Ok build thread, I'm throwing together a gaming PC component list for a friend. This is tower only (can include kbam for $1500 total budget, but left those out as I think that's too personal for another person to choose). I aimed to bring in under $1300 to leave $200 for kbam.
Friend specified no storage drive, hence its omission. Also don't worry about optical.
Can you sanity check me, and provide suggestions for a cooling solution? It's been a very long time since I've used a stock heatsink/fan unit but I also haven't built for awhile so I don't know what the en vogue solutions are right this minute.
Edit: I'm also aware the PSU is a bit overpowered, but I believe the "future" plan is to SLI later in life, add some storage drives, more RAM eventually.... yadda and yadda
What's that SSD adapter thing at the end of the list? a 2.5 inch SSD will just screw straight to one of the 3.5 drive bay inserts in that case, the holes are already there, and the screws required are in the little bits bag that comes in the box. Alternatively, velcro dots!
Ah, I've never seen a desktop drive bay that will accept a 2.5" drive without an adapter. Or are you just saying only attach one side?
Edit: yeah I think you're saying just attach one side. I guess if that's your thing, cool. I like stuff to be rigid in the case, even though I know it's not as big of a deal for the drive integrity itself as it would be for a magnetic drive, I'd rather not have one side hanging unfastened. Personal preference.
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Big Red Tiebeautiful clydesdale style feettoo hot to trotRegistered Userregular
oh hey. i could've just velcro'd my ssd instead of using the screws that didnt go all the way down...
Ok build thread, I'm throwing together a gaming PC component list for a friend. This is tower only (can include kbam for $1500 total budget, but left those out as I think that's too personal for another person to choose). I aimed to bring in under $1300 to leave $200 for kbam.
Friend specified no storage drive, hence its omission. Also don't worry about optical.
Can you sanity check me, and provide suggestions for a cooling solution? It's been a very long time since I've used a stock heatsink/fan unit but I also haven't built for awhile so I don't know what the en vogue solutions are right this minute.
Edit: I'm also aware the PSU is a bit overpowered, but I believe the "future" plan is to SLI later in life, add some storage drives, more RAM eventually.... yadda and yadda
What's that SSD adapter thing at the end of the list? a 2.5 inch SSD will just screw straight to one of the 3.5 drive bay inserts in that case, the holes are already there, and the screws required are in the little bits bag that comes in the box. Alternatively, velcro dots!
Ah, I've never seen a desktop drive bay that will accept a 2.5" drive without an adapter. Or are you just saying only attach one side?
Edit: yeah I think you're saying just attach one side. I guess if that's your thing, cool. I like stuff to be rigid in the case, even though I know it's not as big of a deal for the drive integrity itself as it would be for a magnetic drive, I'd rather not have one side hanging unfastened. Personal preference.
Nah mate, the plastic slide out drive trays have holes drilled through the bottom of them for screwing a 2.5 drive onto.
I pulled the hdd and threw it in an external enclosure. It works just swell and all of the data is there. According to the blinking lights on the laptop upon boot, it is a dead CPU.
Now, my wife needs a computer, but she doesn't need anything fancy. Honestly, she doesn't need anything more than the computer she had that just died. Since she graduated college two years ago, she doesn't even need a laptop anymore.
My question is, what is the most barebones desktop I can throw together using the hard drive I pulled from the laptop? Is that even possible? Is there a way to clone the drive via USB on a new computer? Can anything else from the laptop be salvaged, like the RAM or anything? Should I just buy a pre-built?
What are my options friends?
Dirt cheap system capable of doing a bit of light gaming:
That comes to a total of $379, and if you hook up her old HDD and reinstall Windows on it (you'll need to reinstall because of the new motherboard, don't worry it won't wipe anything else off if you don't tell it to), all you'll need to do is plug in a monitor, keyboard, and mouse and it should play games a great deal better than her old laptop.
Spend a couple of hundred more adding in an SSD primary drive ($90), a dedicated video card ($165), and swapping in a better PSU ($80) to drive everything, and you'll have a pretty great little gaming machine, to be quite honest. For $674!
Madpandasuburbs west of chicagoRegistered Userregular
Is there a reason seasonic have become the primarily recommended power supply brand? My current system has a corsair which was highly recommended at the time.
Looking like I can pick up pretty much everything from microcenter which is only 30 mins from me, aside from the case and power supply which I can just order ahead of time. Bonus paycheck is 8/23, saints row 4 hits around then, and I have the first week in september off.
Is there a reason seasonic have become the primarily recommended power supply brand? My current system has a corsair which was highly recommended at the time.
Looking like I can pick up pretty much everything from microcenter which is only 30 mins from me, aside from the case and power supply which I can just order ahead of time. Bonus paycheck is 8/23, saints row 4 hits around then, and I have the first week in september off.
They make the most reliable, stablest, cleanest powering psu's around right now. That Corsair you have is most likely just a re-badged seasonic, or based off a seasonic design. Antec, Corsair, XFX, and a few other companies sell seasonic re-badged units.
Not that other brands don't also make good psu's, you just have to make sure to do some research on the build of them.
Magus`The fun has been DOUBLED!Registered Userregular
Ok so this is what I'm thinking:
Haswell CPU, 760, Gigabyte MB, 650w PSU (modular?), and 8 GB of RAM. I already have a case/monitor.
Kind of want an optical drive or at least some way to make use of the 1440p rez on my monitor for video.. Might also get a CPU cooler (nothing super hardcore) since OEM ones tend to be noisy/shitty-ish.
Thoughts? I think it's gonna run me around 800-ish.
minor incidentexpert in a dying fieldnjRegistered Userregular
Well, I bought that Dell 29" 21:9 superwide monitor.
Shut up, I'm weak.
And it was an open box for like $450 at Microcenter. So there's that.
So far games are soooooo awesome on it. It basically feels like an eyefinity setup, but with WAY less hassle and better compatibility. Most FPS games I've tried are horizontal+ rather than vertical- so I get more FOV rather than just cropping the top and bottom, which is the goal of all this.
If anyone has any specific questions, lemme know and I'll be happy to try to answer them/test stuff for anyone who's curious about these beasts.
Everything looks beautiful when you're young and pretty
+2
mightyjongyoSour CrrmEast Bay, CaliforniaRegistered Userregular
650W is more for somewhat future-proofing so I won't need to get a new one in a year or two. (In theory)
Eh. Unless your future upgrade includes getting a second card to SLI I doubt you'll need the extra wattage. CPU TDP will only go down and graphics cards will stay about the same in terms of power usage.
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acidlacedpenguinInstitutionalizedSafe in jail.Registered Userregular
So my new 27" 1440p monitor died on the second day. RMAing for cash and then buying a dell ultrasharp which is currently only $50 more than the nixeus.
Dang all of you and your talk of 27" 1440p monitors. My really old, 4:3 second screen is slowly dying, and I'm starting to look at replacing it, making my dell u2211h into a secondary. But I don't really want to spend the money the 27" command. A Dell U2312H is top of the list right now.
Dang all of you and your talk of 27" 1440p monitors. My really old, 4:3 second screen is slowly dying, and I'm starting to look at replacing it, making my dell u2211h into a secondary. But I don't really want to spend the money the 27" command. A Dell U2312H is top of the list right now.
I came in to work the next morning and it just wouldn't power on. I tried re-seating every power connector in the line, tried plugging it into a different power bar, tried it with a different outlet, and tried with a different power cable. It's funny, last year I bought one of a different brand of Korean 27" monitors (Shimian) and it worked for 3 days. Thankfully, the ebay vendor paid return shipping and everything and the replacement has been going strong ever since. I figured that I'd have closer to the Dell/Apple quality for a reasonably mid-ranged pricing with Nixeus, who claim to have better quality control and use better quality components than the cheaper brands.
That said, the Nixeus Vue I got did seem to have better build quality than the Shimian; with no back-light bleed that I could detect in its short life. The mount is a lot better than the Shimian's as well. Assuming the hypothetical replacement unit didn't die I'd be satisfied with owning it, but with the Dell currently being essentially the same price as it there's no reason why I should stay with a budget monitor.
edit: I just ordered the Dell. It's actually cheaper because of free shipping.
I know nothing about water cooling, so curious if this fan setup is OK or not:
Friend just installed it like that, the fan as an exhaust pulling air off the radiator in theory. Does that work?
You'll get better performance putting the fan on the other side of the radiator and having it pull in cool air, but that will still work.
If you run it so the fan is sucking in outside air you will see reduced cpu temps, but your other components will run warmer.
For what it's worth my H70(? The fat one that comes with 2 fans) with a push/pull setup (sucking case air in and pushing it out) keeps my 2600k running at 60c under load and its OCd to 4.5ghz.
Bit late on this, but my ambient case temp was never my issue, it was purely CPU temp...so for me, raising my ambient case temp a degree or two to get maximum CPU cooling was a trade off I was willing to make.
Not sure if this is a place for this, but I didn't find any threads that were more relevant.
I recently picked up 2 new monitors, in addition to the 1 I already have. I'd like to do one of those crazy 3 monitor setups where the screen is spread across all of them so it's super immersive and what not. From my understanding though, Nvidia cards can only handle 2 displays at a time per card. I just have a lone EVGA 570GTX. Is there some way I can make this work given what I have, or do I need to invest in a second card?
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acidlacedpenguinInstitutionalizedSafe in jail.Registered Userregular
edited August 2013
I think at least with the 600 series, nvidia cards have been able to run 3 displays. I thought the 500 series could too, but I know my 470 could not.
I know my 680 is able to display on two 1080p monitors and a 1440p simultaneously.
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minor incidentexpert in a dying fieldnjRegistered Userregular
3 monitors on one card requires an Nvidia 600-series card, or better, I believe. With a 500-series, you'll need a second card. Also, all 3 monitors need to be the same resolution with the same refresh rate.
Everything looks beautiful when you're young and pretty
3 monitors on one card requires an Nvidia 600-series card, or better, I believe. With a 500-series, you'll need a second card. Also, all 3 monitors need to be the same resolution with the same refresh rate.
The new ones are both 4ms, I believe my current one is 3ms. Will that really prevent it from working?
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minor incidentexpert in a dying fieldnjRegistered Userregular
3 monitors on one card requires an Nvidia 600-series card, or better, I believe. With a 500-series, you'll need a second card. Also, all 3 monitors need to be the same resolution with the same refresh rate.
The new ones are both 4ms, I believe my current one is 3ms. Will that really prevent it from working?
The response time shouldn't matter, as long as they're the same refresh rate (or if some of them are 120hz, you'll have to set them down to 60hz so all 3 are the same).
minor incident on
Everything looks beautiful when you're young and pretty
3 monitors on one card requires an Nvidia 600-series card, or better, I believe. With a 500-series, you'll need a second card. Also, all 3 monitors need to be the same resolution with the same refresh rate.
The new ones are both 4ms, I believe my current one is 3ms. Will that really prevent it from working?
The response time shouldn't matter, as long as they're the same refresh rate (or is some of them are 120hz, you'll have to set them down to 60hz so all 3 are the same).
Oh, reading fail on my part. They should all be 60hz.
Now that I've finally got a stable system, I'm looking to finally try overclocking in order to achieve those higher framerates for the beefiest of games. I want to see if I can raise my score on Final Fantasy XIV's benchmark in particular (which is recorded as "Extremely High" but still has under 10k).
I was shared the following link, since it pertains to my card and the included software:
Posts
Ah, I've never seen a desktop drive bay that will accept a 2.5" drive without an adapter. Or are you just saying only attach one side?
Edit: yeah I think you're saying just attach one side. I guess if that's your thing, cool. I like stuff to be rigid in the case, even though I know it's not as big of a deal for the drive integrity itself as it would be for a magnetic drive, I'd rather not have one side hanging unfastened. Personal preference.
Nah mate, the plastic slide out drive trays have holes drilled through the bottom of them for screwing a 2.5 drive onto.
well that's cool
removed that thing then
You are amazing. Thank you so much!
Sadly I can't afford anything over $100 these days. But if I'm upgrading anything anytime soon it will be my GeForce 250.
Looking like I can pick up pretty much everything from microcenter which is only 30 mins from me, aside from the case and power supply which I can just order ahead of time. Bonus paycheck is 8/23, saints row 4 hits around then, and I have the first week in september off.
Steam/PSN/XBL/Minecraft / LoL / - Benevicious | WoW - Duckwood - Rajhek
They make the most reliable, stablest, cleanest powering psu's around right now. That Corsair you have is most likely just a re-badged seasonic, or based off a seasonic design. Antec, Corsair, XFX, and a few other companies sell seasonic re-badged units.
Not that other brands don't also make good psu's, you just have to make sure to do some research on the build of them.
Haswell CPU, 760, Gigabyte MB, 650w PSU (modular?), and 8 GB of RAM. I already have a case/monitor.
Kind of want an optical drive or at least some way to make use of the 1440p rez on my monitor for video.. Might also get a CPU cooler (nothing super hardcore) since OEM ones tend to be noisy/shitty-ish.
Thoughts? I think it's gonna run me around 800-ish.
Steam Profile | Signature art by Alexandra 'Lexxy' Douglass
Steam Profile | Signature art by Alexandra 'Lexxy' Douglass
Steam Profile | Signature art by Alexandra 'Lexxy' Douglass
Shut up, I'm weak.
And it was an open box for like $450 at Microcenter. So there's that.
So far games are soooooo awesome on it. It basically feels like an eyefinity setup, but with WAY less hassle and better compatibility. Most FPS games I've tried are horizontal+ rather than vertical- so I get more FOV rather than just cropping the top and bottom, which is the goal of all this.
If anyone has any specific questions, lemme know and I'll be happy to try to answer them/test stuff for anyone who's curious about these beasts.
Eh. Unless your future upgrade includes getting a second card to SLI I doubt you'll need the extra wattage. CPU TDP will only go down and graphics cards will stay about the same in terms of power usage.
i'm glad i did, skyrim is p immersive now
If it tracks Ivy pricing this year's holiday season or Q1 '14. That said Haswell is a tick and Ivy is a tock, so pricing may not fall as readily.
This is what I'm using and I absolutely love it!
http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?p_id=10509&seq=1&format=2
I came in to work the next morning and it just wouldn't power on. I tried re-seating every power connector in the line, tried plugging it into a different power bar, tried it with a different outlet, and tried with a different power cable. It's funny, last year I bought one of a different brand of Korean 27" monitors (Shimian) and it worked for 3 days. Thankfully, the ebay vendor paid return shipping and everything and the replacement has been going strong ever since. I figured that I'd have closer to the Dell/Apple quality for a reasonably mid-ranged pricing with Nixeus, who claim to have better quality control and use better quality components than the cheaper brands.
That said, the Nixeus Vue I got did seem to have better build quality than the Shimian; with no back-light bleed that I could detect in its short life. The mount is a lot better than the Shimian's as well. Assuming the hypothetical replacement unit didn't die I'd be satisfied with owning it, but with the Dell currently being essentially the same price as it there's no reason why I should stay with a budget monitor.
edit: I just ordered the Dell. It's actually cheaper because of free shipping.
I love 120hz monitors, too. I wish they'd start pumping out more big panels at 120hz, though. They seem rather few and far between.
Bit late on this, but my ambient case temp was never my issue, it was purely CPU temp...so for me, raising my ambient case temp a degree or two to get maximum CPU cooling was a trade off I was willing to make.
Using something similar to how the APU's are named, so like Radeon RX-XXXX.
I recently picked up 2 new monitors, in addition to the 1 I already have. I'd like to do one of those crazy 3 monitor setups where the screen is spread across all of them so it's super immersive and what not. From my understanding though, Nvidia cards can only handle 2 displays at a time per card. I just have a lone EVGA 570GTX. Is there some way I can make this work given what I have, or do I need to invest in a second card?
I know my 680 is able to display on two 1080p monitors and a 1440p simultaneously.
The new ones are both 4ms, I believe my current one is 3ms. Will that really prevent it from working?
The response time shouldn't matter, as long as they're the same refresh rate (or if some of them are 120hz, you'll have to set them down to 60hz so all 3 are the same).
Oh, reading fail on my part. They should all be 60hz.
I was shared the following link, since it pertains to my card and the included software:
Can I just follow this without issue, or are there other steps I need to be aware of as well?
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Steam Profile | Signature art by Alexandra 'Lexxy' Douglass
Steam Profile | Signature art by Alexandra 'Lexxy' Douglass