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The PC Building Thread

YoungGun_UK said:
How many of you lot using the Windows 8 BETA? Thought I might use that from the off.
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Tried it briefly on a work computer as we have an MSDN account but stay well clear of operating system betas.
Crap performance, no features which will be in the full release.

Stick with Windows 7 for now and wait till 8 is fully released, because if Microsoft add the gaming stuff they are rumoured to be putting in it sounds very good.

XBOX 360 games on PC - This is massive rumour but Microsoft refuse to comment on that one, so it might well happen.
XBOX Live for Windows - For the 1st time since HALO, PC players will be able to play XBOX 360 players online. Game dependent of course whether the developer wants to include this.(Which they won't because we all know what happened in the HALO matches)
 
 
The K means it can be overclocked. The non-k one cannot. I.e those cards are both 3.3ghz but with the K one (and a cooler) you can get it up to something like 4.5ghz stable by tweaking the values in the bios, or if your motherboard supports it by just pressing a button on the mobo.

I'd get the cheaper graphics card. You will surely be able to overclock it yourself anyway. I'm not sure how it works with Nvidia cards but with ATI it's as simply as opening up Catalyst Control center and tweaking some values. I think i have my card 130mhz higher than the default clock speed.

http://www.legionhardware.com/articles_pages/nvidia_geforce_gtx_560_ti_overclocking_guide,2.html

It seems exactly the same.
 
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Younggun if you download MSI afterburner you can overclock nvidia cards easily enough. The trick is to take it very slowly and not go overboard. Although it's called MSI afterburner you can use it on any nvidia card.
 
YoungGun_UK said:
Right last piece of the puzzle, I need a wireless adapter that will max out my SKY broadband (not much get 10mb) what's the cheapest best value one, also does it needs to be compatible with the hardware/software?

Is this fine?

http://www.dabs.com/products/edimax-wifi-802-11n-32-bit-pci-adapter-card-6ZT2.html

or should I look at the USB models?
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Send me a PM with your address Younggun and I will post you a wireless card on Monday, I have a couple of Wireless N cards lying around I could send one to you.
 
bsmaff, you seem the one to ask in here.

I'm currently running a Lenovo pre-build which has a Q9300 Core 2 Quad, 4GB DDR2 and a GTX 460 card. The case is making a really annoying rattle and is pretty small so I can't upgrade my 460 to anything more as the 460 just about fits in. With it being a pre-build, the system board is designed around the case so I can't even swap the board and CPU out.

So I'm wondering whether it's worth the £500 or so to buy an i7, system board, RAM and case or is there a graphics card with the same dimensions as the 460 which I could pop in?

Ideally I think I'd like to get rid of the annoying case (and the constant humming) but it seems the £500 spend wont actually get me much of a performance increase, if any.

Thoughts?

Edit: Is the i7 much different to the i5? There's about £100 difference and just wondering if it's that much of a jump.
 
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DagsJT said:
bsmaff, you seem the one to ask in here.

I'm currently running a Lenovo pre-build which has a Q9300 Core 2 Quad, 4GB DDR2 and a GTX 460 card. The case is making a really annoying rattle and is pretty small so I can't upgrade my 460 to anything more as the 460 just about fits in. With it being a pre-build, the system board is designed around the case so I can't even swap the board and CPU out.

So I'm wondering whether it's worth the £500 or so to buy an i7, system board, RAM and case or is there a graphics card with the same dimensions as the 460 which I could pop in?

Ideally I think I'd like to get rid of the annoying case (and the constant humming) but it seems the £500 spend wont actually get me much of a performance increase, if any.

Thoughts?

Edit: Is the i7 much different to the i5? There's about £100 difference and just wondering if it's that much of a jump.
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Looking at the dimensions of the 460GTX there dosn't seem to be much choice on which cards to get as the size of the 460 is very small and most cards overshoot that by about 5cm.
I wouldn't recommmend the i7 over the i5 as they give very similar real world performance.
But depending on how big your hd is you won't need to replace that and hopefully won't need to replace the power supply either.
A new case, motherboard, processor, RAM and graphics card would be required.
You could sell your old bits and get some money towards your new build.
But you should be able to salvage a build for about £400-£500. All dependent on which graphics card you purchase.
I would read the machine spec built by Younggun as it was a good build, I would just not get the card he bought and get a 2nd hand 5870 instead(same performance for £50 less).
 
Currently got:

Intel Core i5 2500K Unlocked, S1155, Sndy Bridge, Quad, 3.3GHz, HD3000 IGP 850Mhz, 6MB Cache 95W Retail £171.89
Gigabyte GA-Z68A-D3-B3, Intel Z68, S 1155, DDR3, SATA III - 6Gb/s, RAID SATA, PCIe 2.0 (x16), ATX £78.82
6GB (3x2GB) Corsair DDR3 XMS3, PC3-12800 (1600), Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 9-9-9-24, 1.65V £39.12
Coolermaster HAF 912 Plus, Black, Mid Tower Case w/o PSU £63.49

Totals £370.10, which seems alright enough. I'll bring over my PSU, hard drives and graphics card so I should be set then.
 
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DagsJT said:
Currently got:

Intel Core i5 2500K Unlocked, S1155, Sndy Bridge, Quad, 3.3GHz, HD3000 IGP 850Mhz, 6MB Cache 95W Retail £171.89
Gigabyte GA-Z68A-D3-B3, Intel Z68, S 1155, DDR3, SATA III - 6Gb/s, RAID SATA, PCIe 2.0 (x16), ATX £78.82
6GB (3x2GB) Corsair DDR3 XMS3, PC3-12800 (1600), Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 9-9-9-24, 1.65V £39.12
Coolermaster HAF 912 Plus, Black, Mid Tower Case w/o PSU £63.49

Totals £370.10, which seems alright enough. I'll bring over my PSU, hard drives and graphics card so I should be set then.
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Your buying the wrong RAM snadybridge chipset is dual channel not tri-channel.
 
So had the PC running for about a month and looking into how I would overclock the CPU.

Which CPU Cooler would I need?

does it depend on what current temperatures i'm getting and what methods to actually overclock the machine (built in OC Genie2 on my MB)

I wouldn't be into overclocking up to something like 4.7 yet (as it would be pointless) giving a bump (4.0 or 4.2) whilst remaining very stable :))
 
Did you get the GD53 and the 2500k? That's the same combo I've bought and I used the OC Genie II button on the motherboard to automatically overclock. Took me from 3.3ghz to 4.2ghz just with one button press.

I'm using the Coolermaster Hyper 212 Plus cooler, works a treat and my system is chilly cold even with fans running at half the speed.
 
Im currently Water cooling my pc :)

Will post details tomorrow or next week. half way their.

GPU AND CPU blocks have now been installed(GPU stock cooler was a fucking cunt to take off) and reserviour and fan controller a go go on my rig. Just need to take out the jigsaw tomorrow and make a hole on the top panel of my case to install my radiator and after that, install the tubing and away we go!
 
That Cooler dags requires you to remove the motherboard doesn't it? Is their another option which I don't need to take out the motherboard.
 
Unless you have a case like mine (Fractal Design R3) where you can take the other side of the case off and it's got a hole cut out to attach the cooler without needing to remove the motherboard :SMUG:
 
DagsJT said:
Unless you have a case like mine (Fractal Design R3) where you can take the other side of the case off and it's got a hole cut out to attach the cooler without needing to remove the motherboard :SMUG:
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Yea, or that lol. always worth buying a good quality functional case
 
I dont think youll be able to run game with a good FPS with that card mate... its pretty old and for the price i would invest a couple of buck more for a better recent card
 
anyone using SSD for gaming? i only have a 60gb drive and windows 7 takes a fair bit of that so probably can only fit the odd game on it

other drives are 7200 sata drives, take it they wont make much of a difference just on loading times or should i look at expanding further with SSD?

i have a budget of about £150 for a gpu....need to make the right decision.

thanks
 
I use my 64GB SSD for booting and also have Skyrim on it, and it FLIES. Boots Windows 7 in 10-12 seconds, everything loaded and done. Skyrim loading screens are 1-2 seconds. I'd easily recommend an SSD but make sure it's a good one with good read speeds, the Crucial M4's are very good.

I couldn't go back to booting off a mechanical drive now, just a shame I can't afford a bigger SSD to put more games on.
 
i have a 120gb dd with a few games here and their but tbh SSD aint that fats noticably. if you buy a fast mechanical hdd and partition it properly then it can run quite fast
 
SSD's are quick but they are too small, you can boot windows off it but then everything else is running off another drive so kind of pointless.
Stripped RAID is a much better solution if you want much better all round speed.

As for graphics card for £150 look out for a 560 or wait till Jan - Feb time when the new Radeon's come out then the mid range cards will drop in price by about 25-40%.

Also with regards to the 5870 they are amazing cards and a great price. But you will need a replacment fan as they are noisy as hell.
 
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