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Started by Sakura, May 31, 2015, 03:54:11 AM

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Sakura

Thread about PCs, go as in-depth as you like I guess.

So I built my PC back in 2011, using the cheapest quad core I could find with 8gb of RAM, and a GeForce 500 series GPU.  This is the piece of crap I've used for the last 4 years (which I had to build on a budget of less than $600 including shipping and taxes):
-AMD Phenom (how do I always end up with Phenom powering my PC?  He gets around) II 955 Black Edition 3.2GHz Quadcore
-8gb Corsair 1333MHz dual channel DDR3 RAM (currently downclocked cause this motherboard is crap)
-Zotac GeForce GTX 550 Ti 1GB
-Western Digital 1TB green drive
-Crap MSI motherboard that I had to RMA twice, only does 8gb of RAM, socket AM3, 1 PCI-E 16 slot, SATA II, DDR3, software audio

Recently I've begun upgrading my PC, not entirely by choice.  A few months ago my PC began locking up and even giving me blue and black screens of death; I eventually found out, the reason for this was because my hard drive was failing.  So $200 later, I now have a SSD and an HDD (this time, I did not get a stupid friggin green drive, don't ever do this, not even for storage).  Windows boots super fast now, though it's only a 128gb so I can't store a huge game like GTA V on it.  I might buy another SSD later on just for video game installs.

Then my friend bought me a copy of GTA 5 to play with our friends because I said I didn't want to spend $60 on GTA 5.  Apparently he's bought at least 3 copies for friends (a fool and his money, as they say, but I guess he makes good money cause it's nothing to him).  Anyway, the game's been laggy and crashes at times, so I initially thought maybe it was a GPU issue, but as it turns out, the game is a very CPU heavy game.  Seems that when Rockstar was porting the game to PC, they didn't rewrite the way that the game handles graphics and workload to work more like traditional PC games, so it still runs like a console game, thus a lot of particle and graphics effects and assets are done on CPU.  My CPU is actually better than what they ask for in the requirements, but it's just not working out.

So lo and behold on Thursday I went onto http://www.logicalincrements.com/, looked up the best possible AMD CPU and motherboard on the list (which is still $150 cheaper than the lowest range i5 on the list).  When I went over benchmark comparisons, it outperforms most i5s in threaded applications anyway, but as usual, trails behind Intel on single-threaded applications.  Of course it's not as good as decent i5s or any i7s, but the cost is just a bit too much, so I stuck with AMD this time around, maybe next time.  Considering that all games are now multithreaded, I figure, whatever that's fine.

So my new PC (I'll be upgrading some more in the future, but yeah, have to upgrade gradually, don't want to go into debt) when I get the stuff on Monday:
-MSI 970 GAMING motherboard (which apparently has a Soundblaster audio card built into it)
-Crucial MX100 128gb SSD SATA III
-Seagate Barracuda ST1000DM003 1TB SATA III
-AMD FX-8320 Octa-Core (8 Cores) 3.5GHz (Turbo 4GHz)
-Corsair 1333MHz DDR3 8GB
-Zotac GeForce GTX 550 Ti
-500 Watt Coolmaster PSU
-Windows 8.1 x64 Professional

I think I might just do a fresh install for the new CPU/motherboard, and replace Windows 8 with Windows 7 Ultimate

So the obvious upgrades that I'm looking at right now are a new GPU (probably gonna go with a GeForce 960, and then later buy a second 960 for SLI), and a new power supply (a four year old power supply that is 500 Watt for a system with a GPU that requires 400 Watts for the GPU; definitely need to rectify this before anything else).  Might have to replace the HSF, possibly replace the case itself, and then there's the stuff for the outside of the PC (could use new speakers, new keyboard/mouse, etc).  I've been broke for nearly a decade, so actually having extra money coming in that I can use, it's nice to have the freedom to be able to buy nice things for a change.

EDIT: I forgot to mention, that I pretty much need to upgrade my PSU to accommodate a second video card, and that's the main reason to upgrade it.  As is, I can only sustain 1 GPU, but if I wanted to get SLI going, I'm going to need at least double the wattage.

What kind of PCs do you PC gamers out there have?

rollntider

I last built one in 2012
Motherboard : ASUS Sabertooth 990FX AM3+ AMD 990FX + SB950 6 x SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard with UEFI BIOS
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131736

Video cards x2 (Crossfire): XFX HD-677X-ZNFC Radeon HD 6770 1GB 128-Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150560

Ram(16 gig): G.SKILL Sniper Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1866 (PC3 14900) Desktop Memory Model F3-14900CL9D-8GBSR
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231460

Proc: AMD FX-8120 Zambezi 8-Core 3.1GHz Socket AM3+ 125W FD8120FRGUBOX Desktop Processor
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103961

Power Supply: RAIDMAX HYBRID 2 RX-630SS 630W ATX12V V2.2/ EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready Modular Power Supply
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817152035

I loved this build.... its been awesome.




Sakura

Quote from: rollntider on May 31, 2015, 01:55:05 PM
Video cards x2 (Crossfire): XFX HD-677X-ZNFC Radeon HD 6770 1GB 128-Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150560

Boo!!!!!!

Kidding  ;D

Sakura

So just an update on my new PC.

Last night before I put it together I was reading up on what clock frequencies people run their 8320 at, and I read that one guy overclocked his on the stock HSF at 200x20 (4GHz) without needing to change voltage (which is good with me, cause I don't wanna mess with voltage settings), so I decided to give it a whirl.  Everything's been running smooth and stable.  Had an issue at first where my RAM wasn't dual channeling (which was nothing new to me, because my old mobo wouldn't do it either), but that was easily fixed.

CPU idles at 40, but I haven't seen it reach 50 even while playing GTA V (which runs perfectly smooth now).  So I talked to someone and they told me I didn't really need to upgrade my PSU at this time if I didn't want to (and provided me a link to a page that showed watt usage for components, my GPU is a Fermi so of course it uses more wattage than I'd like, but when I get a newer card that problem will go away), so the next upgrade on the list is definitely a GeForce 970, and possibly a new HSF -- although the current temps are golden.

rollntider

Quote from: Sakura on June 01, 2015, 05:21:23 PM
Quote from: rollntider on May 31, 2015, 01:55:05 PM
Video cards x2 (Crossfire): XFX HD-677X-ZNFC Radeon HD 6770 1GB 128-Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150560

Boo!!!!!!

Kidding  ;D

Don't be hatin'  :)

Gratz on the new build