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"I need a New PC!" 2013 Part 2. Haswell = #IntelnoTIM, but free online. READ THE OP.

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Mad Max

Member
I'm considering switching over to a modular PSU and I (after doing some research) decided to settle for the Seasonic Platinum 760W (SS-760XP2). Would you recommend it?

The price seems to be either 179.99 or 189.99 depending on where I buy it.

Get the seasonic X-750 instead, the platinums are still based on an older platform I think.
 

~Kinggi~

Banned
How well would a GTX 550 TI do with higher-end games running in high at 720p?

Reason i ask is i may be getting a steambox of sorts but the form factor has to be incredibly tiny, and the best card supported by the psu is a gtx 550 ti. Kind of a bummer as my main system has a 7850 which has been good but the cpu and the ram is far worse then whats coming in the steambox, which is a haswell 4770 and 8gb ram.
 

Mad Max

Member
How well would a GTX 550 TI do with higher-end games running in high at 720p?

Reason i ask is i may be getting a steambox of sorts but the form factor has to be incredibly tiny, and the best card supported by the psu is a gtx 550 ti. Kind of a bummer as my main system has a 7850 which has been good but the cpu and the ram is far worse then whats coming in the steambox, which is a haswell 4770 and 8gb ram.

Not very well probably, that card kinda sucks. However you should probably just use the 7850, as the power consumption is actually lower than the 550TI. You could even go for the 7870 if you want an upgrade. http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/HD_7850_HD_7870/24.html Not sure if it'll fit the case since I don't know what you're looking at.
 

~Kinggi~

Banned
Not very well probably, that card kinda sucks. However you should probably just use the 7850, as the power consumption is actually lower than the 550TI. You could even go for the 7870 if you want an upgrade. http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/HD_7850_HD_7870/24.html

Nevermind i see some benchmarks. Those are contrary to the specs they list...

And i dont have much a choice in the matter. Given the configuration i had to work with the 550 was the best offered. Its being placed in a very small case, like 8 inches in width and 12 inches depth or something. Silver lining is its completely free and paid for :).

I can however manually upgrade the card myself. I have to deal with a 450w psu and space is a factor. Wonder what i could squeeze out there....

The gpu in the 4770 would be better than the 550


Thats not true. Benchmarks have lower cards than a 550 doubling the fps the 4770 could deliver.
 

Mad Max

Member
Power rating of a GTX is listed as lower than 7850 (116 vs 130)

Look at that review, it compares the real world power draw instead of meaningless specs.

And i dont have much a choice in the matter. Given the configuration i had to work with the 550 was the best offered. Its being placed in a very small case, like 8 inches in width and 12 inches depth or something. Silver lining is its completely free and paid for :).

I can however manually upgrade the card myself. I have to deal with a 450w psu and space is a factor. Wonder what i could squeeze out there....

Which case is it and which PSU? The 7850 PCB is smaller than a reference 550TI, so if the latter fits the former will too (unless it has a huge cooler).
 
Hmm I need a few tips. I'm slowly building a new pc because my laptop ain't cutting it.

I have a friend who's selling me his Gtx 570... What cpu would go well with this card? I'm not buying everything anytime soon but he told anything with 6 or 8 cores would be good enough to not be a bottleneck.

So far I only bought some ram and a tower.
 

avaya

Member
Looking for aesthetically pleasing case designs with a maximum height of less than 45cm. ATX compatible, mATX at a push. Any suggestions?
 
I had an XFX Black edition one and it was pretty beast for the time. A friend has it now and its going strong.


What are you trying to power? The Seasonic X750 is fully modular, a bit cheaper than the platinum and is one of the best units out there.

Get the seasonic X-750 instead, the platinums are still based on an older platform I think.

Thanks for the feedback, guys. I'll look into the X-750 then.
 

Tensketch

Member
I'm absolutely devastated, after saving for the past 6 months and buying parts bit by bit I finally put together my new Haswell build.

My Specs:

MB: Asus Z87 Sabertooth
RAM: 16gb Corsair Vengeance LP 1600 (running at 1333 for the OC)
CPU: Intel 4670k
GPU: EVGA 660 TI FTW
Cooler: Zalman LQ310

Machine runs fine, but then I attempted overclocking, following a couple of guides, apparently the ideal test run is to set the clock to x46 and 1.2volts, if it boots, you got a good cpu capable of getting decent speeds. Otherwise, you're out of luck.

Mine didn't make it sadly.

So I bumped it down and played around with the voltage and managed to get a stable overclock at 4.2ghz at 1.23 volts. Which isn't amazing but it's better than my last CPU. All was well, spent all day playing games etc perfectly fine until about 15 minutes in which I got hit by a random BSOD. I've had to bump it down to 4ghz.

The guide I followed was that Linus video. But I cant help but feel that I could be doing better. Does anyone have a more specific guide for Haswell? Or should I just accept my fate and just be happy with my below average CPU?


EDIT: Also, I cant help but feel that 4ghz at 1.2 volts is ridiculous. Is that normal?
 

Addnan

Member
4.6 was expecting way too much from Haswell. A lot of people can only hit about 4.2, it's all luck and with Haswell you have a greater chance of being unlucky with the chip
 

maneil99

Member
Last night my seeming solid overclock rebooted my pc while running prime. The only difference btween the prime run was i was using 2 hw monitoring programs. I know that sometimes cause issues. Windows event log has no whea errors and only says the computer shut off. Bsod viewer shows nothing aswell. I only ran two programs because my vcore seems to be higher then before. Also yesterday i had 2 wheas while testing my gpu oc. I deleted the timestamps but is it possible they were caused by one of my gpu drivers crashing
It happened many times while i was pushing my clock speed on my 780
 

dmann

Member
I'm absolutely devastated, after saving for the past 6 months and buying parts bit by bit I finally put together my new Haswell build.

My Specs:

MB: Asus Z87 Sabertooth
RAM: 16gb Corsair Vengeance LP 1600 (running at 1333 for the OC)
CPU: Intel 4670k
GPU: EVGA 660 TI FTW
Cooler: Zalman LQ310

Machine runs fine, but then I attempted overclocking, following a couple of guides, apparently the ideal test run is to set the clock to x46 and 1.2volts, if it boots, you got a good cpu capable of getting decent speeds. Otherwise, you're out of luck.

Mine didn't make it sadly.

So I bumped it down and played around with the voltage and managed to get a stable overclock at 4.2ghz at 1.23 volts. Which isn't amazing but it's better than my last CPU. All was well, spent all day playing games etc perfectly fine until about 15 minutes in which I got hit by a random BSOD. I've had to bump it down to 4ghz.

The guide I followed was that Linus video. But I cant help but feel that I could be doing better. Does anyone have a more specific guide for Haswell? Or should I just accept my fate and just be happy with my below average CPU?


EDIT: Also, I cant help but feel that 4ghz at 1.2 volts is ridiculous. Is that normal?

I too just built my Haswell rig, and I recently just OC'ed my 4770k to 4.6ghz, but temps were way too high for my liking (90-95C) under Prime95 and OCCT. Afterwards, I dialed it down to 4.2ghz @ 1.15-1.2V and am now satisifed with my temps.

Getting a Haswell chip that can easily OC to 4.6ghz+ on air is basically random and a luck of the draw. If you want, you could try delidding it or a custom water loop if you want to try to obtain a higher OC otherwise I would just leave it at between 4 - 4.4ghz.
 
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/1oe8y

Looking for any potential critiques/tweaks/suggestions. Still need to settle on RAM (more than likely 2x 4gb to start). Likely sticking with Windows 7.

Newegg has a nice combo deal going on the CPU + Case, especially when rebates are factored in. Probably gonna go ahead and order those and the power supply (also on sale) later tonight.


Gonna be my first build. Price is currently coming in a bit higher than I would have liked, but I'd rather still spend the extra bucks rather than downgrade the cpu/gpu or cut out a hdd (Definitely don't want to go through the hassle of moving my Windows install if I skip on the sdd for the time being).

Overshooting on the power supply so I have the easy option to grab a second 770 and go SLI as a relatively cheap upgrade option in ~2 years.
 

teh_pwn

"Saturated fat causes heart disease as much as Brawndo is what plants crave."
1.2V and 95C is too hot even for Haswell. Make sure you seated your heatsink properly, and if you have a pump that it is powered. Or if it's stock heatsink maybe that's about right. With a good heatsink I think you'd have to crank Vcore to about 1.3V to get that hot. 1.275V is the max you want to even attempt without delidding.

If you got to 4.6 GHz without delidding and setting VCore around 1.3V or higher, I bet it's very unstable. Try running OCCT with AVX at max stress and it will probably choke within a couple of minutes. Also pay attention to your current CPU frequency...you may be throttling to 2.8 GHz which...defeats the whole purpose of OCing.

Haswell is a piece of shit with overclocking though. You have to fight to get to a stable/cool 4.3 GHz OC....really isn't that much faster than stock averaging 3.7 GHz turbo.
 

kennah

Member
Get a K series processor or downgrade to a B75 board.

If you are only doing gaming a 4670k is a better chip than the nonK 4770 thanks to single thread overclocking performance. If you do media encoding/video editing or other hardcore tasks then stick with the i7

The Hyper 212 is cheaper and better cooler.

You can get better cases for cheaper, even factoring in the discounts.

And I'm a little surprised you were even able to find a Samsung 830.
 

teh_pwn

"Saturated fat causes heart disease as much as Brawndo is what plants crave."
Probably fine. I overclocked a few Sandy Bridge CPUs at work at 1.4V and they've been running 100% load on average 75% of the time for 2 years. Maybe the "silicon will age" whatever that means, but it was worth the productivity gains. Don't want to use it for something like bank transactions though, lol.

Also depends on what you're doing. Sometimes when you get to the stable point/sweet spot with a CPU, it's 99.999% stable. But once every few days it will freeze/reboot/crash. So keep an eye out and reduce turbo by 1 if that happens.
 
Get a K series processor or downgrade to a B75 board.

If you are only doing gaming a 4670k is a better chip than the nonK 4770 thanks to single thread overclocking performance. If you do media encoding/video editing or other hardcore tasks then stick with the i7

The Hyper 212 is cheaper and better cooler.

You can get better cases for cheaper, even factoring in the discounts.

And I'm a little surprised you were even able to find a Samsung 830.

Thanks for the input.

Motherboards are the area I'm more or less lost on. Basically just want something that has front-facing USB 3.0 and supports SLI, which seems to preclude me from some of the cheaper boards.

I don't do any encoding/editing, so definitely gearing toward gaming. I'm a bit squeamish about overclocking at this point, though. I guess more or less anything's on the table CPU-wise, though. If I drive over to microcenter, they have great prices on Haswells atm and I could maybe buy a 4770K if there's a big difference between that and the non-K.

Actually meant to ask if the 212 was a better option as a cooler. Is there any significant difference in RAM clearance between the two though? (Price is the same, amazon has the GeminII for $32)

...Is the 830 outdated or something at this point? It came up with only one seller there, but it seems like the go-to ssd on newegg, and I think Amazon also had them available.

And any particular recommendations for cases, then? I'm really not picky there. Just looking for one that's not abhorrently plain, has plenty of room, and should keep cool.
 

maneil99

Member
Last night my seeming solid overclock rebooted my pc while running prime. The only difference btween the prime run was i was using 2 hw monitoring programs. I know that sometimes cause issues. Windows event log has no whea errors and only says the computer shut off. Bsod viewer shows nothing aswell. I only ran two programs because my vcore seems to be higher then before. Also yesterday i had 2 wheas while testing my gpu oc. I deleted the timestamps but is it possible they were caused by one of my gpu drivers crashing
It happened many times while i was pushing my clock speed on my 780
 

DorianD

Member
Hey Gaf, so I just built my brother his computer and so far, he loves it for the most part. However, for some reason his Asus GTX 770 Directcu ii GPU seems to be running hotter than most reviews have indicated or general forum consensus. Almost all games and synthetic benchmarks are 80 degrees Celsius at stock settings. At idle it is about 38-45 degrees Celsius, and the room temperature is about 20 degrees Celsius. I have also set a custom fan curve maxing at 100% at 65 C, and it still goes 80 C no matter what.

The main parts of his build is a Fractal Design Define R4 non-window version (took the noise dampening foam out) Asus Z87-Pro motherboard, Intel Core i5 4670K with Hyper 212 Evo heat sink, Corsair TX 750 PSU, and 8GB's of DDR3 Patriot Extreme Memory at 1600Mhz.

I am thinking it might be the case does not have enough adequate airflow as the R4 only comes with two 140mm fans (one intake fan on the front and one exhaust on the back). Any feedback would be certainly appreciated!
 

etrain911

Member
Hey Gaf, I just finished my first build! Yay! Right? Except my graphics card (Gigabyte GTX 770 4GB) keeps locking up on the BIOS screen and the drivers it came with won't recognize the card. How do I handle this? I installed Directx like I was supposed to, and the card is definitely put in correctly but the keyboard just totally locks up on the BIOS screen when I use the card but works fine with integrated graphics.
 

frogg609

Member
Hey Gaf, I just finished my first build! Yay! Right? Except my graphics card (Gigabyte GTX 770 4GB) keeps locking up on the BIOS screen and the drivers it came with won't recognize the card. How do I handle this? I installed Directx like I was supposed to, and the card is definitely put in correctly but the keyboard just totally locks up on the BIOS screen when I use the card but works fine with integrated graphics.

I would try reseating it. Make sure it is in there properly. Do you have another machine to test it in?
 
Reposting in hopes of getting some ideas.

Just built a new PC. i5 processor, Samsung SSD, Sapphire 7970 GPU, and such. Things are working well. I fired up BioShock Infinite to test how well it ran, and everything was flawless on high settings.

A few days pass. I add a VGA connection to a monitor, so I'll have that along with my HDMI connection to TV. Try BioShock again and now it stutters like crazy. Checked processes, restarted, and still it's running terribly. I opened Windows Experience Index and it's giving me a 6.5 for graphics and gaming graphics. Everything else in the high 7s.

Any ideas on what's wrong?

: /
 

vilmer_

Member
So I finally got around to putting all of these pieces together and I have run into a bit of a pickle; the screws provided with the Alphacool rad are too small to fit through the top of the 900D case, and there are no washers provided. The screws included with the rad are 30 and 35mm M3's. The 35mm are too long to begin with and the heads just plop right through on both sets.
 
I've a couple of questions about 120Hz monitors.

1. What does 60fps (or even 30fps) look like on a 120Hz monitor? Do you need to be running things at 120fps locked to really benefit from the higher refresh rate?

2. I've read that people do away with vsync once they switched to 120Hz. Why is this? Does tearing just simply not occur for some reason or does it just not happen as much?
 

xJavonta

Banned
So I'm on W8.1 Preview and every time I try to install the preview drivers from AMD, my desktop turns black and won't respond. Nothing. I tried leaving it on for a day and when I came home it was still black. For me to even use the PC I have to keep away from the drivers.

The resolution and monitor stuff is perfectly fine without the drivers installed (unlike W7), but I haven't tried playing any games yet. I have a feeling that they won't be running to well.

Anyone know what the problem is?
 
AMD? Your card is probably downclocking/locking up. Check GPUz on the second screen while running some benchmark. If so, make sure you're on the latest drivers, then OC using the catalyst control panel overdrive settings.

That's what did it for me, and was the only way I could get settings to stick. Otherwise, my 7950 would go into this throttling frenzy with one monitor, and just lock itself at 500mhz with two.

I seem to have limited features on my Catalyst. I only have the following options, none of which mention anything about Overdrive.

NvRaHNA.png


Pretty sure drivers are up-to-date, but it seems everyone else has a few more options in the sidebar.
 
Historically, do processors change or improve over time during later fabrication runs? Is it possible that in a quarter or two the later Haswell fabrication will allow better overclocking?
 
I've a couple of questions about 120Hz monitors.

1. What does 60fps (or even 30fps) look like on a 120Hz monitor? Do you need to be running things at 120fps locked to really benefit from the higher refresh rate?

2. I've read that people do away with vsync once they switched to 120Hz. Why is this? Does tearing just simply not occur for some reason or does it just not happen as much?

30 or 60 fps just looks better. And if it drops, it's less of an issue than running at 60hz. If you manage to get frames up to 90+ region it's even better, of course.

It's just a better experience overall. Especially with low/inconsistent framerates.

You still get tearing if you don't v-sync/triple-buffer.
 

maneil99

Member
Historically, do processors change or improve over time during later fabrication runs? Is it possible that in a quarter or two the later Haswell fabrication will allow better overclocking?
Rarely. If you are holding out I would advise you to just pick up an ivy bridge
 
So after the comment about the Samsung 830 SSD I realized it's not the newest model.

So my question now is... am I still better off with an 830 over an 840? Same price, but it looks like the 840 has a lower write speed and uses a different standard that means its life might not be as long? Are there any advantages of the 840 I should be aware of?
 

TheD

The Detective
So after the comment about the Samsung 830 SSD I realized it's not the newest model.

So my question now is... am I still better off with an 830 over an 840? Same price, but it looks like the 840 has a lower write speed and uses a different standard that means its life might not be as long? Are there any advantages of the 840 I should be aware of?

I would get the 830, I wish I could find them still for sale
(should of bought 2).
 

Blizzard

Banned
So sadly I haven't found any further clues about the random 2-second black screen on my 770 that happens once or twice a day.

It happened again playing League of Legends. Hadn't happened all day besides that. GPU-Z reports 41 C and I can only assume that's completely fine as a temperature. :(

I certainly don't think I've upgraded drivers unless it's doing it silently, and this time I had the (powered-off) Rift disabled as a secondary monitor.

I guess I should do a spyware check, but I haven't heard of any spyware that would make the screen go black 2 seconds.
 
They still seem... kinda-available. Though that's the 128gb.

And actually while on this train of thought, I'm going this way (128gb SSD over a hybrid SSD) on the recommendation of a friend. Would that be the general consensus over here? This drive is for windows, programs, and my Steam directory (getting a 3TB for everything else).

I'm well aware that my Steam folder can and will quickly balloon to be larger than the SSD can handle. (Windows and free space left so the drive can cache taken into account, I'd have ~75gb or so to use?). But if the true SSD is worth the difference in speed, I don't really mind. I reliably pull 3-5mb/s download speeds from Steam, so it's not a pain to just delete and have to reinstall some games when I feel like playing them again.
 

TheD

The Detective
They still seem... kinda-available. Though that's the 128gb.

And actually while on this train of thought, I'm going this way (128gb SSD over a hybrid SSD) on the recommendation of a friend. Would that be the general consensus over here? This drive is for windows, programs, and my Steam directory (getting a 3TB for everything else).

I'm well aware that my Steam folder can and will quickly balloon to be larger than the SSD can handle. (Windows and free space left so the drive can cache taken into account, I'd have ~75gb or so to use?). But if the true SSD is worth the difference in speed, I don't really mind. I reliably pull 3-5mb/s download speeds from Steam, so it's not a pain to just delete and have to reinstall some games when I feel like playing them again.

I would go the SSD, a hybrid drive can only give you SSDish speeds on data that fits into it's NAND.
 

xJavonta

Banned
So I'm on W8.1 Preview and every time I try to install the preview drivers from AMD, my desktop turns black and won't respond. Nothing. I tried leaving it on for a day and when I came home it was still black. For me to even use the PC I have to keep away from the drivers.

The resolution and monitor stuff is perfectly fine without the drivers installed (unlike W7), but I haven't tried playing any games yet. I have a feeling that they won't be running to well.

Anyone know what the problem is?

Still having this problem. I tried launching a game too (Dota 2 and Black Ops II) and nothing happened.
 
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