Gaming Build - Advice

Got a shopping cart of parts that you want opinions on? Get advice from members on your planned or existing system (or upgrade).

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HawkSight
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Re: Gaming Build - Advice

Post by HawkSight » Thu May 23, 2013 7:03 pm

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 38566&SID=

Hows this ram look to you guys? CORSAIR Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB)

Falkon
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Re: Gaming Build - Advice

Post by Falkon » Thu May 23, 2013 7:20 pm

HawkSight wrote:Looking at Windows 7 Home Premium, OEM means I can only install it once, correct? Amazon has Windows 7 HP for $89. Any better deal out there?
I'm pretty sure OEM just means you don't get customer/phone support for the product. You can reinstall the OS provided the hardware similar to what you initially installed on (ie. you can't use it for two or more different systems and activate it.)

I found this deal on an OEM copy: http://leximart.com/product.php?id_product=96
You could probably price match that at NCIX.

CA_Steve
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Re: Gaming Build - Advice

Post by CA_Steve » Thu May 23, 2013 8:24 pm

HawkSight wrote:http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 38566&SID=

Hows this ram look to you guys? CORSAIR Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB)
Apparently, if you go red, it's $5 cheaper. :)

Sure, that'll do.

Das_Saunamies
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Re: Gaming Build - Advice

Post by Das_Saunamies » Fri May 24, 2013 1:53 pm

HawkSight wrote:Newegg has a bundle deal going on for the i5 3570k with the ASUS P8Z77-V LK for $50 off. Would I see many downsides going to the LK version over the regular ASUS P8Z77? The LK version is $50 less on newegg and with the $50 combo I'd save $100. What do you guys think?
Happened across this review of the board, http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/mainbo ... -v-lk.html, if you're still unsure. X-Bit Labs was happy with their sample's functionality, and I'm fully satisfied with Fan Xpert+, which is the most important feature of the motherboard from a silence perspective.

HawkSight
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Re: Gaming Build - Advice

Post by HawkSight » Tue May 28, 2013 3:22 pm

Whats a quality surge protector that you guys recommend for a pc of this build? I don't really need data loss protection and dont want my hardware to fry incase of a brown out / surge.

Fractal R4 and Samsung 840 Pro 256 arrived today!

CA_Steve
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Re: Gaming Build - Advice

Post by CA_Steve » Tue May 28, 2013 7:21 pm

I'd recommend putting your PC behind an UPS. It's saved my bacon numerous times.

QUIET!
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Re: Gaming Build - Advice

Post by QUIET! » Tue May 28, 2013 7:22 pm

I have a CyberPower pfclcd ups, the smallest tower style one.

With an efficient PC it has plenty of power to run a while and then shut down safely. I think the surge suppression is supposed to be good although I've never had crummy power or lightning to test it with.

It also has kill-a-watt type of capabilities built in to tell you exactly how much power your PC and anything else plugged in is drawing and with the nice LCD it is easy to read.

You might not be looking for a ups but that one is pretty cool, reasonably priced for what it does and has plenty of capacity if your PC isn't being stress tested with a high power GPU and a bunch of high rpm hard drives.

Not exactly what you asked for but ordinary surge suppressors are boring.

Das_Saunamies
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Re: Gaming Build - Advice

Post by Das_Saunamies » Tue May 28, 2013 11:33 pm

Surge protectors are fine for TVs and dumb electronics, but you really should consider a UPS for a PC. Data loss isn't just personal or work files, you can drop out during a critical software update or system operation that may take a lengthy and complicated repair operation to smooth out, and may leave underlying issues still. $100 for many years of peace of mind is worth it IMO, very cheap for insurance.

APC (by Schneider Electric since the 2007 acquisition) and Eaton are both reputable brands and offer a wide variety of models. Check what fits your budget and what sort of warranties they offer. I have used an 800 VA Eaton Protection Station for many years and it has served me well, before that I had a spare server-grade Eaton UPS for about 5-6 years. All my surge protectors are APC (they had nice equipment damage warranties). The city I worked in IT for used both Eaton and APC UPS'.

Abula
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Re: Gaming Build - Advice

Post by Abula » Wed May 29, 2013 5:29 am

I have had very good experience with Cyberpower UPS on 3 pc setups, their PFC sinwave line is what i use and recommend, this is their smallest if you can fit it under your budget i think its a good investment for your pc, CyberPower CP850PFCLCD PFC Sinewave UPS 850VA 510W PFC Compatible Mini-Tower

Das_Saunamies
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Re: Gaming Build - Advice

Post by Das_Saunamies » Wed May 29, 2013 5:46 am

One thing to note about power protection: most of it messes with Powerline products, so make sure to pick a compatible one. The Eaton UPS I use has a PLC-compatible socket that works fine.

HawkSight
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Re: Gaming Build - Advice

Post by HawkSight » Wed May 29, 2013 8:35 am

Awesome info guys. Time to start researching UPS's. The cybertower mini looks really awesome. I just realized that the electrical outlet where this PC is going is a 2 pin outlet and am now wondering if the house electrical is grounded. Hopefully I can just swap the outlet for a 3 pin. If not, how bad of an idea is it to use a UPS / Surge Protector connected to a 3 pin adapter connected to a 2 pin outlet? The house has a couple 3 pin outlets in it but its an older house early 50's and have never had a problem with electrical surge's in the past. Dell monitor is supposed to arrive today!

Das_Saunamies
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Re: Gaming Build - Advice

Post by Das_Saunamies » Wed May 29, 2013 9:16 am

The whole point of a plug not fitting in a socket is usually because it would be a bad idea to connect the two.

Surge protection circuits in general work by controlling the voltage they let through to the system to be protected and shunting the excess down a ground pin or wire to dissipate harmlessly. If the pin or wire is not available, the excess does not leave the protection circuit and may overwhelm it, passing through into the protected system, possibly damaging it and the surge protector. All equipment damage warranties I've seen do become void if the protector is used in an ungrounded socket.

If you have 3-pin outlets in the house, you should have ground, and if you do, an electrician can wire any socket to have ground. You can do this yourself, and there are cheap tricks to emulating a proper earthing, but I would advise against both - it usually voids your insurance policy in case things go south and they find out it was due to an improper installation.

Grounding a socket is more than just swapping the receptacle: the ground wire needs to be routed from the service panel or a suitable junction box.

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Re: Gaming Build - Advice

Post by CA_Steve » Wed May 29, 2013 9:43 am

Das_Saunamies wrote:The whole point of a plug not fitting in a socket is usually because it would be a bad idea to connect the two.

Surge protection circuits in general work by controlling the voltage they let through to the system to be protected and shunting the excess down a ground pin or wire to dissipate harmlessly. If the pin or wire is not available, the excess does not leave the protection circuit and may overwhelm it, passing through into the protected system, possibly damaging it and the surge protector. All equipment damage warranties I've seen do become void if the protector is used in an ungrounded socket.

If you have 3-pin outlets in the house, you should have ground, and if you do, an electrician can wire any socket to have ground. You can do this yourself, and there are cheap tricks to emulating a proper earthing, but I would advise against both - it usually voids your insurance policy in case things go south and they find out it was due to an improper installation.

Grounding a socket is more than just swapping the receptacle: the ground wire needs to be routed from the service panel or a suitable junction box.
+1

Abula
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Re: Gaming Build - Advice

Post by Abula » Wed May 29, 2013 9:54 am

Das_Saunamies wrote:Grounding a socket is more than just swapping the receptacle: the ground wire needs to be routed from the service panel or a suitable junction box.
Just wondering for my case, my house (really old) didnt have any 3rd connector, what i did was to my worker did was to burry a copper stick underground 15ft and cable it to the socket, im not sure if that good... but the UPS and power conditioner see is it as ok on their displays. Im about to move to another old house that will not have it either, so just wondering if this was alright or should i do something different this time.

Das_Saunamies
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Re: Gaming Build - Advice

Post by Das_Saunamies » Wed May 29, 2013 12:44 pm

Abula wrote:
Das_Saunamies wrote:Grounding a socket is more than just swapping the receptacle: the ground wire needs to be routed from the service panel or a suitable junction box.
Just wondering for my case, my house (really old) didnt have any 3rd connector, what i did was to my worker did was to burry a copper stick underground 15ft and cable it to the socket, im not sure if that good... but the UPS and power conditioner see is it as ok on their displays. Im about to move to another old house that will not have it either, so just wondering if this was alright or should i do something different this time.
That is a correct way of earthing your typical household electrical system, grounding via a rod or pole. The basic principle really is no more than making sure the circuit can connect to the Earth.

The difference between professional earthing and DIY earthing is the grade of the result: self-installations can be a fire hazard because people don't know what gauge of wire to use (too thin and it overheats, burning through insulation and more), how to insulate properly (risks shock and short circuiting, corrosion), and how to connect, terminate and route everything safely. DIYers may also neglect sufficient measurements and testing that would ensure the system works properly (especially important when grounding more than one socket, or grounding a socket in a system that already has ground-connected sockets). You can get functional results with DIY, but only a professional can verify if the installation is safe - and you are fully responsible for any DIY installations made, meaning potentially no insurance in case of damages and probably a court case if someone gets hurt or dies.

The real dirty tricks are things like using a jump wire to connect the grounding pin to the "cold" AC wire and drawing a clamp and cable to a water pipe or radiator. These have very obvious risks - you don't want to mess with the proper electrical circuitry in your house (though the first one can be used to wire a TN-C system with a PEN wire, where Neutral or "cold" and Protective Earth or ground share the wire), and connecting power spike energy into ANY household object is a questionable practice at best.

Sorry this got a bit long, so in short: Yes, a ground rod is the way to go, but there are a lot of factors in the installation and a lot of responsibility thereafter.

HawkSight
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Re: Gaming Build - Advice

Post by HawkSight » Wed Jun 05, 2013 12:19 pm

Thanks for all the awesome advice you guys! PC is up and running and has been going steady for the last couple days. Loving every part of it so far. This was only my second pc build so I'm pretty inexperienced, but here's a couple thoughts on the build.

- Macho cooler is huge! Was a real pain to install and keep the cooler from moving on the cpu while screwing in the bridge piece that bolts to the mobo. Had a pretty hard time plugging some things in around this too.

- Had the Asus board all screwed into the case and wired up when I realized I had forgot to install the Asus WiFi piece! Had to take everything out to get the bolt on the backside.

- My PSU came with an assortment of connectors but my GPU takes two 6 pin connectors which my PSU did not come with. I have one cable that is SLI ready which I have connected right into the gpu. The other cable is using a 2 molex connector which ive read is not the best solution. Is there any 6 pin cables that I can plug right into the PSU/GPU for a clean and efficient setup?

- Fan Xpert 2 is pretty cool, I haven't played with it too much. However if I knew how quiet this case was and these fans were at full speed I might have gone with a less expensive mobo. Its really quiet compared to what I'm used too. I am currently using WiFi though so I'm glad I went with the p8z77-v.

- Had a pretty confusing time trying to get all the drivers updated and installed and seems like I still don't have them all correct. The Asus Suite and related programs have created all sorts of files and folders and generally pretty confusing. Trying to update the WiFi go program separately deleted the suite program and now neither are working. Will need to try and reinstall the suite in whole.

- Currently in Device Manager it says drivers for my SM Bus Controller are not installed. Is this something I need?

- Already filling up my SSD quickly, so will be looking for a 3TB or so drive soon.

Here's a picture of the inside and the gpu connectors I'm talking about.

Image

Image

Das_Saunamies
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Re: Gaming Build - Advice

Post by Das_Saunamies » Thu Jun 06, 2013 1:14 am

Congrats on a finished build! 8)

Regarding the points made:
  • The Macho is one of those huge tower coolers that can cool well with minimal forced airflow (meaning lower fan RPM and thus less noise). Option #2 was getting something like the True Spirit 120M that is compact and thus easier to install, but may require more RPM, especially in hot ambient temperatures. My huge-ish cooler gets along fine with 300-600 RPM even in the summer (+28 °C ambient), and that's inaudible. The upside is that you will rarely if ever need to reinstall a CPU cooler.
  • I can see the second 6+2 PCI-E power connector hanging loose there. If it's good enough to power SLI (as per Newegg description), it's good enough to plug in to the same card. Different connectors are mostly a throwback to the dark ages with multiple 12 V lines etc. Consult the PSU's manual first, though.
  • Just you wait with the fans... once your mind and ears adjust, you'll start realising just how quiet things can get, and you'll want to lower those fans to find the sweet spot between silence and cooling. And then you want MORE (better sounding fans, higher CFM/RPM etc.) - that's how things like SPCR get started. :mrgreen:
  • SSDs really aren't very good for use as storage yet, the $/TB is too damn high to get big enough capacities for today's file sizes. Still very happy with my 3 TB Red, quite satisfied with the 1 TB Green, too.
  • SM Bus Controller is a part of the motherboard's chipset, so installing chipset drivers (Intel in your case I believe) will get it running. Probably won't stop the system from working, but leaving drivers uninstalled can lead to weirdness in the future, and you may not remember you haven't installed all system drivers yet (neglect is one big reason why IT help procedures call for installing drivers despite it being a painfully obvious and often unnecessary step).
  • Mobo software is notoriously sloppy and hasn't really evolved in the couple decades I've been using it. Weird installation and update procedures are to be expected.
Have you tested your WiFi WAN connection with http://www.speedtest.net and http://www.pingtest.net yet? That's an easy way to compare real-life performance between different connection methods. I don't have the pictures saved, but for example Gbit ethernet link gets me 2 ms ping with 0 jitter and 90+/10+ Mbps throughput, whereas with 500AV Powerline it's 55/10+ Mbps tops with the same ping - old powerline added 30-50 ms to ping with lots of jitter, which was terrible for gaming. I haven't used WLAN since the heydays of G, so I can't say what the stats there would be.

Abula
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Re: Gaming Build - Advice

Post by Abula » Thu Jun 06, 2013 5:44 am

Glad it worked out for you, nice components.

The only thing i think you could do a little better is the cable management, the R4 has a lot of space on the back to be able to hide it and end up with cleaner look. Here is a video that might help you, he build a very similar build, ULTIMATE Build a Better $2000 Gaming & Silent Workstation PC Computer "How To" Guide. Specially use the back of the motherboard to route the cables and secure them with tie raps to the clamps/clips there are on the back of the case.

Get a WD Red 3 TB NAS Hard Drive: 3.5 Inch, SATA III, 64 MB Cache - WD30EFRX for your storage needs, and leave only the ssd for OS/Program/Games. That hdd was reviewed by SPCR and it got the editor choice, Western Digital Red 3TB & 1TB Hard Drives.
- Currently in Device Manager it says drivers for my SM Bus Controller are not installed. Is this something I need?
Install Intel Chipset drivers and Intel Rapid Storage Technology to get the most of your mobo and the ssd, this are always the frist two drivers that i install, most of the time from the intel website to grab the latest.
- My PSU came with an assortment of connectors but my GPU takes two 6 pin connectors which my PSU did not come with.
The second is hanging from the same cable, thats how that PSU has the 2x 8pin.

Btw did you get a second TY147?

QUIET!
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Re: Gaming Build - Advice

Post by QUIET! » Thu Jun 06, 2013 8:14 pm

The reason why a GPU has dual connectors is connector resistance, not wire resistance.

The connector will overheat if too much current is flowing through it but the 16 or 18 gauge wire can handle a lot more so one modular PSU cable with two plugs on it should work fine.

For the hard drive, if you don't need speed, network attached storage may be something to look in to and can let you keep the noise and heat somewhere that doesn't bother anyone.

Das_Saunamies
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Re: Gaming Build - Advice

Post by Das_Saunamies » Thu Jun 06, 2013 9:56 pm

QUIET! wrote:The reason why a GPU has dual connectors is connector resistance, not wire resistance.

The connector will overheat if too much current is flowing through it but the 16 or 18 gauge wire can handle a lot more so one modular PSU cable with two plugs on it should work fine.

For the hard drive, if you don't need speed, network attached storage may be something to look in to and can let you keep the noise and heat somewhere that doesn't bother anyone.
Let me clarify what I wrote: PSUs having to use more than one cable is a throwback to the bad old days of them having to use multiple 12 V lines to handle the load, whereas now we have stronger (more A) single 12 V lines.

See more here on the forums: viewtopic.php?t=23916
And even more on Jonnyguru's forums: http://www.jonnyguru.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3990

QUIET!
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Re: Gaming Build - Advice

Post by QUIET! » Sat Jun 08, 2013 5:22 pm

I've got my low power gaming PC together and I'm setting up software now.

For the OS I chose Windows Home Server 2011 which is the cheapest 64 bit windows I could find, based on a stripped down Windows Server 2008 and I probably don't need what they stripped down on a basic PC intended for gaming only.

So far I've run in to an Intel integrated NIC driver issue but I think I have a workaround and worst case I can add a NIC. I wasn't able to benchmark it since I couldn't download software but that will be coming soon.

The parts:

Intel DZ75ML-45K mini ATX motherboard ~$80

Intel i3-3220 CPU ~$125 (soon to be i5).

Xigmatek s1284 Achilles heat sink with socket 1156 crossbow adapter ~$28 (soon to be Thor's Hammer)

Samsung green ram 2x4gb DDR3 ~50

Asus Direct CU Radeon 7790 GPU ~&135

Samsung 840 Pro SSD ~$240

LG BD drive ~$22

XION 560 case ~$30 after rebate.

OEM 255 watt 80+ gold rated PSU ~$14 +a few hours modding, cables and supplies.

Two Cougar 120mm PWM fans ~$26

Windows Home Server 2011 ~$50

Grand total ~$800+ a little labor, a few buck in supplies, a bit of tax and some shipping.

Even after the i5 and Thor's hammer upgrade I'll be right around $1.1k for a computer with few weaknesses and reasonably quiet (if you subtract the i3 and Achilles HSF its under $1k).

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