Build Thread 2.0

[Azdeus]

I've checked those, and they match the values specified for the sticks, it was one of the first things I checked when I was looking for some possible setting that could fix this.

[Sarex]

I ended up ordering the LG (ultrawide) monitor, it should arrive tomorrow or the day after. I hope I get the rev 0.2 of the monitor as the chances of it not being defective are much better. Wish me luck.

 

Edit1: Ok, so strike 1, one monitor down. Believe it or not it was pierced by a forklift with both forks, heh. Good news is that it's revision 0.2, so chances are good that the next one is too.

Edited May 23, 2015 by Sarex

[Starwars]

MSI Z97 PC Mate

Crucial 8GB (2x4GB) CL9 1600Mhz Ballistix Sport

ASUS Radeon R9 290x DirectCU II

Cooler Master  Hyper 212 EVO

Cooler Master Elite 310

Fractal Design Integra M 550W 80+ Bronze

SSD 240GB OCZ Arc 100

Intel Core i5 4690k 3,5 ghz, 6mb

 

Just ordered this. Could've pushed it further but money is a bit tight. Got a deal on the graphics card which seemed really great actually (though I know it potentially makes more noise, runs hotter and eats more power than its Nvidia counterparts).

 

Make me feel good about this!

[Bartimaeus]

Kind of an odd build. The MSI PC Mate is fairly down there on the low end for motherboards, with only 3 true phases - not good: would not exactly recommend overclocking any, particularly with the highest end desktop i5 you can get. 3 phases is the absolute bare minimum a motherboard would have these days, and you'd typically find it in mATX boards, not standard ATX boards - and, at around $80-90(?) in the U.S., I'm not sure why it wasn't at least 4 phases. Though it's a generation older, I paid around $30 more for the Asus Maximus VI Hero, which is an 8 true phase board (and the phases are almost certainly higher quality, to boot...can't say for sure, though, since I didn't find details for the PC Mate in a cursory Google search...which I would not take as a good sign, but perhaps one should reserve judgement ). I've always thought of the PC Mate as sort of the board made just for the Pentium K/G3258 - not exactly suitable for the 4690k or other higher end CPUs.

 

Odd choice for PSU, too. Again, the highest desktop i5 you can get...and the most power hungry AMD GPU you can get...and you lowball the PSU? I also don't like that with that GPU, you're running pretty close to the max rated wattage on it, with system power consumption at around 475, maybe as much as 500W at full load. I personally like a 100W buffer, but that might just be me. (e): I wouldn't worry overtly about the PSU, though: from what I can quickly dig up, it's still a good PSU for its specifications...just not what would come to my mind when you say the system will have a 290x.

 

SSD looks good, although it would not have been my absolute first choice at its price point in the U.S. However, you are in Sweden according to your location detail, so I can't really evaluate it as such, and it's, at the very least, competitive and comparable to other options, so it was likely a perfectly good choice.

 

Everything else is up to user preference and/or behavior and seems fine, so that is my quick analysis on the build.

Edited May 24, 2015 by Bartimaeus

[Starwars]

The motherboard was a budget option and one that came recommended from a few people (and with good reviews from what I could find).But I admit I'm not at all familiar with motherboards, and what their strengths/weaknesses are. Only thing I know is that I don't plan on overclocking at all.

 

I got advice on the PSU as well, the tests I've looked at don't really have the system (with that graphics card) running much past 430w or so. I have an acquaintance who's running it on a 520w supply and it works fine. Though I did think that was cutting it a bit close as well.

I know the wear and tear is greater the closer to the limit you run a PSU but it was a chance I'm willing to take. My current system is running at 7 years now and there was the same concerns for that regarding a PSU that was similarily not too far over what was recommended for the GPU (I don't remember the exact values now) but I've never had a problem with it at all. So yeah, it's a gamble.

 

I probably wouldn't have gotten the graphics card if I had more funds due to its power hungriness and loudness/running warm, but at about (transferring from the swedish crown price) 287 bucks it seemed like a pretty good deal for its power. And I really couldn't push my budget up any further as is.

 

Also, I'm hoping I can stick my old harddrive into this new computer also as I need more space than the SSD brings. I hope that is a fairly easy operation, never done it before.

 

Hope it'll be fine.

Edited May 24, 2015 by Starwars

[Humanoid]

The only real quibble is that the 'K' series CPU is made for overclocking, so not doing it kind of misses the point, as does having a Z series motherboard, so if anything it makes the motherboard overbudget.

 

The PSU is fine, video card will draw ~200W, maybe peaking at 250W, CPU 100W at most. And yeah, transferring the old hard drive is trivial, though probably easier to do it after installing the OS on the SSD to prevent any confusion.

[Starwars]

Aaah, then I gotcha... Whelp. I could try and change the order if need be. How much money would I concievably save if I changed it something else? Like I said, not interested in overclocking. Should I change the processor or motherboard?

 

Thanks.

Edited May 24, 2015 by Starwars

[Humanoid]

Well the savings aren't huge as such, but for non-overclockers I'd generally just go with the lowest-spec quad-core option, which is to say, the i5 4460. You do lose a few hundred MHz but in practice it won't realistically limit anything you do. Or take the middle ground and just get the non-K version of the 4690, which is simply a non-overclockable version.

 

As for the board, it's even more marginal in terms of savings, for the most part a Z97 board is simply a H97 board which supports overclocking, but the price difference is probably in the order of $5-10.

[Keyrock]

Yeah, if you don't plan to overclock, there is no point in getting the K variant over the non-K variant (unless you can get it for the same price), especially in the case of the i5-4690, where both variants have the same base and turbo clock speed (whereas the i7-4790K is 400 MHz faster than the i7-4790).  

[Gorth]

My system is becoming quite unstable under load. Sadly I lack the skills to pinpoint exactly which part is the culprit. Drivers will cause BSOD's with different messages, although the most common is 'Power Failure'. Which I "guess" leaves me with either the PSU or the Motherboard as the most likely culprits. It could also be the Gfx card draining too much power of course (despite having two dedicated 8 pin cables from the PSU).

 

Seriously considering upgrading parts of my old system as Im tired of only having 12Mb RAM at the moment anyway. Got my eyes on a new MB, CPU and Memory (which may of course not solve my original problem at all, but at least i can then rule out those 3 components)

 

Would probably also help with a new MB that I can remove the old PCI cards for Soundblaster, SATA3 and USB3 controllers.

[Bartimaeus]

Yeah, you must be really struggling to run much of anything from this millennium with only twelve megabits of RAM - a megabyte and a half is simply not enough by today's standards, I'm afraid. Would definitely recommend upgrading.

 

More seriously, yes, if you don't have any spare parts already, it can be really difficult diagnose a lot of hardware problems. I still have old nvidia 8000 series cards and DDR1 and DDR2 RAM sets and old power supplies and...for this reason. You'll never know when you'll need them for solving computer problems (yours, and sometimes other people's...).

Edited May 27, 2015 by Bartimaeus

[Gorth]

Yeah, you must be really struggling to run much of anything from this millennium with only twelve megabits of RAM

Yeah, I'm dying to run nethack on max settings!!!

 

No, you are right. If it was just a gaming machine it would be overkill, but I do use my desktop pc for other purposes (3D modelling/rendering/animation etc., all stuff that loves as many cores and as much memory as possible)

[Sarex]

The monitor has arrived and it's freaking HUGE! As far as I can see it's all good, no dead pixels, no backlight leaking (well almost none, I think there is some in the right edge of the screen, but I'm not too sure) and no ticking as far as I can hear. Though IPS glow is something I am going to have to get used to.

 

Pictures will be posted soon, or maybe a little later, I'm building a new desk and am going to mount the monitor to the wall. I'll probably post a few picks.

 

I must say I had butterflies when I was turning it on and checking for defects.

Edited May 28, 2015 by Sarex

[Bartimaeus]

 

Yeah, you must be really struggling to run much of anything from this millennium with only twelve megabits of RAM

Yeah, I'm dying to run nethack on max settings!!!

 

No, you are right. If it was just a gaming machine it would be overkill, but I do use my desktop pc for other purposes (3D modelling/rendering/animation etc., all stuff that loves as many cores and as much memory as possible)

 

 

I might be misunderstanding you...but I was mocking you because you said 12Mb - twelve megabits, which is 1.5 megabytes. I PRESUME you meant 12 GIGAbytes, which is...uh...8192 times as much as 1.5Mb. This message may sound really stupid and patronizing if you got that already - it may sound that way even if you didn't! - so apologies in advance. Also, I have 16GB, myself, for little to no reason...pretty much for the sole purpose of making sure I never have to worry about not having enough RAM in the next ten years.

 

@Sarex: looking forward to pictures so I can cry about still only using some crappy 1600x900 screen that's a million years old.

Edited May 28, 2015 by Bartimaeus

[Sarex]

Quick and dirty. Sorry for the ****ty pictures.

 

 

 

 

I should really clean that desk...

[Bartimaeus]

Well...I still don't like ultra-widescreen, so that makes me feel a little better... Looks nice, though. Transparent stand? Was trying to figure out how it was floating for a few seconds, don't think I've ever seen a monitor with a transparent stand, haha. Almost no backlight bleeding? All the LCD monitors I've ever had have always had some backlight bleeding - should post a picture of a black background: curious to see how nice the blacks look.

 

But seriously, that thing is so wide...my eyes sometimes get strained at just 16:9 - I can't imagine getting used to that. So wide...

 

I always forget that we have the same keyboards - always startles me a little whenever you post pictures.

 

What're the speakers, out of curiosity?

[Sarex]

The speakers

 

As for the picture with the backlight bleeding, lol... Now that it's night and I have taken a picture I see that it's bleeding in all 3 corners except the one I thought it was in...ha ha... though comparing it to what people posted online it's not that bad.

 

 

Is this bad? Should I return it?

[Bartimaeus]

Does it bother you? Unless you have a pure or almost pure black desktop wallpaper (like me), you probably won't hardly ever notice, right? So...up to you as to how you deal with it.

Edited May 28, 2015 by Bartimaeus

[Sarex]

Does it bother you? Unless you have a pure or almost pure black desktop wallpaper (like me), you probably won't hardly ever notice, right? So...up to you as to how you deal with it.

 

To be honest, when I tried the black picture the first time I didn't see it, I only noticed it when I took a photo of it. I'll give it a thought over the weekend, but I will probably just ignore it.

[Keyrock]

I have close to that amount of light bleeding on my monitor, maybe not quite as much (only 2 corners on mine) and I really never notice it.  I also discovered I have 1 dead pixel, I didn't see it first for about a month of having the monitor and I never ever notice it unless I am specifically looking for it, and even then it takes me 15 or 20 seconds of active searching to find it, even though I know roughly where to look for it once I jog my memory (1 pixel out of 3,686,400 is a pretty tiny spec on a 27" monitor).

[Bokishi]

Just ordered the 980 ti, benchmarks say it's nearly 50%-90% faster than the 970

[Sarex]

Just ordered the 980 ti, benchmarks say it's nearly 50%-90% faster than the 970

 

(=_=)

[Humanoid]

It's 35% cheaper and 3.5% slower than the Titan X. So yeah, in one fell swoop, both the regular 980 and the Titan X are obsolete. Would go so far as to say it also obsoletes all current 'sensible' SLI and CF configurations, you'd take a 980Ti over 970 SLI or 290/X CF.

 

16th of June can't come fast enough, at which point we'll see how the GPU landscape looks like for the rest of the year.

[ManifestedISO]

 

16th of June can't come fast enough, at which point we'll see how the GPU landscape looks like for the rest of the year.

 

Holy Bandwidth Manbat!

 

It's the form factors I'm looking forward to. Might have to figure out what a centimeter is, instead of inches. 

[Malcador]

It's 35% cheaper and 3.5% slower than the Titan X. So yeah, in one fell swoop, both the regular 980 and the Titan X are obsolete. Would go so far as to say it also obsoletes all current 'sensible' SLI and CF configurations, you'd take a 980Ti over 970 SLI or 290/X CF.

 

16th of June can't come fast enough, at which point we'll see how the GPU landscape looks like for the rest of the year.

Figures, just after I bought a 980 (ok, it's $200 cheaper than the Ti here)