The Official PC building thread - 4th Edition

I love that guy's balls BTW. He even bothers to edit the model into a save file just for proof.

Not saying any sites or file names but there is an unlocker available on questionable sites that is only 12MB so tells me as much. It's basically a bunch of BS to make more money. As black and white as it gets. Personally got it in a pre-order deal for the "Collectors' Edition"(hehe Collectors Edition... lol if you played the games you'd lol too...).

I haven't gotten anywhere near the ending yet because I don't want to ruin it all by blasting through. I hear about so many hitting the ending so soon and wondering what these people do for a living if they have so much time to play? Personally have been impressed by the game so far. Mass Effect 2 was horridly long by the time you added on the DLCs. I think some 50 hours and that's with a fairly thorough but brisk-paced playthrough. I am thorough by nature so I can let myself blast through some parts and still get everything. I hope the ending doesn't suck as bad as I've heard, because it is a great game.

Interestingly Mass Effect 1 only had two short-ish DLCs and one of them ended up being free for PC gamers.

 

I can relate Russ, the Asus I have the same Steve ordered I to was a little worried about it being to big, in the past I never had anything bigger than a 19, but the one steve ordered it became the perfect size for me, not to big and not to small.
I also read in one of the reviews one said the text was muchy, maybe he or she had a couple to many brewsky's, my text was and is crystal clear, and that's without adjusting anything, I love how wide it is, I hardly ever have to scroll horizontally to see everything, I always had that problem before, the size for an old gezzer like me is just right, I'm not a gamer but if I wanted to this would not dissapoint, since I bought this I have seen many others and so far I would not trade mine for no other. As long as Steve's is not a lemon I know his Mama will be very pleased.

 

Again, have personally had a pretty good experience with my ASUS monitor. The enclosure itself is a bit chintzy but solid. The actual LCD panel is typical of the newer generation of decent quality TN panels ie not bad at all. Older TN panels were horrible but I've seen a fair few now that are almost impressive. Am particularly fond of the color and contrast on my own ASUS, much different from my 2407WFP and makes for better movie watching. Again, image quality is absolutely no contest with the Dell.

It seems to me that a large glut of cheap 1080p panels has permeated the market and replaced some more traditional mid-range resolutions. 1680 x 1050 is becoming less common in favor of 1080p monitors for the same or similar prices. Of course, even if built as monitors, these 1080p screens use what are essentially TV panels, so the color and contrast will be more akin to an HDTV than a traditional monitor. It's very evident when comparing my ASUS V242H to my Dell 2407WFP.

Obviously 1080p panels make for decent monitors though as I've been using mine without the headaches of using an actual TV. I appreciate the different color palette for movies and some games, particularly console ports that work well with the 360 Controller such as say Just Cause 2, Resident Evil 5 etc. It makes a good alternative when I don't feel like shifting over to my TV. FPSs, RPGs, RTSs and other games that use KB/M, on the Dell monitor only.

Just for reference, I've done some math and the pixel density on a 23.6" 1920 x 1080 is very close to a 22" 1680 x 1050. Likewise the pixel density on a 21.5" 1920 x 1080 is very close to a 24" 1920 x 1200 or a 20" 1680 x 1050.

Basically if you're buying 1080p, the 21.5" is going to have much better image quality than a 23.6"(21.5" and 23.6" being by far the most popular sizes) due to simple physics. My particular monitor is 23.6" and is almost identical to my old 22" when compared side-by-side. Again, the major difference being the TV-like color and contrast.


Interestingly my monitor has this nifty technology built-in.

I don't know how much truth there is to this but when you activate it, the screen does subtly adjust itself. As far as I'm aware it's simply a dynamic contrast ratio to match what's being displayed. I can't deny or confirm it being a 20,000:1 ratio but I do know the monitor is much more comfortable to use with this technology activated. It seems to help the most with video, but makes a noticeable improvement in games and on the desktop as well. Using ASCR does require having some of the lights in the room off though, as it calibrates itself for a low-light environment. Even then, it's only really in games where it matters. I would say with this tech on, it has really similar black levels to my Dell screen with slightly sharper contrast, ie it's one of this monitor's strongest features. It's also the reason why I chose to run this monitor alongside my Dell and not separately on another machine. They are very different and excel at different things. My secondary rarely does more than F@H and torrents unless friends are over so the KVM switch stays useful.

 

Sharing what? And now you go edit your signature to include spam, right?

Getting a second job soon. I'm going to the temp agency tomorrow. Wish me luck. I plan on building a new system very soon. AM3+, comparable Intel, it's anybodies guess LOL!

 

Best of luck for sure, will you be giving us loans then? LOL

I too sure could use another or better job these days.

Very best luck to you,
Stevo

 

Give them hell at the temp kev.

 

I was a bit slow going this morning Monday it is...

I really need to get after it. I'm concerned that a component may be going. Hopefully just a windows bug. I was playing GRiD last night, and doing really well. Major slow down occurred. I'm hoping it had something to do with Evga Precisions in game monitor. It does effect Angry Birds Rio In fact, I can't even play, if it's running. Worst case is, I have a similar thing happening to my Evga GTX 570, that others have had. Artifacting after a couple weeks. I truly hope not. I noticed after shutting down GRiD, that the Evga monitor showed a huge GPU resource spike at the time of lag. Not sure what could have caused it.

On another note, my buddy that just bought TWO HD 7970's is loving his triple display rig. As you can probably guess, I'm about as jealous as can be! One day... One day!

 

Next time I upgrade graphics, it's going to be at the level of two HD7970s as a minimum. Will probably be two of whatever the successor to the HD7970 is - I'm not prioritising graphics at the moment, so it'll be a minimum of about 8-9 months before I can justify any expenditure, by which time I expect a 28nm refresh might be on the horizon, or perhaps an incremental update.

First item on the list is some more storage. Painful at today's prices, but becoming a necessity! 450GB of free space might sound like a lot, but when it's split across 10 drives, it's hard to manage!

After that will probably be a resurrection of RMS-PRINCESS. Poor thing is basically being run into the ground at the moment. The 5 year old HDD seems to have some bad sectors on it, and the 6 year old X1900XT is on its last legs, is no longer trustworthy for gaming, but is OK for desktop use, just with the occasional flicker and VPU recover every few days. Still, it is nonetheless the lightest, quietest, most portable (due to the carry strap system) and best looking of the systems, so it won't remain neglected forever. Simply a matter of investment, isn't it always!

Next immediate purchases will be a single extra 2TB for the server for crisis abatement, and a PCI network card for the server's X38-DS4 as the onboard NIC is close to failure.


As far as on screen monitors go, so far no issues with MSI Afterburner. It's a farse to get working in the first place, but once you've got the hang of it, it seems to work reasonably well, apart from if you want the OSD to be anywhere other than the top left - the positioning system is hopeless!

 

The reason I like the Evga precision OSD, is because it allows Frame limiting. Perhaps MSI afterburner does though too. I've got the whole weekend to play with it

 

Never messed with frame limiting, never needed to. If I want to do that, I'd just turn on VSync instead. I don't like limiting the frame rate with VSync though, as it can create frame rate instability, and it often increases input lag to the point where it becomes noticeable.

 

Do you see a difference between 80 and 150Fps? The question I ask myself, is why would I make my GPU bust it's butt on a game that's fairly old, and looks just as good at 60 - 80Fps. I've logged hours and hours on GRiD. This is the first time it's encountered a serious bug. Which is why I fear something serious. I'm kind of paranoid like that though

 

I don't perceive my GPU 'busting its butt', I perceive it 'doing its job'. There's a considerable difference in load from even the most ridiculous frame rate excess (e.g. 700fps+ in OpenGL Doom 2), and running proper GPU computing that maxes out the GPU. I only had concern at the load I was drawing when running the bitcoin miner last summer, as that breached the default 210W TDP limit on the HD6970, and I had to raise it to the full 250W for the clock speeds to stay up. (No overclocking here). I also raised the fan speeds to 60% when I ran it overnight - high enough to guarantee no risk of overheating, low enough so as not to cause any lifetime shortening of the fan bearings. In games I don't pay it any heed, just let the GPU do its thing. If I'm on a silence drive, I'll load up Afterburner with my custom fan speed graph which keeps the noise a little lower and temps a little higher.

 

Ah but you've more or less said that Nvidia chips days are numbered I respect your opinion. I also pretty much agree with it. Having witnessed a few die right in front of me. I prefer the GPU to remain cool-ish, and not have to run completely stressed when it doesn't need to. Obviously with cutting edge games, I'll elect to just "let it do it's job"

 

That may well be true, but there's not necessarily a predictable cause of events. Personally speaking I don't think you'd be able to draw much of a correlation between load and lifespan unless the card was actually overheating, which yours isn't.

 

Well since the sensors lie, I guess I'll never know for certain But given I'm finicky about running the fan at 55 - 60% in game, It probably won't overheat, EVER! LOL!

 

You might want to go with the HD7990 but I would put it like you did as the HD7970 is pretty decent as a starting point.

 

Sorry guys, you'll just have to pick out your posts and my replies on your own XD

If it was just a short instance of everything in the game running slower unexpectedly, this is an issue these games have had since Dirt 1. You'll be going along, and suddenly everything slows for a split second and goes back to normal. This is not a hardware issue.

Conversely, if the game experienced significant slowdown for an extended time(ie after restarting the game) then you may have an issue.

Evga is a terrible company that makes terrible software. If you want fan control and/or overclocking, use Nvidia nTune instead. It's a first party add-on to the Nvidia control panel. I wouldn't be surprised to see Precision causing issues, but I wouldn't say it's a definite cause either. Also, in-game monitors are just asking for trouble. The only thing you should be running that shows up in-game is FRAPS.

LOL Sam, 450GB isn't a lot for me at all and I've got a fraction of the storage capacity.

*Sigh* Another in-game monitor I've heard nothing but bad things about. MSI have already proven themselves thoroughly incapable of releasing quality products. And ULPS or not, I shouldn't have to disable a feature of my video cards just to get it to run. AMD Overdrive does the same thing with ULPS enabled... and is already first party included in the drivers. Not to say I don't disable ULPS anyway...

Well, introducing unapproved third party software hacks from a 3rd rate company would be your first clue. I would remove Precision before blaming the hardware. Also, have never needed frame limiting for any reason. If you need to limit your frames, why not just use Vsync?

Just because the cards use less wattage than previous generations doesn't change the physical melting point of the raw materials the cards are made from. I seriously don't get this temps trip you're on with the GTX570. Silicon is still silicon, it doesn't suddenly incur damage at lower heat because the card now runs cooler.

I can see your view point and I partially agree, but you do realize the cards you watched die are from generations of cards that were famous for dying... and it had nothing to do with temps. I have also had several Nvidia cards outright die on me. One of them even with an aftermarket cooler running it ice-cold.

I really have to agree with Sam that as long as the card isn't specifically overheating, all these special settings and procedures for different games are simply a waste of your time and a big source of nerves. I do very personally identify with your anxieties. I went through the nervous video card owner phase too, but it slowly drove me nuts. I ended up being a lot happier after a particular reformat when I simply stopped caring. I just let the drivers do their job and nothing bad ever came of it.

Even now, both of my bone stock 6850s are overclocked from stock (775/1000) to Black Edition specs (820/1100) and the drivers simply adjust the fan on their own. Wouldn't you know it the one piece to fail was the fan bearing on my second card. Nothing to do with temps, RPMs, voltage, nothing. Just simply a bad part. XFX's double lifetime warranty took care of that quite quickly too.

Understand I'm just trying to provide a realistic point of view. When my video cards aren't gaming, they're usually folding, and even with that extreme amount of stress coupled with an overclock they are still running fine after a year. The highest I've seen them touch when folding is about 75*C.(Granted, XFX's coolers for these cards are ridiculous overkill).

Additionally, my 8800GTS G92 has been running problem-free for several years now, and it sees infrequent gaming from my friends and the occasional LAN after having been my primary card for nearly a year. The only thing I have done at all towards longevity is new thermal pads for the RAM and new TIM. The fan runs at stock settings and the card idles in the mid 50's, loads in the high 70s/low 80's. Ofc I don't let it fold, due to its age more than anything, but it is a good example of a generation of cards famous for failing that simply hasn't failed. Your GTX570 doesn't have near the bad track record of the GeForce 8800 series...

On another note, I'm debating finally parting out my Intel rig and building a smaller, more practical rig to fill its role using the same board and CPU. It's currently shamefully overbuilt for what I normally have it doing. Basically sits under my desk and houses a batch of hard drives. Sees so little actual use that I still have my KVM hooked to my secondary monitor to switch over instead of giving it a dedicated monitor. It basically sits and Folds, and runs torrents only because it houses my storage drives. I'm not a huge bit torrent user either. I download what I like, seed it to 1.5, and remove the torrent. So what it works out to is a file storage box that happens to have a much steadier PPD output for Folding than my primary. And even then, I don't have near the amount of hardware to Fold competitively, so my efforts work out to about 1% of my Team's total work units. Basically, I need to put it in a more practical case, give it a much more efficient video card(any suggestions for equivalent or slightly better in the budget range would be welcome), quiet it down, and give it different cooling(possibly upgrade my primary and repurpose the CoolIt) because the Tuniq takes ridiculous space in a mid-tower case.

The parts I want to re-use:

- Q6600 @ 3.7GHz

- Gigabyte GA-X38-DS4

- 2 x 2GB Mushkin XP Ascent DDR2-800 CL4-4-4-12

- Samsung Spinpoint HD501LJ 500GB 16MB Cache 7200RPM(OS drive, aging but still gets 100-100 scores in SMART)

- 3 x Western Digital Caviar GreenPower 1TB 16MB 5400RPM(Primary storage, probably soon to be 4 drives, all 3 currently 100-100 in SMART)

- Corsair 550VX PSU(first generation ChannelWell)

So I'll be needing:

- A mid-tower case with neutral looks, good cable management, workable cooling, and drive space for at least 6 drives. The current case, a Raidmax Smilodon, cools decently, but is gaudy and flashy, very rattly and loud, and doesn't have the best internal layout.

- A somewhat low-profile cooler with very good temps. Again, considering an upgrade of my CoolIt Eco and repurposing that for this build. Quiet, powerful, reliable(at least in my experience).

- A low-mid range video card around or under $100 that will be equivalent to my 8800GTS or faster. Preferable one six pin PCI-E power lead or none at all ideally. Main goal here would be drastically reducing heat, noise and power consumption without compromising the system's utility as a light secondary gaming rig. Passive cooling would be heavily considered here.

- Possibly a reliable and low-mid expense SATA controller card that allows full speed transfers between drives. The main goal would be expanding my SATA connections without compromising speed.

 

It was almost like running at a severely low framerate, including artifacting. It did not recover. I did wait for something like 20 sec. I played last night for a couple hours without trouble. I even allowed Evga OSD to run. Vsync could be an option. Hadn't even occurred to me. Not much of a gamer But I LOVE racing games!

 

I love racing games too and play Grid also. It could always be something else not related to the game but related to other software running in the background, a cookie running from browsing the web, or even a virus of some sort amongst many other scenarios.

The fact that it is working well now tells me there might be something else going on.

I said that without making a 5,000 word essay and tons of quotes, which is a good thing! LOL

Stevo