Gyro Shares a Bit About His Computer Refresh

[Gyro]

I just wanted to share my recent PC systems refresh with some folks who would likely appreciate it :D

 

Sapphire ATI 6970 -> EVGA GTX Titan SC (Usually jumps up to around 1050-1100 boost with the settings I've put on it)

4.4 ghz i7-2600k -> 4.4 ghz i7-4770k (Given that a lot of the Haswell chips were duds for OC, I suppose I should feel lucky I didn't lose any hertz)

ASRock Fatal1ty Z68 Professional Gen3 -> ASRock OC Formula Z87

Intel 128 mb SSD -> Samsung 256 gb SSD (Four times as fast! :D)

16 gigabytes of 1866mhz memory -> Same (Didn't seem like much sense in increasing size or speed)

 

I ran Furmark on maximum settings and the Titan just sailed along at a smooth 30 fps, so I think I should be good for the next three years or so!

[TechAngel85]

Nice rig! I'm planning on building two over the next year. One will by my HTPC running linux (maybe Windows 8) and XBMC. It will have at least a 1T hard drive to house all my movies and music and will be able to do some light gaming via emulators...Mario Brothers anyone? :D The second will be my gaming PC for all my gaming needs. Currently I'm using an Asus G7 laptop and it's treating my very well; however, I would like to have a rig that can handle most games on high/ultra settings.

[phazer11]

Yeah that does look nice mate. How much did that TITAN set you back ~$1100?  Just a bit overkill IMO but it should still be glorious for a few years.

 

I'm personally looking to refresh my desktop as well though I don't need many parts. I need to get a new graphics card desperately (the one currently in my desktop is a GTX 460 768 with a VERY high OC) My processor will probably be ok for a while it's a 2500k with a 5 GHz OC I have a lot of cooling. If I can get the dough I'll probably go for a full watercooling loop my old H60 all-in-one cooler croaked so it's on air atm which is a bit weak for a 5GHz OC so I've decreased the OC to 4.5 GHz until I can get proper cooling. I have a bit over $110 through the EVGA store to spend so if I see a deal I'll probably get a GTX 670 4GB (most likely) or 680 4GB (only if it's a steal).

 

When I saw some SSD's on sale in the later part of April I jumped on it. Two Corsair Neutron GTX 240GB SATA3 SSD's for $340 with shipping.

 

Course I'll have to wait a bit my old ASUS G73SW laptop's (Best Buy GIMPED version with the 1GB Video Card) circuitry for the battery and power jack (laptop couldn't even stay on while plugged in) fried. I'm hard on electronics and most people think I'm crazy for buying from Best Buy but their replacement plan is AWESOME I got a new ASUS G75VX and only had to pay for a new plan.

 

It's what I'm using for Skyrim right now and I have to say I'm surprised it's playing Skyrim with an ENB as well as it is (up to 160FPS with VSync disabled and about 35 on average with heavy ENB).

[xiamthewalrusx]

Nice. Samsung makes the best SSDs by a mile, I also like the switch to an nVidia card. Their CUDA core architecture demolishes AMD.

 

@techangel: check out a front end called gamex if you are running emulators. You won't regret it ;)

[Gyro]

Yeah that does look nice mate. How much did that TITAN set you back ~$1100?  Just a bit overkill IMO but it should still be glorious for a few years.

 

I'm personally looking to refresh my desktop as well though I don't need many parts. I need to get a new graphics card desperately (the one currently in my desktop is a GTX 460 768 with a VERY high OC) My processor will probably be ok for a while it's a 2500k with a 5 GHz OC I have a lot of cooling. If I can get the dough I'll probably go for a full watercooling loop my old H60 all-in-one cooler croaked so it's on air atm which is a bit weak for a 5GHz OC so I've decreased the OC to 4.5 GHz until I can get proper cooling. I have a bit over $110 through the EVGA store to spend so if I see a deal I'll probably get a GTX 670 4GB (most likely) or 680 4GB (only if it's a steal).

 

When I saw some SSD's on sale in the later part of April I jumped on it. Two Corsair Neutron GTX 240GB SATA3 SSD's for $340 with shipping.

 

Course I'll have to wait a bit my old ASUS G73SW laptop's (Best Buy GIMPED version with the 1GB Video Card) circuitry for the battery and power jack (laptop couldn't even stay on while plugged in) fried. I'm hard on electronics and most people think I'm crazy for buying from Best Buy but their replacement plan is AWESOME I got a new ASUS G75VX and only had to pay for a new plan.

 

It's what I'm using for Skyrim right now and I have to say I'm surprised it's playing Skyrim with an ENB as well as it is (up to 160FPS with VSync disabled and about 35 on average with heavy ENB).

 

Actually, I got it for $1020. The Superclocked EVGA Titan and the normal EVGA Titan both cost 1020$ on Newegg, oddly enough. And yes, it is total, glorious overkill. I can't wait to run Skyrim Revisited on it :D I put the Haswell on a Corsair H90 and I've been quite pleased, even though the instillation instructions were written by a poorly-paid chimp with a drinking problem.

 

The rest is air-cooled; I have a Corsair 800D case and I put some extra fans up top to get some active push. It's a little noisy but you stop noticing once your attention is focused on something else. Given that I plan to be using headphones (to spare my fiance from various explosions and death screams) it matters even less. I didn't really want to dick around with a Full Watercool All The Time setup, and fortunately the blower on the Titan is just dandy. Even if it is upside-down.

 

That's good to hear about Best Buy, I'll keep that in mind. And I agree on your processor-my upgrade is kind of silly given the lower OC on Haswell compared to Sandy Bridge, but I figured since this will be my last refresh for a while I figured I should get something new, and Haswell is the best of what's new.

 

Can't figure out how to get another quote on here without screwing up my post, so techangel85:

 

I'm using my 'old' parts to build an HTPC. I'll probably keep it Windows.

[EssArrBee]

Are you going with an HTPC specific case or are you just using a PC tower and jamming it into an entertainment center? I had windows 7 on it and it's not the best setup, but it did the job fine enough with a wireless keyboard that has a trackpad built in. I should probably upgrade, though I'm quite afraid I'll get right back in to making it an obsession again like I had a while ago. You cannot stuff a gaming rig into a Denon receiver unless you want to try and burn down your house for insurance money.

[phazer11]

I actually have two huge cases. I won a CoolerMaster Storm Trooper Case along with 5 CoolerMaster Excaliber and 5 CoolerMaster TurbineMaster Mach 1.8 120mm fans, a CoolerMaster 1050W Silent Pro Hybrid, CoolerMaster Quickfire Pro keyboard, and a kill-a-watt for an Overclocking power draw contest using 3 graphics cards (my current wimpy GTX 460 768mb and two GTX 450's (I would use them in SLI but they're mismatched gigabyte GDDR3 and EVGA GDDR5)) and you'll never guess who sponsored the contest :P. My old HAF 932 (custom paint) is just collecting dust with my old fans in it waiting for re-purposing. If I win or am gifted new parts (most of a system) I'm going to gift my friend this one with my old HAF 932.

 

As far as entertainment centers go I have my Onkyo Surround Sound hooked up to TV/Desktop Monitor via an HDMI cable. There's also one HDMI cable for my Desktop, PS3 feeding into the receiver and I still have multiple connection options if I need to hook something else up (3 HDMI, 4 Composite and RCA, 2 Optical Audio, and a few others). I use my PS3 for most stuff it's nice Blu-Ray playback and all I need to do is either encode or mux video into a .mp4 and viola plays on the PS3 via the HDD plus it does Youtube and Netflix.

[Gyro]

Are you going with an HTPC specific case or are you just using a PC tower and jamming it into an entertainment center? I had windows 7 on it and it's not the best setup, but it did the job fine enough with a wireless keyboard that has a trackpad built in. I should probably upgrade, though I'm quite afraid I'll get right back in to making it an obsession again like I had a while ago. You cannot stuff a gaming rig into a Denon receiver unless you want to try and burn down your house for insurance money.

 

I'm not sure yet; I'll be looking at that once it becomes necessary (I'm moving into a new place in a couple of weeks, and once we decide on a TV I'll probably look at what we need for the center).  Probably an HTPC specific case unless there's some crazy reason not to.  Media server will probably also be the main file server, so I'll want to have plenty of space for drives.

 

Phazer, how are you running three cards at once without SLI on one of them? Or am I misunderstanding your post?

[phazer11]

I'm not anymore but the competition was to load up three GFX cards and get the highest draw possible (on video) via any means in my case I loaded up IIRC Furmark for one of them and used Folding @ Home to load up the other two. Apparently CoolerMaster was pleased with the results everyone got so they decided to give us all the cool swag I mentioned last time.

 

If you're looking for roominess nothing beats a Full Tower case unless you go with a server shell or similar professional rack. As far as performance I've never needed or wanted one but several friends have made some rather nice HTPC (I still prefer the PS3) with Micro ATX boards and Mid Tower Cases. Most of them use i5's I think with 4-8GB of RAM Blu-Ray playback (file based at least) is easy enough using VLC using the "Use GPU Accellerated Decoding" option under Input and Codecs I think some of them use GTX 640's (or whatever the highest GDDR3 EVGA 600 series one is)

[Gyro]

I'm not anymore but the competition was to load up three GFX cards and get the highest draw possible (on video) via any means in my case I loaded up IIRC Furmark for one of them and used Folding @ Home to load up the other two. Apparently CoolerMaster was pleased with the results everyone got so they decided to give us all the cool swag I mentioned last time.

 

If you're looking for roominess nothing beats a Full Tower case unless you go with a server shell or similar professional rack. As far as performance I've never needed or wanted one but several friends have made some rather nice HTPC (I still prefer the PS3) with Micro ATX boards and Mid Tower Cases. Most of them use i5's I think with 4-8GB of RAM Blu-Ray playback (file based at least) is easy enough using VLC using the "Use GPU Accellerated Decoding" option under Input and Codecs I think some of them use GTX 640's (or whatever the highest GDDR3 EVGA 600 series one is)

Thanks for the advice!  I'll take a look at full towers and server racks in particular.

[phazer11]

I'm partial to CoolerMaster cases just because I know they're made to last but NZXT and Corsair both make some nice ones. CoolerMaster wise if you want fan control without much fuss or an external fan controller the one like I won is very nice if you like white and want to see more of your computer's guts the upgraded version is a bit more expensive but tbh I can't tell they changed anything. Otherwise I recommend the HAF 932 and HAF X. The Storm Trooper and the Stryker have dust filters though and it makes things a lot less of a hassle to clean plus the handle on top makes it easier to move and I believe it's easier to get radiators in for watercooling loops than the 932 and X.

 

Cosair wise I'd recommend the 800T (I think that's the one) and for NZXT the Phantom is nice my friend has one though I'm not a fan of white.

 

The Stryker is the mid price of the bunch there. Corsair is always a premium and I think the Phantom is on sale atm.

 

As for cable management I cannot speak for either the Corsair or Phantom but the Trooper (and by extension the Stryker) was much better than the HAF 932 which I do own I do think the Phantom had a similar grommet system though.