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PC Building General

Discussion in 'Technical Discussion' started by SoNick, May 1, 2016.

  1. rata

    rata

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    Trying to be useful somehow.
    Make sure you get rid of static caused by wool and/or just walking on the carpet. Touch the chassis or something else of metal, if it is touching ground then better.
     
  2. Tets

    Tets

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    So I upgraded my graphics card recently, and everything is great except for Just Cause 3 running like shit. I put MSI Afterburner on my secondary monitor and loaded it up only to find that the GPU clock won't move past around 520 out of 990 MHz maximum. Never seen anything like it before. No trouble with anything else, if I load up GTAV for example it immediately jumps to 990 MHz and the game runs beautifully. I can't imagine why Just Cause 3 won't fully utilize my GPU, especially when it ran perfectly with my old card. Doesn't matter if I close Afterburner either, or if I haven't even run it since booting. All I use it for is customizing my GPU's fan curve anyway.

    Anyone have any ideas? I don't know what I could have done, if anything. I played through the game once in its entirety and halfway through with the Sky Fortress DLC, my framerate was always perfectly smooth, not even a hint of stuttering. Now I get like 15 fps at best.

    Edit: Forgot to mention the hardware I'm working with, my bad. Old card is a Sapphire R9 280 3GB, new card is a Gigabyte R9 380 4GB. Not much of an upgrade, but with the old card out of warranty and the fans failing I decided to get a new card and set it aside until I can tear apart the fan housing.
     
  3. rata

    rata

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    I've heard something like that. Now I can't assure if my wires are shortcircuiting, but I think it was because the gpu works on 2D mode so you have to force it to 3D mode.
     
  4. Tets

    Tets

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    Looks like you nailed it. Damn, this is irritating. It runs fine if I force high performance clocks using RadeonPro, so I can sort of work around the problem, but it's still weird as shit. Apparently these Gigabyte cards are notorious for their aggressive power saving, which is exactly the sort of thing that I would find out after getting one, rather than before. *sigh* well at least it works in the end. Thanks for the clue!
     
  5. So hey, I never got around to updating on this one. PC's built and it's running fine! The front of the case has two fans and only the bottom one's working, and the exhaust fan on the back seems to not be doing anything, either. If I need to I have a fan controller from an old build that I can install in one of the two open spots on the front panel then use that to control those two fans as well. Also of note is that HDD cage. This was my first install where I had to use one, and I ended up installing the drives in the cage backwards. The case wouldn't close with the cables to them going there so I removed the cage and saw my error. Unfortunately, they were stuck tight and wouldn't come out. In the end I resorted to taking a dremel tool and filing down the tabs holding the drives in the bays. I have replacement plastic drivebay parts ordered ($10 including shipping for the three of them!), but for now the PC runs fine with the HDDs in one of the cages sitting mostly-loose. When one drive's accessed it shakes things a bit and makes noise, but when the new drivebays arrive I can just move the drives to them and it should just shake that bay instead of the whole PC. Additionally, apparently the previous Windows 7 install I had on this SSD semi-worked! It got to the "Windows is starting up" screen and went at it for about 30 seconds before giving a BSOD. I opted to reformat and reinstall from scratch; I already made backups of everything important to me on that drive about a year ago when the PC it was in died.

    Also of note is that my HTPC decided to die for a bit? I swapped in the 4GB of RAM that it used to have and it booted without issue, but I had canned air and that's a dangerous thing to have in my hands lol. I took the case mostly apart and blew out a TON of dust, then put it back together, but the door on the front that covers the Blu-Ray drive decided it wanted to pop the spring off. I said "Eh whatever I can fix that later" and brought it up to the living room. While waiting on Windows 7 (and later the Windows 10 upgrade) to install on my main PC, I tried to boot the HTPC and it was giving me a file is corrupted error on boot. Worried for the worst, I rebooted and it gave the same problem. Between the spring popping off and me nearly losing my Windows 7 disc (put it on my desk downstairs at the start so I wouldn't forget it, built the PC, then searched EVERYWHERE ELSE for the disc before remembering that I'd put it aside specifically so I wouldn't lose it lol) I just put that PC off as a project for another time and left town to see a friend. I got back the next day and opened the HTPC's case - one of the cables for one of the drives had come off. Okay, that's a simple enough fix--but no, that didn't do it. I took the thing ENTIRELY apart, fixed the door for the BluRay drive, then firmly reattached the data and power cables for each HDD and after that it's running fine! The PC's on a shelf in my living room right now and I've played several hours of Final Fantasy IX on it! There is another problem I'd forgotten about and that's that the PC isn't exactly silent with the fans going constantly, but later I'm sure I can look into a suspend/sleep state for that PC so it doesn't make so much noise when it's not in use.
     
  6. Tets

    Tets

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    Man, I wish I had known that R9 285/380s are notorious for random, inexplicable GPU driver crashes before I bought my new card. This turned out to be an incredibly poor choice! I thought my trouble with Just Cause 3 was bad enough. I feel thoroughly fucked in the ass after all the reading I've done since my GPU started crashing on the regular. Older drivers just crash the GPU, more recent versions either bluescreen or just shit the bed while the monitor reports signal loss. I can't even watch goddamn Netflix anymore. So if anyone else is thinking of buying a current gen, mid-range GPU from AMD, I suggest you reconsider your options carefully.

    Seems to be a driver problem from what I've seen thus far. As long as it's not crashing, my games run perfectly well and the GPU stays cool, it's not overheating or anything like that. I've also read numerous accounts of people going through multiple replacements only to find the new card crashing within minutes of installation, in exactly the same way, each time. I'm about ready to write this off and look at nVidia cards, considering how widespread and low priority this seems to be. It was acknowledged at least half a year ago from what I understand, and that was the last anyone ever heard from AMD on the matter.
     
  7. winterhell

    winterhell

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    nVidia has more useful features and has better drivers.
    With AMD you can forget Vsync under OpenGL. I am baffled why they have never bothered to support it.
     
  8. Mecha Sally

    Mecha Sally

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    Updated my build list a bit. I actually had to re-do it from scratch because I had to switch to my laptop (more on that in a bit) and the list I made wasn't cached on there.

    PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

    CPU: Intel Core i7-6700 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor ($297.99 @ B&H)
    CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler ($24.89 @ OutletPC)
    Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-H170-D3HP ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($87.98 @ Newegg)
    Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-2133 Memory ($58.98 @ Newegg)
    Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($87.69 @ Amazon)
    Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($47.49 @ OutletPC)
    Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 560 Ti 1GB Video Card
    Case: Rosewill BlackHawk ATX Mid Tower Case ($89.99 @ Amazon)
    Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA G2 550W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($70.98 @ Newegg)
    Optical Drive: LG GH22NS70 OEM DVD/CD Writer
    Wireless Network Adapter: Rosewill RNX-N250PCe PCI-Express x1 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi Adapter ($17.88 @ OutletPC)
    Total: $783.87
    Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
    Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-06-10 23:45 EDT-0400

    Changed the CPU, mobo, and case. CPU for Skylake, mobo to work with it, and case since it's supposed to be a bit roomier. Hopefully it's not too heavy... >.>

    My desktop computer started acting up a few weeks ago which forced me to switch to the laptop. System files got corrupted either due to the bad sector that the main hard drive has had for a while or due to a virus that can't be detected. Said corruption has resulted in the following:

    • My display drivers are fucked (can't update them; gives me an error), which results in the screen resolution being really bad.
    • Device Manager shows nothing at all.
    • Microsoft Security Essentials' real-time protection is disabled and will not turn on. I pressed the button to turn it on and it just does nothing. This led to me disabling the internet every time I signed in to Windows because I got worried about getting something/being tracked/whatever.
    • Speaking of the internet, I can't get to wireless network settings, yet I'm still able to connect to the internet. I just can't go in and modify network settings and such.
    • I can't download Windows updates at all; it just hangs for a really long time. This goes for MSE definition updates too. I tried to install Windows Updates manually and it didn't do anything, but manual MSE definition updates worked fine.
    • And as of the last time I had the computer on, whatever key I had used to activate Windows is apparently no longer valid. A notification popped up in the corner asking me to activate and I was like "oh..."

    So yeah, seems I will be building a new desktop much sooner than expected. =/ I'm going on vacation in a few weeks though, so maybe when I get back from that I can order stuff and get started.
     
  9. Josh

    Josh

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    Welp, here's how my build came out. I set an upper max limit of $3,000, and this thing is a beast to the point that I'm a bit remiss to even discuss it.

    Motherboard: ASUS Maximus Hero VIII
    CPU: Intel Core i7-6700
    Cooler: Corsair Hydro Liquid CPU Cooler H100i
    RAM: Kingston HyperX FURY, four sticks for 32GB
    PSU: EVGA 1000GQ 80+
    Storage: Samsung 850 PRO 512GB (I've also installed all my old hard drives, for a total of 640GB SSD and 5TB HDD storage)
    GPU: EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti Super Clocked
    Case: NZXT Phantom 530, white
    Keyboard: Razer Blackwidow Chroma
    Mouse: Razer DeathAdder Chroma
    Monitor: Acer XB270HU (IPS, GSync, great for comic books)
    Controller: Xbox One Elite
    The First Thing I Did With It:
    [​IMG]
    (Yep, launching the game via Steam's simple launcher stretched it to fill the screen by default, so I Just rolled with it.)

    TOTAL COST: $2,861.97, and since I built it for business, that's all tax-deductible.

    The CPU arrived slightly bent, but I decided to try it anyway. It MOSTLY worked, but two of my RAM slots and my top PCI-E slot weren't working. I attempted a refund via Amazon, but their system said it wasn't eligible for returns for some reason. So I wrote into support, and get this... they claimed it was a "household item" that I wouldn't have to return, and refunded me the full price of $297.99! Then I took the CPU out, carefully straightened it out, reseated it using a tool that was in the MOBO's box, and everything's working perfectly now.

    I also have yet to actually install the water cooler. I know if I did, I could push it a lot further, but with everything I've thrown at it so far, there's really no reason to.
     
  10. Okay, I'm kind of tempted to get one of these RX480's coming out soon. How bad of a bottleneck is the rest of my PC? I have a four year old Core i7 875k with dual Radeon 5870s. I think PC specs are super confusing and have no idea if what I have is decent or laughable.
     
  11. rata

    rata

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    We still have to see the real performance of the card, but the CPU dependance on AMD in DX11 is really high (we also have to check for it's performance on DX12), so it may get a noticeable bottleneck (sometimes they drown an i5 4xxx and I think their performance is better than your i7).
     
  12. winterhell

    winterhell

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    Do you insist on getting a Radeon for a reason other than 'in some scenarios it has better performance/$ than GeForce" ?
     
  13. rata

    rata

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    Well, I personally can't find other reason to get a card. Since nVidia is abusing it's position of pseudo-monopoly and their prices are innecessarily high, fuck them. If a radeon has better performance/price ratio, I'm all for it. Spending twice the price for NOT even close to twice the performance sounds stupid for me. But we still have to see if the radeon performance as good as it sounds, in new and old games, and most important, how it interact with your CPU. For example if you have an FX, you have practicaly no other choice than a geforce given the cpu dependance of radeons on dx11. Dx12 can't do miracles neither if your cpu is a crap, so...
     
  14. Jeffery Mewtamer

    Jeffery Mewtamer

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    While on the subject of Graphics cards, if my 5-year-old tower starts giving me problems that push me to replace it, would there be any advantage to having a dedicated GPU over integrated Graphics if Firefox+Orca is the only application I ever launch an Xserver for?

    Am I correct that it would be a waste to have more than 4GB of RAM as long as I'm stuck running a 32-bit distribution of Linux?

    What are the trade-offs between faster clock with fewer cores and slower clock with more cores?
     
  15. Overlord

    Overlord

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    Firefox does use some hardware acceleration but I'm not so sure in your case it's worth it. Do you listen to any video at all? I'm not sure how playback would be affected in terms of choppyness to the audio with integrated graphics. Either way, I wouldn't buy an expensive card, certainly no more than £60-70.

    Yes.

    Depends how many CPU intensive things you're running at once - a program that benefits from a fast clockrate will run much better on say a 2 core system running at 3GHz than a 4 core system at 2Ghz - any given program can only use one core at once. By the same token, 4 lower intensity programs will each have their own core on a 4-core system rather than having to share any.
     
  16. Not sure about how it works on linux, but there are methods to get access to a bigger address range in 32-bit systems (PAE), I'm pretty sure some flavour of linux ought to support that.
     
  17. Jeffery Mewtamer

    Jeffery Mewtamer

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    I do listen to YouTube videos using the HTML5 Player on a regular basis. Orca does seem to trip over itself less on my desktop compared to my laptop as it reads Firefox when I have a lot of tabs open. When I drop down to the terminal, it's mainly for system maintenance, editing text documents, or organizing media files(most of which I use my Portable Media Player to listen to). The desktop also serves as a seed box, with about a hundred instances of ctorrent running in daemon mode, but that's probably a trivial amount of system load compared to Firefox, Orca, and the stripped down xserver I use to launch them(relaunching all those torrents after a reboot did cause major slow down before I altered my seeding script to have ctorrent skip hash checking).

    Granted, I have no idea what kind of graphics the two machines have, have no idea how their ram speeds compare(I think both are 4GB machines with the same sized swap partition), and while I know the laptop is running a newer model Celeron with 4 cores at 1.8GHz, all I know about the Desktop's CPU is that it's an older i7(The Laptop was bought summer of 2015, the desktop was given to me fall of 2011).
     
  18. Overlord

    Overlord

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    I thought PAE bumped you up from a max of 3.25GB to 4GB?
     
  19. trakker

    trakker

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    I'm thinking of building a new PC more and more, since this one is past 5 years old and there are parts in it that are so weak the closest equivalents are double the power. I'm trying to shoot for less than a £1000, but since I last did that 5 years ago, I'm far from a master builder and would appreciate any input on my rough plan of what I want to throw together.

    Intel core i5 6500 (processor) - £190
    MSI Z170A Gaming pro carbon z170 (Motherboard) - £130
    Intel 600p series 128gb m.2 SSD (system drive) - £50
    Western Digital Black 2TB (main storage) - £120
    Corsair Vengence LPX 2times4GB(RAM) - £45
    GeForce GTX 1060 G1 6144MB GDDR5 (graphics card) - £280
    Corsair VS450 ATX (power) - £50
    Case - £30

    £895

    Does that look OK? it's gonna be used for general current gaming (recording and streaming) and video rendering and art and stuff mostly, I have a couple of screens so they'll probably be copious multitasking too. Any improvements in price and components?
     
  20. rata

    rata

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    Motherboards with chipser Z are meant for overclocking, something not possible with blocked processors. You will want either an unlocked (K) CPU or a H motherboard if you will not overclock (you know, saving money).
    Second, VS series of Corsair are crap, I would get a better PSU to keep the system safe. The less I would go with would be an EVGA 500B, not for wattage but quality. You can check Tom's Hardware PSU Tier list to have an idea.
    Third, and this depends only on what are you going to put in it, you may want either a larger SSD or another SSD (a cheaper SATA3 one with more capacity besides that .M2), because modern games are larger and larger. If you will put only the system and one game at the time then it's fine.

    Regarding to RAM, I think that G Skill offers lifetime warranty. I would also get 1x8GB in case you consider getting another 8 in the future.