Let's make a gaming PC - The Bear and Badger

[Deleted User]

Definitely Cuda then, they specifically state that AMD cards aren't supported. ( renderer is Redshift if you were curious)

Might have to have a look to see how easy it is to turn SLI or Crossfire on and off.

Seeing as it isn't supported too well in games I may look at just an upgrade and sell my old card, which should still sell well. (EVGA 980 4gb gtx)

Things to consider. Cheers Gurt.

three1ne

I've just updated my cpu fans and shoved my old ones in the top of the case.

Looking to be a bit more proactive in managing temperatures after rendering some 4k stuff got quite hot. All my fans are 3 pin (so the motherboard wont automatically adjust fan speed??).

So I need to set the fan speed myself. Is there a general RPM that is recommended? They're currently 550, 670, 890 RPM (2 fans are linked through a splitter so im assuming that's why im only getting one reading for it)

GurtTractor

3 pin fans can be controlled, but it will depend on you motherboard. I strongly prefer to use BIOS level fan control to set custom curves for all the fans if possible, here's what my board's fan control section looks like -

8105_33_gigabyte-ax370-gaming-5-amd-x370-motherboard-review.png

8105_33_gigabyte-ax370-gaming-5-amd-x370-motherboard-review.png

My previous Gigabyte only had configurable fans curves via software. That worked well enough and is convenient for adjusting things on the fly while stress testing, but I find such software tends to break after some Windows Updates, and has a small CPU hit. There is a piece of software called Speedfan, which can be used to control all your fans in the system, as long as the motherboard is supported, let me know if you fancy going down the Speedfan route though as the interface is diabolical and there is some specific steps you need to take in order to be able to get it to work properly. If there is some motherboard manufacturer software I would just use that.

The RPM you will want to use will depend on the fan and the specific CPU you will be using. Different fans will push varying amounts of air at different RPMs. And CPUs all have a max temperature at which they will start to throttle the clockspeed down to prevent harmful overheating. Basically I would aim to keep the CPU under about 80c for long term use, technically most silicon should be quite happy at even higher temps ( 85-99c), but it's a good idea to keep a little buffer just to be safe.

What is your CPU, motherboard, and CPU cooler?

Useful monitoring tools are: Real Temp, a simple and easy to read little CPU temp monitoring program. And HWiNFO, for some really in depth monitoring across many more sensors on your hardware, in particular your VRM.

For use cases such as rendering that will smash the CPU to it's max, the VRM temperatures are a really important thing to consider as many boards have pretty average components or heatsinks. VRMs, MOSFETS and inductors are much more tolerant to high temps though, up to 120c or higher. But keep them under 100ish as I think the surrounding components like capacitors can be negatively affected over long periods, which could hurt the lifespan of the board. The more phases it has the better, and a substantial heatsink on it with decent surface area (fins and such, most boards nowadays just tend to use fairly solid blocks which aren't great, they will just soak the heat up to a point and not allow it do be dissipated quickly enough). So check your board, maybe some reviews, to see how the VRM section stacks up, as you may want to ensure it gets plenty of direct airflow. Sounds like you should be good if you've got some additional fans exhausting in the top of your case though.

You can check the various temps in HWiNFO -

If your CPU temps are abnormally high then you may perhaps need to reapply the thermal paste in between the CPU IHS and cooler coldplate, very simple job. Over long periods of time it can dry out a bit, causing overheating issues. I bet so many problems with older hardware seemingly slowing down or overheating are just down to shite thermal paste, something that can be solved with a screwdriver and some relatively cheap thermal compound.

You can also consider the path for the airflow in the case, if you've put the two extra fans in the top of the case then I would place them over the CPU cooler, as if one is at the front top spot it can potentially 'steal' the air coming out from the top front fan if that happens to be your configuration. The best thing is to push air through the case from the front and bottom and out through the back and top, in a diagonal fashion I suppose.

It's pretty much a case of spending a bit of time setting up the curves, finding the sweet spot to keep everything under control, balancing noise/cooling as you see fit. Then once you dialed it in to your satisfaction I would recommend taking notes or a screenshot of what you set it to, as sometimes the configuration can disappear when things get updated or the BIOS gets reset. Annoying to set it all up again... It's worth the effort though, IMO. I've got mine setup pretty well now, with everything running at low RPM at idle and low use, and certain fans set to spool up as the GPU or VRM gets toasty. Nice and quiet for the most part.

Probably more detail than was necessary there

But I guess it's generally useful information for those into tweaking their systems.

M0stly harm13ss

2017 forum prize for most helpful and detailed post this year...

three1ne

This is great, thanks so much Gurt.

Intel Core i7 4790K @ 4.00GHz - Gigabyte Z97-D3H-CF - Cooler Master Hyper 212

When I installed the extra fans I reseated the heat sink. Only been a year since I installed the new cooler, paste was still good, changed anyway.
My idle temperatures for everything are all around 27c. Possibly a 2c difference when I just had 2 fans. Possibly.

Fans are set out as you suggested.

Rendering video will boost cpu temp around 85-90 before I installed the new fans. Will test out new temperatures this week.

After continued transcoding of 4k video I would get an automatic shutdown from Windows 10 (stopclock error) which I believe was possibly heat related.

Although I would get similar temps when running Prime95 and there was no issue. A year ago (before installing the new cooler) I ran Prime95, Memtest86 and ASUS motherboard test (i think) and all passed without issue/system never crashed. I have a feeling it might be Adobe related (video editing software) as the crash has so far only occurred when transcoding to a specific codec. Although I still thought some extra fans might not go a miss.

I've got most of the software you mentioned but will check out the others.

In my BIOS I can adjust fan speed but unsure if I can set speeds according to temp. Will check soon.

Is that curve related to your CPU temp? Once your cpu hits temp 2 your fan spins at level 2 RPM?

GurtTractor

Hmm yeah it would be interesting to see what temps you get now while rendering, hopefully there's some improvement. 85-90 sounds just a little high for a non overclocked 4790k, but it may just need a beefier cooler (or a delid, which can really help with temps, but is a crazy thing to need to do an expensive CPU). A nice big cooler can be a good investment as you can carry it on to other builds, Noctua D15s is pretty excellent, and there's a comparable Be Quiet tower cooler also. If you were to upgrade the cooler you might also be able to get it up to 4.4-4.6GHz, giving a nice little performance bump and allowing the chip to stay relevant for longer.

But maybe it was an airflow issue, I should have asked; what case do you have? Some cases have pretty restricted front intakes, it's been a worrying trend for many new case releases this year actually. Definitely worth checking the VRM temps if you can, it looks like that board has a somewhat minimal VRM setup that might mean it's running a little warmer than would be ideal. Keep in mind that the sensor readings for the VRM MOSFETs that show up in HWiNFO are usually a bit inaccurate due to the actual sensor locations being in the PCB in the vicinity, so you might want to add 10-20 degrees to guess the actual component temps. If the VRMs get overheated I believe that can cause instability or system shutdowns, particularly if the render is taking a long time. It can take a good 30 mins at least for everything to get up to max temperature in a case, so be sure to run the synthetic tests for a good amount of time so you don't get caught out in a real render situation.

If it is a software issue then I don't know what to suggest, those sorts of issues can be a massive pain to figure out.

Another possible factor is the motherboard's voltage setting, it might be auto-ing it a little higher than necessary. I would try to reduce the voltage bit by bit and keep running stress tests until it falls over, then you'll know the most efficient setting you can run it at for a given clockspeed.

That's not an actual screenshot of my BIOS fan settings, just some picture of that screen I found on the web. Basically the x axis is the temperature and the y axis is the % setting for the fan speed RPM, so that 2 setting will give a speed of 40% for that fan. Also selectable in that screen is the control mode, which will be at either PWM or Voltage depending on the fan connected. Your mobo may not have the Smart Fan BIOS feature though. Something else to consider is the ambient temperature, it's fairly cool right now but when it gets to the summer you may find that things begin to overheat if you've calibrated for colder climates. Increases in ambient temp will be seen proportionally in the component temperature, so be somewhat careful about setting and forgetting.

three1ne

Great info, thanks again.

Is the cooler i've got not sufficient enough? It's f-ing massive and a small pain to install.

Ive got an Antec P100 case

Pre new fans I had my 4 additional sata drives right infront of the front intake fan. I've now moved all of those up above the new fan.

New fans are Corsair sp120 performance.

three1ne

Just transcoded the videos again. 60+ files, 1h30ish total. 4k to 540p. No crashes and temps down from 85-90 to a peak of 66!

Was not expecting such a difference. Woo.

Need to change fan settings in bios tomorrow as fan speed didnt fluctuate at all.

Escape

three1ne wrote:

All my fans are 3 pin

2-pin fans are the ones that can't be speed-controlled.

That heatsink's okay, but its fan's quite noisy. Heatsink and fan aside, the microscopic flatness of the copper base and the amount of paste are the main factors in dissipation. If you think you might've applied too much paste (it's commonly done), you could try less and check HWiNFO for the new temp.

GurtTractor

Theeerree we go, much better temps! More like what I would expect for a non overclocked chip. Must have been the thermal paste I would guess, as for application a little too much is actually better than too little, maybe depends on the quality and thickness of the paste though. You ideally want the whole IHS covered and making contact with the plate of the cooler. As long as the paste isn't some really shit stuff that is far too thick you can usually go crazy with it and the pressure of the cooler will spread it out thin enough. I always use the manual spread method now which seems to be optimal.

No you're getting much better temps you should be able to go for a little overclock if you wanted to, gotta keep an eye on the VRMs though...

The Hyper 212 is a great cooler, you don't need to switch that out at all unless you really want to max out your overclock or minimise the noise as much as possible.

The gigantic Noctua coolers are pretty epic. I would always recommend the D15s (what I have atm) for better RAM and PCIE compatibility over the D15. They have one of the best mounting methods too, really easy. Though they are still massive and a pain to work around, so you want to have plugged everything in around it before dropping it on there.

Facewon

Woah.

That's some crazy posting folks. Love it. Don't understand most of it, but love it.

Escape

GurtTractor wrote:

as for application a little too much is actually better than too little, maybe depends on the quality and thickness of the paste though.

I've always had better luck with minimal amounts, so it could be that I've been using paste that's too high a viscosity for the heat to push into microscopic holes? Shouldn't be that, else the paste has failed its job (unless it's designed for overclocking, if you can buy such a thing). Or maybe I've been lucky with the quality of my heatsink bases.

I used to spread manually, but I use a pea or X now because I've more faith in the heatsink pushing out what it doesn't need, versus happily sitting on a bed that's too firm to disturb. Tension to the motherboard seems like it might be a factor, because some of the arms I've known have been really tight and secure. Others not so much. When I used to repair PCs for work, most arms for PIIIs were grippers.

GurtTractor

Not too shabby - https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2018/11/24/build-a-pc-black-friday-deals-us/

Blue Swirl

Wtf is "Intel Optane memory" and why should I care? Is it just a glorified brand name for SSD?

SpaceGazelle

You need it to remember what it is.

LivDiv

It learns your regularly used processes and kinda banks that data.
So over time boot will definitely get quicker, as will other regular things such as opening the programmes you use regularly.
It does all this automatically.

The best way I saw it described was on their site.
If your HDD was the super market that has everything and Ram your kitchen counter with the things currently being used, then Octane would be your pantry where things are available quickly.

I think it's interesting tech but the speed increases in comparison to an SSD are minimal and not really worth it. If it is in a prebuilt and the rest of the spec matched it wouldn't put me off but I wouldn't add it to my own build.

GurtTractor

Err yeah you can use it as a caching drive, or as a dedicated boot SSD I believe. Interesting tech, but not sure it's really taken off (yet).

Roujin

I'sld rather have one of them PCIE SSDs. GIMME DAT ULTIMATE READ/WRITE SPEED KTHX.

GurtTractor

Yeah M.2 NVME is where it's at, uses a x4 PCIE bus via the little M.2 slot. Ultimate would be a few of those in some kind of RAID config.

Blue Swirl

LivDiv wrote:

The best way I saw it described was on their site. If your HDD was the super market that has everything and Ram your kitchen counter with the things currently being used, then Octane would be your pantry where things are available quickly.

Ah, gotcha. Interesting. Cheers guys.

cockbeard

Silly question perhaps but I was getting annoyed with my laptop being rubbish on the wifi, and was looking at upgrading the wifi card to a dual band one (yes that old). Then was thinking about what to do with it when I get a new one. It's not going to be any kind of gaming power house, so figured it would sit under the telly with a big external hard drive and become a media server and emulation machine. I'm a bit disappointed that memory is still really expensive, and I can't upgrade the processor so I'm stuck with an old i5 running four cores at 1.8 MHz. Is this or memory going to be a bottleneck and what for. I struggle to understand which bits are used for which processes

GurtTractor

Hmm not sure really, should be fine for media, some emulators like 4Ghz+, like gamecube stuff perhaps. Emulations of older systems will be fine probably.

Blue Swirl

When RGB isn't enough, go for bling instead.

GurtTractor

I really don't get that kind of thing, PC components just aren't that inherently aesthetically pleasing IMO.

But each to their own.

Blue Swirl

I enjoy admiring the technical skill and workmanship in a nice build. I also like subtle RGB, but faux gold/silver RAM with "diamonds" is just chintz personified. It's like personalised plates and Range Rovers with heavily tinted windows. It's screams of a lack of personality, compensated for with cash.

GurtTractor

Heh, yeah chintzy is the first word that popped into my head when I clicked on that. As usual less is more.

GurtTractor

Generally little ITX cases tend to be more aesthetically interesting I find, there's only so many ways you can configure a big fat box of a standard ATX tower, but ITX can be tucked into setups in rooms with fair more elegance.

I thought the Cryorig Taku case was an interesting concept -

Though I think they missed a trick by not making one that matched the popular Focusrite Scarlett series -

scarlett_range_2nd_gen_square_with_accessories_lr_2.jpg

Blue Swirl

Question for you lot, how do I tell what RAM I have in my laptop, other than opening it up? System Settings says I have 8GB, but I don't know what MHz that is, or whether it's DDR3 or DDR4.

GurtTractor wrote:

I thought the Cryorig Taku case was an interesting concept.

I concur, that's excellent.

mrsmr2

cpu-z

cockbeard

mrsmr2 wrote:

cpu-z

I discovered this the other day, very easy to use, but memory still costs shit loads

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