Building a computer? Need advice/suggestions? Come here!

[Warsaw]

You seem to have an awful lot of graphics card failures. I've had one, and it was a dead 6600 GT. Oh wow, also an Nvidia chip. Eh? Eh?

Just giving you a hard time.

[JackalStomper]

Never had any card die on me, regardless of brand.

Must be a canadian thing.

E: Though a radeon x1600 that I had gotten did fry the AGP slot on my mobo, does that count?

[Bodzilla]

no but seriously,
you have THAT much trouble with nvidia cards and yet you still refuse to look at an AMD option?


what the fuck is wrong with you lancer.

[Cortexian]

Well, lets take a look at my options in sequence here for a second:

1. A GTX 285 dies:
a) Send it back to EVGA for a FREE replacement. Continue using the computer with the remaining card.
b) Buy two new cards of a different make/model since I was running SLI.

2. The replacement GTX 285 dies:
a) Send it back to EVGA for a FREE upgrade to a GTX 470 since their stock of 285's is now depleted. Continue using the computer with the other GTX 285.
b) Buy two new cards of a different make/model since I was running SLI.

3. The upgraded replacement GTX 470 arrives. It can't run my system in SLI.
a) Send the other GTX 285 back for another GTX 470 while using the replacement 470 I got. End up with two GTX 470's.
b) Buy two new cards of a different make/model since I was running SLI.

My choices in bold, probably the better deal since I was never without a computer and I got a completely FREE upgrade to GTX 470's. The replacement cards EVGA sends you are refurbs or something, but they carry the same lifetime warranty as the card you originally purchased. If these 470's die in the future I'll probably get 560ti's for free, however I probably won't be using these long enough for them to fail.

I just happened to get a lemon replacement. I don't refuse to look at AMD as an alternative, I refuse to buy cards with worse performance. At the time I was considering a GTX 590 or HD 6990. I was leaning towards the 6990 since it was more powerful (though louder) and I wanted to try Eyefinity on it. So if I had bought a card it would likely have been an AMD HD 6990.

[Cortexian]

So here's a question that I've been pondering for awhile.

Right now I have two intake fans on the front of my case, the rest are all exhausts. I've been thinking of reversing the rear fan so that the top two radiator/cpu fans have access to more "fresh" air. I'm not sure if this will work very well though because the exhaust from all of my expansion cards kinda pools behind the PC, and as we all know hot air likes to rise.

Visual representation of what I'd like to change:
http://img834.imageshack.us/img834/9052/airflow.gif

[Warsaw]

I should think a better idea would be flipping the radiator fans over so they draw from the outside directly while leaving the rear fan as an exhaust. Switching directions of the rear fan is going to cause turbulence not only because of moving air but because of temperature difference. Turbulence reduces the efficiency of fans and ducting.

The most you will accomplish by flipping the rear fan is blowing more air over those fancy heatsings surrounding the CPU slot (like they need it) and/or cooling off your memory. While neither is bad, they aren't really parts that you need to worry about cooling as much as the CPU and GPU, as they don't tend to get as hot in my experience.

[Cortexian]

Yeah, I'm just a fan of sticking with the "hot air rises" airflow theme. Meaning I would dislike turning my top fans around.

I'll try it at some point though and see if it makes the temps any better.

[Zeph]

Somebody is trying to one-up my rig. :realsmug:

Is it me?


You seem to have an awful lot of graphics card failures. I've had one, and it was a dead 6600 GT. Oh wow, also an Nvidia chip. Eh? Eh?

Just giving you a hard time.
Doesn't help that he overclocks.


Yeah, I'm just a fan of sticking with the "hot air rises" airflow theme. Meaning I would dislike turning my top fans around.

I'll try it at some point though and see if it makes the temps any better.

That's more of an air pressure rule. In the space of a computer's case, it'll be negligible considering you have fans creating lateral movement. If that one fan on the back starts pulling air in the case, you'll wind up with the equivalent of blowback in VTOL aircraft. It'll slowly start sucking in warmed exhaust and cooling will slowly become less efficient. Keep your cooling linear.

[Warsaw]

No, it's not you.

[Cortexian]

Nah Warsaws new PC beats your new one Zeph.

Warsaw was talking about that newegg wishlist I posted a link to.

[Warsaw]

You really should pull back on the GPU overclock though. I mean, if that extra performance is worth that much then I'd spend up.

[Cortexian]

Stock operating temps on this card are acceptable at 90 degrees, so I don't see a problem.

The EVGA Lifetime warranty covers damages done by overclocking as long as the original cooler is installed, so if something DOES go wrong there's not an issue.

[Warsaw]

Stock operating temps are 90, and that's really high. It doesn't matter what they say it should run at, running hot reduces operational lifetime. Even still, they may be saying that temperature is acceptable because they figure anybody with a high-end card will replace it before it dies anyways.

[Cortexian]

Yeah well I'm only topping out at 80 degrees since I'm runnign a custom cooling scheme. It's louder than stock settings but it cools better.

[JackalStomper]

good news: evga is releasing a liquid cooled GTX 680

bad news: its still dual slot

http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?t=163342

[Cortexian]

Terrible water-block, get an EK or something better instead and enjoy the better performance and build quality.

Hopefully the GTX 680 Classified Hydro Copper from EVGA is non-reference with extra memory, 8pin + 8pin power instead of the dumb stacked one, and a better layout of the ports. Then we might actually be able to single-stack cool them.

[JackalStomper]

single slot water cooled 680 supposedly on the way? http://wccftech.com/galaxy/

[Cortexian]

Looks like it might be time to upgrade the old CM690:
http://www.corsair.com/vengeance-c70-mid-tower-gaming-case-arctic-white.html

[Amit]

The Carbide 500R looks similar to the 690: http://www.corsair.com/pc-cases/carbide-series-pc-case/carbide-series-500r-white-mid-tower-case.html

[Higuy]

Hey guys. Currently looking into upgrading my computer at the moment becuase I'm going to be starting to work in Cry Engine 3 full time, and I want some pretty powerful stuff to use. I currently run a ASUS mobo (no idea what kind at all, I want to upgrade this), ATI HD Radeon 5850 (I run a dual 22" monitor setup btw), AMD 2.4ghz dual core processor (I'd like to upgrade this as well), 8gb of RAM, and a 750watt psu by Corsair... I also have 500gb harddrive and an external one of 500gb, if that counts. Basically, what should I upgrade, and or add, to help me run smoothly when developing? I'd like to not spend a ton of money, but who knows. I'm pretty out-of-date as to whats going on in this crazy tech world, so if someone could help me out, I'd really appreciate it.

[Amit]

AMD Phenom II X4 965 on Newegg for $109.99 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103727&nm_mc=EMC-IGNEFL042512CA&cm_mmc=EMC-IGNEFL042512CA-_-EMC-042512-Index-_-ProcessorsDesktops-_-19103727-L02A)GO GO Before they sell out! That's all you really need and upgrade the GPU, but if you want a beast CPU you should look towards the X6 line instead of the X4 or go for the X4 960T which you can unlock into a 6-core CPU and overclock it.

[Higuy]

Im assuming this is the x6 line you are talking about?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819106012

For 30 more dollars I will probably get it, still pretty inexpensive compared to the intel processors.

Also, any thoughts on this mobo? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131767

It looks like it will work with the AMD CPU I linked above and the one you did as well.

[Amit]

It's a good motherboard. I was going to get it to run with my X4 955 Black Edition, but they were sold out at the local shop so I went with the Gigabyte GA-970A-D3 instead. If you plan to overclock go with a Black Edition Phenom II CPU, but if not, just stick with the regular editions. They are usually fast enough. The 970 series chipsets are not good for SLI or CrossFire, though. If you want that, go for at least a 980 series board to get 8x + 8x lane speeds. Or if you want mega performance in dual GPU configuration, go for a more expensive 990 chipset board.

Also, AMD released some pretty beast drivers yesterday: http://www.techspot.com/news/48346-catalyst-124-brings-anti-aliasing-improvements-xp-support-for-hd-7000.html

[JackalStomper]

NVIDIA recently launched its new tank dual gpu card: http://www.techpowerup.com/165064/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-690-Launched.html

[king_nothing_]

I just ordered a 3770k BWAHAHAAHAAHA

(and a whole new rig)

[JackalStomper]

enjoy your sandy bridge performance with an improved price IGPU

[king_nothing_]

Better clock-for-clock performance, less power consumption, and a much better GPU (which I'll actually use for my TV; not sure if it'll be noticeable for what I'll be using it for though).

No, it's not a big performance increase from Sandy, but there is an increase. Anyone expecting huge performance gains was being unrealistic to say the least; it's a die shrink. It's a tick, not a tock.

And anyway, I'm coming from an e6750. I didn't wait this long to get something a year+ old to save a few bucks and then possibly later regret not going for Ivy.

[Xetsuei]

I forgot about this. Someone should make new builds, I am not familiar with anything right now.

[king_nothing_]

So I bought this off eBay:

http://www.asus.com/Graphics_Cards/NVIDIA_Series/ENGTX570_DCII2DIS1280MD5

and they sent me this:

http://www.asus.com/Graphics_Cards/AMD_Series/HD7950DC2T3GD5

lol?

[Cortexian]

Hey man, they look the same. Must be the same right?

[king_nothing_]

Hey man, they look the same. Must be the same right?
Fine with me. :haw:

[Amit]

There's one less DVI port on the 7950. I assume you'll be keeping it and make the same "mistake" the shipper made by thinking it was still the GTX570? You could get away with it. And triple slot? Jesus fuck.

[king_nothing_]

There's one less DVI port on the 7950. I assume you'll be keeping it and make the same "mistake" the shipper made by thinking it was still the GTX570? You could get away with it. And triple slot? Jesus fuck.
Yeah, I had to use the DVI to mini-DisplayPort adapter that came with it to hook up my second monitor. As for it being absolutely huge, well, I have no intentions of ever running two cards, and I have more than enough space for it, so it doesn't concern me.

[Amit]

As for it being absolutely huge, well, I have no intentions of ever running two cards, and I have more than enough space for it, so it doesn't concern me.

Pretty much the same here. Wouldn't bother me too much other than the looming thought at the back of my mind that it might be so heavy as to snap the screws that hold it in place.

[=sw=warlord]

Screws would only snap if you're using shitty quality screws.

[Amit]

I suppose. Sometimes it makes me wonder, though, especially for the GPUs that have motherfucking retention brackets included with them lol.

[Zeph]

Screws would only snap if you're using shitty quality screws.

and even then, they'd only snap when you're tightening it from torque.

Or your computer falling at terminal velocity.

[Bobblehob]

Soooo, I have a bit of a dilemma here and I need some help. I am in the process of purchasing my new gaming computer, but I have run into a problem when it comes to the CPU, I was intending on getting myself a regular i7-3770 Ivy Bridge CPU to go with my ASRock Z68 motherboard, but after doing some research I found conflicting information when It comes to compatibility between the two. I read a bunch of reviews on NewEgg and found that for a bunch of people the IB processors needed a Bios Update on the Z68 motherboards to be compatible, but the Processor actually has to post first before you can update said Bios, but the IB processors won't post in the first place without the update, a bit of a catch 22 it seems. My alternative is a 10 dollar cheaper i7-2600k. Im just curious if anyone else here has any knowledge on the subject and might could give me some advice on how to proceed at this point...

[JackalStomper]

Check Asrocks site to see if the boards ship with the updated BIOS, those reviews might be old. Some said the same for my 990x board in regards to bulldozer, but that wasn't an issue with mine as it shipped with the latest BIOS.

Ivy bridge itself is at most a 10% performance boost compared to its sandy counterparts, with its main appeal to gamers being PCI-E 3.0 support.... with ivy chipsets. You won't get this with a Z68 board, so unless you're anal about TDP and iGPU performance it shouldn't effect you that much.

But then again why get a z68 at all? Get a 7x series board and you won't run into any of these problems anyway.

[Bobblehob]

Check Asrocks site to see if the boards ship with the updated BIOS, those reviews might be old. Some said the same for my 990x board in regards to bulldozer, but that wasn't an issue with mine as it shipped with the latest BIOS.

Ivy bridge itself is at most a 10% performance boost compared to its sandy counterparts, with its main appeal to gamers being PCI-E 3.0 support.... with ivy chipsets. You won't get this with a Z68 board, so unless you're anal about TDP and iGPU performance it shouldn't effect you that much.

But then again why get a z68 at all? Get a 7x series board and you won't run into any of these problems anyway.

Well, at this point the problem is that I already ordered the Board, based on the advice of a friend of mine. I only discovered this issue last night xP And I am trying to decide what is best at this point for me to do as far as a CPU is concerned.

[=sw=warlord]

You can sometimes get motherboard makers to update the bios for you though it will cost a pretty penny.
Note:
http://www.sixtiescity.com/Anderson/PENNY1.jpg
This is not a pretty penny.

[JackalStomper]

short 670, because who needs footlong cards.

http://www.techpowerup.com/img/12-05-07/54a.jpg

Makes me wonder how the heatsink would work

[Limited]

My PSU is starting to cut out, 2 power cuts in a week (wasnt a real power cut as my monitors were still powered). I think I might RMA it when I go on holiday as its within 3 year warrenty.

Starting to think I may make a new rig, hopefully won't have same issues as last time (faulty mobo, hdd, gfx card from all brand new items).

Thinking I might get 680GTX, 128GB SSD for default hard drive.

[Amit]

short 670, because who needs footlong cards.

http://www.techpowerup.com/img/12-05-07/54a.jpg

Makes me wonder how the heatsink would work

How did they manage that?

[JackalStomper]

How did they manage that?
Guess the advances made in gk104 allowed them to cut down on the VRM required to run the card, and therefore the length. Meaning if you want to overclock you're going to have to go with the good old giant version.

Rumors abound that AMD is gearing up to release a 7970 'ghz edition' to compete with the 680/670. (recent benchmarks have the 670 putting up competition against 7970's)
Not sure if there would be any actual changes in the design or if its just a factory overclock with marketing hype.

I really hope AMD's next card series are better than this, because they totally shafted early adapters with this one.

[Amit]

But damn. That new GTX 670 is even shorter than my old Radeon X1600 PRO. Ghz Editions are just marketing hype mostly. OC yourself and save the money. Btw all HD 7770's are Ghz editions really, so they are just a bunch of bullshit.

[JackalStomper]

More on that short 670, this time with the heatsink on

http://wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/GTX-670-PCB1.jpg
http://wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/GTX-670-PCB-1.jpg
the blue pcb is an 'overclocked edition' 670, which is really just a 680 pcb with a 670 chip.

I don't understand why they would go through all the trouble with designing that short PCB, and then ruin it by using a blower added to the end of the card :/

[Limited]

So I have a rough set of parts that I am thinking of getting and I was wondering if you helpful chaps can like fill in the gaps and make sure the ram is the right type and all that jazz.

Heres what I'm currently thinking.

EVGA 680GTX
Intel i7 3.4ghz
120GB SSD (Probably OCZ as they are on sale, or a Crucial)
Coolermaster HAF X Case (http://www.ebuyer.com/222943-coolermaster-haf-x-case-rc-942-kkn1)
Corsair 16GB RAM
BR/DVD Burner
Wireless PCI Card

Okay so PSU and Mobo, I have no idea. Corsair are good ones but I have no idea what wattage I'd need, and I'd want the possibility of SLI'ing later down the road, maybe a 850W or 1000W?

Mobo I have absolutely no idea, obviously it would need to be the same socket as the i7. Manufacturer? I have no idea, ASUS perhaps?

Any help is appreciated :)

[JackalStomper]

...what model of i7? Guess it doesn't matter i7's all cost an arm and a leg anyway.
I would suggest getting an ivy bridge board for the PCI 3.0 ability (which a 680 will take advantage of) and other doodads like native USB 3.0 and such.
I've been going with ASUS for years and they haven't let me down. Gigabyte would be a secondary choice and MSI after that.
AsRock also seems to be pretty popular but I haven't used a single product of theirs.

Corsair PSU's are horrible on the low level and all their models only have one 12 volt rail, that dies and poof psu evolved into paperweight.
Not that this is common but I'm paranoid :tinfoil:
Prefer Antec myself.

For SLI, you shouldn't need anymore than a 850watt these days. This is especially true with the crazy power consumption numbers that the HD7000's and g600's are getting.

[king_nothing_]

Here's what I just built (didn't get everything from Newegg):

Intel Core i7-3770K (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116501)
ASUS SABERTOOTH Z77 LGA 1155 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131821)
SAMSUNG 4GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147094) x4
SAMSUNG 830 Series MZ-7PC128D/AM 2.5" 128GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147134)
Phanteks PH-TC14PE 140mm UFB (Updraft Floating Balance) CPU Cooler (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835709001)
CORSAIR Professional Series HX650 (CMPSU-650HX) 650W, Modular (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139012)
COOLER MASTER HAF 932 Advanced (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119160)
Ordered: ASUS ENGTX570 DCII/2DIS/1280MD5 GeForce GTX 570 (Fermi) 1280MB 320-bit GDDR5 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121432)
Sent: ASUS HD7950-DC2T-3GD5 Radeon HD 7950 3GB 384-bit GDDR5 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121489&Tpk=asus hd7950)

I'm pretty satisfied with everything so far.

When I was researching SSDs, it seemed the most recommended ones were the Intel 520 and the Samsung 830. I don't remember if it was the OCZ or Crucial drives, but I think I remember hearing about reliability issues with one of them. The Samsung drives are apparently incredibly reliable.

Also, before you laugh at my ugly, heat spreader-less RAM, you should know that that RAM is recommended like CRAZY. It overclocks very well. I know shit about RAM overclocking, and I have mine at 1866MHz. Once I figure out what the hell I'm doing I should be able to get it to 2133MHz. Some people are getting it to 2400MHz. It's also very low profile, which I needed for that Phanteks monstrosity.

That gigantic CPU cooler is working well for me as well. I'm at 4.7GHz completely stable (24/7) right now, with hyper-threading on.

[Limited]

I actually had the case listed before King, but I think I prefer the asthetics of the HAF X more.

Ivy bridge I7's are expensive, or do you just mean the bridge on the mobo.

[JackalStomper]

670's are out, benchmarks show them competing/beating out 7970's at the usuals while drawing less power than a 560 ti, for $400.

Hopefully this means another 7970 price cut?

[InnerGoat]

AMD won't cut prices again. Save a few bucks so you can get the GTX670 :)

[JackalStomper]

yeah its tempting

[Amit]

Why do you even consider a $400 GPU? Do you need it?

[JackalStomper]

yes

[InnerGoat]

yep

bigger my frame rate at high resolutions :)

[Limited]

Hey Folks, thanks for the input. My mate also said 670 came out so I'm thinking I'll just get the EVGA 670 Superclocked, which is on level with the 680 and like £100 less.

Parts:
OCZ 120GB SSD (http://www.ebuyer.com/268244-ocz-120gb-agility-3-ssd-agt3-25sat3-120g-agt3-25sat3-120g)
EVGA 670 GTX SuperClocked (http://www.scan.co.uk/products/2gb-evga-gtx-670-superclocked-28nm-pcie-30-(x16)-6208mhz-gddr5-gpu-967mhz-boost-1046mhz-cores-1344-d)
Corsair 850W HX Modular PSU (http://www.ebuyer.com/164951-corsair-850w-hx-modular-psu-cmpsu-850hxuk)
Corsair 16GB DDR3 1600Mhz Jet Black (http://www.scan.co.uk/products/16gb-(4x4gb)-corsair-ddr3-vengeance-jet-black-pc3-12800-(1600)-non-ecc-cas-9-9-9-24-xmp-150v)
Asus P8Z77-V SOcket 1155 (http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_1155/P8Z77V/#specifications)(friend showed me this, thoughts?)
Intel i7 3770k Ivy Bridge 3.5Ghz (http://www.scan.co.uk/products/intel-core-i7-3770k-s1155-ivy-bridge-quad-core-35ghz-5-gt-s-dmi-650mhz-gpu-8mb-smart-cache-35x-ratio)
LG Bluray Player/Burner
Coolermaster HAF X Case

R (http://www.ebuyer.com/222943-coolermaster-haf-x-case-rc-942-kkn1)ough cost so far: £1,223.53 / $1966.52

[Amit]

I keep forgetting that I'm living in the past with just one display for gaming. :ugh:

[Futzy]

[]Case: $120 Fractal Design R3 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811352014
[]Mobo: $190 ASUS P8Z77-V - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131820
[x]RAM: $47 8gb Vengeance LP - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233186
[]GPU: $410 Asus GTX 670 DCII -
[x]CPU: $230 3570K - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116504
[]Heatsink: $53 HR-02 Macho - http://www.amazon.com/ThermalRight-HR-02-MACHO-Thermalright-Macho/dp/B005ERSN7G
[]PSU: $90 Seasonic 620w Mod - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151095
[]HDD: $90 Samsung F3 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152185
[x]Soundcard: $14 Xonar DG - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829132020
[x]Thermal Compund: $9 MX-4 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835186038
[]Monitor: $340 PCBank (27" 2560x1440) -
Total: $1584
phite


Hey Folks, thanks for the input. My mate also said 670 came out so I'm thinking I'll just get the EVGA 670 Superclocked, which is on level with the 680 and like £100 less.

Parts:
OCZ 120GB SSD
EVGA 670 GTX SuperClocked
Corsair 850W HX Modular PSU
Corsair 16GB DDR3 1600Mhz Jet Black
Asus P8Z77-V SOcket 1155 (friend showed me this, thoughts?)
Intel i7 3770k Ivy Bridge 3.5Ghz
LG Bluray Player/Burner
Coolermaster HAF X Case

Rough cost so far: £1,223.53 / $1966.52

You're spending too much. I'm assuming you're running at 1080 @ 60hz, why do you want a 670? If you're not planning on SLI you're waisting your money on anything above a ~600w PSU. You're waisting your money on 16gb of ram unless you're pushing huge amounts of polies or raw video. Is there a reason you need the hyperthreading of the 3770k?


fuck that jcap guy too

[Limited]

I do appreciate you trying to look for alternatives, but the main purpose is to built a powerful machine that woken become old and dated in a short time. I'd rather spend a bit more and make it worth while.

I was originally going for 680 but in scaling back. In a short answer, yes I would like ability to SLI in future.

Any issues with compatability with the parts? Going to order later today probably

Ordered - Had to also buy a 2TB HDD and Windows 7 copy which didnt help the cost =\

[Higuy]

I've been toying around with the idea of getting a server for upcoming projects, to stop the hassle of having to personally give out files and builds of projects.

I'd like to know, does anyone have any experience working with a server/SVN? What kind of computer components should I be getting/creating for this kind of job, and what kind of settings should the computer have once I get it?

[Amit]

and Windows 7 copy which didnt help the cost =\

Hahaha, good one...:ehhh:

[JackalStomper]

With AMD dragging their ass on the 7990, the AIB partners seemed to have taken it into their own hands.

http://www.techpowerup.com/166643/AMD-AIB-Partners-Said-to-be-Working-on-quot-HD-7970-X2-quot-.html

No doubt these and the 7990 itself will be cheaper than the ridiculous prices nvidia is pushing on the 690.

[Warsaw]

I really hope AMD's next card series are better than this, because they totally shafted early adapters with this one.

inorite? $1100 for third-place performance. :maddowns: Then again, from what I'm seeing the AMD offering blows the Nvidia offering away on DX10/11 performance where DX10/11 is actually properly used.

Actually, the 7970 really shines once you OC it. The first versions weren't faster because the process wasn't refined yet and there were no custom coolers. They honestly should have waited a few more months so that they could have a faster card and look better versus the competition. Had it been out at the time, I would have opted for two GTX 680s for the sake of image quality, but I'm not at all dissatisfied with what I have.

[legionaire45]

I've been toying around with the idea of getting a server for upcoming projects, to stop the hassle of having to personally give out files and builds of projects.

I'd like to know, does anyone have any experience working with a server/SVN? What kind of computer components should I be getting/creating for this kind of job, and what kind of settings should the computer have once I get it?

[Bump]

First off, there are better alternatives to SVN. Git and Mercurial being two common ones.

What type of content are you planning on versioning? If you're only dealing with text then either will work fine. If you're planning on versioning binary data (for example, Halo Maps and/or PSDs/.max files) you'll want to stick with Mercurial since there are plugins which help keep disk usage in check. Versioning binary data is generally a bitch no matter what though.

In terms of hardware, you're really not going to need too much. Your ISP is going to be your main bottleneck, and after that I/O. So go for 7200RPM drives or if you're feeling rich, some SSDs.

In terms of software, it depends on what exactly you want to do. Version Control is a good idea and for the most part you can run SVN, Mercurial or Git out of Apache or Nginx. You'll probably want to stick with some variant of Linux (Ubuntu Server or Fedora being a good starting point) but if you want to spend the money you could get a copy of Win7 Pro/Ultimate or Windows Server. If you have an .edu email address you should be able to get a free copy of Windows Server here (https://www.dreamspark.com/).

Another thing you might want to look into is Continuous Integration. I've mainly seen this done in the context of building source code but there's no reason why you couldn't throw together a couple of scripts which compile map content and then package it up into a zip file or something.

[leorimolo]

http://i.imgur.com/8noWw.png

Whachu guys think? Its all going in a microatx case and I hope I can eventually SLI my cards, should I get the 570gtx or wait for the 670 to drop in price?

[JackalStomper]

Will that 570 even fit it in a micro atx case?

[Tnnaas]

As long as his box isn't one of those SFF cases, he should be fine.

[legionaire45]

I'd hold out and save up for a GTX670. They're better at pretty much everything except GPGPU stuff.

[Timo]

How much of an influence does a decent motherboard have on performance? There are plenty of motherboards available that are cheaper and more expensive, I just have no idea how much to spend.

This is what i'm looking at:
ASUS P8Z77-V LX Intel Z77 DDR3 PCI-E3.0 LGA1155 (http://www.computerlounge.co.nz/components/componentview.asp?partid=16390)
Intel Core i5 3570K Ivy Bridge 3.40Ghz 6MB 77W LGA1155 (http://www.computerlounge.co.nz/components/componentview.asp?partid=16619)
8GB DDR3 1600MHz (http://www.computerlounge.co.nz/components/componentview.asp?partid=15720)
OCZ AGILITY 4 128GB SATA III 2.5" SSD (http://www.computerlounge.co.nz/components/componentview.asp?partid=16828) with a mounting tray
ASUS XONAR D1 7.1 CHANNEL PCI SOUND CARD (http://www.computerlounge.co.nz/components/componentview.asp?partid=11928)

I'm going to hang on to my 4850 for the time being as it can still play games pretty well, and i'm not too worried about gaming anymore. This is more to make editing photos much easier. Do you guys think it'd be better to go cheap and get an mATX mobo and a higher spec CPU, or stick with what i've got? Or should I go AMD?

[Patrickssj6]

I would define a motherboard like this:

The brand does not define performance it defines:
-Build quality (e.g. Capacitors used) -> Lifetime
-Layout quality (Ports, Heat-Management)
-Support

The chipset defines:
-Performance BUT
getting a chipset from the same series with a higher version number, does not result in a better performance. Most of the time they are just required because they support more features you might want like USB 3.0. This is the point where one could save money.

Unless you want a dedicated sound card, you could just try to get a mobo with 7.1 integrated. Not sure about this though.

[Timo]

I'd only ever buy a big brand name mobo from a decent vendor, so quality and support aren't big issues, and I don't have enough devices to warrant additional connectivity. I'd like a dedicated sound card as i've spent a bit of money on speakers and headphones and would like to get the best I can out of them. But then again the last time I used onboard was over 4 years ago, so i'm sure it's much better than it was. I guess that's another option, fork out more on a nicer mobo and flag the soundcard all together :s. I wish there weren't so many options.

My main concern is that I can grab these instead (for example):
Intel Core i7 3770 Ivy Bridge 3.40GHZ 8MB 77W LGA1155 (http://www.computerlounge.co.nz/components/componentview.asp?partid=16620)
ASUS P8B75-M INTEL B75 DDR3 USB3.0 SATA3 PCI-E3.0 (http://www.computerlounge.co.nz/components/componentview.asp?partid=16663)

For only $20 more (i'm assuming i7 > i5). I'd personally prefer an ATX motherboard just to allow for better airflow within the case which isn't a big deal, i'm just a bit apprehensive of taking the cheapest motherboard available if it'd just end up bottlenecking the more expensive parts i'd end up buying with the spare cash.

[Patrickssj6]

Well the main difference between the two board is the B75 and Z77 chipset (the motherboard is build around them). B75 is the lowest range, Z77 a lot more higher. The B75 has only one SATA 6GB/s port which will be required by your SSD, this might be a critical point in case you want to add more SSDs in the future. The rest of the features (SSD Caching, more Overclocking control) are really just redundant.

Make a picture yourself http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGA_1155#Ivy_Bridge_Chipsets
I would try to get a motherboard with a Q77 chipset, you might be able to get an i7 as well then.

[InnerGoat]

Please get a SSD from Intel, Crucial, or Samsung. Crucial's 128GB M4 should be similar priced to that OCZ and you don't have to worry about firmware issues.

[Amit]

Crucial m4 is where I'd put my money if i didn't already buy a Kingston SSDNow V200 (was significantly cheaper and still suits my needs).

[Timo]

I can grab this samsung one for the same price: http://www.computerlounge.co.nz/components/componentview.asp?partid=16954


Well the main difference between the two board is the B75 and Z77 chipset (the motherboard is build around them). B75 is the lowest range, Z77 a lot more higher. The B75 has only one SATA 6GB/s port which will be required by your SSD, this might be a critical point in case you want to add more SSDs in the future. The rest of the features (SSD Caching, more Overclocking control) are really just redundant.

Make a picture yourself http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGA_1155#Ivy_Bridge_Chipsets
I would try to get a motherboard with a Q77 chipset, you might be able to get an i7 as well then.

I haven't been able to find any Q77 chipset boards in NZ, I don't think they've been released here yet :s. At this point i'm thinking about holding onto my Audigy 2 and getting a mobo with decent onboard (Z77 chipset) just in case it doesn't work.

[Cortexian]

+1 Crucial M4 SSD's.

[Timo]

This is what i've ended up going with:

SAMSUNG 830 SERIES 128GB SATAIII SSD
Lian-Li HD-321 Dual 2.5" HDD/SDD to 3.5" Drive Bay Adapter

Gigabyte GA-Z77X-D3H Intel Z77 Ivy Bridge Motherboard
Intel Core i7 3770 Ivy Bridge 3.4Ghz 8MB 77W LGA1155
Mushkin Blackline FrostByte 996995 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3-1600

[Warsaw]

I don't know if you planned on ever upgrading the CPU, but you should know that LGA 1155 is officially a dead platform now. There is no more potential, what you see on the market is what you get. LGA 2011 still has one refresh left, 1155 does not.

Just throwing that out there.

[Timo]

2011 motherboards are still in the $450+ price range here (versus $220), which is pretty far out of my price range. I expect that this setup will last me the next few years at least so i'm not too worried about buying another motherboard further down the line.

[Warsaw]

Well, the idea is to NOT buy a new motherboard, just a CPU... =þ

That sucks about the pricing though. Over here, Z77 and X79 motherboards of similar capability can be found for near-identical prices, and the entry-level LGA 2011 CPU is the same price as the top-tier LGA 1155.

[Timo]

2011 CPUs are similarly priced to older sockets (some cheaper in fact), but motherboards are still stupidly priced. It'd be pointless for me to spend an extra $300 on a 2011 motherboard when it'll cost me less than that further down the line to get one.

[JackalStomper]

price drops and intel usually don't go together. At least not in the consumer friendly sense.

990x:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/3128383/temp/990x.JPG

2600k:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/3128383/temp/2600k.JPG

basically they charge as much as they can get away with

[Bodzilla]

same as all electrical goods.

you think that new phone is actually worth 700?
laff.

[Pooky]

Hey Modacity, maybe you can help me.

What I'd like to do is run 2 VGA inputs to a single monitor. I've heard of KVM switches, but all the ones I can find seem to be for running one input to multiple monitors, which is the exact opposite of what I need. Does anyone know of a switch or something I could get where I'd be able to easily run multiple inputs to the same monitor?

[JackalStomper]

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000213ZE0
Not saying you should get this one in particular as I have no idea on its quality but hopefully it can point you in the right direction.
Failing that you could get a monitor from this decade and use digital inputs instead.

[Pooky]

There is a DVI input but the quality seriously blows compared to the VGA. Last time I tried it the colors were badly washed out. Maybe it was just the cable I used, idk. Anyway this monitor doesn't have any kind of switch or anything to change between DVI and VGA. The Xbox 360 w/ VGA cable is the other input I'm wanting, btw.

[Amit]

There is a DVI input but the quality seriously blows compared to the VGA. Last time I tried it the colors were badly washed out. Maybe it was just the cable I used, idk. Anyway this monitor doesn't have any kind of switch or anything to change between DVI and VGA. The Xbox 360 w/ VGA cable is the other input I'm wanting, btw.

I was going to suggest using DVI. If the colours were washed out, then it was most likely that the cable was damaged. DVI is supposedly better than VGA, but most people cannot tell the difference. I use DVI because my monitor requires it to enable certain features. The Digital signal just works better or something like that. I'd say try a different DVI cable before buying osme elaborate piece of hardware. I do exactly what you want to do with my own monitor. DVI comes from Desktop GPU and VGA comes from laptop. I press the source button to switch between the two.

[Pooky]

There's no source button on the monitor that I know of though. Maybe the function will appear once it's connected.

[Amit]

Well the "source" button for me is a physical button on the monitor. It's a Samsung Syncmaster 2053BW 20". What monitor do you have? I thought all monitors with multiple inputs had this button. It might be possible that it will show up in menus after you plug in the other source, like you said.

[Pooky]

Yeah it did, and the quality turned out good too. Surprising, since it's the same exact DVI cable I used last time... Different video card though. So for the first time I have what I've always wanted, a single unified AV setup controlling both my PC and Xbox 360. Thanks!

[JackalStomper]

I completely didn't notice that the 660's were out.
Not very exciting at this point, same story undercutting price with superior performance. Only a matter of time before AMD drops their prices again.
I'm actually kind of hoping they do, especially if it includes the 7970, might grab one.

[Cortexian]

DVI is simply capable of more bandwidth and better pixel-mapping than VGA. VGA gives the monitor the signal and lets the monitor decide where to display it (hence why you can adjust position for VGA displays a lot of the time). DVI sends the signal with information on exactly what pixel should be displaying what, the monitor just confirms the position and does it.

Generally DVI is sharper and more vivid than VGA due to these two differences. Certain monitors require DVI to get the required quality and bandwidth through, 2560x1440 or 2560x1600 require Dual DVI-D cables since regular DVI cables can't pup out enough bandwidth.

[Warsaw]

DVI and HDMI are also essentially the same thing, but HDMI also supports audio channels and DRM technology as well as color-spaces apart from RGB. It is not, however, compatible with VGA.

I always feel like DVI is the forgotten interface. It's like everybody skipped it just for HDMI, and I don't even know why DisplayPort is becoming a thing. The latter is the most useless connector.

[Bodzilla]

i use DVI, have for years

[king_nothing_]

I use one DisplayPort, one DVI, and one HDMI, simultaneously.

:smugsome:

[Warsaw]

Well, my monitor can take VGA, two DVI, one HDMI, one Display Port, component, and composite. And has outputs for analogue 5.1.

:smugsome:

Of course, I'm only using DVI-D and HDMI at the moment (PC and Xbox). Single monitor supremacy.

[Amit]

I always feel like DVI is the forgotten interface. It's like everybody skipped it just for HDMI

???

There was the gap between 2007 and 2011 where more people used DVI over HDMI. I still use DVI because the cable actually came with my monitor. That and my monitor doesn't support HDMI :D

[Warsaw]

In 2007-2011 most people were still using VGA, despite VGA having technically been "dead" since 2004. TV's never had DVI input, they jumped straight from VGA to HDMI for PC input.

I use DVI because I like the fact that it does *not* support DRM, because all of my monitors have come with DVI cables since 2004, and because it screws in. :p

[king_nothing_]

and because it screws in. :p
That is precisely why I don't like DVI.

[Amit]

In 2007-2011 most people were still using VGA, despite VGA having technically been "dead" since 2004. TV's never had DVI input, they jumped straight from VGA to HDMI for PC input.

I use DVI because I like the fact that it does *not* support DRM, because all of my monitors have come with DVI cables since 2004, and because it screws in. :p

Most people are going to use VGA at least until 2020, I'd say. Monitors aren't enough of an advancement for people to go out and spend money on a new one just for a superior cable method. Monitors last a fuck long time so I don't see anyone who already uses VGA switching until their current needs aren't met anymore. What I was saying was that in that 4 year period, a lot of people started using DVI because 22"+ monitors were becoming cheaper for the consumer and the cable came with their new monitor was DVI.

I use DVI because it screws in so I don't have to worry about it getting unplugged randomly. Oh and my monitor doesn't support HDMI, so...

Even if I did have a monitor that supported HDMI, I'd still use DVI. Mostly because I wouldn't have to go out and buy a new HDMI cable lol.

[Patrickssj6]

I don't like to use HDMI, it feels like plugging a USB cable into my monitor. I prefer using dedicated cables to do dedicated tasks. I want my monitor cable to just transfer display and screen information, not additional information like DRM.

[Rhydgaled]

Is this thread suitable for discussion about laptops? I hope so, because I am currently on a 1 year work placement (part of my degree course) which is far from home so I'm renting a flat for the year. It's too small for my desktop really, so if I'm going to do everything I want to I'm going to need a better laptop.

First off, I dislike Windows 7 and can get a free copy of Windows out of MSDN-AA thanks to my university so I'm thinking of getting a laptop without an OS and installing a free and legal copy of Windows XP Professional myself. Now the question is what hardware will I need? The major software I want to be able to run (which I use on my desktop, which has a 3ghz Pentium 4 and 1GB of RAM) is as follows:


3ds Max 5 (yes a very old version)
Adobe After Effects (v6.5 I think)
Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5

I expect anything that can run those, and run them well, could handle everything else I use (like Photoshop, Office and Visual Studio) I'm thinking along the lines of the following specs:

An Intel CPU that's suitable for 32-bit Windows XP (need suggestions here), my limitted research suggests maybe an Intel Core i5, what makes 3ds max 5 run best?
2.5GB RAM (+/- 512MB)
15.4" screen (so it fits in the bags I have for my current laptop)

I have next-to-no understanding of graphics cards, but I doubt an integrated Intel one* is enough to run 3ds Max. I've done a little bit of research and I think the graphics card should have 512MB - 1GB of it's own memory (which would affect the amount of RAM, since I think video memory + RAM is not allowed to exceed 3.5GB I think) and I think OpenGL and/or Direct3D support is a must (although all today's cards probably support that anyway).

It would be nice if the machine was capable of running CMT's Open Sauced campaign smoothly without struggling without turning off many (or any) of the extras, so that might be a good guide for what the right video card would be. Sadly I'm not likely to have any time for HEK on top of everything else I want to do, which has been the suituation for quite a while.

*I believe I have one of these in my current laptop, I get a warning when starting HALO CE so I doubt Max will run. If I can run all that software with integrated Intel graphics I might just get a huge external hardrive to install 3ds Max and the video editing software on, and use my current laptop.

[JackalStomper]

It's a little difficult to find laptops without operating systems installed outside of ebay.
You might be better off just getting over it and adapting to Windows 7.
Can't help you much more than that. I'm not really a laptop person.


(which would affect the amount of RAM, since I think video memory + RAM is not allowed to exceed 3.5GB I think)
This isn't an issue on a 64-bit OS. Seriously why so reluctant to run something from this decade?

[ThePlague]

I don't understand why people even bother with XP anymore. UPGRADE TO WINDOWS 7, IT HAS COMPATABILITY WITH EVERYTHING.

[Donut]

gaming / game design (which it sounds like you have some part in) should all be done at 4+ gb ram, which necessitates a 64 bit operating system. also, windows 7 is excellent. id take it over xp any day.

also, get cooling pad if you can afford it. heat will do a lot of wear and tear on your components, and laptops apparently like to commit suicide by heat (since everything is crammed into that small space). keeping it cool with a pad or anything to help increase airflow will keep the laptop performing better, and make it last longer.
as for your integrated intel issue, i believe the intel core series (i3, i5, i7) all have HD3000 integrated chips, which are good enough to play tf2 on reasonable settings. youll be able to run max on that, but you should definitely try to get an actual dedicated GPU.

E: and get a 64 bit operating system dammit. i will mail you a flaming bag of cat shit if you dont
E2: one last thing, with a laptop, youre going to want to "buy for the future", if that make sense. since you cant really upgrade a laptop, dont just get something that can run halo or the programs youre into now. make the investment and spend a little more money for something that has more power, so someday when youre like "hey, i wanna try a new game", you can actually run it.

how much are you planning on spending on this?

[Pooky]

I don't understand why people even bother with XP anymore. UPGRADE TO WINDOWS 7, IT HAS COMPATABILITY WITH EVERYTHING.

Well, it's not compatible with everything. Win7 64 can't run 16 bit applications at all, which makes installing some really old games a pain in the ass. Also, Aero breaks compatibility with a fair few things.

Don't get me wrong though, Win 7 is a huge improvement over XP and I love it. I just run Windows Classic theme and all is well.

[Tnnaas]

I feel like everyone is screaming at me with all this, "Get Windows 7!" stuff.

I'll get on it dammit, let me work up some money first!

[JackalStomper]

Better hurry before microsoft decides to stop giving out licenses so people have to buy windows 8

[Corndogman]

Hey guys, I'm thinking of upgrading soon. Right now I have a prebuilt Dell thats about 2 years old, but I have a radeon HD 6950 and a new 500w PSU in it, so basically I'm looking at getting a new mobo, CPU, RAM, and a case. I don't plan on doing any super intense gaming, I mostly just need to be able to multitask a bit (ie Fraps, livestreaming, skype, etc.) and get consistent 60fps in most games. I would however like to be able to run Planetside 2 on high settings, as opposed to the 20fps I get on low right now -_-. I'm looking to spend about $350 - $400.

I really don't know that much about Motherboards and processors, so I was looking at some of the combo deals on newegg such as:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.1067524

Around $250 is ideal for me, leaving the rest for RAM and a decent case. But again Idk much about Mobo's and such so I'm totally open to suggestions on that. I'm leaning towards AMD right now because the prices seem way cheaper than comparable Intel CPUs. Also, whats the deal with these 6 and 8 core cpus I'm seeing? They aren't much higher in price compared to quad-cores with similar specs. Do they really offer that much better performance or is it just a money grab?

Help a noob out here; I'm still looking around so I'm open to any suggestions. Also I'd prefer a nice big case with dvd drive and all that jazz built in.

[Donut]

another planetside guy :iamafag:

ive heard planetside 2 is going to be intense like bf3. idk how accurate that is, but if you want to play it on high, you might want to do some research.

ram is dirt cheap though, so just grab 8gb of of ddr3, 1600mhz ram for like, 40 bucks.
E: 6 and 8 cores are a thing, but idk if id go that route. i think those are mainly for servers and rendering machines and whatnot.

[Warsaw]

The thing about the new AMD FX line is that while they claim "X no. of cores," they really behave as if they had half of that number. So really, that "six-core" CPU is more like a three-core; you actually get better single-thread performance by disabling half of the AMD cores (leave 0, 3,and 5 up but kill 1, 2, and 4).

I say go with an Intel i5 CPU, like this one:

Core i5-2310 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115089)

Holy fuck, there is a dirth of decent budget Intel-socket boards. This is the best I could dig up without going as far back as the awful P67 chipset:

ASRock H77 Pro4-M (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157301) or ASUS P8B75-V (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131835)

It's roughly $280 for the CP/Mobo pair, but the $30 trade-off is well-worth the huge performance boost. RAM is dirt cheap, so don't worry about having to stash too much away for it; I recommend Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600, but 1600 G.Skill is pretty good...look at the egg ratings. As for case, what strikes your fancy?

Regarding Planetside 2, the settings are currently capped at Medium, so even if you set it to High you won't see any difference. There are also rumours going around that Planetside 2's highest settings will slow PCs to a crawl with intentionally high levels of detail so that when the game ages it still remains visually competitive. So just know that even with this upgrade, you still may not be able to run it full blast. If the rumours are true, you'll need much higher-end set-up.

[Corndogman]

Is 16 gigs worth it or just overkill? I've found corsair 8GBx2 for $60 on sale right now so I figure It's worth it compared to 40ish for 8gb.

[Warsaw]

I have 16GB for future-proofing. I say it's worth it. But I also still have four more RAM slots to fill up...hmmm...

[JackalStomper]

I've never even come close to filling more than half of my 8 gigs at any moment...

[Warsaw]

I haven't, either. But I also know that games are going to start getting more resource intensive really fast over the next few years as the current generation of consoles falls by the wayside.

[Patrickssj6]

Just load every map the game has into the RAM. No more map loading xD

[Corndogman]

Yeah, the 500w PSU was another concern for me, so thanks for the heads up on that. What are the advantages of a more expensive MoBo? Is performance affected at all or is more a matter of longevity?

I like Warsaws suggestion of:
- Core I5-2310 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115089)
- ASRock H77 Pro4-M (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157301)
I've always felt more confident with Intel but I was curious about those AMD's. I'm looking at ~$330 with those 2 and the RAM, tack on another $50ish for a case plus shipping etc. puts me at $400 which is fine by me.

Also, just so I'm sure, PSU's and optical drives are all standardized right? My current PSU and DVD drive will fit into a new case?

[Donut]

just out of curiousity, whats your issue with the p67 chipset? ive had it for over a year now, and i havent had any problems with it.

[Rook]

Is 16 gigs worth it or just overkill? I've found corsair 8GBx2 for $60 on sale right now so I figure It's worth it compared to 40ish for 8gb.
Do you mind posting the link to that sale?

[Corndogman]

Do you mind posting the link to that sale?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233296
It's actually $66 not 60, but shipping is free at least.

E: I think its just a 1 day sale as well.

[Warsaw]

You can use your old DVD drives in the new case, the 5.25" bay is a standard. I'm assuming you bought an ATX PSU, so any ATX case and most micro-ATX cases will house it.


just out of curiousity, whats your issue with the p67 chipset? ive had it for over a year now, and i havent had any problems with it.

It's old and crippled, and I don't like buying crippled hardware...Z68 was the superior option during SB's heyday and well worth the premium, as it opened up many upgrade options. He's also going to want something that can potentially do PCI-E 3.0 if he decides he wants to upgrade the GPU again...those Radeon HD8000-series chips are just around the corner.

Spend more now, spend less later. Spend less now, spend even more than you should later. If he were on a higher budget I'd say go with X79, as the price difference over a top-end Z77 is negligible and it still has some life left in it. LGA 1155 is about to reach end-of-life, while LGA2011 still supposedly gets one more refresh. Socket AM3 on the AMD side is also supposedly a dead end now.

[Corndogman]

Ok so heres what I've got now, thoughts?


Intel Core i5-3450 Ivy Bridge 3.1GHz (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116506) (Only $15 more than the other one, faster and consumes less power)
ASRock H77 Pro4-M (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157301)
(http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811108407)IN WIN MANA134 Black SEEC Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811108407)
CORSAIR XMS 16GB (2 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233296)

Along with the Radeon HD 6950 that I already have and 500w PSU.

[Warsaw]

Looks good to me. I would say bump up to 1600MHz on the RAM, but I know that Intel CPUs really don't care what speed your RAM is. AMD CPUs are more affected by it. Case isn't really my style (I like sleek and minimal), but the price is right and the reviews are good. My only gripe on the case is that there aren't more reviews.

[Corndogman]

My reasoning for that case is that its the biggest one I could find at that price. I basically had to hammer my GPU into my current case so I wanted to make sure I had lots of space for that and cable management. I'm not entirely sold on its looks either, but it looks rugged as hell, and in reality its just a box that sits under my desk so I'm not too concerned about it. Might change it though.

I've already purchased the RAM since its a limited time offer, but I'd like to get some more feedback before I go ahead on the other stuff.

[Cortexian]

That memory is really expensive for what you're getting. I just bought another 2x4GB kit of 1866Mhz memory for $51 CAD.

[Warsaw]

And you see very little improvement with it. Intel CPUs don't care much for increased speed from what I've seen, and what little they do won't matter because he's not building a high-end rig here. He'll be HDD and GPU bottlenecked before that RAM speed really starts to matter.

In the final analysis, capacity is often more important than speed. If you run out of RAM, it won't matter how fast it is because there won't be any left. You can argue that he doesn't need 16GB and that 8GB is enough, but if he wants to save money down the road he's better off grabbing 16 now rather than 8GB now and 8GB later. DDR3 prices are nearing the bottom of the price curve.

[Siliconmaster]

16 gigs for $100 USD isn't bad at all, I jumped on 8 Gb of 1600 for 50 when it was on sale a few months back, I thought that was a total steal, since the last time I bought RAM it was 4 Gb for $100, and that was on sale. So maybe prices have just dropped dramatically, but that seems like it was a good price to me.

[Corndogman]

The RAM that I linked to was on sale for $65 yesterday, which is why I bought it. I wouldn't buy it at its current price ($95), so no, I don't think I over-payed for it.

[Siliconmaster]

Awesome.

[Cortexian]

I'm just saying that had you shopped around a bit more, you could of probably got faster memory for even cheaper. CAD is worth less than USD right now, and I still got it cheaper "in-country".

That isn't bad memory by all means though, and the price you got it as was def worth it in comparison to the non-sale price.

[Corndogman]

Oh well, I'm sure it'll be fine. Anyways, unless anyone has any objections I'll be ordering this later today:

Intel Core i5-3450 Ivy Bridge 3.1GHz (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116506)
ASRock H77 Pro4-M (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157301)
ZALMAN Z11 Plus HF1 Black Steel / Plastic ATX Mid Tower Computer Case (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811235035)

E: Also, I realized that my PSU is actually 550w not 500, so that should give me a bit more clearance.

[Warsaw]

Ew, Ivy Bridge. If you're going to spend $200 on a CPU, you might as well spend the $20 to get the unlocked Core i5-2500K, that way you can overclock it and stay competitive even when the tech moves on.

[Corndogman]

What's wrong with Ivy Bridge, isn't it just the newest iteration of Sandy Bridge? You're right, the $20 is probably worth it in the long run, but I'm worried about power consumption. It might now be worth it if I have to spend another $100 or so on a new PSU.

e: Fuck it, I'll just go for it.

[Warsaw]

They run hot versus their predecessors and the performance gain isn't really worth the price premium or the heat premium in my book. I mean, it enables PCI-E 3.0 on Z68 boards, but that's a moot point unless you plan on doing multi-GPU. That board I suggested can't realistically do multi-GPU, and getting one that can for Intel CPUs would drive your costs up considerably.

My main issue here was how close to the price of an unlocked CPU you were.

[Corndogman]

Alright, well I went with the i5-2500k and a motherboard that was slightly cheaper, but had free shipping, so that balanced the cost a little. I'm happy with my build and am pretty excited to get it running.

[mech]

I don't know nuthin about computer components anymore, so i'm coming here for one of you tech savvy duders. I'm asking for someone to list the best pc components for around 750 bucks to build a complete person pc with the exception of a mouse, keyboard, and speakers. Don't need a super fancy case, if it can be cheap and cool(air flow shit) to apply more funds towards primary components; do so.

I will shower you with colon cobras upon reception of said list.

[Cortexian]

Intel i9-6660X Super-Turbo CPU
128GB 4800Mhz DDR5 Memory
Nvidia XTR 7000 16GB GPU
1.2TB SSD
2000W PSU

[Amit]

Heh, that's way under his budget. I think you should suggest something with a bit more power since he has more to spend.

[Patrickssj6]

get a nuclear power plant supply, better be safe

[JackalStomper]

personally I would say wait for haswell but if you want a new rig RIGHT NOW...

case: corsair 300r
mobo: z77 chipset, something from either asrock/asus/msi
cpu: i5-3550
gpu: gtx 660
hdd: wd10ezex
ram: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231426 (fuck longass model numbers)

adjust the components for lower/higher performance based on what you want, this is just a baseline.

[mech]

Thank you to everyone but freelancer.

660gtx
i7 3770k
16GB DDR3 1600RAM
ASSROCK mobo
1TB HDD
550W PSU
ANTEC ATX TOWER

[Pooky]

This seems like as good a place as any to post this. Okay Modacity, I'm having an incredibly frustrating sound issue. Basically whenever a really loud, bass heavy sound like a gunshot plays it comes out sounding really crappy and distorted. I've tried multiple sound cards, onboard audio, played with every windows sound setting I can find and nothing seems to fix the problem. Here's the 2 best audio sources I've found that create the issue, if it helps

LaG2NJjGNcg

Any of those big bass BOOMs do it.

eZArBXYO1Nk

I've also tried multiple headsets, speaker systems, etc. It always happens regardless of the hardware used, which makes me think it's somehow a Windows issue.

[Warsaw]

What models of sound card did you use?

I've had issues with on-board sound and Creative, but not with HT Omega cards.

It could be interference. Or it could be that the slot you are putting it in is causing the issue, if you haven't tried moving the card around. I really don't think it's a Windows issue, it's way too specific.

[Pooky]

Asus Xonar DX and HT Omega eClaro

I've tried 2 different PCI-E slots with no success and there aren't any wires or anything nearby to them.

[Patrickssj6]

First video:

Laptop Speaker - Clipping
PC Sound System - Clipping
High-End Audio Interface + Headphones - Clipping.

So if it is just this video then the clipping is normal otherwise your speaker would reproduce the sound wrongly (reducing the clipping even though it is there).
The guy in the video did this on purpose probably, this is the original song http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoXG-4DntUA

I hear no clipping in the second video though. Make sure you don't boost the sound or change these settings if you are not sure what you are doing. 24bit/48kHz is standard.
http://cdn.head-fi.org/1/1a/500x1000px-LL-1a8d9173_24-bit44100HzAdvancedSpeakerPropertiesinWin7.gif

[Pooky]

I did get the clipping in some other stuff, like Brutal Doom gameplay and such. If it's just the source file in all cases, there's an awful lot of shitty audio files floating around out there.

[Cortexian]

there's an awful lot of shitty audio files floating around out there.
QFT

[Bodzilla]

Hey bro's, after the 3rd HDD failure in 3 years (2 of them in a raid set up >_>. >________________> ohgfoahogihaspihlihgoasihsgoihsa (i think i've lost everything)) I'm looking at a good SDD with a standard HDD for the bulk of my system.

from what i've heard, this is a very good one, at a good price and a really good warranty.
OCZ 256G Vertex 4 Series SSD
Internet Price: $217.00
http://umart.com.au/newindex2.phtml?bid=5

And i'm not sure what a good HDD is anymore. But i'm not getting another WD.

[Warsaw]

@Pooky: interference can come from the motherboard's own PCB layout as well. They don't always put a lot of thought into audio shielding. That said, it doesn't sound like this is your issue. And yes, most audio sources are pretty shit to begin with.

@Bod: Crucial M4 or Samsung 830 for the SSD. Samsung Spinpoint F3 for the HDD.

[Amit]

And i'm not sure what a good HDD is anymore. But i'm not getting another WD.

Western Digital supremacy. I've had fucking three Seagate drives fail on me in in the past 12 months alone. Two FreeAgent goflex 2.5 drives and one regular 1TB Barracuda drive that I bought two months ago. Fuck. That. Shit. And generally I've had good experience with Seagate, but they just don't make them the way they used to. Never had a WD drive fail on me. Never. And I own a lot of them from years past. The oldest one I have is a 20GB IDE drive from 2001. I bought many more over the years. All are still working. in machines that I have running right now.

[Warsaw]

I've had a WD Green drive that's bad, still have it. It's not unusable, just don't do anything that requires access to it for more than a few seconds. That said, I had failed to do my research because everybody knew the Green drives were terrible at the time. I just saw WD, lots of GB, and a low price and thought it was a bargain. Oops.

That said, I still generally choose WD over everybody else. The Samsung Spinpoints, however, are looking attractive for their price, and they have good performance for a platter drive.

[Cortexian]

Hey bro's, after the 3rd HDD failure in 3 years (2 of them in a raid set up >_>. >________________> ohgfoahogihaspihlihgoasihsgoihsa (i think i've lost everything)) I'm looking at a good SDD with a standard HDD for the bulk of my system.

from what i've heard, this is a very good one, at a good price and a really good warranty.
OCZ 256G Vertex 4 Series SSD
Internet Price: $217.00
http://umart.com.au/newindex2.phtml?bid=5

And i'm not sure what a good HDD is anymore. But i'm not getting another WD.
OCZ's are good for speed but bad for reliability. They've stepped up their reliability somewhat in the past year but Crucial M4 or Intel SSD's are still king of reliability.

Get a WD Black or Red drive for long term storage reliability with decent performance. And with your track record, you should get 4+ and setup a RAID-6 so if any two drives fail your data is still secure. lol.

[Patrickssj6]

Running 2 WD Green and 1 Black..never had any issues. Theres my fanboyism.

[Bodzilla]

i had 2 WD black 2tb drives, in mirror, both died within 6 months of each other.

and i had another 1 die a year before that. I've lost 3 in in a year and a half. I'm not getting another WD

[Warsaw]

Crucial M4 or Samsung 830 for the SSD. Samsung Spinpoint F3 for the HDD.

The Samsung 830 and Crucial M4 are basically equal in terms of reliability and speed, and they yo-yo each other on price. I hope to grab a 256 GB version of one or the other, and my 128GB M4 has been awesome.

The Spinpoints are known for being quiet and reliable with comparable performance to WD.

[Amit]

i had 2 WD black 2tb drives, in mirror, both died within 6 months of each other.

and i had another 1 die a year before that. I've lost 3 in in a year and a half. I'm not getting another WD

Crucial M4 and Samsung Spinpoint. Your dreams are complete.

[Bodzilla]

windows isn't recognizing my second HDD.

i used to have a raid setup, but i've since then replaced it with a SSD with my OS and a HDD for data. I put all the factory defaults for my bios back to normal, and when i was installing i could see both Hard drives, but i can only see the partition i created for windows when i'm IN windows.

i can see it in bios though.

anyone else had this? send halp.

[Cortexian]

So you partitioned a drive and can only see part of it correct?

Are you sure the second partition is actually in a Windows usable format?

Did you go into the Windows Disk Management and assign a drive letter for the other partition?


I'd just like to highly recommend the following Mini-ITX case if anyone ever wants to built a portable system:
http://www.bitfenix.com/global/en/products/chassis/prodigy/

[Bodzilla]

dont worry. i'm an idiot. forgot to allocate space for partitions for the rest of the drives.

[Bodzilla]

only thing thats a bit weird is windows allocated system reserved space, on my HDD and not my SSD where my OS is installed. does it always do that?

[Amit]

only thing thats a bit weird is windows allocated system reserved space, on my HDD and not my SSD where my OS is installed. does it always do that?

It often does that if you install windows with other drives plugged in. It's not a huge deal, but I prefer not to have that space mixed up on a separate hard drive. If you're up to it, I'd suggest unplugging any HDDs you have and reinstall windows with only the SSD plugged in. It's a pretty useless 100mb waste if you're an experienced computer user, so I'd suggest reading this (http://www.mydigitallife.info/hack-to-remove-100-mb-system-reserved-partition-when-installing-windows-7/) guide and removing it altogether.

[Bodzilla]

nah it doesn't bother me that much. i think i'll just leave it alone.

[JackalStomper]

The FX-8300's are out, and already out of stock on amazon :(

Not sure if because people are interested in them, or there just isn't much supply.

[InnerGoat]

if anyone wants a fast drive to store porn on, the 600GB WD velocitaptor is 99bux right now

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136555

these have 5 year warranties as well

(http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136555)

[Zeph]

I've got two of those in 300GB size. I paid 178 USD for them.

[Warsaw]

Holy balls, I need to get one of those VelociRaptors...I was considering just grabbing a 256 GB SSD but that seems like a better option.


The FX-8300's are out, and already out of stock on amazon :(

Not sure if because people are interested in them, or there just isn't much supply.

Yes.

[InnerGoat]

lol the SSD would kill it in everything. That's why I said porn- as in storage drive :)

[Warsaw]

I need space though. My 750 GB Green is lolunreliable and needs to go, and I'm at approximately 99MB free space on my 128 GB M4.

[InnerGoat]

hold onto your dicks here's big kepler! http://www.anandtech.com/show/6446/nvidia-launches-tesla-k20-k20x-gk110-arrives-at-last

oh wait it's not the desktop version... sigh nvidia

[Warsaw]

And you probably won't see a consumer version any time soon, since their foreseeable production run is back-ordered for Tesla applications

[bleach]

What are good flash drives on the market today?

Edit: I would [extremely] like to place an order today.

Considerations:

Durability for the general student-consumer
A pragmatic capacity (≥16 GB, looking at 32 GB now)
High speeds (write, read) under normal, daily file transfer conditions
Price range: $30 ≤ price ≤ $60
Future compatibility: perhaps USB 3.0
Reliability & manufacturer reputation
Advantages of Post-Black Friday

One potential site I may buy from is Amazon.

Edit: I didn't think that this warrants a new thread so may as well tack on my neediness here.

[Zeph]

A thumb drive is a thumb drive. A cheap one will last you as long as an expensive one.
The only real difference between them now is whether they're USB 3.0 or not. A new 3.0 drive has transfer speeds comparable to normal hard drives if the drivers are installed on the host machine. Some of the larger 3.0 thumb drives try to rival low end solid states since they're essentially the same thing.

[bleach]

So I guess I'll go with USB 3.0 flash drives then. These are just a few of the ones I might consider buying.


SanDisk Extreme 32GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive Model SDCZ80-032G-A75 (going to probably buy from Staples) (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008AF383S?ie=UTF8&redirect=true&tag=cupcre06-20)
Lexar JumpDrive Triton 32 GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive LJDNV32GCRBNA (http://www.amazon.com/Lexar-JumpDrive-Triton-Flash-LJDNV32GCRBNA/dp/B006DDT6LW/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top)
CORSAIR Voyager GT 32GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive Model CMFVYGT3A-32GB (http://www.amazon.com/Corsair-Flash-Voyager-32GB-CMFVYGT3A-32GB/dp/B008MCZI3W/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1353789029&sr=8-1&keywords=corsair+voyager+gt+32)
Patriot Supersonic Rage XT 32GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive Model PEF32GSRUSB (http://www.amazon.com/Patriot-Memory-Supersonic-Flash-PEF32GSRUSB/dp/B008R6OPJQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1353789185&sr=8-1&keywords=patriot+supersonic+rage+xt)

E: A few disheartening reviews related to backwards-compatibility for the SanDisk, but it remains a competitive contender among the choices.

Looking for fast transfer speeds for monolithic files and also large agglomerations of many small files.

EE: Leaning towards the SanDisk Extreme 32 GB

[Cortexian]

A thing that I built:
http://i.imgur.com/hunYF.jpg

Not a powerful rig without a GPU, but it serves the purpose for what the buyer wanted. Video of build coming soon™.

[Amit]

Is a video really necessary? And why would a customer want such a powerful PC, but no real GPU to go with it? Home server?

[Cortexian]

Kind of a Home Theater PC/Internet browser for his TV. It has integrated HDMI so it's perfect for the role. He said he was looking into Steam Big Picture for gaming as well, but not yet. So I think this is a good base system. Even if he does start gaming at 1080p, a mid-range GPU in the current gen will be more than adequate to supplement this hardware.

Plus, he was looking at something similar online for $1,500 and I built this for $700.

EDIT: Video finished!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iRzZmudc4M

[Amit]

For the love of god, get a better mic. My ears are bleeding.

[Cortexian]

It sounds fine to me?

Was just using the integrade GoPro camera on my head for the mic.

[Amit]

Next time, use a desktop mic or wireless headset to record because the low bitrate is really hard to listen to for more than a minute.

[Cortexian]

It sounds better than my G930 does when I record to me. So I really have no idea what you're getting at.

[Tnnaas]

Okay, so my younger brother nabbed this mobo (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131622) a while back and now he wants to get a graphics card. He's running Windows XP 32-bit. Since I'm not a brilliant component analyzer like some of you, I need your help. He's looking at this graphics card (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127684) to play on (cheap, powerful, positive reviews). Will the system support it? If more info is needed, ask and I'll deliver.

[ThePlague]

Okay, so my younger brother nabbed this mobo (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131622) a while back and now he wants to get a graphics card. He's running Windows XP 32-bit. Since I'm not a brilliant component analyzer like some of you, I need your help. He's looking at this graphics card (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127684) to play on (cheap, powerful, positive reviews). Will the system support it? If more info is needed, ask and I'll deliver.Why not have him spend 20 more dollars and get this card (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127701&nm_mc=AFC-C8Junction&cm_mmc=AFC-C8Junction-_-na-_-na-_-na&AID=10446076&PID=3938566&SID=)? It will smoke that card by far, and if he sent in the rebate it'd be about the same price. Plus, AC3 is free with it.

Also, what amount of RAM is he using? He should at least update to Windows 7...

[Tnnaas]

He's got 2GB of RAM on his machine, and if we didn't blow use the last install on my computer he'd have Windows 7 Ultimate...

I only got Ultimate because my step-dad blew his money on an install disk from Best Buy. :ugh:

[ThePlague]

Well I think that card would be a good investment nonetheless. Maybe later on he could get more RAM (it's extremely cheap right now!), he could update to something this generation (cmon guys XP is ooollld. maybe get it non legitly...).

[=sw=warlord]

So I just got one of these (http://uk.msi.com/product/mb/X79A-GD65--8D-.html) and now need suggestions for CPU to get.
Honestly didn't expect the board to be this filthy rich in features.
and I thought the 16 gigs of DDR3 Ram was over the top, WELP!

http://weknowmemes.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/mother-of-god-meme.jpg

[InnerGoat]

Was that a gift? Haha someone must really hate you. The only reason to go s2011 is for the 6 core CPUs and 64GB of ram, both of which you will be ordering I hope?

Here this is the only CPU that's not 1000 dollars or a quad core (you don't go s2011 to use a quad lmao, ivy bridge is superior) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116492

[Warsaw]

Actually, the full-sized PCI-E lanes and quad-channel memory are perfectly legit reasons. Also the fact that LGA1155 is DEAD while LGA2011 is due for one more refresh. Get the cheap quad-core now, grab the IVB-E later.

I have the quad. IVB was not out at the time. IVB still isn't as good after the dust settles.

[Cortexian]

It is if you fix the thermal issues yourself.

:downs:

[=sw=warlord]

It is if you fix the thermal issues yourself.

:downs:

And completely void any and all warranty you may have had by unsealing the thermal plate from the die

:downs:

[Cortexian]

Hence the :downs:.

[arbiter901]

I'm making a big update to my system here. Now I haven't really been up to date in components here for quite some time so I may lack some understanding of which is a better buy. Any suggestions for better components for around the same price range will be greatly appreciated.

Here are my choices.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116504
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130655
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231428
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127703

[=sw=warlord]

For not much more you might as well get this instead of the 8Gb. (http://www.amazon.com/Corsair-Vengeance-Desktop-Memory-CMZ16GX3M2A1600C10/dp/B006EWUO22/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1356749629&sr=8-1&keywords=DDR3+16Gb)

[arbiter901]

Don't really need 16 gigs atm (DDR3 is cheap so I may rethink this later on).

I'm trying to keep this upgrade just under $500.

[=sw=warlord]

Don't really need 16 gigs atm (DDR3 is cheap so I may rethink this later on).

I'm trying to keep this upgrade just under $500.
You might not need 16 gigs but given amazon currently has over half the price off, you'll save more in the long run if you decide later on.

[Warsaw]

It is if you fix the thermal issues yourself.

:downs:

Nope. There is no IVB-compatible chipset that can do what X79 can do. The only feature LGA1155 chipsets and CPUs have over X79 is QuickSync...which is pointless when you can tell your oversized discrete cards to do the same job.

[Btcc22]

Actually, the full-sized PCI-E lanes and quad-channel memory are perfectly legit reasons. Also the fact that LGA1155 is DEAD while LGA2011 is due for one more refresh. Get the cheap quad-core now, grab the IVB-E later.

I have the quad. IVB was not out at the time. IVB still isn't as good after the dust settles.

Dead but not obsolete. I'm not sure if the PCI-E lanes is really a valid reason either, especially since there are 1155 boards that offer acceptable solutions (to a problem that does not yet exist) for most users.

As for quad channel memory versus dual channel, you won't see much of a difference (if any) in most real world cases. This'll probably change in the future but by then our current machines will look like things of play.

It's easy to buy into features you don't actually need.

[Cortexian]

Nope. There is no IVB-compatible chipset that can do what X79 can do.
...

Like what?

[InnerGoat]

he NEEDS 64GB of ram.


lol

[PlasbianX]

Welp.. seriously considering building a gaming PC. Looking for all the parts for the pc itself, minus the hard drive (have that). Before the cost of the case, hoping to not spend more than $500. Halp!?

[Warsaw]

Plas:


CPU - Core i5-3350P (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116782)
Motherboard - ASRock Extreme 4 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157293), though since I'm counting rebates, the ASUS P8Z77-V LK (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131837) is an alternative
GPU - EVGA GeForce 650 Ti, at $140 after rebate (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130839)
RAM - 8GB DDR3 1600 Corsair Vengeance (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233144)



All said and done, it's $493. You can grab a better GPU if you drop down to a Core i3 CPU, which might actually work to your benefit, but after running with a weak CPU and strong CPU for years with my first rig I figure it's better to spend a little more now on the CPU so that you can get a stronger GPU later when the need arises and not be bottlenecked to oblivion. Four cores is also starting to matter these days.


...

Like what?

Eight RAM slots for quad-channel memory, dual-socket CPU support, full-width PCI-Express lanes...

You can say those are gimmicks, but that doesn't invalidate the point. LGA 2011 is more capable than LGA 1155 ever could be.

Besides, the cost difference of a quality 1155 setup versus a quality 2011 setup is negligible (like, $10) and at the time I was researching a build (Sandy Bridge era) it was marginally less expensive to do LGA2011 than LGA1155. The i7-3820 was the same price as the i7-2700K, the board was $220 versus $250 for the same tier board with the closest possible features, and dropping to a 2011 board that was still quality but with more mainstream 1155 parity would have saved me an additional $20 (but then what would be the point of going LGA 2011?). And, to boot, my computer is also a workstation...just not workstation enough to warrant a Quattro or FireGL.

Second, evolutionary dead end is the same thing as obsolete in the world of computers. While I'll be able to upgrade to a modern CPU and new GPUs a year from now and still support everything they can throw at my board, those with LGA1155 platforms will have to be building completely new computers. And this is going to be an issue if the new consoles actually are coming out this holiday season.

[Btcc22]

LGA 2011 is more capable than LGA 1155 ever could be.


I would hope that a newer and more expensive technology would be more capable, even if most of the additions are of no use to the majority of users.



The i7-3820 was the same price as the i7-2700K, the board was $220 versus $250 for the same tier board with the closest possible features


Your cost comparisons are quite unfair. The 2700k carried a premium for nothing more than a shot at reaching slightly higher overclocks, although the evidence I've seen indicates that it was a complete waste of money, offering zero benefit over the 2600k. Not really a surprise since they're the same chip.

On top of that, some of the K series CPUs will achieve better performance after overclocking. If you're not going to overclock it, you may as well have gone for the cheaper models.



Besides, the cost difference of a quality 1155 setup versus a quality 2011 setup is negligible

You priced up the most expensive LGA1155 build you could put together against probably the cheapest LGA2011 build and convinced yourself that you were getting value. You could have put together an LGA1155 build for a much lower price with very little performance loss. Once you reach the high-end, you pay a massive premium for negligible performance gains.



those with LGA1155 platforms will have to be building completely new computers


Doubt it. I think LGA1155 will continue to serve well for quite a while yet.

[Patrickssj6]

I want a new case for my old ATX rig. I want the case to be simple and silent (no side window and fan, not many LEDs etc.). I took a look at the NZXT H2 and loved all aspects of it but it seems to be getting a lot of bad reviews (e.g. for having unlabeled cables etc.).

Can anyone confirm or recommend a different case?

[Cortexian]

Mid tower? Full tower?

[Patrickssj6]

Ah sry Mid-Tower...fuck I knew I forgot an important aspect xD

[Warsaw]

If you are after the NZXT H2 for its sleekness as well as its sound-dampening qualities, I'd recommend the Fractal Design R3. It's not as good at sound dampening, but it is much better built than any NZXT case.

@Btcc22: Wrong on all counts. I did not use the least expensive LGA 2011 board, and nor does attempting to reach feature parity with an LGA 1155 build require you to use the most expensive boards available. For both X79 and Z68/Z77, the most expensive boards go for above $400. What I did was set a price point of no more than $250 and look for boards that offered the maximum bang for the buck. ASRock ended up being the best brand for both platforms, and the real deciding factor ended up being the number of full PCI-E lanes. X79 is bigger, I have dual 7970s, and Z68 would have bottlenecked them.

I also do, in fact, overclock my CPUs (and my GPUs, actually). I just haven't done it for this PC yet since I haven't seen much of a need to outside of improving physics processing for Metro 2033. At the time, the i7-2600K and i7-2700K were the same price, too.

So all and all, my comparison is completely fair.

[Btcc22]

have dual 7970s, and Z68 would have bottlenecked them.

Hardly (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/Ivy_Bridge_PCI-Express_Scaling/24.html). You'd probably see a tiny performance decrease that you'd barely notice on benchmarks let alone through actual use but that's about it. My Z68 board would run both those cards in PCI-E 3.0 x8 (or x16 for a single card) with an IB CPU which is the same amount of bandwidth per card as a PCI 2.0 x16 would provide. Still, no point worrying about that when on the whole there's negligible difference between a 7970 on PCI-E 2.0 x8 and x16.

7970 benchmarks:
http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph5458/43816.png
http://tpucdn.com/reviews/Intel/Ivy_Bridge_PCI-Express_Scaling/images/perfrel_1280.gif
http://tpucdn.com/reviews/Intel/Ivy_Bridge_PCI-Express_Scaling/images/perfrel_2560.gif

[Warsaw]

Wrong again. I would have been using PCI-E 2.0 x8/x8 on a Z68 motherboard at the time. Building a computer only running at 96% even for a single card is asinine when I can build one running at 100% for the same price or less.

Here are some more pertinent graphs, since my rig is using the related ASRock Extreme6 and two 7970s:
http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph6228/49656.png
http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph6228/49661.png

Oh, and that's with a full x16/x16. Z68 did not go higher than x8/x8.

In the end, building a computer for me is all about maximizing the headroom per dollar once I've decided on the performance requirements. All I have to do in the foreseeable future is upgrade a CPU. By the time games on the new consoles start becoming notable more demanding than the best games on the previous consoles, people on 1155 will be building whole new computers. I won't. Why? Because mine has the ability move more data, faster. Plain and simple.

[Btcc22]

I'm not wrong when you pretty much repeat what I already posted.

The Dirt 3 result is strange and seems unique to AMD cards so I'd probably discount it without further testing. However, other benchmarks show zero difference between PCI-E 3.0 x8 and x16 with Dirt 3 so you could have found a number of suitable LGA1155 boards anyway, if you actually cared about getting a few more wasted frames in Dirt 3 that is. I suspect you don't. ;)


Oh, and that's with a full x16/x16. Z68 did not go higher than x8/x8.

Higher than x8/x8 PCI-E 3.0 which is the same amount of bandwidth as x16/x16 PCI-E 2.0 plus better latency, yes. This is assuming you're using IB, although the article and benchmarks I posted show that there's no real difference between PCI-E 2.0 x8/x8 and x16/x16 anyway.

Going by release dates on your parts you built that machine either after the release of Ivy Bridge or incredibly close to it. I'm still willing to bet that you could have built a far cheaper 6 series platform (Z is a waste, as you mentioned earlier) platform without sacrificing much, if any, performance. Even if you went down the SB route and couldn't take advantage of the board's PCI-E 3.0 bandwidth, then you could have opted for boards with NF200 chips.

Anyway, to sum it up lest we do another loop, none of that really matters and we're just nitpicking. I just felt you were overhyping LGA2011 and being slightly unfair about LGA1155 when really, there's nothing wrong with it and it's still the better choice for building a machine that can come close to or match the 2011's perfomance but with a cheaper tag, unless you convince yourself about needing features that you'll likely never use.

[Warsaw]

Just up front, this is good conversation. I enjoy this. I hope there isn't any perceived hostility here.

Now, onto the reply. You posted single-card results and I posted multi-card results; 5 frames per second in DiRT is actually quite large and will have an extra impact as time goes on, especially once I get to over-clocking the GPUs when the warranty runs out in about two months. Metro 2033 shows some slowing, and on Z68 I can only imagine it would be worse. Even still, I get some slow-downs when those 3D particle effects are in full force (needs Nvidia PhysX to fix, or a CPU over-clock :D) I only wish they had stuffed in a Sandy Bridge comparison. That said, Anand doesn't analyse frame times like Tech Reports (they ought to) so that may not even be telling the whole story. They also didn't test any other titles apart from those two, which is weird. That PCI-E 2.0 rating is also at x16/x16, where Z68 would have been worse at x8/x8. The best X79 performance was using PCI-E 3.0 x16/x16...even SB-E can take advantage of PCI-E 3.0, they manually set it to PCI-E 2.0 just for comparison. Basically, look at the green bars.

To address your curiosity, I built my computer before Ivy was out by about a month. The i7-2700K was pretty young and I had originally priced the AMD FX-8150 against the 2600K; X79 only popped up once I totalled how much my builds were costing. None of the NF200 boards made the ratings cut-off. The idea with this PC became building the absolute most future-resilient computer with most top-shelf components I could afford. My last computer was also a Socket 939 Athlon 64 3200+ coupled with a GeForce 7800 GT and it lasted me nearly 8 years. However, because of the socket, I couldn't feasibly upgrade it without spending as much as an entirely new PC as early as 2007, and being stuck with that single core was becoming a serious impediment toward playing newer games or efficiently using newer programs by March 2011. I didn't want to get hosed like that again. Hence, my preference for X79 (and AMD). This ended up being my first Intel computer since 1995.

Really, my main point is that if you think you want to be building an Ivy Bridge computer using the maximum performance i7-3770 and also think you might want to go multi-card at a later date, it's worth it to consider X79. A board can be had for the same price as the good Z77 boards, and you actually can benefit from the increased PCI-E bandwidth even now with the current high-end GPUs, to say nothing of what the next generation will bring, and GPUs are improving in performance at a much higher rate than CPUs. Yes, the i7-3770 is actually faster than even the i7-3960X in quite a few tasks, but you are very rarely CPU limited in games and productivity applications are quickly moving to take advantage of heterogeneous computing. If you do a lot of photo or video editing, or any kind of productive rendering at all, the increased memory bandwidth from a fully-loaded quad-channel board could help, too. I dislike 1155 because it no longer has any upgrade path. I bought a Socket 939 CPU at the end of Socket 939's life, and I got shafted on that end. Had I waited and jumped on AM2, I wouldn't have had to upgrade for another two or three years. I thought 8 years on high settings was a good run but 10 would have been an incrediblelife-span for a computer. I suspect I will be able to achieve that with this computer. I do not believe LGA 1155 will be so fortunate. And for what it's worth, I thought $2000 for what I crammed into this machine was pretty damn good. My only regret is that Nvidia didn't release the GTX680 sooner, and not for performance reasons.

Just to get back to the beginning, all of this came about because Warlord wanted (needed) to build a new rig and you guys jumped on him for his choice in platform. I told him X79 in a private conversation because I know he does multi-card and I know he doesn't want to have to upgrade again for awhile. He was really only toying with the idea of going Intel in that conversation and was ready to jump AMD, partly because AMD sockets have longer lives. That would be dandy except I thought that Socket AM3+ was also on its way out (I had missed an announcement in September saying it was extended to cover Steamroller in 2014). So now he has himself a board that still has one more refresh waiting for it and a cheap, 2.4GHz, 60 quid Xeon to run it on for awhile...which is already leaps and bounds better than his old Phenom I computer and is probably faster than a Bulldozer/Piledriver core. I'd say he made out like a bandit.

Now, if Intel changes its mind and gives 1155 one more go-around OR decides not to update LGA 2011 CPUs, then the joke is on me. However, I have to work with the best information that I have.

[=sw=warlord]

Higher than x8/x8 PCI-E 3.0 which is the same amount of bandwidth as x16/x16 PCI-E 2.0 plus better latency, yes. This is assuming you're using IB, although the article and benchmarks I posted show that there's no real difference between PCI-E 2.0 x8/x8 and x16/x16 anyway.
You're suggesting I should settle for pci-e 2.0 x16/x16 when I could have pci-e 3.0 x16/x16?

Anyway, to sum it up lest we do another loop, none of that really matters and we're just nitpicking. I just felt you were overhyping LGA2011 and being slightly unfair about LGA1155 when really, there's nothing wrong with it and it's still the better choice for building a machine that can come close to or match the 2011's perfomance but with a cheaper tag, unless you convince yourself about needing features that you'll likely never use.
To be fair, I feel you're over hyping LGA1155, it has no more cycles and the LGA2011 board I got was far cheaper than any comparable LGA1155 [£84 inc P&P].
Will I need the extra features?
Probably not but having those features is the same as keeping a condom in the wallet, you may not need it but you'd rather have it on you and not need it than need it and not have it.

[Btcc22]

Just up front, this is good conversation. I enjoy this. I hope there isn't any perceived hostility here.


None. :)

[PlasbianX]

Does anyone know of a super cheap laptop that can run the latest openGL drivers? I need one bad for class.

[=sw=warlord]

So I got this built.
Specs are:
Intel i5 3470 @3.2Ghz
Corsair Vengeance dual channel kit [2x8Gb @1600Mhz]
Asus HD6770 1Gb
Asus Sabertooth P67
OCZ ZS 650W
Zalman Z11

All of this was in total ~£200 taking advantage of the currency conversion rates.
As for the MSI I posted about earlier in the thread, the cheapest chip I could find for that board was ~£200 so I went for the Asus board and i5 for cheaper than what it would have cost for the chip alone for the msi..
Oh and the memory cooler there cost me £5 off Ebay.
PSU and HDD as well as DVD-ROM were from an existing build.
http://i1141.photobucket.com/albums/n599/cobby87/100_0380_zps1676ae06.jpg

[Amit]

So you're telling me for $310, you got an Ivy Bridge i5, Sabertooth motherboard, 16GB RAM, HD6770, and Zalman HSF? What about the case and fans?

And judging by the amount of cables lying around, you're not done with the build yet?

[=sw=warlord]

I'm telling you that Ebay and sniping auctions is an excellent way to get decent hardware for a cheap price.
The motherboard was sold as faulty, all it needed was the bios being upgraded and it works perfectly fine.
I already had the PSU from my former system, same with HDD, Ram I got from Amazon during the boxing day sales, same with the case so that was 75% off for the ram and around 55% for the case.
Cables need tidying up but as it stands, the cooling I have is good enough that the RAM is 5*C lower than the room temperature.

[Warsaw]

Time to replace that CPU cooler...

[Amit]

I'm telling you that Ebay and sniping auctions is an excellent way to get decent hardware for a cheap price.
The motherboard was sold as faulty, all it needed was the bios being upgraded and it works perfectly fine.
I already had the PSU from my former system, same with HDD, Ram I got from Amazon during the boxing day sales, same with the case so that was 75% off for the ram and around 55% for the case.
Cables need tidying up but as it stands, the cooling I have is good enough that the RAM is 5*C lower than the room temperature.

eBay? Say no more. And here I was thinking everyone bought from retailers. Hmm, that has me thinking. Off to the eBay for an HD 7850!

[Patrickssj6]

So yeah, I wanted a SSD, so while I was at that, I wanted to cleanup my computer which meant a new case, water cooling would be nice and some more RAM so transformation:
http://i.imagebanana.com/img/vb1hhp0c/Comp1.jpg
http://i.imagebanana.com/img/nt8jlamo/Comp2.jpg

hipster photo effect included

need some more cables and then I am finished

AMD Phenom II X4 955 (not sure if I want to OC yet)
ASUS M4A79XTD EVO
NZXT Kraken X40
NVIDIA GeForce 275 GTX (I wanted the 650 TI but only because of the smaller size and DX11, the performance difference is not that great)
4GB to Corsair LowProfile 8GB
2x 1TB WD Green
1x 3TB WD Green
1x Samsung SSD 840 Pro

[ThePlague]

I had that case too, terrible cable management whenever I owned it, but there was nothing I could do. Now I have a coolermaster HAF 912. Some may think it's ugly, but this thing is fucking amazing at management.

[Patrickssj6]

Yes the old one (Antec 300 I think?) was terrible at cable management. The new case is a Fractal Design R4 (http://cdn.cnetcontent.com/ea/d5/ead56909-0950-475a-aa73-bd26f3f241a8.jpg). I thought I ordered the window version but I received the closed side panel with the ugly side fan intake which I wasn't going to use in the first place. So what I did I exchanged both side panels and they do fit. The other side panel was slick and white, now full of pictures and stuff. Now it looks like a fridge xD

I also tried to OC but after realizing that my Phenom is a C2 stepper, the max I could get out was 3.6GHz at 1,425V. Which sucks a tad because 1,5V was idling at around 46°C.

[ThePlague]

Well i'm using a 925 at stock clocks, but my moderate clock I used to use was 3.5GHz which ran extremely cool (21C gaming) on my hyper 212+ cooling.

You got a great case though, if I had the money it would've been that or the other one everyone is getting.

[Bodzilla]

That cpu fan in your old case is enormous.

i havn't seen a cpu fan like that in 10 years. literally.

[Cortexian]

OK so here's my plan for the next few months, I'll be documenting it in a build on overclock.net or elsewhere but I'll make sure to post links to updates here.


Corsair Obsidian Series 900D Full Tower
Intel Core™ i7-3930K Processor, 3.20GHz w/ 12MB Cache
Corsair Hydro Series H100i Extreme Performance Liquid CPU Cooler
Gigabyte GA-X79-UP4 w/ Dual DDR3 2133, 7.1 Audio, Gigabit Lan, USB 3.0, 4 Way CrossFireX / SLI
Corsair Dominator Platinum 16GB DDR3 1866MHz CL9 Quad Channel Kit (4 x 4GB)
Crucial M4 2.5in SATA III Solid State Drive, 512GB
2x WD 4TB RE Enterprise Hard Drive, SATA III w/ 64MB Cache
LG 14x Internal Blu-Ray Writer
2x EVGA GeForce GTX TITAN 6GB PCI-E w/ Dual DVI, HDMI, DisplayPort
Corsair AXi Series AX1200i Digital Modular Power Supply

I'll be getting the parts in increments, holding off on the motherboard, processor, and RAM until Haswell comes out. However I think all the other stuff is fairly set in stone at this point, though not all coming in the initial build. For example, I'm only getting the SSD to start and the hard drives will come later. Additionally, I'm only going to get one Titan initially and get the second one after living with one for awhile.

After the base build I'll get my own HP ZR30w or Dell U3014 monitor, then the second Titan, then two more of the monitor I chose. Then the hard drives go in and other optional stuff. After that, watercooling (hence the 900D).

[Zeph]

:\

I'd hold off on buying hardware till after Haswell gets benched.
Well, getting the 3014s wouldn't be a bad idea.
I'd say go for a single Titan, but I'm curious as to how nVidia is wanting to refresh them. If there's going to be a 700 series Titan it seems a bit silly. 800 series wouldn't be too bad considering how long it will be till that happens.
But a new CPU and such is a meh idea.
DDR4 is hitting servers with Haswell and that'll be a fucking huge leap when it's pushed to mainstream. Unless you can't play your current games at 1920x1200, hold off on serious hardware investment. This is especially true if all you are planning is to use it for general gaming. It's really painful to see a GTX680/690 roll out "so soon" after dumping so much into a 590 and have it do a considerable percentage better (30-60% higher in some cases). That gap is just going to get bigger when DDR4 rolls in just as DDR2 got raped when DDR3 started getting cheap.

[Cortexian]

I said that I'd be waiting for Haswell to come out and get tested before buying the CPU/mobo/memory.

Getting a Titan for the VRAM obviously, since it's the only Nvidia card with that much so far. I doubt there will be a 6GB VRAM 700 series right off the bat. The higher VRAM is great for the large resolution displays I'm planning on running, that's why I went with the Titan instead of 690's or triple 680's.

Additionally, I've been telling myself that I'll upgrade for almost two years now without ever doing it because I'm always waiting for the next best thing. At some point you need to bite the bullet and just buy your new system. I'm holding off for Haswell but as soon as we see some benches there I'm making a decision.

[InnerGoat]

get 3 titans an 64GB of ram or you're not hardcore

[ThePlague]

and a 1tb SSD, and two CPU's

[DarkHalo003]

I know this is a thread about building computers, but I'm a big laptop person versus a desktop person. I'm not thinking about buying anything new soon, but I would like to know what would be an example of a great gaming laptop? Please, don't be sarcastic with your response because I know it's absolutely tempting.

[Tnnaas]

I'm actually running through my own magical adventure of dealing with laptops. I'd love to help you out more, but seeing as how I know nothing severely helpful, I cannot help out. I've been using Notebook Check (http://www.notebookcheck.net/) as resource to help upgrade my very bland clam-shell. I suggest you check them out.

Realize though that if you are flat-out buying a gaming laptop, it's going to cost a lot.

[Cortexian]

Here's a really helpful hierachy chart for the GPU's:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-graphics-card-review,3107-7.html

As you can see, the 680M is barely as good as a desktop GTX 295, 480, 570, etc...

[Warsaw]

Believe it or not, the Alienware M17x is actually a pretty good value. You get the best performance you can get in a gaming laptop short of buying the monstrous, SLI/Crossfire-capable M18x, you get a full HD screen, you get aluminum construction, you get backlit keys, and you get a phenomenal-for-its-class five hour battery life.

In the grand scheme of high-end laptops, it's also not that expensive if you configure it right. Leave out the RAM and HDD upgrades and buy those third-party. Max the GPU and know when it's not worth it to get a better CPU. Get the BD-player.

Personally, if I had cash to blow on a gaming laptop I'd be looking at the Razer Blade v.2. I know it's neither the most powerful nor the best on battery, but its subtle-but-not-so-subtle character really appeals to me. It's also got a track-pad in one place where I think all laptop track-pads ought to be, and then there is its lack-of-thickness.

[Donut]

So between selling my old card and the free metro last light that comes with some Nvidea 600 series cards, I figured I could get a pretty good deal on an upgrade. I was originally looking to get a 660ti, but its performance gain over the 660 is minimal, especially considering the 100 dollar price gap. The 660 is ~200 dollars. I figure I can sell my 560ti for at least 100 bucks, and free metro is worth 50, so thats not a bad deal.

I noticed something though:
My current card is an EVGA GTX 560ti: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130604
I'm looking at an EVGA GTX 660: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130825

The (E: some of) 600 series cards only have 192-bit memory, while my older 560ti has 256. I googled around, and I can't find a reason for this. Does anybody know why they do that? The posts I've seen online say this memory bandwidth restriction makes the card not worth it.

I value performance over graphics. I will put everything on low to achieve 60fps if I have to. I don't want to do that with Last Light though, and for the price I could get a newer card at, I'm really on the fence about what to do here. Input anybody?

[DarkHalo003]

Believe it or not, the Alienware M17x is actually a pretty good value. You get the best performance you can get in a gaming laptop short of buying the monstrous, SLI/Crossfire-capable M18x, you get a full HD screen, you get aluminum construction, you get backlit keys, and you get a phenomenal-for-its-class five hour battery life.

Yeah, it looks pretty freaking awesome. I love that screen, computer size, and light-up keyboard. On top of that, technology is currently at a point where it's so good that it can run most everything I want it to, so the minimum specs (aside from using NVIDIA GTX over AMD, fuck that) would probably be outright overkill as is. I'm not running anything like Crysis too, so I honestly have no reason to need superpower.

Obviously, price bites. Even in today's market these kinds of Laptops don't fall below $999 (which is what I paid for my undergrad Laptop, which is still pretty good all things considered).

[Zeph]

My current card is an EVGA GTX 560ti: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130604
I'm looking at an EVGA GTX 660: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130825

You're not comparing the same line of cards.
Successor to the GTX 560ti is the GTX 660Ti not the GTX 660.

[Donut]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130809
the 660ti has that same 192bit memory situation going on.

[Zeph]

Hmm, did not know the Ti's were 192-bit. Looks like it's more than made up for by architecture and clocks in the benches, though.
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/547?vs=647

You can compare the 660 vanilla in there as well. Anandtech doesn't have a nice way to compare more than two.

[Donut]

Ooo that site is cool. just eyeballing it looks like the 660 is about a 25% improvement on everything my 560ti does. considering the ~150 i would get back between selling my card and free metro, that seems worth it. is ~50 bucks for a 25% increase in performance worth it at this point? im still on the fence.

[InnerGoat]

600 series are built like midrange parts. The memory runs at a much greater clock speed on the 600 series cards to make up for the narrower memory bus. :)

[Warsaw]

Ooo that site is cool. just eyeballing it looks like the 660 is about a 25% improvement on everything my 560ti does. considering the ~150 i would get back between selling my card and free metro, that seems worth it. is ~50 bucks for a 25% increase in performance worth it at this point? im still on the fence.

You didn't know AnandTech? Now you do. Everybody should know AnandTech, there are very few tech hardware sites as thorough, unbiased, and well-edited. Look at their review of the HTC One to see what I mean. TechReports is comparable, but a little broader in scope. I also don't recall them having that handy-dandy CPU/GPU Bench comparison feature.

[Cortexian]

So I revised my build a little...
http://lancersedge.dyndns.org/stuff/builds/X79-Build-04-25/

Again, the WD drives and second Titan are coming LATER. Initial build will exclude them.

[Warsaw]

I still need one of them fancy 3930Ks. That's my next upgrade...if I don't get irritated into buying a PCI-E sound card first.

[Amit]

Goddamn. Dropping almost $6k on a PC? Haven't seen someone do that in a while. What's it being used for again?

[ThePlague]

Porn and e peen stroking

isn't haswell coming out this year derplancer?

[Zeph]

Goddamn. Dropping almost $6k on a PC? Haven't seen someone do that in a while. What's it being used for again?
He doesn't have his planned 3x3014s in there either. That'll be another 4500 dollars.
I think he'll be using it to watch HD movies.

[InnerGoat]

still not enough memory you're going to run out of ram if you open firefox...

ya a firefox memory leak joke in 2013 you heard right

[Bodzilla]

still not enough memory you're going to run out of ram if you open firefox...

ya a firefox memory leak joke in 2013 you heard rightholey moley

[Cortexian]

Gaming, video editing, and general use.

Also I'm a computer enthusiast so I don't need an excuse. Cost comes out to just over $5,000 at my price.

[Warsaw]

Nearly twice the price for not much of a performance boost over a $2000 computer. Waste, even by enthusiast standards. The i7-3930K is the most valuable component in your build, and spending on 1866 MHz RAM is, by every account I have read, a pointless gesture for Sandy-Bridge-based systems.