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"I need a New PC!" 2012 Thread. 22nm+28nm, Tri-Gate, and reading the OP. [Part 1]

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I was complaining about the slightly slower boot time with my new mainboard and CPU. Few hours ago it suddenly took about 5 minutes to boot and it turns out that my secondary HDD, a Western Digital, is crapping out on me. The game partition isn't accessible anymore and transfer rates on my data partition go from normal to awfully slow (~500 KB/s right now) and sometimes back to normal again. The HDD is a little over two years old and I'm not sure if that's good or bad, but I honestly don't know what to buy anymore. I really don't want to buy any Seagate anymore, I had Samsung's dying one me, with another one that is getting weird in my home server, and I hoped the blue WD would last a little bit longer.

I'm no expert, but I have been using a Hitachi hard drive in my current PC for years now and it shows no signs of failure. It's not exactly a good testimonial on my part, since I don't use my PC as a server. But maybe a Hitachi drive could be another possibility?
 

Ledsen

Member
What? lol

What I mean is that real world differences in performance are negligible IMO to warrant massive price gaps between the same products.

Price to performance ratio for me is the key factor, quality and dependability are not really a factor between AMD and Intel, never had any of their procs fail oh me.

That's the thing, they're not negligible, they're huge. Price/performance on the 2500k is the best there is, no question.

Also you should watch Arrested Development ;)
 

overcast

Member
I posted in the Diablo thread and they pointed me here. I want to be able to just run D3 fairly well on my laptop. I think my main problem is the graphics card?

Here are my specs:
CPU: AMD A6-3400M APU with Radeon HD Graphics
CPU Speed: 1.4 GHz
RAM: 6 GB
OS: Windows 7
Video Card: AMD Radeon HD 6520G (I think I need an upgrade?)
I have 324 GB of free space.

If there is anything I need, help would be very much appreciated.
 
I posted in the Diablo thread and they pointed me here. I want to be able to just run D3 fairly well on my laptop. I think my main problem is the graphics card?

Here are my specs:
CPU: AMD A6-3400M APU with Radeon HD Graphics
CPU Speed: 1.4 GHz
RAM: 6 GB
OS: Windows 7
Video Card: AMD Radeon HD 6520G (I think I need an upgrade?)
I have 324 GB of free space.

If there is anything I need, help would be very much appreciated.

Your laptop doesn't have a videocard

It's the CPU that is processing the graphics, not much you can do but buy a new machine
 

Karmum

Banned
So, at 1:00 PDT (4:00 EST) the Crucial M4 128 SSD is going on sale, it's already $124.99, how much lower is it going to be with this deal on NewEgg?

Edit - Apparently $99. Oh man, to buy or not to buy?
 

r4z4

Member
Finally kicked off purchasing parts for my build with the most agonising decision of all: a case!

Went with the BitFenix Shinobi. Ideally I would have liked an mATX case but there is nothing out there that I found was perfect so went with the best looking (imo) cheap mid-tower.

Now all I am waiting on is release of the GTX 670 and will decide whether I go with that or a 7850 depending on price, hoping the 670 comes in at £300.

Rest of my build will be :
i5-2500K + 212 EVO
Asus Maximus V Gene
Corsair Vengeance 8GB
Crucial m4 128GB
HD 7850 or GTX 670
Corsair TX650W v2
 

Hazaro

relies on auto-aim
So...... I was trying to oc my machine so I could run my RAM at 1866 instead of 1333. 1333 is stable but once I oc, I BSOD or hang. I ram memtest86+ and when at 1333 saw no errors after a 2 tests. When I went to 1866 ( I oc'ed the bios and went right to memtest so i assume it was oc'ed) was getting a slew of errors.

I used the Asus bios auto overclock selection but I see the voltage around 1.485. Some reson I cent get it to 1.5 manually either. This is so frustrating.
The speed boost is super negligible. If you want to bother with an RMA you can. Can you run at 1600Mhz and lower timings? It's very similar.
I was complaining about the slightly slower boot time with my new mainboard and CPU. Few hours ago it suddenly took about 5 minutes to boot and it turns out that my secondary HDD, a Western Digital, is crapping out on me. The game partition isn't accessible anymore and transfer rates on my data partition go from normal to awfully slow (~500 KB/s right now) and sometimes back to normal again. The HDD is a little over two years old and I'm not sure if that's good or bad, but I honestly don't know what to buy anymore. I really don't want to buy any Seagate anymore, I had Samsung's dying one me, with another one that is getting weird in my home server, and I hoped the blue WD would last a little bit longer.
Well there's going to be 2 or something HDD makers left so you won't have a lot of choice about the matter.

I'd get a Samsung F3/F4 HDD.
 

Hazaro

relies on auto-aim
With the i3 2120, what would be the maximum video card to pair it with?
Pretty much anything.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-fx-pentium-apu-benchmark,3120.html

You'll have cases where a better CPU will give you more frames, but a CPU won't be holding stuff back nearly as much as they have in the past.
e.g. BF3 with 32+ players, SC II on custom maps / large engagements. A quad can also help have higher minimum FPS.

The i3 is an absolute beast for gaming for the $.
 

Hazaro

relies on auto-aim
Yeah, there really isn't much in it. Thanks for that.
I can easily understand the concerns about it being only 2 cores with HT. It was why I had the 955 recommended for so long with bulldozer on the horizon, but with bulldozer being a flop and with Z68 board prizes coming down to $110 it made more sense to replace it with the capable i3 after seeing updated benches and it being proven faster is just about everything + upgradable to a nice i5 or i7 down the line.
 
I can easily understand the concerns about it being only 2 cores with HT. It was why I had the 955 recommended for so long with bulldozer on the horizon, but with bulldozer being a flop and with Z68 board prizes coming down to $110 it made more sense to replace it with the capable i3 after seeing updated benches and it being proven faster is just about everything + upgradable to a nice i5 or i7 down the line.

Half the price of an i5 for similar in-game performance is fine with me.
 

Frank

Member
Just wanted to say thank you! to the guys keeping the OP alive. I just finished building up my first rig in the last 10 years :) and the OP helped a lot with clarifying what I need and want.

I've been mostly a console gamer this generation, so it's nice to open up again the PC gaming space. I grew up within it, which makes this whole thing a bit like coming home.

Now, towards a diabloesque future! And a severely closer relationship with Steam!
 

Karmum

Banned
That's kind of hard to resist.
Yeah, even with like another $7-8 in tax, still under $110. This sucks, I don't want to buy both a new case and SSD this week, so I'll just have to pick and choose.

I guess it's pretty obvious, an SSD deal like this may spring up eventually, but maybe not in the next few weeks and I don't see my case going down anytime soon.
 

Hazaro

relies on auto-aim
Just wanted to say thank you! to the guys keeping the OP alive. I just finished building up my first rig in the last 10 years :) and the OP helped a lot with clarifying what I need and want.

I've been mostly a console gamer this generation, so it's nice to open up again the PC gaming space. I grew up within it, which makes this whole thing a bit like coming home.

Now, towards a diabloesque future! And a severely closer relationship with Steam!
No problem, I get a lot of help on areas I'm not that familiar with and I don't do any of the graphic work.

I am trying to look into making PC gaming more accessible, but HDD prices and Windows and me actually making some kind of profit is making it very difficult to balance.

I saw a computer company (Clockwork) advertise on a fighting game stream which was cool, but their stuff was easily marked up $400 on a $900 and $1300 system. "Find best parts and pass on the savings" my ass.

Problem is your market is price sensitive in a market where the opposite (high end) is profitable on smaller scales.
660Ti could be another 6 months away according to the guy who runs Overclockers in the UK.
6 months seems like a stretch. I'd guess more like 2-4. But that's just a guess because 'Summer' is pretty long and you have 28nm yields + 670/680 supply to juggle.
 

kharma45

Member

ParityBit

Member
The speed boost is super negligible. If you want to bother with an RMA you can. Can you run at 1600Mhz and lower timings? It's very similar.

I can try 1600 tonight when I get home. One thing I find perplexing is that the voltage appeared to hover at 1.485 or so even when I tried to increase it in the BIOS to 1.5 At least that is what the BIOS was telling me.

So my plan was to try memtest on each chip (I have 4) and see if any of them past the OC. If one passes, I will assume it is the RAM and if all fail I will assume it is the motherboard? Last night when I was trying this, Memtest literally failed within minutes.
 

TheExodu5

Banned
It went black as if lost power (says "no signal" as if someone disconnected the monitor), and then booted up by itself and "start windows normally".

So far the highest temp I've seen while playing WiC is 71 celsius.

No overclock failure messages or anything?

Could be a PSU problem. When my PSU went bad, it would cause random reboots.
 

Ty4on

Member
Is there any reason why people prefer Intel to AMD? I have an AMD Phenom II X6 1090T 3.6 Ghz processor and its perfect.

I always thought it was because Intel has the name, but if anyone could share opinions that'd be nice.
Edit: Sprry, this answers the question "Why would you ever choose AMD over Intel", not vice versa :/

The FX8150 does beat the 2500k in most multi-threaded tasks, especially in Linux (Win7 doesn't like the bulldozer architecture), but it is still slower than 2500k in single-threaded tasks.
embed.php

Full review on Ubuntu.
(benchmarking starts at page 6)
It also overclocks pretty well. The gaming performance renders it pretty useless for gamers (the 2500k isn't that much worse in multi-threaded tasks, it beats it in some), but it probably has a use if you want to do video/image editing quickly without paying for an i7.
 

Karmum

Banned
I was planning on waiting until the 670s came out but i think i might just pull the trigger on a 560ti 448.

This one to me looks really good

EVGA Classified Ultra - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130758

Any thoughts on this card or anyone have any experience with it?
I'm honestly not too aware of the 560 Ti (let alone the Classified Ultra one), but I'm pretty sure my overclocked GTX 460 (one, not two) probably gets near the performance a 560 Ti. Would take that opinion with a grain of salt, though.
 

Chittagong

Gold Member
Hmmm I'm new with PCs, so not sure how this AMD stuff works.

Anyway, I have the 7850 and it has been running 12.3 drivers. Today there was a prompt to update to 12.4 drivers. I accepted and it downloaded and the installer installed the 150MB package into a folder at C > AMD where there are now two folders, one for 12.3 and one for 12.4.

Anyway, even after reboot when I open CCC and select info, it shows I'm running 12.3 and I have no idea where to go from here.
 

Sethos

Banned
Hmmm I'm new with PCs, so not sure how this AMD stuff works.

Anyway, I have the 7850 and it has been running 12.3 drivers. Today there was a prompt to update to 12.4 drivers. I accepted and it downloaded and the installer installed the 150MB package into a folder at C > AMD where there are now two folders, one for 12.3 and one for 12.4.

Anyway, even after reboot when I open CCC and select info, it shows I'm running 12.3 and I have no idea where to go from here.

Sounds like it unpacked the installer, didn't actually install it.

Run the installer inside the 12.4 folder.
 

Dirtdog07

Neo Member
I know I don't post very much here but I recently decided to build a new computer and just wanted to say thanks for this great thread. Between this thread and Tom's forums it was really helpful on deciding what to get. With the final pieces coming in today, I can't wait to get it together. Thanks again. These are my specs:

Case - CM Storm Trooper
CPU - I5 2500k
PSU - Corsair HX850
MB - ASUS P8Z77-V Pro
Video Card - EVGA GTX 680 SC
Mem - Mushkin DDR3 8gb 1333
HD - Samsung F3 1tb
SSD - Crucial 128gb
Optical - LG Blu ray
Cooler - Noctua NH-D14

img0296wh.jpg
 

Chittagong

Gold Member
Sounds like it unpacked the installer, didn't actually install it.

Run the installer inside the 12.4 folder.

This is turning to be more frustrating than I imagined. AMD uninstaller gets stuck and fails to finish, as does the AMD installer. It just hangs on some process for ages, for example when installing it gets stuck in

"Enumerating source media for installable packages"

and when uninstalling it gets stuck on the analyzing bit... yeah, this will take most of the day then.
 

mkenyon

Banned
So, at 1:00 PDT (4:00 EST) the Crucial M4 128 SSD is going on sale, it's already $124.99, how much lower is it going to be with this deal on NewEgg?

Edit - Apparently $99. Oh man, to buy or not to buy?
Sonnuva bitch. Just bought one too.

Anyone remember off the top of their heads if it has built in garbage collection? Tempted to go RAID0 at that price.
Finally kicked off purchasing parts for my build with the most agonising decision of all: a case!

Went with the BitFenix Shinobi. Ideally I would have liked an mATX case but there is nothing out there that I found was perfect so went with the best looking (imo) cheap mid-tower.

Now all I am waiting on is release of the GTX 670 and will decide whether I go with that or a 7850 depending on price, hoping the 670 comes in at £300.
Oh man! Fractal Arc Mini, so much. Shinobi is a great case, but lacking a bit on airflow. You might want to consider picking up an extra fan or two.

I don't know how prices translate across the pond, but I don't expect the 670 to be any lower than $400.
I was planning on waiting until the 670s came out but i think i might just pull the trigger on a 560ti 448.

This one to me looks really good

EVGA Classified Ultra - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130758

Any thoughts on this card or anyone have any experience with it?
Only if you overclock and enjoy pushing it to the limits. If you want it to be a bit more quiet, get the least expensive ASUS DCII or MSI Twin Frozr version you can find. I've seen them as low as $240.
 

Karmum

Banned
Sonnuva bitch. Just bought one too.

Anyone remember off the top of their heads if it has built in garbage collection? Tempted to go RAID0 at that price.
Wouldn't take my word for it, did some quick googling and I can't imagine it being some odd number like $109.99 or something. I'm definitely jumping on the SSD train once 4 PM EDT rolls around, damn shame it probably won't ship out today though. I assume I'll have to do a fresh new OS install with the SSD? That'll suck.
 

Filth

Member
Hey guys I'm having a really annoying pc issue and I thought maybe someone could help me out.

Symptom: my monitor will randomly go black and flicker back to the desktop and back to black over and over. What is wierd though is it only happens when I click reply to a thread on neogaf and visit other sites main pages. I could have neogaf opened on my pc all day with no issues literally but the second I click reply to a thread that's when the monitor goes black. And it stops once I get rid of the browser. I've tried reinstalling the browser and using ie chrome Firefox. It happens on all 3. My video card is a gtx560 ti with up to Date drivers and I've reinstalled those to.

I was dealing with it by ignoring it but it started happening while playing a game on steam which never happened before. I'm hoping to fix this issue before diablo
3 comes out :/
 
Does anyone have any recommendations for a decent but cheapish socket 775 CPU cooler? Budget's around £20-25 (so around $35?).

Being able to fit it to the i5 I'm planning to get in six months or so would be a bonus.
 

r4z4

Member
Oh man! Fractal Arc Mini, so much. Shinobi is a great case, but lacking a bit on airflow. You might want to consider picking up an extra fan or two.

I don't know how prices translate across the pond, but I don't expect the 670 to be any lower than $400.

You have no idea how many times I switched between the Define Mini, Arc Mini and Shinobi. Technically Arc Mini is a better case (modular hard drive racks, rubber grommets etc) but the looks of the Shinobi did it for me. I did pick up two extra 12cm fans so those plus the CPU cooler should work out OK I think.

About the 670 UK price: I've applied the "convert to £ and add £50 rule" $400 = £250 so hoping for something around £300. Don't screw us over Nvidia!
 

Chittagong

Gold Member
So, after a lot of CClewner and Driver Sweeper and forced rebooting, stuck AMD installers and stuck AMD uninstallers, I finally got the drivers to install properly and games work now fine.

CCC won't start at all though, so same hassle again, repair .NET, clean up reistry of crap... And still nothing. So I guess I won't change those graphics settings, then.

I can not believe AMD puts me through this crap. A monkey could program an installer that parks all previous AMD software to a legacy folder, cleans registry and assembly entries, ensures correct .NET version and updates references, and verifies installation dependencies.
 

mkenyon

Banned
Does anyone have any recommendations for a decent but cheapish socket 775 CPU cooler? Budget's around £20-25 (so around $35?).

Being able to fit it to the i5 I'm planning to get in six months or so would be a bonus.
Coolermaster Hyper 212 (plus, evo, whatever). The one in the OP.
Is the "Excellent" build in the OP good enough to play all games at max details on 1080p resolution?
At what frame rate?

There's going to be exceptions, but most should play at 60, some at 30-60. BF3, Witcher 2 with ubersampling, Crysis 2 DX11, and Metro 2033 spring to mind as games that probably would not be playable at max.
 
Coolermaster Hyper 212 (plus, evo, whatever). The one in the OP.

At what frame rate?

There's going to be exceptions, but most should play at 60, some at 30-60. BF3, Witcher 2 with ubersampling, Crysis 2 DX11, and Metro 2033 spring to mind as games that probably would not be playable at max.

I know nothing of frame rates. Whats considered a good frame rate?
 

LordAlu

Member
So, after a lot of CClewner and Driver Sweeper and forced rebooting, stuck AMD installers and stuck AMD uninstallers, I finally got the drivers to install properly and games work now fine.

CCC won't start at all though, so same hassle again, repair .NET, clean up reistry of crap... And still nothing. So I guess I won't change those graphics settings, then.

I can not believe AMD puts me through this crap. A monkey could program an installer that parks all previous AMD software to a legacy folder, cleans registry and assembly entries, ensures correct .NET version and updates references, and verifies installation dependencies.
It is honestly terrible. My housemate was stuck on 11 series drivers because he simply couldn't upgrade them. Repairing wouldn't work, uninstalling didn't do anything, driver sweeper didn't help at all. It simply refused to install them correctly.

Eventually he got an SSD upgrade and did a clean Windows install... and suddenly the driver install worked perfectly. No idea why it didn't with the previous one.
 

Lanbeast

Member
What kind of future are SSDs facing? That Crucial M4 is really tempting to jump on, but is it likely that the price will go down much more over the next ~9 months or so?
 
setup:
i5 2500k
h80 cooler
ripjaw 2133 8gb ram
asus z68 mobo



after following the oc guide in the op I ended up blue screen repeatedly so I changed everything back to the way it was prior. I've gone back in now and changed the oc from auto to 42 without changing anything else(besides setting the ram back to the xmp profile/2133).

core temp is saying 1.366 v(was 1.34 before at 'auto'/3700mhz)

anyway my question is should this be fine if it proves stable/prime95 no errors or bluescreen/etc? Been awhile since I've oc'd anything. Like I said above I've left the other bios settings alone like cpu offset/manual voltage/pll overvolt etc. Just set it to xmp/and adjusted the rate from auto to 42. Max core temp is looking like 62c so far.

any other advice would be appreciated/the other asus z68 guides seem to suggest similar settings as in the guide in the op. I just ran into this guide http://forums.tweaktown.com/asus/47510-asus-z68-v-pro-4-5ghz-bios-screenshots.html
which has a few different settings(seems to leave cpu voltage at offset etc) any opinions on this setup?

sorry for the rambling / just trying to get this oc'd before I stop messing with it for awhile and get down to using it.
 

Karmum

Banned
What kind of future are SSDs facing? That Crucial M4 is really tempting to jump on, but is it likely that the price will go down much more over the next ~9 months or so?
Seems like many of them are getting close to $1 per GB, but I dunno when (if ever) they'll get down to HDD prices.
 

Chittagong

Gold Member
It is honestly terrible. My housemate was stuck on 11 series drivers because he simply couldn't upgrade them. Repairing wouldn't work, uninstalling didn't do anything, driver sweeper didn't help at all. It simply refused to install them correctly.

Eventually he got an SSD upgrade and did a clean Windows install... and suddenly the driver install worked perfectly. No idea why it didn't with the previous one.

After 4 hours of uninstalling, reinstalling, crashing, freezing, failing, repairing disabling and enabling .NET, cleaning registries CCC decided that now it's time to work again. Best of all, I have fuck all idea what did it.
 

JB1981

Member
so I just watched two how-to videos in the OP and building a rig actually seems a lot more straightforward than I'd imagine.

My biggest concern seems to be how to set everything up with the mobo and the case. How do you know that you are getting a case that will be compatible with the mobo? Isn't each mobo design different and has holes in different places? Also, it seems that once you have each component installed that the hard part is making sure that you have all your connections in the right places. There are a lot of frigging wires coming out of the PSU and it also seems that the case itself comes with its own set of wires? Is that right?

As far as airflow and cooling, i see people in here buying separate heatsinks, sit that really necessary? Doesn't the mobo have a heatsink that the CPU sits on?
 
so I just watched two how-to videos in the OP and building a rig actually seems a lot more straightforward than I'd imagine.

My biggest concern seems to be how to set everything up with the mobo and the case. How do you know that you are getting a case that will be compatible with the mobo? Isn't each mobo design different and has holes in different places? Also, it seems that once you have each component installed that the hard part is making sure that you have all your connections in the right places. There are a lot of frigging wires coming out of the PSU and it also seems that the case itself comes with its own set of wires? Is that right?

As far as airflow and cooling, i see people in here buying separate heatsinks, sit that really necessary? Doesn't the mobo have a heatsink that the CPU sits on?

motherboards come in form factors: atx/micro atx/etc you pick a case that will fit the motherboard and then use standoffs to mount it. The case will have its own wires for the power switch/reset/speaker/leds. People buy after market heatsinks for their cpus to overclock. A retail cpu generally comes with a heatsink that is ok for regular use.
 
Ok, I request you help.

Have my new PC all built and I'm in love! LOVE!! I was using my old 19 inch monitor but obviously I need/want something bigger. I decided to use my 42 inch TV as a monitor for now. It is 1080 capable and I connected it to my PC via HDMI. The problem is that its native 1280x720 and when I try to select 1920x1080p it says its not supported even though it is.
Also, is it possible to add customized resolutions like 2540-1440 or is it just not possible on televisions?

Finally, if you could recommend a monitor that is at least 24 inches for between $200-250 which would it be?

Thanks!
 
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