2015 - 07:51 PM, said:

and no drive is ever going to achieve that in real world use anyways, because no one sits around spending their days doing large sequential reads and writes. In real-world use, the 850EVO is often no less than 20% faster than the drive you suggested, sometimes substantially less, sometimes a little more, but generally for cases where it matters, random operations that are going to be less than synthetic benchmark ideal situations, that difference manifests pretty clearly in testing.

I could see cheaping out on bulk storage somewhat, but on your SSD? I'll spend the $20 more

In real-world the 850EVO isn't better since you will hardly notice the difference - the little better benchmark notes arn't a drawbacks for a gaming rig. For a normal user only read speed is usfull (what is notable in boot up time for the os or a savegame) and they are caped anyway by the Sata III port. So there is no real difference if your Windows need 16,5 seconds to boot with the Samsung SSD and 17sec with a Crucial. You also won't notice if a savegame is loaded 100ms faster.

Edited by Kuritaclan, 10 January 2015 - 10:45 PM.

[Catamount]

Well the measured difference would be more like Windows loading in 19.5-20.5 seconds. You underestimate the level of impatience that drives some of us to own them

I mean, so what if Windows takes 40 seconds? or 50? Could get a hybrid drive instead. But like I said, impatience. We're all willing to pay to satisfy it.



Anyways, Maxwell's behavior is in excess of what I was aware of. That leads to some concerning questions. Half their appeal is power efficiency, but that's probably also going to mean people will try to pair them with lesser PSUs, and I don't mean merely decent stuff, ATNG Bronze units or something that'll actually handle the load. 950s and 960s will probably get paired with stock prebuilt units if they sip lightly enough to avoid PSU purchases for upgrades. Now it sounds like they're actually potentially very stressful on PSUs. I wonder if that's going to cause reliability issues long term for an awful lot of people.

Edited by Catamount, 10 January 2015 - 09:35 PM.

[Kuritaclan]

Catamount, on 10 January 2015 - 09:34 PM, said:

Well the measured difference would be more like Windows loading in 19.5-20.5 seconds. You underestimate the level of impatience that drives some of us to own them

I mean, so what if Windows takes 40 seconds? or 50? Could get a hybrid drive instead. But like I said, impatience. We're all willing to pay to satisfy it.

xD - well some users don't even have a ssd. Clearly half the time for booting/loading savegames/open browser/initiating programs is favorable. So this is the real bonus to use a ssd over a hdd. A slow system look like it is a new pc with a ssd. Compare ssd with each other there are differences and some chase for the best. But i rather get a ouple more FPS on the gaming rig that could push me after a couple years in a new game over 24 FPS, and need therefore to upgrade later, than bother with 1 second loadtime.

Catamount, on 10 January 2015 - 09:34 PM, said:

Anyways, Maxwell's behavior is in excess of what I was aware of. That leads to some concerning questions. Half their appeal is power efficiency, but that's probably also going to mean people will try to pair them with lesser PSUs, and I don't mean merely decent stuff, ATNG Bronze units or something that'll actually handle the load. 950s and 960s will probably get paired with stock prebuilt units if they sip lightly enough to avoid PSU purchases for upgrades. Now it sounds like they're actually potentially very stressful on PSUs. I wonder if that's going to cause reliability issues long term for an awful lot of people.

Those concerns could hit a point in the future. It needs further investigations. (And a old rule stays true: build your own rig and you know what you are up to, instead of buy twice a discount pc in the supermarket) Most of the stress of high frequency power consumption changes on load are cushioned by the gpu vrm itself. On the other side every component has influence on all in a circuit. (worst case example is fps reflected powerstage frequence changes of graphic card spilled into the soundcard and you hear it on your headpones) So yeah psu is the provider and when it gets a bad feedback what is not regulated because of bad design/components it could make trouble on other parts of the pc. Modern power supply units have lots of protection circuit and they will step in if major problems happen. - the best advice i can think of is get a psu up to date to the gpu/cpu and you barely will face problems.

Edited by Kuritaclan, 10 January 2015 - 10:49 PM.

[Catamount]

I try to give that advice with PSUs always. We get a lot of people with Walmart PCs in here who want GPU upgrades, and that's fair, but very often the advice given to them or the decision they make is to limit purchases to very frugal GPUs that don't take much power to avoid PSU purchases, and I say, over and over "don't chance it with some crap no-name prebuilt PSU". We all know system builders skimp on PSUs badly to save money. The units are just good enough so that inevitable failures will most likely happen outside of the warranty window. Even then, I've had and seen PSUs blow in prebuilt machines after only a year or two with stock hardware. Our old HP Pavilion from 2002 blew out a year after we put a Geforce FX5200 in, a GPU so light on power it didn't have a cooling fan, just a tiny passive heatsink. Nvidia doesn't publish its TDP it seems, but it's not in excess of 20W - and that was enough to blow the PSU, or at least it likely hastened its demise.

Nevertheless, people try to avoid that PSU purchase all the time, and advice to do so comes across here, no matter how many times you tell people not to. Now it sounds like Maxwell might make that an even poorer decision than usual. I like Maxwell a lot, so it's a mild criticism of Nvidia at most. The far bigger criticism is of anyone who says "[I'll] buy a GPU that's light on power so I can skip the PSU upgrade". It was bad advice before; now it sounds like going forward it'll be calamitous advice.

Edited by Catamount, 11 January 2015 - 08:32 AM.

[Goose]

Intel Friday

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-4590 3.3GHz Quad-Core Processor ($186.88 @ OutletPC)
CPU Cooler: Thermalright TRUE Spirit 120M(BW) Rev.A 46.2 CFM CPU Cooler ($32.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: MSI Z97 PC MATE ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($79.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-2133 Memory ($76.98 @ OutletPC)
Storage: Toshiba Product Series:DT01ACA 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($72.99 @ NCIX US)
Video Card: HIS Radeon HD 7950 3GB Video Card ($145.66 @ Newegg)
Case: Cooler Master HAF 912 ATX Mid Tower Case ($44.99 @ Micro Center)
Power Supply: Corsair Builder 500W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($29.99 @ Newegg)
Optical Drive: Samsung SH-224DB/BEBE DVD/CD Writer ($14.98 @ OutletPC)
Total: $685.45
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-01-16 18:25 EST-0500

Base Total: $744.78
Mail-in Rebates: -$65.00
Shipping: $5.67
Total: $685.45

NewEgg is sick of them 7950s, and now your temps are FUBAR, as that card just dumps heat any old place. You might be better off moving the intake card to the door …

This build only needed 30.5A on the 12V rail.

The Antec Three Hundred Two is $40, but it needs intake fans desperately, so pass; There are a mess of R9 285s out with only 2GB of RAM: It could be just the thing for us, but somethings just off about the whole affair …

[Lord Letto]

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD FX-4300 3.8GHz Quad-Core Processor ($89.98 @ OutletPC)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus 76.8 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler ($19.99 @ Newegg)
Thermal Compound: Arctic Silver 5 High-Density Polysynthetic Silver 3.5g Thermal Paste ($5.49 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3 ATX AM3+ Motherboard ($121.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($76.98 @ Newegg)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($53.97 @ OutletPC)
Video Card: Sapphire Radeon R9 290 4GB Tri-X Video Card ($264.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Corsair 500R Black ATX Mid Tower Case ($89.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA 1000G2 1000W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($109.99 @ Newegg)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 (OEM) (64-bit) ($88.98 @ OutletPC)
Case Fan: Corsair CO-9050014-WW 62.7 CFM 120mm Fan ($31.98 @ OutletPC)
Total: $934.32
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-01-16 19:19 EST-0500

Tweaks, Software & OC is Mandatory for Good Performance with the FX Processor

Edited by Lord Letto, 16 January 2015 - 04:22 PM.

[Goose]

Really? An FX-4300 and a R9 290?

[Lord Letto]

with the recent OC and Tweaks to my FX-4100, i'm satisfied, and R9 290 should get rid of any possible GPU Bottleneck with MSAA on.

[Oderint dum Metuant]

For $934 that is a no no.

At least in my opinion.

[Kuritaclan]

DV McKenna, on 17 January 2015 - 02:21 AM, said:

For $934 that is a no no.

At least in my opinion.

For me too

- There is no need for a 990FX Board (only usefull for SLI/CF Setups but since they don't have PCIe 3.0 with exception not the best idea in 2015) for such a "mediocre" in best case CPU (the Board costs more than the CPU - it is the best indicator that something goes wrong with the compilation)
-The FX-4100 itself is "4core" or better to say 2 bully modules - the performance isn't worth the $90 compared to a Pentium G3258 Anniversary CPU for 60 bugs.
- The psu is with 1000W nominal power out of every consumption from the system and oversized (in worst case the system will consume half of the named power with full load on cpu and gpu @ the same time - more likely it will have 350 to 450W)
- AMD CPUs like higher frequency RAM at least 1866MHz better the 2133MHz as supported the supposed 1600Mhz are bad compared to the wish getting the best out of the cpu but do not pair it with the memory.


All adds up to the conclusion that this is expressed polite in best case terribly unbalanced. If this is a setup, for upgrading later it doesn't do fine anyway. Amd CPUs have bigger price decline so upgrading the FX-4100 to a 83XX isn't that great of a deal compared to an upgrade from G3258 to a Xeon1231. SInce you can use all the Way a $60 Board on the Intel Side compared to the investion for the suggested $120 board it is more cost with the AMD System then doing it with Intel on the first buy and even later it will be only rughly the same.

Edited by Kuritaclan, 17 January 2015 - 05:51 AM.

[Lord Letto]

FX-4100 (OCed to 4.8GHz), Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus (With CM Fan), VisionTek Radeon HD 6970 2GB (Maximum OC in Afterburner), 4GB G Skill DDR3 1333MHz Ram , BitFenix Outlaw Case with 1 BitFenix 120mm & 140mm Fan, OCZ GamexStream 700W PSU.

I Like that setup of mine, MWO is playable (to me anyway) with everything on Very High except for Particles & Shadows on High, Damage Glow, Motion Blur & Vsync Off, 1080P Fullscreen DX11. if I turn on MSAA the GPU Maxes Out so if I want MSAA without Maxing out the GPU I need something better, the R9 290 Might be able to do that, and the FX-4300 is Newer, +0.2GHz faster Stock and didn't have the problems as bad as the 1st gen FX Chips, if it can be made stable @ around 4.8-5.0 GHz I think whoever gets it would be set. also using Programs such as Core Temp, MSI Afterburner, Park Control & PriFinitty 2 would help also along with benching programs such as Unigine Heaven 4, Catzilla & Cinebench R15 for stress testing and to see how it would compare with other setups.

[Goose]

AMD Saturday

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD FX-8370E 3.3GHz 8-Core Processor ($184.29 @ Amazon)
CPU Cooler: Thermalright MACHO 120 REV.A 46.2 CFM CPU Cooler ($39.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3P ATX AM3+ Motherboard ($74.99 @ Micro Center)
Memory: G.Skill Trident X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-2400 Memory ($110.98 @ Newegg)
Storage: Toshiba Product Series:DT01ACA 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($65.99 @ NCIX US)
Video Card: HIS Radeon HD 7870 2GB Video Card ($120.66 @ Newegg)
Case: Cooler Master HAF 912 ATX Mid Tower Case ($44.99 @ Micro Center)
Power Supply: Enermax REVOLUTION X't 530W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($38.99 @ NCIX US)
Optical Drive: Asus DRW-24F1ST DVD/CD Writer ($14.98 @ OutletPC)
Case Fan: Cooler Master R4-MFJR-07FK-R1 110.0 CFM 200mm Fan ($10.99 @ NCIX US)
Case Fan: Cooler Master R4-MFJR-07FK-R1 110.0 CFM 200mm Fan ($10.99 @ NCIX US)
Total: $717.84
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-01-17 14:36 EST-0500

Base Total: $786.18
Mail-in Rebates: -$75.00
Shipping: $6.66
Total: $717.84

Teh RAM I like for FXs is back in stock; 7870s are going out'a style, and priced to prove it; I spent $2 to not have lights on the big fans, and there is jack-all happening in case prices at teh moment.

I finally looked at an Enermax PSU, and [H]ardOCP never seems to fail them, so I'm running a gambit on this unreviewed Gold+ model; You're using 41.5A out of 43 on the 12V rail …

[Max Johnson]

GTX 960 build

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/tqYz99

CPU: Intel Core i5-4670K 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor ($237.98 @ OutletPC)
CPU Cooler: be quiet! Dark Rock 3 113.8 CFM Fluid Dynamic Bearing CPU Cooler ($49.99 @ NCIX US)
Motherboard: MSI Z87M GAMING Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($69.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill AEGIS 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($65.98 @ OutletPC)
Storage: Seagate 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Hybrid Internal Hard Drive($79.00 @ Amazon)
Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 960 2GB Video Card ($219.99 @ NCIX US)
Case: Cooler Master N200 MicroATX Mid Tower Case($39.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: Cooler Master Elite V2 550W ATX Power Supply ($29.99 @ Newegg)

Base Total: $861.92
Mail-in Rebates: -$70.00
Shipping: $.99

Total: $782.91




Try to do a cheap color matched build with parts I would use myself and a GTX 960.

[Lord Letto]

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-4690K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor ($219.95 @ SuperBiiz)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus 76.8 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler ($25.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Thermal Compound: Arctic Silver 5 High-Density Polysynthetic Silver 3.5g Thermal Paste ($7.40 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z97X-GAMING 7 ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($162.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1866 Memory ($64.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($51.88 @ OutletPC)
Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 960 2GB Video Card ($219.99 @ NCIX US)
Case: Rosewill REDBONE U3 ATX Mid Tower Case ($49.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: Rosewill HIVE 650W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($78.98 @ Newegg)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 (OEM) (64-bit) ($88.98 @ OutletPC)
Case Fan: Corsair CO-9050014-WW 62.7 CFM 120mm Fan ($29.31 @ Mwave)
Total: $983.20
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-01-22 22:36 EST-0500

[FatYak]

I am constantly amazed, and jealous of the price listings in some of these buillds.


Stupid AUD conversion and international shipping rates

Edited by Verapamil, 22 January 2015 - 09:22 PM.

[Kuritaclan]

I'm more amazed of the imbalance of the most builds. Who needs for a i5k a $160 board, what is worse than cheaper boards price/equipment wise. Just to think of one is thinking a $30 psu will handle a 10 times expensive graphicscard. And so on. Most times it just look like lets throw some **** together and hope it stays under $1000.

[FatYak]

Kuritaclan, on 23 January 2015 - 07:36 AM, said:

I'm more amazed of the imbalance of the most builds. Who needs for a i5k a $160 board, what is worse than cheaper boards price/equipment wise. Just to think of one is thinking a $30 psu will handle a 10 times expensive graphicscard. And so on. Most times it just look like lets throw some **** together and hope it stays under $1000.

Well, tell us then oh great one how to get a balanced build for 600 bucks then......

I agree with the PSU comment though

[Kuritaclan]

I don't think you will get a well rounded gaming rig for $600 (- it is a also question what you wanna do high/ultra settings on FullHD or higher Resolution with 60+ FPS?). I don't think it is worth to build rigs with a gtx 960, since its a pretty slow card for its price compared to older cards on the market. If you have such a low budget you may need to get second hand ware - get a 770 or a 280X or a 290.

[FatYak]

Kuritaclan, on 24 January 2015 - 12:29 AM, said:

I don't think you will get a well rounded gaming rig for $600 (- it is a also question what you wanna do high/ultra settings on FullHD or higher Resolution with 60+ FPS?). I don't think it is worth to build rigs with a gtx 960, since its a pretty slow card for its price compared to older cards on the market. If you have such a low budget you may need to get second hand ware - get a 770 or a 280X or a 290.

Ill take your point that you probably wont get a well rounded rig, but there will be people who only "have" "X" number of dollars to work with and do the best they can with what they have. Unfortunately that means compromising on their hardware for some people, and if that means 30-40 FPS and a still have a good experience then that may be the compromise.

Edited by Verapamil, 24 January 2015 - 01:15 AM.