PC Build Advice/Review Thread

[Don Katsu]

Actually the 7870 XT/LE is in stock at tigerdirect for 225 after a 15 dollar rebate card.

Ordered <.<

But I just realized I might need more RAM. I know my hardware is a bit dated

6GB DDR2 RAM

At the very least this card should be better than my 4850 512MB

[Krandor]

You can get 8gb of DDR3 ram for the 40-50 buck range, just need to scroll around various sites.

[Jojimbo]

DDR3 is keyed differently to DDR2 though, there are a few MBs out there that can take either but they are rare and DDR2 is pretty damn expensive; 6GB should be enough for a gaming PC so long as you don't keep firefox open with 768478765865 youtube tabs.

[Krandor]

Derp. That slipped my mind since I hadn't built a computer in almost a decade before last week.

[Don Katsu]

I might need a new case for that 7870 XT. I currently have a Antec 300

UPDATE: again thanks for letting me know ejact. I picked one up and now they are sold out.

[Purrrfect]

Is there a worthwhile upgrade from a 2500k that is running at 4.4ghz? I haven't kept up on the Ivy chips or anything, but I haven't seen much in the way of 5ghz or so.

[Don Katsu]

So my roomate decided he needed 16GB of RAM and ended up replacing all his 2GB sticks with 4GB sticks. So now I have 8GB DDR3 RAM and a I found am unused copy of Windows 7. Looks like I'm going to get a new mobo and processor to go with my shiny new video card

I must find a decent priced motherboard now to go with this

http://microcenter.com/product/38857...1155_Processor

Also, I'm using a Antec 300 case and Antec Earthwatts 650w power supply. I should be ok right?

[Nitsuki]

My nvidia 680gtx stock ran on my antec earthwatt 650w PSU, but due to the very low 12v amps, i decided to get a more up to date one, i have a 750w modular now cuz i wanted better cable management. But yes, those antecs really pack a punch for current vcards if you don't care about the low amps.

[Jojimbo]

Is there a worthwhile upgrade from a 2500k that is running at 4.4ghz? I haven't kept up on the Ivy chips or anything, but I haven't seen much in the way of 5ghz or so.

Nothing worthwhile currently out, unless you went SB-E for more PCI-E lanes if using multiple 600/7000 GPUs. IB hits a wall around 4.4-4.6GHz most of the time, very few chips can hit 5GHz and even fewer can do it at a reasonable vcore.

So my roomate decided he needed 16GB of RAM and ended up replacing all his 2GB sticks with 4GB sticks. So now I have 8GB DDR3 RAM and a I found am unused copy of Windows 7. Looks like I'm going to get a new mobo and processor to go with my shiny new video card

I must find a decent priced motherboard now to go with this

http://microcenter.com/product/38857...1155_Processor

Also, I'm using a Antec 300 case and Antec Earthwatts 650w power supply. I should be ok right?

ASRock Extreme4 Z77 on the low end for a k series CPU, Gigabyte UD3H is sort of low/mid range, Gigabyte UD5H/Asus P8Z77-V (Pro)/MSI MPower are all good high end boards (need high end cooling to make these worthwhile)

[Don Katsu]

Hyper 212 EVO any good? It's what I currently have.

[Jojimbo]

With a 212 EVO I would just go with an Extreme4 or UD3H, it's a decent budget cooler and allows for moderate OCs but there is little point on sticking it onto a high end MB.

[rold]

ASRock 970 EXTREME3 AM3+ AMD 970 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard + AMD FX-8150 Zambezi 3.6GHz Socket AM3+ 125W Eight-Core Desktop Processor FD8150FRGUBOX anyone have any info on this combo is it good , can i over clock it with out any issues etc?

[Adajer]

Don't buy AMD CPUs

[Don Katsu]

Don't buy AMD CPUs

I second this, the last time they were good was Phenom II 3.2GHz (2009) but only because it was half the price of a similar performing Core2Quad. There is no reason to buy an AMD CPU unless you already have a Motherboard for it and are on a tight budget

[Caiyuo]

There's a group on youtube that run teksyndicate that have actually compared recent AMD offerings with the popular intel gaming processors and found them to be really pretty comparable and even better in some instances. They've been written off for the most part it seems for whatever reason, but there might be something there.

http://www.youtube.com/user/razethew...ew=0&flow=grid

[Jojimbo]

I think it's because their results don't match anyone else's, if you do get an AMD FX CPU then do not get the 8150 as they are last gen, get the newer 8300 which are slightly better. FX CPUs do have their uses though, they are pretty good (for the price) when it comes to certain heavily multithreaded CPU intensive tasks and unless you are playing RTS games or have an extreme GPU setup then they will probably perform somewhat on par with an i5 anyway.

[Isiolia]

It might wind up being a matter of games starting to use more cores.

Main thing AMD is bringing to the table right now is more cores for less. For about $10 more retail, an FX-6300 will hang with an i3-3220 in most things, and blow the doors off it in heavily threaded tasks. Possibly nice for a budget machine being used for more than just games.

Once you price yourself into quad-core Intel territory though, I wouldn't buy AMD right now. Even if they can manage to keep up in some tasks, Intel has also made huge strides in power consumption and heat...AMD not so much.

[Jojimbo]

Maybe, but you have to keep in mind that while AMD marketing says they have more cores in reality half of their "cores" sit between a hyper-threaded and true second core in terms of performance and Intel already has a ~50% performance lead in single threaded situations (or ~4 threaded if comparing to an i5). Hell Intel might even have hex core consumer CPUs out by the time we start seeing a lot of games using 6+ cores efficiently and even then some games (like RTS) will never be using more than 1~2 because trying to multithread that kind of workload causes more problems than it fixes.

[Isiolia]

Not just assuming based on marketing, more the writeups I've seen on them, like this one. Gaming scores are mostly on par, and the FX-6300 jumps far, far ahead on multicore rendering/encoding (but still behind Intel quad cores).

If it ever starts being a big deal, I have little doubt Intel will just bump the i3 line to quad core or something. In the meantime, maybe AMD will get their per-core performance up to par. Actually having competition is both interesting and beneficial to the consumer, so hopefully they do.

[Don Katsu]

Would it be a bad idea to overclock my Phenom II 955 BE to 3.6Ghz on a Hyper 212 Evo? <_<