The Official PC building thread - 4th Edition

Man the 8 cores are beasts!

 

Remember that the i7 3960K is a 6-core processor (yes, an expensive one at that). It's still a good 15W shy of the FX-8150 despite being a good 60% or so faster than it.

 

I'm just saying. I never imagined they'd release processors, disregarding power consumption, in favor of performance. The 8150 borders on a Powerful GPU eh?

 

That has happened with graphics cards for several years, dating way back to the Geforce FX era!

 

In my opinion, this is a huge leap in power consumption. The odds of a fire increase LOL!

 

I'd argue they increase a lot more when choosing to overclock something than upgrading to something like an FX series

 

More power, more risk

What's funny is, I'll probably buy one :S

 

It sounds like my conniving and deal-making ways have put a GA-990FXA-UD5 with 1090T attached within my grasp. Is this a board with known major problems or should I be fairly safe?

 

There's a known flaw with faulty BIOS chips on these boards it seems, but otherwise they seem fairly solid. If it's a used board, hopefully you will have dodged that issue.
edit: There also seems to be several incidents of faulty onboard NICs as well, but not sure what the % failure rate there is.

Primarily the complaints are directed at useless warranty support from Gigabyte, but unfortunately outside the storage sector I haven't really found a single technology company that does offer any sort of warranty support that performs as advertised, so this isn't specifically a Gigabyte issue. I really do feel for people in the US who only get a 30 day retail warranty enforced by law, as opposed to 12 months here.
Worst case scenario in the UK you at least only have to physically buy new products every 12 months if you get stuck in a warranty cycle.

 

Well the board itself is apparently in working order as it's been used before. Other than that I need to start picking out a PSU. Rather set on a Seasonic X Series for sheer quality but considering other options. Also have a decent shot at a single 6970 which could later be augmented with another so that factors into my power requirements.

 

I get a year warranty on ALL of my boards so I don't know what your're smoking but it seems to be a typical Euro attitude and misconception. Unless you speak of some OEM re-sellers who get extra special deals on gear and are left to warrant the product themselves, which will be stated before buying. You want something cheaper and want to gamble you can go OEM as it is up to the buyer.

Ask Russ about Gigabyte and he'll tell you not to worry I'm sure as we all have many Gigabyte boards.

You'll be just fine with the Gigabyte board(s) whether new or used, it seems problems get blown out of proportion these days and there are only a few manufactures for mainboards to steer clear of like Biostar.

 

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

This is what I'm looking at. Was a bit leery of the brand but not only are the prices quite good, SPCR gives them top reviews across the series. Nice quality internals, good efficiency, rated in a 50*C environment. They apparently have excellent electrical performance with low ripple across the rails. Would be nice to have a wattage cushion for later upgrades.

When the only thing SPCR could level at them was the fan got a bit loud, the efficiency wasn't quite 90% and the cables were a bit long, I was suddenly interested. They seemed to have liked it a great deal.

 

Oman7,

The corsair 400R looks to be like the answer to the NB and VRM heat in a watercooled AMD PC. I've never seen anything like it. The system temps, which had been almost in lock-step with the CPU temps, never went over 32C for 5 maximum passes of IBT. The CPU, hit all of 42C. I took the original 74.4 cfm fan from the H60, and installed it in the top fan position of the L side cover, blowing right at the NB and VRMs

I'm also impressed with the Corsair H60. It's quite an improvement over what they were, when they first came out. The mounting for an AMD is very cleverly done. This is one CPU cooler that you won't be sliding all over the place trying to get a screw caught in the backing plate. You could install it on the CPU, with one hand! I'm also Hella impressed that in spite of having an 11mm thinner radiator, it cools just as well as mine does. I didn't notice any instructions for mounting the rear fan as an intake either, blowing all the heat back into the case! ROFLMSOAO!! True story, swear to God! I think Shaff had one.

Oh, I guess there will be another Corsair 400R in my future! LOL!!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Also, am heavily considering an SSD.

Would like to look at another 1TB for a new games drive which would probably be one of these:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136533

Opinions? As good a chance as any other?

 

I recently bought a 60GB Corsair Force3 for a machine at the office, they're $85 at newegg. I actually got mine for £51 which works out at $69 before tax. Even with an E5200 the system is incredibly fast for desktop usage. Longevity wise time will tell, but performance wise the thing is amazing for the money.

 

Here is a deal at $159.99, for a 256GB SSD:

SanDisk SDSSDP-256G-G25 2.5" 256GB SATA III Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...-_-na-_-na-_-na&AID=10446076&PID=3938566&SID=

$10 more and you can get a Samsung 830 256GB

 

Yes I have the h50, and I have it pulling in cold air from the outside In,through the roof fan.

 

No sorry, outside of the case to the inside, ie drawing air in.