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"I need a New PC!" 2012 Thread. Ivy, SSDs, and reading the OP. [Part 2]

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F

Felix Lighter

Member
It's crazy that the current Steam deals are considered underwhelming because other digital distributing competitors have step up their game immensely this year. You can build up a ridiculous gaming library this time of year for peanuts. Every passionate gamer on this site that hasn't jumped on the PC gaming train yet should be in this thread.
 
P

Piercedveil

Member
Now I'm looking at upgrading my own PC lol. I currently have an AMD Athlon II X2 260 and an AMD 5670. If I were to upgrade my CPU to a 3570k, how much of a performance boost would I see in games without upgrading my GPU right away? Only reason I don't want to upgrade my GPU right now is because my total build would be around $1000 instead of the $700 I'm aiming for (need to buy windows unfortunately).

Any help? :)
 
MisterNoisy

MisterNoisy

Member
GK86 said:
MisterNoisy generous gift came in the mail today.

Thank you again MisterNoisy! My brother will be happy.

Well, assuming I don't end up keeping the case, and giving him the one I have. :p
Click to expand...

I'm glad it arrived unscathed. Hopefully it serves you well. :)
 
C

CountAntonius

Member
n64coder said:
I can't comment on the ability to play source games but it's hard to find components much cheaper than the bundle you picked out.

Can someone else suggest a budget card to play games for this person?
Click to expand...
Yeah seems like an OK deal. I've heard source games weren't very hard to run on modern systems.
 
GHG

GHG

Member
kharma45 said:
What are you powering? If it's just a single GPU I'd go for this if you're wanting modularity.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-018-SS
Click to expand...

For a potential SLI build. I'm not 100% set on this but would like the option if I chose to go that route.

What it will be powering initially:

i5 3570k Oc'd to 4.6 Ghz
Gigabyte Z77 Sniper M3 Mobo
16GB RAM
2 7200rpm HDD's
1 120GB SSD (not certain on this yet either)
1x 480 GTX
DVD drive

The GPU and 7200rpm HDD's are carryovers from my current computer.

The PSU 100% needs to be modular due to the layout of the case I have chosen.

What about this one:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-047-CS

?
 
N

NoRéN

Member
Hazaro said:
Two different roles. Quiet and good pressure for the noise level vs more airflow.

CM fans for places you need airflow and aren't bothered by added noise.
Click to expand...

Now this is something I didn't know much about. Thank you for the info.

Since the CM deal has more fans than I need I think I'm going to try using one of each just to see what temps I get.

Thanks for the help.
 
H

Hazaro

relies on auto-aim
big_z said:
if you want the quietest card get the Asus. It's virtually silent even under full load and i'm super anal about pc noise.

My friend has the three fan gigabyte and while it's quiet for most people you can hear it a bit, especially when gaming. There's a good video on youtube comparing stock, gigabyte, asus and msi cooling solution noise but i cant find it off hand. techpowerup also did a round up and the asus won hands down for cooler noise.

the only downside is price. asus likes to charge a premium while the gigabyte goes on sale fairly often.
Click to expand...
Last I looked into it the differences are very minor and the savings and availability of the GB vs. ASUS make the GB better imo. My GB670 I cap at 50% fan speed, don't know what your friend's fan curve looks like. Never goes above 65C. Idles at 25% fan speed and 44C.
Piercedveil said:
Now I'm looking at upgrading my own PC lol. I currently have an AMD Athlon II X2 260 and an AMD 5670. If I were to upgrade my CPU to a 3570k, how much of a performance boost would I see in games without upgrading my GPU right away? Only reason I don't want to upgrade my GPU right now is because my total build would be around $1000 instead of the $700 I'm aiming for (need to buy windows unfortunately).

Any help? :)
Click to expand...
What can you salvage? You'd want to upgrade both CPU and GPU. I'm sure you can cut a lot off the $750 build (Case, PSU?, HDD, DVD). If you do not plan on overclocking you can fit in an i5 3450 + H61 motherboard I'm positive.
xero273 said:
didn't know they discontinued the samsung f4 2 tb drive, anyone have any recommendations for a 2tb drive?
Click to expand...
No :(
Everything is shit now. You can buy a Red and turn off TLDR or something, I haven't gone super deep into it. Just buy a drive and backup your important data, keep on top of SMART reports.
 
C

CSampson

Member
Looking for opinions on what to upgrade out of the following:

Option #1: Processor

Currently have: AMD Athlon II X4 635 Quad core @ 2.9

Upgrade would be to an i5 or i7

Option #2: Video Card

Currently have: Radeon HD 6950 2GB HIS card

Upgrade would be a GTX 670 or 680

Option #3: Monitor

Currently have: Hanns-G flat LCD 22' average monitor

Upgrade would be a BenQ XL2420T

All roughly will be in the 300$ range give or take (from memory anyways). Just wanted opinions on what people think should be a priority.
 
S

scogoth

Member
CSampson said:
Looking for opinions on what to upgrade out of the following:

Option #1: Processor

Currently have: AMD Athlon II X4 635 Quad core @ 2.9

Upgrade would be to an i5 or i7

Option #2: Video Card

Currently have: Radeon HD 6950 2GB HIS card

Upgrade would be a GTX 670 or 680

Option #3: Monitor

Currently have: Hanns-G flat LCD 22' average monitor

Upgrade would be a BenQ XL2420T

All roughly will be in the 300$ range give or take (from memory anyways). Just wanted opinions on what people think should be a priority.
Click to expand...
I would say 1 then 3 then 2
 
T

The Frankman

Banned
last two days I've been installing/re-installing programs for my OS 64 GB Crucial SSD and my 750 GB HDD. First off my God, I never quite realized how noisy a HDD is (and it really wasn't) until you hear an SSD run completely silent.

The only thing I haven't installed yet are my many games, and not this is where I'm going to have issues. I plan to get Guild Wars 2 in the next month, and that appears to require 25 GB. Considering I only have 42 GB free on the SSD left I'll have to make some choices out of the other games.

Second, none of the graphics cards I kept in the past worked on the new system. However I'm so over budget I don't anticipate shopping for a card until March 2013. Of course that's taking into account hoping I can get a good monitor from a friend.
 
D

Deleted member 22576

Unconfirmed Member
Is there a good guide anywhere on how to properly backlight a monitor? Err, rear light.. Not the panels backlight, but th fancy ambient lighting.
 
K

kharma45

Member
Radeon HD 7970 and GeForce GTX 680 tested with 10 CPUs

Two graphics cards, ten processors, ten benchmarks

If you like playing games in Full HD resolution with all fancy graphical effects enabled, you obviously need to invest in a high-end graphics card. If you're looking at buying one of the current high-end cards, such as the AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition or the Nvidia GeForce GTX 680, it's worth taking a closer look at the rest of your computer. Will your PC be able to squeeze the most out of these expensive powerhouse video cards, or do you have a bottleneck hiding somewhere? With a speedy Core i7 processor you obviously need not worry, but what if you have something like an Intel Core i3 or AMD A6? Hardware.Info examined just that scenario, so read on to find out.
Click to expand...

http://uk.hardware.info/reviews/3714/radeon-hd-7970-and-geforce-gtx-680-tested-with-10-cpus
 
F

FJ0372

Member
Hey Gaf, not sure if this is the right place to post this, need help on a graphics card issure, if not please redirect.

Anyway my PC's graphics card stopped working as anytime I turned it on there were red lines across the screen (XFX 5850). So I decided to borrow a 7770 off a friend to try that and now as soon as I turn on the PC the graphics card runs but theres just a black screen, any help?

Thanks
 
D

DTKT

Member
FJ0372 said:
Hey Gaf, not sure if this is the right place to post this, need help on a graphics card issure, if not please redirect.

Anyway my PC's graphics card stopped working as anytime I turned it on there were red lines across the screen (XFX 5850). So I decided to borrow a 7770 off a friend to try that and now as soon as I turn on the PC the graphics card runs but theres just a black screen, any help?

Thanks
Click to expand...

Did you change the drivers?
 
D

DTKT

Member
FJ0372 said:
I did not, if I didn't will the bios not even load up?
Click to expand...

Well, if it can't output an image, you won't have anything on screen. But I don't think drivers can prevent an image, it can severely impact your performance or force default settings but no image seems unlikely.

Are you sure the card is good?
 
LiquidMetal14

LiquidMetal14

hide your water-based mammals
Rockin' my new Vertex 4. Yeah, it's all that. Faster than I could ever imagine. I can boot up Windows in about 8-10 seconds.
 
F

FJ0372

Member
DTKT said:
Well, if it can't output an image, you won't have anything on screen. But I don't think drivers can prevent an image, it can severely impact your performance or force default settings but no image seems unlikely.

Are you sure the card is good?
Click to expand...

Hmm, I've tried it with one other card, same problem. I can even hear the windows staring noise when it's on, but just a black screen on my TV though.
 
M

MC RaZaR

Neo Member
Maybe try a different PCIE slot. Make sure the HDMI, VGA, or what ever you use is connected tight into the monitor and graphics card.
 
P

Piercedveil

Member
Hazaro said:
What can you salvage? You'd want to upgrade both CPU and GPU. I'm sure you can cut a lot off the $750 build (Case, PSU?, HDD, DVD). If you do not plan on overclocking you can fit in an i5 3450 + H61 motherboard I'm positive.
Click to expand...

I definitely need a new case/PSU. HDD could be used but I don't have anything on hand to back it up to. DVD drive could be reused and RAM also could but I only have 4 GB at the moment. My PC right now is a prebuilt so some of the components really aren't good enough to save unfortunately. I do plan to overclock later on so I'll stick with the Z77 and 3570k. I think ~$630 for what I picked is great. Just that $100 Windows I need to get :p I could switch the GPU to like a 7850, but saving a bit more and going for a 7950 is probably a much better idea, right? So, should I just wait on the entire build until I get enough for the new video card too?
 
S

scogoth

Member
Jtwo said:
That doesn't sound glamorous enough for me.
Click to expand...
Really? What more do you need?

eCAI5.jpg
Click to expand...
 
D

Deleted member 22576

Unconfirmed Member
Aha, I don't know I Thought there was some sort of science to get nerdy about like matching the temperature of the bulbs to the screens temperature or something. IDK, good to know. I'm getting one of those new fangled 21:9 monitors soon and I want to do it up all fancy.
 
LiquidMetal14

LiquidMetal14

hide your water-based mammals
The Frankman said:
last two days I've been installing/re-installing programs for my OS 64 GB Crucial SSD and my 750 GB HDD. First off my God, I never quite realized how noisy a HDD is (and it really wasn't) until you hear an SSD run completely silent.

The only thing I haven't installed yet are my many games, and not this is where I'm going to have issues. I plan to get Guild Wars 2 in the next month, and that appears to require 25 GB. Considering I only have 42 GB free on the SSD left I'll have to make some choices out of the other games.

Second, none of the graphics cards I kept in the past worked on the new system. However I'm so over budget I don't anticipate shopping for a card until March 2013. Of course that's taking into account hoping I can get a good monitor from a friend.
Click to expand...

Just keep the mantra of installing most, if not, all games on the D drive. I made my 1tb HDD my data drive and have program folder structures and a Steam/steamapps/common setup among a few other things. I also set Windows to recognize the Music/photo/video folders in my E drive as the default folders for those types of files. Even made a separate DL folder so all my browser DL's go into the E drive as well. I haven't seen much improvement while testing Spec Ops The Line with the SSD so I moved it to my E drive and got myself back up to 93GB.

The Samsung F3 is so good that ever since this new format and install on the drive, it's loading about as good as I ever recall. Borderlands 2 was loading in about 3 seconds and that was off the HDD.
 
S

scogoth

Member
Jtwo said:
Aha, I don't know I Thought there was some sort of science to get nerdy about like matching the temperature of the bulbs to the screens temperature or something. IDK, good to know. I'm getting one of those new fangled 21:9 monitors soon and I want to do it up all fancy.
Click to expand...
If you really want to go crazy you can but I don't really think it will make that much difference unless you're spending $1000+ on a monitor and another $1000+ on a colorimeter to calibrate the monitor. It's more for eye strain then creating a perfect color environment.

These guys do sell higher end bulbs of you want
http://www.cinemaquestinc.com/ideal_lumesb.htm
 
H

Hazaro

relies on auto-aim
kharma45 said:
Radeon HD 7970 and GeForce GTX 680 tested with 10 CPUs



http://uk.hardware.info/reviews/3714/radeon-hd-7970-and-geforce-gtx-680-tested-with-10-cpus
Click to expand...
Was excited, but then they left out the most important chips to compare imo (x4 Phenom II and a real 2100 @ 3.1Ghz (Not a low power 2.5Ghz).
CountAntonius said:
Where ate you getting this deal from? Anywhere else to find similar prices?
Click to expand...
Anandtech, [H], Overclock.net buy/sell/trade forums

or

eBay
 
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