Build Thread 2.0

[Humanoid]

But then you might notice nVidia had a disastrous driver release not two weeks ago which drove some people as far as needing to reinstall their OS and realise there are no winners in this race. It's a pretty messed up situation when games are so dependent on hardware vendors to adapt to them, rather than the other way around, and it leads to this stupid race to release "optimised" drivers for every new AAA release with manifestly inadequate testing.

[Gorgon]

Browsers are hardware accelerated now a days. I had several system locks and it took a while to figure out it was caused by the combination of google Chrome and an AMD driver update. 

 

So yeah, don't necessarily use the latest version. 

[Gorgon]

Went and did a stupid thing. Was taking out my GFX for a dust cleaning and the card being really big and not being able to feel what I was doing used too much force and yanked a piece of plastic off the board. The top PCI e x16 slot is now a dud. I remember reading somewhere that the card needed to be in the top slot if in a single card configuration, and sure enough it wont start up  with the GFX in one of the lower PCI slots. It says crossfire on the board so logically there should be more than one compatible slot. Maybe it's hardware and I really did a number on the board but it will only boot with the monitor in the Integrated graphics slot and the GFX out.

 

As recently discussed this is a really bad time to be shopping for a GFX. 4k being still pretty expensive and also my goal if I want to upgrade.

 

Sooo I'm looking at a ****ty placeholder card, a 4k monitor and another mobo maybe. Not wise to try and stick a new GFX in there having done violence to the board.

[Gorgon]

Actually now that I look at it nothing looks broken or bent. Two sets of pins have come loose securing the plastic clip with a little lever on it that you use to secure the card.

 

Is that meant to come off maybe ?

 

 

No I guess not

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/comments/1cb3jv/troubleshooting_the_plastic_part_on_my_pci_slot/

 

Annoying. I feel like the thing could have been constructed with a bit more durability. Didn't use that much force but the card was still snagged on the clip​ maybe.

[Bartimaeus]

The piece of plastic itself is only meant for securing the card, I am pretty certain. If the PCIE port itself is O.K., then all you need to do is make sure the card is secure in the port even without the plastic lock. I would say it's at least worth a try unless the port itself is screwed up.

 

P.S. I hate those plastic lock-ins, too. My current board has a pretty easy-to-use one currently, though, which I count myself blessed for.

Edited March 24, 2016 by Bartimaeus

[Gorgon]

From what I can see it also acts as a guide for the pins. Now I have a row of exposed pins on the motherboard and the flat end of the GFX meant to go in between. The smallest adjustment could bring them out of alignment. Could try to see if it will fit back on since it looks like it went off clean without damaging the pins.

[Gorgon]

No joy, a few of them are bent slightly, they don't line up.

[Gorgon]

Haswell and Skylake are on different sockets I take it ?. 

 

I hate having to replace old stuff, would much rather be upgrading. Probably not worth it though. Maybe I'll just play ****ing solitare until the new 14 nm cards are out. 

[Sarex]

What CPU/MB do you have. It could be due to your CPU supporting a low number of lanes and the mb not having it's own chip to offset that.

 

I have a 5820k with a rampage 5 mb and for some strange reason only the first slot offers a full x16 lane, but it's blocked by the cooler for me and when I plug in the card in to a lower slot I only get x8 lanes... So it could be a similar case with your own setup.

Edited March 24, 2016 by Sarex

[Gorgon]

Core i7 4770k and an MSI Z87-chipset. Only one choice left for PCIe because the card takes up two slots. Can fit it in the middle slot but it won't boot. The lower slot kinda collides with the PSU.

[Gorgon]

Manual states that expansion cards have to inhabit pci slot no 2 first, in other words it can't be unpopulated if I want to use any of the PCI slots. that's the one that's broken. 

 

Bummer.

[Bartimaeus]

It's funny how many times I've heard this story, but most motherboard manufacturers (or the chipset maker - in this case, Intel) don't try to change it.

[Humanoid]

Haswell and Skylake are on different sockets I take it ?. 

 

I hate having to replace old stuff, would much rather be upgrading. Probably not worth it though. Maybe I'll just play ****ing solitare until the new 14 nm cards are out. 

 

Yeah, no point upgrading from Haswell really. Fortunately LGA1150 boards are still easy enough to source. Even if you feel you want to upgrade everything later, a budget board like a B85 will at least get you up and running now.

 

H81/B85/H97/Z97 will all work with your CPU.

[Bartimaeus]

H87 and Z87 as well. There's unlikely to be any need at all to upgrade to Skylake, particularly seeing as both support PCIE 3.0.

[Gorgon]

So my GFX is dead too. Just before I decided to clean it out it the fans had been whining at max speed for a protracted period. I think I might have killed it by manually setting the fan speed lower. It would kick up to maximum anyway when playing games having reached the temp threshold but this repeated experience probably killed it off, especially considering that there was a solid block of dust covering 1/3 of one fan. 

 

Soo.. what to get as a placeholder. I'm getting that 40' 4k display. Given that I will be likely replacing another GFX in a year or so when the price of the new cards have stabilized I have been pondering what I can buy now that I will still be able to use in a future build.

 

One thought is SLI/ Crossfire configurations with different cards. No guarantees but maybe there will be backwards compatibility with the new cards. Another is a fanless GFX, that would still be a nice thing to have in the drawer if I want to experiment with an ultra quiet build in future. Drawback here of course is that all fanless GFX offerings are pretty weak. 

[Humanoid]

Philips are replacing that 40" 4k model with a 43" one soon, so it may be worth it to hold on for a bit as the street price should end up fairly similar. The new model is also IPS, where the old one was a VA panel (which admittedly some may prefer for the deeper blacks).

[Gorgon]

That does look pretty sweet. Maybe coupled with a wall mount.

[Gorgon]

I need m.2 support and TRIM I suppose. It's a bit hit and miss with these boards, some list TRIM support for SSDs others, even expensive ones, don't. Why isn't this standard. 

 

Does The EVO 950 Samsung  PRO m.2 SSD go hand in hand with a TRIM support board or is there something else that can perform that function ?. 

[Bartimaeus]

Every modern consumer-grade motherboard will have TRIM support. That's why it's not being listed - it's not really a consideration.

[Gorgon]

ahh

[Gorgon]

Sooo... what GPU to get.

 

So far I've ordered :

 

Asus z97 pro gamer. It was reduced price and I was able to confirm that there were no clearance issues with the ginormous CPU cooler. It also had a nicer audio chip than the cheaper offerings. 

 

Nocturna ND 15 cpu cooler. Not strictly necessary, but reducing peak noise from the CPU cooler was attractive. So was the price  .Max fan RPM mode comes in at under 30 db. if you believe their stats.

 

Samsung 950 Pro 512 gb m.2. I consider this a future investment. Two aging non SSDs make up my bulk storage. 

 

So, do I get a mid range card like an r9 390 or a GTX 970 or I just get whatever and save as much money as I can while I wait for a suitable GPU offering.

[Humanoid]

It's not a good time to buy, but then it's not a good time to be unable to play games either, so it's a tricky decision. If you're going to a card to keep for a while, I reckon the AMD option will age better over the coming few years. The trend seems to be that their stuff is supported for longer and so gains effective performance over its nVidia counterpart over time. For example, the R9 290 used to compete against the GTX 780 and comprehensively lost to the 780Ti. Now both of those nVidia cards are decidedly slower, and the R9 has gone to competing with the GTX 970 over the past year or two, and in newer games is beating it. With the advent of Win10/DX12, I expect it to pull ahead more clearly.

 

I note that Computersalg seem to have some stock of the R9 290X 8GB edition, a card that's not very common but for all intents and purposes is the same as the R9 390X, but 500DKK cheaper. I'm not a huge fan of XFX, but I'd take it for the price.

 

At that price it also undercuts the slower regular 390 and GTX 970, so it's probably the best value in the "performance" card stakes. At 2000DKK I think the 380X is too close to that price to be palatable. Below that maybe this 380 non-X (avoid the 2GB models) though I don't think they're fantastic being rehashes of the disappointing R9 285, and below that I think the lowest viable gaming card is the GTX 950.

[Bartimaeus]

XFX has the slowest customer support of literally any tech company I've ever done business with. It took about a month and a half for them to tell me they couldn't find anything wrong with my GPU. The double lifetime warranty on their DD cards isn't really worth the bother.

[Humanoid]

Depending on national laws, it's often the retailer you should be dealing with rather than the manufacturer. I've never had to deal with a PC parts manufacturer directly, ever, but Australian consumer law is like that. But it's also true that their coolers aren't as good as Sapphire or Gigabyte's, for instance.

 

One other thing worth mentioning is that the 290/390 series downclocks very well. Set the power target to something like -40% and lose only 10-15% performance, which is a good solution for those sensitive to heat/noise issues.

 

 

P.S. Also worth looking into the second-hand market perhaps.

[Gorgon]

Installed what I have. Thermal paste came out like diarrhea and did not at all resemble the perfect sphere in the instructions. Why can't they make a dispenser that gives you the exact amount you need.

 

used the silent CPU fan cable extensions and set the fans to silent mode in the BIOS. Temps stabilised at 28 degrees.  Pretty impressive for air I'd say. The m.2 is not detected in windows, hoping a bios update will fix that.