Another newcomer in need of advice.. (gaming rig)

[Wali]

Intended use for the PC: Gaming and office work, perhaps some minor video editing.

OS will be Linux, so I'd like to stick with Nvidia GPUs (and kinda took a liking to the GTX 660 line due to a relatively good power to performance ratio?).

The system should be able to handle some minor overclocking in the future.

Case: Nanoxia Deep Silence 1 (incl.: 2x120mm fans, 1x140mm fan)
PSU: Corsair TX750 V2 750W (modular)
Motherboard: ASUS P8Z77-V
Processor: Intel Core i5-3570K Box, LGA1155
CPU cooler: Zalman CNPS11X Performa
Memory: 16GB-Kit Kingston HyperX LoVo XMP PC3-12800U CL10
GPU: MSI N660 Twin Frozr 2GD5/OC, GeForce GTX 660
HD : Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB SATA 3 8,9cm(3,5")
Optical Drive: ASUS DRW-24B5ST

Intended upgrades:
2nd GPU (SLI): MSI N660 Twin Frozr 2GD5/OC, GeForce GTX 660

Possible upgrades:
SSD
2nd HD

Here comes the question part:

1. Would the PSU above have enough "oomph" to handle the second GPU (and possibly other upgrades such as the SSD/HD)? I tried to figure it out with a calculator, but got somewhat inconclusive results.

2. I read that multi-rail setups (of the 12v rails) in the PSU offer better protection in the case of one component shorting out. On the other hand, the most popular PSUs seem to be produced by Corsair and Seasonic, who offer single-rail PSUs almost exclusively. Would it be worth switching to multi-rail setups by "be quiet!" or another manufacturer over this, considering the possible increase in cost?

3. Are there any components that should be replaced with higher quality ones? I'm trying to compose a computer that will last for some time to come, through possible upgrades, so quality matters.

4. Is the only difference between buying the "boxed" version of the processor and a "tray" version that the latter comes without stock cooler?

As this is the first PC I (try to) build myself, I'd be very thankful if you point out other inconsistencies as well - even if they seem obvious to you. I've done a lot of reading on various forums and sites such as this, but some knowledge only comes with experience.

Many thanks in advance - and please excuse bad text layout... 'bound to a mobile device until I get this thing running. -.-

Edit: The retailers in question are mindfactory.de and hardwareversand.de.

 

[Torn Mind]

SSDs barely use any power and HDDs use maybe 12 watts tops. HDDs should have a volt and amperage rating on the label on the disk itself.

The TX750 is certified by Nvidia themselves to run dual SLI for the GTX 560 Ti(older, which means more of a guzzler). It has 62 amps on the 12v rail, so that means 744 watts can be sent on the 12 volt rail. That is well above what a GTX 660 SLI config will draw.

PSU calculators usually overstate wattage values.

Your MSI GPU was benchmarked here: http://www.legitreviews.com/article/2023/11/

This is total system power consumption, so the 3960X processor and other components also use up power. I'd say about 170 watts is due to the GPU(wild guess on my part), so 460 watts at the wall is my estimate if the GPU was SLI'd.

But PSUs are rated for what is actually delivered to components, not at the wall. Some AC power is not converted into DC power; this is where efficiency comes in. Assuming 87% efficiency, since the review used a Corsair AX1200, the I would estimate that whole system in that review would pull 400 watts if there were GTX 660s in SLI.


For tray vs. boxed, warranty might be an issue. I'm not sure of the details myself, however.

 

[Sleepingforest]

Welcome to the forums!

1. Even 650W is enough for 2 top end 670s. You'll be fine.

2. It doesn't matter that much compared to buying from the right manufacturers. Be Quiet! is pretty good; every Seasonic is good, and most (if not all) Corsair units, even the budget CX line, is solid.

3. There are actually components that are needlessly expensive, like your motherboard and hard drive. EVERY drive and motherboard has a failure rate. Your best bet is to have backups. I'd recommend an Asrock Z77 Pro3 instead of the Asus as it's about $100 less but performs equally well. Similarly, a WD Blue, Hitachi, or Seagate Barracuda are perfectly good hard drives.

4. I believe so, yes.

Other changes I would make: get the absolute cheapest DVD burner available--they're not a part worth spending a bunch on. Your cooler is probably alright, but around here, we tend to recommend the Xigmatek Dark Knight II or the Thermaltake Frio for $50. On the other hand, even a $25 cooler like the Scythe Katana 4 will suffice for overclocking.

SLI is rarely worth it, and it's generally more cost effective to buy a strong card every few years than weak ones for SLI. SLI is also noisier, hotter, and more prone to glitches.

 

[Termie]

Good advice above.

I'll just add that if you have the budget for it, you should get an SSD, and just by making the tweaks suggested by Sleepingforest above, you can afford an SSD. So you're going to buy one then!

Just a quick explanation on drive speed - it used to be that people would spend 50% more for the Caviar Black drives, which would provide 5-10% faster performance. Now that SSDs are relatively affordable (or other component prices have come down, freeing up space in the budget for SSDs), the speed of mechanical drives is largely irrelevant. Any 7200rpm drive will be fine even as an applications drive. Having the OS on your SSD is what will really make things fly.

Oh, and the thing about PSU rails - back in the day (like 5 years ago...), single rail PSUs were the exception, rather than the rule. Some people thought that the benefits of a unified rail were outweighed by the potential danger of having that much amperage on a single rail. That really isn't an issue anymore, and if anything, I would suggest you consider only single rail PSUs, as you don't have to worry about load-balancing. Just get a high-quality unit, like the Corsair you listed. I'd actually swap it out for the Corsair HX650 to get the slightly higher quality innards and avoid running outside the peak efficiency range (1/2 of capacity). You'll never, ever use more than 300w with your build, even overclocked to the max. Another GTX660 by definition and design cannot add more than an additional 150w to the total.

 

[Wali]

Thank you both for looking into this in so much detail, and for the feedback, too. This is exactly the kind of help I had been looking and hoping for.

I really should have included the retailers I'll be using to avoid this, but the two coolers you recommended are not readily available to me, at the moment. (Edited the OP now to make things easier).
I found the Thermaltake Frio, but in the wrong socket configuration (1155 not supported).

Especially the price difference in motherboards was mindblowing, though. Really could buy two Asrocks for the one Asus. I had originally picked it for quality reasons, improved audio over lighter Asus versions, and the included WiFi card.. but now I'm having second thoughts.
The obsession with quality stems from really bad experiences with my last PC (from HP - there, I said it). It broke down three times in two years due to faulty hardware (likely PSU and motherboard). So if there's a chance to avoid something similar, it would be worth the additional cost of the Asus board. It's supposed to still run smoothly a few years down the line.

 

[Sleepingforest]

Would you consider other sites like alternate.de, atelco.de, mediamarkt.de, or pearl.de? You may get a better selection.

 

[mfenn]

I agree with Termie and Sleepingforest on all points.

Regarding tray vs. boxed CPUs, you're right that the tray CPU doesn't come with a cooler. That's not the most important difference though. The most important difference is that a tray CPU comes with no warranty from Intel, you are only covered by your retailer's return policy. This is because tray CPUs are meant to be sold to OEMs that have long-standing replacement contracts with Intel. You are not such an OEM.

 

[Sleepingforest]

I agree with Termie and Sleepingforest on all points.

Regarding tray vs. boxed CPUs, you're right that the tray CPU doesn't come with a cooler. That's not the most important difference though. The most important difference is that a tray CPU comes with no warranty from Intel, you are only covered by your retailer's return policy. This is because tray CPUs are meant to be sold to OEMs that have long-standing replacement contracts with Intel. You are not such an OEM.

Do you know if you can purchase the Intel Tuning Plan (overclocker's insurance) to cover that problem? It probably sends the cost over that of a boxed CPU, but you do get a no questions asked replacement from Intel.

 

[Charlie98]

The obsession with quality stems from really bad experiences with my last PC (from HP - there, I said it). It broke down three times in two years due to faulty hardware (likely PSU and motherboard).

You are not alone...

 

[Wali]

All the feedback is very much appreciated! It's a lot to take in, of course, so I'll try to sum up the next steps. Please let me know in case I got something wrong.

1. "Downgrade" PSU to a Corsair HX650 Gold (7-year manufacturer warranty?! I'll take that!)

2. SLI is (in general) not worth it, because it eats too much power and the cards run too hot? I thought it might be a budget upgrade a year or two down the line, when the card would (likely) be cheaper. A straight GPU upgrade is recommended instead?

3. If point 2 is confirmed, the expensive motherboard really isn't worth it. I have not looked into ASRock in detail, yet: Are BIOS updates required/recommended, and if so, are they possible under Linux? (Likely Mint 13, MATE 64-bit)

4. SSDs - I'm completely clueless. A lot of Linux distros used to have issues with them (especially as boot medium), and as a result I gave them no consideration. So I would have a number of questions:

- How much of a performance increase can be expected if strictly just the OS runs on the SSD, and for instance the games themselves are stored on a conventional HDD?

- Can someone recommend a certain brand and model? Again, reliability would be the key factor (along with Linux compatibility, in case there are differences). 60GB or so would likely be enough, if running just the OS exclusively on the device makes sense.

 

[Sleepingforest]

1 and 2. Even that seems a bit much in terms of wattage available. 500 is enough for one card. It's most effective to just do a string of single GPUs (less heat and glitches due to SLI too).

3. The Asrock Pro3/4 is good enough for your purposes, and their pretty cheap (at least in the US).

4. Whatever you put on the SSD will load faster. OS boots faster, games will have slower load times (by a few seconds; my games take between 3 and 10 seconds to load a new area from things like fast travel). Samsung and Crucial are solid.

 

[DSF]

As Sleepingforest said, the experience during play will be the same on an SSD as on a conventional hard drive. The only real impact will be on load times. If you're playing a game that only has to load once at the beginning, or that doesn't have large chunks of data to transfer it doesn't need to be on the SSD. The games that really benefit from being on an SSD are things like massive RPGs that have to load huge worlds every so often.

For me, since I don't have anything like Skyrim installed, the main game that I have on my SSD is Battlefield 3. There's a significant difference in loading times, but on the other hand, that amounts to saving a few seconds per half hour or so of gameplay since it only matters once per map. It depends how much you care about that.

If you use Steam, it's now configured so that many games will let you choose which drive to install the game to, which is helpful.

 

[Torn Mind]

Intel SSDs are also a good choice for reliability, but the Samsung 840 Pro is the best performer on the market, and it is also reliable.

I have the Asrock H77M motherboard, and I am running Linux Mint 12 32-bit on it with the integrated graphics of a Celeron G550. No BIOS update needed at all. The thing about Linux is that it checks for the hardware WHILE the OS is loaded, so it is a helluva lot more "portable" than Windows.

 

[Charlie98]

2. SLI is (in general) not worth it, because it eats too much power and the cards run too hot? I thought it might be a budget upgrade a year or two down the line, when the card would (likely) be cheaper. A straight GPU upgrade is recommended instead?

When I was researching GPUs I asked that very same question... one BIG card vs 2 lesser in SLI... the consensus was one BIG card. There are performance issues with SLI and there isn't a 1+1=2 bargain in SLI... more like 1+1=1.6 or so. ...and then there is the more hardware and more heat issue... more stuff to go wrong.

I went with the biggest card I could afford at the time (560ti/448) and I'm glad I did vs SLI. It certainly is easier to deal with...

 

[mfenn]

Do you know if you can purchase the Intel Tuning Plan (overclocker's insurance) to cover that problem? It probably sends the cost over that of a boxed CPU, but you do get a no questions asked replacement from Intel.

No, it does not. Intel's terms and conditions say:

Unless specifically set forth below, the terms and conditions for the Plan do not replace, change or otherwise impact the scope or term of Intel’s standard boxed processor limited warranty.

 

[mfenn]

4. SSDs - I'm completely clueless. A lot of Linux distros used to have issues with them (especially as boot medium), and as a result I gave them no consideration. So I would have a number of questions:

All SATA SSDs are compatible with Linux. The OS doesn't really know that it's an SSD vs. an HDD at the most basic level. It's only other software that's layered on top that knows the difference. You are using a distribution that has new enough kernel that TRIM should work fine as long as you use an ext4 filesystem.

 

[Wali]

You are using a distribution that has new enough kernel that TRIM should work fine as long as you use an ext4 filesystem.

I'm really glad you mentioned that, mfenn. First thing I would have likely done is format the SSD in ext2, just because that is what I usually do with my HDD-partitions.

Another question that just arose is: How much of the SSD do I allocate for Swap? Back in the days, I used to go by the "Swap=RAMx2" rule-of-thumb.. but with 16 gigs of RAM, that seems a bit off now.

Do you have any suggestion for a suitable Swap-size?

 

[Termie]

I'm really glad you mentioned that, mfenn. First thing I would have likely done is format the SSD in ext2, just because that is what I usually do with my HDD-partitions.

Another question that just arose is: How much of the SSD do I allocate for Swap? Back in the days, I used to go by the "Swap=RAMx2" rule-of-thumb.. but with 16 gigs of RAM, that seems a bit off now.

Do you have any suggestion for a suitable Swap-size?

I use a 1GB page file with both of my systems. I believe that's the standard approach with SSDs and systems with plenty of RAM. Using no page file can cause some apps to hang, but you really don't it otherwise and space on SSDs is at a premium.

 

[Charlie98]

I use a 1GB page file with both of my systems. I believe that's the standard approach with SSDs and systems with plenty of RAM. Using no page file can cause some apps to hang, but you really don't it otherwise and space on SSDs is at a premium.

I used to not have page file on my system, but I researched it a bit more and set it at 1GB min, 2GB max. I couldn't do that with my old 60GB SSD... there wasn't enough room.

 

[mfenn]

I'm really glad you mentioned that, mfenn. First thing I would have likely done is format the SSD in ext2, just because that is what I usually do with my HDD-partitions.

Another question that just arose is: How much of the SSD do I allocate for Swap? Back in the days, I used to go by the "Swap=RAMx2" rule-of-thumb.. but with 16 gigs of RAM, that seems a bit off now.

Do you have any suggestion for a suitable Swap-size?

ext2? Do you hate your life or something? :awe: Journaling (ext3/4) and any lazy allocation (ext4) is the way to go.

As for swap, I would honestly not allocate an if you're using the default /proc/sys/vm/overcommit_memory value of 0. If you're swapping, you're dead anyway, so you might as well not swap in the first place with 16GB. If that makes you too uncomfortable, you can allocate some nominal swap space of a couple gigs on a spinning disk. I would not swap to SSD because that's a great way to prematurely wear out your drive.

 

[Wali]

>.> What can I say.. there was a time when I used ext2, and those were simple, happy times (unless you lost data in a crash). And then they suddenly came along with all this new-fangled stuff, including higher numbers and what have you. First ext3, then ext4.. I mean.. just where is this supposed to end?! *cough*

But yeah, after reading up for a moment... it may really be time to learn a new trick and move on.

So:
- small swap partition on the HDD, rest formated in ext4 with journaling enabled
- SSD in ext4, but journaling disabled to save read/write cycles ?


P.S.: May be repeating myself here, but I really can't overstate how much all the help is appreciated. Without you folks, I would have gone wrong on so many turns, it's not even funny.
Really feels like I came a long way during the last few days. Just spotted one of the retailers mentioned above mis-labeling Kingston P'n'P RAM as low-voltage (all the way to listing it at 1.35V). Of course it draws the full 1.5 volt, so if you happen to miss that, plug it in and overclock because you think you got overhead..

 

[mfenn]

Ha, I suppose btrfs will really blow your mind then!

ext4 with no journaling is basically ext2. You want to have journaling to protect your data from crashes etc. It's not really that much more in terms of write cycles, certainly not in comparison to the risk of running without a journal.

 

[Wali]

Mmmkay.. so.. I'd been fairly sure that I had stuff(tm) figured out now - thanks to you folks - but another unforeseen issue just popped up.

First things first: the parts are finalized and have arrived!

Case: Nanoxia Deep Silence 1
PSU: Corsair HX650 650W 80 PLUS Gold (modular)
Motherboard: ASRock Z77 Extreme4 Intel Z77 So.1155 Dual Channel DDR3 ATX Retail
Processor: Intel Core i5-3570K Box, LGA1155 (for warranty)
CPU cooler: Zalman CNPS11X Performa
Memory: Kingston LoVo 16GB Kit* (2x8GB) DDR3L 1600MHz CL9 Intel XMP
GPU: MSI N660 Twin Frozr 2GD5/OC, GeForce GTX 660
HD : Western Digital Black 1000GB (WD1002FAEX) 64MB 3.5" (8.9cm) SATA 6Gb/s
SSD : 120GB Samsung 840 Basic Series (MZ-7TD120BW) 2.5" (6.4cm) SATA 6Gb/s TLC Toggle
Optical Drive: LG Electronics (GH24NS95) DVD-RW SATA 1.5Gb/s intern Bulk

Now here's where I ran into trouble (and now it really shows this is the first time I'm trying to build a computer): The bolded parts were delivered without cables, and it left me completely dumbfounded.
Not only did the retailer not indicate this (even the article codes seem to link to units with cables and such supplied in some cases), I can not for the life of me figure out which precise cables are required.
I know the HDD and SSD are SATA devices, but at least the SSD connectors seem to be intended for Laptops? And the DVD burner is possibly IDE?

But that still doesn't tell me just which precise cables I'd have to pick up at a store (seems I would need separate data and power cables for SATA?), whether there's any differences between manufacturers and so on. It's the one aspect of this project I just overlooked entirely.

Could one of you please shed some light on the issue, for a helplessly confused person?

 

[Sleepingforest]

You should get SATA cables with the motherboard, and the power cables come on the PSU. They look kinda like an "L". A quick Google of that DVD burner shows that it should be SATA.

 

[Steltek]

If you don't get enough SATA cables with the motherboard, you can buy them from just about any source as they are standardized cables. If you buy cables, you can get them with either straight connectors or 90 degree "L" connectors to help with cable management.

For future reference, when you purchase a "bare" optical or hard drive, you are getting just that: a bare drive with no hardware like brackets, cables, or sometimes even screws. A "retail" drive kit normally includes some installation hardware.

In most cases, "bare" drives are better deals moneywise even if you have to purchase an additional SATA cable. Retail kits are generally packaged better, include some hardware, and may (in some instances) have a longer warranty.