Well i want something to also act as a file server.
ah, well that is also a decent use for one as well. MicroATX is pretty much the standard form factor these days, so you shouldn't have too much trouble fining a board with the number of sata ports you need and a decent raid controller.
Depending on where you're putting it, you might want to look at Silverstone for a case: http://silverstonetek.com
I've got an HTPC hooked up to my TV sitting in my credenza and I'm using one of their cases, works great.
XBL: Jhnny Cash PSN: Jhnny_Cash Steam ID: http://steamcommunity.com/id/hypephb 3DS: 0619-4582-9630 Nintendo Network ID: DBrickashaw
You might know me as D'Brickashaw on Steam.
I should've taken a picture before I cleaned out my computer. I had my SSD basically suspended in mid-air because I had nothing to fasten it to the 3.25 bays and the cables held it up.
Anyways though, I got zipties and laptop screws, so I was able to fasten the SSD down today and clean up my desktop's wiring situation immensely. Changing parts may be a hassle later on, but at least it's clean and the airflow is open.
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Donovan PuppyfuckerA dagger in the dark isworth a thousand swords in the morningRegistered Userregular
Waiting for my tax return to grab another EVGA 970 SC, need all the frames for Witcher 3 on this 27'' 1440p. Sidenote, even if I got the FTW it would only perform as fast as the slower SC correct, so no reason to get anything better?
Right, in SLI they will function fine just at the lower clock speed. Might I suggest overclocking?
I'm not sure how to really use the precision x app, can you load a profile and does it need to be open all the time?
Oh cool. so I could run a top-notch cpu, full ram, and a single graphics card with a micro-atx?
The only real difference (besides physical size) between this motherboard and this motherboard is that the ATX board has more RAM slots, more PCI slots, two more SATA slots and a RAID controller, and onboard 7.1 sound connectors.
If you are a typical gamer and going to overclock a quad-core Haswell CPU, run 8-16 gigs of RAM, and a single GPU, there is operationally no difference between the two. Sure, you might have to make sure your computer speakers accept an optical input if you buy the mini-ITX board, but then better speaker setups pretty much all do. It'll still push sound to your front case headphone port anyhow.
I really wanna recommend the G3258 to a friend of mine. But he mainly wants to play Shadows of Mordor, which afaik will scale well up to 4 cores, with a decent enough performance loss with just two cores to Matter.
But the price difference between the G3258 ($70) and the cheapest i5 (the 4440 for $180) is enough that I feel bad pressuring him to get a new mobo + CPU to fix his crashing problems.
Specifically, Shadows of Mordor is crashing during non-heavy load moments on the LGA-1366 mobo he bought in 2011, and we suspect it's his southbridge overheating (though it seems to hover just in the mid-60's during gaming). I mean, we could go in and unseat his southbridge heatsink, clean it and reapply thermal paste, and see if that fixes it.
But I don't necessarily have time to go through that with him -- and even then, it might not be the actual problem. I told 'em that in the long run, upgrading to an LGA 1150 mobo and a Haswell CPU will serve him better even apart from solving the immediate crashing problem. But he's (understandably) hesitant to spend even more money on his PC after already dropping $400 on a STRIX GTX 970 + 8GB of extra RAM.
tl;dr: Is the G3258 still a good recommendation even for very recent games at Ultra-level settings?
what kind of difference is there right now between sandy bridge processors (intel i5 2500k) and the newer models?
Sandy bridge was pretty good, so if you have a good Sandy processor you probably don't need to upgrade.
That being said, there was a good jump in power (and feature support with AVX and the like) between Sandy and ivy. Less of a jump between ivy and haswell (most of the improvements were in the chipset rather than the processor proper, although the chipset improvements are nice if you're using things like usb3). Upgrading is always fun, as long as you're not breaking the bank.
So I should be good for another year or so? Was curious more because I've noticed the new processors and didn't know how big of a difference there was between the older ones and newer ones.
Have you checked the system logs to see crash details? Were they just ctds or were they whole system crashes?
Where would I find these logs/enable logging?
He tells me it's only in SoM that his PC hard crashes; other things crash, but always to the desktop, and likely because of compatibility issues with the games themselves (so like Crusader Kings II, etc). His southbridge temp (IOH in the BIOS) is a little hot, but I've had him monitor his temps while gaming and it doesn't seem to get above like 66C -- though that may be unacceptably hot for a southbridge, I dunno.
I think the reason for it in the first place is that he upgraded from a 550 Ti to a GTX 970, so presumably there's a lot more load on his southbridge because of the much beefier card. But this is just speculation on my part.
I would try a fresh install of windows before throwing a new mobo/cpu at the crash problem. 66 isn't that hot, at least not hot enough to cause anything to crash.
The logs would be under Admind Tools->Event Viewer
I really wanna recommend the G3258 to a friend of mine. But he mainly wants to play Shadows of Mordor, which afaik will scale well up to 4 cores, with a decent enough performance loss with just two cores to Matter.
But the price difference between the G3258 ($70) and the cheapest i5 (the 4440 for $180) is enough that I feel bad pressuring him to get a new mobo + CPU to fix his crashing problems.
Specifically, Shadows of Mordor is crashing during non-heavy load moments on the LGA-1366 mobo he bought in 2011, and we suspect it's his southbridge overheating (though it seems to hover just in the mid-60's during gaming). I mean, we could go in and unseat his southbridge heatsink, clean it and reapply thermal paste, and see if that fixes it.
But I don't necessarily have time to go through that with him -- and even then, it might not be the actual problem. I told 'em that in the long run, upgrading to an LGA 1150 mobo and a Haswell CPU will serve him better even apart from solving the immediate crashing problem. But he's (understandably) hesitant to spend even more money on his PC after already dropping $400 on a STRIX GTX 970 + 8GB of extra RAM.
tl;dr: Is the G3258 still a good recommendation even for very recent games at Ultra-level settings?
If your friend still has the X58 chipset build, then a used server chip Xeon 5670 6-Core for about $120 will easily serve as a comparable inexpensive upgrade suitable to running anything gaming related in the near future. I did the same thing and it made my 5 year old build fly.
Computer build thread, I want to migrate as much of my PC as possible to a mini or micro-ATX motherboard and appropriately sized case. I have a 3570k CPU, need 4 RAM slots, and enough space to run a self-contained CPU water cooler (with possibility for GPU cooling also). What motherboard and case should I migrate to?
I'm also looking to move from an SLI 660Ti GPU setup to a single card. I don't need to move up to a more powerful card, but I don't want to take a performance hit. I just don't know where SLI 660Tis fall in comparison to a single card. Should I go with a GTX 970? Should I go for a 780Ti or 980? And R9 290X?
I really wanna recommend the G3258 to a friend of mine. But he mainly wants to play Shadows of Mordor, which afaik will scale well up to 4 cores, with a decent enough performance loss with just two cores to Matter.
But the price difference between the G3258 ($70) and the cheapest i5 (the 4440 for $180) is enough that I feel bad pressuring him to get a new mobo + CPU to fix his crashing problems.
Specifically, Shadows of Mordor is crashing during non-heavy load moments on the LGA-1366 mobo he bought in 2011, and we suspect it's his southbridge overheating (though it seems to hover just in the mid-60's during gaming). I mean, we could go in and unseat his southbridge heatsink, clean it and reapply thermal paste, and see if that fixes it.
But I don't necessarily have time to go through that with him -- and even then, it might not be the actual problem. I told 'em that in the long run, upgrading to an LGA 1150 mobo and a Haswell CPU will serve him better even apart from solving the immediate crashing problem. But he's (understandably) hesitant to spend even more money on his PC after already dropping $400 on a STRIX GTX 970 + 8GB of extra RAM.
tl;dr: Is the G3258 still a good recommendation even for very recent games at Ultra-level settings?
If your friend still has the X58 chipset build, then a used server chip Xeon 5670 6-Core for about $120 will easily serve as a comparable inexpensive upgrade suitable to running anything gaming related in the near future. I did the same thing and it made my 5 year old build fly.
He has an i7 950 in there currently. The CPU is definitely not the problem (unless it's what's causing the crashes).
I think the mobo is just bad, and probably not in a way that's worth trying to fix over just spending $70-100 on a current-socket one plus a $70 G3258 (which seems to run most recent games just fine once it's OC'd). He'll solve his crash problem and, given that he's already upgraded to a GTX 970, set himself up for any necessary upgrades down the road for at least a year or two.
I really wanna recommend the G3258 to a friend of mine. But he mainly wants to play Shadows of Mordor, which afaik will scale well up to 4 cores, with a decent enough performance loss with just two cores to Matter.
But the price difference between the G3258 ($70) and the cheapest i5 (the 4440 for $180) is enough that I feel bad pressuring him to get a new mobo + CPU to fix his crashing problems.
Specifically, Shadows of Mordor is crashing during non-heavy load moments on the LGA-1366 mobo he bought in 2011, and we suspect it's his southbridge overheating (though it seems to hover just in the mid-60's during gaming). I mean, we could go in and unseat his southbridge heatsink, clean it and reapply thermal paste, and see if that fixes it.
But I don't necessarily have time to go through that with him -- and even then, it might not be the actual problem. I told 'em that in the long run, upgrading to an LGA 1150 mobo and a Haswell CPU will serve him better even apart from solving the immediate crashing problem. But he's (understandably) hesitant to spend even more money on his PC after already dropping $400 on a STRIX GTX 970 + 8GB of extra RAM.
tl;dr: Is the G3258 still a good recommendation even for very recent games at Ultra-level settings?
If your friend still has the X58 chipset build, then a used server chip Xeon 5670 6-Core for about $120 will easily serve as a comparable inexpensive upgrade suitable to running anything gaming related in the near future. I did the same thing and it made my 5 year old build fly.
He has an i7 950 in there currently. The CPU is definitely not the problem (unless it's what's causing the crashes).
I think the mobo is just bad, and probably not in a way that's worth trying to fix over just spending $70-100 on a current-socket one plus a $70 G3258 (which seems to run most recent games just fine once it's OC'd). He'll solve his crash problem and, given that he's already upgraded to a GTX 970, set himself up for any necessary upgrades down the road for at least a year or two.
Yeah, it's most likely the mainboard. The pc is most likely bluescreening but rebooting without showing the diagnostic. Knowing what the specific error is can narrow the problem down, but realistically it doesn't matter if it's the mainboard or the cpu, since the end result is replacing both. If he's just gotten a 970 upgrading the cpu and mainboard won't be a waste.
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Donovan PuppyfuckerA dagger in the dark isworth a thousand swords in the morningRegistered Userregular
To be honest, I'd feel bad about recommending a two-core processor for a gaming rig now. You could get away with it up until recently, but far more games are actually leveraging more cores now to cripple yourself with a dual core for gaming. You're better off just going for the Haswell refresh quad-core you can afford (either the cheapest if you're not overclocking, or the K chip if you are. There's no point going for anything in the middle).
@Hamurabi: I was just running Shadows of Mordor on Ultra minus Motion Blur/AA (off) on a G3258 at 4.4GHZ and R7 265 fine.
But as said, if you can swing it get a 4 core. But if you really don't want to/can't the only game you can't really play at the moment is Dragon Age: Inquisition just because BioWare did something to the Frostbite engine. It started off not even launching, they fixed that without noting it, but it's still rather poor on a tri core CPU (my AMD Athlon II 425 could run it 'playable'ish) but for me on the G3258 the main menu basically locks up at 0 FPS.
So a G3258->upgrade is acceptable (my plan!), but it seems developers are heading DA:I's way.
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TraceGNU Terry Pratchett; GNU Gus; GNU Carrie Fisher; GNU Adam WeRegistered Userregular
Yeah he's gonna want a quad core. If not now then in a few months from now.
I had kinda resigned myself to his unwillingness to spend more money -- which, again, is totally fair. Not everyone thinks as little as I do of just throwing $500+ at their computer just so they can play video games that they don't have time for anyway because they're in grad school. >_>
But yeah, I would much prefer he got the cheapest i5 he can get (the cheapest K chip, really). Alls I can do is give him my frank opinion (and mention some of the suggestions here) so he's at least making an informed decision.
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Dr. ChaosPost nuclear nuisanceRegistered Userregular
This is my rig. I could use help choosing new upgrades before departing South Korea. In particular, I think I need a new, GPU and possibly power supply or processor (if feasible) for Witcher 3 and the various 4X games which spank my computer.
Operating System Version:
Windows 7 (64 bit)
Processor: Intel Core i5-3570K @ 3.4 GHz
Video Card:
DirectX Card: AMD Radeon HD 7900 Series
Memory:
RAM: 8GB
Korea is home to the Yongsan Electronics Market. I can find just about any computer part on the weekend and compatibility is not a concern because power supplies are dual voltage. I want to shop before I depart Korea in the summer. Should I even be considering an upgrade at this time?
Right. CPU temperatures. I'm wondering what's going on with mine.
Gigabyte Easytune is reporting that my CPU, having JUST turned the computer on, is fluctuating every few seconds at any number between 35 and 51 degrees celcius.
Looking at HWmonitor, that's reporting the gigabyte motherboard temperature as the same (so i'm assuming that's the socket) but then under the CPU heading, it's giving the much more believable 25degrees celcius, i'm assuming that's the core temperature? I don't know.
To add to the matter, after a few hours of having the pc on, i checked easytune again. It reported a cpu temperature that fluctuated between 24degrees celcius and 35 degrees celcius.
Is it a case that my motherboard isn't recognising the correct temperatures until it has warmed up? Is it just completely wrong? or do i have an issue.
I changed the cooling gel a few times on saturday as it was doing this then. Changed it once - looked the same. Changed it a second time and put it on a different way - looked the same. Did this a third time and it looked the same then so i just left it.
Could someone explain to me maybe what's going on here? Do i have anything to worry about if HWmonitor is reporting the cpu temp as 25degrees celcius? Everything RUNS fine, I think. I've been playing WoW on high at pretty much a locked 60fps while questing and doing dungeons and i think that's more cpu-intensive than it is gpu intensive.
Any thoughts?
NNID: Quical
STEAM: Quical
Check out my youtube channel, maybe subscribe?: NerdAndOrGeek
@Cantido what PSU do you have presently? What mobo?
That processor is still pretty solid, so I would only upgrade it if there was a stellar deal on a 45XX.
Your video card is probably on the low end for 4K games, so look around. For those who have been in these threads for a while, you'll know that I'm officially done with ATi, so I'm admittedly biased by saying you should get a GTX 8XX or 9XX to replace your 79XX.
This is my rig. I could use help choosing new upgrades before departing South Korea. In particular, I think I need a new, GPU and possibly power supply or processor (if feasible) for Witcher 3 and the various 4X games which spank my computer.
Operating System Version:
Windows 7 (64 bit)
Processor: Intel Core i5-3570K @ 3.4 GHz
Video Card:
DirectX Card: AMD Radeon HD 7900 Series
Memory:
RAM: 8GB
Korea is home to the Yongsan Electronics Market. I can find just about any computer part on the weekend and compatibility is not a concern because power supplies are dual voltage. I want to shop before I depart Korea in the summer. Should I even be considering an upgrade at this time?
Do you know what graphics card you have currently? That's just a series number so it doesn't say much. If you right-click on your desktop, go to "screen resolution" and go to "advanced" you should get more info about your graphics card.
If you have a 7950, you could upgrade to a GTX 970 or 980. If you have a 7970 or 7990, I'm not sure why you are getting "spanked" by any games.
That said, your processor is fine. And whether you need a new power supply depends on what brand/wattage that is as well.
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BouwsTWanna come to a super soft birthday party?Registered Userregular
This is my rig. I could use help choosing new upgrades before departing South Korea. In particular, I think I need a new, GPU and possibly power supply or processor (if feasible) for Witcher 3 and the various 4X games which spank my computer.
Operating System Version:
Windows 7 (64 bit)
Processor: Intel Core i5-3570K @ 3.4 GHz
Video Card:
DirectX Card: AMD Radeon HD 7900 Series
Memory:
RAM: 8GB
Korea is home to the Yongsan Electronics Market. I can find just about any computer part on the weekend and compatibility is not a concern because power supplies are dual voltage. I want to shop before I depart Korea in the summer. Should I even be considering an upgrade at this time?
I think it matters what type of 7900 you have (a 7950 is very different than a 7990). Regardless, I would echo Mugsley that a 970 or (preferably) a 980 is where you're going to get the most bang-for buck. If it was a matter of upgrading multiple components of yours a little, or focusing on one, I'd always consider GPU first.
How much RAM do you have?
EDIT: One other thing I thought of, I think there are more GPU's coming down the pipe... Who knows what ATi's response to the nVidia offerings is going to be. Maybe wait until March-April if you don't have to pull the trigger right away. We may see great things coming down the pipe.
Right. CPU temperatures. I'm wondering what's going on with mine.
Gigabyte Easytune is reporting that my CPU, having JUST turned the computer on, is fluctuating every few seconds at any number between 35 and 51 degrees celcius.
Looking at HWmonitor, that's reporting the gigabyte motherboard temperature as the same (so i'm assuming that's the socket) but then under the CPU heading, it's giving the much more believable 25degrees celcius, i'm assuming that's the core temperature? I don't know.
To add to the matter, after a few hours of having the pc on, i checked easytune again. It reported a cpu temperature that fluctuated between 24degrees celcius and 35 degrees celcius.
Is it a case that my motherboard isn't recognising the correct temperatures until it has warmed up? Is it just completely wrong? or do i have an issue.
I changed the cooling gel a few times on saturday as it was doing this then. Changed it once - looked the same. Changed it a second time and put it on a different way - looked the same. Did this a third time and it looked the same then so i just left it.
Could someone explain to me maybe what's going on here? Do i have anything to worry about if HWmonitor is reporting the cpu temp as 25degrees celcius? Everything RUNS fine, I think. I've been playing WoW on high at pretty much a locked 60fps while questing and doing dungeons and i think that's more cpu-intensive than it is gpu intensive.
This is my rig. I could use help choosing new upgrades before departing South Korea. In particular, I think I need a new, GPU and possibly power supply or processor (if feasible) for Witcher 3 and the various 4X games which spank my computer.
Operating System Version:
Windows 7 (64 bit)
Processor: Intel Core i5-3570K @ 3.4 GHz
Video Card:
DirectX Card: AMD Radeon HD 7900 Series
Memory:
RAM: 8GB
Korea is home to the Yongsan Electronics Market. I can find just about any computer part on the weekend and compatibility is not a concern because power supplies are dual voltage. I want to shop before I depart Korea in the summer. Should I even be considering an upgrade at this time?
@Cantido, You seem to have left off what PSU you currently have.
| Origin/R*SC: Ein7919 | Battle.net: Erlkonig#1448 | XBL: Lexicanum | Steam: Der Erlkönig (the umlaut is important) |
Woo! So I got my 970 yesterday. Put it in last night; I was a little worried it wouldn't fit my case, but it slid right in. Aww yeah.
Amazed at how much quieter it is than my 470. Oh, and it's pretty, too. Thanks, thread, for talking me into it.
XBL: Jhnny Cash PSN: Jhnny_Cash Steam ID: http://steamcommunity.com/id/hypephb 3DS: 0619-4582-9630 Nintendo Network ID: DBrickashaw
You might know me as D'Brickashaw on Steam.
Cpu temp in bios is showing a set 45degrees celcius which just doesn't make sense to me. I've changed the cooling gel, I've reseated the heat sink. Fan is running on max. What could even be causing it? And that it gets lower after a few hours of usR while the core temperature is significantly lower. Bios temp reading faulty? There's no heat coming from it.
NNID: Quical
STEAM: Quical
Check out my youtube channel, maybe subscribe?: NerdAndOrGeek
Right. CPU temperatures. I'm wondering what's going on with mine.
Gigabyte Easytune is reporting that my CPU, having JUST turned the computer on, is fluctuating every few seconds at any number between 35 and 51 degrees celcius.
Looking at HWmonitor, that's reporting the gigabyte motherboard temperature as the same (so i'm assuming that's the socket) but then under the CPU heading, it's giving the much more believable 25degrees celcius, i'm assuming that's the core temperature? I don't know.
To add to the matter, after a few hours of having the pc on, i checked easytune again. It reported a cpu temperature that fluctuated between 24degrees celcius and 35 degrees celcius.
Is it a case that my motherboard isn't recognising the correct temperatures until it has warmed up? Is it just completely wrong? or do i have an issue.
I changed the cooling gel a few times on saturday as it was doing this then. Changed it once - looked the same. Changed it a second time and put it on a different way - looked the same. Did this a third time and it looked the same then so i just left it.
Could someone explain to me maybe what's going on here? Do i have anything to worry about if HWmonitor is reporting the cpu temp as 25degrees celcius? Everything RUNS fine, I think. I've been playing WoW on high at pretty much a locked 60fps while questing and doing dungeons and i think that's more cpu-intensive than it is gpu intensive.
Any thoughts?
@Quical that sounds like a temperature sensor problem rather than an actual heat issue. Are you looking at "CPU TEMP" or "CORE TEMP" when you are measuring temperature?
Also, there's nothing wrong with 45 degrees as a baseline. As long as things are not spiking when you are playing games there's no issue.
Right. CPU temperatures.I'm wondering what's going on with mine.
Gigabyte Easytune is reporting that my CPU, having JUST turned the computer on, is fluctuating every few seconds at any number between 35 and 51 degrees celcius.
Looking at HWmonitor, that's reporting the gigabyte motherboard temperature as the same (so i'm assuming that's the socket) but then under the CPU heading, it's giving the much more believable 25degrees celcius, i'm assuming that's the core temperature? I don't know.
To add to the matter, after a few hours of having the pc on, i checked easytune again. It reported a cpu temperature that fluctuated between 24degrees celcius and 35 degrees celcius.
Is it a case that my motherboard isn't recognising the correct temperatures until it has warmed up? Is it just completely wrong? or do i have an issue.
I changed the cooling gel a few times on saturday as it was doing this then. Changed it once - looked the same. Changed it a second time and put it on a different way - looked the same. Did this a third time and it looked the same then so i just left it.
Could someone explain to me maybe what's going on here? Do i have anything to worry about if HWmonitor is reporting the cpu temp as 25degrees celcius? Everything RUNS fine, I think. I've been playing WoW on high at pretty much a locked 60fps while questing and doing dungeons and i think that's more cpu-intensive than it is gpu intensive.
Any thoughts?
@Quical that sounds like a temperature sensor problem rather than an actual heat issue. Are you looking at "CPU TEMP" or "CORE TEMP" when you are measuring temperature?
Also, there's nothing wrong with 45 degrees as a baseline. As long as things are not spiking when you are playing games there's no issue.
I'm looking, in easytune and bios, at "cpu temp". Which really just jumps around to be honest. If.it's.a temp sensor problem then is there anything I need to do? Will it cause issues or is it just "bios reads it as this and so you're stuck with 100% fan Speed forever"?
It Doesn't matter what temp It Is in the room It seems, always gives back This Weird up and down temp.
NNID: Quical
STEAM: Quical
Check out my youtube channel, maybe subscribe?: NerdAndOrGeek
Posts
ah, well that is also a decent use for one as well. MicroATX is pretty much the standard form factor these days, so you shouldn't have too much trouble fining a board with the number of sata ports you need and a decent raid controller.
I've got an HTPC hooked up to my TV sitting in my credenza and I'm using one of their cases, works great.
You might know me as D'Brickashaw on Steam.
Anyways though, I got zipties and laptop screws, so I was able to fasten the SSD down today and clean up my desktop's wiring situation immensely. Changing parts may be a hassle later on, but at least it's clean and the airflow is open.
Get ye a decent-sized HTPC case, install a mini-ITX motherboard and Haswell refresh processor (onboard graphics is more than enough for decoding BluRay, you can even do some light to moderate gaming with it), boot from an M.2 SSD, then stuff the rest of the case with five HDDs. You'd probably want some RAM, too.
None. You just get more pcie rails with ATX.
I'm not sure how to really use the precision x app, can you load a profile and does it need to be open all the time?
yes, you could even do that on mini-itx if you really wanted to as well. form factor doesn't really matter much outside pcie slots.
The only real difference (besides physical size) between this motherboard and this motherboard is that the ATX board has more RAM slots, more PCI slots, two more SATA slots and a RAID controller, and onboard 7.1 sound connectors.
If you are a typical gamer and going to overclock a quad-core Haswell CPU, run 8-16 gigs of RAM, and a single GPU, there is operationally no difference between the two. Sure, you might have to make sure your computer speakers accept an optical input if you buy the mini-ITX board, but then better speaker setups pretty much all do. It'll still push sound to your front case headphone port anyhow.
I really wanna recommend the G3258 to a friend of mine. But he mainly wants to play Shadows of Mordor, which afaik will scale well up to 4 cores, with a decent enough performance loss with just two cores to Matter.
But the price difference between the G3258 ($70) and the cheapest i5 (the 4440 for $180) is enough that I feel bad pressuring him to get a new mobo + CPU to fix his crashing problems.
Specifically, Shadows of Mordor is crashing during non-heavy load moments on the LGA-1366 mobo he bought in 2011, and we suspect it's his southbridge overheating (though it seems to hover just in the mid-60's during gaming). I mean, we could go in and unseat his southbridge heatsink, clean it and reapply thermal paste, and see if that fixes it.
But I don't necessarily have time to go through that with him -- and even then, it might not be the actual problem. I told 'em that in the long run, upgrading to an LGA 1150 mobo and a Haswell CPU will serve him better even apart from solving the immediate crashing problem. But he's (understandably) hesitant to spend even more money on his PC after already dropping $400 on a STRIX GTX 970 + 8GB of extra RAM.
tl;dr: Is the G3258 still a good recommendation even for very recent games at Ultra-level settings?
Sandy bridge was pretty good, so if you have a good Sandy processor you probably don't need to upgrade.
That being said, there was a good jump in power (and feature support with AVX and the like) between Sandy and ivy. Less of a jump between ivy and haswell (most of the improvements were in the chipset rather than the processor proper, although the chipset improvements are nice if you're using things like usb3). Upgrading is always fun, as long as you're not breaking the bank.
Where would I find these logs/enable logging?
He tells me it's only in SoM that his PC hard crashes; other things crash, but always to the desktop, and likely because of compatibility issues with the games themselves (so like Crusader Kings II, etc). His southbridge temp (IOH in the BIOS) is a little hot, but I've had him monitor his temps while gaming and it doesn't seem to get above like 66C -- though that may be unacceptably hot for a southbridge, I dunno.
I think the reason for it in the first place is that he upgraded from a 550 Ti to a GTX 970, so presumably there's a lot more load on his southbridge because of the much beefier card. But this is just speculation on my part.
The logs would be under Admind Tools->Event Viewer
If your friend still has the X58 chipset build, then a used server chip Xeon 5670 6-Core for about $120 will easily serve as a comparable inexpensive upgrade suitable to running anything gaming related in the near future. I did the same thing and it made my 5 year old build fly.
I'm also looking to move from an SLI 660Ti GPU setup to a single card. I don't need to move up to a more powerful card, but I don't want to take a performance hit. I just don't know where SLI 660Tis fall in comparison to a single card. Should I go with a GTX 970? Should I go for a 780Ti or 980? And R9 290X?
He has an i7 950 in there currently. The CPU is definitely not the problem (unless it's what's causing the crashes).
I think the mobo is just bad, and probably not in a way that's worth trying to fix over just spending $70-100 on a current-socket one plus a $70 G3258 (which seems to run most recent games just fine once it's OC'd). He'll solve his crash problem and, given that he's already upgraded to a GTX 970, set himself up for any necessary upgrades down the road for at least a year or two.
Yeah, it's most likely the mainboard. The pc is most likely bluescreening but rebooting without showing the diagnostic. Knowing what the specific error is can narrow the problem down, but realistically it doesn't matter if it's the mainboard or the cpu, since the end result is replacing both. If he's just gotten a 970 upgrading the cpu and mainboard won't be a waste.
But as said, if you can swing it get a 4 core. But if you really don't want to/can't the only game you can't really play at the moment is Dragon Age: Inquisition just because BioWare did something to the Frostbite engine. It started off not even launching, they fixed that without noting it, but it's still rather poor on a tri core CPU (my AMD Athlon II 425 could run it 'playable'ish) but for me on the G3258 the main menu basically locks up at 0 FPS.
So a G3258->upgrade is acceptable (my plan!), but it seems developers are heading DA:I's way.
Might as well future proof.
But yeah, I would much prefer he got the cheapest i5 he can get (the cheapest K chip, really). Alls I can do is give him my frank opinion (and mention some of the suggestions here) so he's at least making an informed decision.
Anybody ever use this site before? Building my first PC and was thinking about using this to map everything out and review stuff. Seems pretty good.
Operating System Version:
Windows 7 (64 bit)
Processor: Intel Core i5-3570K @ 3.4 GHz
Video Card:
DirectX Card: AMD Radeon HD 7900 Series
Memory:
RAM: 8GB
Korea is home to the Yongsan Electronics Market. I can find just about any computer part on the weekend and compatibility is not a concern because power supplies are dual voltage. I want to shop before I depart Korea in the summer. Should I even be considering an upgrade at this time?
Gigabyte Easytune is reporting that my CPU, having JUST turned the computer on, is fluctuating every few seconds at any number between 35 and 51 degrees celcius.
Looking at HWmonitor, that's reporting the gigabyte motherboard temperature as the same (so i'm assuming that's the socket) but then under the CPU heading, it's giving the much more believable 25degrees celcius, i'm assuming that's the core temperature? I don't know.
To add to the matter, after a few hours of having the pc on, i checked easytune again. It reported a cpu temperature that fluctuated between 24degrees celcius and 35 degrees celcius.
Is it a case that my motherboard isn't recognising the correct temperatures until it has warmed up? Is it just completely wrong? or do i have an issue.
I changed the cooling gel a few times on saturday as it was doing this then. Changed it once - looked the same. Changed it a second time and put it on a different way - looked the same. Did this a third time and it looked the same then so i just left it.
Could someone explain to me maybe what's going on here? Do i have anything to worry about if HWmonitor is reporting the cpu temp as 25degrees celcius? Everything RUNS fine, I think. I've been playing WoW on high at pretty much a locked 60fps while questing and doing dungeons and i think that's more cpu-intensive than it is gpu intensive.
Any thoughts?
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That processor is still pretty solid, so I would only upgrade it if there was a stellar deal on a 45XX.
Your video card is probably on the low end for 4K games, so look around. For those who have been in these threads for a while, you'll know that I'm officially done with ATi, so I'm admittedly biased by saying you should get a GTX 8XX or 9XX to replace your 79XX.
Do you know what graphics card you have currently? That's just a series number so it doesn't say much. If you right-click on your desktop, go to "screen resolution" and go to "advanced" you should get more info about your graphics card.
If you have a 7950, you could upgrade to a GTX 970 or 980. If you have a 7970 or 7990, I'm not sure why you are getting "spanked" by any games.
That said, your processor is fine. And whether you need a new power supply depends on what brand/wattage that is as well.
I think it matters what type of 7900 you have (a 7950 is very different than a 7990). Regardless, I would echo Mugsley that a 970 or (preferably) a 980 is where you're going to get the most bang-for buck. If it was a matter of upgrading multiple components of yours a little, or focusing on one, I'd always consider GPU first.
How much RAM do you have?
EDIT: One other thing I thought of, I think there are more GPU's coming down the pipe... Who knows what ATi's response to the nVidia offerings is going to be. Maybe wait until March-April if you don't have to pull the trigger right away. We may see great things coming down the pipe.
Check to see what it says in your BIOS/UEFI.
@Cantido, You seem to have left off what PSU you currently have.
You might know me as D'Brickashaw on Steam.
STEAM: Quical
Check out my youtube channel, maybe subscribe?: NerdAndOrGeek
@Quical that sounds like a temperature sensor problem rather than an actual heat issue. Are you looking at "CPU TEMP" or "CORE TEMP" when you are measuring temperature?
Also, there's nothing wrong with 45 degrees as a baseline. As long as things are not spiking when you are playing games there's no issue.
I'm looking, in easytune and bios, at "cpu temp". Which really just jumps around to be honest. If.it's.a temp sensor problem then is there anything I need to do? Will it cause issues or is it just "bios reads it as this and so you're stuck with 100% fan Speed forever"?
It Doesn't matter what temp It Is in the room It seems, always gives back This Weird up and down temp.
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