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

[Bodzilla]

nah i dont really fuck around with overclocking tbqh. as long as it's not being a bottle neck i leave the CPU alone.
i do have that massive noctura CPU fan, but it'd probably be years before the 4570 would be the bottle neck in a system ya?

with current generational stuff i'm finding i'm wearing them out before games catchup to them.
what do ya reckon?

[InnerGoat]

You'll love it. I just like to overclock things for the fun of it lol.

[Bodzilla]

Puters are for pray gaem.

OC is nerd stuff

(but seriously with current gen CPU's, i'd be looking at the least at a couple of years before the CPU bottle necks the system ya?)

[Donut]

If it's any help, I bought an i5-2500k just about 3 years ago and I've never needed to overclock the thing. I've never seen it be a bottleneck in anything, and if it ever is, I'll just drop 20 bucks on an aftermarket cooler and OC that bitch.

[Cortexian]

Yeah my 2500k is still going strong, really great CPU, but IMO you're always better off buying the current or last generation of CPU/motherboard. Never older than that.

There are certain situations in which cost savings is the primary focus, but performance usually isn't a factor in those situations (ex: If you want to build your own hardware router).

[Bodzilla]

Well i had the i7 860, and i never got close to peaking it.
i really cant see a reason to throw money at something ... cause.

[samnwck]

I've recently built a new computer, and for the first month everything was working great with no hang ups. But as of two days ago I started getting resets, and on the bios screen on startup it said it was due to a power surge and it shut down to protect itself. I opened the case up to look for some source of the issue, no dice. So I plugged everything back in and what do you know, it died once again after about 3 hours in to playing a game. Except this time it seems to have taken out my graphics card as there seems to be no video out at all from it. Does anyone have any clues?

[Cortexian]

Were you overclocking anything?

[samnwck]

No, nothing was overclocked. Here's a parts list

CPU: Intel Core i7-4770K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor ($334.98 @ Amazon)
CPU Cooler: Corsair H100i 77.0 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler ($89.99 @ Amazon)
Thermal Compound: Arctic Cooling MX2 30g Thermal Paste ($21.73 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: Asus Maximus VI Hero ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($198.99 @ Amazon)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($334.98 @ Amazon)
Storage: Samsung 840 EVO 500GB 2.5" Solid State Disk ($249.00 @ Amazon)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($59.24 @ Amazon)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 780 3GB Dual FTW ACX Video Card ($519.99 @ Amazon)
Case: NZXT Phantom 410 (White) ATX Mid Tower Case ($99.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: Corsair RM 750W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($122.99 @ Amazon)
Optical Drive: Asus DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS DVD/CD Writer ($22.94 @ Amazon)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8.1 (OEM) (64-bit)
Monitor: Asus VH236H 23.0" Monitor ($146.58 @ Newegg)
Monitor: Asus VH236H 23.0" Monitor ($146.58 @ Newegg)

And no critical system settings had been changed in the recent days leading up to me ultimately losing video. No programs either besides unigine heaven though I doubt that would have had anything to do with it.

All the video cards outputs have now been checked and no dice with any, the monitor is working though. Onboard video is not working as well. Though I don't know if I would have had to activate something to get that to work but I know all intel cpu's have onboard. So now on top of my gfx card not working(which now I'm not sure if it is or isn't) I'm now thinking it could be my motherboard or possibly CPU?

[Cortexian]

Alright, I'd recommend taking out everything non-essential.

Strip that system down to the basics: CPU, cooler, motherboard, 1x memory DIMM, both your HDD's should be fine to leave in, case, PSU.

Unplug the GPU, Optical drive, your other 3 x memory DIMM's, and your second monitor (just use one from onboard).

Try booting at that point, you may need to enter BIOS to enable the onboard GPU and GPU outputs instead of the discrete GPU. This should happen automatically when you take out the distrete GPU though.

If you can't even get into BIOS because there's no signal, you might be out a motherboard or CPU. Or worst case scenario you might be out a motherboard, CPU, memory, GPU, etc...

If you have another computer available to you that has similar componenets (ex: same socket motherboard, DDR3 memory, PCI-E motherboard, etc) then you can try all of the parts you have in that known-good system one by one to weed out what broke.