The Official PC building thread - 4th Edition

Long time no see Rob, welcome back

 

Happy New Year Guys

 

And to you too Fred

 

Got myself a little treat. Two new 140mm fans and two new 230mm fans, all slightly higher performance than the stock Cooler Master jobs. All four of them BitFenix Spectre Pros. I know not the highest quality fans, but the best options available for the price and with the LEDs I wanted, as they aren't terrible like most LED fans. Retiring my CCL kit to save on wiring, heat, and because they're getting dim. I do depend on the lighting in my PC for some small amount of ambient working light. Also, the fans were aging, and it was high time to get some slightly better ones and bolster my cooling.

Also finally bit the bullet and ordered my 990FXA-UD5 from Newegg for $160. Just hope it's a rev 3.0 board and not one of the problematic earlier revisions. I am quite interested to see what it changes in my overclocking situation. It's a full two chipset generations newer, as well as being a much higher-end and more fully-featured board from the get-go. Our late friend Russ was convinced that the chipset really makes the difference with these Thuban CPUs, and that they allow for better clocks at vastly lower voltages and temps, as well as providing some raw performance benefits over 790 and 890. He showed me several pages of results, comparing different chipsets and CPUs, and I have to agree. Hopefully the practical results will reflect that hypothesis and testing. A solid 4.4GHz with my NB at 2800MHz(the optimal NB setting, but requiring a high core speed) would be fantastic. Even an OC'd Vishera couldn't compete with it, and it would be well within the realm of the large majority of i7s.

I have been researching others' results with similar boards on several forums, and a large percentage are achieving my desired goal with even weaker cooling on the average. My current setup as it is rivals some of the best air coolers there are. Ducting and overpowered server fans being what closes the gap. The idea being that, if the newer chipset allows lower voltages for the same clocks, that instantly translates to less heat, and heat is the deciding factor in ANY AMD overclock. It's currently why 4GHz is my wall. If I simply had a more powerful cooler, I would be well capable of pushing higher. The catch is, why would I upgrade my already powerful cooler if I can achieve the same results through simply better hardware? The new fans are also a little extra step towards that goal. I know listed specs are always a bit dubious, but these fans should be just a slight boost regardless due to their more aggressive blades and a slightly higher RPM on the 140mms.

Also, if I feel so inclined, I can use x16/x16 SLI/Crossfire or use a Vishera CPU. A basically free 1100T is also floating around my small clutch of friends, so I might pull for that and try it out if my 1090T doesn't give the best results.

The option of getting some newer, lower latency RAM has also surfaced. Would there be much benefit going to 16GB considering I don't do any actual hardcore number crunching? I can get an 8GB kit at the same speed but with lower latencies for very good price, but would be willing to pay if 16GB would help me avoid future issues like I had with my video cards.

 

I just put together a UD3 Rev.4 board with a Vishera 3.5GHz and 2x8GB 9 CAS G.Skill Aries and it OC'd easier then my UD7 Rev.2 board with 2x8GB G.Skill Sniper. I was able to push the 3.5GHz to 4.0GHz quickly where as my UD7 board started to be problematic at around 4.5GHz. This could be due to the chips being based on the same die masks since I didn't throw the 4.0GHz into the UD3 to see how well it OC'd but I was impressed with the UD3 and it made me think that if I didn't need the extra features of the UD7 why spend the extra money for it. I also liked the Mouse GUI BIOS but it has one major flaw, you can't use the mouse effectively as there is no acceleration which equates to the mouse moving extremely slow always lagging. It works just fine though with just using the arrow keys but it would be nice if they would fix the mouse issues.

Buying quality RAM is the key but if those factors are the same then low CAS is the way to go. I've had low CAS perform worst then better quality higher CAS RAM so I wouldn't say that low CAS is the only factor. If you don't need 16GB then get 2x4's, you can still add another set of 2x4's for 16GB later if you need and if that exact memory is still available when you upgrade, it is never a good idea to mix memory on today's MB's.

Heat is always the factor when OC'n on any system. That is why when people push any system they go to great extremes to keep them cool.

 

I believe the UD3 Rev. 4 is the newest board in the series. Quite a bit to like about it. I went with the UD5, hopefully getting a Rev 3, so I could have some extra VRM cooling. I intend to run 1.5v plus. My current board is an 890XA-UD3(all 890 components except a 790X chipset) and needed some modifications to handle the heat. The heatpipe cooler off of a 790X-UD4P with some Arctic Ceramique, plus a 50mm CPU fan. Runs quite cool after that little change

The general consensus seems to be that the 990FXA-UD5 has always been somewhat finicky with Bulldozer/Vishera CPUs. Nothing too bad as far as reliability, but a strange bug where the thermal throttling for the VRMs is set way too low when a Bulldozer or Vishera is installed. You basically have to install a fan over the VRM for some extra cooling if you want to run those CPUs, even though it doesn't get hot enough to warrant it. All versions of the board are known to be somewhat buggy at times. The Rev. 1.1 is generally accepted as the best for BD/PD, while the Rev. 3.0 is considered the best for Thuban. Nothing truly deal-breaking, just the usual Gigabyte quirks.

I am making some modifications to my case cooling as well which should help somewhat with heat. My Modded Hyper 212 Evo is an excellent CPU cooler and the better fans plus the exhaust ducting boosted its wattage dissipation by quite a bit. My CPU is at 1.525v on air and never goes above about 55-58*C on Prime95. That's rivaling much more powerful air coolers, if not outright beating them.

As far as the RAM goes, it's the same brand, speed, and voltage as my current kit, just lower latency. 8-8-8-24 vs 9-9-9-24. For overclocking AMD you generally don't want more than two sticks of RAM. So it would either have to be 2 x 4 or 2 x 8. I know 2 x 8 is much more expensive though, and I'm really not sure if I need it. Even if I switch to Windows 8.2, it'll just use even less RAM and resources than the already fairly lightweight Windows 7 I'm currently using.

 

You are right my UD7 is a bit quarky and I've bought but not installed a hard drive fan cooling system which I'll use placed over the NB/VRM area of the board which should provide more stability when OC'n.

As to OC'n RAM, only some boards have problems when over clocking a full bank of RAM, MSI's high end boards are such. But even MSI boards can handle a full RAM bed if it is there preferred memory so it totally depends. And as long as you have memory that is all the same you should be able to use both banks.

I would have to see how Windows 8.2 pans out to actually switch to that platform. One huge problem even when you get by the Start Menu issues is compatibility which is horrible with Windows 8. So for the little bit of performance you might gain with less overhead, I don't know if it is a smart move, at least for me at this venture.

I must re-iterate that I really was impressed with the UD3 I built for my sister and actually she was too.

 

They are bringing back the real Start Menu from Windows 7 in Windows 8.2 release, supposedly.

 

Being the go-to computer guy. It's a love-hate relationship LOL!

Sometimes, I'm so irritated by some of the requests I get. Most the time, it's just their timing. I'm busy with some kind of project, and don't wanna spread myself thin. But it certainly has its rewards

My aunt just gave me an Optiplex gx620. Outdated, Yes! But the case is what I find most interesting. It allows me to build a Cheap HTPC, while not paying for the case. Assuming the buyer finds it aesthetically pleasing

Definitely in need of some state of the art tech!

Oh, I see it has 4 different models. This is what it looks like.


Well, scratch that. The motherboard is quite specific to the case. Eh.... it wasn't that good looking anyhow

 

Yep, a Dell is only good for being a Dell I'm afraid. They're not customisable, especially not the small form factor ones.

 

Rub it in LOL!

I suppose I can sell it as is. It's good for web surfing anyhow.

 

Nothing a little drilling and dremeling can't change right? Worst case scenario, you wrecked an old Dell and can gut it for parts.

 

It might not be worth the effort really....

 

Anything is worth the effort if you want it bad enough. Nothing gives more pride and satisfaction than doing something yourself.

 

Maybe Kevin can mail you the Dell and you can knock yourself out with pride? LOL

 

I suppose I could alter the case. I'll have to think about that one LOL! I definitely agree, about pride and satisfaction in making something yourself. I jarred some Jalapenos yesterday, and they're friggin incredible! Best Jalapenos I've had in a long time

Hey Steve, how about I mail it to you, and you can have an eye sore staring at you

 

What does it have for guts and does it have a PCI-E slot? I'm almost tempted to buy it myself.

A late model Pentium 4 or early Core 2 Duo is what I'm guessing is in that machine. I am quite familiar with them as my Vocational School had a large fleet of them. E6750s with 4GB and an 8400GS for GPU acceleration made them quite versatile and robust for their intended usage. Good enough at least to run the CAD and programming software required for courses. Not too demanding, but the extra grunt they get from not using the bare minimum of components goes a long way.

Been looking for a proper legacy games machine for quite a while. I would be putting a GeForce 7000 in it. A large number of older games have shaders that require a Dx9-only card. Would really like to play them with proper graphics again.

The cases on those particular machines are quite nice looking as well.

 

This sounds about right. Gonna have to plug it in again later.
http://www.discountelectronics.com/product?product_id=2830&product_model=3
Supported CPU:
CPU Socket Type: LGA 775
CPU Type: Intel Pentium 4 or Celeron
Memory:
Number of Memory Slots: 4
Memory Standard: 533MHz DDR2, 667MHz DDR2
Max Memory: 4 GB
Expansion Slots:
PCI Express 2.0 x16: 1 Low Profile
PCI: 2 Low Profile
Storage Devices:
SATA 3Gb/s: 2
IDE: 1
Floppy: N/A
Onboard Video: Integrated Intel Graphic Media Accelerator 950
Onboard Audio: AC97 Sound Blaster Emulation
Onboard Lan: 10/100/1000
Rear Panel Ports:
Serial: 1
Parellel: 1
Video: VGA
USB 2.0: 6
Audio: Line in, line out, and microphone

There's currently only 2 sticks(1gb each Ram), zero add-in cards. A 280W Dell PSU. Optical drive is an NEC ND-3550A. I believe I had one of those. It was agreeable in its day. Sticker on the front says "Pentium D" Windows XP(SP3).

I'll have to check on the CPU specs later.