Build Thread 2.0

[Malcador]

I kind of want one, but $1400 for one is a bit too much.

[samm]

Ah, the joys of the high end Have fun, Keyrock

 

My next addition to my current build is... I'll change my keyboard to a Roccat Ryos Tenkeyless, not because I think it looks good (which I don't), but because it's the only mechanical keyboard available in my country which fitting my whishlist: MX Brown, tenkeyless, either no letters on keys or Swiss layout...

 

 

 

I just need a heatsink that fits my Noctua fan.

The NH-D15 brings its own fans, so you could use your fan to help cool the case Edited March 25, 2015 by samm

[LadyCrimson]

@Keyrock

I'm envisioning the "badgers" music, only with the words "Ramen ramen ramen ramen" instead.

As usual, I am jealous. I would like the new latest and greatest too. The 590 has so far turned out to be a great buy in the long run, but it definitely seems crazy when you initially buy something like that. Always tempting, tho. Maybe the next version...

[mkreku]

It's a nice card, for sure, but personally I kind of lost the incentive to waste huge amounts of money on GPU's anymore. I have a 290X and it feels like there's nothing out there that really stresses the card that I want to play. Like, right now I'm playing through Borderlands 2 with everything on full blast at 2560x1440 and it doesn't even make the fans go up!

 

Maybe The Witcher 3.. and maybe a 390X.. we will see if I get my geek spending urges back.

[Keyrock]

Scooped up a i7-4790K to replace my Xeon E3 1231 v3.  The original plan was for the Xeon to be a stopgap until Broadwell came out.  Now that it's become clear that Broadwell is pretty much purely a power efficiency upgrade and not a performance upgrade, I went ahead and just got the Devil's Canyon Haswell.  The best part is that I got it mad cheap, brand new too, and sold my Xeon off for a decent price so that the gap between what I paid for the 4790K now and sold my Xeon for is smaller than the gap between what the prices of the 2 chips were back when the 4790K first came out, so I actually saved money (thanks Ebay!  ).  I also scooped up a Corsair H100i All-in-One Liquid Cooler and Gelid GC Extreme thermal paste (that stuff is the best) for the Devil's Canyon chip and I'm currently running the 4790K at 4.6 GHz.  I may crank it up to 4.7, 4.8, or even 4.9 GHz, because right now it's not even breaking a sweat.  Running at 4.6 GHz, my Devil's Canyon chip runs cooler, both idle and under load, than the Xeon did at 1.2 GHz less on stock cooling.  I dunno if I won the silicon lottery or the H100i is just that beastly of a cooler.  Probably a bit of both.  I'll probably knock it up another 100 MHz in the near future, stress test it, then go from there. 

Edited April 11, 2015 by Keyrock

[Bartimaeus]

How much did you pay for the 4790k?

[Keyrock]

How much did you pay for the 4790k?

$275

 

Edit:  Also, bumped the CPU up to 4.7 GHz and now for the stress testing.  Just ran Unigine Heaven 5 times in a row at 1440p, ultra settings, extreme tesselation, 4X AA without a hitch, though that stresses GPU more than it does CPU.  Now for MPrime (Prime95).  I'll run it all night when I go to sleep.

Edited April 11, 2015 by Keyrock

[Bartimaeus]

Hah. You and I have different definitions of "mad cheap". I was thinking more along the lines of my $100 for my 4770k...haha.

 

I haven't bothered with overclocking at all, because...why? I have so much more processing power than I'll conceivably need for the next few years, at the very least. After that, games will hopefully become quad threaded instead of still mostly dual-threaded, which should make it even less of a need.

[Keyrock]

I wish I had a hookup to get a chip for a hundred bucks, but I don't, so I'm happy to get it for about $60 less than I would normally from Newegg or Tiger Direct.

 

As for the overclocking, I do a lot of encoding, so every bit of juice I can squeeze out of the CPU and the extra RAM I got all help cut that time down.  Not enough to justify the expense, mind you, but I do have this badass liquid cooler and the best damn thermal paste money can buy, so I might as well put them to good use. 

Edited April 11, 2015 by Keyrock

[Sarex]

I think this is the monitor I'm going for. It's 100 dollars more expensive in my country, but performance wise it's pretty solid. The lag is ok, for it's size and type of panel and the refresh rate is 60. Probably gonna pull the trigger on it next month or the one after.

Edited April 19, 2015 by Sarex

[Fighter]

I'm waiting for a reasonably priced (compared to TITAN) 6 gb card to come out. 980Ti maybe. Some games are already sticking some 6 gb requirements out there (even if they've been BS for now). I like the 980 but I want a future proof one.

[Keyrock]

I think this is the monitor I'm going for. It's 100 dollars more expensive in my country, but performance wise it's pretty solid. The lag is ok, for it's size and type of panel and the refresh rate is 60. Probably gonna pull the trigger on it next month or the one after.

That's a pretty sweet monitor.  You're going to need a beast of a video card (or a SLI/crossfire setup) to render any remotely demanding game at 3440x1440, though.  I have an obscenely overpriced monster GPU to power my 2560x1440 monitor, and that's significantly less pixels to render per frame.

[Sarex]

That's a pretty sweet monitor.  You're going to need a beast of a video card (or a SLI/crossfire setup) to render any remotely demanding game at 3440x1440, though.  I have an obscenely overpriced monster GPU to power my 2560x1440 monitor, and that's significantly less pixels to render per frame.

 

Pretty much. I'll probably wait for the next gen of graphics and get the x80 series.

[Sarex]

OK, it's crunch time and I'm kind of having doubts about the LG. The price is not really the issue, I'm just having doubts because of it being ultra wide. Also there are some build quality concerns, as I found out on deeper investigation but they are not common so it's not really a big issue.

 

I think it's going to be the LG-34UM95-P or Dell U2715H. I really like the Dell because you can change the orientation of the screen to vertical, and that is very useful for reading manga/comics.

 

So what do you guys think is ultra wide really that useful or is it better to go for a standard aspect ratio. Any thoughts and opinions are appreciated.

[Humanoid]

If I had my time again I've probably have gone for a 30-32" centre screen flanked by two smaller screens in portrait orientation. As it is I'm stuck with dual 27" displays which is making it very awkward to fit in a third screen - but at any rate, I'm waiting for the next model refresh before deciding what to do.

 

As for other options, Philips do a 40" 4K monitor for less than $1000, which is interesting. The reason it's so cheap is because it's a VA panel, as opposed to IPS. VA panels are used in most TVs, and compared to IPS has less vivid colours, but better black levels. If that's too big, which is probably the case for a fair few people, there's also a 32" VA panel that's being used by some vendors, the BenQ BL3200PT is one.

[Malcador]

980Ti is out next month it seems, late in the month though. Though I doubt that will press down 980 prices. Might as well buy my stuff now, before the CAD gets worse.

[Azdeus]

I hope this thread is appropriate for this.

 

My mates have recently upgraded their riggs, and since I'm poor and have no compunction about nicking left over pieces I've gotten hold of a couple of DD3 ram sticks, more specifically 2 corsair cmv4gx3m1a1333c9. I've tried slotting them into my Asus m4a77td pro motherboard and... nothing. First time I paired them in the same slots as my old pair(DIMM_A1 & DIMM_A2) and it did'nt work, I tried them in B1 B2, I've tried A1 B1 and A2 B2. Nothing works. The only thing that happens when the computer powers on is that the fans start and the lights for my graphics card starts up.

 

The manual states that the board can handle up to 16Gb of RAM, Max 4Gb per slot - were talking 2x4Gb here, so that should be fine. The memory sticks have a cheap look to them, no heatsink like mine has or such, but they're still supposedly from Corsair.

 

Does anyone have any idea of what I might be missing?

 

I should add that I'm scared to death of flashing my motherboard, I really would like to avoid that.

 

I'm grateful for any help.

Edited April 27, 2015 by Azdeus

[Malcador]

Can you see if both RAM sticks are good, in another PC or something ? Barring that that sounds like the motherboard has a fault

[Bartimaeus]

Also, try just one stick at a time. Motherboards can be weird. I've had new computers inexplicably refuse to boot after sticking both sticks of RAM in...then after taking one out, it booting successfully, and sticking the one taken out back in after shutting it down, and it never being a problem again.

Edited April 27, 2015 by Bartimaeus

[Humanoid]

Heatspreaders on RAM are largely decorative and serve no real purpose except at the very bleeding edge where the chips are pushed past their design limits, so that's not a concern. As for the problem itself, the only real thing I can add to the above is try resetting the BIOS, there may be a jumper pin on the board for this purpose, or use the ol' remove battery trick. Can't think of much else, unless you're getting some beeps from the board, which you can then Google for their meaning.

[Gorgon]

If I had my time again I've probably have gone for a 30-32" centre screen flanked by two smaller screens in portrait orientation. As it is I'm stuck with dual 27" displays which is making it very awkward to fit in a third screen - but at any rate, I'm waiting for the next model refresh before deciding what to do.

 

As for other options, Philips do a 40" 4K monitor for less than $1000, which is interesting. The reason it's so cheap is because it's a VA panel, as opposed to IPS. VA panels are used in most TVs, and compared to IPS has less vivid colours, but better black levels. If that's too big, which is probably the case for a fair few people, there's also a 32" VA panel that's being used by some vendors, the BenQ BL3200PT is one.

I have been looking at that one. Bad colour - in a very relative sense of course, but still, bad marks for colour reproduction and factory calibration, but that's to be expected. It's not an IPS panel.

 

Been close to ordering it a few times too. People are actually saying that it's too big. Is that possible. I think what stopped me is the lack of tilt. Yes you do want tilt even if your screen is the size of a door. 

[Azdeus]

 Appreciate it guys!

 

Can you see if both RAM sticks are good, in another PC or something ? Barring that that sounds like the motherboard has a fault

 

Also, try just one stick at a time. Motherboards can be weird. I've had new computers inexplicably refuse to boot after sticking both sticks of RAM in...then after taking one out, it booting successfully, and sticking the one taken out back in after shutting it down, and it never being a problem again.

 

I sadly don't have another rig to try them in, but they did work a couple of days ago. I've also tried with a single Corsair Vengeance stick and that did'nt work either. :/

 

A single stick of my old RAM's worked fine though.

 

Heatspreaders on RAM are largely decorative and serve no real purpose except at the very bleeding edge where the chips are pushed past their design limits, so that's not a concern. As for the problem itself, the only real thing I can add to the above is try resetting the BIOS, there may be a jumper pin on the board for this purpose, or use the ol' remove battery trick. Can't think of much else, unless you're getting some beeps from the board, which you can then Google for their meaning.

 

I tried pulling the battery with the lack of a plier to move the jumper, and I got it to boot - first time with the single 4Gb Corsair Vengeance stick. I set BIOS to it's default settings and powered down, switched to the dual sticks I wanted and then it would'nt boot. Reset the battery again, the computer booted and wanted me to fix the BIOS settings again - set to default and continued; Also noticed that POST reported 8Gb of Unganged 1333 RAM. Yay!

 

Got the windows loading logo and then when I arrived past the loading logo and it was time for the login screen I got the soundeffect and then it went black.

Keyboard was'nt dead or anything like that, atleast numlock still toggled, but I could'nt see anything.

 

Rebooted and I could'nt get a boot screen.

 

 

Stuck my old sticks back in (But in the black slots this time, instead of A1 & A2) and now I'm sitting here typing.

Edited April 28, 2015 by Azdeus

[Humanoid]

Given as you can get that far now, you can grab Memtest and run it against each of the 'new' sticks individually.

[Azdeus]

Did that, nothing wrong with them at all.

 

No matter what I do, they only boot once when the bios has been reset, no matter what settings I try to do it does'nt work - but I have noticed this; Normally when I change any settings in BIOS and exit the computer does a "soft" reboot, but with the 'new' sticks the computer does a "hard" reboot and completely shuts down before powering on a few seconds later.

[Humanoid]

Maybe have a fiddle with the RAM settings, maybe it's not using the right timings profile, or perhaps even giving it the wrong voltage. Select the most conservative XMP profile, or set them manually to what the sticks are specced at (9-9-9-24 @ 1.5V). Bumping up the voltage a little (I'd cap out at 1.65V) if it continues to be unstable.