Gaming your Machine

After much vacillating I've finally decided that I don't like Nvidia's 'fan off under 60C' approach. I don't know about your card, golg, but as befits it's Titan heritage, my 980ti runs pretty warm so even at rest the card's reading 59C with the fan coming on every few minutes to keep it below 60.

I know that this is normal but I've never had a card run as hot at idle and you can feel the heat radiating off it when taking the case side panel off.

Using Afterburner's default fan profile the card's now sitting at 40C unstressed and under the Valley benchmark test tops out at 68 - The Nvidia profile runs it to 72 so not much difference at the top end. What I have found with the new profile, however, is that it runs the benchmark better. Only 1fps difference (I've run comparisons numerous times now) but very interesting all the same.

At idle the fans are now running at 40% and I can't tell the difference in a silent room from when they're off completely.

__________________
"Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how the Tatty 100 is done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves." - Brendan Behan

Weirdly mine sits at around 30C idle on the energy saver setting, and 40C on the default, all with no fan. (I whack it to the gaming preset for play, which has the fan on by default - 70C is the highest I've seen it hit there). I can only imagine that my capacious but basic case is far less stuffed with kit than yours, and so has more airflow? It's not like it's brilliantly situated or anything. Could just be that the card runs very cool indeed though - I know that's one of it's claims to fame anyway.

__________________
Virtual Reality chatter on a movie site? Got endless amounts of it here. Reviews over here

The two cards have completely different architectures so mine will run hotter by default, I guess. My case is like a fridge otherwise.

The 970 and 980 share a lot; the 980ti is a Titan Z with less Cuda cores and VRAM ... and about 400 quid.

My Steamy Box should be complete tomorrow! The new PSU is in transit and I've ordered a new hard drive for it - There's a crappy old HItachi 500GB thing in there right now which makes more noise than I do when getting out of bed, and is about as quick. Thought about getting an SSD for Windows and keeping it as game storage but the old girl isn't up to that - I'd say 50% of the difference in benchmarks with the 780 compared to my main PC is due to the HD (and the other 50 the CPU). The main PC's SSD'd up and I'd really recommend one for an immediate performance increase to any system.

£40 or less buys you a 120GB which is more than enough for Windows and you can use your existing drive for everything else.

For the Steamy Box I've got a 1TB Seagate Hybrid drive, which is a conventional mechanical with an 8GB SSD bolted on. The theory is that the SSD will cache the most used processes and give them the benefit of the higher speeds. Using Flubit it actually worked out cheaper than a 1TB Western Digital Black mechanical-only drive, which has been the gold standard for years.

Can't wait until I get it set up. I've missed sprawling on the sofa with a controller and in theory the Steamy Box will be able to take over media centre duties from the PS3 as well.

The Steamy Box is a goer! In fact, I'm posting from it now.

With Tattymaths, it's cost me just over £100.

Now it has a proper hard drive and power unit I can see that the old Phenom II is a bottleneck - The 780's benchmarking 8-10 fps less than when it was paired up with the i5 but for what I need it for, that's totally fine.

The hybrid hard drive is excellent, by the way. Performance-wise it's where you'd expect between an SSD and a mechanical and I've got half a mind to buy another for the main PC. Booting into W7 on the Steamy Box now takes 20 seconds as opposed to nearly a minute with the old drive.

None more bling!





I've turned a corner in my life, I think. Selling the Tattymobile and buying one of these:

If they did spoilers for increased case stability you'd probably get one

Might need one now. Looks like I'll be opening up the damn case again in a few days - The PSU I bought has developed a hum/whine which is really getting on my nerves. I think it's the fan rather than coil whine but fortunately I'm getting a replacement sent out before I need to send back the faulty one so I'll not be swapping PSUs in that I already own to try and diagnose things.

Hopefully it's the PSU because otherwise I've got no idea. It's a vibration kind of noise and I've disconnected everything else which could be causing it: GPU, fans etc. I've even swapped out my liquid cooler and replaced it with the old air one.

If it's not the PSU it's the case and if it's the case I think I'm out of luck in terms of refunds...

Guys, for Christmas I should be getting a nice gaming rig (up to around £1k) but I have no idea where to start. I would love to build my own but I would really need help deciding what to ask for.

Is anybody willing to help out a noob?

Is this good?


http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/T9nV8d

Step this way...

I'm basing this on you having a monitor, keyboard & mouse but am including an OS (Windows 8.1 for now as W10 hasn't been added with a price to the site yet).

It's working out, and this is a very quick list to give a broad outline of what you'll get, at under £1000 and will be an excellent 1080p gaming rig.

Link

The basics:

CPU - i5 4690k: You don't need an i7 for gaming and this is a stonker of a CPU

GPU - MSI Nvidia 970: The 970 is the go-to card for serious gamers and won't break the bank. I've gone for the MSI version because it's got the same cooler as my 980ti so can vouch for it. Golg has the Asus version so I'm sure he can go into more detail about that one.

RAM - 16GB DDR3: More than enough but RAM is cheap so 16 is better than 8 for general productivity work.

Cooler - Corsair H55: Same cooler as I have. It's at the lower end of the hybrid cooler range but I've found it a decent upgrade on an air cooler. It'll also fit in slimmer cases than those big metal/fan coolers.

Case - NZXT S340: Lovely looking case but doesn't have an optical slot for an onboard DVD drive. So few things come on disc these days I wouldn't worry about one and if you find yourself wanting to rip a DVD, a USB drive is £20. USB DVD drives can also install Windows etc.

Motherboard - It's got all the bits you need and is SLI compatible so you can add another 970 GPU in the future if you find you need the horsepower.

I love that case.

Mine's better.

Not a bad build though but personally I'd go Nvidia for the GPU and have a CPU that you can overclock.

Oo wow, you could get something properly ballistic for that

Very tasty list T!

Yeah the GTX 970 Strix has been gorgeous so far. Factory overlocked model which is super quiet. I'd think you could probably go even further if you want to future-proof / have 4k resolution or VR etc though.

Compiling all that pricey kit on the first go might be a bit intimidating, what with the possibility of busting one of them up in the process though. It might be worth getting a half-built rig and then slotting in the last few bespoke bits yourself I you haven't built before? IE Maybe get one with Motherboard / case cooling & Power Supply in place? Possibly 800w+ PSU just to make sure you cover all the unit's needs? Then get beastly GPU and CPU (and decent CPU cooling) at best price? Those last 3 shouldn't be too hair-raising to plug in I wouldn't think. Just make sure they're compatible with Motherboard etc & plug in the power cables. Only a few select things can go wrong

For pre-builds I had a good experience with PcSpecialist. Site seems quite flexible, but haven't really explored their high end kit. Clearly wouldn't be best price, but you'd get warranty on the basic build I guess.

*Disclaimer* I'm still basically a noob at this too, so listen to Tatty

Golg - It's all in my link. The mobo is an MSI Z97 Gaming, mainly to keep the red & black theme running with the GPU although its main competitor for gaming mobos is the Asus ROG range which are also red and black.

My motherboard is a Gigabyte Ultra Durable, which is server grade rather than gaming. It's supposed to be a bit more tolerant with repeated hardware changes but that's probably just marketing BS. It's a gorgeous shade of brown...

Hah yeah I realised then edited out to save my blushes

Ninja'd once more.

Well, I took out my PSU and it's definitely making a humming noise although when I screwed it back in again the sound decreased quite noticeably. Back down to tolerable levels, actually. Oops.

Still, I've got a new one on the way and as it's a PSU advertised as being quiet, I'll be interested to see if the replacement is any different. If not I might just return it and go for my original choice, a Corsair.

Thanks for all the help! I'll definitely be looking at all of this and making up my mind after I do a little more research but it seems that I have come to the right place! I'm on holiday at the moment so I won't be looking at much more right now but I will definitely come back when I need additional help.

Building a PC is dead easy. Honestly.

There are very few universal connections so a GPU will only fit in one slot, a CPU will only fit with a particular orientation etc. Before I built my first the only experience I'd had inside a PC was swapping a graphics card.

My old PC had developed a fault - The USB ports stopped working - and like most people I went down to PC World and dropped £800 on a glorified office desktop. When I was in the store I noticed motherboards for sale at £100 and the next day came back and bought one (fortunately I was savvy enough to know about CPU socket sizes) along with a cheap case.

A few hours later I had two PCs and the one I'd built by sticking my old parts on the new motherboard was just as good as the one I'd bought. I vowed never to buy a pre-made machine again.

If you've got any questions, no matter how silly you think they seem, hit me up on Steam and I'll be happy to help.

EDIT - My PSU has gone back to sounding like the 20 year old fridge in my scullery. The identical one I'd bought for the Steamy Box is silent in comparison but it's had nowhere near the same use.

The replacement is in transit which is a shame because I'm strongly thinking about getting an 80 Plus Gold rated one instead of a Bronze. The huge power draw of that 980ti might not be agreeing with the existing power unit.

New PSU in place (and I've got until September to send the old one back) and it seems quieter. A bit.

The rest of the PC is so quiet - silent case fans, no CPU fan, GPU fans not running most of the time - that it's the only noticeable noise. Of course, now I'm actively listening for sounds.

So, the more I look at it, the more I think my build is as unbalanced as the Elephant Man. Striking to look at, but very slow moving.

Granted that the Mad Max release is from the Warner stables, so may not work at all on PC, but that AMD 3.4ghz min requirement has got me worried about future releases. The Battlefront Alpha was also requesting AMD 4.0ghz as a minimum, and although that'll come down, I'm thinking it probably won't come down enough.

Which leaves me fairly screwed. This build you suggest looks great...

But... that's another sizeable outlay. And I doubt I'd get much back for the gubbins I'd remove. I'm wondering whether it's worth holding my nose and opting for a better AMD quad in the short term?

Here's the list of CPUs compatible with my mobo. Think the A10-6800K is the best of the bunch there, if I'm reading this more detailed list for another mobo right. Seems to be gettable for around £100.

If I can get 20 quid back for the current one, I could just about stretch to that. If I'm an idiot. And give up booze as well

Any thoughts? Better AMD quad options out there? General outrage at the thought of sticking with these lumps? . Any help appreciated

To be honest I think you'd be throwing good money after bad going down the AMD route again. I was shocked at how much my old Phenom II BE was bottlenecking the 780 and that was supposedly one of their overclockable gaming CPUs.

Save up £250 and get yourself a 4690k and mobo. In the meantime you'll be fine with minimum specs because your GPU will pull you out of the hole your CPU's leaving you in.

You'd still be ok with a less powerful non-K series i5 but you do without the overclocking, and they overclock like beasts. I'm running a 20% OC on mine and temps never hit 70C.