Other Building a PC?

Woodzy

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After much trial and tribulation, I just finally got my home-built gaming PC rig running.

And then I lost an entire weekend of my life installing mods for Skyrim. Not even playing the damn game, mind. Just preparing to play the game...
It is totally worth it though! Just make sure that when you start your new game you make sure everything is working properly. I wasn't even sure what half my mods were supposed to be doing so it took me a long time and a lot of crashes to find they weren't actually working.
 

Redlambs

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After much trial and tribulation, I just finally got my home-built gaming PC rig running.

And then I lost an entire weekend of my life installing mods for Skyrim. Not even playing the damn game, mind. Just preparing to play the game...
I hope you tested them at worst a few at a time! Or you'll be having fun chasing down glitches ;)
 

Woodzy

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Bit of a thread hijack, but i'm looking to upgrade my grphics card and need to find out what power supply I have. I can't be assed to open the case to find out, but I currently have a GTX 580. If I was to get a GTX 780, would it be safe to assume I already have a sufficient power supply?
 

United22

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Bit of a thread hijack, but i'm looking to upgrade my grphics card and need to find out what power supply I have. I can't be assed to open the case to find out, but I currently have a GTX 580. If I was to get a GTX 780, would it be safe to assume I already have a sufficient power supply?
Just check the power requirements of the two online, and if it is the same it should be ok
 

Castia

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Hmm Aria have a similar deal but you get a I7 4790 oc to 4.6ghz and a h80 cpu water cooler for £475. You get the same Z97 motherboard and 8 Gb of ram as well.
 

Cina

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my setup is 5 years old..still holding up
fair play, you've more willpower than me. In 2011 I bought a budget PC for around 500 quid, did the job fine, but I was using an old PSU that went bust last summer, so I decided to build a new one from scratch, 900 quid. Again, perfect machine, runs everything great, but .. I still want MORE, and MOOORE.
 

Woodzy

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fair play, you've more willpower than me. In 2011 I bought a budget PC for around 500 quid, did the job fine, but I was using an old PSU that went bust last summer, so I decided to build a new one from scratch, 900 quid. Again, perfect machine, runs everything great, but .. I still want MORE, and MOOORE.
My problem too at the moment. Held off on buying a new GPU because I was like 'everything else will just look like it sucks in comparison'. I want power!
 

Stobzilla

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Had all this delivered recently, just need to build it, for capturing rendering and gaming.

MSI A78m-e35 motherboard
Sapphire PCI Express 260x2GB Graphics card
Samsung 840 Evo SSD 120GB
Western Digital Black 1TB Hard Drive
Corsair 430W Bronze Cert
AMD Athlon X4 760k 3.8 GHZ
Corsair CC - 9011050 case.

All for under £400 I don't think I did badly.
 

Woodzy

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Mine is from before the 360 came out, and all I've done to it since was a 100 on a 9800 gtx a few years back.

Thing is all you need is a reasonable graphics card and even a mid-low level i5 will be more than enough for this new gen. Pitiful really.
Is that it? In that case I may revert my thinking back to just getting a GTX 780, and upgrading my RAM from 8GB to 16GB. I have a i7 870 which I assume is enough?

Thing is, I don't solely want to upgrade for games. My job involves a lot of 3D production now and I like to get work done at home, which means lots of intense animation renders and a huge strain on my computer. I was even considering just splashing around £2k (which I don't have) and getting something outstanding, but it's hardly justified. I guess the RAM upgrade should be my priority, but Blender does have a GPU option that i'd like to exploit.

I still haven't worked out what wattage my current PSU is. Turns out my current graphics card is actually a GTX 560 so i'm not sure that what I have at the moment would be enough anyway.
 

VidaRed

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fair play, you've more willpower than me. In 2011 I bought a budget PC for around 500 quid, did the job fine, but I was using an old PSU that went bust last summer, so I decided to build a new one from scratch, 900 quid. Again, perfect machine, runs everything great, but .. I still want MORE, and MOOORE.
Mine is from before the 360 came out, and all I've done to it since was a 100 on a 9800 gtx a few years back.

Thing is all you need is a reasonable graphics card and even a mid-low level i5 will be more than enough for this new gen. Pitiful really.
i have the q6600 quad, its a bit slow compared to the new ones but is still ok.

i have the 5850 card though which was a beast when it came out, i bet the latest ones blow it out of the charts in terms of benchmarks. basically i cant be arsed to research and build a new setup though ive been wanting one for 2 years
 

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I built my first water cooled PC in 2013 and it's still a great machine but I already know that upgrading it will be a pain in the ass. The main problem with water cooling is imo the extra cost as you will always have to splash an extra 70-120€ on a new GPU cooler with every update and it's not like GPUs are really cheap to begin with.

I guess the next time I will rather go for an air cooled rig again, just makes it less of a hassle once the hardware starts showing it's age.
 

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Is that it? In that case I may revert my thinking back to just getting a GTX 780, and upgrading my RAM from 8GB to 16GB. I have a i7 870 which I assume is enough?

Thing is, I don't solely want to upgrade for games. My job involves a lot of 3D production now and I like to get work done at home, which means lots of intense animation renders and a huge strain on my computer. I was even considering just splashing around £2k (which I don't have) and getting something outstanding, but it's hardly justified. I guess the RAM upgrade should be my priority, but Blender does have a GPU option that i'd like to exploit.

I still haven't worked out what wattage my current PSU is. Turns out my current graphics card is actually a GTX 560 so i'm not sure that what I have at the moment would be enough anyway.
The GTX 780 is fantastic, speaking from personal experience. But if you're on the fence, maybe it'll be worth waiting till the next go-round? I thought both GPU's & CPU's were due for a major refresh this coming year...
 

Redlambs

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i have the q6600 quad, its a bit slow compared to the new ones but is still ok.

i have the 5850 card though which was a beast when it came out, i bet the latest ones blow it out of the charts in terms of benchmarks. basically i cant be arsed to research and build a new setup though ive been wanting one for 2 years
My gaming rig is still running a dual core E6600 or something like that. The processor really isn't that important in the scheme of things. If I didn't already have a graphics card, I wouldn't even be bothering to look at i7's, I'd go for a mid i5 or top i3 and put the money in the gpu.

Let's face it, with the new gen it's only modders who will once again push the top systems slightly.
 

Earthquake

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Well let us know then and I'm sure we can help mate.

I'm looking around for parts to do this month and there's plenty of good deals going on all the time.
Cheers, will do!
My gaming rig is still running a dual core E6600 or something like that. The processor really isn't that important in the scheme of things. If I didn't already have a graphics card, I wouldn't even be bothering to look at i7's, I'd go for a mid i5 or top i3 and put the money in the gpu.

Let's face it, with the new gen it's only modders who will once again push the top systems slightly.
Baffling. I'd have expected some section of pc only games pushing things harder, I mean, they all seem to have limiting settings for weaker computers anyway, so they wouldn't be making them inaccessible to the less hardcore gamer.
 

Redlambs

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Cheers, will do!

Baffling. I'd have expected some section of pc only games pushing things harder, I mean, they all seem to have limiting settings for weaker computers anyway, so they wouldn't be making them inaccessible to the less hardcore gamer.
You are talking assets more than power mate. Pc games are by and large limited to what the consoles can handle with a few added bells and whistles which is handled by more advanced graphics cards. You won't get more advanced geometry for example.

Anyone who has anything upward of a decent i3 from a few years ago really shouldn't need to upgrade that. A bit more memory (if less than 8) and a reasonable gfx card, and you'll be on par if not ahead of this gen.
 

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The GTX 780 is fantastic, speaking from personal experience. But if you're on the fence, maybe it'll be worth waiting till the next go-round? I thought both GPU's & CPU's were due for a major refresh this coming year...
Bought a 780 last week and it is fantastic indeed. Upgraded from a hd 7870 which is by no means a weak card but the improvement is huge. For the record I've only got an i5 3550 which is pretty middle of the road.
 

Redlambs

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Hmm Aria have a similar deal but you get a I7 4790 oc to 4.6ghz and a h80 cpu water cooler for £475. You get the same Z97 motherboard and 8 Gb of ram as well.
Cheers for pointing this out mate. I went with the slightly lesser i7 4770k overclocked in the end to stick to my £400 limit, since that is more than enough for games for the next 10 bloody years :lol:

Good deal, the parts individually come to about that anyway, without being pre-built and overclocked. Though I won't bother with the oc from the off anyway, it's nice to know it's there for the future.


Bought a 780 last week and it is fantastic indeed. Upgraded from a hd 7870 which is by no means a weak card but the improvement is huge. For the record I've only got an i5 3550 which is pretty middle of the road.
That's more than enough for this generatiob mate, that card is very nice :)
 

redmanc

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my setup is 5 years old..still holding up
What spec? I bought mine in 2011 just before Battlefield 3 came out so its not that old but started to have to turn the settings down a bit on some games now. Thinking of upgrading but then i started thinking about building myself a new one, the decision and temptation is killing me :D

Currently on an i5-2500k sandy, 8gb corsair and 2x GTX 570 (which is mostly my problem I think). I had the processor stable at 5.1 ghz for a couple of hours last month, not sure how much life I sucked out of it but it was a good performance boost till it finally overheated!
 

Redlambs

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What spec? I bought mine in 2011 just before Battlefield 3 came out so its not that old but started to have to turn the settings down a bit on some games now. Thinking of upgrading but then i started thinking about building myself a new one, the decision and temptation is killing me :D

Currently on an i5-2500k sandy, 8gb corsair and 2x GTX 570 (which is mostly my problem I think). I had the processor stable at 5.1 ghz for a couple of hours last month, not sure how much life I sucked out of it but it was a good performance boost till it finally overheated!
Yes it's just the graphics card for you, it's not worth overclocking that high at all, it'll make the system unstable and won't help much anyway. A well cleaned and set up system is far better than just power and oc'ing, my gaming machine is basically from around '06 and still uses the same processor and mobo, yet I've no problems running anything up until the very latest stuff with a decent gpu. Though it is purely gaming, apart from steam, I don't connect it to the net and don't use it for much else at all other than music and vids.

Unless you have the cash, stick to the i5 family and focus more on the graphics card and even a ssd. I don't run a ssd myself yet (my pc boots up and runs incredibly quick anyway) but it's a definite performance boost ahead of the cpu.
 

Woodzy

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@Redlambs how will my I7 870 hold up with current gen?

I only have 8gb RAM currently so my thinking is just upgrade to 16gb and replace my GTX 560 with a GTX 780.
 

Kallech33

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I've got a question. Help would be appreciated. :)

I've got a HIS Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition (actually it runs at 1100MHz) IceQ Turbo with 2GB memory (1200MHz).
Could I run a crossfire system with another HD7870 from a different manufacturer (for example Sapphire) with a different GPU Clock (1 GHz or 1050 MHz) and Memory clock (1250 MHz)?
Or even a card from the same generation (78XX) but not a 7870 (7850 for example).
 

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Yes it's just the graphics card for you, it's not worth overclocking that high at all, it'll make the system unstable and won't help much anyway. A well cleaned and set up system is far better than just power and oc'ing, my gaming machine is basically from around '06 and still uses the same processor and mobo, yet I've no problems running anything up until the very latest stuff with a decent gpu. Though it is purely gaming, apart from steam, I don't connect it to the net and don't use it for much else at all other than music and vids.

Unless you have the cash, stick to the i5 family and focus more on the graphics card and even a ssd. I don't run a ssd myself yet (my pc boots up and runs incredibly quick anyway) but it's a definite performance boost ahead of the cpu.
Yeah I thought so, it wasn't exactly a new release when I got it. I know I wont get much of a gain out of upgrading to a newer i5 either so i'll probably just throw some money at a 780 or one of the new AMD cards. I was only overclocking for a bit of fun if I am honest, I was maxing out dayz settings and comparing it with overclocked and not to see what the difference was.

I have been a long term Quake player (circa 1998) and I've recently quit playing so having an improved graphics card is a necessity for most games where as for quake it never really mattered.
 

Castia

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I built my medium build PC last year, I'm using a FX6350 and a HD7950, I can run most games on high/ultra with decent FPS but my processor is holding me back, I should have spent the extra money and went for a I5 or I7.

I'm debating on building a new PC when the Nvidia 800 series comes out in a few months but its hard to justify after last years purchase.
 

Redlambs

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@Redlambs how will my I7 870 hold up with current gen?

I only have 8gb RAM currently so my thinking is just upgrade to 16gb and replace my GTX 560 with a GTX 780.
I think it should be fine for now, so's the memory. Definitely pump your money into a new card before all else mate.

I've got a question. Help would be appreciated. :)

I've got a HIS Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition (actually it runs at 1100MHz) IceQ Turbo with 2GB memory (1200MHz).
Could I run a crossfire system with another HD7870 from a different manufacturer (for example Sapphire) with a different GPU Clock (1 GHz or 1050 MHz) and Memory clock (1250 MHz)?
Or even a card from the same generation (78XX) but not a 7870 (7850 for example).
It's been a long time since I used sli or anything like that, but I'd guess different manufacturers would be fine though you might need to set clock speeds and all that to match. I'm not sure about different cards, but I doubt it'd work.

As always as decent single card beats mid level sli/crossfire, but it isn't bad as an upgrade. Though of course your mobo and psu need to support it.
 

Redlambs

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I built my medium build PC last year, I'm using a FX6350 and a HD7950, I can run most games on high/ultra with decent FPS but my processor is holding me back, I should have spent the extra money and went for a I5 or I7.

I'm debating on building a new PC when the Nvidia 800 series comes out in a few months but its hard to justify after last years purchase.
That's always the problem with going amd especially for cpus, they just always leave you feeling like you should have gone intel/nvidia.

I'm only going i7 myself because right now with that deal you helped me find it's only about £50 more than an i5, but in reality for gaming there's little to no difference. A reasonable i5 will outlast the consoles easily. Your fx6350 is far better too, but of course with pc gaming it isn't about bothering about the weak consoles, it's about maximising those settings :lol:
 

Castia

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Yeah I'll get a I5/I7 next time for sure, I knew the AMD setup was second best but I got a good deal so just went with it. I just know once I start reading the gtx880 reviews I'll want one, rumours are that its performing 30% better than the 780 and we all know what a great card that is.
 

Kallech33

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It's been a long time since I used sli or anything like that, but I'd guess different manufacturers would be fine though you might need to set clock speeds and all that to match. I'm not sure about different cards, but I doubt it'd work.

As always as decent single card beats mid level sli/crossfire, but it isn't bad as an upgrade. Though of course your mobo and psu need to support it.
Thanks for the reply. :)

I also did some additional research since you weren't completely sure.

Different manufacturers are indeed fine and different cards works if they have the same GPU:
http://sites.amd.com/PublishingImag.../WebBannerJPEG/AMD_CrossfireX_Chart_1618W.jpg

In my case a 7870 with a 7850 would work. Downside: It doesn't make any sense because the 7870 would be under-clocked automatically until it runs with the same clocks as the 7850.
The same would be the case with two 7870 cards. The one with the higher clock runs at the clock of the slower one.

My mainboard supports Crossfire.
Funny story: My flat mate bought a second Geforce and a new PSU (which he didn't need because his 650W PSU was just fine for the SLI system he wanted to run) a few months back only to realise that his mobo only supports crossfire, not SLI. I was almost pissing myself because he bought a new card and PSU for a total of €250 and couldn't use it. :lol:

My PSU should just be able to carry 2 x 7870 with a bit of power to spare (both in terms of total Watts and amps on the 12V rail).

But I'm not so sure if it's actually worth it to buy a 2nd card because my 7870 can still run most games in 1920x1080 and good settings without dropping below 30fps.
Maybe it would be smarter to save a bit more money and go for an entirely new card next year.
 

Redlambs

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Thanks for the reply. :)

I also did some additional research since you weren't completely sure.

Different manufacturers are indeed fine and different cards works if they have the same GPU:
http://sites.amd.com/PublishingImag.../WebBannerJPEG/AMD_CrossfireX_Chart_1618W.jpg

In my case a 7870 with a 7850 would work. Downside: It doesn't make any sense because the 7870 would be under-clocked automatically until it runs with the same clocks as the 7850.
The same would be the case with two 7870 cards. The one with the higher clock runs at the clock of the slower one.

My mainboard supports Crossfire.
Funny story: My flat mate bought a second Geforce and a new PSU (which he didn't need because his 650W PSU was just fine for the SLI system he wanted to run) a few months back only to realise that his mobo only supports crossfire, not SLI. I was almost pissing myself because he bought a new card and PSU for a total of €250 and couldn't use it. :lol:

My PSU should just be able to carry 2 x 7870 with a bit of power to spare (both in terms of total Watts and amps on the 12V rail).

But I'm not so sure if it's actually worth it to buy a 2nd card because my 7870 can still run most games in 1920x1080 and good settings without dropping below 30fps.
Maybe it would be smarter to save a bit more money and go for an entirely new card next year.
Yes, back in the day it was more complex, but of course due to how sli/crossfire works it'll always resort to the lowest card sadly. Your mate is a tool for not checking first too :lol:

Thing is, you are far better off waiting and saving for a new card. Dual, or even tri video cards seems like a decent idea, but a single card at a higher spec will always be better. Unless there is no card higher of course, but then you are looking at professional competition grade builds with ridiculous specs :lol:
 

Kallech33

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Yes, back in the day it was more complex, but of course due to how sli/crossfire works it'll always resort to the lowest card sadly. Your mate is a tool for not checking first too :lol:

Thing is, you are far better off waiting and saving for a new card. Dual, or even tri video cards seems like a decent idea, but a single card at a higher spec will always be better. Unless there is no card higher of course, but then you are looking at professional competition grade builds with ridiculous specs :lol:
That's what I told him. :lol:
But he had a simple solution for this problem: He bought a new motherboard, CPU and upgraded his RAM. Meaning he spend even more money and his SLI cards were a complete bottleneck again. :lol:


I got PM'd by ClutchHunter (who was running the show in the newbies PC thread when I was down there and knows his stuff) on the topic of Crossfire.
I thought I'd share what he wrote for clarification:

Sorry, had to... just spotted that you said that a 7870 would downclock to the 7850 in Crossfire. This is untrue. It's true for a particular scenario, but at least not with 7xxx Crossfire. The higher clocked card will be utilised less until the weaker card is at 100% utilisation and the stronger card at say 90-95% at which point the stronger card should push up, so in essence you're not losing any performance - as far as I'm aware. At least this is what I've read and also what I've seen with my own 7970 + 7950.

I think you should all migrate to the PC building thread in the newbies ;)
 

Redlambs

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That's what I told him. :lol:
But he had a simple solution for this problem: He bought a new motherboard, CPU and upgraded his RAM. Meaning he spend even more money and his SLI cards were a complete bottleneck again. :lol:


I got PM'd by ClutchHunter (who was running the show in the newbies PC thread when I was down there and knows his stuff) on the topic of Crossfire.
I thought I'd share what he wrote for clarification:
It can in theory work how he's saying, and in some systems might well do, but I think you'll find it varies. Sometimes crossfire will cause problems if both cards aren't run at the same speed manually. It depends on the motherboard and game I believe, plus your overall set up.

But the stronger card will never quite hit 100% as far as I'm aware due to the very nature of how crossfire works. But again, it's been years since I dabbled in all that, so clutchy is probably right having done it.

It's a viable upgrade though if you really need to, but with the rig you have I think I'd save a little more money and just buy a decent new card. But of course, I know the feeling of wanting an instant few more fps, so if you are looking at a cheap card then it's worth a try ;)

But first give your machine a clear out and tune up if you don't regularly, you'll be amazed at what can be achieved through some simple maintenance.