The Official PC building thread - 4th Edition

ZoSoIV,

Russ has passed away, sorry to say.

 

I knew he wasn't doing good sorry to here that..his in a much better place now

 

Wow, quite a shock to come back to this thread after 3 months and find Russ gone. Jackie Evancho, you just lost your biggest fan. Take it easy buddy. Did you ever have a chance to get out there to drive that new car you just bought about 6 months ago - wasn't it some kind of Mustang or Camaro as I recall? You're probably out there right now cruising with the top down, in some other place and time.

Sam, I know you're familiar with Rolls, Bentleys, Jags, and the like, but those two cars I just mentioned are products that we yanks made popular here stateside quite some time back.

Russ was quite supportive of AMD's products, and their excellent price/performance ratio. Estuansis mentioned a few months back (an hour of reading ago for me as I am trying to catch up) that he has been using the AMD better price/performance ratio to stay technologically on top of things in his sweet spot of 1920x1200 gaming. I totally agree with that strategy, Jeff. I just told a friend to think AMD regarding an HTPC I am suggesting that he build.

I also caught that quote about Intel preferring to shore AMD up, than have it die out and possibly end up fighting the anti-trust commission to prevent breakup of the company. I think there could be a lot of truth to that. Healthy competition not only benefits consumers - it can also benefit competitors. Let the other guy stick his neck out sometimes - he might get the patents but often you can license what you need without making the huge R & D investment.

But it's quite tricky, as Stevo alluded to, because if you aren't careful you can get snuffed out, like 3dfx by nvidia. Microsoft has always operated with a bit of paranoia about the chance of missing out on a sudden shift in technology - and they weren't too concerned about snuffing out Netscape when they put out windows 98 with Internet Explorer bundled in. Competitor gone - but then they found themselves with a stressful fight with the government over accusations of monopolistic practices. How many states - was it 20 - where the state attorneys joined forces against them?

Gates himself was very involved, and he was not happy about that fight. I am sure Intel management remembers that quite well, and who needs it? Yes, they might be thinking, probably better to let AMD stay alive and healthy with a good chunk of the lower end of the market as long as profits are good.

As I mentioned, I just told a friend to build an AMD HTPC rather than try to find a laptop with an hdmi output port powerful enough to handle Power DVD 13 and its True Theater upscaling. I poured over the market today, and it seems to me that an AMD midtower could be built for close to $350, whereas a suitable laptop might be more like $800.

He wants to do what my brother and I do. We play our movies on the Toshiba 47" screen (usually downloaded at 720p at a reasonable quality of about 2 gigs per file, sometimes 4 gigs) with power dvd true theater upscaling to 1080p which makes quite a difference. I just shelled out $100 for the upgrade from version 10 to version 13 to try to get wider compatibility with all the new formats. Our HP mid-tower phenom 1 9750 quad core with 8 gigs ram runs 40% stressed with the true theater effect turned on. (It's all run on the cpu - if you enable hardware accelaration, you can't enable true theater.)

The hdmi graphics card is a cheap $50 3650, and it has been acting up, so, just in case, I recently picked up a spare $38 4000 card with twice the memory.

Power DVD allows you to split the screen and see the difference the true theater makes - and if you're not familiar with it, it's remarkable. Even if the movie is already 1080p, the change is still amazing - much richer color saturation, detail - profoundly better in my opinion. It works on even the really skinny 700MB files, but I prefer something better to start with. So, as I said, if I can download around a 2 gig file size, 720p, that will turn out to play beautifully on this lovely screen.

Speaking of lovely screens, that was some link you posted Sam (3 mos back) about the 4k technology. A 10" screen with 2560x1600 resolution? Wow. That much information on 30" looks terrific now, but that pixel density would make it look almost like a painting. Every time I go up to LA and see the 1080p 24" Samsung that I bought them, I am amazed at the quality of the image.

If you're right, Sam, and those pixel densities hit main-stream within 5 years, and we can run that on our 30" screens (3 X 3 = 9 X 4megapixels = 36 megapixels, should I say 15 years?) then the graphics would be so gorgeous, I can't imagine it.

Speaking of gorgeous graphics, I just played through Metro: Last Light over the last few days starting Sunday.



I hovered at around 30 fps and it was okay. I first maxed everything, but fps was only about 24. By backing off of - is it SMA? - from 4x to 2x, frames jumped up to about 32. I could not see any real difference. Assuming that is an anti-aliasing setting, I can tell you that I never had any jaggies jump out on me, as they did when I tried Far Cry 3 at 2x AA - you must be at least at 4x on that game.



For anybody who is into that kind of gaming, one reviewer called Metro: Last Light "Astonishing." Absolutely incredible game. Some very fresh innovative material that none of us has ever seen before. Yes, astonishing is a good word. I finished it, then immediately went back and played the last half again - starting with the monster chapter. You can be so busy trying not to run out of ammo, or not to run out of filters for your gask mask, that the challenge, and the stress, can cause you to miss out on some of the extraordinary events. The second time through, of course, you can pace yourself better.

Welcome to post-apocalyptic Moscow through a gask mask.



So back to my friend and his HTPC needs. He won't be doing any fancy video editing like some of you guys are expert at. He's like me - he'll just play the movies. So does anybody care to suggest parts for that cheap $300-400 mid-tower HTPC AMD build?

Rich

 

Shoot, my brother is sporting a pretty outdated HTPC. It keeps up with the times quite nicely. An AMD Athlon x 2 5200 (2.6Ghz), and I have it underclocked to 2.0Ghz to keep it cooler. It handles Blu-ray with ease, plus it has onboard video, which can also be used for hardware acceleration in TMT5. For an HTPC, you really don't need much. Depending on how enclosed the HTPC will be, you'll wanna consider cooling. Those cramped cases can cause some heat. And he's got a stereo receiver on top of the HTPC. Which is why I had to underclock it. You really don't notice it though. Before I underclocked it, he was complaining that the fan would rev up from time to time. I heard it a few times. Haven't heard it since It probably could do better with a larger heat sink, but in an HTPC, what do you do LOL!

As you probably know, do NOT go with the stock Power supplies, if it comes with one. Typically they're not very high quality. I went with a seasonic 300w I believe. Rock solid little gem!

 

Hi HG,

Actually you can get a laptop with HDMI that is easily capable for a HTPC unless you want to use it for gaming too, then you are totally correct as you'll want a dedicated or very powerful graphics card. I bought a Acer with an A8 CPU and it worked very well when I connected it to my 50" Samsung. Also I could use both the laptops screen to watch a movie in full screen play while I used the laptop to surf the web or whatever I wanted to do, I was streaming Netflix and surfing. Now the other thing to consider is storage space but I have a server for my music and movies.

Those are nice graphics, very sweet!

I've been playing with Windows 8 as I'm working on a friends netbook which has a 570GB SSD and nor ROM drive of course. I can't say I like 8 as it is a pain in the but with the Metro crap. I do like the Copy/Move UI though as it is pretty slick have a graph of the bandwidth and I do like the new borders they use. Again MS is hiding a lot of good stuff that if Russ was still with us would be going nuts over. But once you learn the new locations it's not so bad.

I installed ObjectDock on the Desktop and added most of the Windows 7 features to it to make it easier to get at stuff including GodMode features and a Power/ReStart/Logoff/Sleep button. Stardock has gotten better with stability but still not 100% as I can get Stardock to crash when configuring the Menu Bars. The Flyout feature they have is pretty slick and cuts down some of the bulk of just adding icons for all of the features I added. I'm really please with the Stardock configuration and I think the guy will be thrilled when I give him his netbook back.

What I can't believe is that Delta Airlines is now transitioning to 8. My mom got it on her PC first and just hates it, I can understand why. The workers around her have seen what she has to go through and they don't want it but the IT staff basically said you will be forced to use it, typical I'd say. I've shown her a couple of tricks that should help her so that should curve some of the frustration, I hope.

Stevo

 

Hi guys,

Well, I'm printing out your windows 8 stuff to Paperport, Stevo, to keep for when I find myself being forced to use it for some reason. Like maybe fixing somebody's computer that came with it. Otherwise I'll never upgrade from 7. I know Sam also had talked about customizing the Metro interface to get back to the 7 look.

I was thinking about your 2560x1440 monitor, Stevo, when I helped my brother build a Cad system (with 250gig Samsung 840 pro SSD) - he bought two of those beauties and runs a dual monitor setup. I posted about it on the gaming thread a month ago - first dual-monitor setup I've ever participated in.



Speaking about dual monitors, that is a big eye-opener about your Acer. I can't believe it is that powerful to do a full-screen Netflix play on the 50 at 1080p, while you surf the web on the laptop monitor! Is that a recent purchase? Do you have a model number for me? He won't do any gaming, but he does need it to run Power DVD 13, and put out 1080p including at least 5.1 audio.



(That above shot reminds me of Russ, he loved music, especially organ music!)

Am I right about an $800-1000 price point (if not more) or do those things go for less than that? Actually I would bet that you invested well over $1000. But an AMD midtower would be quite a bit under $400 I'm sure. Regarding the case and power supply, Kev, I'll keep in mind your little seasonic 300 - what do those cost? And Stevo - you picked up a $50 case recently as I recall - are you happy with it? What model did you get?

Hey guys, on that discussion about laptop SSDs, is there not a potential problem of having the paging file on the SSD (lots of writes all in one spot?) Sam, are you saying that SSDLife gives you 8 to 9 years on your 40 gig Intel SSDs? That is way longer than I ever heard anybody talk about! Is that just for Intel, and just for that size?

Rich

 

I believe I spent more than the current price.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151090

 

Rich: Yes, I do know something about american cars, certainly more than that much

AMD has been better performance for cost up to a point almost entirely consistently for the last 10 years since the Athlon XP came out, with perhaps a slight blip when the Core 2 Duo was first released, which was a real game changer at the time. AMD prices soon fell to compensate, and the trend was restored.
The conditional is though, up to a point. There comes a point when AMD CPUs simply don't get any faster, and if you're able to put more money toward a CPU, you have to switch sides. Up until pretty recently, you never really needed to cross this barrier for general games purposes. Now though? I think the tide is slowly turning.

Despite pretty unnerving performance in the desktop CPU sector, AMD are doing fairly well overall - winning all three games console contracts will help keep them upright, and they are taking on a few ex-nvidia staff for marketing and product development. I don't see them going away just yet, but whereas until a couple of years ago the CPU division was holding up the GPU division, now I think it's the other way round.

For video playback alone, I'd say go with an AMD APU system. Inbuilt integrated graphics is best in the business (but ultimately is still integrated graphics, so not that great for games), and from a value perspective, they're excellent. The CPUs themselves are also much better hardware designs than the FX series.
Also, upscaled 720p is no match for real 1080p, both in terms of demand and image quality - with a good source, I think you'd see the difference quite clearly between the two, but you also might need a better CPU.

For Windows 8, I use classicshell. It's easy to use, creates not just a windows 7 style start menu, but earlier versions such as XP and 98 if you really want, and is also full of tweaks for windows explorer itself, restoring the 'up' button and things like that. It was a bit flakey when I first installed it, but is fairly reliable now - you occasionally get a 5-10 second wait time before the bypass occurs, but if you're on a slower PC that would go unnoticed anyway. Very neat little program - I avoid anything Stardock after a bad experience with windowblinds many years back managed to corrupt my entire OS install the point of needing a reformat.
One thing I do hear though, Win8 is tolerable for home (if you can deal with Metro or discard it using third party software) but it's not great for business, for various reasons. I do question business rollouts of it this early. If I were forced to rollout an OS for a business it'd probably still be 7, but if it had to be 8, classicshell would go on all the PCs, no doubt.


On the screens front, the 10" 2560x1600 does exist, in the Nexus 10 tablet PC, which I'm very fond of. In a remote desktop or citrix environment you can see how a windows desktop looks at 300+ dpi. Not easy without a stylus I will say, but it is stunningly clear.
4K monitors are out there in the wild, they cost an absolute fortune but they are there. I imagine they will eventually filter down to the 21-24" or so size that 1080p is common for today, give it time. Currently excluding the 10 year old IBM T221 (which at 40Hz and 50ms is not exactly current-gen panel material) the smallest I've currently seen a 4K at is 36" from EIZO, at a price tag in excess of $30,000, but they are slowly but surely coming down in the ultra-large HDTV market, so PC monitors will inevitably follow. It's painfully slow progress, but we will eventually have them in a useable, affordable size.

I ran SSDLife on my Corsair Force 3 60GB and got a fairly similar result from that. SSDs aren't quite as short-lived as people often think as long as you don't do anything silly like defrag them. Well, not unless you buy from OCZ of course

 

Yeah win8 is not as bad as people make it out to be, but what surprised me was its big brother server 2012. I just completed capstone for degree in network support/admin and added a 2012 machine to our server pool. At first i laughed when i seen the tiled interface to a server OS, but it was minimal and there are so many new features that it quickly became my favorite.
also, no problems with OCZ for me, have used Vertex1,2 and 3 with no problems. Am aware of the reputation, however I always thought it was due to the early drives needing manually flashed and a bunch of people who shouldn't be booting into DOS opening command lines bricked them. YMMV

 

Nah, all OCZ drives have had higher failure rates than other brands since day one, even the 'good' ones. Some of their products are particularly awful though, and have failure rates higher than 50% within 12 months of purchase - when you consider the average failure rate for Intel, Samsung and Plextor SSDs is below 0.4%, that's quite impressive. Current top dog for SSD reliability is Samsung, with less than one drive in a thousand being returned. Intel are not too far behind, with one return for every 200-250 sold.

 

Finally some action, I starting to worry about you guys, this was always a hot thread and I always read every page of it, I don't know why it died out, if maybe Russ's passing had anything to do with it don't let it happen, he would be the first to scream don't you dare slow down, or maybe there are other reasons or both, anyway glad to see guys are speaking again.

 

Been quiet for me as I've been pretty heavily burdened with work. I'm trying to rejuvenate my activity on the forums where possible now though, difficult as it can be to slot in!

Good to see, with the exception of the late Russ, that people are still around.

 

I suspect people are simply busy. In any case, It would appear many people are still subscribed to this thread, and will offer aid when they can

You're right. This used to be a VERY hot thread LOL! When ever I have a build 'itch', this thread comes to mind LOL!

 

I have been balancing work and women and all the related drama lately. I suppose I haven't had much to say. Hardware is fairly stagnant right now.

I'll be having some steadier work at some point soon here, and the 6850s are going bye bye in favor of some 7 series cards. Also considering replacing my motherboard for a newer model as this one currently limits my OC due to various quirks. I am not above a new board for a few hundred extra MHz

My 6 core currently manages any game quite admirably. I am not planning to replace it any time soon if I can get a slightly better overclock out of it. The only true limit right now is my video memory and various Crossfire issues inherent to the HD6800 series. CPU has not been an issue at all and I really don't see it becoming one for a while still. This rig has untapped power. I might possibly look into some higher performance RAM with better latencies as well. My current RAM is actually somewhat slow in comparison to what I could have for almost the same price.

 

Love my 1090t. My X264 encodes benefited from it greatly! And it seems to be at least as equal in gaming as my 965 quad was. I still respect that CPU though.

I definitely see the need for an upgrade regarding the mobo though :S VERY outdated.

 

Well not particularly outdated. Has USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gbps and all that. What limits me is the 790X chipset. Having an 890 wouldn't help much either. Apparently(from some research Russ and I had done a while ago) Thubans respond wonderfully to 990 boards.

The board itself, is still reasonably high performance and still quite a useful motherboard for running multiple generations of AMD hardware. It's somewhat high-end and built/cooled well enough to OC 125W+ CPUs. Haha I do have to defend it. It's a damn good board

RAM and motherboard are the first upgrades though. Preferably the same speed of RAM(1600MHz) with lower latencies, and a board with full x16/x16 Crossfire. Gigabyte of course

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128509

Looking at that. The UD3 has a few inherent issues that the UD5 seems to avoid.

 

I'm sorry, I was talking about my 790xta-ud4. VERY outdated LOL! Yours isn't nearly as dated as mine

Ugh! The 990 gigabyte boards really haven't come down much, have they!

 

Still have my 790X-UD4P floating around somewhere. Still works fine for old Phenom IIs that only have the DDR2 controller

 

Yes, my board works 'fine' but I do like to upgrade every now and again. And I do wonder about my NIC. Very peculiar behavior... that or the damned driver!

 

If it helps any, I'm now concerned about physical longevity of my PC than obsolescence. It's still in good health at the moment, but it's all 2 1/2 years old or so now, the CPU/board/some of the RAM are 3 1/2 years old, and the PSU/Case 4 1/2. No plans to replace any of them in the near future...