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The Official PC building thread - 4th Edition

Discussion in 'Building a new PC' started by ddp, Sep 13, 2010.

  1. ddp

    ddp Moderator Staff Member

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    i ain't no sheep, i'm a lone wolf.
     
  2. theonejrs

    theonejrs Senior member

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    Mr-Movies,

    Thinking that the earth was flat was nothing more than abject stupidity. The curvature of the Earth becomes readily apparent at about 23 miles, over any large body of water. You can see it plain as day!

    Russ
     
  3. omegaman7

    omegaman7 Senior member

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    Reminds me of believing in the tooth fairy. It just doesn't seem plausible LOL! I'm not sure what I would have believed in that time frame, but I'm sure it wouldn't have seemed right... Especially seeing a body like the moon or the sun in the sky.
     
  4. sammorris

    sammorris Senior member

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    Disproving a heretofore unscrutinised theory is never a bad day for science. Were it not for new discoveries like this, we'd still think the earth was the centre of the universe and the sun revolved around it.
     
    Last edited: Dec 8, 2012
  5. Mr-Movies

    Mr-Movies Active member

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    Very true Russ, good point.

    Fantasies are a good thing no doubt.... LOL
     
  6. theonejrs

    theonejrs Senior member

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    Sam,

    Truthfully, it's the implications that bother me. We all have learned certain, so called facts, over the years, and are now seeing irrefutable proof that many accepted theories that are considered fact, are wrong!

    On another note, My new GigaByte GA-990FXA-UD5 AM3+ motherboard came late Friday. It's an ATX board, and is about the heaviest motherboard I've ever seen, by at least 1/2 a Lb. The attention to little details is amazing. One of the minor shortcomings of the 990XA-UD3 was the heatsinks. They were very easy to accidentally unseat if you pressed on them in the wrong place, and a PITA to re-do, if you did. The new 990FXA-UD5 uses steel screws and springs from the bottom, 3 on the Northbridge, and 3 on the VRMs, so you can't rock these. No plastic push pins!

    I'm just about done with the FX-8320 for Russell, and I plan to start my new build in a couple of days. 3.7GHz seems to be the best speed, where the computer has good balance, and plays games best. My Doctors have started me on Oxygen Therapy and I used bottled O2 for a few days, and quickly bought a used O2 concentrator, which makes pure O2 by catalytic means. Much safer, and far less costly. It cost me $260 +tax for just a few days with the tanks. The Concentrator cost $250 plus $50 shipping. It was a very quick, no-brainer! LOL!!

    Russ
     
  7. Estuansis

    Estuansis Active member

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    New PSU going to be ordered Monday :)

    Having trouble deciding on the brand.

    SeaSonic X Series X650 Gold which is lauded as being basically one of the highest quality consumer-grade PSUs you can buy. SPCR basically had no complaint except price to wattage, which I don't necessarily care about.

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151088

    Corsair 750HX though I am unsure what OEM makes the guts now. Has the added advantage of sharing some components with the 850HX. Reviews are generally very good.

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139010&Tpk=Corsair 750HX

    Cougar GX750. Very good review from SPCR only criticizing the fact that it was really 80-plus Silver certified on American current and not Gold as advertised. Also the fan was a bit noisy but it ran cool. Interested because it has very nice internals like both of the above and rock solid stable voltages.

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817553007&name=Power-Supplies

    I am most interested by the Corsair and Seasonic, but am wondering if the Cougar is a better value.

    Leaning toward the Corsair HX. Went to BestBuy and they only had lower-end Corsair units. Seems to be the BestBuy/Corsair official deal, the Corsair GS Gamer Series. Nasty reviews at consumer level, but seemingly alright units. I would like at least 700 watts so I can put less load on the PSU and hopefully reduce heat some and increase efficiency. So the HX series fits the bill. The X650 is so nice though.
     
    Last edited: Dec 9, 2012
  8. Mr-Movies

    Mr-Movies Active member

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    This is something I've noticed on my Gigabyte boards as well lately but also on some of the other mfg's too. The UD5 was on my list for the new case but I think I'm going to go with the Fatality1 instead. It too has better heatsinks like the UD5 but it has two LANs which I can use right now in my setup and it is a high-end feature rich board.

    Jeff, I was looking at that same SeaSonic X Series X650 Gold too and it is a strong runner for my upgrade as well. Very nice PS..... I'm also thinking like you as I'm leaning towards a 700w PS and may get the RAIDMAX Blackstone series RX-700AC 700W $53 cheaper then the SeaSonic however not the same quality but I've used plenty of different RAIDMAX power units and they never have let me down.
     
  9. Estuansis

    Estuansis Active member

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    Personally would never risk a Raidmax PSU. Their cases and other accessories are fine but one should really use a higher-end PSU for any sort of performance build. I doubt that 700W unit can really do 700W. No professional reviews that I can find. You can cheap out on many things easily but the PSU is not one. They carry a hefty price of failure.

    The X650 has the nod for quality but the 750HX has sheer capability plus many parts from 850W PSUs so has some overhead. A few drives, Crossfire video cards, a hefty mobo, and an OC'd 6 core are going to need a lot of juice. Ideally the 650W should more than suffice but under what percentage of load? Lower loads = higher efficiency = lower heat = better ripple characteristics. Especially useful things for OCing and gaming.

    Also just have to paint and install my new intake side panel. Simply been lazy and leaving the side to hang open until I get all my new stuff :D
     
    Last edited: Dec 9, 2012
  10. sammorris

    sammorris Senior member

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    All comes down to what's inside it. You can find some cheap terrible PSUs that have relatively solid insides sometimes. Not often, but it happens.
    For most people though it's a case of not if but when. Usually when good PSUs fail (again, not always, but the vast majority of the time) they fail safe, and simply need replacing.
    When cheap PSUs fail, they often take other components with them, or start fires (or both!)
    When that's never happened to you before, it's easy to be blasé about it. Once it does happen though, it's not a mistake you make a second time. 7 years ago I did very nearly encounter a fire were it not for some quick action pulling the power cable out.
    The failure of a £25 PSU cost me £40 for a system repair [at the time, I didn't feel it was safe to test the individual components, nor did I have the time], the value of a higher quality PSU, a floppy disk drive, one hard disk (and its data), just the data on another and a stick of RAM - all in, negating the value of the data, about £200 of damage. I got very lucky as the graphics card (then worth almost £300) and the board/CPU survived 'unscathed' although they were never very stable after that.
     
  11. Estuansis

    Estuansis Active member

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    Read my edit.

    Funny enough I am somewhat excited for a 6 core. I'm not sure if the 955BE's current inability to OC is the fault of the board, PSU or the chip itself, so am interested to see what replacing the PSU does for me. I know the +5v voltage dips out of spec now and then which can't be good for stability regardless of the small amount it is used(or maybe I'm wrong and it's heavily used.) What runs on the +5v these days?

    I stand to gain performance due to more cores, the vastly superior IMC and the higher clock potential of Thuban over Deneb. 4-4.2GHz should put me in the same ballpark as the average i5/i7 though obviously not a heavily OC'd one. Board is being replaced with a late model 990FX-UD5, so very capable for the task. A shame few games take advantage of more than 4 cores, but those that do are the ones that can use it.
     
    Last edited: Dec 9, 2012
  12. Estuansis

    Estuansis Active member

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    Update: Made my purchase a day early :)

    750HX, Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo, and a new 140mm Cooler Master case fan for rear exhaust. The original is being installed on the side panel when it is finished. I believe they are identical. Free shipping, $175.

    I have mixed feelings about the 750HX not being a Seasonic but my budget means that $150+ for the next highest priced proper PSU is a bit much if I don't want to eat into my next paycheck. Also a recent discovery has been made that the Seasonic X650 has somewhat shorter cabling. Ouch. Still, it's a high end Corsair. Enough said. CWT(Channel Well) units are still very good, all things considered. One reviewer noted that it could technically be rated as a 900W PSU in a load testing environment, but 750W gets it the 80 Plus Gold. Add to all this a quieter and better 140mm fan. It also has a beefy 7 year warranty and a $25 MIR I might as well fill out. Very promising.

    http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/Corsair-HX750W-Power-Supply-Review/775/8

    The Hyper 212 Evo is being purchased as an attempted replacement for the CoolIt Eco 120. I do not trust it anymore as its cooling capacity is mediocre and it is much too sensitive to ambient temps and long running. I believe the Hyper 212 Evo is also capable of dissipating more wattage. At worse I can sell it very quickly. Best case scenario, it's got slightly better temp characteristics and doesn't idle nearly as hot with OC'd chips. Other forums seem to agree with that stance. Many even say it's simply "a better cooler". At the price I got it at, it's certainly worth a try. Worth noting I always run my CPU fans full blast.

    I could go for higher flow fans, but overall throughput isn't as important for me as placement. The lack of a dedicated rear exhaust and a tower cooler with its own dedicated fans eats into air flow. There is simply not enough exhaust for the case due to the placement of the Cool-It 120 radiator, which needs to be blowing inward to get any airflow. After these changes are complete it should be very similar to a stock HAF 932. Keep in mind mine is a hodgepodge Frankenstein built from a stripped AMD Edition without a side fan hole. The window was nice but hard to keep clean. Also just having it removed from the side panel improves temps considerably. The HAF 932 cools significantly better than the AMD Edition.

    TL;DR

    I hope to significantly improve my airflow and solve some problems with my PC before moving on to bigger and better hardware :)

    A 1090T or 1100T will for sure be in my possession this or next month come hell or high water. I can definitely make use of my current motherboard if the need arises. It is still fairly capable. Yet to be seen if the 990FX-UD5 will be mine :) Might possibly get a very similar 890FX-UD5. Both are equally capable as far as this chip is concerned. Juggling deals among friends right now. Both are getting ready to make some upgrades. One to (the admittedly a bit better than Bulldozer) Piledriver and one to Intel with I believe a 2600K.

    I do concede that Piledriver OC's better than Phenm II and seems to finally be faster in the long run.
     
    Last edited: Dec 9, 2012
  13. Mr-Movies

    Mr-Movies Active member

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    There is nothing wrong with RAIDMAX supplies and I guaranty that you wouldn't know the difference between whatever you buy and them. The only way you would know there is a difference is by seeing the name on the cases. Power Supplies are not much different in design between all PS's, they are VERY basic units and haven't changed much over time. The biggest change years ago was to go to a switching supply and then in PC's moving from AT to ATX where the moterboard has more control and the switch isn't directly wire to the PSU.

    Sam is correct that some cheap supplies can burn up your system when they fail however that is truly rare and if you get an in-expensive 80% rate certified supply the design should be decent no mater the price tag although caps and can very and life expectancy will be effected. An example of poor quality components in PSUs would be CoolMaster which I won't buy anymore especially since they don't honor their warranty. With in a year my 600w went down, the supply worked well prior but just stopped working at least the 5v & 3.3v wouldn't work under load but still tested fine with a PSU tester.

    Just like all marketing PSU's rated power is often misleading and seldom can you use the full rated power across all rails as they share power depending how they are setup.

    In conclusion just because you spend a lot doesn't mean you have a better piece of gear.

    Stevo
     
    Last edited: Dec 9, 2012
  14. omegaman7

    omegaman7 Senior member

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    I've never bothered to study PC power supplies. If they're a trusted brand, and meet or exceed certain Energy-Efficient certifications, than I strongly consider them. I make a list of 3 - 10. Depending on price and other criteria. E.g. Modular, cable length, fans, etc. Energy efficiency ratings are of course the number one thing I look for. If they can make quality claims, than they're worth my time and money ;) And when I decide on one or more of them, google and I break it down ;) Though I owe owning my last two corsair models to this thread and another :p
     
  15. theonejrs

    theonejrs Senior member

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    Mr-Movies,

    So, let me get this right. You want to get the Fatal1ty motherboard because it gives you two lans, and it's a high end feature rich board. It may be high end, but only if you don't plan on overclocking. Unfortunately, for the feature rich part, the bios is no where up to the standards of the motherboard, having only LLC and Cpu voltage adjustments, as per the manual. The UD5 has LLC plus, CPU PLL Voltage control, NB/PCIe/PLL Voltage control, and CPU NB VID Control, all pretty essential for a high stable overclock. Not only that, you are losing two Sata 6.0 ports, so I see nothing gained and quite a bit lost! You can read more about it here!

    ASRock Fatal1ty 990FX Professional AM3+

    http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/sabertooth-990fx-990fxa-ud7-990fxa-gd80,3068-2.html

    No Raidmax anything in this house, except maybe an NIC. It's pretty hard to screw up something that simple, and unlike their cases, you won't get cut to ribbons, installing one. I will warn you about one other thing about RaidMax. They sometimes change manufacturers without warning. In a previous post you mentioned Cool/Master? I believe you meant Cool/Max, because they used to build PSU's for Cooler/Master. They got so bad that Cooler/Master changed manufacturers. I've sold many Cooler/Master PSUs since then, and none have failed that I know of. They aren't very efficient at >73%, but they won't burn the house down either.

    Best Regards,
    Russ
     
  16. theonejrs

    theonejrs Senior member

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    Estuansis,

    You can find a good number of new 1090t's on Ebay. If you have a Micro Center near you, they have it for $172.

    The question of which overclocks better, Phenom II or Piledriver is too close to call. Don't forget, the 1090t Thuban is a Phenom II, and I'm frankly not so sure that Piledriver can beat it. I've had mine to 4.2GHz, on a lesser motherboard, and with all the adjustments available in the setup of the UD5, I think it's capable of a lot more!

    Best Regards,
    Russ
     
  17. DXR88

    DXR88 Regular member

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    the early Reversions of the 990fx UD3 are identical to the UD5, the only difference was packaged software. im using reversion 1.0 of the UD3 and am quite pleased with the purchase.
     
  18. DXR88

    DXR88 Regular member

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    i managed to get my 965BE to 4.6ghz but it started to frits out on me its stable at 4.3Ghz, wish i could say the same about the heat though.
     
  19. theonejrs

    theonejrs Senior member

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    DXR88,

    I hate to ask, but how hot does your 965BE run? What case is it in? Type, size and speed of fans and direction of airflow (in/out).


    10909t temps at idle, 4GHz
    [​IMG]

    1090t in the 990XA-UD3
    [​IMG]

    I deliberately used different software to show that other programs agree with EasyTune's temps. Looking down the Hardware Monitor Pro list, look at the consistency of the temps. 35C for the GPU core at idle. It was 47C in the 790X-UD4H, with the CPU voltage at 1.424v(MAX). Also note the 36C of the 6 year old Seagate 250, compared to the 2 year old WD-500BE. When I can hear the spindle bearings stating to be audible, I get the data off the drive, now! One time, I lost everything because I wanted to wait 5 days for the weekend LOL!! Data saved, Drive retired!

    As far as I'm concerned, the main reason for the low temps, is the new case.

    http://www.corsair.com/pc-cases/carbide-series-pc-case/carbide-series-400r-mid-tower-case.html

    It's flat out the best cooling case I've ever seen. My CPU cooler is a Corsair H60, which is about 35% smaller (25mm vs 38mm) than the dual fan CoolIt system it replaced, and cools with only one single stock pull fan! It's nice to have a reserve like that, where I can add a push fan any time, if needed. All you need is a Phillips screwdriver. Maybe 5 minutes, and you don't have to take out the radiator to do it! I linked you to Corsair, because the Newegg pictures don't do justice to how nice looking this case is, and how functional, especially seeing it with multiple GPU hardware installed, and a 240mm radiator in the "Roof"! I bought 2, on sale for $79 each. It's a mid tower, but a very big one 20.5" deep, 4 5.25 bays, 6 3.5"/2.5" bays

    I'll start the 990FXA-UD5/Phenom IIx6 1090t, probably tomorrow night, if I feel as good as I did all day, yesterday and today. My health has improved dramatically in the last month. I had wasted away to 99 Lbs and would barely feed myself. Food just wasn't appealing. Now I eat like a horse! I've gained 16 Lbs so far. I called my Doctor and went to the Hospital earlier today. They look me over, and he says, "something's changed"! I ask what, and he says they don't know. I could have stayed home an saved myself the trip! LOL!! It's now 48H 12M, since I turned my O2 off. I haven't needed it! My skin, which was like sandpaper, because it was dying, one layer at a time, is now reversing itself and feeling soft again. If I feel this good tomorrow, I'm taking my 87 Fiero-GT out for a spin!

    Check out that case, it's superb!

    Best Regards,
    Russ
     
  20. Estuansis

    Estuansis Active member

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    Glad to hear of your good fortune Russ! I agree that Phenom II is still fundamentally a better chip, but the OCing limit without true water cooling seems limited. They are limited directly by temps.

    Am excited for my 1090T and fully intend to put it in a capable board and get a high OC if possible. Most can do 4Ghz at least. The CM Hyper 212 Evo is the newest Hyper 212 version and should be a decent improvement from the Cool-It with the airflow changes. Though it seems newer closed liquid loop coolers from Corsair and CoolIt are much better performers with larger radiators and more powerful pumps.
     
    Last edited: Dec 10, 2012

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