Yet another PC build thread! :)

[PhireSide]

If you want a good comparison of GPU's, then check out Archer's GPU comparison charts

Sweet, thanks! WIll have a look at that so long

Is there any reason I should go with an HX650W PSU or can I maybe skimp a bit there? I don't want to sound stingy, just asking since a cheaper PSU will give me some leverage to maybe push for a better GPU or so.

So far I have the following in my mind:

CM Storm Scout
Asus P8P67-M Pro
Intel Core i5 2500K
2*2GB XMS3 RAM
Seagate Barracuda 1TB SATA3 HDD
DVD-RW (any one will do)

The PSU and GPU I am still deciding on - if I make the one better, the other will become weaker. So therein lies my problem for now - which PSU and which GPU?

Looking at Archer's charts, the GTX560Ti is a very good buy, but I am wondering if I should not push for a GTX570 rather...or a 580 if I can afford it. If I do that, I don't think I can fork out R1K+ for a PSU, which is my other problem. I think the rest I am quite settled on. I have a 80GB HDD I'll load Windows onto for now, and at a later stage I can just Ghost the Windows drive onto an SSD when I decide to purchase one.

Thanks for all the help guys!

 

[Archer]

Get a proper PSU, since if done right it can easily last 5+ years. Trust me, the last thing you want is some shoddy PSU with transients that end up frying your PC when you start going 80%+ of its full load capacity.

 

[Ono'rach]

Get a proper PSU, since if done right it can easily last 5+ years. Trust me, the last thing you want is some shoddy PSU with transients that end up frying your PC when you start going 80%+ of its full load capacity.

This ^

I bought a crappy PSU, despite being advised against it. Now I want to go Crossfire but can't unless I buy a proper PSU (which I should've bought in the first place)

 

[PhireSide]

That would be the other problem...we stay on a farm and our power is not of the best in the land.

I saw this PSU on Rebeltech just now, for about R300 less than the HX650: http://rebeltech.co.za/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=1448. It is a MUKii asroc plus asc-750AB - 750w power supply with a 5-year warranty. Never heard of them, so I am a wee bit sceptical.

Gosh, this is turning into an expensive build:wtf:

 

[Libertas Computers]

Okay the coolers are confusing me quite a bit now. The 212+ seems very good for the price, so I think I might be settled for now. If I don't like it, I can always try something else.

Agreed, if you want to minimize costs (as it looks like you're trying) go for a cheaper option that might even outperform a more expensive option. (I'm basing this on reviews, not fanboynessness)

Interesting views on the motherboard, what exactly do I lose by going the MicroATX route instead of the full-size board? Other than the obvious such as less PCI slots

From what I can tell not so much. There's a feature here or then on the motherboard and in bios that is on the atx and not the mATX, but I honestly doubt that performance will be hampered by this. I'll have to make sure, don't have it off by heart like some of the forumites here.

Libertas Computers, do you have a roundabout price on a 60GB SSD? Sorry if I misread anything, I managed to pick up the flu and the meds are making me groggy *bleh*.

I just finished my last round of meds for my flu and will be heading to the doc again for some more, so no worries there.
The Intel 320 series is rated as a good OS drive if you're only using it as a OS drive as it's highly rated in reading small files are R950 for a 40Gb, but the SSD battle is quite hectic, so I'm not gonna go recommend anything just yet, I just remembered that they were rated quite good as an OS drive.

www.hwcompare.com shows that the GTX570 has an advantage over the ATi cards (6950/6970), but I don't know how accurate that comparison might be...I guess they are more or less on par?

I take this as a personal preference kind of thing. If you feel that the extra cash spent on a better graphics card is worth the marginal increase in frames, then go for it. Have a look at Archer's thing and decide there what you consider is worth the couple of Rands.

I must add that I would like it relatively silent, too. I do most of my stuff on a 17" laptop so I am used to fans humming along, but silent components are not the top priority but they would be preferred.

Only thing I can think of here is getting silent fans on the chassis if you need extras or the stock ones are noisy..

Eish, what else? I think that's about it...now I think I'm going to wait until AMD flashes it's Bulldozer chips before I buy. Hopefully the prices will drop by that time.

By that time for all we know the next series GFX cards came knocking perhaps and we'll have this whole dicussion again, that's the thing with technology... But I think it might drop other AMD prices, not so sure about Intel though[/quote]

Oh, one more thing. I read online the GTX570 length is around 267mm - will it fit inside a CM Scout case?

As far as I know there are some problems with that. Some cards are slightly longer than the 'stock' card, it depends on the manufacturer. The CM Scout has space for 10.5" maximum (meaning the power connectors are on top). 267mm is 10.51", and I've read that there's a small ridge in the hdd cage that might stop you from slotting it in correctly. You might have to do this:
http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a306/simon84uk/IMG_0204.jpg
Then it'll fit like this:

Sweet, thanks! WIll have a look at that so long

Is there any reason I should go with an HX650W PSU or can I maybe skimp a bit there? I don't want to sound stingy, just asking since a cheaper PSU will give me some leverage to maybe push for a better GPU or so.

Rather go with a proper PSU, you'll end up with less hassles later if some might pop up. I've got a GS-600 in my rig and so far so good, I'd say you can come away with a TX650 for R925 along with its 5 year warranty...

Looking at Archer's charts, the GTX560Ti is a very good buy, but I am wondering if I should not push for a GTX570 rather...or a 580 if I can afford it. If I do that, I don't think I can fork out R1K+ for a PSU, which is my other problem.

As I said earlier (like 30mins ago when I started replying) it's preference thing. If you feel the extra fps (which is mainly what you should be looking at for gaming) is worth the extra money spent then by all means go for it.
P.S. - I'm sitting with a GTX280 and I'm still happy until about BF3 time..

 

[Werfetter]

Im looking at building a similair rig but with a much bigger budget restriction, but from the bit of research i've done:

The 2500 will be more than good enough for quite some time so rather save some money there and get an SSD to run you OS etc. The performance increase from that wil be far more noticeable than getting a 2600k. Guru3D overclocked the 2500 to 4 ghz on air cooling so getting it that high wont be much of a problem.

As for the RAM, remember when running RAM at 1600+ mhz you wil need to overclock to get it there otherwise it will run at a lower frequency, so in my opinion I would rather go for the "Corsair® XMS3™ 4GB DDR3-1333 Gaming Memory Kit - 2x2GB Matched Pair - CL9-9-9-24". As far as I can see the Vengeance Ram you are looking at comes in matched sets of 3 (Im not completely sure of this though but the pricelists i've looked at only stock them in stets of three) so unless you are planning on putting 6 chips (The motherboard you are looking at only has 4 DIMM slots) in dual channel its not worth the extra costs.

Love the motherboard.

As for the Graphics Card have a look at the link in this thread: http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php/273502-GPU-Value-Comparisons. It seems to be on par with all the reviews i've read, I myself am going for the best price/performance card I can get my hands on (tight budget).

The power supply will be fine, though just remember that you sacrifice power efficiency by having a modular power supply (I myself have the Corsiar TX650).

 

[Chris Erodis]

Hi Wabbit,

If you are gaming on 1 LCD at HD resolution then both the AMD 6970 and Nvidia GTX 570 are great cards however the GTX570 will suffer in the titles that are comming out later this year because of its Vram limitation. Even if the card is very powerfull on paper games like AVP we already see the GTX 570 using 1260mb of Vram and sometimes there is a bit of micro stutter, now if u use the 6970 in the same game at the same settings you have it alot smoother because there are no limitations on Vram. Dont take anything less than 2 gig of Vram if u are a new buyer right now.

Having a poor power supply today will cause your latest hardware to underperform due to all the throttling from Nvidia and AMD. They have some very clever electronics.

If u are on a tight budget then look at Palit's 2gig GTX560 ti its a great card and 2 of them outperform the GTX580.

 

[Archer]

The power supply will be fine, though just remember that you sacrifice power efficiency by having a modular power supply (I myself have the Corsiar TX650).

No you dont, well, not really. Typically modular connectors like that will have a >10mV drop per Amp that goes through them. That will result in an absolute worst case power loss of 0.25W while delivering 60W. Thats a 0.4% power loss worst case. Real world it will be more like 0.2%. Edit: actually most wires will probably draw mush less than 60W, and be closer to 30W. So that makes the power loss even more insignificant

What really drives the efficiency is the components within the PSU and that can be gotten from what efficiency rating the PSU has (80+, Bronze, Silver, Gold or Platinum)

 

[PhireSide]

Thanks for all the help Fred!

I read here (http://www.overclock.net/nvidia/887853-gtx-570-sli-inside-cooler-master.html) and it seems it is a very tight fit but it can be done without butchering the case. I am a bit of an nVidia fanboy, have been all my life so no surprises there ;D. I have my heart set on a GTX570, but supply of it seems very dodgy and they are a bit scarce.

Do you stock the TX650? It seems as if the main difference between the HX and TX is that the TX is not modular...no big deal for me, I don't think. I guess I'll see when I actually order what I want to go with.

@Chris, I currently onyl have a 19" screen running but I'm upgrading that pretty soon after I have purchased my system.

@Werfetter, I decided on the XMS3 rather for the fact that I would not utilize the extra speed/cost associated with it. The Vengeance is a bit overkill, hehe

 

[Chris Erodis]

Also check out Zerotherm Cpu coolers, the ZT-10D Premium its very cabable of handling i7's at more than 300w.

I am also an Nvidia fan but at the moment the only Nvidia graphics cards that can handle my 5760 x 1080 resolution with 4 x AA in Crysis Warhead is my rig with 3 x Palit GTX580 3gig versions. Otherwise it would have been a great failure

 

[Kuga]

Well said Kuga! Zalman FTW! LOOOL

I wonder why that is shhh top secret.....

Yeah..

Little do they know.. Heh. I guess when it happens to him like what happened to me, wabbit16 will soon regret not taking my advice.

 

[ashTZA]

that mobo is excellent. although if you have the luxury to wait, the Z68 chipsets where 'supposed' to be released sometime round this month?... They address a few of the develoment quirks of the p67/h67 aswell as add SSD cache support, and a few other minor features. If you're not in a rush, wait for them. although I havent a clue when we'll actually get a decent mobo with them on.


although for the ram I'd also drop down to the 1600.
I think the cpu runs it 1333 at stock, so u'd have remember to make a turn to visit your bios and enable XMP mode under ram setting to turn up the epic.
but my personal opinion 1600 is way fast enough.

Unless you're using alot of graphics rendering and editing software, (or VMware?) I dont see much reason to go for the i7. only real difference between the 2600K i7 and a 2500k i5 is the hyperthreading (4 extra virtual cores). Which I dont think much else at the moment is gonna make use of "8 cores".
So you could save R1000 there, unless of course money isnt the issue.

Both those GPU's are great, you're gonna have to bring that decision down to price and pref / 3monitor thing. Nvida is nice for games that use nvidia's PhysX but for those, the CPU would help out the ATI. So there wouldnt be much of a real world noticable difference.
ATI on the otherhand u can support 3 monitors without the need of 2 cards. which is cool.
Personally im a NVidia fanboy so im probly bias to that anyways. ASUS are a good alround. Gigabyte is pricey but probly have the highest clockspeeds,
MSI's FrozerII ones are also something special.

PSU is good. and 650w is enough for that setup aswell. (I have a 750w for similar setup, but only incase I ever get a second GPU.)

 

[Chris Erodis]

I have sold 9 Gigabyte Z68X-UD7-B3 Motherboards with already. The board is identical to the P67A-UD7-B3 except for the chipset and small changes to the bios. The sad thing is the board still does not have custom profiles you can set in the bios for your various overclocking profiles. Highest overclock i have got out of the board on AIR is 5715mhz so far using the i7 2600k cpu. I have also been able to OC the Aexea Vampire series 1600mhz cl7 to 2270mhz on this board without any issues. My LN2 run i still need to get stable.
DOnt like the fact that the NF200 chip is controlled by the cpu and no voltage support for it.

 

[ashTZA]

I have sold 9 Gigabyte Z68X-UD7-B3 Motherboards with already. The board is identical to the P67A-UD7-B3 except for the chipset and small changes to the bios. The sad thing is the board still does not have custom profiles you can set in the bios for your various overclocking profiles. Highest overclock i have got out of the board on AIR is 5715mhz so far using the i7 2600k cpu. I have also been able to OC the Aexea Vampire series 1600mhz cl7 to 2270mhz on this board without any issues. My LN2 run i still need to get stable.
DOnt like the fact that the NF200 chip is controlled by the cpu and no voltage support for it.

When I saw the Asus sabertooth p67 I absolutely had to buy it. you should check that out. it also allows u to save custom profiles, which is a bonus, but tbh I dont really use the overcloaking features so I cant comment on how good it is. I was more attracted to the warranty and the idea of "military grade components". ...And I thought it was pretty. I needed something I knew can handle summer heat, cause I can't have an aircon fitted in my rented apartment

A Z68 chipset would have been sweeeeeet, but I was impatient and couldnt wait with rumors that they may be delayed.
And what u know 3 weeks after I bought a P67, the z68 is out Im feeling like a stupid sad panda

 

[Chris Erodis]

The ASUS P67 Sabertooth is a great board but dont be fooled by manufacturers claims its all marketing to show they take great care in their work. If u want to OC that Sabertooth to 4GHZ on the stock intel cooler do the following.

In Bios goto advanced, AI Tweeker

Ai OC tuner to manual
Set cpu voltage to 1.3V
CPU PLL 1.85V
CPU Multi for all cores to X40
Load line to extreme
Phase control to Extreme
under cpu advanced settings disable C1 and C3 and also EIST.

F10 and you have a good stable OC with that board. If u need more advanced help contact me by PM

 

[ashTZA]

The ASUS P67 Sabertooth is a great board but dont be fooled by manufacturers claims its all marketing to show they take great care in their work. If u want to OC that Sabertooth to 4GHZ on the stock intel cooler do the following.

In Bios goto advanced, AI Tweeker

Ai OC tuner to manual
Set cpu voltage to 1.3V
CPU PLL 1.85V
CPU Multi for all cores to X40
Load line to extreme
Phase control to Extreme
under cpu advanced settings disable C1 and C3 and also EIST.

F10 and you have a good stable OC with that board. If u need more advanced help contact me by PM

Thanks will give it a bash. I haven't OC'd it yet cause I bought a dominator CMP8GX3M2A1600C ram kit, only to find out it doesn't play nice with the mobo. didnt want to do ANYTHING, till I've had em swapped out to a vengence kit of same ( CMZ8GF3M2A1600C8). I skipped a tiny piece (but most important) part of homework there.
The asus p67 mobo DOES NOT like having Corsiar 2x4GB dominator ram at all... (4x2gb is fine).
The Vengence series though it hugs and kisses I believe.

 

[Chris Erodis]

That ram u have will work just fine...u need to manually adjust the timings in bios for your ram. If u need help with this i can assist.

 

[ashTZA]

That ram u have will work just fine...u need to manually adjust the timings in bios for your ram. If u need help with this i can assist.

I've already returned it
I did play around with the timings and set them up manually according to some info I pulled out my arse somewhere on the interwebs, it really did help, but then was just crashing every 4 - 5hours instead of every 1.. I must have done something wrong.

I also increased the voltage to 1.65 (it was originally be sitting on 1.5) but didnt see any noticeble improvement. Furthermore the board seemed to be touchie, sometimes going a bit over 1.65, so I adjusted it down a little till it just bearly touched 1.65, didn't make any difference either.

I decided best to just to try the safer option (vengence), instead of messing about further. As corsair staff had noted on their forumns that the vengence series was better suited for that board. My skills at playing around with that stuff is mediocre at best, and my paranoia of chips to charcol conversion quite high. I didnt really have anyone more knowledgeble to turn to.
I can live without having dominator, although it would have been nice ,
Vengence is still very good ram, and I doubt outside of benchmark software (or bragging rights) Im gonna notice even the slightest difference.

 

[PhireSide]

Hey hey, no thread-jacking here

J/k, good to see some banter here, and I'm taking it all in. I don't think I'll be such a big overclocker, but it would be nice to have the facility available should I one day want to dabble in it. I used to experiment on a Socket 478 Celeron here in our workshop, I managed to get that poor 2.66GHz 'monster' up to 3.96GHz on stock air cooling before it would proclaim no more. Then I added random fans everywhere, I found old heatsinks that I slapped on every hot sufrace I could find, I tied away all the cables...then someone decided to scale the power supply, and since then I haven't tinkered further.

But back to the topic...I won't mind much about overclocking profiles and such...online some call it the Z67 and some the Z68, but it seems like it only has a few improvements...would it be worth getting? I am kind of worried about buying into an untested chipset, so maybe I should rather wait until they mature more or go for the P67 if I am in a hurry.

I'll update the OP with the specs and what I would ideally want and the total cost for you guys

I have the price under R10K so far, but I forgot to add a CPU cooler - something that seems very debateable

 

[Chris Erodis]

Wabbit16 the new chipsets are great, P67 and the new Z68 from Gigabyte and as i mentioned i have done some serious overclocking on that new chipset so its very stable. The only thing that i found wrong so far on the Z68X-UD-B3 motherboard is that Nvidia have not allowed SLI support in their older driver for this board and Intel have not added SLI support for this board into their chipset drivers. So if u are wanting to use older drivers for sli support its not going to happen u wil need to use the latest drivers. The latest drivers are not always the best because of some benchmarking software not enjoying the new drivers.

If u are only wanting a stable 4ghz OC 24/7 then i would recommend the X58 platform even if its older but its still the best when it comes to gaming using multi graphics cards.

My list of Motherboards i own for my OC LN2 lans,
ASUS Rampage 3 Extreme x 2 (1 of them has 219 LN2 runs behind it and is now framed)
ASUS Rampage 3 Exreme Black Edition x 1
EVGA X58 Classified 4 Way SLI
EVGA P55 Classified 200
ASUS Maximus 4 Extreme
ASUS Rampage 3 Gene
ASUS P6T7 WS Supercomputer

as u can see only 1 P67 i will use for LN2 as i still believe in the X58

Here is the HUntkey X7 900W powering up 3 EVGA GTX 470's in a EVGA P55 Classified 200 board using dominator 2000. Cpu 875K @ 4400 on air