The Official PC building thread - 4th Edition

Sam,

I can hear the drives, with the side cover removed, but you can't hear them with the cover on, not even from 18 inches away! Even by your standards, it's a very quiet computer.

Here's a better shot of the new case. The picture on Newegg sucks! It looks so narrow. They advertise it's width as 8.1"! Yup, with the side covers off! LOL!! 10" would be more like it.



As you can see it's a pretty robust case, but without the Banana Republic look of a lot of cases these days. It's solid and well built, and the fit and finish is excellent. The Cooling? Let me put it this way, I'm presently using 33% less radiator, 27mm vs 38mm thickness, and only a single pull fan, and it's silly cold! Low 20C range at idle. I can't get it past 45C running IBT or Prime95, and that's in an 85F (30C) room! It also allows vertical mounting, hanging from the top in a mid size case. It was close, and I did have to remove the two top memory locks. Don't worry, they won't fall out! Case cleaning is a breeze, requiring no tools at all!

Here's a present for you, CPUZ 1.62 ROG. So far it's the only version that will correctly identify the CPUs and memory. http://www.cpuid.com/downloads/cpu-z/1.62-rog-setup-en.ex don't forget to add the "e" after ex!




CPUZ Memory



I'm still having fun!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Jesus Russ! Why is it 85F in there! I'd be roasting like a pig on a spit! I don't even like it when it's 76!

 

Yeah 30°C is pretty unpleasant to say the least, coming from personal experience!

 

Oman7 & Sam,

Russell doesn't like AC. He does use a swamp cooler sometimes. You would be amazed at how cool 85F inside is, when it's 115F outside! It drops to 80F in my room with the AC on, until about 3:30 PM! There's finally some shade for the house, and it cools rapidly! In the summer months the days are longer, and generally much hotter. Running Prime95 in an 85F room for five hours yielded it hit 50C once, mostly high 40's. I have no worries for the temps no matter how hot it gets!

EDIT:
I forgot to add that I'm going to try one of these for the CPU radiator.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835186078

It won't make the type of noises that the 1700 RPM Corsair fan makes, because it delivers 74CFM at only 1350 RPM, and it's PWM controlled. Should work better than the original!

Russ

 

I must me doing something wrong, if you get temps like that with such a high ambient :S No sarcasm intended. There probably is something I can do. WOrking two jobs though... Not sure when I'll get to it

 

Oman7,

As it was I had to lower the CPU voltage by -0.50v, or it wouldn't boot up. The voltage was too high on automatic!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

I actually don't doubt that. I've read forums that suggest, AMD's like cooler temps, and lower voltages for stability. I certainly don't like seeing anything over 55C myself. Although the GPU I've loosened up a bit.

 

Some benchmarks from the new build: CPU Arithmetic.



Memory Bandwidth



Processor multi-Media



I've never seen such high scores in this catagory before. 513,175 IT/s for Interger

SSD and main HDD benchmarks



New Sata III 500GB WD Black edition.



Very good speed for an HDD. The Sata II 500, is good for a little less than half the speed of the Sata III 500.

I discovered that the Phenom IIx6 1090t is slightly faster at some things than the FX-8320 8 core. You can pile on the work all you want to with the FX-8320 and it never slows down The SlipStream 140 fan had two cracked blades on it, so I put the original corsair fan back on it, and I have a much better fan coming later today. 74 CFM, PWM control, 1350 rpm, from Arctic Cooling. It should be much quieter, and run cooler! It also encodes video faster than the 1090t. Now I have to fight with M$ to keep them from charging me for another license, come Monday!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

The X6 being faster in some apps is a given due to the higher per-core speed, and is the primary reason I still went with an i5 for my LAN PC rather than an AMD which I could undeniably have built for less.
I'm disappointed to hear that you had to manually change the voltage on the board before you could even boot windows stock on that system. I've seen some epic fails with auto volts when over clocking a Core 2, but never at stock before.

That said, it's no better on the other side. Intel advertise support for Ivy Bridge CPUs with the older H61 etc. boards, but even though the board specs say they do, in some cases it turns out, they don't!

 

Sam,

I think I've got that figured out already. The CPU voltage comes up in the bios and CPUZ and shows as 1.472v. I was able to set it so it runs at 1.280v. Runs great!

 

Indeed, way too high for that CPU. The only time I had an auto voltage go mad was for my overclocked Q9550. I only noticed the auto 1.55V (should have been 1.25 stock, I was using 1.35V for my manual overclock!
When I was trying to figure out why the CPU was suddenly idling in the 69s!

 

The new ones are significantly quieter than the original, which were audible in a closed case from over six feet.

Edit: This is in reference to the 2 TB drives.

 

My WD1001FALS hardly ever makes a peep. And I sit less than 2 feet a way Had it a few years too.

 

I've had a WD1001FALS Caviar Black for the past 3 years and although the seek noise is quite audible, the idle noise is pretty good, and its generally only the latter that's annoying with secondary drives. Of course, with windows' habit of randomly seeking you don't want a drive with noisy seek for your OS. That was one of the reasons for giving up my 37GB Raptors.

 

Sorry I should have been more clear (and maybe read the other posts more closely). The 1 TB drives are fairly quiet. It is only the older 2 TB drives that I find to be very loud.

 

Never bought a 2Tb black. Only the WD20EARS drives. I have only one black drive installed. And my OS drive is an SSD. So, my computer is fairly quiet Fans are a bit noisy when I encode though. Not nearly enough to bother me at 2 feet though

 

More info on the FX-8320 build.

WEI, AMD FX-8320 8 Core at 3.825GHz.



With the WEI, and 3D Mark 06, I noticed the CPU performance comes into play much more, as the power of the CPU increases. I also noticed the the difference between no enhancements, and full enhancements is only about 3000 3D Marks. It's a lot lower with a lesser CPU. As you can see, the Graphics abilities improved.

3D Mark 06, no enhancements.



3D Mark 06, full enhancements, not a lot of difference in the scores. I see on the WEI, that the Processor and memory scores went up to 7.7. I wonder if SLI will improve those two 7.4 subscores? One of these day, if the mood strikes me, I'll find out.



Oh!!! Apparently, I had something in the setup set wrong, which is why it was getting to 55C. I probably caught the corner of a key and didn't notice it, because as soon as I reset the defaults and tried again, it was fine. Now, it doesn't go past 45C! It might on a real hot day (triple digit), but that doesn't concern me.

Unless you are a very high end gamer, I can't see any compelling reason to try to overclock it past 4.2GHz, and you can do that with a click of the mouse, with Easytune! It gives you 3 choices. 4.0, 4.1, and 4.2GHz. I've seen over 5GHz on air already, which to me, makes it a viable and usable computer, suitable for more than just benchmarks! So far, I see nothing not to like! I'm a happy camper!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

I just purchased a new case much better then Russ's at a fraction of the cost as it is on a 12 hour special deal at $60, although I got it for $50 which is even better. This rig is ready for just about any option you need and loaded for bear with all of the fan options. Plus I love the 2x4 HDD bays that accomidate 2.5" HDD's including of course SSD's. Kevin is probablty the only one that won't like this case! Check out the video for the features it's pretty sweet.

Fractal Design Arc Midi Black High Performance PC Computer Case w/ USB 3.0 and 3 x Fractal High Performance 140mm fans $20 off special code EMCJJJA35

Russ the numbers on that new build are just horrible.... LOL

Stevo

 

Cheaper yes, but I struggle to see how the case you linked is better than the one Russ posted...

8 3.5" drive bays in a mid tower is nice, but in all honesty, I think I prefer the utility of having at least 3 5.25" bays, not necessarily for optical drives, but you can at least get 5 3.5" disks in three 5.25" bays (or fan controllers etc.) Your options with only 2 5.25" drive bays are minimal. Indeed, with the older cases I used that have 5 3.5s and 4 5.25s, I can actually get 10 HDDs crammed in and still have an optical drive. When all is said and done, the 8x3.5+2x5.25 I believe comes up to the same number.
The side panel only allowing 140mm+ fans and not 120s is a bit of a design oversight too.

Fractal Design cases are quite nice, but I think the Corsair Russ posted is actually superior, albeit by not a great margin. By getting your case for barely more than half the RRP you got a good deal, but that doesn't make the case itself a good deal.

It's all down to personal preference with cases, and you may prefer that design to the Corsair, making it better despite the physical design shortcomings, but from an objective standpoint, it ain't better

 

Well I was joking to some degree but you are wrong as it can handle 120mm fans too and I don't need a fancy fan controller, been there done that and won't go back. But it does have a fan controller for the 3 fans it comes with. I would much rather have this case then Russ's at $100 bucks considering I spent half as much and the Corsair wouldn't provide me with much more for twice the price. But to each his own even though this one is better...