The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

Wow!

Twenty seven million pixels - well it's good that you have something to strive for, Sam!

LOL

(yeah, my buddy Mo of PC builder fame - not shaffaaf - told me about some pcs he built for stock traders with 4 monitors - but your link was amazing - especially the setup on the bottom)

 

Indeed. I've actually seen a setup like that, not quite the same, but comprising six 19 or 20" 4:3 monitors on the perimeter, and a 42" plasma in the middle in this arrangement (42" is space in between the horizontal lines, each vertical line represents a 20")

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This was in a CCTV surveillance room I once had the chance to look at, very cool.

 

Hmmmm. I've never seen anything like it. Now I know where you get some of your BIG THINKING!

I went to the product page of the 27 million pixels, with the kid there in front of the panel - the bottom part of the panel showing his hud display. What game, or software do you think he was running! He looked pretty happy. Was that YOU a few years back? Hahaha.

 

It looks like Diablo, but it's too good looking to be Diablo 2 and Diablo 3 isn't out yet.

 

Well, the kid looks pretty excited.

But ... tell me. Don't you think the black lines - the borders of each 24" display - would kind of get in the way, let's say, in playing Left 4 Dead? Or do you think a person would just get used to them and not notice the lines any more?

Hahahaha

 

I would find the borders of such a display irritating. But I also see the benefits, and am quite impressed LOL! I think the bottom one is beckoning to me I smell destiny LOL!! 13,000$ OUCH!
CineMassive Omegaplex

 

Is it only me who really really wants someone to push the screens over onto the kid...

I miss my second monitor :-( I used to have a 1280*1024 square monitor next to my 1440*900 wide TV I didn't use it on games but its good fun when your sorting files out/copying and pasting from wikipedia to your coursework.

The coolest thing I've seen is Burnout Paradise the centre screen shows pretty much what you see on single display then the 2 side screens show what's on either side so you can see people coming for you ages before you would just with one screen.

 

The black lines are the reason I never much cared for dual monitors in the past - spanning something across both screens is irritating. However, when using a secondary screen as an IM and monitor platform (like for instance monitoring four GPUZ windows whilst playing Age of Conan as I did yesterday) it's handy.
$13,000 isn't all that much. You get a smaller screen with fewer pixels for $40,000 if you want a single contiguous display, as we discussed a few pages back.
A few games support panoramic screens - I know flight sim games typically do. I really ought to try out the second screen playing Supreme Commander - but I'm not sure what I have to disable to do it, because IIRC multi-GPU setups can only run one 3D display at once.


edit: I didn't have to disable anything, two screens worked off the bat. It does blunt performance somewhat though, it must be said.

 

Interesting edit, Sam. So two screens worked. I'm not familiar with the game. Let me ask, what happens when you use two screens on Left 4 Dead?

VENTILATION PROJECT!
I don't know if anybody remembers (or cares, lol - Keith's comment about wanting to tip the display cluster over on the little kid just proves how evil all you guys are, hahahaha - I swear I didn't have that thought at all - Keith you should go get yourself checked out, hahahaha) about my little p4 vent mods from a while back - picture below.

My one commission check has been running out, so I have decided to push off my i7 build (the new spedo tower sits in its box) until I sell some more houses, meaning I'll be relying on this little P4 for a few more Left 4 Dead months.



Except for the fact that Sam wondered about my "spidey" filter, it looked like these mods might be helpful. However I haven't quite been satisfied with this setup, for 5 main reasons:

#1. Cleaning the kama bay filter is a pain in the butt - you have to remove both side covers, unscrew four screws, and slide the kama bay out in front, then remove 4 more screws to get to the filter. Awful! Yeah, tip the displays over on the kid!

#2. Understanding now that the gpu is in its own lower chamber, and that the cpu is in its own upper chamber (due to the gpu card effectively vertically partitioning the case) - I took a closer look at the gpu section ventilation and decided that it was not adequate. Notice that there is only one gpu lower chamber intake fan. The top is an exhaust, and the kama bay front, and sunbeam upper side to the cpu, all have to do with ventilating the cpu upper chamber.

#3. Sam had mentioned that he once had a top INTAKE fan - I think it was on his Lexa. In looking at all my upper chamber cpu ventilation - and noticing that I have never felt anything but cool air exiting the top of the case - I started wondering if the top exhaust was merely short-circuiting the flow from the kama bay. Cool air comes in the upper front, and goes right out the top - probably yes!

#4. My gpu has been overheating with the warm weather we just started having. I increased my gpu fan settings, and that has helped a bit. But with extra crashing, I have had to lower my gpu overclocking and I am not able to maintain 30+ fps all the time any more.

#5. So that I'm not the last one to leave the safe house on level load, I finally created my Raid 0 and cloned my 150gig ide to my 1.2 terabyte Raid 0 Sata, and I can immediately tell the difference! (But that means a little more heat below the kama bay in the gpu section of my case - the seagates run hot - I placed vertically a pci slot double-fan setup that I had lying around outside the drive bays just inside the side cover to blow through a few holes to try to keep the drives a bit cooler.)

So, take a look at the new p4!



Looks better, eh? First off, I lost the spidey filter!

I bought 5 filters from Quiet PC for $4 each, and used 4 of them on the new setup. I added a side fan next to the one that I already had. One is an intake and needs a filter, the other is an exhaust and does not have a filter, but it has the same filter cover for uniformity of looks. The top became an intake and a filter got added to that fan.

Then I "improved" the troublesome kama bay by removing the internal filter completely, and installing a filter in front. It protrudes out from the front so it could be argued that I no longer have the elegant flat smooth front look that I had before.

My answer would be, "So what?" The front look doesn't bother me in the slightest - the little bulge on top looks robust and masculine - it's the sign of Power Modding! Hahaha. Most of all, I love that to clean the kama bay filter I pop off the cap just like on all the other filters! That's the way it should be - so I LOVE how it looks!

(Seriously, no matter how it looked, that's how I was gonna do it, come hell or high water, my prime motivation being convenience of maintenance. But I swear I actually like the new look - top, front, and two sides have the same identical protruding grill, and there is a smaller one with slightly different design for the cpu.)



I turned my original side intake into an exhaust with a low rev 800 rpm scythe s-flex - immediately to its right is a new 1600 rpm intake. I dreaded having to drill through all that steel again, but it wasn't quite the nightmare the top modded fan was since I was able to take the panel off and lay it on my washing machine "work bench."

My side exhaust fan is by design, not high rev. I can make adjustments later, but I wanted to make sure that I was pushing more air in than pulling out, in order to maintain positive internal pressure, to keep the dust out. I have definitely achieved that - when I open my floppy drive cover, I can feel air coming out, and with wet fingers, I can feel air coming out the holes I drilled in the slot covers.

Time will tell how well this works - I'll be giving it its maiden voyage next Wednesday, gaming day. I do have air conditioning in my office/trailer and in a trial run to see how the Satas would reduce my level load time, I ran the A/C for three hours yesterday, and my gpu was cool, lol - no crashing and no lagging. But in general, I would prefer not to have to run the A/C for the extra expense - we pay a good bit for electricity out here. For myself, I can be comfortable in shorts and a T-shirt, with several desk fans.

My worry is my gpu temps.

. . . . . . .

For the gpu section, notice that I still really only have one intake fan - the right side 1600 rpm 120mm. I am sure I do have a bit of a short circuit with the 800 rpm exhaust directly to its left, but Sam had suggested not only the top inlet, but the one side exhaust closest to the back, for that gpu heat, so I am of course hoping the flow from side-middle to side-back will pull that heat out.

I am also hoping that some of the cool outside air coming in from the very top and from the upper front kama bay, will find its way down to the bottom gpu section through the 1" gap from the side of the gpu card to the case wall (I have a narrow 7" case.)

How do you guys like my new case - easy to clean filters all the way around - and no "spidey!" I'll report later on whether or not it results in a cooler gpu, lol.

Rich

 

Thats why there's a shortage of fans at newegg!!! LOL! Totally funnin. Thats a rather unique setup you got there. Well...I imagine most boards would be happy with a config like that. But I really haven't given cooling much thought. Which is exactly why I bought the Haf 932.

 

Rich, seriously, if you can't afford that build, you may as well sell the case and live better off for the time being, case prices aren't going to go anywhere.
You are essentially right about top exhaust and top-front intake. Especially if the top exhaust fan is strong, all the air coming in via the Kama bay goes straight out the top without cooling anything, well maybe the RAM, nothing more.
I see what you've done is used the circular cooling setup with two fans next to each other in opposite directions, I don't like this - the air tends to come in one fan, go straight out the other, then back in through the other one creating a 'recirc' feel, i.e. pumping warm air in, rather than cool air. you would be better off making both those fans intake and beefing up the rear and upper side fans. Having a strong 1900rpm 120mm fan essentially means you may as well have all three side fans intake as with filters on them, the amount of air they will push in is about equal to the amount that the 1900rpm will pull out.
I loathe patterned fan grilles, so to see that gone is certainly a plus. The big fan grille at the front imo actually looks better than it did before.
Omega: The HAF932 is a reasonably well cooled case to start with. However, carry out some simple modifications (certainly no dremels or custom-made grilles etc) and it's a force to be reckoned with. It's my intention eventually to have four Slipstream 1900rpm fans on the side hooked up to the Rheobus (2 per channel I think, I don't like the idea of potentially having 2 amps of fan running out of one little regulation circuit). Right now I have 3 of my original four Nexus realsilents, I added my spare Silverstone FM121 when experimenting with high chipset voltages so I had a bit of extra cooling, but the speed adjustment being inside the case is a real pain, so I want to get shot of it as soon as I can afford the slipstreams. As I may have mentioned before, the weak 1000rpm 7-blade 140mm rear went in favour of a 1500rpm 11-blade Sharkoon, and the extra 120mm top fan slot was filled by my 120m Scythe Kaze White.

 

I've always meant to get round to modding my Dabs Value case (£30 with a 550 watt PSU that promptly blew up). As the design is at best STUPID!



I've done my picture bigger then I normally put them on because I started to ramble and had to shrink the text (sorry if anyone's running 800x600 which seems unlikely) (can you tell I've been supping Relentless (if you don't know its an energy drink)) . The new version of paints coool! Although brackets don't work properly.

Anyways I was planning to slice everything below the reset button between the light off and replacing it some form of mesh I'll lose front USB, Front audio, Power LED and disk active LED but meh I don't need em. I'm not sure whether making a hole will make a mess of my side window but I dunno. What sort of tool would you use anyway? A top fan would be handy but it would mean I need to take everything out my case and I can't be arsed to.

EDIT: Wow just found something out when seeing how hot my system is without the plastic front. On idle at least removing the front makes no difference but what amazes me more is if I jam the 2 front 80mm fans with a pencil and a screwdriver there's no change to temperatures/fans speeds (the fans I've jammed are 4-pin) (with the exception of my mobo which is 30C rather then 26C) and my rig is pretty much silent. I think new fans rather then a second quieter PC are the way to go....

 

I had a case with light tubes almost identical to that but mine was silver. It didn't come with a PSU but was £25 delivered from ebuyer. it had two 80mm front fans (not included - I bought 99p Casecom blue LED ones, one of which now has dead bearings), the same blue 80mm side fan, and a slot for either a 120mm or two 80mm fans - I chose two 80s as I had one from my old stock TIME case - an akasa, oddly enough) - I elected to go for an Arctic CopperSilent2l heatsink for my Socket A XP 3000+, but even with that and arctic silver it still reached temps in the 70s under load.
Loads of my cases are missing the expansion bay covers too, I don't know what I keep doing with them, I need to get more to replace them at some point - there's a few shops on ebay that sell all that sort of stuff really cheap - very handy.
You spelt bezel right. I'm forever sticking my fingers in exposed fans - partly because i'm insane, partly because it's how I measure fan speed (acoustically - the pitch of the noise produced can be interpreted into speed). I've never stuck my tongue in there though, that would taste disgusting, think of all that dust buildup.
I'm well aware of what Relentless is. It's quite popular at LANs, and indeed in general.
Ultimately, it isn't hard to keep a PC quiet as long as you buy decent parts.

 

Kevin, I forgot you were a HAF guy! You're set! And Keith found out that silence is simple - throw out the 80s!

Sam, I'm glad you like the looks of my case including the front.

I see that you don't like the potential fluid flow of the side by side intake/exhaust - I deliberately underpowered the exhaust at 800 rpm next to the 1600 rpm intake for that reason.

But your idea of turning all the fans into intakes and beefing up the rear exhaust system has me as excited as if I was mainlining the power drink that Keith is now hooked on, lol.

I have room at the rear - very bottom - to add a 120mm exhaust. The power supply is up on top. That's perfect! Two intakes and one exhaust specifically handling the lower gpu section of the case!!

I might as well put in something that really blows some hot air out the back. What do you recommend, s-flex at 1900 rpm, or one of those new fans you have been working with?

Also I think you're right about selling the case - should I try ebay?

 

Heck yah rich! The Haf is wonderful to say the least. I haven't even tapped into its full potential! Money WELL spent! Infact, I would say the PSU is the most important component, and then the case/tower. Baby that equipment LOL!

<Left 4 dead Moment>Man...I wonder if programmers make what appear like obvious mistakes on purpose. The damn smoker just jumped up onto a burning barrel and had me rolling in laughter due to one of the sounds he makes when in pain. Good stuff LOL! Keeps me coming back for more.

<another Left 4 Dead Moment>Had a rather intense moment recently. On "Death Toll". In the final chapter "Boathouse Finale", a witch appeared in the wide open area. Now...4/5 times I will carry the first propane tank with me til the second one. Sometimes I'll even carry both with me, in anticipation of the tank. This time the witch presented herself. I surrounded her in the propane tanks, and blew one up, to have the other explode as well. Well...it Did Not take her out! However, I stood my ground and was rewarded when a single shotgun blast took her down. VERY awesome! Rather intense moment if you ask me. Yes, the witch trips me out LOL!

 

Well, that's the simple answer. 80mm fans, when quiet, don't do an awful lot for airflow. They might help a degree or so perhaps, but in general, stick with 120s and 140s (and sometimes 200+s)
I haven't actually worked with the Slipstream fans yet, however they come highly recommended by SPCR for two reasons - they are high-blade fans designed for volume airflow (rather than high pressure airflow through heatsinks), they're very noisy but very powerful - they're also very versatile with volts, they will start from a stand at 5V, at which point they are very quiet, almost as quiet as your 800rpm S-Flex. With a fan controller to match they are incredibly handy fans. Sadly, they're also quite pricey.
You may as well ebay the case, if it's never been used and is unmarked you should get a decent sum for it.
Omega: Something tells me you will like L4D2's wandering witch

 

The smoker jumping on a burning barrel and making "I'm burning up" noises. Nice, Kevin - I never noticed that!

The funniest thing I ever saw in L4D was in the airport lobby before going up the escalators to the safe house, where we sat spellbound watching a hunter clawing a witch for about 20 seconds. He just sat there clawing her, and although the blood flew, she just ignored him and kept crying, lol.

By the way, nice job with the propane tanks on the witch. I have started using them, just a bit. I didn't know that one going off triggers the other, like the red gas cans. So two exploding weakened her enough for one shotgun blast to finish her - nice!

COOLING FANS
Sam you mentioned Slipstream, which I googled. I see that it has a smaller hub and many more fan blades. It makes sense to me that Sony can't package in all the elements of the fluid dynamic bearing in a smaller hub design like the slipstream.

So, overall, what are the advantages of the slipstream? And how does the Sharkoon, which you had talked about earlier, fit into the equation?

I'm starting on adding in my new lower rear 120mm exhaust today!! For starters, since I have two brand new 800rpm s-flex fans lying around (I don't know why I got so many earlier this year - I was thinking new build at the time) I believe I'll just put one of those back there for starters.

TOTAL OF 8 COOLING FANS
I will have a grand total of 2 80mm fans, and 6 120mm fans. The 80s involve the high speed cpu hsf (temperature controlled - exceeds 4000 rpm when cpu gets hot) which is a filtered intake fan, ported to the outside through a sunbeam hose, and one constant-speed rear exhaust fan which is my fastest and noisiest 80mm - probably at least 3000 rpm if not 4000.

For the 6 120mm fans, I am including the one that is part of the upper PSU rear exhaust - it is very quiet and probably revolves at only 800rpm.

In addition to the PSU rear exhaust, I have 5 120mm fans that I have modded on - front, ceiling, two on side, and new one on back getting installed today.

My inventory of s-flex 120mm is
3 at 800 rpm,
2 at 1600 rpm, and
1 at 1900 rpm.

As I say, I was just thinking about putting one of the 800 rpms in the new back exhaust.

But I am having second thoughts about that. I should probably re-balance my whole computer with a different use of my existing 120mm fan inventory (above in red.)

UPPER MOBO AND CPU CHAMBER
For INTAKE, my upper chamber has a dedicated filtered outside intake through a tube right to the cpu 80mm hsf, and the 120mm kama bay front and the 120mm ceiling intake. For EXHAUST there is a noisy high speed 80mm, plus the slow-moving 800 rpm psu 120mm. One idea would be to make all 120mm intake fans 800 rpm.

That would probably be a balanced design with two 800rpm 120mm intakes, and psu 800rpm 120mm exhaust. The 80mm would balance each other - one intake, one exhaust.

LOWER GPU CHAMBER
That would free up the higher rpm fans for better gpu cooling which right now is my primary concern - I think the crashes are caused by high gpu temps - the p4 itself is not overclocked.

So for the lower gpu chamber, that would free up the 1900 rpm, and the two 1600 rpm fans. I could then place the 1900 and the 1600 as lower chamber side intakes, and one 1600 as lower chamber rear exhaust.

How does that fan array sound to you guys?

Rich

 

I bought the Sharkoon because they're the only company to make nice 140mm fans to fit the HAF at the back. For 120mm fans, I'd go with Scythe instead.
You really want some half decent exhaust fans and not use all your fast ones as intake. Normally I'd say use 800rpm fans all over, but if you've got overheating issues then maybe not.

 

Hmmmm. It's a bear of a hot day today, 96 F here in the trailer/office, and running the Ati Tray tool renderer just as a reference, I'm getting gpu temps of 97 to 99!! Cpu temp is 71. Cpu load is 100%.

MS-7103 BIOS CHANGES:
I'm in my MS-7103 bios and thinking of slightly overclocking the p4 - I don't want to do much since I'm still running the stock hsf. You had told me a long time ago that overclocking options are very limited on MS-7103 anyway. Cpuz shows 3.2 ghz at 16 multiple of fsb at 200mhz. With cpu not under load, multiple is 14, then under load it jumps to 16. The highest fsb clock setting in the bios is 210 - for a slight overclock at 16 multiple of 3.36 ghz. I think I'll try that and see what cpu temps do.

BIOS: While in the bios, I'm also changing DRAM performance mode from disabled to ENABLED, unless you tell me that's a bad idea.

BIOS: I see that my AGP aperture size right now is set at only 64mb, which seems low to me. The max possible setting is 512mb. I have 512mb of memory on my 3850 gpu. I think I'll change to 256mb.

There is another setting called VGA share memory size which is presently set at max of 128mb, the min possible setting is 16mb. I'm going to leave that as it is.

I can also change memory voltage, and agp voltage. Memory is at 2.6 - I can go to 2.7 or 2.8. AGP is at 1.55, I can go to 1.6, 1.7, or 1.8.

BIOS: At one time a couple years ago I increased agp voltage from 1.55 to 1.7, and increased memory voltage from 2.6 to 2.7. I'm going to do that right now. (I held those settings for a month hoping it would help cure my BF2 freezes, which I later realized were due to only 1gig of system memory, so I changed them back.)

I keep forgetting what aperture size means. As I said, I'm going to set it from the 64mb where it is now, to 256mb (max possible is 512mb.)

But I probably was told to do the 64mb by the Tweak Guide, so I'll have to do more reading - or maybe you know what the best setting is.

NEW EXHAUST FANI can't fit a 120mm in the lower back without some clever cutting. Two inches along the back it drops in a half inch to where the expansion slots are - that indented area is just under 120mm wide. I might actually have to use my cutting torch. You're recommending a high speed fan in the back - maybe you're right - as long as I am able to maintain positive case pressure.

Rich

 

I'd probably advise against it - things are hot enough in there already, and it's not going to get you much, maybe 8-9% extra CPU speed at best.