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[legacyzero]

Wow, this case really excites me!
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...-_-na-_-na-_-na&AID=10446076&PID=3938566&SID=

Is this a good one to go with for my next build?

 

[mkenyon]

Is there a preferred brand for the HD 7950s? I've read Sapphire for overclocking.

A review on Hardware Canucks says the MSI and Gigabyte are neck and neck in performance and overclock potential.

The only difference is noise and cooling ability on the after market heatsinks. Sapphire, ASUS DCII, and MSI Twin Froze are all good.

Is the best type of monitor for pc gaming ips panels?

Nope, 120hz (real 120hz, not the fake stuff they advertise on TVs) is.

Ready to purchase my build on NCIX, but at the last minute the checkout feature says they've discontinued their GTX460. So I took the Radeon 6870 instead. However, the details of the 6870 says it requires at least a 550W PSU. The Antec Basiq 450W model I chose from the OP's chart doesn't seem to be enough. Am I going to run into trouble if I don't take a bigger PSU?

450 is plenty.

 

[mkenyon]

Wow, this case really excites me!
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...-_-na-_-na-_-na&AID=10446076&PID=3938566&SID=

Is this a good one to go with for my next build?

Broken link.

 

[Fjordson]

Man, hard drive prices/availability are bumming me out.

Any good alternatives to the Samsung F3 (1 TB)? Would be willing to go slightly smaller I guess if it's a good drive.

 

[legacyzero]

212 heatsink. Z77 mobo. Personally id get a 830 ssd and gigabyte.asus.msi 670.

Get the CM212+ instead of the Hymper N520
I like 7950 or 7870 over the 660Ti, they'll perform better than it down the line due to bandwidth.

Could you both give me some recommendations for those suggestions? Here's my updated tentative build.
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/fjf9

That Cooler master 212 seems very basic. Will that perform better than the Hyper N520 that I (randomly based on looks lol) selected?

Broken link.

Link works when I click it.... Strange.. It was this case:
NZXT SWITCH 810 White CA-SW810-W1 Steel / Plastic ATX HYBRID Full Tower Gaming Computer Case
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...-_-na-_-na-_-na&AID=10446076&PID=3938566&SID=

 

[Syphon Filter]

The only difference is noise and cooling ability on the after market heatsinks. Sapphire, ASUS DCII, and MSI Twin Froze are all good.

Nope, 120hz (real 120hz, not the fake stuff they advertise on TVs) is.

450 is plenty.

can you link me to a good 120hz 24" monitor?

 

[·feist·]

Could you both give me some recommendations for those suggestions? Here's my updated tentative build.
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/fjf9

That Cooler master 212 seems very basic. Will that perform better than the Hyper N520 that I (randomly based on looks lol) selected?



Link works when I click it.... Strange.. It was this case:
NZXT SWITCH 810 White CA-SW810-W1 Steel / Plastic ATX HYBRID Full Tower Gaming Computer Case
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...-_-na-_-na-_-na&AID=10446076&PID=3938566&SID=

The Switch 810 is in the OP recommendations. It's one of the better cases in its class, so long as you don't mind the glossy finish (matte finish "Special Editions" cost more).

If you didn't understand Hazaro's shorthand response, check out the OP build section.
The Hyper 212 Evo/212+ are easily better than the N520.

 

[bodyboarder]

Barring one or two demanding games (Crysis 3 par example) you should be fine.

Yep. For performance hogs, just turn down the settings a little and you're still in great shape.

Thanks for that.

 

[TouchMyBox]

can you link me to a good 120hz 24" monitor?

This one is pretty good.

Asus has a good 24 incher as well which I tried out in-store and it looked to be fairly quality, but it's glossy which means you might hate it.

 

[mkenyon]

can you link me to a good 120hz 24" monitor?

BenQ XL2420T if you have a card with dual link dvi and like a matte screen.

Samsung S23A750D if you have a display port card and like gloss screens.

BenQ has lower input lag, Samsung has better colors.

 

[Zombie James]

Good video on the proper way to apply thermal paste. I've seen so many people using the card and finger methods (like those guys in the NCIX and Newegg videos) and this clearly shows why they're wrong.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hNgFNH7zhQ

 

[suffah]

I'm leaning towards picking up one of those Korean 27" IPS monitors. My only concern is how badly I'd take a hit in Diablo 3 with the 2560 x 1440 resolution.

My card is a 6870.

Any thoughts? D3 doesn't seem too power hungry. Am I being over cautious?

 

[Syphon Filter]

BenQ XL2420T if you have a card with dual link dvi and like a matte screen.

Samsung S23A750D if you have a display port card and like gloss screens.

BenQ has lower input lag, Samsung has better colors.

hmm the guy above you said it was glossy and you said matte. are their two versions or something?

 

[·feist·]

I'm leaning towards picking up one of those Korean 27" IPS monitors. My only concern is how badly I'd take a hit in Diablo 3 with the 2560 x 1440 resolution.

My card is a 6870.

Any thoughts? D3 doesn't seem too power hungry. Am I being over cautious?

2560x1600 - Gaming Performance, as a rough baseline. Max details.

 

[Fjordson]

Man, hard drive prices/availability are bumming me out.

Any good alternatives to the Samsung F3 (1 TB)? Would be willing to go slightly smaller I guess if it's a good drive.

Bumping for the new page (noob question I know).

 

[mkenyon]

hmm the guy above you said it was glossy and you said matte. are their two versions or something?

He said the ASUS is glossy.

 

[Artchur]

This is slightly off-topic; however, I need some pro advice. I'm planning on selling my old comp after I get the new one built. Is the best way to protect my data from theft etc to wipe the HDD and do a clean install of the copy of vista that came with the computer? It's a OEM version though... will it still show as registered to me?

 

[Syphon Filter]

He said the ASUS is glossy.

right,i'm bugging lol.

 

[gutterboy44]

Good video on the proper way to apply thermal paste. I've seen so many people using the card and finger methods (like those guys in the NCIX and Newegg videos) and this clearly shows why they're wrong.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hNgFNH7zhQ

Yes of course if you do the other methods sloppy and wrong they turn out sloppy and wrong. No consistency or accountability for the variation in pressure on the glass. He needs to drill holes an mount the glass with the actual hardware so the pressure the heat sink screws apply is the exact same for every method. Then do every method carefully like you would if you weren't clearly imposing a bias. Worthless video that proves nothing due to the wild amount of variables and clear objective to prove one method correct over the others.

 

[Infinite Justice]

seems newegg jumped the gun some of the prices have changed to a higher number (the sapphires are expensive now)

 

[suffah]

2560x1600 - Gaming Performance, as a rough baseline. Max details.

Damn amazing thanks!!

Now to find a monitor.

 

[hockeypuck]

Awesome, really helpful OP. Used Hazard's "Excellent" build as a starting reference and went from there. Ordered my parts today for my first PC build, can't wait. Even watched Carey Holzman's Youtube video, about as newbie-friendly as it can be.

Your Current Specs: i5 3570K / 8GB RAM / MSI Z77A-G43 mobo / HD 7950 / Rosewill 550W 80plus single +12V rail PSU
Budget: $1000, USA
Main Use: Gaming only
Monitor Resolution: haven't decided yet, will use my neglected TV with HDMI for now
List SPECIFIC games that you MUST be able to play: Guild Wars 2
Looking to reuse any parts?: no
When will you build?: next 1-2 weeks
Will you be overclocking?: No

Three questions from this newbie:
1. The OP highly recommends a custom cooler with the HD7950 3GB. But I don't intend on overclocking right now (just want the thing to work). Will the reference fan on the i5 3570K be sufficient?

2. With the MSI Z77A-G43 motherboard that comes with ClickII BIOS UI, do I really need to change any settings? Don't want to mess with anything if I don't need to. If everything is working fine after OS installation, is BIOS Live Update still recommended?

3. I'm going to use a TV for my monitor for now and hook up via HDMI. My computer will detect this on first boot, right?

Appreciate any help, thanks.

 

[SuicideUZI]

IPS screens are great for their large viewing angles and (generally) good colours. However, in terms of pure performance, you'd be better off getting a 120Hz TN screen. It won't look as good, but it'll be more reactive and closer to the experience you'd get with a CRT screen.

is 120hz only good if you have a PC that can push games at 120fps, or is there still a benefit to it even if your game is only running at 60fps?

 

[Pachinko]

is 120hz only good if you have a PC that can push games at 120fps, or is there still a benefit to it even if your game is only running at 60fps?

120 hz is more versatile then 60 hz, so it'll just generally look smoother.

to avoid graphical stuttering and obtain proper vsync you want your games to run at an even framerate or as close to one as possible.

At 60 , you can get away with 60fps(best), or 30(still good) but if your games are running at sub 20's it's much harder to keep thing going well, it'll end up looking choppy.

At 120 hz you can obviously try for the insane performance of 120 fps, chop it in half for 60 , chop that in half for 30 but you also gain access to more in between framerates that work well- 40 fps , 24fps both become smooth looking. I'd argue things will just look smoother all around with a higher refresh rate. Even running 75hz on an old crt looked better for most games then 60 hz did.

 

[Aeana]

Just a question for those of you with SSDs: do you typically just put your OS on it, or do you also install games or put other things on it too?
Trying to decide which size to get, thinking 64GB should be more than enough.

 

[antitrop]

Just a question for those of you with SSDs: do you typically just put your OS on it, or do you also install games or put other things on it too?
Trying to decide which size to get, thinking 64GB should be more than enough.

My Windows 7 installation is about 20gb, so a 64gb SSD should leave you plenty of room for putting games on.

 

[Sutton Dagger]

WTF tried the Sleeping Dogs demo and its absolutely killing my gtx 670. It got to 84 Celsius...and the fans were absolutely screaming like I've never heard them before. No other game has gone beyond 70, what can I do about that?

 

[CambriaRising]

WTF tried the Sleeping Dogs demo and its absolutely killing my gtx 670. It got to 84 Celsius...and the fans were absolutely screaming like I've never heard them before. No other game has gone beyond 70, what can I do about that?

Runs fine on my evga 670ftw.

 

[HarryDemeanor]

WTF tried the Sleeping Dogs demo and its absolutely killing my gtx 670. It got to 84 Celsius...and the fans were absolutely screaming like I've never heard them before. No other game has gone beyond 70, what can I do about that?

I've got games that I play that do this same exact thing but during character selection/creation. It's the weirdest thing. Once I get into a game it goes down to normal temperatures. I can never figure out why it does this.

 

[wandering goat]

I just put together a new PC for my mom. She doesn't game or anything, so it should serve her quite well for a good amount of time. I work in an IT service company that among other things builds PCs, so I was able to get parts a bit cheaper (mark-up isn't actually all that high for most common PC HW, but every little bit helps).

Here's what I went with:

Case: Chenbro PC31031
PSU: Antec EA380
CPU: Intel i3 2120
Mobo: Asus P8B75-M/CSM
GPU: Asus EAH5450 Silent 1GB
RAM: 4GB Kingston 1333MHz
Optical Drive: standard Asus drive
HDD: Crucial M4 128GB (+ old WD HDD for media)
OS Windows 7 HP 64-Bit

All in all a fairly low cost but speedy system for general use. Just finished building it and installing Windows, MSE, and other programs - I think she should be really pleased with it.

Thanks to Hazaro for the CPU suggestion, it really is quite nice.

 

[Kalnos]

Just a question for those of you with SSDs: do you typically just put your OS on it, or do you also install games or put other things on it too?
Trying to decide which size to get, thinking 64GB should be more than enough.

OS, browser, and most current played games for me. It's possible to have steam on your SSD and then have some games on the SSD and others linked on your HDD IIRC.

This is my recommendation for a 64GB SSD.

 

[Aeana]

WTF tried the Sleeping Dogs demo and its absolutely killing my gtx 670. It got to 84 Celsius...and the fans were absolutely screaming like I've never heard them before. No other game has gone beyond 70, what can I do about that?

Are you on the latest beta drivers? Those cause my 560ti to get nutso hot, but other driver versions don't. It's very odd.

OS, browser, and most current played games for me. It's possible to have steam on your SSD and then have some games on the SSD and others linked on your HDD IIRC.

This is my recommendation for a 64GB SSD.

Cool, already have that one in my cart waiting to pull the trigger. I just wasn't sure if 64GB would be enough (or overkill, even). The idea of flash memory for files that are written over and over has always kinda scared me due to the write limitations of flash memory, but it seems to not be much of an issue anymore.

 

[Salacious Crumb]

My Windows 7 installation is about 20gb, so a 64gb SSD should leave you plenty of room for putting games on.

Not when games now routinely have 20+ GB install sizes. I'd feel uncomfortable getting anything smaller than 120GB.

 

[antitrop]

Are you on the latest beta drivers? Those cause my 560ti to get nutso hot, but other driver versions don't. It's very odd.

On my GTX 590 (notorious for running hot as the sun) w/ the latest Beta drivers I was hitting about 75c max. Considering it's the middle of August and I don't have AC that was an acceptable temp for me.

 

[JustProgress]

I'm buying new fans for my case and stumbled upon what I think is a pricing error on the Corsair website: SP120 Quiet Edition Twin Pack for the price of 1 fan - 16.99. Maybe I'm missing something, but I ordered 2 sets to fill out my mesh panel. Link's here.

 

[Sutton Dagger]

I've got games that I play that do this same exact thing but during character selection/creation. It's the weirdest thing. Once I get into a game it goes down to normal temperatures. I can never figure out why it does this.

Hey, wait a minute, the same thing is happening to me. It goes mental on the pause screen. I think the same thing happened with Witcher 2. It just went up to 97% load on the pause screen again in SD, tried it multiple times just to verify.

Anyone got a link to the newest drivers for the 670?

 

[Kalnos]

I just wasn't sure if 64GB would be enough (or overkill, even).

It definitely isn't overkill but it should be enough if you don't mind moving games to your HDD when you play them less (or just uninstalling them).

You do have to watch for random system files that take up a ton of space though. I noticed that hiberfil.sys and pagefile.sys were taking 10GB and 16GB of SSD space respectively. If you disable Windows Hibernation that gets rid of hiberfil.sys and you can limit pagefile.sys to 2-4GB if need be. Just something to watch.

 

[antitrop]

Hey, wait a minute, the same thing is happening to me. It goes mental on the pause screen. I think the same thing happened with Witcher 2. It just went up to 97% load on the pause screen again in SD, tried it multiple times just to verify.

Anyone got a link to the newest drivers for the 670?

http://www.geforce.com/drivers/results/46279

 

[Deleted member 22576]

So I think I'm going to go with those relatively cheap dell ips displays. The 23in ones. Am I going to run into any DRM weirdness playing blurays since I'd have to use hdmi->dvi adapters to run them? I'm planning on ripping most of the discs anyway, but isn't there some sort of hdmi handshaking hdcp weirdness going on when you just want to play a rbluray?

 

[Salacious Crumb]

So I think I'm going to go with those relatively cheap dell ips displays. The 23in ones. Am I going to run into any DRM weirdness playing blurays since I'd have to use hdmi->dvi adapters to run them? I'm planning on ripping most of the discs anyway, but isn't there some sort of hdmi handshaking hdcp weirdness going on when you just want to play a rbluray?

It'll work fine. HDCP isn't a proprietary HDMI thing, it works with DVI and DisplayPort as well.

 

[Ceebs]

WTF tried the Sleeping Dogs demo and its absolutely killing my gtx 670. It got to 84 Celsius...and the fans were absolutely screaming like I've never heard them before. No other game has gone beyond 70, what can I do about that?

I have just been jacking my fans up to 70% and it stays around 70c. At the default it was getting super hot as well.

No clue what it is with that game as it's the only one do get that warm.

 

[Grief.exe]

I've got games that I play that do this same exact thing but during character selection/creation. It's the weirdest thing. Once I get into a game it goes down to normal temperatures. I can never figure out why it does this.

Generally, certain screens aren't optimized well.

I've heard developers talk about it and the issue seems to kind of get swept under the run, and no one ever fixes the problem, just goes right through to release.

Loading screens, character select screens, game select screens, etc.

 

[Aeana]

It definitely isn't overkill but it should be enough if you don't mind moving games to your HDD when you play them less (or just uninstalling them).

You do have to watch for random system files that take up a ton of space though. I noticed that hiberfil.sys and pagefile.sys were taking 10GB and 16GB of SSD space respectively. If you disable Windows Hibernation that gets rid of hiberfil.sys and you can limit pagefile.sys to 2-4GB if need be. Just something to watch.

I went with the M4 128GB version since it was still within my budget. Looking forward to this.

 

[Evlar]

I've got games that I play that do this same exact thing but during character selection/creation. It's the weirdest thing. Once I get into a game it goes down to normal temperatures. I can never figure out why it does this.

Sounds like the issue SC2 had at release; it would cook some video cards on the title screen because the engine would let the cards ramp up to as many FPS as they could handle... For such a simple scene, high end cards running certain out of date drivers would get up to thousands of frames per second and burn up.

 

[Cindres]

Good video on the proper way to apply thermal paste. I've seen so many people using the card and finger methods (like those guys in the NCIX and Newegg videos) and this clearly shows why they're wrong.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hNgFNH7zhQ

Perfect video for my leading up to building.

The "metal method" :lol

 

[Fjordson]

OS, browser, and most current played games for me. It's possible to have steam on your SSD and then have some games on the SSD and others linked on your HDD IIRC.

This is my recommendation for a 64GB SSD.

I was looking at that exact same card. I think I can just barely squeeze it into my budget. I'm guessing it's worth it for at least the OS install? Even if I won't get many games on it?

 

[mrklaw]

Getting closer to being able to order. Hopefully in two weeks

Intel Core i5 3570k, 3.4ghz
Coolermaster Hyper212
MSI Z77A-G43 Motherboard
Corsair Vengenace, Low profile. 8GB
Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB HDD
MSI HD7850 2GB Twin Frozr
Bitfenix Shinobi Windowed Case
Corsair TX650, 650W Non-Modular PSU
Sony 24x Optical DVD Drive

Keeping as close to the £700 mark as I can get, currently adds up to £702 pre-postage.

So just final touches and queries, this build was in part thanks to GAFfer about a month ago after I posted my initial build.
1. Noise, I'm wanting a faairly quiet PC so how will this do for noise?
2. Was thinking about upping to a modular PSU but does that really matter when the cable will be hidden in the back of the case anyway?
3. How much breathing room does the 650W PSU Give me? Not for an extra GPU but for upgrading the GPU and adding more hard drives (or an SSD) in the future.
4. The Cooler comes with the thermal paste and everything, right?
5. Overclocking, I do plan to overclock the CPU, and the GPU a little also, just checking this is fine. I know the CPU and Memory are good for it I was just wondering about the Mobo more than anything.

if its a little noisy, later on you can replace case fans with quiet ones - check quietpc.com. Not sire how quiet the 212 cooler is? I used a noctua CPU cooler with slower fans and it was really quiet

 

[mrklaw]

I have built a PC for a friend with the ASUS P8Z77-V LX in it, and it reaches 4.6GHz easily. It's a great board for 80£, yeah.



This is a nice guide for SSD's.

Um, with a reliable SSD (samsung is reliable, so good choice) it shouldn't really fail or crash or anything. The way I have my windows set up is have programs installed to C:, but move all the windows 7 libraries off to my 2TB storage drive, it's detailed somewhere in that SSD guide above. That way I don't lose any data if I do need to reformat, because all my save directories for the programs are usually on another HDD. It's a nice "modular" approach so there's nothing hinging on the operating system being perfect. If you want to be safe, however, a small partition would suffice for backups.

You wouldn't need any special software, you can go to Control Panel > System and security > Backup, then press Create system image on the left and follow instructions. It'll ask where you want to save it etc.

Can you create a bootable image of the SSD on the HDD, so that in case of failure you don't have any down time?

 

[kharma45]

How would this one fare?
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/asus...ta-raid-pcie-30-(x16)-dvi-d-hdmi-d-sub-(vga)-

I mean I wasn't really planning on taking it higher than 4.1 but I guess a better mobo provides a little breathing room.

EDIT: In the last hour something on my list has dropped by like £12, the original build sits at £690 and with the new motherboard it sits at £703, just an extra quid on what I had before. Can't tell what's dropped in price though, think it -may- be the HDD.
Either way, sitting on this now:
http://pcpartpicker.com/uk/p/fkc2



Oo thanks. I'll consider it if I have to bring the price down a little more.

7850 is also £160 at Novatech now, and Overclockers

http://www.novatech.co.uk/products/...ium=affiliate&utm_campaign=1018132_HotUKDeals

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-154-MS&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=411

The Sapphire one is even cheaper again with OCUK but I'd spend the extra £4 to get the MSI.

 

[glaurung]

Well GAF, here is my new PC setup.

• i7 3770K (3.5 GHz)
• GIGA-BYTE MB Z77 S1155 ATX motherboard.
• 16GB Kingston HyperX DIMMs.
• GIGABYTE's GeForce GTX 680 2GB.
• Some WD 2TB HDD.
• Thermalright Archon cooler.
• 750W PSU for future insane GPU upgrades. Might go SLI if money is not a problem next autumn.

Held together with my new favorite case ever: Fractal Design R3 (Black Pearl). This thing is dead silent.

I fiddled around with Windows 8 and then went back to 7. Windows 8 is a completely pointless train wreck.