PC Gaming Hardware discussion. Rigs, Upgrades, pics, and news.

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Ugh. Building this secondary PC has been a nightmare.

At first today I was going to install the mobo and such in the case, had the cooler backplate mounted and when I looked in the box i realized there is no I/O shield, so a bit frustrated I took the 45m drive back to microcenter and they took a I/O shield from a open box mobo, I ended up picking up the 4670K while I was there as well. So I take the hour and 1/2 drive home. I assembled everything on my test bench and found out the main PCI-E x16 slot is defective on the mobo, it will not recognize my 7950 at all, so I inserted it into the second PCE-E X16 slot and it was reconized and installed right away.......

So now I have to take another 45-1 hour drive across the bridge to PA and it will be third time and 15 dollars combined to get over the bridge just to return this mobo. I should be compensated for my bridge tolls because this is ridiculous.

Sucks when your build never goes the way you want it.

I've done hundreds of computers for customers and friends but soon as I come to do one for my self it's always a pain :mad:

My current build had to be the worse though... Picked up all my new parts and started building only to find out the mobo is slightly larger than most ATX boards so my CPU heat sink wouldn't fit through the hole of the mobo plate inside the case. Had to use an air powered saw to cut through the plate so it would fit. Some power leads were too short and I had to go buy extensions (see previous post) Win 8.1 wouldn't see the SSD I wanted to use for my system drive. After Win 8 installed it kept crashing, Found out it had to do with fastboot, so I disabled that. When I installed my Hydro H80i The power lead fell out of the Sata power port and my CPU got really hot, like really hot!

It's all ok now, well except for my CPU temps, trying to find time to strip my radiator down to make sure it's correct and reverse the fans at the top of the case just in-case there is no air pressure.

CPU temps:

Idle - 35-40c
Under some load - 45-50c
Under max load @ 4Ghz 60-75c

It was going over 80c when I first installed it, took it off and re-applied some thermal paste and re-seated it, and the temps dropped to what they are now.
 
I got a question if anybody can help me out on.. I'm planning to buy a premade steambox, the digital storm bolt 2. It's a dual booted system with steam and windows 8, now I know steam is downloaded games so I got that down. But what about windows 8 type of games? Do they come on discs only and I insert them in the cd reader, or does windows 8 games have a download service too? I'm confused as in which games are supported by which format only. That's why I wanna get a dual boot gaming pc
 
I got a question if anybody can help me out on.. I'm planning to buy a premade steambox, the digital storm bolt 2. It's a dual booted system with steam and windows 8, now I know steam is downloaded games so I got that down. But what about windows 8 type of games? Do they come on discs only and I insert them in the cd reader, or does windows 8 games have a download service too? I'm confused as in which games are supported by which format only. That's why I wanna get a dual boot gaming pc

pretty much every game you buy is going to come from steam.

with a handful from origin.

Unless of course you want physical discs, you can still get them but why would you?
 
So...I kind of impulsed bought something that I think could be really cool to go with my setup. It is the Buttkicker: Gamer 2. Works with both consoles/PCs and I guess it has been out for a while. Might not be in production anymore as I had to get it on Ebay(still new). It's this vibrating device that clamps on to your chair and resonates low frequency inputs. So in a driving game, you can really feel the engine revving up or in a shooting game you can feel the explosions or shots. Even slightly feel your footsteps when you're running. I'm pretty much always using headphones so this seems like it could really add that missing piece of immersion. I think it'd even be great for movies/music too. I should have it by Thursday and I'll report back what I think.

 
I just have the "upgrade itch". My rig is fine though lol. I will be upgrading around the time Witcher 3 releases though.

You don't really want this PC, it's kinda of joke/ for my girlfriend to play The Sims on. I'll post pics of it later today as I finish installing the software and actually hook up the fans.


Intel 4670K @ stock w/ cooler master hyper 212 evo
8GB of Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600 RAM
Sapphire Radeon 7950 OC's w/ Boost
500GB HDD
Cooler Master HAF 932
 
The above machine was built for less than the price of an Xbox One BTW.
 
I've been slacking on pictures of my girls PC I built I will put some up today after work.
 
Yeah...I LOL'd at that post.
Pure hilarity.

PC part picker absolutely does not show Microcenter CPU and Mobo combo's which are insanely cheap compared to anyone else, only catch is it is pickup only from the store. Luckily there is one across the bridge from me. Anything else I wouldn't buy from there though LOL.
 
My comp, yeah it kinda dirty but... :)



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So I'm kinda tempted to grab another 7950 for my rig to go X-fire. Is it worth the hassle?

As I would have to upgrade my PSU to handle them and the HIS cards are to heavy so they flex when warmed up, So mounting both cards with the support would be a ball ache so I'm weighing up my options.
 
So I'm kinda tempted to grab another 7950 for my rig to go X-fire. Is it worth the hassle?

As I would have to upgrade my PSU to handle them and the HIS cards are to heavy so they flex when warmed up, So mounting both cards with the support would be a ball ache so I'm weighing up my options.
What resolution are you looking to run?
 
So I'm kinda tempted to grab another 7950 for my rig to go X-fire. Is it worth the hassle?

As I would have to upgrade my PSU to handle them and the HIS cards are to heavy so they flex when warmed up, So mounting both cards with the support would be a ball ache so I'm weighing up my options.

Honestly I would say if you are playing at 1080p or lower I would stick with your current card, and if you are going at a higher res I would say sell your card and get a R9 290, you could crossfire your 7950 with another 7950 but like you said, you would have to upgrade your PSU and you're going to have to a really nicely ventilated case with great airflow to keep two 7950's cool.

R9 290's can be had on ebay for less than 300 dollars.
 
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What resolution are you looking to run?

If you are playing at 1080p or lower I would say the general consenus would be no and to just sell you card and get a R9 290 or something along those lines if you wanted to stay with AMD, if you are playing at higher than 1080p I would definitely say yes. R9 290's are massive bang for buck GPU's and can be had on Ebay used for less than 300 bucks.

1080p

I was thinking either go X-fire or wait for the 780ti cards to come down in price. I should add that I like to push the very best I can out of games with AA + high detailing and the 7950's don't stack up to well on Watch_Dogs according to early benchmarks.
 
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yea if I were you I would sell your 7950 and go r9 290(non x)

I shall have a look at how much the R9 290s are. Thanks evo

Just had a look at OCuk and you can buy cards with 2 R9 290x on the same PCB :eek: thats a little crazy.
 
Oh btw just thought I would drop this here I have a friend who is selling his superclocked evga 770 4gb for $340.
I think his version is like $400 bucks brand new so if anybody is interested just hit me up.
 
Oh btw just thought I would drop this here I have a friend who is selling his superclocked evga 770 4gb for $340.
I think his version is like $400 bucks brand new so if anybody is interested just hit me up.

Loved my 770's when I had them but they are no longer a valid option in the market IMO, a 4GB 770 costs 400 dollars or more, you could get a r9 290 which alot faster that still has the 4GB VRAM. Glad I was able to sell both of mine before AMD's cards came back to retail prices.
 
Loved my 770's when I had them but they are no longer a valid option in the market IMO, a 4GB 770 costs 400 dollars or more, you could get a r9 290 which alot faster that still has the 4GB VRAM. Glad I was able to sell both of mine before AMD's cards came back to retail prices.

Yeah. I mean it isn't a terrible card (compared to what is inside the PS4 & XB1 it runs circles around them), but it is pretty much a 680 with some tweaks/higher clock.
Not bad, but again nothing to write home about.
 
Well I finally got around to taking pics of the next gen console killer, my girlfriends Sim 3 rig. This PC is considered a "hobbled mess" because it was not bought from PCpartpicker.com, and also I am "poor and don't know how to build PCcorrectly" according to some console fanboy dweeb.

*THIS IS NOT MY MAIN RIG, MY MAIN RIG IS WELL DOCUMENTED IN THIS THREAD*

Intel i5 4570 w/ cooler master hyper 212 evo
ASRock pro 3
8GB of DDR3 Corsair Vengeance
500 GB HDD
Sapphire 7950 boost overclocked to 1100 mhz on the core, 1350 on the mem.
Corsair GS800 PSU

Total cost 390 dollars, only the CPU/GPU/MOBO were bought from ebay/microcenter, the rest I had laying around.

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I have tested a few games on the above machine, all at 1920x1080 res.

Battlefield 4 Ultra + High FXAA (no MSAA) 90 FOV: 60-80 FPS.
Crysis 3 on All High settings + 16X Antistropic + 2xSMAA: 55-65 FPS
Thief all Max settings minus SSAA which is off, FXAA on, 16X Anistropic, 90 FOV: 60-70 FPS
Titanfall all max settings settings + 4xMSAA + 16X Anistropic: Solid 60fps
 
How much would that PC cost if you had to buy everything from scratch (not including the monitor)?

It's a moot point really as I've seen a dozen or so "pc build to kill new-gen consoles for < $600" with some as low as $450. I'm just curious is all.

It's funny, because we can already build PC's that perform as well as, if not better than, new-gen consoles for not much more than they cost. So what happens in 2-3 years when we can build an absolute new-gen killer for $500?

Oh yeah, the consoles will be $300-400.

Hope that $100 saving is worth half the library and functionality, heh.
 
Just got my 780ti today, I get at least a 10+ FPS increase in facebook. :p
 
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