AlectharAlan ShoreWe're not territorial about that sort of thing, are we?Registered Userregular
I like the 500R, but I think there are better options at that price range, the HAF XM chief among them. Corsair makes a compelling product, but the 600T and 650D are both really expensive given their lack of cooling versatility, especially with the fairly anemic front/top fans. The 300, 400 and 500 "R" cases are all solid, and the 400 and 500 at least come with a solid basic fan setup, but I think you can do better in the same price range. The CM 690 II is a very solid competitor to the 300R, the Define R4 and Arc Midi are great up against the 400R, and I've already mentioned the HAF XM.
Corsair does a damned good job engineering the insides of their cases, but I don't dig the "extras," like built-in fan controllers I don't want or need, and in general you don't have a whole lot of room to color outside the lines that Corsair has drawn into the cases.
Pretty much... I got the HAF 912... it's supposed to be a really good case and was only around $70... some of the negative reviews on Newegg were complaining that the inside wasn't painted black like the outside... I don't give a damn about that... I just need something that will hold all of my components and have decent cooling.
I like the 500R, but I think there are better options at that price range, the HAF XM chief among them. Corsair makes a compelling product, but the 600T and 650D are both really expensive given their lack of cooling versatility, especially with the fairly anemic front/top fans. The 300, 400 and 500 "R" cases are all solid, and the 400 and 500 at least come with a solid basic fan setup, but I think you can do better in the same price range. The CM 690 II is a very solid competitor to the 300R, the Define R4 and Arc Midi are great up against the 400R, and I've already mentioned the HAF XM.
Corsair does a damned good job engineering the insides of their cases, but I don't dig the "extras," like built-in fan controllers I don't want or need, and in general you don't have a whole lot of room to color outside the lines that Corsair has drawn into the cases.
Just to play devils advocate, I actually make use of my fan control. I have no central air, so in the summer hot months, I jam all my case fans up to full speed during the day. At night when the house cools off and I don't want to game next to a jet engine, I pop them all back down.
I don't use the light controls very often, but I guess it's there if I need it.
I like the 500R, but I think there are better options at that price range, the HAF XM chief among them. Corsair makes a compelling product, but the 600T and 650D are both really expensive given their lack of cooling versatility, especially with the fairly anemic front/top fans. The 300, 400 and 500 "R" cases are all solid, and the 400 and 500 at least come with a solid basic fan setup, but I think you can do better in the same price range. The CM 690 II is a very solid competitor to the 300R, the Define R4 and Arc Midi are great up against the 400R, and I've already mentioned the HAF XM.
Corsair does a damned good job engineering the insides of their cases, but I don't dig the "extras," like built-in fan controllers I don't want or need, and in general you don't have a whole lot of room to color outside the lines that Corsair has drawn into the cases.
Just to play devils advocate, I actually make use of my fan control. I have no central air, so in the summer hot months, I jam all my case fans up to full speed during the day. At night when the house cools off and I don't want to game next to a jet engine, I pop them all back down.
I don't use the light controls very often, but I guess it's there if I need it.
I don't even know how to turn my 500R's front fan lights off. The button is there but it doesn't do anything. And the documentation says nothing on how to hook them up to the motherboard instead.
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GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
I like the 500R, but I think there are better options at that price range, the HAF XM chief among them. Corsair makes a compelling product, but the 600T and 650D are both really expensive given their lack of cooling versatility, especially with the fairly anemic front/top fans. The 300, 400 and 500 "R" cases are all solid, and the 400 and 500 at least come with a solid basic fan setup, but I think you can do better in the same price range. The CM 690 II is a very solid competitor to the 300R, the Define R4 and Arc Midi are great up against the 400R, and I've already mentioned the HAF XM.
Corsair does a damned good job engineering the insides of their cases, but I don't dig the "extras," like built-in fan controllers I don't want or need, and in general you don't have a whole lot of room to color outside the lines that Corsair has drawn into the cases.
Just to play devils advocate, I actually make use of my fan control. I have no central air, so in the summer hot months, I jam all my case fans up to full speed during the day. At night when the house cools off and I don't want to game next to a jet engine, I pop them all back down.
I don't use the light controls very often, but I guess it's there if I need it.
I don't even know how to turn my 500R's front fan lights off. The button is there but it doesn't do anything. And the documentation says nothing on how to hook them up to the motherboard instead.
I thought the same thing. The issue is that the button is SUPER deep. You almost need a paper clip or something to push it in far enough. When it's in far enough, it will make an audible click before popping back out...plus you'll see the lights toggle.
I like the 500R, but I think there are better options at that price range, the HAF XM chief among them. Corsair makes a compelling product, but the 600T and 650D are both really expensive given their lack of cooling versatility, especially with the fairly anemic front/top fans. The 300, 400 and 500 "R" cases are all solid, and the 400 and 500 at least come with a solid basic fan setup, but I think you can do better in the same price range. The CM 690 II is a very solid competitor to the 300R, the Define R4 and Arc Midi are great up against the 400R, and I've already mentioned the HAF XM.
Corsair does a damned good job engineering the insides of their cases, but I don't dig the "extras," like built-in fan controllers I don't want or need, and in general you don't have a whole lot of room to color outside the lines that Corsair has drawn into the cases.
Just to play devils advocate, I actually make use of my fan control. I have no central air, so in the summer hot months, I jam all my case fans up to full speed during the day. At night when the house cools off and I don't want to game next to a jet engine, I pop them all back down.
I don't use the light controls very often, but I guess it's there if I need it.
I guess what I should say is that for myself, I'd rather have my own fan control solution than one that's built-in and might not handle what I want to throw at it. The 600T's fan controller is pretty odd, the voltage range is pretty small, and if you went to the trouble of replacing the built-in front fan (for example) and the replacement is any kind of performance fan, it'll probably burn out the controller, because it's only rated to handle like 4-5W per fan.
I like Corsair's cases, I just want to see them either go whole hog on a feature like the fan controller rather than give me something that will only handle the default loadout, then be fixed in place and redundant when I change things around.
I like the 500R, but I think there are better options at that price range, the HAF XM chief among them. Corsair makes a compelling product, but the 600T and 650D are both really expensive given their lack of cooling versatility, especially with the fairly anemic front/top fans. The 300, 400 and 500 "R" cases are all solid, and the 400 and 500 at least come with a solid basic fan setup, but I think you can do better in the same price range. The CM 690 II is a very solid competitor to the 300R, the Define R4 and Arc Midi are great up against the 400R, and I've already mentioned the HAF XM.
Corsair does a damned good job engineering the insides of their cases, but I don't dig the "extras," like built-in fan controllers I don't want or need, and in general you don't have a whole lot of room to color outside the lines that Corsair has drawn into the cases.
Just to play devils advocate, I actually make use of my fan control. I have no central air, so in the summer hot months, I jam all my case fans up to full speed during the day. At night when the house cools off and I don't want to game next to a jet engine, I pop them all back down.
I don't use the light controls very often, but I guess it's there if I need it.
I don't even know how to turn my 500R's front fan lights off. The button is there but it doesn't do anything. And the documentation says nothing on how to hook them up to the motherboard instead.
If you're referring to using the motherboard to control the fan lighting, the documentation doesn't mention it because it can't be done. Their should be separate power molex power leads that run through that button powering the fan LEDs, you can just unplug those if the button doesn't want to work. Failing that, you can simply remove the LEDs from the fans, it's not really that tough most of the time.
GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
The corsair cases actually have the lights prewired to a kill switch, but that kill switch is so stupidly deep that you will think it doesn't work at first...until you finally push it in far enough that it "clicks", and your lights toggle.
I like the 500R, but I think there are better options at that price range, the HAF XM chief among them. Corsair makes a compelling product, but the 600T and 650D are both really expensive given their lack of cooling versatility, especially with the fairly anemic front/top fans. The 300, 400 and 500 "R" cases are all solid, and the 400 and 500 at least come with a solid basic fan setup, but I think you can do better in the same price range. The CM 690 II is a very solid competitor to the 300R, the Define R4 and Arc Midi are great up against the 400R, and I've already mentioned the HAF XM.
Corsair does a damned good job engineering the insides of their cases, but I don't dig the "extras," like built-in fan controllers I don't want or need, and in general you don't have a whole lot of room to color outside the lines that Corsair has drawn into the cases.
Just to play devils advocate, I actually make use of my fan control. I have no central air, so in the summer hot months, I jam all my case fans up to full speed during the day. At night when the house cools off and I don't want to game next to a jet engine, I pop them all back down.
I don't use the light controls very often, but I guess it's there if I need it.
I guess what I should say is that for myself, I'd rather have my own fan control solution than one that's built-in and might not handle what I want to throw at it. The 600T's fan controller is pretty odd, the voltage range is pretty small, and if you went to the trouble of replacing the built-in front fan (for example) and the replacement is any kind of performance fan, it'll probably burn out the controller, because it's only rated to handle like 4-5W per fan.
I like Corsair's cases, I just want to see them either go whole hog on a feature like the fan controller rather than give me something that will only handle the default loadout, then be fixed in place and redundant when I change things around.
I like the 500R, but I think there are better options at that price range, the HAF XM chief among them. Corsair makes a compelling product, but the 600T and 650D are both really expensive given their lack of cooling versatility, especially with the fairly anemic front/top fans. The 300, 400 and 500 "R" cases are all solid, and the 400 and 500 at least come with a solid basic fan setup, but I think you can do better in the same price range. The CM 690 II is a very solid competitor to the 300R, the Define R4 and Arc Midi are great up against the 400R, and I've already mentioned the HAF XM.
Corsair does a damned good job engineering the insides of their cases, but I don't dig the "extras," like built-in fan controllers I don't want or need, and in general you don't have a whole lot of room to color outside the lines that Corsair has drawn into the cases.
Just to play devils advocate, I actually make use of my fan control. I have no central air, so in the summer hot months, I jam all my case fans up to full speed during the day. At night when the house cools off and I don't want to game next to a jet engine, I pop them all back down.
I don't use the light controls very often, but I guess it's there if I need it.
I don't even know how to turn my 500R's front fan lights off. The button is there but it doesn't do anything. And the documentation says nothing on how to hook them up to the motherboard instead.
If you're referring to using the motherboard to control the fan lighting, the documentation doesn't mention it because it can't be done. Their should be separate power molex power leads that run through that button powering the fan LEDs, you can just unplug those if the button doesn't want to work. Failing that, you can simply remove the LEDs from the fans, it's not really that tough most of the time.
Not the lights, just the fans themselves. I know where the fans hook up to the front switch but I have no idea where the fans' wires end and the switch's begin.
Also, wow the switch actually works! Too bad it's the HDD light that shines right at my pillow at night.
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GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
edited August 2012
Why not just sleep your PC at night? That's what I do. No lights, no sound and no heat. Instant "boot up" the next day.
Sleep actually works these days, it's not that archaic "Oh god it's a crapshoot if my system ever turns on again" feature it was in 2001.
I like the 500R, but I think there are better options at that price range, the HAF XM chief among them. Corsair makes a compelling product, but the 600T and 650D are both really expensive given their lack of cooling versatility, especially with the fairly anemic front/top fans. The 300, 400 and 500 "R" cases are all solid, and the 400 and 500 at least come with a solid basic fan setup, but I think you can do better in the same price range. The CM 690 II is a very solid competitor to the 300R, the Define R4 and Arc Midi are great up against the 400R, and I've already mentioned the HAF XM.
Corsair does a damned good job engineering the insides of their cases, but I don't dig the "extras," like built-in fan controllers I don't want or need, and in general you don't have a whole lot of room to color outside the lines that Corsair has drawn into the cases.
Just to play devils advocate, I actually make use of my fan control. I have no central air, so in the summer hot months, I jam all my case fans up to full speed during the day. At night when the house cools off and I don't want to game next to a jet engine, I pop them all back down.
I don't use the light controls very often, but I guess it's there if I need it.
I guess what I should say is that for myself, I'd rather have my own fan control solution than one that's built-in and might not handle what I want to throw at it. The 600T's fan controller is pretty odd, the voltage range is pretty small, and if you went to the trouble of replacing the built-in front fan (for example) and the replacement is any kind of performance fan, it'll probably burn out the controller, because it's only rated to handle like 4-5W per fan.
I like Corsair's cases, I just want to see them either go whole hog on a feature like the fan controller rather than give me something that will only handle the default loadout, then be fixed in place and redundant when I change things around.
I like the 500R, but I think there are better options at that price range, the HAF XM chief among them. Corsair makes a compelling product, but the 600T and 650D are both really expensive given their lack of cooling versatility, especially with the fairly anemic front/top fans. The 300, 400 and 500 "R" cases are all solid, and the 400 and 500 at least come with a solid basic fan setup, but I think you can do better in the same price range. The CM 690 II is a very solid competitor to the 300R, the Define R4 and Arc Midi are great up against the 400R, and I've already mentioned the HAF XM.
Corsair does a damned good job engineering the insides of their cases, but I don't dig the "extras," like built-in fan controllers I don't want or need, and in general you don't have a whole lot of room to color outside the lines that Corsair has drawn into the cases.
Just to play devils advocate, I actually make use of my fan control. I have no central air, so in the summer hot months, I jam all my case fans up to full speed during the day. At night when the house cools off and I don't want to game next to a jet engine, I pop them all back down.
I don't use the light controls very often, but I guess it's there if I need it.
I don't even know how to turn my 500R's front fan lights off. The button is there but it doesn't do anything. And the documentation says nothing on how to hook them up to the motherboard instead.
If you're referring to using the motherboard to control the fan lighting, the documentation doesn't mention it because it can't be done. Their should be separate power molex power leads that run through that button powering the fan LEDs, you can just unplug those if the button doesn't want to work. Failing that, you can simply remove the LEDs from the fans, it's not really that tough most of the time.
Not the lights, just the fans themselves. I know where the fans hook up to the front switch but I have no idea where the fans' wires end and the switch's begin.
Also, wow the switch actually works! Too bad it's the HDD light that shines right at my pillow at night.
Personally, I'd just unplug the HDD light pins. Do you need a flashing indicator that the drive is doing something?
Hey guys so I built a snug little PC for my parents using an Antwc ISK300-150 case. Everything works except one of the fans is making a loud noise and it appears to be the fan on the inbuilt PSU. Should I just send it to a PC repair shop?
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GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
Having an SSD, the boot is almost instant anyway, so I don't bother sleeping it.
Back on the spindle drive though, yeah, I shut down rarely.
That was meant for Ianator, I should have quoted. It was more in reference to the complaint about lights shining in eyes at night.
I will say though, I use an SSD and I still sleep, because the difference between instant and 10s is still a difference
Yeah, its really nice that my computer wakes from sleep faster than my monitors turn on. Granted, my 24" takes a long time to turn on, the 20" is pretty snappy.
This sickness of this thread must be spreading. Amazon very helpfully popped up with "hey, people also buy 670 FTWs with that blu-ray drive" and now there's one winging its way to me.
Hey guys so I built a snug little PC for my parents using an Antwc ISK300-150 case. Everything works except one of the fans is making a loud noise and it appears to be the fan on the inbuilt PSU. Should I just send it to a PC repair shop?
If it's all brand new why not just RMA the PSU / case? A grinding noise coming from a PSU fan could be a dodgy bearing, and it's generally best not to open up your PSU to service yourself. An RMA is probably all your local PC repair shop will do, so save yourself $100.
The one about the fucking space hairdresser and the cowboy. He's got a tinfoil pal and a pedal bin
I don't know if I'm ready to pull triggers, but I am due for a new machine and want to at least get a sense of what it will cost me given my desires. My computer knowledgeability is laughable, but I think I remember enough from when a friend helped me with the last build to assemble one on my own.
I want: To murder GTA5 and Fallout 4 (ie. solid max or near-max 1900x1200 performance on new games for a couple years). To work on multi-GB photoshop files with smoothness. Am not planning to overclock or "hack" my system or anything like that.
I am still not sure I'm sold on SSDs, despite the thread's blog's article about them. They're so tiny :C I'll only be able to fit like, a couple favourites (considering my most recently played game is Max Payne 3, demanding 30GB of HDD space) on it, and I like to have a lot of games installed. Unless you can split a steam installation across drives, but that seems like it would be a hassle.
So build total is $1261, plus cost of a hard drive, which could be from $150 to $300 (if I were to get an SSD plus spindle for storage). Of course, a bunch of those components are on sale or have rebates that would bring that down to $1036, but that would require a consensus here that I didn't just idiotically choose random parts that sounded good but will perform much differently.
For all I know this list is grossly overpaying for my needs. I'm just tired of choppy framerates on Max Payne 3 and GTA4 even at 720p resolution. And Photoshop could always use more smoothness with huge resolution files.
Thanks to anyone willing to take a look here and offer me some tips or reprimands.
It also might be relevant to know if some big technological release is around the corner. The threadblog's article about memory was a year old and said "DDR4" could be a year away from commonplace. Is that anything other than still "coming soon"?
Edit: Oops, oh yeah, I guess I should factor in... windows 8 as the O/S expense?
So. . .how the hell do I Crossfire? I have two HD 6870's - same make and model (different environmentally friendly packaging), but I'm getting something about a "bridge". The hell? Good shows some piece of plastic, but neither of my cards came with that - certainly not the new 6870 I have (nevermind that neither have anything that looks like something should be bridged into it - just has the power slots).
I am still not sure I'm sold on SSDs
I got a 128 Sammy and paired it with a Caviar Black for games/photo editing. My mind is blown by the difference (I was running off a Barracuda for games and a WD Green for mass storage).
windows 8 as the O/S expense?
I'm sure there is discussion of this on the forum but I'll put my two cents in. I put Windows 8 (student advance copy) on my new machine, and deleted it within an hour. I imagine it will certainly be big, but it is such a large leap from Windows that it really should be called something else; I am still stunned they did not include a classic interface under Metro. Of course it is cheap as hell so that will also help adoption, but I can not see "under the hood" computer users taking it up anytime soon.
ED! on
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GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
edited August 2012
They...did include a classic interface under metro. It's called Desktop, and it's right there on the start area. It's classic Windows 7.
Windows is still there, the Start Menu just got replaced and there is a new class of application.
I am an "under the hood" user, and I am enjoying the hell out of Windows 8. I just went in to it with an open mind and actually learned what it was capable of, instead of just looking at Metro and going "GAH DIFFERENT DELETE REINSTALL WINDOWS 7".
So. . .how the hell do I Crossfire? I have two HD 6870's - same make and model (different environmentally friendly packaging), but I'm getting something about a "bridge". The hell? Good shows some piece of plastic, but neither of my cards came with that - certainly not the new 6870 I have (nevermind that neither have anything that looks like something should be bridged into it - just has the power slots).
You need a Crossfire bridge. It's a flat ribbon cable, about 2-3 inches long with connectors on both ends. It snaps onto the connectors on the tops of the cards.
This is where it plugs in:
All Radeon HD cards that are crossfire-able (and the 6870 is) will come with a crossfire bridge cable.
Ah, it stinks, it sucks, it's anthropologically unjust
I know about the "desktop"; I wasn't impressed with it's accessibility. As has been moaned about (which I just took as anti-Windoze whining) this seems too tablety for my tastes.
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GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
I know about the "desktop"; I wasn't impressed with it's accessibility. As has been moaned about (which I just took as anti-Windoze whining) this seems too tablety for my tastes.
If you knew about it why did you say it wasn't there?
You're free to not like Windows 8 for whatever reason you want, but when giving advice to someone, please don't tell them false things. There is enough false information floating around about Windows 8, it needs to stop.
If it's too tablety for you, that's 100% understandable...but don't tell people things like it doesn't have the classic Windows UI when it clearly does, and it's a click/hot key away.
I don't mind relearning an interface, but am wondering about it's introduction of the "apps" screen/function. Doesn't that essentially mean more running tasks that might hog resources?
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GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
I don't mind relearning an interface, but am wondering about it's introduction of the "apps" screen/function. Doesn't that essentially mean more running tasks that might hog resources?
It's like a tablet. The metro apps will get swapped out to a page file when you aren't using them, so the only resource they take is a tad bit of disk space to restore their state.
Metro apps, just like tablet apps, have to be written to actually understand this...that you can be "closed" at any time, and you need to save your state so that when you're brought back up, it's the same state.
If you knew about it why did you say it wasn't there?
It's why desktop is in quotes. The "desktop" that they have I didn't like (I spent more than an hour on it), and its interaction with the Metro Tab was too. . .well I don't have a word for it, but it didn't seem like it went very well together. /shrug.
but don't tell people things like it doesn't have the classic Windows UI when it clearly does
"Cleary", and "does" are stretches wouldn't you say? It is not inaccurate to say that there is no Windows 7 style experience on Windows 8. Not "Oh theres a Windows 7-like style there. . .", but a "If you do not like Metro here is the Toggle to take you back to the Windows interface you've had for so many years" because there isn't one. You can not escape the Metro experience, even if you Start-Tab into the so-called "classic UI".
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GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
edited August 2012
No, they aren't stretches. I can use my Windows 8 PC and never so much as blink at the start area. Press Window + X sometime, and you'll get the Power User Menu, completely supplanting the need to ever touch Metro. Going further, you can still pin programs to your task bar, just like you could in Windows 7. Further removing the need to ever touch the Start Area.
And it's not "a Windows 7 like style", it's Windows 7 without it's start menu. Don't be a goose.
The only time you MUST look at Metro is when you first login...but you could press Window + D as soon as that happened, get to your desktop, and never look at Metro again, ever.
Would it be optimal? No, because the Metro start area actually offers some pretty cool things if you delve in to it and don't just react with "GAH DIFFERENT". It would effectively be like using Windows 7 without it's start menu. Possible, but not optimal.
I'm not going to get into a back and forth here about Windows 8; you feel it satisfies those looking for a technical update to Windows 7 without changing the experience. I (and many others who have used it longer than me) do not. The Metro Experience goes beyond that starting page, and the way the user interacts with their programs and what not is absolutely not the same (not sure where the confusion here is). /shrug
Feel free though to just dismiss it all as "OMG WHERES MAH WINDOZE!"
-For an extra $10, bump up to an i5-3570. 300Mhz is a substantial boost if you don't plan to overclock.
-You can save $35 by going with the ASRock Z77 Extreme4.
-Your case is overpriced and a bit antiquated. I'd recommend something like the HAF 922 or the Corsair Carbide 300R. If you really want a big-ass case, others will have good recs.
-Make sure whatever memory you get is 1.5v and not 1.65v. This is the only build incompatibility thing to worry about with the components you listed, but it's important. If you have $45 to spare, you may want 16GB of RAM for Photoshop work.
-I'd recommend a 1TB HDD (like the Seagate Barracuda) paired with a 240GB/256GB SSD. This should run you like $250 total.
You're real close with your build. Gonna be a good machine.
-You can save $35 by going with the ASRock Z77 Extreme4.
I can't tell, but I don't think this one has built in WLAN? I liked that about the P8Z77, would save me buying a wireless network card (and keep a PCI slot free).
Also thanks for that RAM caution, I wouldn't have known about the 1.5v. Is Patriot a known brand? Might do 16GB o'dat (currently advertised at $70, plus a MIR).
If you need a built-in WLAN card, yeah go for it. Didn't realize that was a requirement!
Patriot's fine. You may want to pick up DDR3-1600 memory instead of DDR3-1333, but I doubt you'll even notice the difference in speed (it's extremely minor).
I was not at all impressed with the early windows 8 consumer previews I used. Definitely felt like a halfassed tablet interface mashed together with Windows 7 just for the sake of doing it, and with some serious discoverability issues. In fairness, I haven't had time to try any of the more recent and (presumably) more refined versions. I stopped following the Win8 thread we have for that reason but from what I could tell when I popped back in to see what people were saying a couple of times, my impression was 1) most people here seemed to be warming up to it, and 2) they were very defensive and dismissive towards the minority who were not.
If I actually have a whole free afternoon sometime soon I'll probably try Win8 out on a virtual machine again and see how far it's come.
Posts
Corsair does a damned good job engineering the insides of their cases, but I don't dig the "extras," like built-in fan controllers I don't want or need, and in general you don't have a whole lot of room to color outside the lines that Corsair has drawn into the cases.
Battle.net
Trying to keep things around $200 what would you guys recommend?
You can always bump it up to a ti for a slightly larger investment.
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Just to play devils advocate, I actually make use of my fan control. I have no central air, so in the summer hot months, I jam all my case fans up to full speed during the day. At night when the house cools off and I don't want to game next to a jet engine, I pop them all back down.
I don't use the light controls very often, but I guess it's there if I need it.
I don't even know how to turn my 500R's front fan lights off. The button is there but it doesn't do anything. And the documentation says nothing on how to hook them up to the motherboard instead.
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I thought the same thing. The issue is that the button is SUPER deep. You almost need a paper clip or something to push it in far enough. When it's in far enough, it will make an audible click before popping back out...plus you'll see the lights toggle.
I guess what I should say is that for myself, I'd rather have my own fan control solution than one that's built-in and might not handle what I want to throw at it. The 600T's fan controller is pretty odd, the voltage range is pretty small, and if you went to the trouble of replacing the built-in front fan (for example) and the replacement is any kind of performance fan, it'll probably burn out the controller, because it's only rated to handle like 4-5W per fan.
I like Corsair's cases, I just want to see them either go whole hog on a feature like the fan controller rather than give me something that will only handle the default loadout, then be fixed in place and redundant when I change things around.
If you're referring to using the motherboard to control the fan lighting, the documentation doesn't mention it because it can't be done. Their should be separate power molex power leads that run through that button powering the fan LEDs, you can just unplug those if the button doesn't want to work. Failing that, you can simply remove the LEDs from the fans, it's not really that tough most of the time.
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Not the lights, just the fans themselves. I know where the fans hook up to the front switch but I have no idea where the fans' wires end and the switch's begin.
Also, wow the switch actually works! Too bad it's the HDD light that shines right at my pillow at night.
Twitch | Blizzard: Ianator#1479 | 3DS: Ianator - 1779 2336 5317 | FFXIV: Iana Ateliere (NA Sarg)
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Sleep actually works these days, it's not that archaic "Oh god it's a crapshoot if my system ever turns on again" feature it was in 2001.
Back on the spindle drive though, yeah, I shut down rarely.
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Personally, I'd just unplug the HDD light pins. Do you need a flashing indicator that the drive is doing something?
That was meant for Ianator, I should have quoted. It was more in reference to the complaint about lights shining in eyes at night.
I will say though, I use an SSD and I still sleep, because the difference between instant and 10s is still a difference
Because I need to keep up on IRC. There are things I need to not miss.
Also because my crap internet (that I'm not the only one on) means I require the night to download Borderlands.
Twitch | Blizzard: Ianator#1479 | 3DS: Ianator - 1779 2336 5317 | FFXIV: Iana Ateliere (NA Sarg)
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Yeah, its really nice that my computer wakes from sleep faster than my monitors turn on. Granted, my 24" takes a long time to turn on, the 20" is pretty snappy.
If it's all brand new why not just RMA the PSU / case? A grinding noise coming from a PSU fan could be a dodgy bearing, and it's generally best not to open up your PSU to service yourself. An RMA is probably all your local PC repair shop will do, so save yourself $100.
Path of Exile: snowcrash7
MTG Arena: Snow_Crash#34179
Battle.net: Snowcrash#1873
Are they decent?
Are they decent?
They are certainly decent.
I want: To murder GTA5 and Fallout 4 (ie. solid max or near-max 1900x1200 performance on new games for a couple years). To work on multi-GB photoshop files with smoothness. Am not planning to overclock or "hack" my system or anything like that.
Some cursory component investigation (prices are CAD)
CPU: Intel Core i5 3450 Quad Core Processor LGA1155 3.1GHZ Ivy Bridge 6MB Retail $210
MOBO: ASUS P8Z77-V Pro LGA1155 Z77 DDR3 SLI 3PCI-E16 2PCI-E1 2PCI SATA3 DisplayPort USB3.0 Motherboard $225
Case: Antec P280 XL-ATX Tower Case Black 3X5.25 2X2.5 6X3.5IN 2X120MM Top 1X120MM Rear Front USB3.0 No PSU $130
PSU: OCZ ModXStream Pro 700w ATX 20/24PIN SLI Ready Modular Cables 135mm Fan 80PLUS $100
Memory: Kingston KHX1600C9D3B1K2/8GX 8GB Kit 2X4GB 1600MHz DDR3 240PIN DIMM Unbuff Hmp HyperX CL9 $46
GPU: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 670 OC 980MHZ 2GB 6.0GHZ GDDR5 2xDVI HDMI DisplayPort PCI-E (As a bonus comes with Mafia 2 and Borderlands 2, BL2 being one I wanted to preorder anyways) $400
Input peripherals: Guessing I can do this for about $150
Monitor: Unnecessary
I am still not sure I'm sold on SSDs, despite the thread's blog's article about them. They're so tiny :C I'll only be able to fit like, a couple favourites (considering my most recently played game is Max Payne 3, demanding 30GB of HDD space) on it, and I like to have a lot of games installed. Unless you can split a steam installation across drives, but that seems like it would be a hassle.
So build total is $1261, plus cost of a hard drive, which could be from $150 to $300 (if I were to get an SSD plus spindle for storage). Of course, a bunch of those components are on sale or have rebates that would bring that down to $1036, but that would require a consensus here that I didn't just idiotically choose random parts that sounded good but will perform much differently.
For all I know this list is grossly overpaying for my needs. I'm just tired of choppy framerates on Max Payne 3 and GTA4 even at 720p resolution. And Photoshop could always use more smoothness with huge resolution files.
Thanks to anyone willing to take a look here and offer me some tips or reprimands.
It also might be relevant to know if some big technological release is around the corner. The threadblog's article about memory was a year old and said "DDR4" could be a year away from commonplace. Is that anything other than still "coming soon"?
Edit: Oops, oh yeah, I guess I should factor in... windows 8 as the O/S expense?
I got a 128 Sammy and paired it with a Caviar Black for games/photo editing. My mind is blown by the difference (I was running off a Barracuda for games and a WD Green for mass storage).
I'm sure there is discussion of this on the forum but I'll put my two cents in. I put Windows 8 (student advance copy) on my new machine, and deleted it within an hour. I imagine it will certainly be big, but it is such a large leap from Windows that it really should be called something else; I am still stunned they did not include a classic interface under Metro. Of course it is cheap as hell so that will also help adoption, but I can not see "under the hood" computer users taking it up anytime soon.
Windows is still there, the Start Menu just got replaced and there is a new class of application.
I am an "under the hood" user, and I am enjoying the hell out of Windows 8. I just went in to it with an open mind and actually learned what it was capable of, instead of just looking at Metro and going "GAH DIFFERENT DELETE REINSTALL WINDOWS 7".
You need a Crossfire bridge. It's a flat ribbon cable, about 2-3 inches long with connectors on both ends. It snaps onto the connectors on the tops of the cards.
This is where it plugs in:
All Radeon HD cards that are crossfire-able (and the 6870 is) will come with a crossfire bridge cable.
If you knew about it why did you say it wasn't there?
You're free to not like Windows 8 for whatever reason you want, but when giving advice to someone, please don't tell them false things. There is enough false information floating around about Windows 8, it needs to stop.
If it's too tablety for you, that's 100% understandable...but don't tell people things like it doesn't have the classic Windows UI when it clearly does, and it's a click/hot key away.
It's like a tablet. The metro apps will get swapped out to a page file when you aren't using them, so the only resource they take is a tad bit of disk space to restore their state.
Metro apps, just like tablet apps, have to be written to actually understand this...that you can be "closed" at any time, and you need to save your state so that when you're brought back up, it's the same state.
It's why desktop is in quotes. The "desktop" that they have I didn't like (I spent more than an hour on it), and its interaction with the Metro Tab was too. . .well I don't have a word for it, but it didn't seem like it went very well together. /shrug.
"Cleary", and "does" are stretches wouldn't you say? It is not inaccurate to say that there is no Windows 7 style experience on Windows 8. Not "Oh theres a Windows 7-like style there. . .", but a "If you do not like Metro here is the Toggle to take you back to the Windows interface you've had for so many years" because there isn't one. You can not escape the Metro experience, even if you Start-Tab into the so-called "classic UI".
And it's not "a Windows 7 like style", it's Windows 7 without it's start menu. Don't be a goose.
The only time you MUST look at Metro is when you first login...but you could press Window + D as soon as that happened, get to your desktop, and never look at Metro again, ever.
Would it be optimal? No, because the Metro start area actually offers some pretty cool things if you delve in to it and don't just react with "GAH DIFFERENT". It would effectively be like using Windows 7 without it's start menu. Possible, but not optimal.
Feel free though to just dismiss it all as "OMG WHERES MAH WINDOZE!"
-For an extra $10, bump up to an i5-3570. 300Mhz is a substantial boost if you don't plan to overclock.
-You can save $35 by going with the ASRock Z77 Extreme4.
-Your case is overpriced and a bit antiquated. I'd recommend something like the HAF 922 or the Corsair Carbide 300R. If you really want a big-ass case, others will have good recs.
-Make sure whatever memory you get is 1.5v and not 1.65v. This is the only build incompatibility thing to worry about with the components you listed, but it's important. If you have $45 to spare, you may want 16GB of RAM for Photoshop work.
-I'd recommend a 1TB HDD (like the Seagate Barracuda) paired with a 240GB/256GB SSD. This should run you like $250 total.
You're real close with your build. Gonna be a good machine.
Path of Exile: snowcrash7
MTG Arena: Snow_Crash#34179
Battle.net: Snowcrash#1873
Also thanks for that RAM caution, I wouldn't have known about the 1.5v. Is Patriot a known brand? Might do 16GB o'dat (currently advertised at $70, plus a MIR).
Patriot's fine. You may want to pick up DDR3-1600 memory instead of DDR3-1333, but I doubt you'll even notice the difference in speed (it's extremely minor).
Path of Exile: snowcrash7
MTG Arena: Snow_Crash#34179
Battle.net: Snowcrash#1873
Oh man, I might totally be doing this. COPMUTRE.
If I actually have a whole free afternoon sometime soon I'll probably try Win8 out on a virtual machine again and see how far it's come.