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The Computer Question Thread


aznriptide859

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Cool, well I bounce between Suffolk and London so if your profile's correct then it wouldn't be too far out of the way.  A case of pricing up components now I suppose, where do you usually use?

 

 

I use Scan, Aria are good too.

 

Scan do a today only deal that almost always has a "self assembly only" bundle of parts.

They are usually bloody good deals but don't have a  GPU leaving you to buy a graphics card yourself.

 

For probably less than your £2000 budget you could get a damn tidy PC.

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Hm.. so they do.  The one today for example does come with everything you need minus the GPU and a HDD, not a bad spec at all, for £350, steal.  Feel like it could take a while (if ever) that they'd have the upper end parts on such a deal though I'd have thought.

 

I was thinking (so far) an i7 5-series, GTX 980, 250+ SSD along with 1 hybrid drive, at least 16 gig of memory and all inside one of these: http://www.scan.co.uk/products/nzxt-phantom-410-black-with-orange-trim-mid-tower-2x120mm-1x140mm-with-side-window-w-o-psu

 

Obviously still a fair few details to sort out like ram speed, sound card and cpu cooler but I'll get there.

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Sounds like a good spec.

 

RAM speed doesn't really matter, sound cards are questionably useful. For CPU cooler personally I'd go for a big air cooler like the Dark Rock Pro 3 (nice and quiet) or maybe one of the all-in-one liquid coolers.

 

If you have the money I'd get a bigger SSD, I have a 500 in mine and it's getting full already. Also with that case, try to buy things that are orange, would look sweet :D

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Looks great so far :) Solid choices all round.

 

I would recommend/advise on a few points. With RAM, what quite a lot of new and veteran builders alike don't realise, is that RAM is 99% of the time limited to 1333MHz via the BIOS settings. In order to hit 1600, 2000 etc. you'll need to be confident (or have a friend) to overclock it - For arguably minimal gains. Don't get too fussed about the speed - Focus on the amount (You're bang on :) )

 

With the CPU cooler, I would like to recommend a standalone watercooling kit. Historically watercooling has been relatively complicated, because you'd need to loop the system through your PC, mess around with pumps or whatever - But the type I mean is specific to the CPU, and entirely self contained. 

 

http://www.corsair.com/en-gb/hydro-series-h110i-gt-280mm-extreme-performance-liquid-cpu-cooler

 

Above is a link for example - The thing I like about them, apart from their simplicity, is that they're generally more efficient and far quieter. But at the same time they're quite pricey compared to air coolers.

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That's right, the build it yourself bundles aren't high end but they also do smaller bundles of high end stuff like this:

 

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/intel-hex-core-i7-5820k-processor-plus-asus-x99-deluxe-motherboard-haswell-extreme-bundle

 

From time to time they will do ones with a cooler and perhaps some RAM, they often bundle cases with PSUs too.

 

 

I am going to Weymouth for two weeks on Sunday but after that I am cool with either:

 

You pop round for a cup of tea and we build a PC together (preferred option).

 

or

 

I build it an you collect it.  I'd rather you were there for the process and there's no way in hell I'm posting a completed computer.

 

It'll be fun¹

 

 

¹Fun not guaranteed.

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Cool, well 2 weeks sounds about right for finalising what I'm after.  Quite happy to come around for a bit, never hurts to learn a bit more about the stuff I've not done myself before, be handy when it's upgrade/fixing time.

 

Thanks for the input guys, all very useful.  I'll probably go with a 500 SSD then, normal HDDs are cheap-as these days after all.  Not much of an audiophile and I seem to remember reading about sound cards being less relevant back in PCZone about 8 years ago so perhaps I'll forego that, more money for a capture card.  Then again at the moment I have a handy setup whereby my 5.1 headset is in the soundcard and the speakers in to the mobo and I can just switch between them with a couple of clicks rather than getting under the desk and swapping a ton of wires, so maybe a basic one just for the connections?  Not sure.

 

I'll stick with 1333 on the RAM then, 16 seems to be the right amount.  The CPU water coolers seem pretty decent these days, nice little self-contained units, much less scary leak-any-moment looking than the fully water cooled custom rig another armourer I knew a few years back had.  Certainly be nice to have a built that's a little quieter than my current one (not that you really notice in games, but for the rest of the time).

 

The i7 5930 seems like it'll be overkill so I'll go 5820 with a 750W PSU.  GPU and case are decided.. just mobo really.  Don't have a clue on that one, the descriptions are insanely long and most of the time they all have the same type and number of PCIe slots etc so it's tricky to pick between.

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more money for a capture card.

When you say capture card, do you mean a card specifically for recording yourself playing? If so, there's this pretty amazing feature Nvidia cards have called Shadowplay. With 5 minutes of setup, you can be recording at 60fps. You can configure the length of time to record, and to save (i.e. press "F5" to save the last 10 minutes of the game/your camera/microphone). which is great for short clips.

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Fraps is alright, leaves a watermark unless you pay for it though and can murder your framerate. Shadowplay is pretty great.

 

With regard to a motherboard, they're mostly all fine, just make sure it has the right socket for your CPU and all the slots and connections you need/want.

 

 

Looks great so far :) Solid choices all round.

 

I would recommend/advise on a few points. With RAM, what quite a lot of new and veteran builders alike don't realise, is that RAM is 99% of the time limited to 1333MHz via the BIOS settings. In order to hit 1600, 2000 etc. you'll need to be confident (or have a friend) to overclock it - For arguably minimal gains. Don't get too fussed about the speed - Focus on the amount (You're bang on :) )

 

 

As far as I know, RAM is always limited to 1333 at first, because that's as high as the JEDEC standard goes (everything over is technically an overclock). However it only takes a couple of clicks in the BIOS to select the XMP profile which enables the increased clock rate that was advertised when you bought the RAM. However however it's also true that you won't notice the higher speed, and thus it's probably not worth doing in the first place.

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Hm.. had not heard of that feature on the graphics card itself.  It's a superfluous thing I suppose, I wasn't planning on sacrificing performance of core components, but I've always found FRAPS just so power hungry it's unreal.  Might be alright with some games on a powerful rig initially, but after a couple of years of graphics improvements I don't think it'll be viable any more, at least that's what's always happened in the past.  Always fancied having a dedicated card going to a dedicated hard drive so I can just play away like normal while recording and then when you do get those 'wtf' rare moments or the occasional sweet kill streak they'll be there to mash in to a dubstep-fuelled compilation later on.  Or for when I'm co-op'ing with my brother in Far Cry for example it'd be fun to put some footage together in full res at max graphics and not have to suffer any FPS loss in the actual game while playing.

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well the 3900-4900-5900 are Enthausiast class CPU's. 

As in, frecking expensive and thus mostly serious production and workstation class.

 

4 or more cores, LARGE cache, quad memory channel, HUGE thermal dissipation ( in retaion to non E classes ).

I'm talking what, TDP 145W ?

 

I could know, I have a 3930k myself and I did it.

My mate and I had a discussion, I thought mine would be better at workload and future proofing.

My 3930k VS his 4770k. Both i7.

Mine then €500, his was around €380 ( he bought it when they launched, no not really MSRP ).

They were tied at worst. His did a little better even in games. Mine was better only when more cores were used, like in compression work.

But people like you and me, we don't use 6 cores. I've only 2 programs that use it, EAC ( rips FLAC from CD ) and WinRAR ( file compression program ).

 

Best of all? 

My Max thermal dissipation was 145Watt, his...97Watt.

My advice, get a 4790 non K.

 

My source: http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/core_i7_5960x_5930k_and_5820k_processor_review,14.html

That's compared to the previous 47x0 generation. Look at what you need. Games will perform equal or ever-so-slightly less.

Not worth the extra £'s in my opinion.

 

The 750W is seriously too much. Sorry, but it has to be said.

Going with this calculator:

http://powersupplycalculator.net/

 

I added for you:

- Intel i7 4790, not overclocked 

- High End motherboard

- nVidia GeForce GTX 780ti ( The GTX 980 uses LESS energy, so I took worst case and most modern GPU they had available )

- 4 sticks of RAM ( doesn't matter what capacity )

- Samsung EVO 840 SSD ( 850 wasn't available yet, but is a tiny bit less power hungry so again worst case ) Doesn't matter what capacity

- Blue ray disk

- 3x 120mm fan

- 2x 140mm fan

 

Recommended PSU: 509W

Idle power: 81W

Load power: 406W

This is the minumum recommended PSU wattage for the selected components. Choosing a lower wattage PSU increases the risk of system to become unstable and noise from PSU to become annoying. Choosing a higher wattage PSU decreases efficiency at lighter loads, but leaves a margin for overclocking and future upgrades and also ensures the PSU stays cool and quiet.

In load the GPU selected requires 3x as much as any other component. So even there, there's some headroom.

 

A Corsair RM550W is a very good choice.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Well.. been mulling this over a lot, I don't fully understand everything about the different classes of CPU so it's a tricky one.

 

The 3 main parts I'd want to be OTT are the PSU, CPU and mobo.  They're the trickiest to upgrade vs RAM and GPU.  The other thing is nobody can predict what's going to happen in 5 years time, we could all be using Oculus type headsets all the time instead  of monitors for all we know.  I do a fair amount of video editing and conversion so a high class CPU could definitely save me some time I know that.

 

Not throwing aside your advice, I just really want a rig I can build now then hopefully not have to worry about for some time.  That's what my current one's done for me and with the way graphics in games seem to be improving at a far slower rate these days I'm hoping that I can do the same again.  I really need something that'll just work for me and the computer stuff I need to do end of the day, the less I have to fuss over the PC itself the more I can actually get done with it.

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Video editing is a fine use for the rig you had in mind. Apologies. As fir the future: you can bet everything will be more energy efficient as it's a big thing. About monitors: since you're doing video editing a IPS screen would do nice: it's a tad slower than a gaming TN screen, but it offers way better colour reproduction and wider viewing angles. Dell makes nice ones. Don't worry about the Oculus for now. It is not out yet and you can always get it later. Keep in mind that non ported pc games make big use of the keyboard, which you can't see with an occulus strapped over your face.

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Video editing is a fine use for the rig you had in mind. Apologies. As fir the future: you can bet everything will be more energy efficient as it's a big thing. About monitors: since you're doing video editing a IPS screen would do nice: it's a tad slower than a gaming TN screen, but it offers way better colour reproduction and wider viewing angles. Dell makes nice ones. Don't worry about the Oculus for now. It is not out yet and you can always get it later. Keep in mind that non ported pc games make big use of the keyboard, which you can't see with an occulus strapped over your face.

 

Gotcha, I was planning on going IPS yeah, I don't need 1ms on a monitor, seems silly to sacrifice that for nicer colours when I'm not playing competitive CS:GO or anything.  Looking at 4k (again for video rather than games) but I think it'll be a little while after getting the tower that I pick one up, very hard to choose.  The Oculus thing I won't get too far in to, haha.  Spend a lot of time fantasising about Star Citizen being as good as they're promising and playing it with a headset.  :greedy:

 

On an unrelated note (that's rather more pressing) does anyone have any clue how to figure out which types of GPU would be compatible with my laptop?  I had a GTX 570m (thing's about 2 years old now) which seemingly fried itself on christmas eve, the whole thing went stone dead, not so much as a light on 2 different chargers (tried with and without the battery).  Dropped it to a local tech guy I've used before and he's said it'll boot up without the graphics card in and that the mobo has an MXM 3.0 slot.  I know laptops might be a bit of a long shot but if anyone's got any ideas they'd be appreciated else I'll be rather stuck for entertainment during a particularly long, boring, static duty I've got coming up.

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That's the tricky part, there's *one* on eBay but in America and I've had too many GPUs arrive DOA to risk that, not counting the delivery time.

 

My guy mentioned the same thing about the BIOS compatibility issue, seems kinda *suitcasey* but hey ho.  I'll ring cyber power and see what they say I suppose.

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Bleurgh.. the slot on my laptop mobo can accept various other cards but the BIOS is limited to the 570m and 580m (very obsolete at this point) so I'm gonna try MSI but I doubt they'll have any other BIOSs for me.  The biggest annoyance is that 7 and 8 series mobile cards can be had for substantially less money than the one ancient one I need... which itself is looking to be £300 c***ing quid for the one that's in the UK.

 

Even if I get a new BIOS and a new GPU I've no idea if the heat sink will fit.  #fml

 

Ed: For swears.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Well, I've determined that the only way to fix the laptop is find another GTX 570m which is long out of production.  Luckily a seller on AliExpress (which seems to be the main chinese ebay?) actually has some, and they're far too expensive for what they are but I really don't wanna toss away a machine that's otherwise fine and still plays anything at medium at least.

 

That said unfortunately it's gonna be a while before the exact card I need comes in and I've got a fair amount of time away from work coming up very soon which will be [/i]excruciatingly[/i] boring without a laptop, so I'm gonna have to put the desktop build on hold for a bit, which is annoying because I was keen to get on with it but this one will probably still be fine for another 2 years at the rate things are going so a couple of months won't hurt (apologies for any frustration to you guys that took time typing adivce which will change by the time I'm buying parts, life throws these things at you).

 

Scan seem to have a much better warranty than CP but they do a couple of options that differ more than I expected in the same price range:

 

Scan - http://www.scan.co.uk/3xs/configurator/17in-gaming-laptop-nvidia-geforce-970m-980m-clevo-p771zm

 

CP - http://www.cyberpowersystem.co.uk/system/FANGBOOK_Evo_HX7-200/

 

Lesser CPU in the CP but it's got 16 gig of memory vs 8 in the Scan and the CP comes with a SSD along with the normal HDD (though it's a 5400 in the CP vs 7200 in the Scan) and a built in optical drive yet still costs less.  Old chassis/housing/casing though, exact same as the one I bought 3 years or so ago.  Same GPUs and OS, but 2 years return-to-mfg warranty with scan vs 1 month collect+return fixing and 1 year with just parts/labour covered with CP.

 

Easy to upgrade the RAM in the Scan option further down the line though I'm not so sure how much it'd matter.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Did a lot more looking around, went for one of these in the end:

 

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=LT-180-MS&tool=3

 

Was tempted by the 15" 4k screen MSI for the same price but the 4k won't come in to its' own for a year or two yet in terms of video and there's now way that spec will be handling games at 4k even in the near future.  Much prefer to have the larger screen as a better all round substitute for my desktop when I'm on an enforced holiday.

 

OC have a nice selection, shipped out nice and quick and the warranty's as good as SCAN's.  Should have the money I spent on this (that came out of the desktop fund) saved back up again in a while then the real work can begin proper.  Assuming my car insurance isn't utterly horrendous after crashing last year...

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Ok since the pc i was meant to be getting when my mate went to saudi got sold from under me by his parents.

 

I kind of want to build a desktop rig that's moderately ok for gaming, uni/teaching work and some video editing now net access is back again.

 

I have a nice monitor and a cheapish keyboard from my dad's docking station upgrade so that's fine.

 

I want recomendations with a budget of around £500. There is a pc in the family that's about 5 years old that I will be using as a base for my build but eventually a nicer case is something I plan on.

 

There is a HDD in there that I can use once wiped but I have no idea what the specs of what's in there already until I have chance to gut it when I move.

 

I was told i will have to wipe it because it's full of dodgy porn from brother and adware *suitcase* from my mother being useless with I.T and allowing toolbar installs.

 

But it's a case with HDD and cd drive and psu so.it's a start even though I suspect I will later toss most.of those parts.

 

So with a budget of 500 knowing that case, psu monitor and potentially HDD was sorted what would you buy?

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So, I've got fed up of having my HTPC in an old lian-li case with only 80mm fans next to my media centre, especially now i've sold my eggsbox 360 and there's a handy looking hole in the TV stand.

 

Can anyone suggest a Micro ATX case thats no more than 140mm wide so I can fit it in the gap?

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