Build Thread 2.0

[Humanoid]

Yeah that's how 8 pin connectors are.

[Azdeus]

Anyone here that has any experience with watercooling kits that you can buy? The small ones focused on just processor cooling that comes in closed kits. (Corsair Hydro, be quiet!, Coolermaster Neptune et.c.)

 

Are they worth the money, or should one buy a builder kit instead? How noisy do they turn out to be in real life terms?

I've got no experience with either of those systems, but I can't afford to upgrade my computer at the moment and I need to get some better cooling for my old processor.

[Sarex]

Anyone here that has any experience with watercooling kits that you can buy? The small ones focused on just processor cooling that comes in closed kits. (Corsair Hydro, be quiet!, Coolermaster Neptune et.c.)

 

Are they worth the money, or should one buy a builder kit instead? How noisy do they turn out to be in real life terms?

I've got no experience with either of those systems, but I can't afford to upgrade my computer at the moment and I need to get some better cooling for my old processor.

 

I made a post here a while back on my experience with Cooler Master 280L. The take away was that it provided similar cooling to my Noctua nhd-15 and that it was louder (the pump whine was noticeable).

 

While I have never tired these I would recommend them as I have heard only good things about them:

https://www.ekwb.com/shop/aio/predator

 

There are also kits on the site if you want to go down that route.

[Humanoid]

If you can't afford to upgrade your PC, it's strikes me that a CPU cooler is probably one of the lowest priorities you could have. What are you hoping to gain from the exercise? The performance gains (from overclocking) will be minimal and most games aren't CPU-bound anyway. The money would likely be better put towards something else, or saved for a larger future upgrade.

[Gorgon]

My sense is that those all in one enclosed coolers aren't all that good. Water offers the best cooling performance but possibly at the cost of headaces you don't need. I'd go for beefy air cooling personally.  They make more noise than many air coolers too by virtue of  smaller fast reving fans being more effective for a radiator. 

[Azdeus]

I made a post here a while back on my experience with Cooler Master 280L. The take away was that it provided similar cooling to my Noctua nhd-15 and that it was louder (the pump whine was noticeable).

 

While I have never tired these I would recommend them as I have heard only good things about them:

https://www.ekwb.com/shop/aio/predator

 

There are also kits on the site if you want to go down that route.

 

Those kits look interesting, don't think my local supplier has those models available, but I'll have to consider them anyway. If shipping is'nt going to cost me a fortune atleast.

 

That NHD-15 is huge. Since I live in an old house with wooden floorboards, the flexing in the floor when I walk around would be a concern. It's one of the reasons why I'm looking at water cooled options.

 

 

If you can't afford to upgrade your PC, it's strikes me that a CPU cooler is probably one of the lowest priorities you could have. What are you hoping to gain from the exercise? The performance gains (from overclocking) will be minimal and most games aren't CPU-bound anyway. The money would likely be better put towards something else, or saved for a larger future upgrade.

 

Since I'm going for a different socket, I can't upgrade the CPU, more RAM is'nt going to help, and my GPU (Radeon HD7950) is already strangled by my processor (An Phenom II X4 955 BE). I intend to use the cooling for my new computer anyway, so it's not any real loss, but I should gain some performance in the mean time from getting any increased performance from just being able to fully utilize my CPU or overclocking it.

 

My sense is that those all in one enclosed coolers aren't all that good. Water offers the best cooling performance but possibly at the cost of headaces you don't need. I'd go for beefy air cooling personally.  They make more noise than many air coolers too by virtue of  smaller fast reving fans being more effective for a radiator. 

 

I would probably exchange the fans if that were the case, all I've looked at so far have had the possibility of changing them.

What would those headaches be? Besides changing the fluids.

 

 

 

[Gorgon]

Well with an all in one like that one probably not much. Know a guy who got one. Seemed happy with it. Although I didn't see the point of the extra expense since he wasn't overclocking. 

The plate can be changed to fit any socket ?

[Azdeus]

Well with an all in one like that one probably not much. Know a guy who got one. Seemed happy with it. Although I didn't see the point of the extra expense since he wasn't overclocking. 

The plate can be changed to fit any socket ?

 

Ah,well all the ones I've looked at they list compatibility with essentially all sockets. AM2/3 to Intels 1151 and whatnot, it's been a few years since I had socket variations 100% down.

Overclockings is probably something I will have to go for, wether I like it or not. But my 7 or so year old stock AMD cooler is'nt up to muster for that. ^^

[Bartimaeus]

Seagate 1000GB:

Reallocated Sector Count: 1

 

Well, it had a good run. Nearly ten years of usage, 50688 hours (2112 days / approaching 6 years) of being powered on, nearly 3000 starts/stops...not bad for a crappy Seagate drive manufactured during the darkest days of Seagates' manufacturing process. Good thing I was already in the process of making a complete backup...

[mkreku]

My Western Digital reached almost exactly half of that before crapping out on me. I'm using a Hitachi now since I've never had to change a Hitachi because of errors, only because of a need for more space.

[Bartimaeus]

Surprisingly, I've had much worse luck with WDs than Seagates. Every WD I've ever had has died on me within like two years. Every Seagate I've had has somehow survived 5 or more...I have old 80GBs that are literally 20 years old that still work just fine that I can't throw away simply because they still work.

 

Since, as you said, Hitachi are supposed to have the best failure rates, I've just waiting until I see a decent price on one until I buy one. This Seagate is still at only 1 reallocated...but it's only been a few weeks since I noticed it. I'm not putting anything new without mirroring it to my backup drive regardless, though.

Edited February 26, 2017 by Bartimaeus

[AwesomeOcelot]

I had 2 Seagate Barracudas that lasted over 8 years of quite heavy use but then Seagate and Samsung drives only lasting a year, so I switched to WD and I haven't had any problems with 5 drives. I've owned 2 Hitachi drives and they didn't die, they became obsolete, they weren't the best in terms of performance though.

[mkreku]

My Hitachi is much faster than my WD ever was. I am reaching 200+ MB/s transfer speeds when copying files from my SSD to my HD or vice versa.

 

And I just realized I bought this thing in 2015. It was released in 2012.. 5 year old technology! Of course, I am still rocking my 2008 motherboard and my Core i7 970 (6/12 core at 3.5 GHz). Not much has happened in the CPU world since I still have no problem running my games at 2560x1440 at max or near max settings (my 290X just seems to become faster with age).

[Gorgon]

I have a Seagate I had to disconnect because it started making the death rattle. Still works, but no HD ever survived a new mysterious noise for long.

[Bokishi]

Hosting a videocard hunt contest on my website, if anyone wants to play. I just photoshoped a bunch of videocards into Watch_Dogs 2 panoramas. Zotac is sponsoring and offering a GTX 1080 Mini as the prize. (Hoping they will offer a 1080 Ti for the next contest.) Nvidia is also pushing the contest on their social media

 

 

Edited March 8, 2017 by Bokishi

[Bartimaeus]

Don't buy an M.2 SSD if you plan on using Windows 7 on it. I spent a few hours trying to make it work, including figuring out how to manually patch my installer of Windows, but after finally getting it to recognize that the drive existed at all, the farthest I got was it reaching the Windows splash screen before it repeatedly blue screened. Guess it'll have to use Windows 10.

Edited April 5, 2017 by Bartimaeus

[Gorgon]

It's still got all the same menus, they are just hidden away under a lot of over designed new menus that look kinda IOSy or like they belong on a phone where you can't have more than 4 or 5 entries in the same heading. 

 

Most of the things you remember from 7 like the device manager, services.msc and so on can still be called from the search console. Just avoid using the settings app whenever possible. 

[Bartimaeus]

Yeah, it actually seems remarkably similar. A few things were jumbled up, others just straight up missing, and some worthless stuff was added...but overall, it looks pretty similar to Windows 7.

 

I liked that the bootup W10 installer was quite literally exactly the same as the bootup W7 installer, minus a changed background color.

[Sarex]

Don't buy an M.2 SSD if you plan on using Windows 7 on it. I spent a few hours trying to make it work, including figuring out how to manually patch my installer of Windows, but after finally getting it to recognize that the drive existed at all, the farthest I got was it reaching the Windows splash screen before it repeatedly blue screened. Guess it'll have to use Windows 10.

 

If you are using a Samsung M2 drive this will fix your issues on Windows 7

[Humanoid]

Might be a stretch calling this a "build", but I picked up a cheap Celeron NUC (NUC5CPYH) to use as a HTPC for a bedroom HT system I'm planning (likely using LibreELEC + Kodi). I recently bought the house I'd been renting for the past decade so I can finally do this, and it helps that I have some spare bits and bobs lying around I can reuse.

 

Old:

Crucial M4 128GB SSD

Some sort of generic USB TV tuner I got free from some parts purchase long ago

Monitor Audio BR2 bookshelf speakers (I'll need to figure out wall mounting)

Logitech K400 Plus wireless keyboard+touchpad

 

New:

Intel NUC5CPYH (Celeron N3050)

4GB DDR3L SODIMM

SMSL Q5 Pro DAC/T-Amp

Logitech Harmony 650 universal remote (yes it works with the cheapo amp)

Some sort of 55-60" TV, waiting for an EOFY deal

 

Unfortunately my bedroom layout isn't great for this, as the wardrobe doors are directly in front of the bed, and the TV will have to end up about a metre to the right of my viewing position. I considered a roll-down projector screen in front of the doors, but I decided that the projector noise would be too loud for a general purpose solution.

Edited May 30, 2017 by Humanoid

[LadyCrimson]

I'm still an Nvidia slave so the last GPU I bought was the 980ti. Didn't bother with a 1080ti (yet) since I (still) haven't built a new rig. I was ready to last Xmas but then I bought a PS4 instead + 2nd house stuff to the tune of $20k, so now maybe next fall or early winter.

 

Anyway, I was originally going to get the i7-6700k because it seemed fine for my modest personal needs and likely to last me another 5+ years, with the way I "PC" these days....but maybe I should go with the 7700k now? I have no clue. Longevity is my main concern, not uber-power/overclocking. And by the time I might care about 4k, CPU's (and GPU's) will have gone through 5 more cycles anyway.

 

So would the 6700k still be fine for someone like me?

[Sarex]

I'm still an Nvidia slave so the last GPU I bought was the 980ti. Didn't bother with a 1080ti (yet) since I (still) haven't built a new rig. I was ready to last Xmas but then I bought a PS4 instead + 2nd house stuff to the tune of $20k, so now maybe next fall or early winter.

 

Anyway, I was originally going to get the i7-6700k because it seemed fine for my modest personal needs and likely to last me another 5+ years, with the way I "PC" these days....but maybe I should go with the 7700k now? I have no clue. Longevity is my main concern, not uber-power/overclocking. And by the time I might care about 4k, CPU's (and GPU's) will have gone through 5 more cycles anyway.

 

So would the 6700k still be fine for someone like me?

 

Why not go for the AMD Ryzen CPU, like the 1700 or 1700X? It would serve you much better then the 7700k for future proofing.

[LadyCrimson]

Why not go for the AMD Ryzen CPU, like the 1700 or 1700X? It would serve you much better then the 7700k for future proofing.

 

1 - I'm also an Intel slave since the beginning of time. I've never been fond of AMD. It's probably not entirely rational, especially these days, but there it is.

2- I haven't liked the gaming performance reviews of the Ryzen.

3 - I'm still not even using 1440 at the moment nor do I do any frequent, mega-cpu-intensive non-gaming tasks

[Sarex]

Fair enough, I was always on Intel too. As for the performance reviews, as far as I know AMD did some optimizing since release but idk how much that changed game performance.

 

On the point of your original question if cash is not a hard issue, go for the i9-7820X that should future proof you plenty. If you are looking to get a budget build grab the 7700 non K variant which is 50 bucks cheaper then the K version and you don't need to spend much on the MB since you are not going to overclock.

Edited June 15, 2017 by Sarex

[LadyCrimson]

i9-7820X

Hadn't heard of that one yet, thanks. Could be priced anywhere from $600-800 maybe? Hm. A little high for my tastes but I can keep it in mind. :D