Basic Gaming build - with learning curve

nozzferrahhtoo

Sorry for long post, and the newbieish questions but I guess its better than those who post one liners like "Whats the best computer I can make for €1000".

I was going to make a build last year, and was overly enthusiastically speccing the latest in CPUs and Extreme mother boards up to €1500 before losing interest.

I lost interest when I realised that my 7 year old Dimension 9150 (2gRam, 200GB HD, 3.2 CPU, HD 4350 graphics) is still running all the games I actually like to play. Mainly cause I do not play FP shooters which are intensive, but am into my Bioware Games, Sam N Max games. Assassains Creed2 is the most recent game running on it.

I dipped into Fear 1 and 2 and Bioshock and my computer was fine. Not bad for a 7 ish year old investment.

This week Dragon Age 2 is the first game to show my computers age. Win 7 is required to go over “medium” graphics settings due to DirectX and I rather suspect if I install WIN 7 on this old PC it will continue to work find for another few years running all the games I like (Mass Effect 3 will be my likely next purchase).

Even the cheap HD 4350 has been happily running Cryengine on full and dealing with Graphics on Project Entropia for example which I played for awhile before abandoning it out of sheer boredom. It tested my graphics well though with very, very, occasional froze as the GPU caught up. Mostly however I was running through their bizarrely colored landscapes with no issue.

So this time I do not NEED a build but I WANT to build for the learning experience. I have not only never done it but I have never overclocked a CPU, linked graphics cards or set up RAID before. I want to do them all. Swapping in and out basic components is all I have ever done.

So basically I want a cheap build that gives me a learning experience and is superior enough to the D9150 to make it worth building and to keep me in Mass Effect 3 later this year. Since I feel there is a couple years left in the old 9150 yet if I were not to be scrapping it... I imagine that any new build superior to it will last me some time.

Money is not an issue though as I was going to fork out €1500 this time last year and have more saved now… but at the same time I am not going to spend anything unjustified just to have fancy components and would be just as happy with a €500 build if it came in sufficiently superior to my current system.

So here is my thinking and questions and requirements for comment / response / advice / critique from the gurus here:

1) HD 4350 is running fine. But I want to learn how to link cards. So will get another HD 4350 for €35. What rare and little stress my games have put the HD 4350 under will likely be ironed out by this extra power.

2) I would like to overclock a bit, just to learn how. I am reading Intel i5-2500k is the best for this for both results and beginners?

3) A MotherBoard with decent LEDs and/or beeps for helping a beginner like me diagnose problems would be nice as well. I am also lost in the world of understanding the different chipsets. B65, B65 (B3), C206, H61, H61 (B3)... this is all alien to me right now. It would of course have to be compatible with my 2 Graphics card wish, and anything else listed here.

4) I am reading bigger lower latency but “slower mhz” RAM is better than less of the “faster” memory. So 8GB of CL7-8-7-24 (DDR3-1600) is a better investment than things like 6GB of CL9 DDR3-2200). Anyway arent 1155 boards only really happily compatible with up to DDR3-1333? Not sure. "GeIL" are the only CL6 I am seeing at that speed on my local webshop are they good or bad?

5) My Dimension 9150 has a 5 way card reader, a CD writer AND a DVD writer and I have never used any of them except for the one day I wiped XP and put in XP64. Therefore my new build will have NO DRIVES. Don’t want them, don’t want to listen to them, don’t want to waste heat and power on them. Don’t want their wires clogging the inside of my box. I will likely connect one just long enough to install WIN 7 and then ditch it.

6) I will go with a good version of Win 7 and want to run both RAID for basic storage and basic installs etc, but will spend a little extra on a fairly decent SS disk for the OS/boot etc. with good read/write speeds on it.

7) Due to lack of drives case does not need to be massive, but I am fairly open here on appearance and size. Good cooling would be the most important aspect, noise reduction next, and after that size and appearance is ok as long as it is not in any way garish. The location of the case will be such that fans on all sides would be unobstructed, so a case with lots of fans and maybe one side as an open grill would be close to perfect. The contents of the case will be in my mind:

a. The two small graphics cards but with a view to larger ones in future.
b. SS disk and RAID drives.
c. Good cooling and fans.
d. Wireless internal network card (hate USB sticks)
e. Have lots of Cisco equipment for doing CCNP/CCIE so need to add a card for telnet port etc.
f. No drives, just USB access.
g. Decent power unit.

8) Any thing else fun to do that would involve a bit of learning, though nothing too steep or risky.

9) I know Win 7 can switch some processing to the GPU when it sees the chance. Is the HD 4350 compatible with that. Not important, just curious.

Comments / Suggestions / Answers? Given my low requirements is there any advantage at all at looking at smaller cases, cube cases, micro motherboards or any of that?

jme2010

I seriously doubt your hd 4350 runs the cryengine on "full".

What monitor do you have? An old CRT? you'd still only get a choppy mess of 20fps or less.

Any new fps game will kill your card and putting a 4350 in xfire is laughable. Get a DX11 card with a minimum of 1GB of ram for playing at usefull resolutions.

Sorry for being blunt, but I used to thinkthe same of putting my 8800 in sli, just non-sense when the card was already out dated by 4-5 years.

But builing your own pc is very rewarding, ive built 4 so far each one gets a new generation of something or other. Socket 754 -> AM2 etc.

The i5 2500k seems to be red hot and everybody is ordering it. Make sure you choose an LGA1155 (B3) motherboard. And a P67 chipset if you plan on overclocking not a H67 one.

nozzferrahhtoo

jme2010 wrote: »

I seriously doubt your hd 4350 runs the cryengine on "full". Any new fps game will kill your card

I am able to play Entropia on all full settings yes, using the Dell flat screen monitor that came with my computer at the time... dont have model number to hand as I am in work.

And also I do not play "FPS" games as I said except the times I dipped into Bioshock and FEAR for a little while so I am not worried about their performance. The games I aim for are the Bioware kind of games, and the TellTale kind. I have Assassains Creed 2 and Dragon Age 2 now and I dont forsee another purchase until Mass Effect 3.

Jonny7

Gah.. a 4350? and no don't crossfire it!! that is not a gaming card, and if you think its 'okay' you are going to be absolutely blown away when you get a normal gaming graphics card

anyway...


The Intel 2500K is such a good chip at the moment that its hard to spec anything else - if you want the best without paying through the nose, then base a system on that - around 800 euros

Likewise, in your case, you could drop the budget to 600 euros and still get a great little machine with an AMD Quad core and a graphics card - will run games about 4 or 5 times faster than your current thing

seyeM

The HD4350 is a weak card that's just a step above integrated graphics - see here http://www.anandtech.com/show/2630/4
I would think you'd need to be playing in near the lowest resolution and detail settings to get playable framerates in most recent games.

You said you have your sights set on having up a multi GPU setup, but for your needs i would strongly recommend a single more powerful graphics card. 4350s in crossfire will still offer pretty poor performance, 2 weaker cards in crossfire generally draw more power then an equivalent single GPU and you will be dependant on good drivers for performance.

A 6850 offers a nice price/performance ratio without breaking the bank, you could even add another at some later date if you're still determined to get crossfire :pac:

This is a 2500k, with one ATI 6850, a motherboard capable of adding another graphics card sometime down the line, 2x1TB HDD, 1x60GB SSD, a good case + CPU cooler and a modular PSU powerful enough to allow the adding of another graphics card. The wireless card I'll leave to you to choose.


Intel Core i5-2500K Box, LGA1155

MSI P67A-GD55 (B3), Intel P67, ATX, DDR3

4GB Kit Mach Xtreme Technology Copper DDR3-1333, CL9

Thermaltake Toughpower XT 775W

Powercolor HD6850 1024MB Dual-DVI/HD1M2I5

2x Samsung SpinPoint F3 1000GB, SATA II (HD103SJ)

OCZ SSD 60GB SATA 2,5' Vertex 2 Extended

Cooler Master HAF 912 schwarz, ohne Netzteil

Corsair A70 (Sockel AM2/AM2+/AM3/775/1156/1366)

Arctic Cooling Wärmeleitpaste MX-2 Tube 4g

LogiLink SATA 0.3m Kabel mit Sicherungslasche

LG GH22NS50 bare schwarz

Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit SB-Version Englisch

I left in a DVD drive, because one of them with 2 small sata connectors isn't that intrusive, and they really can come in handy when installing and backing up stuff. Comes in at €1000 before the network card and should really last like your last one.

nozzferrahhtoo

Thanks thats some really good and hard work you just put in. I will read it and all the links closely after this post.

Really the only reason I am aiming for Crossfire is simply because I have never done it before. Remember there are two main targets for my build that are equally important:

1) Is to get something thats better than my computer now... but not much better as to be honest it is serving most of the needs I have already and I am currently happily playing Assassains Creed 2 on it. Main thing I keep thinking is that I do not actually NEED a better computer. I just WANT to build one.

2) To force me to do things I have never done before, and so learn how... which includes linking Graphics Cards.

sink

A HD 4350 is about the same power as integrated graphics. It's is certainly not a gaming card. I would not recommend purchasing another one.

There is not much to putting two cards in one system, it fairly simple and straight forward if you already know of to put one card in. I would only go for a Crossfire or SLi system if you want to build a top end gaming machine, otherwise you can get a lower power, lower heat, lower noise single graphics card which preforms the same or better for the same or less money. Basically it makes no sense doing it for the sake of it. It only really becomes a viable option around the GTX 560/HD 6950 which will set you back over €200 each. In that performance range you would be looking to power games at greater than HD resolution, so something like a 2560x1600 monitor or a multi monitor setup.

As other people have mentioned the Intel i5-2500k is the best bang for your buck at the moment and it's a great overclocker. With a good aftermarket cooler and a well ventilated case you can push this baby towards 5 GHZ.

As far a motherboards go, the most important thing to get right it the socket. Different CPU architectures use different socket types with the pins that connect the CPU to the motherboard in different arrangements. The latest line of Intel CPU's use Socket LGA1155, older lines use LGA1156 and LGA1366 and even older lines use LGA775. The latest AMD CPU's use socket AM3 and older ones use socket AM2+/AM2.

Second most important thing to get right is the chipset. Each socket type will normally have several different chipsets that motherboards can use, they usually designed either by Intel, AMD or Nvidia and are then manufactured under licence by the likes of Asus, MSI, Gigabyte etc, and incorporated into their own boards. Each chipset will support different features on the motherboard, e.g. the two chipsets currently available for LGA1155 board are P67 and H67, P67 allows you to overclock the CPU while H67 allows you to use intel integrated graphics. All P67 & H67 chipsets were recalled earlier in the year due to a design fault causing the SATA performance to degrade over time, they were re-released with a slightly modified architecture known as (B3). There will be more chipsets for LGA1155 released in the future.

Third and fourth most important things to look for when selecting a motherboard is the number of expansion slots such as PCI-e and PCI lanes, Crossfire & SLi support, USB3 & SATA6 ports etc, and the overall performance of the board. Look out for benchmarks on hardware site such as http://www.tomshardware.co.uk, http://www.anandtech.com/ and http://www.bit-tech.net/, but usually boards with the same chipset differ only very slightly on performance.

Almost all motherboards will have there own code system of beeps and led's for notifying you of a problem, it's not something to worry about when purchasing a board.

Lower latency memory is very slightly better, but the performance difference is minuscule, if there is not much difference in price it can be worth going for the lower latency memory but it's not something worth paying that much more for. Faster memory used to be important when overclocking older CPU's because you would modify the bus speeds that regulate both the CPU and RAM at the same time and so faster RAM meant higher bus speed which meant higher CPU clock speeds. But on the latest generation of Intel CPU's you don't have to touch the bus speed and so faster memory has very little overall effect.

There are a few different levels of RAID, but the two you would encounter in desktops are mainly RAID 0 and RAID 1. RAID 0 performs what is known as striping, it turns two or more drives in to one virtual drive combing their capacity and giving a speed boost. The danger is that you also combine their tendency to drop dead, if one hard drive in a RAID 0 array dies all the information in the array dies with it. Before the dawn of SSD's it was the only way to significantly improve the read/write performance of your PC but a single SSD far outperforms HDD's in RAID 0.

RAID 1 performs what is known as mirroring. It basically duplicates all data across multiple drives, giving you redundancy if one fails. It's useful for storing very important files that you really do not want to loose. It's being replaced these days by cloud storage for very important files (i.e, internet storage). But if cloud storage is too expensive or not fast enough RAID 1 still has it's uses.

You can put SSD's in a RAID but only if you are made of money.

nozzferrahhtoo

Ok thanks guys, all this stuff is gold. I knew a good bit of what you just said there Sink especially about the sockets, but a lot of it new too, so all is good. I have gone cross eyed reading Toms Hardware in the last week too before I made this thread.

I am now taking this one component at a time. So far I have fixed on the 2500k CPU and the “HAF 912 plus” case. I had been looking at the HAF 932 anyway when I was considering the i7-960 build last year so the 912 seems to be enough to me!

Now looking at the Motherboard next before anything else. seyeM recommends the MSI P67A GD 55. This I can get for €130 on the site I use here in Germany. Within the same price range for B3/P67 (not more than + 20€) are the following boards… are there any significant advantaged of any of them in terms of things like speed, RAID support or Manufacturer? I have read on Toms Hardware that MSI tend to skimp on quality in order to win price wars?

ASRock P67 Extreme4
Gigabyte GA-P67A-UD3P-B3
ASUS P8P67 Pro Rev 3.0
MSI P67A-GD65, P67 (B3)
ASUS Sabertooth P67 Rev 3.0

"ASRock’s P67 Extreme4 had the highest memory overclock and second-best efficiency" according to Toms Hardware in a test of 9 P67 boards though they seem to have erred more towards Gigabytes P67A-UD4 overall but that is closer to €162. Meanwhile for overclocking the CPU they gave the best mark to the ASUS P8P67

I read the ASUS also has an inbuilt bluetooth adapter which is cute.

seyeM

What sink says about crossfire above is exactly right and well phrased. Anything below a dual GTX 460/ ATI 5770 setup really isn't worth it IMO.

If you percieve the HD4350's performance as acceptable in these recent games, I urge you to go for the €140 ATI 6850. The improvement in FPS/smoothness and the extra graphical detail it will allow really will offer a much better experience.

Plus given you're lookng for a certain amount of future proofing, games are only going to get more hardware intensive as time passes


edit to add*

For the P67 motherboards, you should get the B3 revision ones. The initial release had a percentage of boards that suffered problems with the SATA ports over time - the B3 revision fixed this.

nozzferrahhtoo

Thanks again, you have me mostly convinced on the GPU options, I am going to take that on board. Will check a few toms hardware sites to compare the 6850 to the cards above and below it but it sounds like the best Money/performance option to me too from what little I have read in the last hour.

Out of curiosity why Powercolor? The cheapest I see on my local sites here in Germany are Gigabyte at €129, the Powercolour is €143, and there is a "dual fan" option for €145 from "XFX". Is dual fan at all desirable or just gimmicky?

Right now the MOBO is my focus. Do you see any advantages/disadvantages of the other similarly priced 5 boards listed above compared to the one you yourself just recommended? The ASUS is sounding better for over clocking, USB3 support and the cute little bluetooth thing, but is not sounding the hottest in terms of RAID support.

sink

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

Ok thanks guys, all this stuff is gold. I knew a good bit of what you just said there Sink especially about the sockets, but a lot of it new too, so all is good. I have gone cross eyed reading Toms Hardware in the last week too before I made this thread.

I am now taking this one component at a time. So far I have fixed on the 2500k CPU and the “HAF 912 plus” case. I had been looking at the HAF 932 anyway when I was considering the i7-960 build last year so the 912 seems to be enough to me!

Now looking at the Motherboard next before anything else. seyeM recommends the MSI P67A GD 55. This I can get for €130 on the site I use here in Germany. Within the same price range for B3/P67 (not more than + 20€) are the following boards… are there any significant advantaged of any of them in terms of things like speed, RAID support or Manufacturer? I have read on Toms Hardware that MSI tend to skimp on quality in order to win price wars?

ASRock P67 Extreme4
Gigabyte GA-P67A-UD3P-B3
ASUS P8P67 Pro Rev 3.0
MSI P67A-GD65, P67 (B3)
ASUS Sabertooth P67 Rev 3.0

"ASRock’s P67 Extreme4 had the highest memory overclock and second-best efficiency" according to Toms Hardware in a test of 9 P67 boards though they seem to have erred more towards Gigabytes P67A-UD4 overall but that is closer to €162. Meanwhile for overclocking the CPU they gave the best mark to the ASUS P8P67

I read the ASUS also has an inbuilt bluetooth adapter which is cute.

I just bought a MSI P67A GD 55 (B3), still waiting for it to arrive. The reason I went for it was basically they had it in stock and I didn't need the extra features of the MSI P67A-GD65 (B3) (two more SATA6 ports, two eSATA ports and a 3.5" front bay with two USB3 ports).

I've had MSI boards in the past and I've been very pleased with them. I also keep hearing about problems with Asus P67 boards.

nozzferrahhtoo

Ok thanks for that too! This is gold as I said.

Last question for awhile:

On the GPU, looking around the price range I see these 4 cards are very closely priced. Is there a significant advantage to the 6870 at all at only €10? Also Premium Edition of the card runs at 1050MHz while PCS+ at 1100MHz with a 4 cent difference between them! Whats the difference really?

€135 PowerColor Radeon HD 6850
€143 PowerColor Radeon HD 6850 PCS+
€143 PowerColor Radeon HD 6850 Premium Edition
€153 PowerColor Radeon HD 6870 PCS+
€159 PowerColor Radeon HD 6870

seyeM

6870 is more powerful (1120 stream processors vs the 6850's 980), so for a small amount extra I would definitely go for the 6870. Dont necessarily stick to Powercolour, just go for the cheapest 6870. If they have custom coolers, try googling a review of the card to check how the temperatures and fan noise compares to the stock cooler.

I'd stay away from factory overclocked units unless they are equal or very close in price to stock ones, or offer superior coolers etc. Reason being that you can overclock the normal graphics cards youself for free, just maybe not quite to the same level.

sink

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

Ok thanks for that too! This is gold as I said.

Last question for awhile:

On the GPU, looking around the price range I see these 4 cards are very closely priced. Is there a significant advantage to the 6870 at all at only €10? Also Premium Edition of the card runs at 1050MHz while PCS+ at 1100MHz with a 4 cent difference between them! Whats the difference really?

€135 PowerColor Radeon HD 6850
€143 PowerColor Radeon HD 6850 PCS+
€143 PowerColor Radeon HD 6850 Premium Edition
€153 PowerColor Radeon HD 6870 PCS+
€159 PowerColor Radeon HD 6870

The core engine speeds and memory speeds are overclocked in the Premium Edition and even higher in the PCS+ edition. The HD 6870 is a ~10% faster than the HD 6850 in general. The best value there is definitely the HD 6870 PCS+ as it's cheaper the the stock and it will be a good deal faster.

nozzferrahhtoo

Well then it looks like unless there are any more comments or suggestions I am essentially going to go with almost exactly the build from seyeM.

Changes are to get the 6870 PCS + as the tiny price increase sounds worth it. I also will get the Black Diamond version of the RAM as it is only €5 more and is CL7 rather than CL9. Also the 875W version of the power unit is around 20 euro more, not a big step up.
I cant find corsair CPU fans on my local website so is the Cooler Master H212 plus ok?
My build and local prices therefore are:

CPU: Intel i5-2500K @ €175
Mobo: MSI P67A-GD55 (B3) @ €130
RAM: 4GB Mach Xtreme Technology Black Diamond @ €42
Power: Thermaltake ToughPower XT 875W @€;113
GPU: PowerColor Radeon HD 6870 PCS+ @€;153
HDD: 2x Samsung Spinpoint F3 1000GB, SATA II @€;83
SS: OCZ Vertex 2 60GB @ €94
Case: Cooler Master HAF 912 PLUS black. @€;67
Fan: Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus @€;22
Total: €879 before software.

nozzferrahhtoo

I am seeing on another thread that I MIGHT hit trouble with space on the Motherboard I am looking for... in terms of the CPU fan impinging on the space for the RAM slots.

Is this a concern for me at all, or should I be ok?

PS I did find the Corsair A70 on my site after all when I searched. I missed it because for some reason under CPU coolers the Corsair Manufacturer filter is absent so although the products are there, they can not be found with standard filter.

sink

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

I am seeing on another thread that I MIGHT hit trouble with space on the Motherboard I am looking for... in terms of the CPU fan impinging on the space for the RAM slots.

Is this a concern for me at all, or should I be ok?

PS I did find the Corsair A70 on my site after all when I searched. I missed it because for some reason under CPU coolers the Corsair Manufacturer filter is absent so although the products are there, they can not be found with standard filter.

You should be all right as that ram doesn't have massive heat spreader. Although I haven't heard much of Mach Xtreme Technology before, I prefer to stick to well known brands such as Corsair or Crucial.

seyeM

Think it's a problem on all P67 boards, the Ram slots are close to the CPU socket. Make sure you stick to standard height RAM, the stuff with tall heat spreaders could get in the way of a CPU cooler. If worst comes to worst you can install it in slots 2 + 4.

I've read that the P67 motherboards and CPUs prefer RAM to be 1.5 volts. I'm guessing to run your chosen ram at 1333 CL7 will take more then that. My advice to you there would be to pick the cheapest 2x2gb RAM from a reliable manufacturer, that's 1.5V and does not have tall heat spreaders. It will most likely be 1333 CL9, but that is fine. Something like this or this

I'd also stick with the 212+ for your CPU cooler, it performs very well for the price, and is not too big or heavy. The A70 with 2 fans I'd imagine is a fair bit bulkier and heavier.

nozzferrahhtoo

Kewl thanks for that. I guess there is no specific advantage to switching to a cooler master PSU since I am getting their case and fan?

Out of curiosity following on from "sink" above.. is there a reason you go for this slightly less known brand of RAM? Personal good experience with it or so on?

sink

Kingston are without a doubt the biggest manufacturers of RAM in the world. They however mainly make generic, non-performance RAM for business machines and the like. Mushkin have a been around a while too.

seyeM

No need to match case and PSU brands.

Personally no, I haven't used Mach Extreme before, just Crucial and Corsair. My original choice was based on:

-1.5v
-cheap
-1333Mhz or more
-heat spreader doesn't rise above ram
-lifetime warranty

I certainly haven't heard anything bad about them, but if you can find Corsair/Crucial/GSkill etc that fits the above by all means go with it. The Mushkin kit here also meets these at a lower price.

nozzferrahhtoo

Having dropped the ball on this AGAIN I now have the credit card packed, the weekend free, and the itch to start ordering. So last chance all to spot something wrong, missing or dodgy with my build that I need to be wary of or change before I go booking it either late tonight or early tomorrow.

Thanks for the help all. I have thanked all the posts. I took most things on board... posted the build on toms hardware and took more things from there on board... and here is the finished build:

PART		Description				PRICE	% Of Total		Best Supplier

CPU		Intel Core i5-2500K, 4x 3.30GHz		166,5	17,16547934		titoco.de
MOBO		MSI P67A-GD65, P67 (B3)			136,89	14,11280761		K&M ELEK
CASE		Cooler Master HAF912 Plus schwarz 	67,76	6,985783065		Planet4one
Graphics	PowerColor Radeon HD 6870 PCS+		155,4	16,02111406		CSSC Computer Service
Memory		Mach Xtreme Black Diamond 8GB CL7	78,4	8,082724208		E-Bug
HDD		Samsung Spinpoint F3 1000GB, SATA II	40,81	4,207346619		memshop.de
HDD		OCZ Vertex 2 60GB, 2.5", SATA II 	89,73	9,250801571		memshop.de
PSU		XFX Black Edition 850W ATX 2.3 		107,52	11,08487891		Mindfactory
Cooling		Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus		21,78	2,245430271		VV-Computer
Paste		Arctic Cooling MX-4, 4g Spritze		3,31	0,341247667		CSV-Direct.de
OS		Microsoft: Windows 7 Professional 64Bit	89,25	9,201315505		Metzinger-Hanssen GmbH
Wireless	ZyXEL NWD-270N, 150Mbps (MIMO), USB 2 	12,62	1,301071167		Mindfactory

Total cost: €969,97

seyeM

You might want to look at getting an OCZ Agility 3 60 GB SSD instead, they come in @ around €110, and have superior read/write speeds (550/500 MB/s).

Also aim for 1.5v ram with low heat spreaders, an 8GB Mushkin Silverline Stilleto kit would do the job, and probably at less cost.

Monotype

Definitely avoid the vertex 2 - it's only 55GB, making it one of the worst choices in its range. Better off withe C300/M4/Vertex 3.

That's a very powerful PSU - you mentioned earlier something about two GPUs, what's the plan now?

nozzferrahhtoo

Plan is to go with one for now, I will get a second one later should the mood take me. I was generally talked out of bothering with getting two, so I thought I would keep it as an open question.

darego

seyeM wrote: »

No need to match case and PSU brands.

Personally no, I haven't used Mach Extreme before, just Crucial and Corsair. My original choice was based on:

-1.5v
-cheap
-1333Mhz or more
-heat spreader doesn't rise above ram
-lifetime warranty

I certainly haven't heard anything bad about them, but if you can find Corsair/Crucial/GSkill etc that fits the above by all means go with it. The Mushkin kit here also meets these at a lower price.

damn i didn't know about that. i ordered my rig on friday with
http://www2.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=44321&agid=1193

will it be a problem with this mobo do you think?
http://www2.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=43134&agid=1601

also got this cpu cooler which looks large enough
http://www2.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=25731&agid=669

massy086

darego wrote: »

damn i didn't know about that. i ordered my rig on friday with
http://www2.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=44321&agid=1193

will it be a problem with this mobo do you think?
http://www2.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=43134&agid=1601

also got this cpu cooler which looks large enough
http://www2.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=25731&agid=669

i have that ram you should be fine

Monotype

The heatspreaders are actually not as big as they look there and they do fit in with the mugen 2 alright.

darego

good stuff, thanks guys

nozzferrahhtoo

Just heard from by better half that most of my parts arrived this morning. Going to be a busy night when I get home.

nozzferrahhtoo

Wouldnt you know it, everything is now delivered except the wireless usb and.... wait for it.... the CPU paste.

So my entire build experience is being held up by a little €3.99 bottle of MX-4.

Oh the injustice.

Jonny7

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

Wouldnt you know it, everything is now delivered except the wireless usb and.... wait for it.... the CPU paste.

So my entire build experience is being held up by a little €3.99 bottle of MX-4.

Oh the injustice.

check the bottom of the cpu heatsink.. some stock coollers already have a layer of paste on them

nozzferrahhtoo

This is true but I also purchased what I was told was a very good one. Is there much difference between the stock stuff and the stuff I bought in terms of over clocking and the like. Is it best to hold off until the better grade material is in there before I mess with such things?

nozzferrahhtoo

Newbie questions below....

So far so good. The cooler master case is a joy to work with. Tool less bays for the HDDs and the SDD. So all drives are mounted, CPU is in, RAM in the correct slot population etc.

Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus CPU cooler was a difficult one to install for a newbie but I got there in the end. For anyone who gets it, it is designed specifically for 3 types of intel socket and 2 AMD types. Small moveable parts allow you to set which socket. 1155 support is stickered on to the box as an afterthought and the instructions do not tell you which is for 1155 so you work this out yourself in the end. It came with its own paste though, so it did not matter than the CPU did not have any. Some helpful videos on you tube demonstrating the install too.

XFX Black Edition 850W ATX 2.3 is indeed a beast, but looks great, fits great and the semi modular design means you have the mainboard connectors and some PCI-E connectors already set, then it is optional from there on.

Newbie questions...

Still a complete newbie though so have a couple of most likely horrifically obvious questions...

1) Never used SATA before. Ever. So new to this and to the difference between SATA and Sata II. my board has 8 SATA ports. 4 of them at speed 3/s and 4 at 6/s. I gather the HDDs I got are SATA so they go into the 3/s. The SSD is SATA 2 so that goes into one of the 6/s? The MOBO came with 4 Sata cables (E322903 Style 2725 80oC 30V 6G 26AWG Dingsheng) which I assume I can use on all 3 drives??? Same with SATA power connectors, there is no difference between I and II?

2) Power. The semi modular PSU has the 24 pin connection my Mobo needs already fixed. It also has 2 PCI-E already fixed. After this there are 2 more connectors... one terminating in an 8 pin head... the other in a 6 pin head with a 2 pin optional extra hanging off it too. I assume the 8 pin head is the one I need to put into the ATX 8pin CPU power port on the MOBO?

3) The Cooler Master Case comes with 2 fans installed, back top and front bottom. Not entirely clear how to install these. Do they need to go to the MOBO somehow or not? The wires coming off them look like normal power wires, but terminate in 1 4 pin male and 1 4 pin female style connectors. Do I need both? Is it optional?

game4it70

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

Newbie questions...

Still a complete newbie though so have a couple of most likely horrifically obvious questions...

1) Never used SATA before. Ever. So new to this and to the difference between SATA and Sata II. my board has 8 SATA ports. 4 of them at speed 3/s and 4 at 6/s. I gather the HDDs I got are SATA so they go into the 3/s. The SSD is SATA 2 so that goes into one of the 6/s? The MOBO came with 4 Sata cables (E322903 Style 2725 80oC 30V 6G 26AWG Dingsheng) which I assume I can use on all 3 drives??? Same with SATA power connectors, there is no difference between I and II?

2) Power. The semi modular PSU has the 24 pin connection my Mobo needs already fixed. It also has 2 PCI-E already fixed. After this there are 2 more connectors... one terminating in an 8 pin head... the other in a 6 pin head with a 2 pin optional extra hanging off it too. I assume the 8 pin head is the one I need to put into the ATX 8pin CPU power port on the MOBO?

3) The Cooler Master Case comes with 2 fans installed, back top and front bottom. Not entirely clear how to install these. Do they need to go to the MOBO somehow or not? The wires coming off them look like normal power wires, but terminate in 1 4 pin male and 1 4 pin female style connectors. Do I need both? Is it optional?

1.
All the modern sata drives are backwards compatible so in theory you should just be able to connect to either port on board but see no gains if you use sata 6 (not 100% on this though)
As for the cable and power there fine to use.

2.
The 2xPCI-E are for gpus.These would normally be 8pin (6+2)
The 8Pin EPS-12v is right to use on mobo.

3.
If the fans have a small 3pin with an adapter for a bigger 4pin molex you can use either.
Your mobo will be have 3pin headers and should come with some sort of software or bios options to control speed.
If you use the bigger 4pin straight to psu they will run at full rpms.

nozzferrahhtoo

Thanks for that. Clears up 95% of my questions. I still have the one more though...

Youre right 3pin with an adapter for a bigger 4pin molex is what the two fans have. The thing is that there is an adaptor to TWO bigger 4pins on each. It goes from the small 3pin to 2 4 pins. One 4 is male. One is female. Does it matter at all which I use? I assume Im not expected to use both or the case will become a helicopter?

game4it70

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

Thanks for that. Clears up 95% of my questions. I still have the one more though...

Youre right 3pin with an adapter for a bigger 4pin molex is what the two fans have. The thing is that there is an adaptor to TWO bigger 4pins on each. It goes from the small 3pin to 2 4 pins. One 4 is male. One is female. Does it matter at all which I use? I assume Im not expected to use both or the case will become a helicopter?

Your welcome.One part of it is what you use to power the fan and the other part is for letting the power pass through if you where daisy-chaining cables together.If you wanted to run a few thing off one cable from psu these fan connections would let you.
So you can use just one (female) that fits to the power cable (male) from psu.

nozzferrahhtoo

Success so far. Computer all linked up, from the hard disks up to the power buttons and led's. Turned on fine. Played with the BIOS. Ran all the memory tests and the like that the Bios offers and everything passed.

So just have to wait for my copy of Win 7 to install now and I am done.

The only 2 things giving me trouble are:

1) There is a front panel sound on the case which I have connected to the mobo. The connection into the mobo has another connection coming off it which I THINK has something to do with microphones. The connection is AC'97. There is nowhere to put this in my MOBO. Is this an issue?

2) The mobo comes with 2 usb3 ports on a pseudo expansion slot card. I have fitted this but the connection into the USB3 support port on the mobo... simply wont fit. I have forced it as hard as I dare, but it simply does not appear to go. Is this unusual or have people have this issue before?

game4it70

You just use one of the front panel audio connections.The HD audio one i would use as i think the ac97 one is for older tech.

As for the usb3 i ant got a clue as not used them before

seyeM

Did you put in the IO shield before the motherboard?

The rear IO panel should already have USB3 connections, so unless you're planning on using loads of them, the expansion card isn't necessary.

nozzferrahhtoo

seyeM wrote: »

The rear IO panel should already have USB3 connections, so unless you're planning on using loads of them, the expansion card isn't necessary.

Yea I just noticed that USB3 about 10 minutes before you posted this and it is probably more than enough. So I will probably just stick the expansion card in a drawer or on ebay or some such.

nozzferrahhtoo

Yay, installed Win 7 64 bit prof last night and it worked a dream. Copied it onto a USB stick to install it from there (since I have a build without optical drives) and from the moment I hit the power button until the moment win7 was installed with all drivers updates from Windows Update... was less than 15 minutes. Including setups, and drive formatting.

Its a lovely beat of a machine, and despite the 2 built in case fans, the large CPU fan, and the fan on the PCS+ video card... it hardly makes a noise at all. I have a new respect for all things "coolermaster" now.

Thanks for the help all, I look forward to putting the machine through its paces with gaming and more.

nozzferrahhtoo

Unusually the rig just wont turn on today.

No warning lights, no beeps, nothing, it just wont turn on suddenly.

what does happen is for half a second when you put the power on the first time the fan in the PSU power moves, so it is like it is just about to start up everything else. Then it stops. At least this proves its not a problem with the power button.

How to diagnose from there however is unclear.

Kirby

Sounds like a power issue to me.

First thing I would try is plugging out the case fans from the psu and try turning on again.

Failing that try booting up with with just the mobo, cpu and one stick of ram. Everything else should be plugged out from the psu. What happens then?

Also, when you plug the PC in, is there any blue or yellow lights lighting up on your motherboard itself or is it completely blank?

If it is, I would wager your psu is fried.

nozzferrahhtoo

Upon closer inspection it does indeed appear the problem is with the Graphics Card.

When the problem happened I had poor light, but on opening the case today in the light I can see that the card has burnt out or something. At the point on the circuit board, just behind where the Monitor connects from the outside, has formed a white partially dust smudge that I imagine was from melting.

The question now, as I repackage it and send it back and thank my luck that I live in a country like Germany with a... very strongly in favour of the customer.... returns policy.... what happened and how can I prevent the replacement from ending in the same fate. I was not even doing anything in ANY way intensive on the computer the day it happened. Emails, boards.ie.... no gaming or anything of this sort.

nozzferrahhtoo

Some pictures of the affected area.

nozzferrahhtoo

Since the last post this rig has been operating wonderfully. No more issues since they replaced (for free including all postage in both directions) the damaged Graphics Card. In the end I realized it was my fault the graphics card had been damaged. I left it where rain water of all things got to it! But thankfully they asked no questions and made a straight swap.

I have a second PC running for 8 years or so now. A Dell dimension 9100 which I specced quite high at the time. When I built the PC above however I donated this PC to my better half. She uses little more than You Tube, Office, Windows XP 64 bit, the latest Adobe readers and players, and some translation software. No heavy requirements for graphics of sound.

The PC is finally giving trouble however. Lots of Blue Screens happening. Most often while using anything Adobe related like You tube or Reader. My best theory is that some recent update is incompatible with some hardware. Nothing goes in the event logs.

So I am thinking of a new PC for her. As low budget and Power consuming as possible but at the same time something that will go a few years without slowing down under various Windows 7, Adobe, and MS office updates!

My three options are:

1) Ditch the PC and buy a decent enough Netbook and cradle. Allow her to use that on the move but dock it when she wants monitor and I/O devices. We already have an older EEEPC netbook and are happy enough with it so something along those lines but a newer model would be tempting. What are good competitors in terms of price and power for the EEEPC?

2) Build a new PC from scratch. Here I would want to keep power consumption and costs low. I would also like to reduce noise levels and case space as much as possible without wasting money. I am happy to spend when spend is justified but will scrimp where useful. What is better these days in terms of options, costs and upgradability and size? Cubes or Mini Towers? Most likely a MoBo with built in graphics and sound is enough.

3) As for 2 but actually upgrade my now 2 year old Game rig for the fun of it and use salvaged parts in building the new Office Rig. SSD and so forth. Trying hard to justify this option to myself except that it would be more fun. All good arguments to do so welcome

Monotype

If you to build a new PC from scratch, you could go for a small Intel build - i.e., get a mini-ITX motherboard. It might be a little more expensive going down this route.
The alternative getting a regular AMD AM3+ motherboard - you could pick a smallish ATX to go with it. This would be the best option if you want the most power in a system on the cheap. However, you'd need a graphics card as well, which is probably not what you're aiming for.
The last option is to get an AMD FM2+ system. There's some good FM2+ boards there to choose from and the graphics provide a little more oomph than Intel's offerings, depending on what you get. It wouldn't be as small as some of the boards from Intel, but you can get some great features for cheap in the motherboards.

I think a good motherboard and an SSD would be handy. What kind of space do you reckon that she'd need?

nozzferrahhtoo

Space requirement would be low as most of her documents are PDF and docx, small files, and a lot of other things she has stored already on google drive. So I would likely go for a small fast SSD for the OS and a small but nippy HDD, favoring speed over disk space, for anything else.

I was looking at the FM2+ boards yesterday alright. First time I have looked at AMD. I did not consider AMD when building my own system as quite simply the 2500K two years ago was the best bang for your buck and nothing else made sense.

In the last two years... correct me if I am wrong here... the price of the 2500k has gone UP 20 or 30 euro. Now, although it is slightly "better" than the Intel i5-3470, the 3470 is currently the best priced offer in terms of Bang-For-Buck. Coming in around €140. While other CPUs are "better", none of them are better enough to justify the higher costs to anyone but the most intense users.

Similarly what I learned yesterday in my research is that the AMD FX-6300 is the best Bang-For-Buck in the AMD.... is good enough to compete with the 2500K a bit... and is also at €95 not justifiable to get anything "better".

Monotype

The 3470 is a fairly powerful quad core - but the question is - do you really need even that much power?

I think that a 5400K or a 6400K would be enough.
http://www.hardwareversand.de/Socket+FM2/66806/AMD+A6+5400K+Black+Edition+mit+AMD+Radeon+HD+7540D+Grafikeinheit%2C+Box%2C+FM2.article
http://www.hardwareversand.de/Socket+FM2/80782/AMD+A6-6400K+APU+mit+AMD+Radeon++HD+8470D+Grafik%2C+Box+mit+Lüfter%2C+FM2.article

If you got a board like this
http://www.hardwareversand.de/DDR3/101595/ASRock+FM2A75M-DGS+R2.0%2C+FM2%2C+mATX.article
or this
http://www.hardwareversand.de/DDR3/66940/MSI+FM2-A75MA-E35%2C+FM2%2C+mATX.article

and paired with a 128GB or 120GB SSD, I think you'd have a very fast office PC.

I forgot that you can get some good ITX FM2 boards as well.
http://www.hardwareversand.de/DDR3/70162/MSI+FM2-A75IA-E53%2C+FM2%2C+ITX.article

If you want more processing power, you could go with Haswell as well. They have some nice, feature-filled ITX motherboards.
http://www.hardwareversand.de/Socket+1150/78034/Intel+Core+i5-4430+Box%2C+LGA1150.article

BloodBath

Might as well get the quad core A8 5600k. It's the best value from those AMD apu's.

http://www.hardwareversand.de/Socket+FM2/66804/AMD+A8-5600K+Accelerated+Processor+mit+AMD+Radeon++HD+7560D+Grafik+Box.article