This is the cheapest GTX660Ti on Newegg, with a $30 dollar rebate (if you can get it).
Or if the $200 is a hard limit, then have a gander at this.
I'm not dead set on an nVidia card; I just haven't had an ATI (or AMD now, I guess) card in ages.
$200 isn't a hard limit (I'd say $250 is, tho), but considering my aging card plays Rift extremely well, I can't imagine I'd need to spend a fortune to have it play a little better.
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GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
The 660ti is a great buy. It's probably the best card you're going to get in that price range.
That card is also $30 more than my hard limit (on Newegg, anyway).
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GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
I would say south of the 660ti, AMD might have some better value buys. Can't say positively, but you might be able to get a higher end AMD card from the last generation in the sub-250 range.
So I set the multiplier to 40x, and 30 minutes of Prime95 puts the max load temps at 74-75C. Does that seem reasonable to you dudes? I feel like it's a little hot, personally, and I plan to set it back to Auto; the default seems to be 36x for all 4 cores, and 38x for a single core under load.
So I set the multiplier to 40x, and 30 minutes of Prime95 puts the max load temps at 74-75C. Does that seem reasonable to you dudes? I feel like it's a little hot, personally, and I plan to set it back to Auto; the default seems to be 36x for all 4 cores, and 38x for a single core under load.
Perfectly reasonable temps. But you'll probably be just as happy with the default settings.
I hope I'm not spamming this forum. I keep attempting to post a question but when I post my posts seem to vanish. I'm wondering what is a good CPU fan to pick for my build. I do not need to overclock but my current stock CPU fan is possibly on the fritz; I don't know what a good brand/what requirements I need to meet when buying a new CPU fan.
==============================
Please excuse the ungodly mess that is my posts.
I'm not a common user of the forums, but I did use this thread and the help of the community to build my current desktop. I love it and it has treated me very well. I have some techy friends, but I'm a bit of a layman when it comes to these things. I could probably be more, but I tend to not trust myself -- feel like I know enough to cause damage more than anything when assembling stuff.
Anyway, recently my CPU fan has started going on the fritz. At times the computer will fail to fully boot up, because the CPU fan will not spin. I've asked around, and been told that this could be caused by several things, but the cheapest bet would be replacing the CPU fan (hoping the problem is just with the fan and nothing else). I know when buying my parts it was very important to make sure things fit properly. So, I'm wondering what would be a good CPU fan for my build to purchase. I have no interest in overclocking, and I have not had a need to as of yet. Any help you all can provide is really appreciated!
@Hamurabi I run similar temps on my 2500k at 4.6ghz with a Thermalright HR-02 Macho which seems high to me compared to temps reviewers got with the cooler. However, when I put the system together last November I ran Prime95 for 36 hours at 4.6ghz with zero problems and it's been completely problem free outside of a bad stick of ram. I've thought about trying some different thermal compound than Arctic Silver 5 and reseating the cooler, but that's a real hassle when I'm rarely if ever doing something that has all four cores at 100%.
I should have been a bit more clear, but my spam fest may have made that equally impossible. I have already built this computer for about a year. Hence the discontinued parts, but now I need to replace my stock CPU fan -- and I have no idea what is necessary to look at for that.
Thank you Foomy! I think that is exactly what I'm after. I wasn't sure what all considerations you have to make when buying a heatsink (brands, size, etc.).
If you really want to dig down into it, these are the factors that really matter in heatsink selection:
Size/clearance - so you can know if it would fit into your case, or block ram slots etc. really only matter for extremely large models
Noise - Some will sound like a jet engine, some you never notice.
Heat Dissipation - How cool will it make your cpu.
and the only way to figure out those last 2 are to just read through a lot of reviews.
I see. Yeah thanks for the more detail too. My fear is definitely it not fitting in the case after I purchase. This was the one my friend suggested, but it seemed like it might be overkill. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835106187
I see some reviews on the first one (the one you provided) saying its a difficult install -- I'm going to have one of my buddies (who installed mine before) do this for me, but hopefully he'd have no problems with it.
So I guess my CPU never actually goes over like 50C playing WoW (which I'll be real, is most of what I do on it), so the 40x multiplier almost never actually reaches 75C in real-world use anyhow. Guess I can live with that.
How DIY are you? Cause if you're game I'd say get a Raspberry Pi with a decent sized SD card for OS and local scratch file, and install a flavor of Linux provided by the RPi community. That's your cheapest option. If you want to stay in Windows I'd probably do a build around an A4 APU as I've seen those go on sale as low as $20.
Dell Ophelia project looks very interesting, but no word on release yet.
I'll be graduating with a CS degree in may so I am pretty DIY when it is required. That being said, windows would probably be the better option so I can have silverlight.
Tell me about the A4 APU you mentioned. Some cursory glances look like it's a cpu/gpu combined unit- is it going to facilitate HD streaming etc. well?
@Djeet, this is what I wrote for the last person asking about an htpc a month or so ago:
There are lots of HTPC build guides. There was a thread a while back that had a link to a nice one, I'll see if I can find it later. Right of the bat you will need to decide if you want to go low energy or upgradeable. Pretty much any of the sandy bridge or ivy bridge cpu's and any of the llano or trinity amd apu's will have enough power for a htpc build. So if you get a high end one, it will drain more power, but will allow you to upgrade to more of a gaming system later on. If you get a low end one it will use less power, but it will require an upgrade down the road if you want to play games. I went with the i3-2100t, which is a low power low end sandy bridge. It pumps out 1080p blurays no sweat.
As for video you don't need a dedicated video card to get 1080p movies/tv. The onboard graphics for any of the cpu's i mentioned will be more than enough for that. However, a low end cpu with onboard graphics will probably not even run most modern games. So something to think about.
There's lots of other things to consider but I'll just list a few of the big ones and you can ask questions/pm me/or google HTPC builds for other stuff.
1) A powerful cpu + dedicated gpu + small case will be effing noisy to keep cool. So if noise is an issue, you need to consider where you want to make sacrifices.
2) Make sure your motherboard has the appropriate video connections, and supports the onboard graphics, if you go that route.
3) I don't know of any free software for playing bluray movies. So a fresh instal of windows 7/8 plus a bluray drive will allow you to read bluray discs, but not play bluray movies/tv shows/whatever, because you won't have the proper decoders. Total media theater and powerdvd are the two most used decoders, and cost around $100. Sometimes old powerdvd versions come packaged with the bluray drive, but I've heard they are not so great.
4) There are only 3 companies that do the tuner card thing. Silicon dust (hdhomerun), Ceton (ceton infintv), and hauppauge (wndr or something). Tuners come in 2 varieties, clearQAM and cable card ready. clearQAM means you can get the local channels, cable card ready means you can rent a cable card (usually pretty cheap) from your cable company, and get the rest of the cable lineup. As a side note, your tv probably has a clearQAM tuner, but you can't record off of that one since your tv probably doesn't have a video out, and your HTPC probably wont have a video in.
edit2- I forgot the most important thing to consider when building a HTPC. Your WAF/GAF (wife acceptance factor/girlfriend acceptance factor) is going to drop compared to the standard cable box/bluray drive. It doesn't matter that it looks a million times better, and allows you to access way more stuff, it will break a non zero amount of times, and the WAF will plummet.
Edit- Let me add a few thoughts. The builds I talk about above are for a full HTPC (bluray/dvd playback capabilities, streaming, cable tv recording). If you just want a streaming box you can probably get away with even less in terms of cpu power. A decent full HTPC will probably be around $400-$600 depending on software needs/unnecessary but nicer hardware purchases. For a streaming box you can probably get away with an intel celeron cpu based build. Should be much cheaper. Not $35ish RaspberryPi cheap, but still.
Jebus314 on
"The world is a mess, and I just need to rule it" - Dr Horrible
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AlectharAlan ShoreWe're not territorial about that sort of thing, are we?Registered Userregular
edited January 2013
So. I finally got my Prodigy in, and put my NAS together. Transferring data over as I type. Thoughts:
The Prodigy is a nice case, but it's absolutely huge. With the handles taken into account, it's roughly as large as the cheapo M-ATX case my parents' PC is in, and it's significantly wider. That causes a storage issue for me at the moment. I'd trade the standard PSU mount in for an SFX mount in a hot second if I thought it would make the case a bit less unwieldy.
In general the quality of the case seems solid, but it's dragged down somewhat by the details. The bottom "legs" should not be the same material as the top handles. Even unloaded, the case will wobble if nudged, and I'm not a fan of that. The placement of the "front" panel isn't great. If, for whatever reason, you need to place a case side flush (or nearly so) with a wall or the like, you have the option of making the front panel virtually inaccessible, or blocking the big side vents. Cable routing is probably about as good as it was going to be, but I can't help but feel like there are a few changes that could be made that wouldn't up the price of the box, but would make things look/work a bit better. The HDD trays were a massive pain in the ass for 3.5'' drives. The mounting posts on the trays easily escape the rubber washer dealies they're placed in, and the trays don't seem quite as flexible as those use in my 600T.
All in all a solid case, but I feel like it could have been better for little to no additional cost.
Anyway, below are some pics of the build. It's not pretty, but with this case, with 6 HDDs, it was never going to be. I ended up deciding on NAS4Free for my OS, and everything seems to be working beautifully so far. I'm pretty psyched about it.
Inside the box.
From the top, you can see the drive that's in the HDD caddy.
And basically just the whole thing all put together.
AlectharAlan ShoreWe're not territorial about that sort of thing, are we?Registered Userregular
edited January 2013
The giant arch of SATA cables bugs me, but the electric blue ones were really inflexible. I wouldn't recommend them. I considered cobbling together a complete set of the standard "ribbon" ones, but I had already plugged them all in...
Edit: Also the 24 Pin bugs me, but it has to come out at that angle, so it doesn't respond well to the standard bends I would use to reduce its profile in a regular desktop.
It looks much better than the much simpler cabling job that I had to do on my Prodigy HTPC. No idea how you got the power supply cables so clean down there.
acidlacedpenguinInstitutionalizedSafe in jail.Registered Userregular
yeah I had the same complaints with the prodigy when I built my parents their computer. You could always simply remove the bottom "handles" but I think that would probably unbalance the case aesthetically.
One thing I really liked was having the racks for slotting SSDs on the door. I still want to build another PC in that case though, you could make a solid mobile gaming PC with that and fit a 240mm radiator in the top.
GT: Acidboogie PSNid: AcidLacedPenguiN
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Donovan PuppyfuckerA dagger in the dark isworth a thousand swords in the morningRegistered Userregular
For a Mini-ITX case it is pretty huge. It's bigger than many Micro-ATX cases! Still looks neat and seems quite nicely made.
I am still interested in perhaps raspberry pi'ing for my HTPC. Is there any reasonable way to do netflix on it?
not really that well, Netflix still won't release a public app for Linux.
There are some work-around like solutions, but they involved either streaming it from another computer, or running a vm, or there is a way to get it running with wine.
The wine option would probably be the best, but I have no idea what the performance would be like on the Pi
I am still interested in perhaps raspberry pi'ing for my HTPC. Is there any reasonable way to do netflix on it?
Not that I know of. Netflix doesn't play nice with Linux due to the lack of a DRM-capable version of Silverlight. There's a Ubuntu package for Netflix, but it's basically just a customised WINE wrapped around Netflix and the Windows Silverlight plugin. I doubt the Pi would be up to that.
That said, there are other, similar boxes with more powah that run Android, so you could run Netflix and other streaming apps off that. And XBMC soon.
Posts
I'm not dead set on an nVidia card; I just haven't had an ATI (or AMD now, I guess) card in ages.
$200 isn't a hard limit (I'd say $250 is, tho), but considering my aging card plays Rift extremely well, I can't imagine I'd need to spend a fortune to have it play a little better.
Perfectly reasonable temps. But you'll probably be just as happy with the default settings.
==============================
Please excuse the ungodly mess that is my posts.
I'm not a common user of the forums, but I did use this thread and the help of the community to build my current desktop. I love it and it has treated me very well. I have some techy friends, but I'm a bit of a layman when it comes to these things. I could probably be more, but I tend to not trust myself -- feel like I know enough to cause damage more than anything when assembling stuff.
Anyway, recently my CPU fan has started going on the fritz. At times the computer will fail to fully boot up, because the CPU fan will not spin. I've asked around, and been told that this could be caused by several things, but the cheapest bet would be replacing the CPU fan (hoping the problem is just with the fan and nothing else). I know when buying my parts it was very important to make sure things fit properly. So, I'm wondering what would be a good CPU fan for my build to purchase. I have no interest in overclocking, and I have not had a need to as of yet. Any help you all can provide is really appreciated!
Thanks!
Here's my build:
Octanku's Computer
Case:
Corsair Carbide Series 500R Black Steel
Mother Board:
ASUS P8Z68-V PRO
Processor:
Intel Core i5-2500K Sandy Bridge 3.3GHz
Video Card:
GeForce GTX 580 1536MB 384-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x 16
Power Supply:
NZXT HALE90-850-M 850W ATX 12V v2.2
Memory:
CORSAIR Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM
Hard Drive:
Western Digital 1.5TB 7200 RPM SATA Hard Drive
DVD Burner:
LG CD/DVD Burner
:P
If it were me, I'd drop the 500R down to a 200R-300R and drop that almost $100 in savings into getting a 660ti.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814133466
I'd also consider dropping that power supply to like 450-500watt. Some of your items are discontinued too.
for a decent cheap heatsink this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835103065 is the usual recommendation.
Size/clearance - so you can know if it would fit into your case, or block ram slots etc. really only matter for extremely large models
Noise - Some will sound like a jet engine, some you never notice.
Heat Dissipation - How cool will it make your cpu.
and the only way to figure out those last 2 are to just read through a lot of reviews.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835106187
I see some reviews on the first one (the one you provided) saying its a difficult install -- I'm going to have one of my buddies (who installed mine before) do this for me, but hopefully he'd have no problems with it.
@Djeet, this is what I wrote for the last person asking about an htpc a month or so ago:
Edit- Let me add a few thoughts. The builds I talk about above are for a full HTPC (bluray/dvd playback capabilities, streaming, cable tv recording). If you just want a streaming box you can probably get away with even less in terms of cpu power. A decent full HTPC will probably be around $400-$600 depending on software needs/unnecessary but nicer hardware purchases. For a streaming box you can probably get away with an intel celeron cpu based build. Should be much cheaper. Not $35ish RaspberryPi cheap, but still.
The Prodigy is a nice case, but it's absolutely huge. With the handles taken into account, it's roughly as large as the cheapo M-ATX case my parents' PC is in, and it's significantly wider. That causes a storage issue for me at the moment. I'd trade the standard PSU mount in for an SFX mount in a hot second if I thought it would make the case a bit less unwieldy.
In general the quality of the case seems solid, but it's dragged down somewhat by the details. The bottom "legs" should not be the same material as the top handles. Even unloaded, the case will wobble if nudged, and I'm not a fan of that. The placement of the "front" panel isn't great. If, for whatever reason, you need to place a case side flush (or nearly so) with a wall or the like, you have the option of making the front panel virtually inaccessible, or blocking the big side vents. Cable routing is probably about as good as it was going to be, but I can't help but feel like there are a few changes that could be made that wouldn't up the price of the box, but would make things look/work a bit better. The HDD trays were a massive pain in the ass for 3.5'' drives. The mounting posts on the trays easily escape the rubber washer dealies they're placed in, and the trays don't seem quite as flexible as those use in my 600T.
All in all a solid case, but I feel like it could have been better for little to no additional cost.
Anyway, below are some pics of the build. It's not pretty, but with this case, with 6 HDDs, it was never going to be. I ended up deciding on NAS4Free for my OS, and everything seems to be working beautifully so far. I'm pretty psyched about it.
Battle.net
Edit: Also the 24 Pin bugs me, but it has to come out at that angle, so it doesn't respond well to the standard bends I would use to reduce its profile in a regular desktop.
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Great build, as your always are
It inspires me to rebuild my NAS since my second hand HDDs I was crowing about a while ago lasted all of about 2 months
Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better
bit.ly/2XQM1ke
It's an ASUS AMD C-60 board. Basically a down-clocked version of the E-350.
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One thing I really liked was having the racks for slotting SSDs on the door. I still want to build another PC in that case though, you could make a solid mobile gaming PC with that and fit a 240mm radiator in the top.
not really that well, Netflix still won't release a public app for Linux.
There are some work-around like solutions, but they involved either streaming it from another computer, or running a vm, or there is a way to get it running with wine.
The wine option would probably be the best, but I have no idea what the performance would be like on the Pi
but here's the details if you want to do some research: http://www.compholio.com/netflix-desktop/
Not that I know of. Netflix doesn't play nice with Linux due to the lack of a DRM-capable version of Silverlight. There's a Ubuntu package for Netflix, but it's basically just a customised WINE wrapped around Netflix and the Windows Silverlight plugin. I doubt the Pi would be up to that.
That said, there are other, similar boxes with more powah that run Android, so you could run Netflix and other streaming apps off that. And XBMC soon.
Battle.net