New build

weazlor

Hi Guys, to begin with I'll post my current setup, to know what I can/should hang on to, and as a referance to what I'm used to.

Dell XPS 720, 1kw psu, BTX
4Gig DDR2
2 X 280gtx in sli,
2 X 60 =120 gig SSD's in striped raid for OS, swap file
st350063 Seagate 500G Media drive
Western Digital Raptor WD1600ADFS 160GB Game Drive (steam/Starcraft etc)
2 Benq Monitors, 19 inch and 24inch Widescreen(FP91G, FP241W)
DELL stock Creative SFX card. Works fine.

So yeah, I'm resigned to getting a new case/mobo/cpu/ram/Psu for now, and upgrading the graphics and stuff later. I'm happy with my keyboard /mouse (G15 and G5 logi's)

So far, I've tracked down (but not yet purchased):
A nice case, http://www.computeruniverse.net/en/products/90441589/antec-p280.asp
Good Mobo http://www.computeruniverse.net/en/products/90456551/asus-sabertooth-z77-sockel-1155.asp
Nice Ram http://www.computeruniverse.net/en/products/90455501/corsair-vengeance-16gb-ddr3.asp
Decent CPU http://www.computeruniverse.net/en/products/90404525/intel-core-i7-2600k-boxed.asp

I'd appreciate recommendations on Heatsink, and PSU, and of course, if I'm doing something magnificently derpy that I havent noticed..

I figure the sli'ed 280s can keep me going for a while, so paying a few quid more for a slightly beefier PSU is preferable to dumping a lot more on a newer card for now.

Monotype

It's a fair amount to spend on a motherboard, it's also a good bit to spend on RAM. I know RAM is cheap nowadays, but if it's just gaming and regular desktop stuff, 8GB is fine.

The 2600K is last generation. Still good though, but you'd be as well off with a 3570K, since there's not really any gains in gaming. The 280s would be quite a bit behind (although there are two of them) so I'd nearly be wanting to upgrade those if you're into gaming.

Are you in a hurry to upgrade? Maybe wait until June for socket 1150?

What's your current CPU?

klub44

Dell XPS 720 is the best looking oem case ever. Have my modded to ATX (week of messy work). I love these shapes

weazlor

Well, I'm happy with previous gen gear, not as pricey and I'm not that bothered about not being on the bleeding edge. The only reason i'd wait would be to push the price lower when the current gear gets pushed down a notch.

The general approach I was planning on was getting a good foundation for further upgrading in future, hence the quality parts.

Currently on an intel quad 2.66. I'll look into the 3570, might help keep the price down, and still give me the option of hopping up to the 2600 at a later point. This I'm assuming,?http://www.computeruniverse.net/products/90477924/intel-core-i5-3570-boxed.asp?sr=3570

I've heard about the 720 modding, but It's a loud mofo and a bitch to clean, hence the antec. The easy access filters caught my eye, as well as the watercooling option. I'd be happier to just sell the 720 off after I've stripped the graphics and drives. It's nice, but bulky.

Any thoughts on heatsink/psu? I'm figuring zalman for the HS in any case, unless ye know of a particularly nice one on market.

Monotype

You'd want the "K" at the end. This:
http://www.computeruniverse.net/products/90458433/intel-core-i5-3570k-boxed.asp

The successor to the 2600K is the 3770K. What kind of work do you plan to do on the machine?

weazlor

I saw that one, is the onboard graphics a big deal? It's the only difference I saw.

Mainly gaming/surfing, may be doing some twitch broadcasting/youtube vids in the future.

Eve online, starcraft 2, that kinda deal.

Monotype

You can overclock with the "K". These CPUs are very easy to overclock.

The 2600K/3770K only offer hyperthreading on top of the 2500K/3570K. That means essentially no performance increase at all for games. If you want a build for future upgrading, the 3570K and 3770K are top of the line right now and there won't be any more newer CPUs for this socket. I certainly wouldn't be bothered going from a 3570K to a 2600K unless there was good reason (i.e., heaving encoding).

Edit: Also CPUs and motherboards don't really fall in price when a newer generation comes in, they just phase out and end up worse value for money against the newer ones.

weazlor

Ah, thanks.

I'm still putting money together for it, so I'll see how things go. If i end up being close to june i'll wait it out.

BloodBath

The main board is overkill. It's a trap most new builders fall into. I spent €250 on my first build mobo. Total waste of money.

The Asrock Z77 pro 4 is great all round board for €100 less than that.

I'd stick with 8 gigs of ram for now. It's more than enough for current games and any backround programs. You can always add more when you need it. €40 saved.

I'd go for a 3570k as well for the proc which can be picked up €60 cheaper than that 2600k on hardwareversand. Even cheaper on mindfactory.

€200 saved total for the same/better performance.

For the heatsink I'd go with a coolermaster hyper 212 evo. It's only €29 and will allow you to get at least 4.5 ghz on the 3570k while keeping it below 60c under load and is reasonably quiet.

Power supply this would be plenty for that build.

http://lb.hardwareversand.de/400+-+500+Watts/30074/Super-Flower+Amazon+80Plus+450W.article

weazlor

that psu will handle 2X280's?

BloodBath

No it won't.

For overclocked cpu + dual gpu setups I'd go with this

Also the pro 4 board doesn't support sli. You would have to get the extreme 3 or 4.

http://lb.hardwareversand.de/DDR3/57624/ASRock+Z77+Extreme4%2C+Sockel+1155%2C+ATX.article

The pro's only support crossfire.

weazlor

So, final build

Case: Zalman Z11+ Midi Tower
CPU: Intel Core i5 3570K
PSU: EVGA SuperNOVA
Ram: 16GB Corsair Vengence
MOBO: AsRock Z77 Extreme 3
Cooling: Coolermaster Hyper 212 EVO

Sound about right? 586.60 from that site.

BloodBath

Looks good. 16gb of ram is still overkill but no harm.

weazlor

Cool. I'm still stuck on the case though, Do want the P280 for silence, but it's a little on the steep side.

Meh, I think it's worth it, case like that will take future builds happily. I'll let you guys know how things work out.

Serephucus

BloodBath wrote: »

For the heatsink I'd go with a coolermaster hyper 212 evo. It's only €29 and will allow you to get at least 4.5 ghz on the 3570k while keeping it below 60c under load and is reasonably quiet.

Where are you getting this from? You've linked me to a picture of your setup before, and it was hitting 75°C after a couple of minutes of Prime.

BloodBath

It was 71c after 10 mins at 4.6ghz at a higher voltage. It's 60c max at 4.5 but I do have good airflow in my case.

Maybe 60-65c would be a better estimate.

weazlor

I'm eyeing up the Thermalright HR-02 Macho right now. Looking by the pics it looms over ram like an angry god. Anyone used it in a build?

tuxy

BloodBath wrote: »

It was 71c after 10 mins at 4.6ghz at a higher voltage. It's 60c max at 4.5 but I do have good airflow in my case.

Maybe 60-65c would be a better estimate.

Might as well be trying random numbers when you don't include voltages and ambient temperatures.

weazlor

Thanks, but I'm not interested in overclocking, all I want to know is will those parts work well together as is, and are they reasonably priced.

Revised build:

CPU http://lb.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=56296&agid=1617

PSU http://lb.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=69310&agid=1629

Ram http://lb.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=61907&agid=1193

Case http://lb.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=60693&agid=631

Mobo http://lb.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=67918&agid=1601

Cooler http://lb.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=67114&agid=669

tuxy

You should get this ram if you are worried about clearance with the cooler

http://lb.hardwareversand.de/1600+Low+Voltage/72735/16GB-Kit+Corsair+Vengeance+Low+Profile+schwarz+PC3-12800U+CL9-9-9-24.article

BloodBath

tuxy wrote: »

Might as well be trying random numbers when you don't include voltages and ambient temperatures.

I've overclocked 3 of them in 3 machines with the same cooler and the results are the same in all of them and there's 100's of similar reports online.

4.5 @ 1.25v Ambient is between 20-25c. Maxes at around 65c. Even with higher ambients or worse case airflow you shouldn't be going much higher than 75c which is still safe as houses.

weazlor

tuxy wrote: »

You should get this ram if you are worried about clearance with the cooler

http://lb.hardwareversand.de/1600+Low+Voltage/72735/16GB-Kit+Corsair+Vengeance+Low+Profile+schwarz+PC3-12800U+CL9-9-9-24.article

Good point thanks, done.

Monotype

The macho is well known to be a great cooler, but it's also very well known to be one of the hardest heatsinks to install. You might end up with a lot of swearing and cut fingers.

weazlor

I worked in dell slicing my hands on 20 laptops an hour. I'll be able to handle it.

Sounds like I've got my rig then, woohoo

weazlor

Ordered, cost me just over €700 including delivery for the lot, using computeruniverse and hardwareversand.

Not too shabby.

weazlor

Hmm, I've been doing some reading on my PSU, specicically Here (under details), showing 20A each on the 12v rails, and a max of 53A across the board.

So, Here's whats worrying me. According to that review:

"A second GeForce GTX 280 requires you to have a 800 Watt power supply unit at minimum if you use it in a high-end system. That power supply needs to have (in total accumulated) at least 55 Amps available on the 12 volts rails. "

Am I in trouble?

marco_polo

Not in trouble but 650W is tight enough 2 X GTX 280s as they have a peak load power of about 225W each (18.75 amps).

Fortunatley the i5-3570k is a 77W TDP CPU at stock so even in the absolute worst case of all the major components hitting peak power at the same time, everything totals up to well under the 636W max rated 12V rail wattage (225W + 225W + 77W = 527W), leaving a little over 100W to cover the rest of the system which is plenty.

In reality even under heavy loads your total system power consumption will likely be a good bit lower than the sum of those peak values or each component as they are usually only hit by synthetic benchmark software like furmark and prime95 for the GPU and CPU respectively.

Still I wouldn't go overclocking the CPU much if at all until you upgrade to more power efficent current gen GPUs in the future as you don't have much spare power capacity to play with. It will still perform great at stock in the meantime.

Monotype

Doubtful that you are.
1) They measure the absolute peak. That's probably CPU and GPU stressed to the max. This unlikely to happen in most situations, but assuming you were running stress tests and it did...
2) How do they get from total consumption of 363W to suddenly needing 800W? 363x2 = 726, alright, but aren't you doubling all the rest of the components? You don't need two CPUs all of a sudden.
3) They are not taking into account PSU inefficiencies. Assuming that it's at the maximum efficiency that that unit can provide (Enermax Galaxy 1000W) which is 85%, that brings the actual power consumption below 310W.

tl;dr, looks like that PSU should do the job fine.

weazlor

Thanks for setting me at ease guys. I know the 2nd gpu is only going to be propping up the main card, so I didnt ever expect to have both cards running at max at any time. Just wanted to be sure to be sure

weazlor

So, moving on from the build so far, what graphics card would you recommend for dual-screen shenanigans? I'm going to roll with the aformentioned GTX280s for the time being, but what nvidea card is the one to move up to? I've done some research and figured that a single 570 would match my 280s, so that's my obvious *you'd be an idiot to purchase this or lower cards* line

Any particularly tasty cards catch your eye in the €150-200 range?

BloodBath

If a single 570 matches your current gpus then there's nothing that will beat them in the €150-200 range. You would want at least a 660ti which is €250.

Eboggles

An overclocked HD7870 XT would easily beat a GTX 570 (2xGTX280), along with being cooler, quieter, more effecient and you wouldn't have to deal with dual card messiness.

Serephucus

He'd only be getting about a 15% performance boost, maybe 20 if he gets lucky though. It's not bad (I've upgraded for less) but a 570 isn't exactly a slouch either. That being said, AMD isn't set to release much for a while, and a 7870 would have better resale value.

weazlor

I'm not necessarily looking at one card, what about sli solutions? I've found a list of cards under or close to a hundred that I could just get two of.

650gtx OC 1G DDR5

Zotac 650gtc 2gb

650 GTX 2Gb

650 GTX 1G

650GTX 2G

650GTX 1G

BloodBath

I wouldn't touch any of those cards. Why not just get a 660ti? At least that gives you some future upgrade options to add a second one down the line.

weazlor

Got the last of my parts today, the build has begun

All that's left to install is my current graphics and harddrives, will be doing that tomorrow.

MiskyBoyy

weazlor wrote: »

Got the last of my parts today, the build has begun

All that's left to install is my current graphics and harddrives, will be doing that tomorrow.

I always enjoy seeing photos of peoples builds

weazlor

I would, but camera on my phone has died

weazlor

And we're up and running, sadly my new mobo didnt accept my previous stripe raid arrangement, so I had to wipe my windows partition. Happily, I anticipated such an issue a long time ago and had kept my documents etc on a second drive, only had the OS on the SSD's.

She's super quiet, cpu's idling at 33c, and the 280gtx's are giving a Windows experience index of 7.8 (I'll know when I've played a few games of starcraft if that translates to smooth performance at ultra settings or not)

Thanks for the help guys, I'd recommend this build happily to anyone. €700 + HDD/GFX for a solid gaming box aint half bad.

weazlor

Pics ahoy. crap cameraphone is crap, but ye asked for it





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