"I need a New PC!" 2011 Thread of reading the OP. Seriously. [Part 2]

Status
Not open for further replies.
This is really irritating me. I have a 6950 and a dual screen setup (Monitor and Plasma TV) and it won't let me make the monitor a primary screen. If I run them in extended or duplicate modes, the monitor will have crazy screen tearing because it's not the primary. Any way I can make the monitor the primary screen and/or get rid of the tearing?
 
Think I found the PSU for me:

Microcenter has a PC Power & Cooling 760w for $70 after rebate. It's not modular, but fuck it, my case lets me hide all the cables behind the mobo anyways (HAF-912). It's a damn good PSU from a legendary brand and the price is right! I think I'll go pick it up tomorrow.
 
Shawsie64 said:
Just upgraded to an i2500K, 8gb Corsair Vengeance and a 60gb SSD (for OS and a few other things) from a Q9540, 4gb ram. My GPU is a 6950 2gb.

You guys think I will see much of a performance increase? Was worried my older system was holding my 6950 back as was seeing far lower performance than other people with 6950's in some games..
Stock Q9450? Yup.
grkazan12 said:
Hey guys I know some you think this is going to sound pretty stupid, but I was wondering what you guys would in this situation.

I really love my gaming PC and I sometimes I do purchase multi platform releases on it, but the reality of moving into a dorm next semester and an apartment next year I'm finding it really hard to purchase some games for the PC and leaning towards the console versions for games like Skyrim. It would be way easier to bring the console along instead of the tower,monitor,speaker,mouse, and keyboard and in the end all of this has somehow made me regret getting one and somehow selling it back all because I wouldn't be spending enough time with it.

I know it sounds crazy and it probably is, but I was curious as to what you guys would do if you were in my situation.
I wouldn't give it up. I've brought my giant almost fulltower case around with my monitor places.

I can't do any work on laptops. Taking it all isn't so bad, I just wrap them up together in a big towel and off I go.
A smaller case can help.
BoobPhysics101 said:
Think I found the PSU for me:

Microcenter has a PC Power & Cooling 760w for $70 after rebate. It's not modular, but fuck it, my case lets me hide all the cables behind the mobo anyways (HAF-912). It's a damn good PSU from a legendary brand and the price is right! I think I'll go pick it up tomorrow.
PCP&C has fell out a bit but that PSU is based on the solid Seasonic units and seems highly recommended. Great deal.
sca2511 said:
This is really irritating me.
Can't say. Maybe the Hz is set at 59Hz instead of 60Hz?
 
Maybe the dorm guy will be interested in an NZXT Vulcan?
Top_left.jpg
 
Seems like my MSI 570 GTX might be dead. Comp. freezes within a minute, screen gets artifacts. I put in my 4890 and the comp. is working fine so is my 570 dead or can it be something else? Also how long is the turn around for a replacement usually?
 
mr2xxx said:
Seems like my MSI 570 GTX might be dead. Comp. freezes within a minute, screen gets artifacts. I put in my 4890 and the comp. is working fine so is my 570 dead or can it be something else? Also how long is the turn around for a replacement usually?

I had the same issue with my ASUS 570 GTX. Artifacts on the screen when booting, then after the windows start screen the screen would go black. Took about a month to get a replacement.
 
Traitor to Heaven said:
I had the same issue with my ASUS 570 GTX. Artifacts on the screen when booting, then after the windows start screen the screen would go black. Took about a month to get a replacement.
A month sucks, hopefully MSI is faster. Don't need it now but I'm sure I'll need it for my winter break from school.
 
mr2xxx said:
A month sucks, hopefully MSI is faster. Don't need it now but I'm sure I'll need it for my winter break from school.

Yeah, it sucked. What took so long was them trying to repair the card instead of shipping a replacement right away. I guess they were low on refurbished models because they offered a replacement that was a different model from mine. But after I declined the offer, they sent me a brand new card the next day.
 
Ive been using Comodo Backup for a year or so to back up my files but the latest update is making it act funny so I want to try something new. Anyone have any suggestions?


I also want to explain something to see if this makes any sense to anyone else:

A few weeks ago, Comodo Backup was updated and right around this time, I started experiencing extremely slow shutdowns...sometimes taking 3+ minutes.
I ran CPU, memory, RAM, and GPU tests first as a precaution and they all checked out fine.
Googled a little bit and figured the next best step would be to try a clean boot with all non-microsoft services and startup items disabled. This did nothing. I even tried it on safe mode and saw no improvements.

So I started looking at my hard drives and and started by defragging the drive that Comodo backs up to. There was a lot of fragmentation but clearing that didnt help with my shutdown problem.
Next, I ran chkdsk on that drive. It detected no errors BUT it fixed my problem.

At this point, I wanted to find the problem so I started with Comodo and ran a backup overnight. This morning, the shutdown problem returned. I uninstalled Comodo and the problem went away.

Im realizing that this post is kinda long winded and pointless but I guess my question is: Can a third party program still cause issues even on a clean boot? The confusing part of this issue for me is that I thought a clean boot was done so that only MS services are running so you can re-enable any others one by one and nail down the problem. If thats the case, then why did I still have a problem after a clean boot? Could there be another issue somewhere that Im overlooking?
 
Im building a pc right now for my little brother to play battlefield 3 on high settings at 60 fps. I'm trying to spend around $700 and under. Any suggestions?
 
It's not really about carrying it, but more about platform parity and where my friends are. Like I've been playing a lot of BF3 and it's been awesome, but I'm afraid that I might play more MW3 on Live b/c my friends are all going to play. For some reason I see that as my computer is going to waste.
 
Wolf Akela said:
Maybe the dorm guy will be interested in an NZXT Vulcan?
Top_left.jpg

Outstanding little case - lots of room for mATX, though if you mount a 12cm+ tower-type CPU cooler, you'll need to orient it to exhaust air upwards unless you mod it pretty heavily. I've got a *cough* HTPC built in one -- get a wireless 360 controller adapter and something like this for general browsing and you're good to go.
 
mr2xxx said:
A month sucks, hopefully MSI is faster. Don't need it now but I'm sure I'll need it for my winter break from school.
Took me 2 weeks from sending mine out to MSI to get a replacement.
 
Just ordered a Hyper 212+ and low-profile Corsair Vengeance 2x4GB DDR1600 1.5v RAM. Looks like I'll be picking up that 2500k and Gigabyte mobo in a few hours. I might wait til tomorrow when the Hyper 212+ arrives before I start the build though... probably not worth installing the motherboard etc just to take it out tomorrow anyways when the new cooler arrives.

This sucks because I wanted an all AMD GPU/CPU build... but instead I got such good deals on the 'dark side' (Nvidia + Intel) stuff that I couldn't pass it up. Building a GTX 570 + 2500k rig for under $500 is ridiculously cheap.
 
So, with Gigabyte's long and drawn out RMA process it's taken 9 days from the day I placed my first call to get a shipment confirmation email for my advanced RMA. If I would have known it would take this long, I would have just bought another motherboard.

Day 1:
Get told I can't RMA through the phone and need to fill out the online form first.

Day 2:
Get told it's not in their system yet and I need to wait up to 48 hours after submitting the RMA request.
Receive the RMA confirmation on Friday.

Day 3:
Ask for advanced RMA.
Receive the advanced RMA form and fill it out.

Day 6 (after weekend):
Receive an e-mail Monday saying they received the payment form.

Day 7:
Receive an e-mail Tuesday saying my credit card was charged.

Day 9:
Receive an e-mail Thursday saying USPS has received the shipping info (which means it won't ship out until Day 10).

Unacceptable. I don't think I'll be purchasing another Gigabyte product again.
 
Welp, I can't watch flash videos (I'm guessing).

For example, Giantbomb is having TNT now and this is what I see.

Flash.png


This also happens when I try to watch
porn
dailymotion videos. I can watch youtube videos, however.

I tried unistalling flash and reinstalling and I still have this problem...

Thanks!
 
Wolf Akela said:
Maybe the dorm guy will be interested in an NZXT Vulcan?
Top_left.jpg
Why no USB 3.0 header up front? Other than that it looks good (if someone would make a great Ivy Bridge motherboard that doesn't require a full ATX case that is).
 
balladofwindfishes said:
Can you build a computer that runs modern games for around 300 dollars?

Things I don't need
- Case
- DVD Drive

Thins I need
- Everything else


See, I made a PC (using this thread's help) for 800 and some change awhile back. But now my little brother is jealous and wants a computer, so my parents want me to build him one on a very low budget for his birthday.

A monitor is going to eat at least 100 dollars, bringing the actual price of components down to 200 dollars. Yea, that's not going to happen, is it :x


I have an old Corsair H50 cooler, ASUS P7P55D-Pro motherboard with i5 750 chip and 4 GBs of RAM laying around I could part with for 300 bucks. they were all working great but I upgraded so....
 
n0n44m said:
OCCT PSU test is pretty much worst case scenario ... it's basically doing LinX + Furmark at the same time

still it means you are very close to maximizing your PSUs capability, and though it's nice it shuts down itself and doesn't blow up, I'd look for another PSU. I wouldn't run a PSU close to it's maximum capacity over a longer period, as it's both less efficient and it will wear down significantly faster.

Corsair TX/HX/AX or Seasonic are usually preferred for their build quality and performance, but a 700W OCZ should power your system without issues as well.

Hardly. GTX 570 systems peak around 370W. OCCT is useless for figuring out power consumption needs. He has plenty of headroom on his PSU for real world usage.
 
balladofwindfishes said:
Can you build a computer that runs modern games for around 300 dollars?

Things I don't need
- Case
- DVD Drive

Thins I need
- Everything else


See, I made a PC (using this thread's help) for 800 and some change awhile back. But now my little brother is jealous and wants a computer, so my parents want me to build him one on a very low budget for his birthday.

A monitor is going to eat at least 100 dollars, bringing the actual price of components down to 200 dollars. Yea, that's not going to happen, is it :x

http://www.ascendtech.us/itemdesc.asp?ic=PCVM661UQ6603PD

I'd do more research but it's just a suggestion. I think, not sure, the mobo on these has a PCI Express x16 slot. So, you could look for something like this, then when your brother or someone else in your family has an extra $100 or so just upgrade the graphics card and PSU.
 
Shambles said:
Hardly. GTX 570 systems peak around 370W. OCCT is useless for figuring out power consumption needs. He has plenty of headroom on his PSU for real world usage.
I think his PSU is a much older 500w and he likes to clock high so I'm not too surprised.
 
Hazaro said:
I think his PSU is a much older 500w and he likes to clock high so I'm not too surprised.

Yeah, PSU is a 500w Enermax Liberty that was bought in early '06. I asked an electrical engineering friend of. mine and he agreed that overload protection kicked in to keep the PSU from blowing so I definitely hit my limits.

I just got home with my new PC Power & Cooli g PSU, 2500k, and Gigabyte z68 mobo. Total after rebates and taxes was $320. Gonna be fun setting this baby up and stress testing + OC'ing tomorrow.

And yeah, I do like to clock high. I might go for a 4.8 Ghz OC and try to hit 950+ Mhz on tbe GTX 570 now that I can safely supply power to it. Just gotta unlock the BIOS to 1.2v... :)
 
My GPU got loud as hell, sounds like there might be something in the fan? Or maybe the fan is just dying/going bad. It's a 5850 so it's not like it's old, shouldn't have problems with a dying fan this soon. Messed with it a little but it didn't do any good. Not as comfortable messing with that as I am other PC components, and hopefully I don't have to buy an aftermarket cooler or something.
 
So excited, finally the parts for my new PC are arriving. my case, the SSD, the CPU fan, my PSU and the RAM are already here, and I'll pick up the GPU and the optical drive later today :)
Just looks like it wil take a couple of days for the CPU and the mainboard to arrive :(

Oh and I've had a LOT of problem getting a decent priced HDD, everything in the 750-1000GB range jumped from ~40€ to over 100€ in the last week or so. Finally found a Seagate Barracuda 750GB for 47€. Not my first choice, but better than nothing.
 
Shambles said:
Hardly. GTX 570 systems peak around 370W. OCCT is useless for figuring out power consumption needs. He has plenty of headroom on his PSU for real world usage.

well yeah and a 570 has OverCurrentProtection AND almost every PSU can be overloaded a bit (e.g. my HX650 has run 725W loads in benchmarks before shutting down)

yet running OCCT still makes his PSU shut down, which leads me to conclude he's pretty close to the limit without overclocking =]

and once you start overclocking (especially GPU) you can really go sky high lol, I ran Prime95 on 6 threads of my 2600K@4.8/1.4v and Furmark on my GTX480 @ 900/1.2v and I pulled around 730W from the wall socket lol (which is around 620W at 85% efficiency), never heard my PSU fan run that hard :) (really quiet rig otherwise)

BoobPhysics101 said:
Yeah, PSU is a 500w Enermax Liberty that was bought in early '06. I asked an electrical engineering friend of. mine and he agreed that overload protection kicked in to keep the PSU from blowing so I definitely hit my limits.

I just got home with my new PC Power & Cooli g PSU, 2500k, and Gigabyte z68 mobo. Total after rebates and taxes was $320. Gonna be fun setting this baby up and stress testing + OC'ing tomorrow.

And yeah, I do like to clock high. I might go for a 4.8 Ghz OC and try to hit 950+ Mhz on tbe GTX 570 now that I can safely supply power to it. Just gotta unlock the BIOS to 1.2v... :)

what 570 is that? The chips are all good clockers but the earlier stock/reference PCBs don't really dig high voltages that much. I mean I run 1.2v on my (watercooled) 480 everytime I play BF3 but I wouldn't do it with a reference 570 :p
 
Wichu said:
I put a small glob on the processor, then spread it out by simply putting the heatsink in place and fastening it to the motherboard (squeezing the paste to cover the processor). I'm getting 33°C idle, and 55-60°C under full load - I've overclocked it to 4.3GHz at 1.3V. If you're getting 40° idle, there's probably something wrong.
Hazaro said:
A BB sized / 2 grains of rice sized ball (~3mm) in the middle is fine, a small line is fine as well.
Spreading it out lets air get trapped and you don't want that. Also the new Intel chips have really crappy idle sensors so just look at load temps.

Fan on HS is fine that way.

Win 7 USB installs are iffy sometimes, you can retry it.

Gotcha. The bios was displaying 40°, but HWM/CoreTemp/AsusProbe are indicating that they're in the 29-32° range. I'm gonna run some stress/load tests as you said and see how they do, but everything seemed okay in the few hours I played BF3.
 
Holy SHIT have hard drive prices skyrocketed. A Samsung Green 2TB drive I was looking at buying for $80 a few weeks ago is now $230!!!!! That's...quite an increase. I think I'll be holding off on new drives for quite some time....
 
Mengy said:
Holy SHIT have hard drive prices skyrocketed. A Samsung Green 2TB drive I was looking at buying for $80 a few weeks ago is now $230!!!!! That's...quite an increase. I think I'll be holding off on new drives for quite some time....

Yeah, with the flooding in Thailand and everything, this is really insane.

CoolS said:
So excited, finally the parts for my new PC are arriving. my case, the SSD, the CPU fan, my PSU and the RAM are already here, and I'll pick up the GPU and the optical drive later today :)
Just looks like it will take a couple of days for the CPU and the mainboard to arrive :(

Oh and I've had a LOT of problem getting a decent priced HDD, everything in the 750-1000GB range jumped from ~40€ to over 100€ in the last week or so. Finally found a Seagate Barracuda 750GB for 47€. Not my first choice, but better than nothing.

Just picked up my GPU (MSI N560GTX-Ti Twin Frozr II) and got Batman: Arkham City as a free bonus game on Steam. So happy right now :)
 
Conceptor said:
Gotcha. The bios was displaying 40°, but HWM/CoreTemp/AsusProbe are indicating that they're in the 29-32° range. I'm gonna run some stress/load tests as you said and see how they do, but everything seemed okay in the few hours I played BF3.
Bios temps usually higher than OS idle temps. Idle temp is good.
 
Gvaz said:
Does anyone know where I can get a GTX570 TwinFrozr 3? Some reason they seem out of stock...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127582
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004XVMAKU/?tag=neogaf0e-20
?
SoulClap said:
I'm going to buy a Thermalright HR-02. Do you guys think its necessary to attach a fan if I overclock my 2500k to 4GHz?
Depends on your voltage and your case airflow. A 900 or 1300 RPM Scythe Kama II is pretty damn silent if it ends up being too hot.
Just give it a test.
 
Is it worth going for the 2.5gb version instead of the 1.3gb version of the 570 @ 1920x1200? Especially if I want to do supersampling?
 
Gvaz said:
Is it worth going for the 2.5gb version instead of the 1.3gb version of the 570 @ 1920x1200? Especially if I want to do supersampling?
Value wise if you are ok with AMD I'd say get a 6950 2GB (tad slower), or a 6970 2GB for the same price.
Anything over $250 is pretty fast diminishing returns.

I'd stick with the regular version, but I haven't messed around enough with supersampling and checked the memory usage to be sure how much it really eats up.
What are you planning to use it for/on?
 
Hazaro said:
Depends on your voltage and your case airflow. A 900 or 1300 RPM Scythe Kama II is pretty damn silent if it ends up being too hot.
Just give it a test.

Thanks I'm probably going to pick up a Thermalright TY-140 with it.
 
SoulClap said:
Thanks I'm probably going to pick up a Thermalright TY-140 with it.
If you are looking to buy I'd suggest the Macho for a heatsink if you can find it in stock.
Gvaz said:
Gaming and I want to be able to do super sampling like OGSSAA or the equivalent.
I meant can you try SSAA on your current setup on the games you want and use MSI Afterburner to check memory impact of it?

I can't find any good articles or posts on it right now. I can test the impact later as well since I'm interested to know.
Also of course keep in mind FPS impact of doing so :)
 
Hazaro said:
If you are looking to buy I'd suggest the Macho for a heatsink if you can find it in stock.

Crap. It's not in stock in any Canadian online stores. If noise is a concern do you think I'm making the right choice by going with a HR-02 with a single fan or would I be better off going with the Silver Arrow? I really don't see myself overclocking past 4.0GHz either. I have a Fractal R3 (120mm fans in the rear, front, and bottom of the case spinning at around 1200 RPM) btw.
 
Gvaz said:
I can do MLAA or whatever but it doesn't work in half the games I try and looks worse than 2xAA or FXAA
I'd PM DennisK4 or something.
SoulClap said:
Crap. It's not in stock in any Canadian online stores. If noise is a concern do you think I'm making the right choice by going with a HR-02 with a single fan or would I be better off going with the Silver Arrow? I really don't see myself overclocking past 4.0GHz either. I have a Fractal R3 (120mm fans in the rear, front, and bottom of the case spinning at around 1200 RPM) btw.
I think $40 should be the top end anyone needs to spend, really.
HR-02 with 1 fan should be more than fine. Does that 140mm fan mount on it?
 
Let go of my last board with blues this week (Das S). Don't think I'll be using any more blues or full-size boards in the future.

On the plus side, my Poker w/ reds came in yesterday. Really digging it. It reminds me of a more lively HHKB.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom