PC Discussion Thread - All PC related in here.

[echo1 0]

I'd look at the ASUS Xonar DX, it has some very good reviews and is much cheaper than the Auzentech. As for the sound improvement, it depends. I have a fancy set of headphones too (Beyer DT770s) and the onboard sound card on my PC powers them quite well. However, you can often get quite a lot of "noise" from onboard sound, so for the best listening experience, a sound card may be a good improvement.

If waiting wasn't a option, and I was mad, what card would you recommend?

The GTX285 is the fastest single-GPU card available. (There are faster dual-GPU cards such as the GTX295, and HD4870X2, but these suffer from the same kind of issues that SLI/Crossfire setups do, as they work on the same tech). Whether it's worth €100 more than a GTX275 is debatable though.

I was wondering that myself. Maybe some people are true enthusiasts who can afford these lifestyles of the rich and famous.

Well, there's rich, and then there's stupid. Guess sometimes these things are basically the same :p

[MehMan 0]

So I replaced the cooler with a third party one and it's mucho better. I have it at lowest RPM so I can't hear it. It's preforming better underload at minimum RPM than the stock cooler at full blast. Now I can hear the other fans though and those must go!

So i'm buying 3 noctua fans and locking them at 800 rpm.

Quick question, regarding the Asus Arctic Square, does anybody know how to replace the 92mm fan inside? It's got six trox screws holding the top on, I gotta see what happens once I undo them. Hopefully it's smooth sailing from there on, a simple replacement.

[cm 0]

Research

Research

Research

Even more research

I did some research before I made my post and it seems that if you can afford it, the i7 is the better performer currently.

I don't plan on clocking higher than 3.6Ghz so I won't have to worry about hitting that wall. :)

My last system I bought 2 X1900 cards and the expensive mobo (P5B) to support it. I was totally disappointed with the results and swore that I would never do the crossfire thing again (mostly because arma didn't support it and it's the main game I play).

You're right it's the P6T and I know who the mfg. is :)

For some reason I just couldn't remember the numeric.

Thanks for the advice. What is the improvement over onboard output? Sound quality? Better gaming performance?

I'll check the prices, again thanks for the advice.

Yeah i'm still in the process of researching, and thanks to you guys i'm learning even more. Price isn't too much of a factor for me so I don't mind buying the better performer (i7). I was thinking about waiting for Intel's 35nm process to come out but I've put off upgrading for a while now and I have to pull the trigger sometime.

RE: 4890's

If waiting wasn't a option, and I was mad, what card would you recommend?

I want fancy headphones since I live in a apartment. Would a fancy headphone compliment the fancy sound cards?

Asking you guys for your advice and opinions is part of my research, and I appreciate it very much. Thank you. :)

Very interesting. I wouldn't want to make that kind of mistake. I'll talk to "the guy" at my local computer shop and ask him when he expects the next-gen cards to come out.

I was wondering that myself. Maybe some people are true enthusiasts who can afford these lifestyles of the rich and famous. :icon_lol:

Again, what about finest headphones around?

I seriously appreciate your opinions, keep em coming. :D

Ok, here comes my unbiased opinion, I have a shite load of experience with computers, much more than the vast majority of users on here.

CPU: I would have to agree with one of the above members that going with a PII 955 is probably your best bet. they have unlocked multipliers - so are a piece of cake to overclock, accept DDR2 & DDR3 memory and are relatively cheap. If you were going to be doing CAD work, I would recommend an i7, but there is little difference in gaming.

Mobo: I would recommend a gigabyte GA-MA790XT-UD4.

2x 2.0 PCI-E x16 slots, a few PCI slots and plenty of PCI-E 1x for sound cards and what not. The good thing about this particular board is that it has A LOT of upgrade potential. AMD will not be changing thier CPU socket anytime soon, so I would expect at least 2-3 years of high-end capability out of that board.

RAM: 4GB (2x2GB) 1666 DDR3,

Brand doesn't really matter that much as long as you stick to your usual kingston/corsair/team xtream etc. Tighter timing make a neglible difference but if they don't cost much more then why not. You are unlikely to use 4GB or RAM (although with arma2...) and with the price of RAM always dropping in the long run you can pick up an extra 4GB of RAM when it's cheaper and/or if you actually need it.

Graphics card:

This is probably the hardest part to pick and depends entirely on your budget. If you wanted to go the whole AMD/ATI route, maybe picking up a 4870X2 or a single 4890 would be a good idea, but again depends on your budget. If you went the crossfire route, 2x 4890s would be a formidable machine, and one I assume could easily run arma 2 on near max settings (at a reasonable resolution of course).

If you were to go down the nvida route, you always have the good old GTX295 or maybe a pair of GTX260 216s.

I recommend going for the single, fast card rather than dual GTX280/260/4890 or whatever, simply because you have that extra PCI-E x16 slot to use if you feel you need to.

Oh, and don't base your selection on ancient hardware. Crossfire and SLI have come a loooooong way since the X1900 days.

Sound card: this is an area i don't have all that much knowledge in, but I wouldn't really bother whith any of the really expensive cards, you will notice no difference when gaming. The auzentec card mentioned before is definately a good pick, and I'd have to recommend that one as well. In terms of the improvement over on board sound, there will be significant reduction in static and lag in the sound if the processor gets choked up with tasks. Sound quality is obviously improved over onboard, although the law of dimishing returns takes affect here and when you start buying cards $100+ most of the time the improvement is marginally less.

HDD:

By all means, go SSD if you want to, but if you were doing that I'd expect you to have a core i7 975 EE w/ 2x GTX295 or something . They simply are not worth the huge cost at the moment. 2x raptors in RAID 0 will give you a huge boost in theoretical HDD speed but don't expect anything too dramatic in the real world, although windows and games with boot/load pretty quickly... What I would recommend, is getting 2x 1TB drives, and throwing them in RAID 0, because of the density of the drives they approach the speeds of some of the less dense 10K RPM drives and have heaps of room for all your games/music/pr0n etc.

Heatsink:

Go for the trusty old TRUE, excellent cooler, the V8 is a POS really, it's just made to look cool and it's super expensive because of it and it's not even "the best" cooler. Make sure you lap it though as you should see a pretty good drop in temps.

BTW: whoever said ATIs next gen cards are coming out in the next month is talking out of thier arse. It will be Q3 at least, and rumors say it's been delayed until Q4. Just buy now...

Edited May 11, 2009 by cm

[Pyronick 21]

HDD:

By all means, go SSD if you want to, but if you were doing that I'd expect you to have a core i7 975 EE w/ 2x GTX295 or something . They simply are not worth the huge cost at the moment. 2x raptors in RAID 0 will give you a huge boost in theoretical HDD speed but don't expect anything too dramatic in the real world, although windows and games with boot/load pretty quickly... What I would recommend, is getting 2x 1TB drives, and throwing them in RAID 0, because of the density of the drives they approach the speeds of some of the less dense 10K RPM drives and have heaps of room for all your games/music/pr0n etc.

SSDs don't have seek times. They do have memory access latencies though, but that is negligible.

Atm SSDs are way too expensive for most of us, but if you want to be an early adaptor you might want to get one.

I tried an Intel X25E as MBR and pagefile dump and it really is fast.

But that was probably also due to the fact that it was my only SATA drive next to my DVD writer.

For other stuff I have an Ultra320 SCSI system which still kicks SATA/300's ass.

If you really want the best of the best, get the Core i7 920 and a good X58 board with SAS.

Don't use SATA drives but use SAS instead, it has way better latencies and the bandwidth is much better aswell.

And you'll be ready for the next-generation SAS-enabled SSDs as SATA is getting outdated and lacks TRIM commands.

SATA2 will only have a higher constant bandwidth and is outdated already.

[cm 0]

SSDs don't have seek times. They do have memory access latencies though, but that is negligible.

What's your point? It still doesn't mean they are worth the massive price tag (as you stated).

I still don't think an i7 and x58 is worth the money... but if you have money to burn then why not.

[echo1 0]

So I replaced the cooler with a third party one and it's mucho better. I have it at lowest RPM so I can't hear it. It's preforming better underload at minimum RPM than the stock cooler at full blast. Now I can hear the other fans though and those must go!

Which cooler did you end up with in the end?

Ok, here comes my unbiased opinion, I have a shite load of experience with computers, much more than the vast majority of users on here.

BTW: whoever said ATIs next gen cards are coming out in the next month is talking out of thier arse.

I have yet to see anything that says otherwise. Unless they've changed their schedule in the past week or so, in which case that hardly qualifies as me talking out of my arse.

Oh, and don't base your selection on ancient hardware.

SLI/Crossfire is still unreliable the last time I checked. There are certain situations where it would be worth the risk - mainly if you have something like a 30" monitor, but if you have a more regular sized screen, a single card should be more than enough.

[xav 0]

Please?

Is it worth replacing my C2Duo E6300 (1.87Mghz) from about 3 years ago with the brand new Intel Pentium Dual Core E6300 coming out this month ?

[echo1 0]

It would be faster in theory, but really fast enough to justify the cost and effort. If you want something faster, I'd replace it with an C2D E8600.

[cm 0]

SLI/Crossfire is still unreliable the last time I checked. There are certain situations where it would be worth the risk - mainly if you have something like a 30" monitor, but if you have a more regular sized screen, a single card should be more than enough.

It still isn't great, I would definately agree there, but it gone leaps and bounds since the x1900s were using it. At least now you can actually see a 2x gain in performance given the right optimisations are made in the game/drivers.

And please spot anything in my post that looks biased to you.

[MehMan 0]

Which cooler did you end up with in the end?

Scythe Musashi. Installation was a doddle. Gainward opted not to cover the RAMs with heatsinks but I did. It was really a lot more straightforward than I originally though. It's a tiny bit longer than the standard cooler, but I'm willing to sacrifice this for the beatiful silence!

Another problem I do have is the noise the front fan makes when it's right at the front. The p182 has a nice system for airducting, the middle HDD cage turns into an airduct, providing that you take out the HDDs. I did so and there wasn't much difference. Now with a new vga cooler the duct was in the way, the fan clipped on the end of the hdd cage and now that had to be removed and the fan placed right infront of the cage, where there's a nice 120mm slot for it. HOWEVER it's either a noisy fan or a bad spot. In any case, once I get my noctuas I'll look further into it.

[SWAT_BigBear 0]

SLI/Crossfire is still unreliable the last time I checked. There are certain situations where it would be worth the risk - mainly if you have something like a 30" monitor, but if you have a more regular sized screen, a single card should be more than enough.

It still isn't great, I would definately agree there, but it gone leaps and bounds since the x1900s were using it. At least now you can actually see a 2x gain in performance given the right optimisations are made in the game/drivers.

If I had the chioces of todays cards, I wouldn't do SLI again, I would go with 1 large card.

[evilnate 0]

Ok, here comes my unbiased opinion, I have a shite load of experience with computers, much more than the vast majority of users on here.

CPU: I would have to agree with one of the above members that going with a PII 955 is probably your best bet. they have unlocked multipliers - so are a piece of cake to overclock, accept DDR2 & DDR3 memory and are relatively cheap. If you were going to be doing CAD work, I would recommend an i7, but there is little difference in gaming.

Mobo: I would recommend a gigabyte GA-MA790XT-UD4.

2x 2.0 PCI-E x16 slots, a few PCI slots and plenty of PCI-E 1x for sound cards and what not. The good thing about this particular board is that it has A LOT of upgrade potential. AMD will not be changing thier CPU socket anytime soon, so I would expect at least 2-3 years of high-end capability out of that board.

RAM: 4GB (2x2GB) 1666 DDR3,

Brand doesn't really matter that much as long as you stick to your usual kingston/corsair/team xtream etc. Tighter timing make a neglible difference but if they don't cost much more then why not. You are unlikely to use 4GB or RAM (although with arma2...) and with the price of RAM always dropping in the long run you can pick up an extra 4GB of RAM when it's cheaper and/or if you actually need it.

Graphics card:

This is probably the hardest part to pick and depends entirely on your budget. If you wanted to go the whole AMD/ATI route, maybe picking up a 4870X2 or a single 4890 would be a good idea, but again depends on your budget. If you went the crossfire route, 2x 4890s would be a formidable machine, and one I assume could easily run arma 2 on near max settings (at a reasonable resolution of course).

If you were to go down the nvida route, you always have the good old GTX295 or maybe a pair of GTX260 216s.

I recommend going for the single, fast card rather than dual GTX280/260/4890 or whatever, simply because you have that extra PCI-E x16 slot to use if you feel you need to.

Oh, and don't base your selection on ancient hardware. Crossfire and SLI have come a loooooong way since the X1900 days.

Sound card: this is an area i don't have all that much knowledge in, but I wouldn't really bother whith any of the really expensive cards, you will notice no difference when gaming. The auzentec card mentioned before is definately a good pick, and I'd have to recommend that one as well. In terms of the improvement over on board sound, there will be significant reduction in static and lag in the sound if the processor gets choked up with tasks. Sound quality is obviously improved over onboard, although the law of dimishing returns takes affect here and when you start buying cards $100+ most of the time the improvement is marginally less.

HDD:

By all means, go SSD if you want to, but if you were doing that I'd expect you to have a core i7 975 EE w/ 2x GTX295 or something . They simply are not worth the huge cost at the moment. 2x raptors in RAID 0 will give you a huge boost in theoretical HDD speed but don't expect anything too dramatic in the real world, although windows and games with boot/load pretty quickly... What I would recommend, is getting 2x 1TB drives, and throwing them in RAID 0, because of the density of the drives they approach the speeds of some of the less dense 10K RPM drives and have heaps of room for all your games/music/pr0n etc.

Heatsink:

Go for the trusty old TRUE, excellent cooler, the V8 is a POS really, it's just made to look cool and it's super expensive because of it and it's not even "the best" cooler. Make sure you lap it though as you should see a pretty good drop in temps.

BTW: whoever said ATIs next gen cards are coming out in the next month is talking out of thier arse. It will be Q3 at least, and rumors say it's been delayed until Q4. Just buy now...

Appreciate the input. I too have lots of exp. building systems (since 1995) but I haven't been keeping up on the latest hardware.

I think I've decided to go with the i7 920. The OEM version has the locked multipliers, but the retail version is like the EE (unlocked). If I didn't have money to burn I would most likely go for the AMD proc, but you never know when you'll need a CAD system (visitor, etc.). After more research it looks like the V8 is less superior to the thermalright Ultra 120. I've read lots of success clocking to 4Ghz with temps @ <70C.

Thanks for all the suggestions and opinions, it really helped me. See you guys in Chernarus. :D

[MehMan 0]

Hrrr, this is worrying, if I do a prime95 test on my cpu it gets up to 77-80°C! I have a q6600, not overclocked, with an ASUS Arctic Square EVO cooler on it. Is this okay or should it be better?

With heavy 3dsmax work it cuts out at around 68ish, but with prime it just keeps going...

Edited May 18, 2009 by MehMan

[CameronMcDonald 146]

Interesting. It sounds high, but my E6600 used to also run that hot (~79 each core IIRC) when doing Prime95, and I have an ASUS Silent Square Pro (older iteration of your cooler). I wouldn't worry - Prime95 is designed to stretch your CPU to the limit, and it means to the limit.

[maddogx 13]

Hrrr, this is worrying, if I do a prime95 test on my cpu it gets up to 77-80°C! I have a q6600, not overclocked, with an ASUS Arctic Square EVO cooler on it. Is this okay or should it be better?

With heavy 3dsmax work it cuts out at around 68ish, but with prime it just keeps going...

That's waaay too hot, especially for a non-OC'ed Q6600. Your heatsink isn't bad, so I assume there is a problem with the fitting. You should try removing the heatsink, cleaning off all the heat-conductive paste and reapplying it (remember, just a thin and smooth layer). Then refit the heatsink and make sure it's sitting rock-solid on the CPU with sufficient pressure.

Interesting. It sounds high, but my E6600 used to also run that hot (~79 each core IIRC) when doing Prime95, and I have an ASUS Silent Square Pro (older iteration of your cooler). I wouldn't worry - Prime95 is designed to stretch your CPU to the limit, and it means to the limit.

80°c is way too much for a Q6600. I have the same CPU overclocked to 2,7Ghz and it usually doesn't go above 50°c, even with Prime95. I would generally recommend that people make sure their CPU doesn't go above 60°c after two or three hours of Prime95.

Edited May 18, 2009 by MadDogX

[MehMan 0]

Ok, kept it running now for about 10 minutes. The temperatures settle down at around 80°C in Everest with the cores at:

86°C Core1

85°C Core2

80°C Core3

79°C Core4

It's a bit unnerving, considering it's getting this hot right now. The idle is around 42-45°C, which from some sources is already high. The MB temp in my case is almost rock solid at 37°C. If everything starts heating up, the MB starts reading 40°C.

Now I'm not sure if it is wrong or not, the internets are confusing regarding this, some say yay, some say nay and i'm stuck in the middle going bugger.

Haven't tried reseating the cooler or anything like that. Just some stress testing.

[CameronMcDonald 146]

...I suppose I should mention that I run my E6600 at 3.6GHz here. :(

[MehMan 0]

Ok, touching the fins and heat pipes it seems the heat isn't getting out properly. They are warm, when you'd expect them to be steaming hot...

Reseating is in order!

[maddogx 13]

Ok, touching the fins and heat pipes it seems the heat isn't getting out properly. They are warm, when you'd expect them to be steaming hot...

Reseating is in order!

That's what I assumed in the first place. :D

[MehMan 0]

Ok, reseated, found nearly no thermal paste on the cpu and cooler, nearly no visible, after wiping I saw there was some because the paper towel got dirty.

Anyway, currently idling at 33°C, will wait for 15 before I start hammering it.

EDIT:

And, yeah, a definite result there! 15 minutes of prime 95 and it's not moving past 53 in everst and core temperatures are not moving above 60°C on the first two cores! Much better!

EDIT2:

And now the ambient temp has risen it idles at 37°C. Very nice! Still doesnt go above 55 and cores don't go above 62/63. Mucho better!

Edited May 18, 2009 by MehMan
started the burning!

[PhantomFury 10]

Currently in the market for a new desktop PC - Interested in running Armed Assault at a decent setting.

Here's the link, could you let me know your opinions?

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/martprd/store/pcw_page.jsp?BV_SessionID=@@@@1014913609.1242731624@@@@&BV_EngineID=ccejadehfefhkifcflgceggdhhmdgml.0&chain=PC_World&seo=yes&sku=807769&channel=WEB&page=Product

Thanks. :)

Edited May 19, 2009 by PhantomFury

[MehMan 0]

As far as I can tell, shit.

[PhantomFury 10]

As far as I can tell, shit.

Explain your reasons why and suggestions for improvement.

[Bush 0]

Explain your reasons why and suggestions for improvement.

The CPU and graphics card is kind of crappy.(yeah and the case is just awful)

If you don't know how to build your own system maybe you could look into these two:

Intel-system (at least get a 4870 1GB or GTX260):

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FS-042-OE&groupid=43&catid=1080&subcat=

AMD-system (at least get a 4870 1GB or GTX260)

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FS-063-OE&groupid=43&catid=1184&subcat=

For operating system just download the windows 7 RC1 from microsoft and use it for free until you can get the real version.

You can also chose between a few cases yourself.

I would probably get the AMD-system if I had to choose between those two.

Edit:

If you want to have somthning even better get this one:

Intel i7-system@3.4GHz(at least get a 4870 1GB or GTX260):

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FS-030-OE&groupid=43&catid=1270&subcat=

Edited May 19, 2009 by Bush

[PhantomFury 10]

The CPU and graphics card is kind of crappy.(yeah and the case is just awful)

If you don't know how to build your own system maybe you could look into these two:

Intel-system (at least get a 4870 1GB or GTX260):

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FS-042-OE&groupid=43&catid=1080&subcat=

AMD-system (at least get a 4870 1GB or GTX260)

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FS-063-OE&groupid=43&catid=1184&subcat=

For operating system just download the windows 7 RC1 from microsoft and use it for free until you can get the real version.

I would probably get the AMD-system if I had to choose between those two.

Edit:

If you want to have somthning even better get this one:

Intel i7-system@3.4GHz(at least get a 4870 1GB or GTX260):

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FS-030-OE&groupid=43&catid=1270&subcat=

Surprisingly I've had this one in mind from the very same website, http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FS-154-OK&groupid=43&catid=1080&subcat=

I just need to know whether they're a reputable, it's potentially a lot of money I'm putting down and if anything goes wrong then I'll be severely disappointed. However, thanks for the recommendations.