My first gaming build plan ^^ opinions and improvements needed

[mfenn]

Good idea, I'll get reference jst incase I want to watercool. How about a HIS 7970. It's the only reference design I can find.

Seems good to me. HIS isn't top tier, but they're totally fine. Especially in this case since they are just reselling an AMD card.

 

[Splenyi]

Thanks for the opinions people.

I have my PC finished, and this is what I have;

Case : SG09
CPU : 4670k
Mobo : Z87 Gryphon (needed the extra fan headers, and it was only $40 more than the z87M Plus from ASUS)
RAM : 8GB Low Profile, Low Voltage Vengeance (I went with low voltage because it's not much more expensive, and it puts less effort on the IMC, so hopefully I can get some higher overclocks)
Cooler : Hyper 212 Evo
PSU : AX760i (I decided to keep it, seems as its top stuff)
SSD : Samsung 840 250GB
HDD : WD Black 1TB

GPU : I haven't bought this just yet. I can afford a 780 because of all the money I saved on the RAM, CPU cooler and case, but I'm fairly convinced that its performance isn't worth its price. 7970 still seems best bet, even compared to the new 770. 780 has a good impeller cooler compared to AMDs cards though, and I think that type of cooler would perform well in my case. I know AMDs impellers are really loud, so if I go AMD I'll get MSI's 7970 Twin Froz OC/Boost (did my research and the PCB is still 100% reference and voltage unlocked) (I was thinking about getting ASUS's DC UII Top 7970 with the amazing digital power delivery and beefy cooler, but I heard the voltage is locked, so what's the point of getting a card like that if you can't push it further). I'm thinking that the 780 can still offer more though, seems as the GK110 GPU is still relatively new and could offer some more performance with driver optimisations.

I decided to modify the cooling setup too. The main problem is the top intake pushing all the hot air towards the VGA area. So, I flipped that to exhaust, flipped the rear fan to intake so the CPU has some fresh air (put a fan filter on the back for it, and turned the voltage down so it wouldn't disturb the air path too much), and mounted the CPU cooler horizontally instead of vertically, sucking cold air in from the back, and some in from the VGA intake fan, blowing all the hot air straight out the top. The side fan was kept as intake for the graphics card.

I might get myself a Noctua cooler (U14S if I can mount it horizontally), and some of their 120mm fans because the SS AP120 fans are rather load. There are pretty much no other 180mm fans I can find, so the AP182 at the top is my only choice for now.

I'm also looking forward to a major case mod, redesigning its shocking appearance to something more sleek. A little like this guy designed
http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1038813830&postcount=17
But I'd keep the VGA fans.

 

[mfenn]

Congrats, glad you were able to find a good config!

As for the GPU, it's too bad that no GTX 770 makers are using the excellent reference cooler. I guess it is just too expensive. The GTX 780 is certainly faster than the 7970, but it is also around 50% more expensive. I dunno if it is worth it over the 7970 in terms of 1080p performance.

 

[Splenyi]

Ok, my friend bought all those parts I didn't want to keep, and then gave me some money to buy the rest of the system. This is what I've built;

CPU : 4670k
Mobo : Gigabyte Z87X-D3H
GPU : MSI 7970 Twin Frozr OC
RAM : Dominator Platinum 16GB
PSU : Corsair GS800 (room for CFX if needed, the fan rarely turns on while playing Farcry 3 on max settings)
Cooler : H100i
SSD : Samsung 840 120GB
HDD : WD Blue 1TB
Case : Corsair C70
Additional Cooling : A bunch of Corsair AF and SP fans I found on special

Now I started overclocking the system, starting with the GPU, and I used Unigine Heaven as the stress tester. I used MSI after burner for the OCing

I got the core clock to 1150Mhz and the memory clock to 1475Mhz. The memory clock is rather conservative, but I didn't find much performance improvement at all bumping it up another 50Mhz, and I didn't want to push the memory clock much higher than I did to the core clock, to avoid that ugly screen tearing and get some stability. I tried to push the core clock another 25Mhz, but that caused some tearing. I'm pretty happy with this overclock, much faster than a stock 7970, and it's even higher than a Ghz edition card. On GPU-Z, I checked the ASIC quality, and it's 70.1%. I'm not sure if this actually means anything, but apparently it's kinda high.

I started overclocking the CPU, but not by much. Set the vcore to 1.1 and the core clock to 4.0Ghz. I also turned XMP on (9 9 9 24 1600Mhz). Has anyone overclocked 4670k yet? How high could I get on 1.2v? I'm using Prime95 for the stress testing.

 

[TazFTW]

Has anyone overclocked 4670k yet?

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2326066 <-- Should be useful.
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2326066

 

[Splenyi]

Thanks. I did learn a little from that, but I couldn't find a uncore voltage setting on this board's BIOS... I did raise the uncore from 3.4 to 3.8 though, with my 1.2v vcore and 4.0Ghz clock.

EDIT: I've finished my overclocking for today. I decided to raise my vcore to 1.275 to see how high I could get the cpu ratio. I got it to 4.4Ghz fully stable running at 94°C at the hottest. I tried 4.5Ghz, it booted, but crashed a few seconds into Prime95.

EDIT AGAIN: I thought it was too hot and cranked it down a bit (pc rebooted mid-game during Farcry 3, and I thought it must have been the CPU getting too hot, wasn't monitoring it though). Now it's on 4.2Ghz and 1.225v, running 13°C cooler, for only 200Mhz less.

 

[mfenn]

Looks nice, glad you got it put together!

 

[Splenyi]

I think this thread is finally done thanks guy for all your help

 

[somran]

I completely agree. You can really do much better with such a big amount of $1450. The rest of the stuff sounds pretty good. All the best