[Doc Holliday]

Does anyone here have experience with upgrading the mobo + CPU when you have an SSD/HDD combo? I'm trying to figure out if I can get a way without having to fresh install. Such a pain in the ass, especially when i have my user files in the HDD.

[mkenyon]

Does anyone here have experience with upgrading the mobo + CPU when you have an SSD/HDD combo? I'm trying to figure out if I can get a way without having to fresh install. Such a pain in the ass, especially when i have my user files in the HDD.

30 mins if you install from a USB stick. You want a fresh install.

[Doc Holliday]

30 mins if you install from a USB stick. You want a fresh install.

Crap, installing the OS on the SSD and the user files on the HDD is such a pain in the ass. I was hoping there was a way to avoid changing the registry again.

[MrBig]

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.

Could just be a power flux then. Check all the connectors from the PSU. Let it run and set everything back to stock settings and see if it recurs.

[Suite Pee]

Because of this thread, I now have the best computer I've ever owned (and the only I've built). It just runs so great..so much storage and RAM... ungh

Kinda half-assed cable management for now due to excitement (and the lack of foresight in transferring Steam games to an external to speed this up).

The wi-fi Go feature of new Asus boards has been excellent so far.

[hyduK]

So my RAM is showing as 1600MHz in the BIOS. But in CPU-Z I get:



What's up with that?

[n0n44m]

So my RAM is showing as 1600MHz in the BIOS. But in CPU-Z I get: What's up with that?

that's just the SPD programming on the modules, go one tab to the left to see the actual current speed/timings

[Elixist]

Hey guys wats the best card these days in the 200-250 range? Lookin to do a build finally within a month or two and just keepin my eyes out for deals.

[what_rhythm]

Hey guys wats the best card these days in the 200-250 range? Lookin to do a build finally within a month or two and just keepin my eyes out for deals.

Video card? Nvidia's GTX 660 Ti ($249) is supposed to come out this summer. The GTX 670 ($399) is expected for release on May 10.

AMD's 7850 ($249) is out now and is supposedly a pretty good overclocker.

[JaseC]

Video card? Nvidia's GTX 660 Ti ($250) is supposed to come out this summer. The GTX 670 ($350) is expected for release on May 10. AMD's 7850 ($250) is out now and is supposedly a pretty good overclocker.

The 670 is $400.

Edit: Do'h, caught your edit. :p

[Wolf Akela]

Could just be a power flux then. Check all the connectors from the PSU. Let it run and set everything back to stock settings and see if it recurs.

It took me 7 minutes until I saw my desktop when I did a fresh install from USB to SSD.

As for your user files, you can just symlink them if you intend to keep those files on the HDD. Just symlink the entire User folder then you're done. Takes like 5 seconds.

Program Files is an entirely different question since you have to manually reinstall them so they recreate their own registry entries.

[Shambles]

Well we might not have Micro Center up here in Canada but thats to Memory Express's price beat policy I just scored a sweet deal. Picked up a 256GB M4 this weekend for $182.49. Granted SSD prices are going to drop a fair bit but even still I wouldn't expect things to go this far for a while. Also snagged a 3570K for $199.99. Wasn't sure if I was going to SNB or IVB but since the price beat went through I figured why not? After losing out on overclocking but gaining a bit more performance per clock it's going to come out pretty dang close to the 2500K. Also I'd have to spend another $20-25 to get the 2500K so I might as well get USB 3.0 on die and the other little perks of ivy bridge. I'll just have to be happy with 4.5Ghz. Next up, the motherboard, case, and GPU (Hello there GTX 670!) :D

[faceless007]

So the Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo is one of the most popular and well-reviewed coolers these days, but there's something about it that really bothers me, I'm curious if anyone has noticed this. The actual cooler is held by an X-clip held in place by a circular peg--and since it's circular, the cooler can rotate around it. There's a smaller peg that fits into a notch that's supposed to keep it in place, but it's a little small and still allows about 1-2 degrees of movement. Isn't that bad for a CPU cooler? If I knock the cooler just a little while working inside the case, it can rotate slightly and move the thermal paste out of alignment from what it was.

[scogoth]

So the Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo is one of the most popular and well-reviewed coolers these days, but there's something about it that really bothers me, I'm curious if anyone has noticed this. The actual cooler is held by an X-clip held in place by a circular peg--and since it's circular, the cooler can rotate around it. There's a smaller peg that fits into a notch that's supposed to keep it in place, but it's a little small and still allows about 1-2 degrees of movement. Isn't that bad for a CPU cooler? If I knock the cooler just a little while working inside the case, it can rotate slightly and move the thermal paste out of alignment from what it was.

Not a huge issue unless you're using ceramic based pastes. Moving it one or two degrees won't do anything.

[ParityBit]

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.

How should I go about diagnosing this? Could it be the mono or is it defiantly the ram?

My mobo is an Asus p8z77-v Deluxe and the ram is Coursair vengeance 1866.

Thanks for your help

[Ledsen]

Some people just want to have the "best" performance, I just like the idea of having what I need with my AMD system, I don't need those extra few seconds of quicker encode or the extra 5fps etc etc nothing wrong with either imo.. Brand loyalty plays a bigger part, I strictly look for the best price to performance ratio.

You've made a huge mistake.

[Slayer-33]

You've made a huge mistake.

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.

[MrCunningham]

Unless something has changed, you can't overclock with an HXX motherboard. Really limits possible performance. Either skip the K if you really have no interest in getting 20-30% free performance, or get a ZXX board. Barracuda Greens are pretty terrible drives too. If you have a backup, it's nothing to fret over. But if you are relying on it as a "safe" drive to store media on, I'd worry a bit. To each their own on that though.

OK I reverted my purchase back to the BIOSTAR TZ77B LGA 1155. I guess it makes more sense to spend a few extra bucks to upgrade my mother board to a Z77 than it does to downgrade my processor to a non 2500K.

I also switched the Barracuda Green 1.5TB harddrive to a Barracuda (Non green) 1TB harddrive. Which was similarly priced.

From what I can see, the greens are mostly unreliable. And the standard Barracuda line is OK.

[brotkasten]

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.

[mkenyon]

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.

Did you miss the charts I posted on the previous page? I was #1 AMD fanboy here, held of on Sandybridge until Bulldozer released even.

Price:performance an i3 outperforms the AMD Phenom II chips. Now think of a 4.8ghz 2500k.

Not certain what 'massive' price gaps you are referring to either. 2500K system vs. PII 980/1100T isn't significant in terms of price by any means, despite the latter getting outperformed by an i3.

[MrCunningham]

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]

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 ;)

[Slayer-33]

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 ;)

Oh I know the 2500k is a beast lol

[overcast]

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.

[Elixist]

Ty for vid card recommendations, I'll look out for the 660ti and the 7850 much appreciated.

[Scuba Steve]

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

[Wolf Akela]

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?

Should run just fine. Here's a vid of some guy playing Starcraft 2 with the same APU.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8RUTrlpEHg

[Karmum]

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]

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]

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.

[bodyboarder]

With the i3 2120, what would be the maximum video card to pair it with?

[Hazaro]

With the i3 2120, what would be the maximum video card to pair it with?

Pretty much anything.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...mark,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 $.

[bodyboarder]

Pretty much anything. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...mark,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 $.

Yeah, there really isn't much in it. Thanks for that.

[Hazaro]

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.

[bodyboarder]

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.

[Lanbeast]

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?

That's kind of hard to resist.

[Frank]

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]

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.

[kharma45]

Ty for vid card recommendations, I'll look out for the 660ti and the 7850 much appreciated.

660Ti could be another 6 months away according to the guy who runs Overclockers in the UK.

[Hazaro]

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]

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.

It does seem like a long time off but here's the post of where he said it

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/sho...5&postcount=54

He's had access to nVidia's roadmap for a good while now he said and the 660 seems like it's still going to be a long way off.

[ParityBit]

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]

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]

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.

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.

[Snookie]

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/Produc...82E16814130758

Any thoughts on this card or anyone have any experience with it?

[Karmum]

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/Produc...82E16814130758 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]

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]

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]

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

[Sethos]

Very nice Dirtdog, remember to put up some pictures when done :)