50 replies to this topic

[Camron Lyraus]

Hey mates,

EDIT (If you dont wanna read the hole story):

However, I still plan to use my available funds (lets say 200$, we all know its gonna be more ;-p) to upgrade somewhat.

In regards to hardware I have around:

- AMD Phenom™ II X4 965 Processor (4 CPUs), ~3.4GHz
- AMD Radeon HD 7850
- Sapphire Radeon HD 4870x2 2GB GDDR5 <-- Water Cooled
- Water-Cooling pump and reservoir 'n stuff
- and all the small stuff like PSU's, Cases, HD's...

The machine has to run: MWO! (and some twitch streaming)
This is the one and only priority.

As i have water cooling available i'll get a CPU-block and OC the sh*t outta the CPU I'm gonna get.

I like what the "MSI Z97 Mate" sounds like for the price! ( I can get it for ~100$ round here) Any comments on that?

In regards to CPU, I only know the AMD stuff, really.
i3's sound good, but do not allow any real OC.
What do you guys thing about a G3258? As far as I've read, you can push it up to 4.5Ghz? Awesome pricing as well!
It only supports 1333-RAM though. I was thinking to get some 2x4GB of 1600-RAM and maybe manage to tighten its timing a bit?
My thinking is to get two sticks of good RAM, to get two more in the future and get an o.k. CPU that can be upgraded to something i7-like in a year or so...

I was pondering to upgrade my System and as it now just failed, I'll have to replace some components anyways.

I used to run:
MOBO: MSI K9A2 Platinum
CPU: AMD Phenom™ II X4 965 Processor (4 CPUs), ~3.4GHz
GPU: AMD Radeon HD 7800 Series
RAM: 4*2GB DDR2 RAM
HD: HDD, 7200rpm
POWER-SUPLY: 750W

Now, my computer just failed (powers up but does not boot to BIOS) and I am fairly certain its the Motherboard. I have a bit more than 200$ on my hands (student) and I am not certain how to get the best bang for my buck. I used to run 20-30 fps on lowest settings with the above hardware and I am happy with that as long as I can play again - and if i just get some 5 fps more out of it - all the better ;-)
However, I would love to be able to upgrade to better CPU/RAM/whatever when I get some more cash...

I was thinking along the lines of:
MOBO: Gigabyte GA-970A-DS3P rev.1 (˜90$)
HD: SSD Intenso SSD SATA III Top - 128GB /or/ Kingston HyperX Fury SSD - 120GB (˜60$)
and keeping my RAM/CPU/GPU. This would leave me with cash for a new CPU or RAM if it turns out to be fried.

What do you Hardware-People out there think? Does this make at least "some" sense to you?
I know my IT, but im more of a software kinda guy

Edited by Camron Lyraus, 06 December 2015 - 03:25 AM.

[metallio]

In the last five years I've had more bad power supplies destroy motherboards/other components than anything. Ten years or more ago even a $30 power supply was fine and I had zero problems with them, but now even my $200 power supplies crap out and fry boards, GPUs, hard drives, etc.

Pull your power supply and get it checked before you do anything, or just replace it.

[Goose]

How much free testing can you do, to figure out what needs replacing?

'Cause, at your budget, you will be keeping much more then you where hoping for.

An SSD isn't going to help your gaming, per se, but is pretty nice of just loading apps, or merely booting up: You need to think though your priorities …

I have no idea if there are mobos in production that will accept your CPU, but accepting your current RAM might be the bigger issue.

[Tarl Cabot]

http://pcsupport.abo...rsupplytest.htm


Of all of my computers, I have only had one video card and one motherboard go "bad" but that was due some capacitors/replaced. Every other time it has always been the PSU. The PSU is the least expensive component to replace. It is possible that if the PSU died, it could have taken other components with it, as others have noted but that is one thing that as yet to happen to me /knocks on wood!!!

[Dragoon20005]

something tell me that the 750 watt PSU is not a true 750 watts PSU

some gave it 750 watts which is the combined wattage from the 12 volts, 5 volts and 3.3 volts

you may try to see if you can get a new PSU

see if the PC able to boot up again.

[Camron Lyraus]

Thanks for the valuable inputs folks!

I feel kinda like when I thought my water-cooling-pump had fail but it turned out to be my CPU-Cooler that was clogged, preventing water flow...

I will try if any of my old/other PSU's are compatible or else try the test kindly supplied by Tarl Cabot, thanks!

[Golrar]

Camron Lyraus, on 02 December 2015 - 03:33 AM, said:

when I thought my water-cooling-pump had fail but it turned out to be my CPU-Cooler that was clogged

You have a water block on an Phenom II? Never seen that before.

Edited by Golrar, 03 December 2015 - 06:28 PM.

[MavRCK]

get rid of your amd cpu and get an intel i5 asap... with your gpu you'll have solid framerates..

ssd is a quality of life.. but a standard hard drive isn't going to give you framerates

[Kaptain]

MavRCK, on 03 December 2015 - 09:41 PM, said:

get rid of your amd cpu and get an intel i5 asap... with your gpu you'll have solid framerates..

ssd is a quality of life.. but a standard hard drive isn't going to give you framerates

^ This ^

If you can find a used/sale priced I3 or I5 on 1150socket and a decent/cheap board and some DDR3 your MWO experience will be much much improved and you will have the ability to run a faster I5 or even an I7 in the future. With AMD there is not much of an upgrade path... All of the instructions per clock are kinda... terrible... compared to the last several generations of inlet.

If testing determines the CPU and/or ram is still good you could sell it off on ebay to help fund the upgrade.

Just my suggestion after trying out a $125 amd vs $125 intel on friends build. Returned the AMD cpu/board in favor of the intel. Almost exactly the same cost on each build. $240shipped bought an I3@3.7ghz a MSI Z97 Mate from MSI and 8gb of ddr3. The difference in fps, especially minimum fps, was far far better on the Intel.

Hope my experience helps you

[MavRCK]

As per kaptain, buy a used i5 K series and overclock the crap out of it.. quad core and high ghz = mwo happiness.

[Camron Lyraus]

@Golrar: Well, since it clogged I do so no more - used to run it of my "Zalman ZMachine" Case...

--> not my machine, but close enough...

@All:

Some carefull testing showed it was indeed "just" the mainboard that had failed. Everything else seems to be in order.

To keep you all entertained, I decvided to show you what I puzzled together to be able to participate in the MRBC-Match versus PGI (we ended up calling it my Zombie-Machine):




I had an office-machine standing around with a Q6600-CPU (Quad-2.40 GHz) on a P35T-FB uBTX mainboard with an old GeForce GT 315 (256mb). I stuck 6gb of my other machines RAM in and to my surprise: It actually DID run MWO...at 15 fps on all low and 1024*768.

Subsequently, I tried to fit my HD 7800, but the fan on top proofed to be just too much for that uBTX-format...no space at all... thats when I remembered I still had a HD 4870x2 around - normally a card that's even bigger than the previous - BUT: It had a water-cooling block still attached making it pretty slim - and the pump to go with it...removed the back cover so I can make this dual-slot card fit into a single one.
Now I still needed power... one each 8 AND 6 pin connector...none of those on my office-machines PSU, However, my ZMachines PSUs cables just barely stretched up there...done! Now all i had to do is get a 2L-bottle of distilled water...
and...tada: Frankensteins-Monster was alive!

Currently runs MWO on 1600x1200, all low with sweet 25-35 fps.
CPU runs cool on stock - no OC yet.
GPU doesn't exceed 60°C - no water circulation. If I wanna keep it cooler, I might just swap the water to force back down to 15°C fresh water ;-)

Nothing for the long run - but does give me enough time to wait for some sweet deals!

[Camron Lyraus]

I hope you all had a good lough at the above.

However, I still plan to use my available funds (lets say 200$, we all know its gonna be more ;-p) to upgrade somewhat.

In regards to hardware I have around:

- AMD Phenom™ II X4 965 Processor (4 CPUs), ~3.4GHz
- AMD Radeon HD 7850
- Sapphire Radeon HD 4870x2 2GB GDDR5 <-- Water Cooled
- Water-Cooling pump and reservoir 'n stuff
- and all the small stuff like PSU's, Cases, HD's...

The machine has to run: MWO! (and some twitch streaming)
This is the one and only priority.

As i have water cooling available i'll get a CPU-block and OC the sh*t outta the CPU I'm gonna get.

I like what the "MSI Z97 Mate" sounds like for the price! ( I can get it for ~100$ round here) Any comments on that?

In regards to CPU, I only know the AMD stuff, really.
i3's sound good, but do not allow any real OC.
What do you guys thing about a G3258? As far as I've read, you can push it up to 4.5Ghz? Awesome pricing as well!
It only supports 1333-RAM though. I was thinking to get some 2x4GB of 1600-RAM and maybe manage to tighten its timing a bit?
My thinking is to get two sticks of good RAM, to get two more in the future and get an o.k. CPU that can be upgraded to something i7-like in a year or so...

[xWiredx]

Well, that unlocked pentium is a pretty decent chip once you OC the hell out of it from what we've seen. It can manage medium settings at 4.5GhZ I believe.

With an actual water loop, I think you might be able to get a bit more out of it.

Don't worry about what's listed as 'supported' RAM speeds. As I'm sure you are aware, you can use faster RAM and at worst it will just automatically fall back to 1333. If you use newer good stuff, though, going down in speed means you can probably tighten the timings by a decent amount. I'd imagine a 2133 kit could probably run at 1333 with some nice CL7-type timings without a sweat.

Looking specifically at that pentium vs the i3 chips - it does look like they trade blows. The i3 seems like it can be up to 45% faster in some scenarios and the pentium seems like it can be up to 30% faster in other scenarios based off the Anand review of the pentium. I think if you're going with a Haswell system, I'd recommend the pentium just because what enthusiasts really want is to overclock the hell out of a chip to get that bang for the buck. The gaming performance is really the second part of your satisfaction there. If you're willing to entertain a Skylake system instead, I'd say go with the i3. The difference in IPC is just enough that I'm sure the performance is enough in the i3 chip's favor that then comparing the OCed Haswell Pentium wouldn't look as attractive.

[Camron Lyraus]

Any way to get a sensible setup in the range of my finances for Skylake? Maybe for 200 without RAM?

[Goose]

Your DDR2 is never going to carry forward into anything you buy.

[Camron Lyraus]

nah, thats not what I meant - just excluding the RAM from the 200$
Actually, I might even go for something in the range of Adata XPG V2 DDR3-2400 8GB Kit (2x4GB) Titanium (Timings: 11-13-13-35) or Kingston HyperX Fury DDR4 8GB Kit (2x 4GB) 2400MHz (Timings: 15-15-15)...
both are affordable at ~80$ round here.

My DDR2 shall go to retirement on the P35T, combined with the Q6600 and a pair of G450-32's as a workstation =)
Or with the HD 7850 to allow some back-up gaming...
The Phenom II X4 shall joins its Phenom II X2-brother in Storage, in case I ever get my hands on a corresponding board...

Edited by Camron Lyraus, 05 December 2015 - 06:23 PM.

[darqsyde]

The big thing holding you back is the CPU.

The 7850, when paired with a decent CPU should get you around 50-60fps(dipping occasionally to low 40's).

I would go for the fastest 4 thread Intel CPU(i3-i5) you can afford.

But, in all cases you will almost certainly need to get new RAM in addition to whatever Motherboard you buy.

I would suggest, if affordable, a Z170 Mobo and a Skylake i3 for now. You could always drop in an i5/7 later when funds allow.

[Goose]

darqsyde, on 05 December 2015 - 10:48 PM, said:

The 7850, when paired with a decent CPU should get you around 50-60fps(dipping occasionally to low 40's).

Log Files or It Didn't Happen®

I have a 2GB, 1GHz 7850 on Teh Secret AMD Box, and it badly bottlenecks the OC'd CPU: A framerate limit of 42 seemed the best solution …

[darqsyde]

Goose, on 06 December 2015 - 09:46 AM, said:

Log Files or It Didn't Happen®

I have a 2GB, 1GHz 7850 on Teh Secret AMD Box, and it badly bottlenecks the OC'd CPU: A framerate limit of 42 seemed the best solution …

Log Files...bah. Okay...maybe one of these days I'll do it, even if only for my own amusement.
Admittedly that is without AA, but otherwise maxed out. And either the Crimson Edition drivers, or the latest MWO build seems to have improved things even more.

Still, that 7850 will run much better than 25fps, so my point stands.

[Goose]

darqsyde, on 06 December 2015 - 10:01 AM, said:

Admittedly that is without AA …

While MSAA is double-taxing on CryEngine, Post and "FXAA" are only about as hard as 16xAF …