Support NeoGAF

[RGM79]

Mate you're a guru.

I'm in the UK. I haven't bought the components yet, but I'm planning to get them in the coming month.

The Z87 was a good but insanely cheap mini itx mobo from MSI but I was going to pair it with either a i3 4160 or a i5 4460 (for the time being). I wasn't able to check the bios as I would've bought it from Amazon, and I was hoping I could update it by booting it up into bios.

Finding a Z87 motherboard that is compatible with Haswell refresh out of the box is somewhat difficult as Z87 was quickly discontinued in favor of Z97. The only Z87 motherboards that would support Haswell refresh without needing a BIOS update might be those from the last production batches or were returned to the manufacturer and updated before being resold. The most recent review on the amazon.co.uk page for the MSI Z87I AC dated May 2015 says "One little problem : out of the box the board did not want to restart, a bios update solved this and it has been running my G3258 Stable ever since at 4.4GHZ." The wording is a bit strange, but it seems to imply that the motherboard needed an update to support the G3258 properly. Looking here, we can see that the MSI Z87I-AC did not get G3258 support until BIOS version "7851v17". If you were going to use that with the i3 4160 it would not have worked, seeing as the same update that allowed the motherboard to recognize the G3258 also provided compatibility for the i3 4160. If the motherboard came with "7851v16" It might have worked with the i5 4460, but none of the reviews said what BIOS version the motherboard came with, so who knows what CPUs it supports. Potential headache there.

On the other hand, you don't need a Z87 or Z97 motherboard for a non-overclockable i3 or i5 processor. You can get a cheaper H81/B85 motherboard which are priced around £50 at the cheapest and it will work just as well as a Z87 or Z97 motherboard for most needs. The differences include the lack of enhanced overclocking support and certain features like SLI/crossfire support. I understand if you wanted to buy a Z87/Z97 motherboard to upgrade to an overclockable processor later on, in which case Z87 and Z97 would be preferable.

H81 and B85 motherboards are still in production and nowadays most of them come from the manufacturers' factory with recent updates that already support Haswell Refresh, unless you happen to buy a motherboard from a retailer who is selling old stock that has been left over from before Haswell Refresh support became more common. For example, this Amazon.co.uk listing for the Asus H81I-Plus mITX motherboard has a customer review dated from April 2015 which confirms that Amazon's latest motherboard stock comes with BIOS version 2105. If we look at the CPU support list for that motherboard we can see that 2105 is new enough to support both the i3 4160 and i5 4460, no problem.

If you don't mind posting your parts list, budget, and intended use, we could go over it to check compatibility and recommend changes for best cost and performance. For example: other than a cheap H81/B85 motherboard, you could buy that Z87 motherboard and pair it with the older i3 4130 (£90) or i5 4430 (£147) processors and then it would be compatible, no need to worry about needing a BIOS update to make the motherboard recognize those slightly older processors. You would just need to update the BIOS if you ever wanted to upgrade to a newer Haswell Refresh or Broadwell processor.

Edit: The Amazon.co.uk price for the MSI Z87I-AC is £90, were you going to buy that one at that price? CCL Online is selling the same model for £47. You may be able to contact CCL and ask them if they can verify what BIOS version the motherboard comes with.

 

[YoodlePro]

Finding a Z87 motherboard that is compatible with Haswell refresh out of the box is somewhat difficult as Z87 was quickly discontinued in favor of Z97. The only Z87 motherboards that would support Haswell refresh without needing a BIOS update might be those from the last production batches or were returned to the manufacturer and updated before being resold. The most recent review on the amazon.co.uk page for the MSI Z87I AC dated May 2015 says "One little problem : out of the box the board did not want to restart, a bios update solved this and it has been running my G3258 Stable ever since at 4.4GHZ." The wording is a bit strange, but it seems to imply that the motherboard needed an update to support the G3258 properly. Looking here, we can see that the MSI Z87I-AC did not get G3258 support until BIOS version "7851v17". If you were going to use that with the i3 4160 it would not have worked, seeing as the same update that allowed the motherboard to recognize the G3258 also provided compatibility for the i3 4160. If the motherboard came with "7851v16" It might have worked with the i5 4460, but none of the reviews said what BIOS version the motherboard came with, so who knows what CPUs it supports. Potential headache there.

On the other hand, you don't need a Z87 or Z97 motherboard for a non-overclockable i3 or i5 processor. You can get a cheaper H81/B85 motherboard which are priced around £50 at the cheapest and it will work just as well as a Z87 or Z97 motherboard for most needs. The differences include the lack of enhanced overclocking support and certain features like SLI/crossfire support. I understand if you wanted to buy a Z87/Z97 motherboard to upgrade to an overclockable processor later on, in which case Z87 and Z97 would be preferable.

H81 and B85 motherboards are still in production and nowadays most of them come from the manufacturers' factory with recent updates that already support Haswell Refresh, unless you happen to buy a motherboard from a retailer who is selling old stock that has been left over from before Haswell Refresh support became more common. For example, this Amazon.co.uk listing for the Asus H81I-Plus mITX motherboard has a customer review dated from April 2015 which confirms that Amazon's latest motherboard stock comes with BIOS version 2105. If we look at the CPU support list for that motherboard we can see that 2105 is new enough to support both the i3 4160 and i5 4460, no problem.

If you don't mind posting your parts list, budget, and intended use, we could go over it to check compatibility and recommend changes for best cost and performance. For example: other than a cheap H81/B85 motherboard, you could buy that Z87 motherboard and pair it with the older i3 4130 (£90) or i5 4430 (£147) processors and then it would be compatible, no need to worry about needing a BIOS update to make the motherboard recognize those slightly older processors. You would just need to update the BIOS if you ever wanted to upgrade to a newer Haswell Refresh or Broadwell processor.

Edit: The Amazon.co.uk price for the MSI Z87I-AC is £90, were you going to buy that one at that price? CCL Online is selling the same model for £47. You may be able to contact CCL and ask them if they can verify what BIOS version the motherboard comes with.

This is the build I was looking into.
http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/2pWFhM

The price I was going for was the 47 from CCL. I'm flexible though with regards to cpu, don't really mind if it's not a Haswell refresh, I just want a cpu which will not bottleneck the 970, be that an and or an Intel. I did like the case though and was shooting for a mini itx build.

My earlier plan of building an open air pc strapped to a wall fell apart when my landlord told me I couldn't drill in the wall haha.

Edit.

Just checked their page and they say they can update the bios before they ship it to me. Problem solved I guess ?

 

[RGM79]

This is the build I was looking into.
http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/2pWFhM

The price I was going for was the 47 from CCL. I'm flexible though with regards to cpu, don't really mind if it's not a Haswell refresh, I just want a cpu which will not bottleneck the 970, be that an and or an Intel. I did like the case though and was shooting for a mini itx build.

My earlier plan of building an open air pc strapped to a wall fell apart when my landlord told me I couldn't drill in the wall haha.

Edit.

Just checked their page and they say they can update the bios before they ship it to me. Problem solved I guess ?

If they can update the BIOS for you then that sounds ideal.

My main recommendation for your build is to avoid WD Green drives, they have a head parking issue that potentially increases wear. Anything less than 7200RPM for a hard drive that will hold the OS isn't really ideal, either. The usual recommendation is the 1TB Western Digital Blue (£43), but this Toshiba 1TB 7200RPM (£38) model is cheaper.

You also may want a slight higher wattage power supply if you intend to do any overclocking in the future, but 500 watts is enough for the build as it is.

 

[ThoseDeafMutes]

I have 2 SSDs in my machine. My second one, a 750GB Samsung, only has about 200GB left after Witcher 3 preload ;_;

The moar space the better

When are they gonna bring out (sanely priced) commercial 1.5-2TB drives

Sometimes I get a tingly feeling in my pants when I look at those intel 2TB PCI E drives

 

[balladofwindfishes]

I haven't changed my PC since 2011 and it's not really able to run the same stuff it used to very well at all and I want to play newer games.

I have
- 500W Power Supply
- This graphics card
- Intel Core i5-2500K Sandy Bridge
- 1TB HDD
- This Mother Board
- 4gb of RAM
- A case
- Monitor/Keyboard/Mouse/CD Drive
- I don't have a Windows license I could transfer easily. I got this copy of Win 7 through my college and no longer have access to renew the license if I make any major changes that would require re-authing.

My budget is 500-600 dollars if that's enough?

I imagine I can re-use the case and the HDD, but not much else.

So with these parts I could overclock the CPU and get this graphics card, plus 16gb of RAM, a couple of fans and have a nice PC for <500 dollars?

Do I need a new Power Supply? What size?

Does this look good?

 

[Chesskid1]

hey guys, i recently switched to nvidia from amd and i'm really missing a feature.

basically amd allowed you to save monitor presets and allowed you to switch between them very easily by rightclicking the icon in the notifications area and selecting different presets.

very seamless and i loved this feature, very handy for switching monitor layouts, enabling tvout on the fly etc. i specifically need it to switch between monitors quickly, as i use one monitor for gaming, and the other for productivity

does nvidia have something like this? doing it manually everytime is not ideal.

 

[Psxdad]

Okay, so I made a similar post back in March, but now I'm serious about doing this and have a more firm idea about my budget. I'd like it to be as close to 1k as possible but 1.5k is my ceiling. What I don't want is to get something, and be unhappy with it a year from now. Now on to what I'm using this for!

I'm looking to build a PC strictly for recording and rendering console gameplay footage at 1080p 60fps and possible streaming. I run a small YouTube channel, so that's where I'm putting this video. I use the Elgato HD60 and Sony Vegas as my capture and editing hardware/software.

I'm not going to be gaming on this PC. So, I don't want to go overkill just to also game. I don't mind the idea of building my own (last time I did it was 15 years ago!), but would like some input on where to go parts wise.

I need a full setup. Usual parts, but also monitor, operating system (can you still get Windows 7?), and maybe a optical drive. I'd prefer a small solid state drive to run things off of and then I'll use external drives for storage. So don't include the external drives in the price since I have them already.

Thanks for your help!

 

[MrRoflWaffles]

I have a 650W PSU, an i7 2600k @ 4.1GHz and a Gigabyte Gaming G1 970, 8GM RAM, 1 SSD, three HDDs.
Do I have enough headroom to plug my old 560Ti into my mobo to act as a dedicated PhysX card?

If not, would it be worth getting a higher watt PSU specifically for this purpose?

 

[kudoboi]

So.. a follow up from my problem 2 days ago. I managed to uninstall the corrupted graphics drivers. However, when I try to install either the latest stable or beta AMD driver, the entire screen goes black and the PC refuses to get past the windows boot animation again.

Does this mean my GPU is SOL?

 

[Rufus]

So.. a follow up from my problem 2 days ago. I managed to uninstall the corrupted graphics drivers. However, when I try to install either the latest stable or beta AMD driver, the entire screen goes black and the PC refuses to get past the windows boot animation again.

Does this mean my GPU is SOL?

Someone else had a similar issue here. I think they resolved it, but I don't know what they did. Here's hoping they see this.

 

[Staab]

I'm pondering the pros and cons of grabbing a new processor, currently running a Pentium G3258 on a Z97 1150 socket motherboard :
The i5 4790k, 4C-4T seems like an obvious choice but I've been eying the Xeon E3 line, which are 4C-8T for more or less the same price, albeit without the iGPU (which I don't really need having a discrete R280x GPU).
I'm aware of the fact that the i5 K can be overclocked and not the Xeon, but with the arrival of DirectX 12 and focus on multi-core/multi-threading, would it not be interesting to grab a Xeon instead ?

The i7 is a bit too pricey so I wouldn't want to go there.
The Xeon wouldn't require the purchase of an aftermarket cooler either...what do the people "in the know" think ?

 

[atomic moth]

Upgraded to an SSD without being aware that my old H81 mobo doesn't support sata3. So I'm thinking about upgrading to this z97 on sale:

http://www.superbiiz.com/detail.php?name=MB-Z97-HD3&c=CJ

($20.00 Mail-in rebate, $10.00 off w/ promo code: LILY5010, ends 2015-05-18)

I'll eventually add a 4690k. Will this mobo be fine to eventually overclock on?

I've got a 280x and 650 watt

 

[Crisium]

I haven't changed my PC since 2011 and it's not really able to run the same stuff it used to very well at all and I want to play newer games.

I have
- 500W Power Supply
- This graphics card
- Intel Core i5-2500K Sandy Bridge
- 1TB HDD
- This Mother Board
- 4gb of RAM
- A case
- Monitor/Keyboard/Mouse/CD Drive
- I don't have a Windows license I could transfer easily. I got this copy of Win 7 through my college and no longer have access to renew the license if I make any major changes that would require re-authing.

My budget is 500-600 dollars if that's enough?

I imagine I can re-use the case and the HDD, but not much else.

You only need more RAM and a new video card. Get 16GB of RAM for your system, and use the rest for a GPU. Or you could use some of the money for a better CPU cooler, assuming you have stock. A 2500K can do over 4.0GHz with little issues.

I'd get a GTX 970 with the Witcher 3 and Batman bundle. If you like those games, that's the best deal right now. If you don't, I normally think the 290 is a better deal, but you have a 500W so a 290 + new PSU equals a 970 anyway and you don't get free games. So yeah, get a GTX 970 + 2x8GB DDR3 memory.

So with these parts I could overclock the CPU and get this graphics card, plus 16gb of RAM, a couple of fans and have a nice PC for <500 dollars?

Do I need a new Power Supply? What size?

Does this look good?

You don't need a new PSU with the 970. Use that money to get 16GB of RAM.

 

[balladofwindfishes]

Alright, cool thanks.

I have to get a new case, my old one only has room for one fan and I don't think that will be enough.

 

[fwoibles]

Would this work, or would the fact that I'd be next to the left speakers (vs opposite side to the right) distort it?

When I'm gaming infront of the TV I almost have the same "problem" as you do but no distorted sound, I was rather surprised. I'm sitting very close to the left and center speakers. My room is a fair bit bigger so you should have less of a problem. (Logitech zx906)

 

[Kudo]

Should I get new power supply for upcoming Skylake, I have Corsair HX650 (Older model that is Bronze), I've read from online about Haswell that it needs certain kind of PSU to support the power saving features, and some PSUs are not able to run them properly, random boots etc.
Will Skylake be like that too? Assume there will be "Skylake ready PSUs" list when it's released?

 

[mkenyon]

Should I get new power supply for upcoming Skylake, I have Corsair HX650 (Older model that is Bronze), I've read from online about Haswell that it needs certain kind of PSU to support the power saving features, and some PSUs are not able to run them properly, random boots etc.
Will Skylake be like that too? Assume there will be "Skylake ready PSUs" list when it's released?

It was mostly a marketing gimmick, but also a way to make sure that those people using really shit PSUs stopped. There were some that weren't "Haswell Ready", but probably 99% of the PSUs that enthusiasts or custom builders use were just fine.

In terms of whether or not there will be something like that in the future, who knows? Maybe?

There's really no sense in worrying about it unless you do actually need to ugprade, and you won't know until you find out your specific PSU doesn't work with a newer CPU. Change it then.

I'm pondering the pros and cons of grabbing a new processor, currently running a Pentium G3258 on a Z97 1150 socket motherboard :
The i5 4790k, 4C-4T seems like an obvious choice but I've been eying the Xeon E3 line, which are 4C-8T for more or less the same price, albeit without the iGPU (which I don't really need having a discrete R280x GPU).
I'm aware of the fact that the i5 K can be overclocked and not the Xeon, but with the arrival of DirectX 12 and focus on multi-core/multi-threading, would it not be interesting to grab a Xeon instead ?

The i7 is a bit too pricey so I wouldn't want to go there.
The Xeon wouldn't require the purchase of an aftermarket cooler either...what do the people "in the know" think ?

Per thread performance is still vastly more important than number of threads for gaming.

Also, not all motherboards are Xeon compatible.

 

[wilflare]

what's the best/easiest way to get all the latest drivers? thinking of doing a clean install

 

[mkenyon]

what's the best/easiest way to get all the latest drivers? thinking of doing a clean install

Drivers for what?

For your motherboard -> download from the vendor's website.

Graphics -> Download from AMD or NVIDIA.

 

[wilflare]

Drivers for what?

For your motherboard -> download from the vendor's website.

Graphics -> Download from AMD or NVIDIA.

yea for motherboard, etc
http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/B85M Pro4/?cat=Download&os=Win8a64

hmm the Intel site has more updated ones but it's madness trying to go thru it each time to check

 

[lem0n]

So I'm in the middle of trying to find best bang for buck performance for my GF. I posted a build a few pages back, and you all helped me out. My friend was telling me to try AMD, their performance for dollar ratio is pretty high. Now I'm just exploring options. Here's what I put together real quick. I need a GPU in that build. Suggestions on build and possibly a choice in GPU? She will be playing Dragon Age Inquisition, and modding Skyrim/FO3. It's gonna be a living room box too, so I may load my account for GTA or whatever on the big-screen.

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/gBbmjX

 

[mkenyon]

AMD's video cards are great performance for the dollar. Their CPUs are not.

This slight edit will give better performance in 98%+ in games. Overclock the CPU to 4.5 GHz, good to go.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Pentium G3258 3.2GHz Dual-Core Processor ($64.88 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: ASRock Z97M Anniversary Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($74.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($49.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5&quot; 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($49.99 @ Amazon)
Case: Thermaltake Core V21 MicroATX Mini Tower Case ($54.99 @ Micro Center)
Power Supply: Rosewill Capstone 550W 80+ Gold Certified ATX Power Supply ($39.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $334.83
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-05-18 15:01 EDT-0400

*edit*

And if you want proof, here's a benchmark from a game that actually supports highly threaded/high core processors.

Yup. Better FPS than the 8350.

 

[m_shortpants]

Does anyone have a link to a good up to date guide for over clocking a 4690k/z97?

 

[mkenyon]

Does anyone have a link to a good up to date guide for over clocking a 4690k/z97?

http://www.overclock.net/t/1411077/haswell-overclocking-guide-with-statistics

 

[m_shortpants]

http://www.overclock.net/t/1411077/haswell-overclocking-guide-with-statistics

Perfect, thank you.

 

[PIRL0]

hello.. ive found a pc for sale used for a month.. these are the specs and i want if the price is suitable and what kind of games can i run on the system

1-i7-5930k
2- x99 rampage v motherboard
3-32 gb of lpx ddr4 ram
4- 2 way sli 980 gigabyte 2 gpus
5-ax1500i power supply
6-500 gb samsung 850 evo ssd
7- 4 tb wd black hhd
8-h100i crosair cpu cooler
9-780t corsair case

he says it costed him around 4,600 dollars and is offering me it for 3300 dollars.. mind that pc is more expensive in my country so these parts prices should be 20 percent higher than the actual price in the us i just converted the currency.. should i go for it or not ? what kind of games can i expect

 

[m_shortpants]

hello.. ive found a pc for sale used for a month.. these are the specs and i want if the price is suitable and what kind of games can i run on the system

1-i7-5930k
2- x99 rampage v motherboard
3-32 gb of lpx ddr4 ram
4- 2 way sli 980 gigabyte 2 gpus
5-ax1500i power supply
6-500 gb samsung 850 evo ssd
7- 4 tb wd black hhd
8-h100i crosair cpu cooler
9-780t corsair case

he says it costed him around 4,600 dollars and is offering me it for 3300 dollars.. mind that pc is more expensive in my country so these parts prices should be 20 percent higher than the actual price in the us i just converted the currency.. should i go for it or not ? what kind of games can i expect

can't really speak to price because of the difference, but as far as games go, you'll be able to play absolutely everything for a while to come.

 

[Zareka]

Edit: stupid thing posted before I was done

If I wanted to play Final Fantasy XIV Heavensward with smoother performance than I do right now, would I need to upgrade my CPU or GPU first? I'm looking for this upgrade to have me set with games in general for a while, but my main concern with the initial upgrade is FFXIV, since I'll be upgrading just before its release.

System Specs:
CPU: Intel Core i3-4130 CPU @ 3.40 GHz
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660
Motherboard: MSI MS-7817 (I'm having such a hard time finding out what my MOBO is, so I hope this is the right information)
Memory: 8GB GDDR5 RAM
Storage: 2TB (Don't know how to find out if SDD or HDD)

Whichever I upgrade I'll be able to upgrade the other a few months down the line anyway, so I'm looking for the biggest performance boost first. After some searching and reading around the internet, I'm even more confused than I started. There are so many things that I've read I need to consider that I've just gone blank from being overwhelmed.

My computer hardware knowledge is next to non existent. I feel like a tit trying to post the correct information here, so apologies in advance if I've missed something important or given the wrong bit of information. I wasn't even sure if I was going to ask here, but my hand slipped and managed to post this before I was finished so hey, now I've committed.

 

[Darknight]

Regarding SSDs....is an Samsung 850 Evo 250GB good value at $80? Found one for that price but Im not sure if its too old of a model or if the OZC MX one I see on OP is better deal.

 

[TeaFan]

Quick overclock question. After a stable oc is it best to leave core voltage as is or change it to adaptive?

 

[Foxix Von]

I need some help troubleshooting something. Basically I love my new setup except for one small issue. I've got some weird artifacting trouble in the original witcher game. Everything else is perfectly fine, it's just this one game, and only when downsampling from 4k, and only in very specific areas.

I have noticed some other intermittent problems in other games, but nothing quite like this. Occasionally I've seen some intermittent frames of static, but it happens so fast and it's gone for so long I'm not really sure what is happening or how to describe it.

Now I'm using two 290xs in crossfire from different manufacturers at different clock speeds, and I'm not sure how CCC syncs these things up. So I thought maybe I should try underclocking my cards, but even after underclocking -15% and lowering the memory clock 350mhz it still intermittently flashes this garbage in certain areas.

The only thing that seems to work is lowering the resolution. Which is kind of a bummer. Running GPU tests like furmark doesn't lead to anything either. So I'm not really sure what might be the problem or which card might be the culprit or how to test?

Another goofy thing I just noticed from a screenshot is how the artifacts interact with the water effects, lol.

 

[mkenyon]

Edit: stupid thing posted before I was done

If I wanted to play Final Fantasy XIV Heavensward with smoother performance than I do right now, would I need to upgrade my CPU or GPU first? I'm looking for this upgrade to have me set with games in general for a while, but my main concern with the initial upgrade is FFXIV, since I'll be upgrading just before its release.

System Specs:
CPU: Intel Core i3-4130 CPU @ 3.40 GHz
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660
Motherboard: MSI MS-7817 (I'm having such a hard time finding out what my MOBO is, so I hope this is the right information)
Memory: 8GB GDDR5 RAM
Storage: 2TB (Don't know how to find out if SDD or HDD)

Whichever I upgrade I'll be able to upgrade the other a few months down the line anyway, so I'm looking for the biggest performance boost first. After some searching and reading around the internet, I'm even more confused than I started. There are so many things that I've read I need to consider that I've just gone blank from being overwhelmed.

My computer hardware knowledge is next to non existent. I feel like a tit trying to post the correct information here, so apologies in advance if I've missed something important or given the wrong bit of information. I wasn't even sure if I was going to ask here, but my hand slipped and managed to post this before I was finished so hey, now I've committed.

A faster CPU is going to help give you a smoother frame rate. A better video card will increase the overall average, but you'll still be prone to the same stutters in high action/high pop type situation.

A Solid State Drive will drastically decrease loading times and the amount of stutter you get in the first minute or so after a loading screen.

You'd want a Z97 motherboard a 4690K or 4790K CPU.

Regarding SSDs....is an Samsung 850 Evo 250GB good value at $80? Found one for that price but Im not sure if its too old of a model or if the OZC MX one I see on OP is better deal.

Yeah, it's good. I don't think it's prone to the same issues as the 840 EVO (though my 840 EVO still going strong without slowdowns FWIW).

Quick overclock question. After a stable oc is it best to leave core voltage as is or change it to adaptive?

Offset voltage is certainly theoretically better from a thermal and power consumption perspective, but it's kind of a pain to get setup just right.

 

[vocab]

Man 970 now or wait till a year for a new card. Tough decisions. I think I would of bought it now if it weren't for the 3.5 vram incident.

 

[mkenyon]

Man 970 now or wait till a year for a new card. Tough decisions. I think I would of bought it now if it weren't for the 3.5 vram incident.

Do you play at 1080p?

 

[mintyice]

Anyone want to buy my EVGA GTX 760 2GB SC?

 

[vocab]

Do you play at 1080p?

I do, my next monitor is most likely gonna be 144hz. Don't really care about gsync that much.

 

[mkenyon]

I do, my next monitor is most likely gonna be 144hz. Don't really care about gsync that much.

The 970 is a great card for 1080p.

Keep in mind, the situations where it runs out of VRAM is stuff like massive downsampling or using insane and not very optimized texture packs. These are incredibly insignificant situations.

GAF (and the internet) has this habit of generalizing at a given resolution, assuming that every single person in the world cares as much about the highest possible IQ in games. If you play a game a year from now where "Ultra" is too much, and it doesn't intelligently place the right kind of textures in the slower 512MB of VRAM, you can turn down the textures to high.

That being said, I think waiting a few months is probably a safer bet, with new AMD and NVIDIA cards on the Horizon. I also think that the 290 and 290X is a better buy than the 970.

 

[Demigod Mac]

Has anyone here replaced the thermal compound on their Titan X? I was thinking about applying some Arctic MX-4, but would rather not disturb the thermal pads on the chips, which happens if you remove the entire cooler from the card.

Earlier GeForces allow you to remove the top shroud and heatsink without removing the pads, like the 780 here:

and demonstrated on a 580 by Linus here (he also explains that removing the pads, even if they're placed back perfectly, may negatively impact cooling due to changing the pressure):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NRHRWwrm0M

So if the same can be done with a Titan X, that'd be great.

 

[mkenyon]

Yes, the same can be done.

I've pulled off the stock cooler to put a waterblock on the last 10+ cards I've owned. It's a really easy process.

The pads aren't that big of a deal, because they're cooling parts that dont get *that* hot, other than the VRMs. It's really, really, really easy to replace the pads.

Once you think about a video card as a whole separate motherboard the process becomes a lot less daunting.

 

[Foxix Von]

Ah, seem to have fixed my problem. I was adjusting the wrong GPU. That and Furmark doesn't seem to be recognizing the funky GPU. Downclocking it .6% and then upclocking the other .6% to compensate seems to fix the issue. We'll see how it holds out, I guess.

 

[Shouta]

We got a Laptop/Notebook OT at all? I'm looking into a new one and I can't seem to figure out if we have one or not. There's a gaming thread but I'm not really getting it for gaming.

 

[DagsJT]

Just fired up Witcher 3 on my GTX 680 on high settings. The most fps was 42, or regularly dropped to, and stayed around, 22 fps.

Decision to buy a GTX 970 online this morning feeling even more justified right now.

 

[RGM79]

Okay, so I made a similar post back in March, but now I'm serious about doing this and have a more firm idea about my budget. I'd like it to be as close to 1k as possible but 1.5k is my ceiling. What I don't want is to get something, and be unhappy with it a year from now. Now on to what I'm using this for!

I'm looking to build a PC strictly for recording and rendering console gameplay footage at 1080p 60fps and possible streaming. I run a small YouTube channel, so that's where I'm putting this video. I use the Elgato HD60 and Sony Vegas as my capture and editing hardware/software.

I'm not going to be gaming on this PC. So, I don't want to go overkill just to also game. I don't mind the idea of building my own (last time I did it was 15 years ago!), but would like some input on where to go parts wise.

I need a full setup. Usual parts, but also monitor, operating system (can you still get Windows 7?), and maybe a optical drive. I'd prefer a small solid state drive to run things off of and then I'll use external drives for storage. So don't include the external drives in the price since I have them already.

Thanks for your help!

Looking at the Elgato HD60's requirements, this should be very capable for your needs.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-4790K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor ($316.99 @ SuperBiiz)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler ($26.99 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: ASRock Z97M Pro4 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($75.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-2400 Memory ($98.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($97.99 @ Amazon)
Video Card: Sapphire Radeon R9 290 4GB Tri-X OC Video Card ($253.98 @ Newegg)
Case: Cooler Master N200 MicroATX Mid Tower Case ($43.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Power Supply: EVGA 750W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($49.99 @ NCIX US)
Optical Drive: LG UH12NS30 Blu-Ray Reader, DVD/CD Writer ($34.99 @ Newegg)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 (OEM) (64-bit) ($86.88 @ OutletPC)
Monitor: Acer G236HLBbd 60Hz 23.0" Monitor ($109.99 @ Amazon)
Total: $1196.76
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-05-18 20:10 EDT-0400

There's still a few ways to save money. If you have no desire to overclock, then you could get a 4C/8T Xeon processor like the E3-1231 V3 ($242) and a cheap H81/B85 motherboard in the $40~50 range instead. Getting the slightly more expensive K model processor is recommended as overclocking will extend the usable life of your processor before you will need to upgrade again, though. If you want to save money on the OS, Windows 7/8.1 licenses can be bought from reddit's microsoftsoftwareswap for $20 or less. These are most likely legitimate keys that are resold from educational programs like Technet or Dreamspark. However, you are dealing with a person instead of a retailer, and informal Windows keys sales are not approved by Microsoft and probably breaking some licensing agreement to be clear, but it's not illegal. The risks involved are that the person could be selling you a fake or used key, or that Microsoft may deactivate your license and refuse to reactivate it, although it's somewhat unlikely, usually only if the seller and their list of sold keys was caught. We've had people here using those keys without issues for a long time and others who say Microsoft deactivated their key after several months.

It's also possible to further cut costs by going with a cheap graphics card, but the R9 290 works very well for Sony Vegas, it's faster than a GTX 980 in that regard. There are also cheaper power supplies available like the EVGA 600B ($40) which is more than enough for that PC build, but it lacks features like modular cabling.

Edit: Do you also need a keyboard and mouse?

Hey guys, can I get some advice on processors please? I'm looking at an AMD gaming rig, but I'm not sure if I'm better going for an A10 or an AMD Kaveri FX-4 860K.

Could someone advise? Thanks chaps.

Any particular reason why you want to go AMD? Intel usually offers better performance for gaming. APU systems are better suited for lower cost gaming where quality and framerate aren't a priority, and work well for things like emulation. They do have stronger integrated graphics than Intel processors, but it doesn't mean much if you will be using a separate graphics card.

What's your budget and what specifically are you going to be playing or using with the PC?

We got a Laptop/Notebook OT at all? I'm looking into a new one and I can't seem to figure out if we have one or not. There's a gaming thread but I'm not really getting it for gaming.

Here's Laptop-GAF.

 

[xero273]

For video editing, what kind of video card should I be looking at? The normal geforce lineup or the quadro lineup. This is for video editing only no games.

Thanks.

 

[RGM79]

For video editing, what kind of video card should I be looking at? The normal geforce lineup or the quadro lineup. This is for video editing only no games.

Thanks.

Depends on the program you use. Sony Vegas works better with AMD than Nvidia. Nvidia used to be preferred for Adobe Premiere, but as far back as two years ago Adobe worked to bring better support for both AMD OpenCL and Nvidia CUDA with their newer versions of the Mercury engine, so either brand will work.

I am not totally sure about the advantages of a workstation card, I have never looked into them given the higher costs. I would think it depends on what you are doing exactly and what programs you are using.

 

[kennah]

For video editing, what kind of video card should I be looking at? The normal geforce lineup or the quadro lineup. This is for video editing only no games.

Thanks.

It really doesn't matter. Anything 750ti and up, or 270x or up is more than capable of reducing render times.

A good CPU, lots of RAM and fast disks are more important.

 

[Trojita]

Hmmmm I might build a new computer since I might be able to get a 4790 (Quad Core) or 4930 (Six Core) for a good price from a friend.

I might just get the 4790 since gaming will benefit most from that most likely.

I'll just take my reference GTX 970 from my current case and put it in this one, and then put the GTX 670 back in that pc and maybe use it as a htpc for tv gaming or as a server.

My question for you guys is how SLI works. Say I want to get another GTX 970 to SLI, what exactly is the deal with PCI-E 16x? Is using two graphics cards always going to make it 8x/8x? Is 4 cards going to make it 4x/4x/4x/4x? Or is that somehow dependent on the motherboard? How much power loss and am I looking at?

I've never had a Full ATX case before, so I might do it this time lol

 

[RGM79]

Hmmmm I might build a new computer since I might be able to get a 4790 (Quad Core) or 4930 (Six Core) for a good price from a friend.

I might just get the 4790 since gaming will benefit most from that most likely.

I'll just take my reference GTX 970 from my current case and put it in this one, and then put the GTX 670 back in that pc and maybe use it as a htpc for tv gaming or as a server.

My question for you guys is how SLI works. Say I want to get another GTX 970 to SLI, what exactly is the deal with PCI-E 16x? Is using two graphics cards always going to make it 8x/8x? Is 4 cards going to make it 4x/4x/4x/4x? Or is that somehow dependent on the motherboard? How much power loss and am I looking at?

I've never had a Full ATX case before, so I might do it this time lol

In the case of Z97, it will go x8/x8 if you have two graphics cards in SLI. If you have any other PCI-E cards installed such as USB controllers or sound cards, then those will also eat into available PCI-E lanes and all slots will end up running at x4 speed or something.

I'm not sure what you mean by power loss? Graphics card wattage isn't decided by PCI-E slot speed. Unless you're talking about potential performance bottleneck, there is none. PCI-E 3.0 x8 is fast enough for any single graphics card, as you can see in this test done by TechPowerUp with the GTX 980.

 

[Trojita]

In the case of Z97, it will go x8/x8 if you have two graphics cards in SLI. If you have any other PCI-E cards installed such as USB controllers or sound cards, then those will also eat into available PCI-E lanes and all slots will end up running at x4 speed or something.

I'm not sure what you mean by power loss? Graphics card wattage isn't decided by PCI-E slot speed. Unless you're talking about potential performance bottleneck, there is none. PCI-E 3.0 x8 is fast enough for any single graphics card, as you can see in this test done by TechPowerUp with the GTX 980.

Oh cool thanks. Is there any motherboard that can do x16/x16?

 

[RGM79]

Oh cool thanks. Is there any motherboard that can do x16/x16?

I'm not sure why you would want or need x16/x16, there would be no performance difference for SLI GTX 970 or even future twin graphics cards for at least the next year or two.

If you went with the i7 5930K and X99 motherboard, you could have x16 speeds from both slots for two way SLI. If you went with the 5820K, you would get x16 speed for the first slot and x8 speed for the second slot.

The 5820K has been intentionally hampered by being designed to "only" have 28 PCI-E lanes total as opposed to the 5930K and 5960X having 40 PCI-E lanes total. This is still more than Z97's 16 lanes.