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

Mod74

No DVD drive Subba?

You don't need one, but it'll make things a lot easier if you do. If not you'll need to put all the disc supplied drivers on a USB. And the OS come to that.

Subbax

I'm borrowing one from work for the install of Win 8. The rest will be digital copies, that's the plan at least.

Now I've got a base platform, I can add a few bits here and there. Already looking to get a third case fan for the side.

[Deleted User]

It's exciting as fuck building your own PC. Trufax.

Wrongly, I have a disdain for those that buy ready-built high-end systems.

[Deleted User]

Mod74 wrote:

No DVD drive Subba? You don't need one, but it'll make things a lot easier if you do. If not you'll need to put all the disc supplied drivers on a USB. And the OS come to that.

Yep, but that's half the fun. Drives are more or less redundant.

Subbax

I was tempted to try a bootable USB but thought best keep it as simple as possible for my first proper build.

Subbax

Great, Haswell turned up this morning. Only waiting on Shitty-Link to deliver my mobo.

God I am so excite! I could be playing DotA tonight!

Edit - Mobo turned up and am carting it all home now. Going to read the important bits and get building!

Subbax

I had to get a damn IDE to Sata converter, stupid shitty DVD drive.

Installing windows now, finally!

Edit - Posting this from the new machine whilst I get all the drivers. Going to run some tests afterwards.

Mod74

http://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/

Will keep an eye on your GPU temp. There's a logging feature where you can right click and say show Max temp after playing a game.

http://www.techpowerup.com/realtemp/

Will keep an eye on the CPU temp. Sadly that doesn't log but you can always alt tab.

Subbax

Yeah, I ran Pride95's testing software for just under an hour with RealTemp. Highest recorded temp was 78 so it's looking all good but I want to upgrade the stock intake/exhaust fans and get a second exhaust fan for the top.
I'll get the Gpu temp monitoring software as that'll be handy. Cheers Mod.

I did download 3DMark benchmark software but it crashed on load so I played DotA instead.

[Deleted User]

How loud is this fella under stress? Overlooked but important imo.

Subbax

Under stress it's audible but not to any massive extent.

I think it's coming from the stock intake/exhaust fans, which I will be switching out soon. Going to add a 4th fan as top exhaust too. Hopefully that'll make it über silent. The only things moving are fans a hard drive. SSD isn't an option for the moment.

I got a little paranoid during the stress testing so turned it off after 45 minutes or so. I've read people sometimes leave Prime95 running for 12 hours!

M0stly harm13ss

Morning...my little laptop is chugging after nearly 4 years, and after a bit of steam gaming thinking of dipping into the PC market. I know there are cheaper components on the market and lower specs, but for those in the know how does this look for £800 (pre-built from scan)?

Cooler Master Elite 120 Advanced Mini-ITX Case
Intel Core i5 4670, Haswell, 3.4GHz, Quad Core, 6MB Cache
Asus H87I-PLUS, Intel H87 Chipset
8GB Total (2x4GB) Corsair Vengeance LP, 1600MHz
2GB EVGA GTX 760 SC, 1072MHz GPU, 1152 Cores, 6008MHz GDDR5
600W Corsair Gamer Series PSU, 80PLUS Bronze
2TB Seagate Barracuda, SATA 6Gb/s, 7200rpm, 64MB Cache
LG GH24NS95 - 24x DVD Writer
Edimax EW-7622UMn 11n 300Mbps Wireless USB Adapter

Woodimari

Could probably build that a little cheaper yourself. I'm going down the route of building another rig myself right now, my current rig is great but I just fancy the experience of having a go myself now.

Granted, I'm cutting back on costs as a mate is giving me a i7 3960x for free as well as a power supply so the rest of my shiz should only cost about another £460.

EDIT: Also thanks for the Steam add man, get some Dota going when I don't suck.

Subbax

Mine was similar to that for £700 but minus the DVD and wireless thing. I ended up buying all from Amazon just for Prime delivery sake
Does that come with an OS?

mrsmr2

I'm guessing the cpu can't be overclocked. For the price difference (in component form at least) I would get the k version of the cpu and a z87 motherboard.

More cpu power is always a good thing.

M0stly harm13ss

Thanks for that guys. Slightly upgraded motherboard and unlocked chip, comes to £760 if I build it myself (which I can do, was being lazy). No subba, no O/S, but I have a copy of Win 7 I can use.

Mod74

I'd try and find out exactly what card it is. The 600 series cards built to Nvidia reference specs sound like a jet taking off. The ones where the manufacturer puts a more upgraded cooler on are better. However I believe the the reference design for the 700 series is much better so it might not be as much of a problem.

M0stly harm13ss

Ta Mod, the actual card in the final basket is this one..

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/2gb-msi-gtx-760-twin-frozr-oc-28nm-pcie-30-(x16)-6008mhz-gddr5-gpu-1085mhz-boost-1150mhz-cores-1152

Seems to review well and has an upgraded cooling design from reference. Now just hesitating over the buy button..

LazyGunn

GTX 760 is a grand card but i think you get more bang for your buck with the 7950 from amd, based on my recent research (this research was obsessive and took me all day for 3 days), marks against amd for poor drivers and the company maybe in turbulent financial warers, marks with involve it being a pretty damn good gpu (citation maybe needed for all of this)

I intend to use a gpu for processing things (3d rendering mainly) and so settled on a 580 (because it supports cuda although the 7950 thrashes it at general 'compute' things), and its so lovely i think i might get a second, and it matches the 760 in terms of pure grunt just lacking some specific optimisations

Anything you get in the 7xx is going to be gold star with nvidia, esp with the 7xx series as they seem to get less keen on deliberately crippling cards to steer buyers into their workstation cards, so if youre just gaming, a 760 is a good choice, but have a hard look at amd's 7950 and try not fall prey to brand loyalty

Woodimari

I've got a 7950 and it is pretty damn awesome, run everything I've thrown at it so far in superb style.

M0stly harm13ss

Thankyou Lazy really appreciated (and Woodi too)...yes, there is a touch of brand loyalty there (and potentially a bit of skewed perception around driver issues that probably don't exist!)

LazyGunn

The differences are tit for tat to be honest chap, unless you're into gpu computing, in which case the 7950 spanks absolutely everything nvidia have to offer, but i'm assuming you arent a computer science graduate

What i will say though is that in the spirit of competition you give amd a helping hand and give their 7950 a shot, its a really good card and this kind of competition is exactly what will keep things progressing. If you were to be looking at a dual card setup or were buying for several machines at once i'd steer towards nvidia's efforts but as a single card owner, you honestly cant go wrong with the 7950 at the price and you're contributing towards the greater good. Its a really really good card and will run anything you throw at it for a long time

This might sound contradictory given im buying nvidia cards from 2 generations ago but its all about what exactly you're using your card for, if its only going to be games on a single card setup, i cant help but recommend the aforementioned AMD card, its so good, and a developer for Indigo, the recently gpu-derised renderer for a host of 3D applications loves it, and if support for opencl (the open non-cuda gpu programming standard) grows it could always be very important

If you're going to sli and only game then a 760 sli is more powerful than a geforce titan at less of the price, just not the vram (not that any game will ask for more vram than a 760 can feasibly provide for a long time (extra parenthesis, you can get 760s with 4gig vram that fall short of the ability to compute what they're meant to be computng before they can send it to the enormus resolution you're planning to output it to)), so its something you can upgrade to and sli is still proven much more stable in a dual card setup than amd's crossfire

Regarding driver issues, AMD are much, much better ive heard recently

If you can see yourself upgrading your motherboard in 2 years, then you may as well factor in all the components in too and what that will cost you, facts are for gaming, an old i7 or i5 and a amd 7950 and 8gb of ram will smash anything coming out for some time, you dont need to spend a lot of money, just spend wisely, people bitching over trivial gains in this and the other are really not worth listening to. The closest i'd get to being a true gamer nerd would be to sli two 760s, as a 3d computer artist (as one of those things i do) one or two gtx 580s are perfect, but really for anyone actually just being sensible, they could aid the spirit of competition by going for a well cooled 7950 cause that card is the boss and promotion of the technology it supports could end up being very important.

Bollockoff

Putting your own rig together seems like the easy part. Deciding what the hell to buy and where seems the right pain.

WorKid

http://www.forbes.com/sites/antonyleather/2014/02/03/how-build-a-liquid-cooled-mini-gaming-pc-for-under-1000/

LtPidgeon

Subbax wrote:

What's the best way to tidy up your cables? May pop into Maplin and see if they've got some of those fancy dragons den things.

Do they sell little Kelly Hoppens to sit in your case and hold the cables?

Bollockoff

I'd have guessed "no" to the question I'm about to ask but just in case, is Amazon a decent place price wise to buy components?

Anyone who'd swear to SSD's over HDD's for a gaming rig?

WorKid

I buy everything from Amazon.

[Deleted User]

Bollockoff wrote:

Anyone who'd swear to SSD's over HDD's for a gaming rig?

Both. OS and utility stuff on the SSD. All the rest on HDD. Sometimes I put a current obsession on the SSD (like Skyrim) but mainly it's the OS. My PC boots up in about 6 seconds.

Bollockoff

Hmmm is it difficult to set that up?

And I take it a 64gb SSD would be ok as a booter.

[Deleted User]

No. I bought the SSD first and made a boot Windows USB from an old laptop. Once I'd built the PC I plugged in the USB and it installed Windows on the SSD. A few weeks later I bought the HDD and plugged it in and Windows treated it like any new drive.

Can't quite remember now but anyway.

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