Building a comp - need help

[Cochese]

Interested to see what you come up with.

Wasn't too great of deals I saw, hopefully Monday will bring a different story. I was at Microcenter this morning grabbing a motherboard.

This is my current:

• XFX GeForce 8200 mobo
• AMD Phenom X3 8650
• 4GB PC-6400
• Radeon HD6570
• Cooler Master Hyper 212 cooler
• Cooler Master CM690II Advanced case

I built that almost four years ago with exception of the card, which I added about six months ago or so in anticipation of the new build.

• 16GB (4x4) DDR3-1333 - $50 (bought BF 2011)
• Intel Core i5 2500K - $99
• ASRock Z77 Extreme4 - $105

If you add a water cooler (I'll buy in a few weeks) for $75, plus the case ($90) and card ($65), I think for under $500 I got a kickass build. I'll upgrade the memory to DDR3 2400 when the next generation of memory starts hitting the shelves. I'll also upgrade my 200GB primary drive to a Samsung 840 SSD when those sales start coming down. Total price altogether will be well south of $750, and should overclock very nicely. I think all these components should be Hackintosh compatible as well.

[jussi]

Interested to see what you come up with.

You definitely have me beat in price. Mine isn't close to that. I went a little overboard. And took my spending limit with me. After taxes but before rebates the total so far is $1022. I have around $60 in rebates I think. I got everything except psu. I got real good deals on some components but some were pretty close to retail. Luckily micro center price matches so I never had to worry about paying more than I had to and all the prices were less than those currently listed on their site. They also give you a discount when you buy a cpu and mobo together, even though the cpu was already heavily discounted. I figure another $100 for the psu. I'm going to comb over all the info and helpful links you guys have provided. Any suggestions based on my current spec? Thanks for all the advice.


Cooler Master HAF932

ASUS P8Z77-V PRO

Core i7 3770K

GIGABYTE GV-N670OC-2GD GeForce GTX 670

Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB DDR3-1600 (PC3-12800)

180GB Intel 330 Series SSD drive

2 - 2TB Western digital HD

Zalman CNPS9900MAX-B 135MM Fan CPU Cooler

I also ended upgrading my 19" samsung monitor to a 27" LG.

I need to take a nap now.

Edit: Oh and the video card came with a free game. I chose Assassin's creed.

[chopnhack]

I'll also upgrade my 200GB primary drive to a Samsung 840 SSD when those sales start coming down.

Is this what you were looking for, or are the deals to be better on this unit in a little while?


http://dealnews.com/Samsung-250-GB-SATA-6-Gbps-2.5-Internal-SSD-for-140-free-shipping/638734.html

[Cochese]

Is this what you were looking for, or are the deals to be better on this unit in a little while?


http://dealnews.com/Samsung-250-GB-SATA-6-Gbps-2.5-Internal-SSD-for-140-free-shipping/638734.html

No, that's a good price. Was hoping to wait a few weeks though.

[Cochese]

You definitely have me beat in price. Mine isn't close to that. I went a little overboard. And took my spending limit with me. After taxes but before rebates the total so far is $1022. I have around $60 in rebates I think. I got everything except psu. I got real good deals on some components but some were pretty close to retail. Luckily micro center price matches so I never had to worry about paying more than I had to and all the prices were less than those currently listed on their site. They also give you a discount when you buy a cpu and mobo together, even though the cpu was already heavily discounted. I figure another $100 for the psu. I'm going to comb over all the info and helpful links you guys have provided. Any suggestions based on my current spec? Thanks for all the advice.


Cooler Master HAF932

ASUS P8Z77-V PRO

Core i7 3770K

GIGABYTE GV-N670OC-2GD GeForce GTX 670

Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB DDR3-1600 (PC3-12800)

180GB Intel 330 Series SSD drive

2 - 2TB Western digital HD

Zalman CNPS9900MAX-B 135MM Fan CPU Cooler

I also ended upgrading my 19" samsung monitor to a 27" LG.

I need to take a nap now.

Edit: Oh and the video card came with a free game. I chose Assassin's creed.

Looks really good. For the price of the cooler, did you explore water options? I know the H60 is $60 after rebates right now.

[Stytooner]

I bought this heat sink cooler to start with and could not use it.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...tent-_-text-_-

It was too tall. I can't recall if I could have still closed the side door of the case if I would have removed a fan, but didn't want to do that.

I went with a liquid cooler instead and was very satisfied that I did that upgrade. They also increase longevity of the CPU as long as overclocking is not extreme.

This is the one I bought for it.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16835181015

I would check the height on your anticipated cooler to make sure it will fit in your case.

Looks like the height on yours is 152 MM where mine was 158.5 mm. That is pretty close.

You have decent prices on most of it. My MB was an Asus P8Z68V Pro, so yours is an updated version of that. I think mine is the best one I have ever owned. You would think that would be the case for every computer that I have ever bought, but it isn't, sadly, though should have been. The Asus comes with some very nice software. I think you will love the CPU MB combo you have chosen.

I have an SSD in mine. A 60 GB, but it is only used for cache. It says it's working, but I don't know what the difference would be without it. Very interested to hear about your SSD as a boot drive on yours.

[Cochese]

I had mine running.great last night at 40-50°, then I did some cable management. For some reason it shot up to 93° at idle. Guess I removed the cooler too many times. Took off the stock compound, put on some Arctic Formula 5 and I'm idling around 60°. I suppose that will have to work for the stock cooler. Will have to grab something else this week. Don't want to take the 212 off of the AMD. Even though I will have to buy a wider case than I have on hand.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using Tapatalk 2

[jussi]

Looks really good. For the price of the cooler, did you explore water options? I know the H60 is $60 after rebates right now.

I did but from the reviews I've read the Zalman is supposed to work real well an supposedly does a better job than many water cooling systems. It gets a really good reviews at New Egg. Plus with the price match and mail-in rebate it came out to $35.

I had to go back to the store because they over charged me for the case and while there couldn't resist but spend more money . I had second thoughts on the RAM. I decided to return the 8gb (2 x 4gb) corsair ballistic and get the 32gb (4x8gb) corsair vengeance instead. I'm just waiting for my corsair hx750 psu to arrive and I'll finally be ready to put it together.

[Cochese]

I did but from the reviews I've read the Zalman is supposed to work real well an supposedly does a better job than many water cooling systems. It gets a really good reviews at New Egg. Plus with the price match and mail-in rebate it came out to $35.

I had to go back to the store because they over charged me for the case and while there couldn't resist but spend more money . I had second thoughts on the RAM. I decided to return the 8gb (2 x 4gb) corsair ballistic and get the 32gb (4x8gb) corsair vengeance instead. I'm just waiting for my corsair hx750 psu to arrive and I'll finally be ready to put it together.

Fair enough. After doing some more research myself I ordered another Hyper 212 EVO for the new build. Same temps, quieter and much cheaper than water cooling. Also couldn't get the fear of it leaking out of my mind.

I'll use the savings on a SSD. The case won't look as pretty, but like I open it up anyway.

[jussi]

I had mine running.great last night at 40-50°, then I did some cable management. For some reason it shot up to 93° at idle. Guess I removed the cooler too many times. Took off the stock compound, put on some Arctic Formula 5 and I'm idling around 60°. I suppose that will have to work for the stock cooler. Will have to grab something else this week. Don't want to take the 212 off of the AMD. Even though I will have to buy a wider case than I have on hand.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using Tapatalk 2

Might be a dumb question but are the temp you mention in Celsius of Fahrenheit?

I'm getting 27 deg celcius / 80 deg fabhrenheit.

Should I be worried about the chasis rpm? It's seems like 3 of the 4 are on the red. Currently have the chasis fans hooked up to mobo. Is it better to hook it up straight to the power supply. 3 of them are 230mm and the 4th is 140mm if that matters.

[Cochese]

Celsius. You're way in the clear at 27°.

Hooking to the mobo allows you to control via BIOS or a program. To the PSU, they're 100% all day. EDIT: without a fan controller.

Your BIOS should have cooling profiles you can use to target a specific temp or speed. A target of 40° should be well within specs (you'll have to look them up).

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using Tapatalk 2

[LCHIEN]

FWIW, in the electronics industry there is a rule of thumb, and that is, for every ten degrees C rise in temperature the life of a electronic IC or transistor is halved.

The example is, if a CPU runs at 25C (~room temerature), and its rated Mean time to failure (MTTF) at 25C is 30 years, then if the part is run at

35C its MTTF will be 15 years
45C its MTTF will be 7.5 years
55C 3.8 years
65C 1.9 years
75C 11 months
85C 5.5 months



MTTF is a statistical thing, it doesn't mean the part will fail at that time, but that if you have 1000 parts at the same conditions, half of them will fail by that time.

So you can see the point of not letting the temperature get too high. It can really mess up your chances for long CPU life. The CPU gets the hottest (it has the most transistor elements and runs at the fastest speeds), but other dense parts (like graphics chips) and the transistors in the power supply also get hot.

Heat rise is directly proportional to power dissipation, for processors and digital chips, power is proportional to speed for a given technology and core voltage.

Heat is carried away by radiation, convection, and conduction. THose in turn are helped by heat sink size and fin area, by clear air flow and by forced air flow, in increasing order of effectiveness.

So for chassis fans, faster RPM = more air flow. ALso larger diameter = more air flow. Of course, to do any good they must move hot air away and cooler air in preferably blowing over heat sink fins and hot parts, otherwise the baddest bigass fan running at 2000 RM won't do a bit of good.

[jussi]

I feel stupid. For some reason I saw the red bars and automatically assumed something was over heating. After about a minute of actually reading the manual it turns out the fans were spinning below the lower limit (set by the user). And the reason why only 3 were of the fans had red indicators was because they were the 3 larger fans. I assume all 4 get the same amount of power and therefore those 3 were just spinning at at a lower rpm. I simply lowered the limits for those 3. Besides the comp runs plenty cool. I can even feel a decent draft on my leg from one of the side chasis fans.

I haven't done much with it yet. So no real report but I will comment on how much faster the boot time is. I'm guessing largely due to the ssd. I timed it and it's takes 23s from turning on the switch to windows home screen.

CocheseUGA, thanks for the benchmark link you provided in the other post. I've never really benchmarked any of my comps before, mostly because they were budget builds and I knew what I'd be getting. Anyway this is what I got with only windows installed.

Thanks to all for the great suggestions.


Intel Core i73770K 3.50GHz @ 3604 MHz
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670

32721 MB System RAM (Score: 282)
- RAM Speed: 12620 MB/s

CPU Tests (Score: 871)
- Floating Point Operations/Second: 207009152
- Integer Operations/Second: 1039229960
- MD5 Hashes Generated/Second: 1478648

Graphics Tests (Score: 1095)
- 3D Frames Per Second: 2819

Hardware Tests (Score: 32)
- Primary Partition Capacity: 168 GB
- Drive Write Speed: 202 MB/s