May also be worth plugging the SSD into another system as an addon drive to wipe it and try again.
Question for clarification: W7 install completed and he took the DVD out? Because this sounds suspiciously like the comp wants to restart to the W7 on SSD but boot priority is forcing it to use the disc instead.
After unplugging the ssd and the dvd drive, resetting bios and then putting things back the computer finally decided to use the DVD for booting again. Successful installation this time! Hopefully no more issues.
Monoprice (....sell displays...) now they're taking it a step further with a 30" IPS display that they're saying they'll guarantee will run at 120Hz 2560x1600.
...
There's no specific release date yet, but Monoprice says the display should be out in the next couple of months.
No price info yet, but that could be an interesting option if you can wait a bit and want to avoid the gamble of getting one from Korea.
Bad ass, not sure I want to see the price on them though...
Who am I kidding, yes I do.
Monoprice has a 4k 60hz display on sale for $430 right now too... if they aren't all already gone.
I kind of doubt a 960ti will be better price/performance than a 970. The 970 is kind of amazing and a 960Ti would have to be really cheap to compete.
Agreed. The only possible reason I see to hold out is if you are really worried about VRAM and want to see if there will be a 6GB or 8GB 980 or something.
Judging from past generations the x60ti is usually about 80% the performance of a x70, maybe less vram, and about $50-100 cheaper. So it could work out to be a better overall value if your not caring about things like 4k resolutions.
Well, I'm using this on my TV, so I don't really care about 4K.
What really got me thinking this is playing shadow of Mordor, and then looking at the specs for Evolve...the minimum GPU is I think a GTX 560, which compares almost equally to my 470.
Why I expected this thread to talk me OUT of upgrading my rig, I'll never know. Thanks for the opinions-
SLI a pair of Titan Blacks, NOW.
Psssht. Two days late, them shits got ordered on Monday.
In all seriousness though, I think I'm gonna pull the trigger on a 970 relatively soon. Seems like the MSI is my best bet for performance to quiet ratio, unless I hear any different.
My ASUS STRIX GTX 970 has been nothing but cool and quiet since I got it a month and a half ago.
The OC potential is a little lower than the other OEM options, because it only uses a single 8-pin PCIe connector instead of dual 6-pins, but I've got it running now at 1468 mhz GPU and 7806 mhz VRAM. Even with this substantial OC, it basically never goes over 65C; normally hovers in the low 60s playing Shadows of Mordor on Ultra @ 1080p.
I'm really happy with it. Sent back the second identical card because it was a NewEgg "Open Box," which is probably why it had a noticeable buzzing when the fans spun up. Will prolly eat the $60 expense and just order a second brand-new STRIX 970, since SLI was the only reason I swapped my 350D and Micro-ATX mobo for a 450D and standard ATX MSI mobo.
I should note that SLI boards that actually have realistic x16/x8 slot spacing -- ie. that were designed to account for a universe where the kinds of cards you'd wanna SLI all have beefy dual-slot coolers -- seem to be few and far between. Most of them seem to leave only a single slot inbetween both x8-capable PCIe slots, which means the top card is likely flush against the bottom one.
When I tried doing SLI with my old Micro-ATX board -- with only one slot between the x8's -- the top 970 was always a minimum of 10C hotter than the lower one. It could've gone even higher if I hadn't set the temp ceiling in Precision to 80C.
So my friend is finally upgrading his old build from 2011. It's not absolutely terrible -- i7 950 (but unfortunately it's LGA 1366), 14GB of DDR3-1333 (he had 3x 2GB sticks, and just bought 2x4GB), some dinky old Apevia 650W PSU, and the STRIX GTX 970 that I recently talked him into buying (was a shitty old 550 Ti before that), all contained in a pretty terrible and cramped case.
He pretty much got the motivation to finally upgrade once I let him play Shadows of Mordor on my PC. He's able to play SoM and other games on it atm, but he gets random crashes sometimes.
The ones that happen in Crusader Kings II -- the game he plays most often -- are soft crashes where the game stops working, quits to desktop, and gives him an error dialog. He was having serious problems with it when he tried playing the OSX port on his Macbook, but Googling even the PC version seems to suggest it also has problems with weird crashes in Windows.
He told me the Shadows of Mordor crashes are "hard crashes"; he's not especially computer literate, and I've never seen the crashes in SoM myself, so I takes his word and assume they're somehow different from the CK2 soft crashes.
After the first few crashes (all in Crusader Kings II), we started troubleshooting. After actually installing SpeedFan for the first time to see what his temps were looking like, we realized his southbridge ("IOH Temp" in BIOS) was at a constant 65C at idle. We shifted some things around inside the case (his wiring situation would make this thread cry) and taking off his front panel (the filter is non-removable), we only got the southbridge temp down to low 60s at idle and mid-to-high 60s when playing a game with the front and side panels off.
I was a little surprised that the southbridge would be getting (what seems to me) so inordinately hot. Makes some sense I guess, given that the GTX 970 he has now is an absolute beast in comparison to his old 550 Ti. I've just never understood southbridge cooling (it does have a dinky little heatsink) to be so demanding -- or for a hot southbridge to be the reason for hard crashes.
What I find most weird, though, is that when I installed HWMonitor... it wasn't picking up anything but the CPU utilization sensor. No motherboard/chipset, GPU, fan, etc. sensors at all.
But SpeedFan seems to detect and display the readings of all the temperature and fan sensors.
I'm suggesting to him that he just ditch the shitty old LGA 1366 mobo. I can give him the Gigabyte Micro-ATX LGA 1150 mobo, Micro-ATX case, 650W SilverStone PSU, and H60 from my old build for free. In he's willing to go through with it, he'd just have to put down money on a new LGA 1150 CPU.
He says he doesn't wanna blow anymore money on the PC if he doesn't absolutely have to, which makes sense; he already spent $350 for the STRIX 970 and another ~$60 for the 8GB of RAM.
The options I gave him were:
Taking my hardware and spending $80 on a G3258 and OCing it (or even using it stock). I told him that, to the best of my knowledge, he might suffer a performance hit in some games that require/perform substantially better on a quad-core. afaik Shadows of Mordor will run pretty well on a dual-core, but scales well to at least 4 cores.
Taking my hardware and spending $180 on the lowest-end i5 (the 4430) for the quad-core. He could also get the cheapest K chip (Devil's Canyon 4690K) for $55 more and get a little more price-performance once he OCs it.
Try to find an LGA 1366 motherboard somewhere online, which might mean having to buy a used board, and which in any case would probably be as expensive as a new G3258.
We are in any event gonna try a fresh install of Windows on the new SSD to see if that doesn't fix things by itself.
After the first few crashes (all in Crusader Kings II), we started troubleshooting. After actually installing SpeedFan for the first time to see what his temps were looking like, we realized his southbridge ("IOH Temp" in BIOS) was at a constant 65C at idle. We shifted some things around inside the case (his wiring situation would make this thread cry) and taking off his front panel (the filter is non-removable), we only got the southbridge temp down to low 60s at idle and mid-to-high 60s when playing a game with the front and side panels off.
It sounds like he doesn't have enough intake fans, to create positive air pressure.
No way should extra heat be exhausting to his southbridge via his GPU, at least not so much as to raise his temps by that much, since GPUs blow the vast majority of their hot air out of the case. Thus, he probably has negative air pressure going on, sucking up that hot air back into the case.
Removing the front panel seems to further point to a negative air pressure, as its removal would not have made a difference in a positive air pressure situation.
My first step would be to get him more fans or bigger fans, set up for intake, and see if that reduces the southbridge temperature to the 50C range.
hsu on
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BouwsTWanna come to a super soft birthday party?Registered Userregular
Gonna be honest, it's hard to avoid the rat's nest out the back given all the things that need to be plugged in:
Monitor 1 Video
Monitor 2 Video
Monitor 1 Power
Monitor 2 Power
Mouse
Keyboard
360 Controller
Joystick
Wireless Adapter
I mean what do you DO with all those extra cords? Right now I got one of those trays to attach under my desk and they are kinda shoved up in there.
If the decision is to replace hardware, convince him to start with a sub-$100 processor to at least get things going; then pick up something a bit more beefy possibly at the end of the Summer or beginning of the Holidays.
You could also let him try your PSU out and see how that helps.
I'm hardware-focused, but errors like that tend to point me toward something overheating or saturating a rail. Then again, I had an Abit board back in ~2003 that I replaced everything else but the board and was still giving me crashes or random restarts and other odd crap. Which is where I turned to Asus and never looked back.
Well, my PC is working again. It seems that using the ASUS bios' Tuning Wizard results in it not even posting (though strangely enough the beeps indicate that the problem is the GPU :? ), so if I want to overclock I'll have to do it manually. For now, though, I think I'll just leave it as it is to ensure that it's otherwise stable.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
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DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
So. I have a question. I'm looking to build my first PC and I've decided I want to start out a bit basic and inexpensive in case I mess something up on my first go.
I'd swap out of the motherboard for a 1150 socket one and a G3258 CPU, then once that goes well later you can upgrade it to an i5. Unless you really need quadcores now (like for Dragon Age: i5 Edition), but stuff like the Sims (and most everything else) will run great on dual cores.
"For no one - no one in this world can you trust. Not men. Not women. Not beasts...this you can trust."
So I have an i5 2500k, which is designed for overclocking, which I haven't done yet. If I want to, what do I need to pay attention to in order to make sure I don't blew up my computer? Temperature, right? What is a good temperature range?
So I have an i5 2500k, which is designed for overclocking, which I haven't done yet. If I want to, what do I need to pay attention to in order to make sure I don't blew up my computer? Temperature, right? What is a good temperature range?
Your computer will shutdown or restart if it is overheating the processor. That's when you know it is too high of an overclock and you should then back it off a bit. If you are just doing the built in overclocking in your bios you shouldn't have to worry about making sure you get the voltage right and all that. It is automatic these days.
You'll want a aftermarket CPU cooler possibly to keep the temps down but as above temperature is pretty much guarded against. That being the case: Volts kill CPU's not temps. The automatic overclocking settings may set things a little too high for what it's actually doing, but "shouldn't" set it too high to actually be a problem. But to be safe and if you're manually doing it find out what the max recommended volts is.
But it's not that hard, just set multiplier to XX, volts to 1.XXXX, see if it works. If it does, raise multiplier. If it doesn't raise volts unless you're getting too high. Then once you get it stable maybe try lowering volts until it's not anymore. Changing volts manually go slow, too. .02ish at a time, though if you know you're way below max can go faster.
Xeddicus on
"For no one - no one in this world can you trust. Not men. Not women. Not beasts...this you can trust."
I have a monitor/gpu question. I have an R9 290 coming in this week. My current monitor is a 1650x1080, for which this card will be the killiest of overkill. I am looking into upgrading the monitor as well eventually, but am not sure if I should go 1080p or 1440p. I'd want to be able to run games at 60fps with most of the pretties turned on. Am I going to be able to hit that at 1440p, or would it be better to go 1080p? I'm mainly looking at Witcher 3, but current games I'm playing are Dragon Age: Inquisition, Elite: Dangerous (which honestly runs fine already on a 6870), and MechWarrior: Online (ditto).
I have a monitor/gpu question. I have an R9 290 coming in this week. My current monitor is a 1650x1080, for which this card will be the killiest of overkill. I am looking into upgrading the monitor as well eventually, but am not sure if I should go 1080p or 1440p. I'd want to be able to run games at 60fps with most of the pretties turned on. Am I going to be able to hit that at 1440p, or would it be better to go 1080p? I'm mainly looking at Witcher 3, but current games I'm playing are Dragon Age: Inquisition, Elite: Dangerous (which honestly runs fine already on a 6870), and MechWarrior: Online (ditto).
Not sure about Dragon Age, but the 290 should be able to handle E:D at 1440p. MW:O is very processor intensive, so it could well be that your GFX makes bugger all difference to your ability to play at a nice framerate. What sort of frames are you hitting with the 6870 at the current resolution?
I have a monitor/gpu question. I have an R9 290 coming in this week. My current monitor is a 1650x1080, for which this card will be the killiest of overkill. I am looking into upgrading the monitor as well eventually, but am not sure if I should go 1080p or 1440p. I'd want to be able to run games at 60fps with most of the pretties turned on. Am I going to be able to hit that at 1440p, or would it be better to go 1080p? I'm mainly looking at Witcher 3, but current games I'm playing are Dragon Age: Inquisition, Elite: Dangerous (which honestly runs fine already on a 6870), and MechWarrior: Online (ditto).
A lot of these questions are a bit intagible... What size of monitor are you looking to buy? If you're looking at something 27-30", at desk distance I would say go with 1440P... If you're keeping it small (sub 24"), the 1080P will likely be your best bang-for buck.
Also, while the 290 will very likely NOT be your bottle neck, we don't know what the rest of your system looks like.
The rest of the forum will have to chime in, is 1440 THAT much harder to drive then 1080? I'm working with a 1080 24" BenQ so I'm not going to have very good first hand experience.
Between you and me, Peggy, I smoked this Juul and it did UNTHINKABLE things to my mind and body...
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Donovan PuppyfuckerA dagger in the dark isworth a thousand swords in the morningRegistered Userregular
I have a monitor/gpu question. I have an R9 290 coming in this week. My current monitor is a 1650x1080, for which this card will be the killiest of overkill. I am looking into upgrading the monitor as well eventually, but am not sure if I should go 1080p or 1440p. I'd want to be able to run games at 60fps with most of the pretties turned on. Am I going to be able to hit that at 1440p, or would it be better to go 1080p? I'm mainly looking at Witcher 3, but current games I'm playing are Dragon Age: Inquisition, Elite: Dangerous (which honestly runs fine already on a 6870), and MechWarrior: Online (ditto).
A lot of these questions are a bit intagible... What size of monitor are you looking to buy? If you're looking at something 27-30", at desk distance I would say go with 1440P... If you're keeping it small (sub 24"), the 1080P will likely be your best bang-for buck.
Also, while the 290 will very likely NOT be your bottle neck, we don't know what the rest of your system looks like.
The rest of the forum will have to chime in, is 1440 THAT much harder to drive then 1080? I'm working with a 1080 24" BenQ so I'm not going to have very good first hand experience.
1440p is 3,686,400 pixels.
1080p is 2,073,600 pixels.
So, 1440p is approximately 80% more pixels for your card to draw, and that's before we get into bigger texture sizes that come with higher resolution settings.
Donovan Puppyfucker on
+1
BouwsTWanna come to a super soft birthday party?Registered Userregular
I have a monitor/gpu question. I have an R9 290 coming in this week. My current monitor is a 1650x1080, for which this card will be the killiest of overkill. I am looking into upgrading the monitor as well eventually, but am not sure if I should go 1080p or 1440p. I'd want to be able to run games at 60fps with most of the pretties turned on. Am I going to be able to hit that at 1440p, or would it be better to go 1080p? I'm mainly looking at Witcher 3, but current games I'm playing are Dragon Age: Inquisition, Elite: Dangerous (which honestly runs fine already on a 6870), and MechWarrior: Online (ditto).
A lot of these questions are a bit intagible... What size of monitor are you looking to buy? If you're looking at something 27-30", at desk distance I would say go with 1440P... If you're keeping it small (sub 24"), the 1080P will likely be your best bang-for buck.
Also, while the 290 will very likely NOT be your bottle neck, we don't know what the rest of your system looks like.
The rest of the forum will have to chime in, is 1440 THAT much harder to drive then 1080? I'm working with a 1080 24" BenQ so I'm not going to have very good first hand experience.
1440p is 3,686,400 pixels.
1080p is 2,073,600 pixels.
So, 1440p is approximately 80% more pixels for your card to draw, and that's before we get into bigger texture sizes that come with higher resolution settings.
There you have it! 1440P is a significant leap. Thanks chrishallet83.
Between you and me, Peggy, I smoked this Juul and it did UNTHINKABLE things to my mind and body...
Also, I'm just going to have to chime in here: sitting at desk distance, I'm actually not minding 1920x1080 on a 27" monitor. Now, I will fully admit that I haven't used a 2560x1440 panel for gaming (used them for work in the past), but if you've been on a 1650x1080 screen, you're not going to jump up to a 27" 1920x1080 and scream "WTF is this hideous shit?!"
Then again, the main reason I went 27" was because I wanted a G-sync panel...and 27" seemed to be where those were at (and I rather like having an extra $350 in my pocket from not going with the ASUS ROG when I had to choose between that and the Acer 27")
| Origin/R*SC: Ein7919 | Battle.net: Erlkonig#1448 | XBL: Lexicanum | Steam: Der Erlkönig (the umlaut is important) |
Also, I'm just going to have to chime in here: sitting at desk distance, I'm actually not minding 1920x1080 on a 27" monitor. Now, I will fully admit that I haven't used a 2560x1440 panel for gaming (used them for work in the past), but if you've been on a 1650x1080 screen, you're not going to jump up to a 27" 1920x1080 and scream "WTF is this hideous shit?!"
Then again, the main reason I went 27" was because I wanted a G-sync panel...and 27" seemed to be where those were at (and I rather like having an extra $350 in my pocket from not going with the ASUS ROG when I had to choose between that and the Acer 27")
I was wondering about that as well, if I went 1080p whether I should go 24" or 27". Is the pixel density fine on your 27" for text abd such?
I haven't really had a problem with pixel density (and I've been staring at spreadsheets 8 hours a day for the past three or four weeks). Bear in mind, though, that everybody's eyes are different; so, what I find just fine might be unacceptable to somebody else. If you can, I'd recommend going to an electronics store and checking out to see if 1080 on a 27" is fine to you.
| Origin/R*SC: Ein7919 | Battle.net: Erlkonig#1448 | XBL: Lexicanum | Steam: Der Erlkönig (the umlaut is important) |
Also, I'm just going to have to chime in here: sitting at desk distance, I'm actually not minding 1920x1080 on a 27" monitor. Now, I will fully admit that I haven't used a 2560x1440 panel for gaming (used them for work in the past), but if you've been on a 1650x1080 screen, you're not going to jump up to a 27" 1920x1080 and scream "WTF is this hideous shit?!"
Then again, the main reason I went 27" was because I wanted a G-sync panel...and 27" seemed to be where those were at (and I rather like having an extra $350 in my pocket from not going with the ASUS ROG when I had to choose between that and the Acer 27")
I was wondering about that as well, if I went 1080p whether I should go 24" or 27". Is the pixel density fine on your 27" for text abd such?
Yeah I used a 27" 1080p monitor for a while (until it unexpectedly died on me a couple months ago) and I was skeptical when I ordered it but in practice had no complaints. I think it probably depends on the specific model to some extent - I have seen some 27" 1080p displays in stores that looked noticeably fuzzy or had the "screen door" effect enough to be annoying, so if possible see the screen you're interested in "in the flesh" before buying. But sacrificing pixel density can buy you improvements in other areas: there are some 27" displays designed for gaming that are "only" 1080p but boast great response time and 144hz refresh rate, which could be more important for some people, while still being affordable and readily available.
Hey thread, I used this resource to build my pc a couple of years ago and I need some advice as it's time for a tune up. I have a 250 gb ssd that is pretty much just windows 7 and I don't know what I've done, but the thing is completely full. Completely. I run everything off of the 2 tb E drive at the moment and it is still stuffed to the gills. So, what do I do? I've got a deal lined up on a new ssd for a good price, 500 gb and I can just transfer windows over to it. Or is it worth it to clean out the old ssd and save my cash? Is the ssd even worth it as a boot drive considering I use this computer as a dvr and never really turn it off? I'm never going to see the quicker boot times, is the gaming performance worth it?
Monitor sizes; one other thing to consider is that with 2560x1440 at 27", you can get away with a bit less anti-aliasing than you could on 1920x1080 at the same size, because the smaller pixels look less aliasing-y -- which can help with performance. It's not magic, you still get weird creeping effects and stuff, and I'm not sure what the performance impact is with all the different types of anti-alising these days; but for me, switching from 23" 1680x1050 to 27" 2560x1440 meant I can set AA to one or two steps less than before.
Hey thread, I used this resource to build my pc a couple of years ago and I need some advice as it's time for a tune up. I have a 250 gb ssd that is pretty much just windows 7 and I don't know what I've done, but the thing is completely full. Completely. I run everything off of the 2 tb E drive at the moment and it is still stuffed to the gills. So, what do I do? I've got a deal lined up on a new ssd for a good price, 500 gb and I can just transfer windows over to it. Or is it worth it to clean out the old ssd and save my cash? Is the ssd even worth it as a boot drive considering I use this computer as a dvr and never really turn it off? I'm never going to see the quicker boot times, is the gaming performance worth it?
You don't know what's on it and it's full? Uhh...
I would suggest figuring out how to clean up your drive before you buy a new one. Start with windirstat: https://windirstat.info
So what's the consensus on the thread about 4k vs 1440p gaming? I'm going to get a new top-end gaming PC this summer and am planning ahead. Right now I'm leaning towards a 1440p system with two 970s in SLI and a nice 1440p monitor. It seems as if 4k is very difficult for current gen graphics cards to do (even two 980s in SLI) and the 4k monitors aren't very good yet. It may be that when I'm doing this in about June/July this state of affairs could change.
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Magus`The fun has been DOUBLED!Registered Userregular
Assuming I built a computer in about 2013 with medium level parts, about how long will I have to wait until I can get at least a 75% general increase in game performance getting, once again, mid level parts?
Right now I have a 3.4 Intel quad core, a 760 GTX, an SSD and 8gbs of whatever RAM made the most use out of my other specs.
Assuming I built a computer in about 2013 with medium level parts, about how long will I have to wait until I can get at least a 75% general increase in game performance getting, once again, mid level parts?
Right now I have a 3.4 Intel quad core, a 760 GTX, an SSD and 8gbs of whatever RAM made the most use out of my other specs.
It is hard to say - it depends on what kind of games you play, and whether there are any big jumps in the field. Also it depends on how you define "75% general increase in game performance."
But I would say in general right now you can go 3 years with a mid-range build and still be playing new stuff at acceptable framerates. You might not get all the bells and whistles on, but you can still play at 1080p.
Hey thread, I used this resource to build my pc a couple of years ago and I need some advice as it's time for a tune up. I have a 250 gb ssd that is pretty much just windows 7 and I don't know what I've done, but the thing is completely full. Completely. I run everything off of the 2 tb E drive at the moment and it is still stuffed to the gills. So, what do I do? I've got a deal lined up on a new ssd for a good price, 500 gb and I can just transfer windows over to it. Or is it worth it to clean out the old ssd and save my cash? Is the ssd even worth it as a boot drive considering I use this computer as a dvr and never really turn it off? I'm never going to see the quicker boot times, is the gaming performance worth it?
You don't know what's on it and it's full? Uhh...
I would suggest figuring out how to clean up your drive before you buy a new one. Start with windirstat: https://windirstat.info
I have a 250GB SSD and a 500GB SSD on my system. If I pooled together everything on my system, I think it would take up about 80GB. And a large portion of that is probably my WoW install/folder. Unless you have a "Downloads" folder that you never clean out, I don't know what could be doing it.
Hey thread, I used this resource to build my pc a couple of years ago and I need some advice as it's time for a tune up. I have a 250 gb ssd that is pretty much just windows 7 and I don't know what I've done, but the thing is completely full. Completely. I run everything off of the 2 tb E drive at the moment and it is still stuffed to the gills. So, what do I do? I've got a deal lined up on a new ssd for a good price, 500 gb and I can just transfer windows over to it. Or is it worth it to clean out the old ssd and save my cash? Is the ssd even worth it as a boot drive considering I use this computer as a dvr and never really turn it off? I'm never going to see the quicker boot times, is the gaming performance worth it?
You don't know what's on it and it's full? Uhh...
I would suggest figuring out how to clean up your drive before you buy a new one. Start with windirstat: https://windirstat.info
I have a 250GB SSD and a 500GB SSD on my system. If I pooled together everything on my system, I think it would take up about 80GB. And a large portion of that is probably my WoW install/folder. Unless you have a "Downloads" folder that you never clean out, I don't know what could be doing it.
+1 for Windirstat
Running it now and it's not done yet, but windows is already showing over 212gb and growing.
Posts
Question for clarification: W7 install completed and he took the DVD out? Because this sounds suspiciously like the comp wants to restart to the W7 on SSD but boot priority is forcing it to use the disc instead.
Monoprice has a 4k 60hz display on sale for $430 right now too... if they aren't all already gone.
My ASUS STRIX GTX 970 has been nothing but cool and quiet since I got it a month and a half ago.
The OC potential is a little lower than the other OEM options, because it only uses a single 8-pin PCIe connector instead of dual 6-pins, but I've got it running now at 1468 mhz GPU and 7806 mhz VRAM. Even with this substantial OC, it basically never goes over 65C; normally hovers in the low 60s playing Shadows of Mordor on Ultra @ 1080p.
I'm really happy with it. Sent back the second identical card because it was a NewEgg "Open Box," which is probably why it had a noticeable buzzing when the fans spun up. Will prolly eat the $60 expense and just order a second brand-new STRIX 970, since SLI was the only reason I swapped my 350D and Micro-ATX mobo for a 450D and standard ATX MSI mobo.
I should note that SLI boards that actually have realistic x16/x8 slot spacing -- ie. that were designed to account for a universe where the kinds of cards you'd wanna SLI all have beefy dual-slot coolers -- seem to be few and far between. Most of them seem to leave only a single slot inbetween both x8-capable PCIe slots, which means the top card is likely flush against the bottom one.
When I tried doing SLI with my old Micro-ATX board -- with only one slot between the x8's -- the top 970 was always a minimum of 10C hotter than the lower one. It could've gone even higher if I hadn't set the temp ceiling in Precision to 80C.
tl;dr: I have been happy with my STRIX 970!
He pretty much got the motivation to finally upgrade once I let him play Shadows of Mordor on my PC. He's able to play SoM and other games on it atm, but he gets random crashes sometimes.
The ones that happen in Crusader Kings II -- the game he plays most often -- are soft crashes where the game stops working, quits to desktop, and gives him an error dialog. He was having serious problems with it when he tried playing the OSX port on his Macbook, but Googling even the PC version seems to suggest it also has problems with weird crashes in Windows.
He told me the Shadows of Mordor crashes are "hard crashes"; he's not especially computer literate, and I've never seen the crashes in SoM myself, so I takes his word and assume they're somehow different from the CK2 soft crashes.
After the first few crashes (all in Crusader Kings II), we started troubleshooting. After actually installing SpeedFan for the first time to see what his temps were looking like, we realized his southbridge ("IOH Temp" in BIOS) was at a constant 65C at idle. We shifted some things around inside the case (his wiring situation would make this thread cry) and taking off his front panel (the filter is non-removable), we only got the southbridge temp down to low 60s at idle and mid-to-high 60s when playing a game with the front and side panels off.
I was a little surprised that the southbridge would be getting (what seems to me) so inordinately hot. Makes some sense I guess, given that the GTX 970 he has now is an absolute beast in comparison to his old 550 Ti. I've just never understood southbridge cooling (it does have a dinky little heatsink) to be so demanding -- or for a hot southbridge to be the reason for hard crashes.
What I find most weird, though, is that when I installed HWMonitor... it wasn't picking up anything but the CPU utilization sensor. No motherboard/chipset, GPU, fan, etc. sensors at all.
But SpeedFan seems to detect and display the readings of all the temperature and fan sensors.
I'm suggesting to him that he just ditch the shitty old LGA 1366 mobo. I can give him the Gigabyte Micro-ATX LGA 1150 mobo, Micro-ATX case, 650W SilverStone PSU, and H60 from my old build for free. In he's willing to go through with it, he'd just have to put down money on a new LGA 1150 CPU.
He says he doesn't wanna blow anymore money on the PC if he doesn't absolutely have to, which makes sense; he already spent $350 for the STRIX 970 and another ~$60 for the 8GB of RAM.
The options I gave him were:
- Taking my hardware and spending $80 on a G3258 and OCing it (or even using it stock). I told him that, to the best of my knowledge, he might suffer a performance hit in some games that require/perform substantially better on a quad-core. afaik Shadows of Mordor will run pretty well on a dual-core, but scales well to at least 4 cores.
- Taking my hardware and spending $180 on the lowest-end i5 (the 4430) for the quad-core. He could also get the cheapest K chip (Devil's Canyon 4690K) for $55 more and get a little more price-performance once he OCs it.
- Try to find an LGA 1366 motherboard somewhere online, which might mean having to buy a used board, and which in any case would probably be as expensive as a new G3258.
We are in any event gonna try a fresh install of Windows on the new SSD to see if that doesn't fix things by itself.Oh yeah? (Trigger warning: cabling)
I would try to see if a fresh windows install solves the game crash problems before throwing hardware at it.
No way should extra heat be exhausting to his southbridge via his GPU, at least not so much as to raise his temps by that much, since GPUs blow the vast majority of their hot air out of the case. Thus, he probably has negative air pressure going on, sucking up that hot air back into the case.
Removing the front panel seems to further point to a negative air pressure, as its removal would not have made a difference in a positive air pressure situation.
My first step would be to get him more fans or bigger fans, set up for intake, and see if that reduces the southbridge temperature to the 50C range.
Schadenfreude is getting the best of me. I want to see what it was like now.
Ooohhhhh, that's the good stuff.
Monitor 1 Video
Monitor 2 Video
Monitor 1 Power
Monitor 2 Power
Mouse
Keyboard
360 Controller
Joystick
Wireless Adapter
I mean what do you DO with all those extra cords? Right now I got one of those trays to attach under my desk and they are kinda shoved up in there.
If the decision is to replace hardware, convince him to start with a sub-$100 processor to at least get things going; then pick up something a bit more beefy possibly at the end of the Summer or beginning of the Holidays.
You could also let him try your PSU out and see how that helps.
I'm hardware-focused, but errors like that tend to point me toward something overheating or saturating a rail. Then again, I had an Abit board back in ~2003 that I replaced everything else but the board and was still giving me crashes or random restarts and other odd crap. Which is where I turned to Asus and never looked back.
This, and also clean, re-paste, and reseat the southbridge heatsink.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
I was looking around and I saw this http://pcpartpicker.com/user/alanhenry/saved/CVTBD3
And I decided that would be a good base. I plan on adding a video card to also.
For the most part I think I'd just want a PC that can play like the Sims so I'm wondering if this is a good base.
Your computer will shutdown or restart if it is overheating the processor. That's when you know it is too high of an overclock and you should then back it off a bit. If you are just doing the built in overclocking in your bios you shouldn't have to worry about making sure you get the voltage right and all that. It is automatic these days.
But it's not that hard, just set multiplier to XX, volts to 1.XXXX, see if it works. If it does, raise multiplier. If it doesn't raise volts unless you're getting too high. Then once you get it stable maybe try lowering volts until it's not anymore. Changing volts manually go slow, too. .02ish at a time, though if you know you're way below max can go faster.
It's faster (scroll down). Up to you if that's worth the price.
It's faster, but I can't say you'll really notice a difference between the two.
Not sure about Dragon Age, but the 290 should be able to handle E:D at 1440p. MW:O is very processor intensive, so it could well be that your GFX makes bugger all difference to your ability to play at a nice framerate. What sort of frames are you hitting with the 6870 at the current resolution?
http://steamcommunity.com/id/pablocampy
A lot of these questions are a bit intagible... What size of monitor are you looking to buy? If you're looking at something 27-30", at desk distance I would say go with 1440P... If you're keeping it small (sub 24"), the 1080P will likely be your best bang-for buck.
Also, while the 290 will very likely NOT be your bottle neck, we don't know what the rest of your system looks like.
The rest of the forum will have to chime in, is 1440 THAT much harder to drive then 1080? I'm working with a 1080 24" BenQ so I'm not going to have very good first hand experience.
1440p is 3,686,400 pixels.
1080p is 2,073,600 pixels.
So, 1440p is approximately 80% more pixels for your card to draw, and that's before we get into bigger texture sizes that come with higher resolution settings.
There you have it! 1440P is a significant leap. Thanks chrishallet83.
Then again, the main reason I went 27" was because I wanted a G-sync panel...and 27" seemed to be where those were at (and I rather like having an extra $350 in my pocket from not going with the ASUS ROG when I had to choose between that and the Acer 27")
I was wondering about that as well, if I went 1080p whether I should go 24" or 27". Is the pixel density fine on your 27" for text abd such?
Yeah I used a 27" 1080p monitor for a while (until it unexpectedly died on me a couple months ago) and I was skeptical when I ordered it but in practice had no complaints. I think it probably depends on the specific model to some extent - I have seen some 27" 1080p displays in stores that looked noticeably fuzzy or had the "screen door" effect enough to be annoying, so if possible see the screen you're interested in "in the flesh" before buying. But sacrificing pixel density can buy you improvements in other areas: there are some 27" displays designed for gaming that are "only" 1080p but boast great response time and 144hz refresh rate, which could be more important for some people, while still being affordable and readily available.
You don't know what's on it and it's full? Uhh...
I would suggest figuring out how to clean up your drive before you buy a new one. Start with windirstat: https://windirstat.info
Right now I have a 3.4 Intel quad core, a 760 GTX, an SSD and 8gbs of whatever RAM made the most use out of my other specs.
Steam Profile | Signature art by Alexandra 'Lexxy' Douglass
It is hard to say - it depends on what kind of games you play, and whether there are any big jumps in the field. Also it depends on how you define "75% general increase in game performance."
But I would say in general right now you can go 3 years with a mid-range build and still be playing new stuff at acceptable framerates. You might not get all the bells and whistles on, but you can still play at 1080p.
I have a 250GB SSD and a 500GB SSD on my system. If I pooled together everything on my system, I think it would take up about 80GB. And a large portion of that is probably my WoW install/folder. Unless you have a "Downloads" folder that you never clean out, I don't know what could be doing it.
+1 for Windirstat
Running it now and it's not done yet, but windows is already showing over 212gb and growing.