The PC-building/hardware knowledge thread

[est]

Glad you got a somewhat positive outcome, Nodaisho!

Also, yeah the 900 is pretty cantankerous and somewhat reticent to let you come away without at least a token injury.

[Melodic]

So ArmA2 thrashes my 4870 something fierce. nVidia's new offerings at the end of summer had better be rad as hell.

[est]

You could always turn the graphics detail down a bit?  It is odd, because I took a look at some screenshots for that game and wasn't very impressed.  Maybe it's an inefficient graphics engine?

Also, what are nVidia supposed to be doing?  I have seen that AMD will probably have a new DX11 card out before/with the Win 7 release in October, but haven't really seen much of a response from nVidia.

[Reed]

It could be a problem with your 4870's temperatures. Have you  been monitoring that, including VRAM temps? Also, do you have an aftermarket cooler on? Some of them don't properly cool the 4870, and I've heard of a lot of problems arising from that.

[MrBlu]

Bringing GuitarFreak back.

Also:
http://aquariumsuppliesplus.com/pro482960.html

[MrBlu]

Grrr, my RAM refuses to do 1333mhz...

[bicostp]

Does anyone know if Steam distributes the same .gcf files for 32 bit and 64 bit versions of Windows? (Or even if there are separate 64 bit versions?) I'm building a new comp and running Win7 RC on it (because it has 4 GB of RAM on top of the 800-something the graphics card has), and want to copy the files off my laptop (which I had been using for games), which is running XP MCE 32 bit because I'm lazy and don't feel like waiting for everything to download, on top of all the other games that aren't loaded on my laptop. Something tells me it generates different versions of hl2.exe accordingly when it finishes downloading but I'm not sure.

Thanks!

[GuitarFreak]

Bringing GuitarFreak back.

Also:
http://aquariumsuppliesplus.com/pro482960.html

I wouldn't use either of those for a computer. The top one because of the 1" and 3/4" inlet/outlet ports would be hell to get tubing on to, and 1" tubing wouldn't work with pretty much every block/rad out there. The bottom one would be the best, but you'd need to have the power cord come out of your computer somewhere.

[MrBlu]

Yo.

I've had bigger plans since this though.

Using two cheaper 350+G/hr. pumps with that thing (still cheaper than a MCP665, two loops baby!), using an car heater core (this) in an Antec 900 I'm getting at a good deal. I'ma drop in there an i7 920 with a D-Tek FuZion v1 or a Heatkiller Rev 3.0, a GTX 280, with a D-Tek FuZion GPU block, or Heatkiller GPU block, 3x2GB OCZ Platinum DDR3 1600 Cas 7 (don't tell anyone, it's $100 at Geeks.com) aaand Cooler Master Ultimate PSU. All on a MSI X58M board.

I'm also thinking of having a 200mm rad custom made, and sandwiching it between the 200mm Big Boy fan and 4 of these.

I don't wanna say much else, but here's a hint of what else I'm doing.

[ackblom12]

Finally getting around to building the PC next week. Here's the parts:

Motherboard - http://tinyurl.com/nasfkq

CPU - http://tinyurl.com/dfnb32

RAM - 2 sticks of http://tinyurl.com/n96q8j

I still need to get a new Power Supply and video card at some point, but what I have will work and this will at least get me running so I can have a working computer for 2 weeks before Windows 7 comes out and I have to reinstall windows again.

If I had the cash I'd be getting this refurb http://tinyurl.com/kmohua but it will have to wait. I'm a little paranoid about putting that much cash into a refurb as well. Either way, I'm upgrading from a 8800GTS, so pretty much anything costing more than $50 right now will be a pretty decent upgrade.

[ackblom12]

I got my PC all up and ready!

I actually went ahead and made a new thread for it just because I ended up taking pictures and making a shoddy tutorial on how to lap your heatsink.

On the other hand, I've been overclocking and I've thus far been able to get the Processor running at 3.8ghz with no problems. I'm going to be installing some monitoring software before I go any further, but with how easy it's gone up to this point I might be able to hit 4ghz, well see.

Edit - http://forums.questionablecontent.net/index.php/topic,23850.0.html

[morbid79]

Meet puttputt:

[est]

Great rig, Mike.  Are any of those cards an X2 or is it "only" tri-xfire?  When I get some decent money again I'm gonna have to upgrade a tad, but for now I'm stuck with what I got

[MrBlu]

Hellooooo dual socket. Specs?

[morbid79]

Dual Xeon 5520
16GB ECC DDR3
6*300GB WD Velociraptor running RAID10
LSI SAS Controller
3*ATI 4890/1GB, no X2 (4890 hasn't been X2'd yet, that I know of)
Asus Xonar DX sound card
LG DVD burner
PC Power and Cooling 1200W PSU
Lian Li X2000 case

[est]

Jesus

[evilbobthebob]

That's more like a frigging server than a desktop 

[morbid79]

Well, tugger, my prior workstation, is a dual 5420. 

Bertha is a new server, dual 5506 + 6 1.5TB drives + 3ware 9690 RAID card running RAID50 + 36GB DDR3.  Mulk is my older server, dual Opterson 275 + 8GB RAM + 8 320GB drives + 3ware 9550 RAID card running RAID5.

[ackblom12]

ATI's 5870 and 5850 cards were just put on sale. From waht I've read on this and Nvidia's 300 series, Nvidia may be giving up the top spot this gen.

http://tinyurl.com/l3qops


http://tinyurl.com/nh5g7r


Also a good chunk cheaper than I thought they would be.

[est]

Giving up the top spot?  I thought ATI were already on top?  The 4890 is faster than everything but the 295, which is a 285X2.  If a 4890X2 came out it would be the fastest this gen, no?

[morbid79]

I'm pretty interested in the new ATI cards, especially how they can run multiple monitors.  Mmm.

[GuitarFreak]

Dual Xeon 5520
16GB ECC DDR3
6*300GB WD Velociraptor running RAID10
LSI SAS Controller
3*ATI 4890/1GB, no X2 (4890 hasn't been X2'd yet, that I know of)
Asus Xonar DX sound card
LG DVD burner
PC Power and Cooling 1200W PSU
Lian Li X2000 case

I would have gone with 1.5TB drives for the space. They're just as fast as the raptors and offer a shitton more space.
My drive

Also, if anyone is looking for one, I'm selling an XSPC Razor GTX 260/280 water block, also my EVGA 790i SLI mobo w/NB/SB block. PM for info.

[est]

There is a school of thought that believes you should not be using very large drives in RAID arrays due to the increasing possibility of a rebuild failure and data loss.

A single 8+2 rebuild with 1.5 TB drives reads and writes about 28.5 TB (read 1.5 TB*9 drives, write 1.5 TB*10 drives). That means that in a perfect world using vendor specifications, we can expect one out of every 312 rebuilds to fail today with data loss. Moving to the next-generation 2 TB drives, this value drops to every 234 rebuilds, and with 4 TB drives it drops to every 117 rebuilds.

Also, perhaps he is using the machine for something that is better served by the VelociRaptor's faster access time?  I dunno.

[GuitarFreak]

Possibly. I don't really know a whole lot about RAID. It's pretty much the only thing dealing with computers I haven't done besides extreme cooling D:

[morbid79]

The file server is running 6*1.5TB in a RAID50 configuration.  I had a power failure (tripped the breaker) and it had to rebuild.  Took a solid day to get that done.  No loss, though.  Phew!

Also, workstation needs a bit more disk access speed, hence the RAID10 + faster drives.  Games and 3D rendering are fun!

[BankHoldUp]

I'm pretty interested in the new ATI cards, especially how they can run multiple monitors.  Mmm.

I was running three off one 3870X2 up until the latest driver update. Now, it only wants to recognize two of them. I tried rolling back and that got the third working, but turned off the other two.

I'm going to wait to make a concerted effort to fix it when I have a complete copy of W7. I'm currently rocking the Beta 2 version and it is screwing all sorts of things up in very minor but irritating ways.

[MrBlu]

Hey guys, look what I got...


















TAGAN BLACK PEARL

[Candle]

so i got a video card for xmas

it's EVGA's nvidia geforce 9800 GT

i am going to install it and windows 7 shortly. hopefully it will be a smooth ride.

this'll make my specs: 4 GB DDR2 RAM
                               2.5GHz Duo-Core Intel(want to learn to overclock this shit)
                                nvidia geforce 9800 GT

[Nodaisho]

Is it just me, or has the cost of RAM suddenly jumped? I thought it was a good bit cheaper when I was looking at it while shopping for a replacement mobo. I'm looking at $75 for the cheapest 2x2gig DDR2 setup I can find on newegg.

[LTK]

On the topic of performance: Can anyone give me some tips for getting more bang out of my hardware? I've got a gaming laptop with a 2GHz Dual-core processor, a Geforce 9600 video card and 4GB of RAM, and I feel like it can do more than it does. Here's the thing, I tried that new multiplayer FPS in zero G, Shattered Horizon, and on an occasion when people on the server were gushing about their setup, I found that my average framerate on minimum settings was much lower than what the other's claimed theirs to be, namely around 15 fps, even though I believe this system to be fairly well-equipped for games. Are my expectations too high or am I doing something not entirely right?

[evilbobthebob]

Your expectations are possibly a little high. I have almost exactly the same specs on my laptop (2GHz dual core, 4GB RAM, Geforce 9600M) and on Audiosurf I can't use maximum settings at 1280x800 or I get jumps. On STALKER I have to turn the settings down somewhat for smooth gameplay. Source games tend to run really well. I think the real problem is overheating. Nvidia cards tend to get hot, and in a laptop this is made worse. If I'm in a cold room I tend to get a few more FPS for longer periods; performance deteriorates as the card warms up. There's not much you can do to get better performance apart from turning down graphics settings, messing about with background processes or just getting a more powerful computer.

[Chesire Cat]

On the topic of performance: Can anyone give me some tips for getting more bang out of my hardware? I've got a gaming laptop with a 2GHz Dual-core processor, a Geforce 9600 video card and 4GB of RAM, and I feel like it can do more than it does. Here's the thing, I tried that new multiplayer FPS in zero G, Shattered Horizon, and on an occasion when people on the server were gushing about their setup, I found that my average framerate on minimum settings was much lower than what the other's claimed theirs to be, namely around 15 fps, even though I believe this system to be fairly well-equipped for games. Are my expectations too high or am I doing something not entirely right?

1. Right click on the battery icon in the tray.
2. Go to "Power Icons"
3. In "High Performance" click "Change Plan Settings"
4. Click "Change Advanced Power Settings"
5. Under "Processor Power Management" make sure the Min/Max values are both 100% when plugged in

What this does is prevents your lappy from throttling back the processor power in order to conserve power when plugged in. You can actually test if this is the problem by looking at the "Resource Monitor" from the "Performance" tab in the Task Manager. If it says the CPU max frequency is anything but 100% it is being throttled artificially.

[Chesire Cat]

Your expectations are possibly a little high. I have almost exactly the same specs on my laptop (2GHz dual core, 4GB RAM, Geforce 9600M) and on Audiosurf I can't use maximum settings at 1280x800 or I get jumps. On STALKER I have to turn the settings down somewhat for smooth gameplay. Source games tend to run really well. I think the real problem is overheating. Nvidia cards tend to get hot, and in a laptop this is made worse. If I'm in a cold room I tend to get a few more FPS for longer periods; performance deteriorates as the card warms up. There's not much you can do to get better performance apart from turning down graphics settings, messing about with background processes or just getting a more powerful computer.

Dont be afraid of opening up your lappy and cleaning out the dust from the fan (blow it outwards from the inside, not inwards from the outside) and make sure all airflow vents on the bottom are clear of dust.

I updated my lappy from a T5550 (1.83ghz) to a T9300 (2.5 ghz) without any additional cooling or even applying more conductive past.

My specs are pretty much the same as yours through.

Intel Core 2 Duo T9300: 2.5ghz
Nvidia 9600m
Only 3 gigs of ram though, I need to get a second 2gig stick
Running Vista Home Premium

And I am currently playing Arkham Asylum at 1366x768 with no Anti-aliasing, Ambiant Occlusion and Motion Blur, everything else is maxed. Borderlands runs even better, as does Bioshock. All 3 are Unreal engine games. Both Oblivion engine games; Oblivion and Fallout 3 run well. All Source games run spiffy, would like to give Crysis a go, I havent tried Dragon Age as Im pretty sure that will be the hardcap where my lappy cant handle it, maybe with more ram itll be alright.

[evilbobthebob]

Hmm, I might try and upgrade my processor some time. The processor itself stays pretty cool; it is just the graphics card that gets hot, sometimes hot enough to make the laptop shut itself down, which worries me. I do clean it out quite often, but I probably need to open it up properly because that hasn't been done since I got it.

[Chesire Cat]

What I pulled off my headsink (which is a grill blocking the fans outward airflow) it was literally a carpet. Like I was able to pull it off in one piece and toss it, not drop it, into the garbage without it falling apart. Mind you, getting at it was exceptionally difficult, though with a air duster it shouldnt be so bad since you are blowing out of your computer and not in, you shouldnt hurt and circuitry. The bottom airflow holes were just as bad too.

My computer is an Acer Aspire 9620 and has never shut down due to heat, even when I play with it on my bed.

[evilbobthebob]

Mine's a Samsung R560. I think the problem is the form-fitting casing, which must reduce airflow. It's only 15.4" as well, so the parts are all quite close together. I'll have to take a look inside.

[Candle]

my specs: CPU 2.5GHz Dual-Core Intel (supposedly really great CPU for overclocking but i digress)
    EVGA GeForce 9800 GT(512MB) Video Card
    4GB DDR2 RAM
    Windows 7 64bit


would be totally interested in learning how to Overclock my CPU if i didn't already know it's a pain in the ass and even when done correctly can eventually result in frying your processor.

soo... guess i'm wondering if anyone is familiar with overclocking: is it worth it, how hard is it to learn etc.

[DavidGrohl]

My new Comp :

Core i7 920 ( 2.66 GHz running at 3.25 GHz with stock cooling )
Corsair 6GB RAM ( 3x2GB -- 3 slots open )
Corsair PSU ( was on sale for 1/2 price . . awesome deal )
500GB HD ( don't see myself using more than this as I don't save video after watching it )
HD Radeon 4770  ( currently runs everything I want to play on max @ 1920x1080 )

I like it.  It makes Empire Total War battles shine.

[LTK]

On the topic of performance: Can anyone give me some tips for getting more bang out of my hardware? I've got a gaming laptop with a 2GHz Dual-core processor, a Geforce 9600 video card and 4GB of RAM, and I feel like it can do more than it does. Here's the thing, I tried that new multiplayer FPS in zero G, Shattered Horizon, and on an occasion when people on the server were gushing about their setup, I found that my average framerate on minimum settings was much lower than what the other's claimed theirs to be, namely around 15 fps, even though I believe this system to be fairly well-equipped for games. Are my expectations too high or am I doing something not entirely right?

1. Right click on the battery icon in the tray.
2. Go to "Power Icons"
3. In "High Performance" click "Change Plan Settings"
4. Click "Change Advanced Power Settings"
5. Under "Processor Power Management" make sure the Min/Max values are both 100% when plugged in

What this does is prevents your lappy from throttling back the processor power in order to conserve power when plugged in. You can actually test if this is the problem by looking at the "Resource Monitor" from the "Performance" tab in the Task Manager. If it says the CPU max frequency is anything but 100% it is being throttled artificially.

Thanks, but turns out it was already at 100%. I've got the definitive version of Windows 7 on the way (running RC now), so I'll see how that performs after reformatting. I get a feeling all the stuff Steam installs starts to clog up my processes.

[Chesire Cat]

Def check to see what background progs are eating processes and memory. If its something you can close do it, if its something you dont recognize, google it. Things as simple as iTunes and Winamp (via some sound drivers and HD crawling for new music) take a decent sized chunk outta both.

[Miles]

You won't really get much out of Shattered Horizons with that setup. It's a VERY processor and GPU dependant game (Hell, it was designed by futuremark, they intend to push EVERYTHING to it's limit). Considering the MINIMUM requirement on the GPU is an 8800GT your 9600M isn't going to do very well i'm afraid, and without any more solid data on your processor i'd imagine that's pushing itself as hard as it can too.

[est]

Yeah, if I remember correctly a 9600M < 8800GT performance-wise, unfortunately.

[Miles]

Yeah, if I remember correctly a 9600M < 8800GT performance-wise, unfortunately.

Massively so, IIRC the 9600M has HALF the stream processors of the 8800GT, and a 128bit memory interface as opposed to 256bit.

Bad times!

[Trollstormur]

here's my proposed build. anyone see any issues?

[Reed]

I would go for a better brand of PSU. Something like a Corsair.

[look out! Ninjas!]

Corsair or Seasonic 750 watt models would be good for that.

Anyway, my near-future rig is as such:

i7 860
Gigabyte P55A-UD4P
Giel 4G DDR3 1333
Noctua U12P SE (2 fans)
HIS 5850
Pioneer DVD-RW
WD Black 1TB
Seasonic 750w Modular
Lancool k62
Dell Generic Keyboard
Logitech MX518
Acer X233HB 23" LCD

Got everything except the videocard (of which there are huge shortages) and the case (of which there are slightly smaller shortages)

[est]

I am putting off upgrading until Superspeed USB & 6gb sata are in a decent board.  Not sure what cpu I want just yet.  It's be nice to wait for the new i7, but it'll be massively expensive D:  Also waiting for the Fermi cards to hit, to see what the performance is like & what happens to prices of existing cards.

[Alex C]

Today is a sad day. A young cousin of mine had me stop over to look at the machine he was having problems slapping together. He did everything right... except for the bit about making sure you put all the standoffs between the motherboard and the case. Was really more of a post mortem than trouble shooting. I think he knew there was no coming back for it though, or at least, I hope to god he did.

Also, I like how I just noticed that Reed linked the exact PSU I already ordered to replace my old one.

[look out! Ninjas!]

My case came with the standoffs pre-installed. One less tiny thing to be fucking around with I guess.

[philharmonic]

Well at least it wasn't as wetaded as what I did last week.......
....bought a shiny new Asus mobo (P5QL/EPU)  and Coolermaster power supply (600W)  to put into a toast Acer tower. Mobo is ATX. Tower case is AT in other words WOULDN"T FIT !!!!!!
Gah I'm such a tool sometimes..

Gots a shiny new tower on order (Coolermaster Elite RC 330)