New system questions

[lehtv]

A good liquid cooling system costs a lot more than the contained Corsair Hydros and similar coolers. You can get similar performance for a lower price if you buy a tower cooler.

I looked at the overclocker's club reviews of Corsair H60/80/100 and they had comments like "Thermal dump into chassis with default fan configuration"...

Yes, in standard configuration of a H60 for example, you have the fan installed in the rear exhaust port, with the radiator attached to it, and the fan brings cool air from outside onto the rad. The air then warms up the inside of your PC and needs to be exhausted with fans on the top. A lot of people who use Hydros buy another fan for a push-pull setup, reversing the airflow from inside the case to out.

 

[maniacalpha1-1]

Is a "tower cooler" a cooling system you can buy? The kind I was talking about is all I saw on Newegg.

 

[lehtv]

A tower cooler is a typical heatsink+fan combo. I.e. standard aftermarket cooling. They come in various sizes, from a small 92mm fan+heatsink to dual 140mm fans and a heatsink weighing about 1KG.

 

[maniacalpha1-1]

Well, I had already resolved to get one of those CM Hyper 212s; but I read that that's basically only good for a moderate overclock.

So is that large heatsink with dual 140mm fans good for a strong overclock?

Are GPUs usually sufficiently self cooled to overclock, especially factory overclocked like a TwinFrozr? I'm guessing GPU cooling is a lot more expensive and takes more work/customized setup.

 

[mfenn]

Well, I had already resolved to get one of those CM Hyper 212s; but I read that that's basically only good for a mcloderate overock.

Moderate being defined as 4.5GHz or so on Sandy Bridge, yes.

So is that large heatsink with dual 140mm fans good for a strong overclock?

Yes, but really beyond 4.5GHz or so, you are really hitting the point of diminishing returns on most chips.

Are GPUs usually sufficiently self cooled to overclock, especially factory overclocked like a TwinFrozr? I'm guessing GPU cooling is a lot more expensive and takes more work/customized setup.

Correct on both points.

 

[maniacalpha1-1]

Ah, thanks. I was thinking of doing an IB build but to save a bit, I think I will just go with a 2500k build and one of the Hyper 212s, and that should last me til 2015 assuming I don't take up video editing or something. At which point I should have been able to save enough to build an awesome Skylake based machine or whatever is out then.

Or, well, actually, at some point later in the year I expect to add a GTX 680, an Asus VE278Q 27" and a Razer Carcharias headset(unless there is a better cheaper headset), so there won't really be any savings for quite some time...

 

[mfenn]

And so the upgrade addiction treadmill begins... :awe:

But seriously, let us know how the build goes.

 

[maniacalpha1-1]

So, I'm actually going to be able to build within a month or two, unless shit hits the fan!

I'm going to change up to a 3570k and an Asrock Z77 Extreme 4, that costs about the same as a 2500k + Asrock anyway.

Here's my newer question though. I see some new SSDs hitting the market, but how do I know the benchmarks to look at and prioritize? For example, Samsung 830. If I look only at the sequential read from Anandtech bench Crucial M4 128 vs 830 128 GB, the M4 is a lot better than the 830 at .5KB 2GB sequential read, and also 1KB, 2KB and 4 KB. Then the 830 is better at 8, 16, 32, 64 and 128; and then they are almost the same at 256-2048, and then the 830 pulls away a bit at 4096kb and 8192.

Kingston HyperX 240GB(the only benchmark AT bench has, so I left it vs the 128GB samsung 830) is similar, and the Intel 520 240GB is similar as well though it becomes basically equal to the 830 at 512 KB and stays that way all the way up to 8192.

And then of course, there's the Corsair Neutron which I read the review, but it hasn't made it to the full SSD Bench yet.

This might seem like a lot of thought to put into SSDs but what I get is what I got for at least 2 years, so I want to get the fastest I can...should I just get a Crucial M4 or Samsung 830 and stfu and stop thinking about the others?

And, I'll be playing games that use seamless world tech like Planetside 2, for example, and who knows what MMORPGs will come out that I play that also have seamless worlds and need good on-the-fly access.

EDIT: I'm also not seeing any reason why I shouldn't do a RAID 0 on SSDs and that would allow me to get one now and more later. I note, however, that most of the motherboards say they allow "4 x SATA2 3.0 Gb/s and 2 x SATA3 6.0 Gb/s", that is, only up to 2 in SATA3 RAID. Is SATA2 3 Gb/s a bottleneck, ie, do I have to have a motherboard that allows more than 2 SATA3 ports in RAID, if I'm going to take full advantage of more than 2 SSDs in RAID?

 

[mfenn]

So, I'm actually going to be able to build within a month or two, unless shit hits the fan!

I'm going to change up to a 3570k and an Asrock Z77 Extreme 4, that costs about the same as a 2500k + Asrock anyway.

I'd probably steer toward the Z77 Pro3 rather than the Extreme4. If you're not going to SLI, the Extreme4 doesn't buy you a whole hell of a lot.

Here's my newer question though. I see some new SSDs hitting the market, but how do I know the benchmarks to look at and prioritize? For example, Samsung 830. If I look only at the sequential read from Anandtech bench Crucial M4 128 vs 830 128 GB, the M4 is a lot better than the 830 at .5KB 2GB sequential read, and also 1KB, 2KB and 4 KB. Then the 830 is better at 8, 16, 32, 64 and 128; and then they are almost the same at 256-2048, and then the 830 pulls away a bit at 4096kb and 8192.

Kingston HyperX 240GB(the only benchmark AT bench has, so I left it vs the 128GB samsung 830) is similar, and the Intel 520 240GB is similar as well though it becomes basically equal to the 830 at 512 KB and stays that way all the way up to 8192.

And then of course, there's the Corsair Neutron which I read the review, but it hasn't made it to the full SSD Bench yet.

This might seem like a lot of thought to put into SSDs but what I get is what I got for at least 2 years, so I want to get the fastest I can...should I just get a Crucial M4 or Samsung 830 and stfu and stop thinking about the others?

And, I'll be playing games that use seamless world tech like Planetside 2, for example, and who knows what MMORPGs will come out that I play that also have seamless worlds and need good on-the-fly access.

Reliability should be the most important factor IMHO, followed by performance. In terms of performance, you will want to look at random reads and writes of a size equal to the NTFS block size that you plan to use (typically 4K). Make sure to take IOMeter results with a grain of salt because it uses a highly compressible test data set that skews results towards Sandforce drives. Sequential performance is all well and good, but there is very little use case for it in a desktop (think about it, what are you going to do all that reading from or writing to?).

Both the M4 and 830 are very reliable drives, so I'd personally get whichever of those is cheapest, with a preference for the 830 if the prices are close.

EDIT: I'm also not seeing any reason why I shouldn't do a RAID 0 on SSDs and that would allow me to get one now and more later. I note, however, that most of the motherboards say they allow "4 x SATA2 3.0 Gb/s and 2 x SATA3 6.0 Gb/s", that is, only up to 2 in SATA3 RAID. Is SATA2 3 Gb/s a bottleneck, ie, do I have to have a motherboard that allows more than 2 SATA3 ports in RAID, if I'm going to take full advantage of more than 2 SSDs in RAID?

You can't do (non-software) RAID across SATA controllers, so that's where the limitation is coming from. Realize that "upgrading to RAID0" means that you need to make a full backup of your system because creating a RAID0 set destroys all data on the drives.

Personally I wouldn't bother. Flash memory obeys Moore's law, so by the time you're ready to upgrade a much bigger, faster drive will cost less.

 

[maniacalpha1-1]

OK, so, I actually have employment now and will be buying within a pay period or 2. As it happens I just bought 2 Vertex 4 128 GBs in the Newegg shellshocker. My plan is to raid 0 them, if that doesn't work out, well, it cost $174(incl tax) which is less than most 256GB singles would have been anyway.

So basically at this point I'm looking at the following, which I really only need the motherboard and processor, and essentially, I only need to double check power supply sufficiency and whether or not I'm going to get RAID 0 Trim(supposedly a recent AT article says if you have a 7 series chipset motherboard, win 7 and RST 11.0 or higher you get raid 0 trim). I have zero data that requires backup except for music, which I keep backed up on DVD, so any risks of RAID don't worry me. So, my build will be this:

Case: CM Storm Enforcer
PSU: Antec Neo Eco 620c (48 amps 12v rail)
MB: Asrock Z77 Pro 3
CPU: i5 3570k
4 X 4 GB Mushkin Blackline Enhanced DDR3 1600
Cooler: CM Hyper 212 EVO
DVD/CD burner: Whatever is cheapest
Win 7 home premium
2X OCZ Vertex 4 128 GB in RAID 0
1 Samsung HD103SJ 1TB HDD
Sound card(undecided, maybe a Xonar 5.1)
GPU(see note)

As for GPU, I've got a GTX 560Ti, but my eventual plan is to upgrade to at least a 660 Ti. At least, that is, so the question is how high of a GPU can I go and still run all this other crap? GTX 680 OK?

 

[krnmastersgt]

Pretty sure the Vertex 3 hit $.50 per gigabyte the other day, I'm not sure why you'd buy 2 Vertex 4's when you weren't working till just recently but oh well.

If the Neo Eco 620 is a 620W unit, it has enough amps and effective wattage to cover 2 680's in terms of just raw power required. A single 660 Ti or GTX 670 or their ATI equivalents (7950,7970) will run pretty much any title out there fully maxed out very good framerates, and should hold for at least a year or 2.

 

[mfenn]

So basically at this point I'm looking at the following, which I really only need the motherboard and processor, and essentially,

When you say this, do you mean that you've already decided on the other parts or that you already physically have them? Also, can you list the prices you're seeing for the parts you have picked out? For most parts (the ones that aren't absolutely terrible), whether or not they are good really depends on the price more so than the part itself.

 

[maniacalpha1-1]

When you say this, do you mean that you've already decided on the other parts or that you already physically have them? Also, can you list the prices you're seeing for the parts you have picked out? For most parts (the ones that aren't absolutely terrible), whether or not they are good really depends on the price more so than the part itself.

I physically have half of it:

Already owned:
CM Storm Enforcer
Antec Neo Eco 620c
8 GB Mushkin 1600 Blackline
Samsung 1TB HD103SJ
2X Vertex 4 128GB in shipment

Going to buy soon:
Asrock Z77 Pro 3 $94.99 and 3570k $229.99 at Newegg minus $18 combo
Additional 8GB RAM $46.99 Newegg
Right now, cheapest CD DVD burner is $14.99 NEwegg
Hyper 212 EVO $34.99 Newegg

Buy Later:
Sound card(if I still want one), a PCI Xonar 5.1 is $39.99
video card depending on what's out in a month or 3

I've looked at Tiger Direct and Amazon and wasn't really impressed by any savings enough to use them though I'm always open to any other ideas.

 

[mfenn]

Thanks, all that stuff looks fine to me except possibly the memory. What version of the Enhanced Blackline do you have? If it's one of the 1.65V versions, you will need to either underclock and undervolt it to run at 1.5V or grab a new 16GB kit.

 

[maniacalpha1-1]

The 1.5 volt; http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820226191

 

[mfenn]

:thumbsup: You're good to go in that case.

 

[maniacalpha1-1]

Asrock boards come with 2 SATA cables, but unbelievably, even on the specs sheet at Asrock's site, it just says "2 SATA data cables", and doesn't specify if they are SATA2 or 3. Can I assume they are SATA 3 6 gb/s?

I actually have had 2 SATA3 cables on my list for a while. I'm considering getting a Pro4 today just because of the free SSD. Presume there's no issue with that board.

 

[mfenn]

SATA cables are SATA cables, there is no physical difference between a cable marked as SATA 1.5 Gb/s, SATA 3Gb/s, or SATA 6Gb/s. See this article.

Anyway, yes the Pro4 is a good board.

 

[maniacalpha1-1]

LOL, I had no idea, that's good to know, about the cables. Anyway, went ahead and got the Pro4, $139.42 shipped, included a free Agility 3 60GB(not the best, but hey, if I'm gonna get the board anyway, why not get free stuff?) and also I went for the combo that included the Iolo OEM.

Just curious, there's a rebate on that SSD. But can you get rebates on stuff you got free?

Also, this might need its own thread, but has anyone used Safeware.com for insurance on computers? I'm interested in that because they have(if I understand their site correctly) no deductible, plus some additional coverage that might not be on a homeowner's policy, such as drops/falls/spills/power surge, and it's around $30 for $1200 coverage.

 

[maniacalpha1-1]

So, all I need now is the CPU, and I'm going to get that after next paycheck if there are no surprises, or after the 2nd next if there are. Either way, now I have to think about actual setup.

1. The case I have has a 120mm rear fan and a 200mm front with a slot for a top fan. If I get a top fan, should it pull in from outside or blow out? I never study cooling, so I have no idea. My current PC that I built, on an Antec 300, I simply left it as it was.
2. As I mentioned the motherboard has a free Agility 3 SSD. Now, I've studied my windows disk resource monitor usage while just using firefox and watching netflix, and it seems like it doesn't make for much disk usage(though there is a big disk read usage jump while watching Netflix, what is that? Netflix streams, it's not on the disk??). And, as windows boot times are a novelty not worthy of increasing, I'm thinking just put windows on the Agility 3. What then to do with the 2 Vertex 4s? RAID 0 them for performance, or just split stuff between them? If I don't raid them, what kind of things could I possibly split between them to split workloads? Note that I have nothing that I can't bear to lose, so I'm not worried about data loss from raiding.

I know Planetside 2 and BF3 load pretty fast from HDDs and certainly don't need raid 0 SSDs but someday I might find myself playing some MMORPG that uses zone loading at zone borders.

 

[mfenn]

Just curious, there's a rebate on that SSD. But can you get rebates on stuff you got free?

You should be able to since you can download the form and the box still has a UPC. Read the fine print to be sure though.

1. The case I have has a 120mm rear fan and a 200mm front with a slot for a top fan. If I get a top fan, should it pull in from outside or blow out? I never study cooling, so I have no idea. My current PC that I built, on an Antec 300, I simply left it as it was.

I would make the top fan an intake, but honestly you don't need one.

2. As I mentioned the motherboard has a free Agility 3 SSD. Now, I've studied my windows disk resource monitor usage while just using firefox and watching netflix, and it seems like it doesn't make for much disk usage(though there is a big disk read usage jump while watching Netflix, what is that? Netflix streams, it's not on the disk??). And, as windows boot times are a novelty not worthy of increasing, I'm thinking just put windows on the Agility 3. What then to do with the 2 Vertex 4s? RAID 0 them for performance, or just split stuff between them? If I don't raid them, what kind of things could I possibly split between them to split workloads? Note that I have nothing that I can't bear to lose, so I'm not worried about data loss from raiding.

Definitely avoid RAID0, a desktop workload can't push the queue depths necessary to make such a setup shine. I would use one for the OS and applications and another for games.

The big benefit of putting applications on the SSD is reducing application launch times. Especially make sure your Windows profile is on the SSD (it should be if you just install the OS on the SSD and don't do any hijinks) because that'll make sure your Application Data directory is on the SSD. Reading files in Application Data is where most programs spend the majority of their startup time.

 

[maniacalpha1-1]

So, everything is shipped and sitting back at my parent's house, so I just gotta go back tomorrow night and build it.

Question: The Asrock Z77 Pro4 specs on newegg say it has a PCI-E 3.0 and a PCI-E 2.0 slot. I don't think those will work for SLI, but will that 2.0 work for a physx card? I'm at some point, once I upgrade GPU, going to have to decide what to do with the current 560 Ti.

 

[mfenn]

Yes, the 2.0 slot will work fine for a PhysX card.

Now, is a dedicated PhysX card worth the power, heat, and noise for the couple of major games that can use it? Not in my opinion.

 

[maniacalpha1-1]

So, build is up, and here are the results:
1. Freaking little thing that hooks onto the edge of the GPU broke off the mobo(on the pci-e 3.0 slot) during installation. I'm guessing the screw will keep it secure, though.
2. When I built my previous PC in 2010, it was faster than a HDD, but it installed very slow. I put windows on the Agi 3, and wtf, it installed in like just a few minutes...installing on my vertex 2 takes that long just to get to where it will begin to install.....and boot time...insanely fast, even compared to the Vertex 2. Is it possible I've had my vertex 2 in the wrong SATA slot?
3. I ran ATTO on one of my Vertex 4's and it got up to about 400,000 read for 2048 -8192, see this for comparison http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1888/4/ . That's fast(right?), but it's a big drop from that review(over 500,000. Note: my Vertex 4s are the 128s, that review is 256/512). Did I do something wrong there? I have them plugged into the two SATA 6gb/s slots that are by themselves away from the SATA2s.
4. I did a software RAID stripe and it didn't do jack different in ATTO. I know it isn't worth it but I'm on a tinkering rage, do you have to set up hardware raid before you install windows or can you do that after? If you have to do it before then no biggie.
5. I did a very crappy power cable management job(read: thick mass of cables smooshed into the bottom). As long as they aren't blocking airflow to the mobo and CPU area, it's OK, right?
6. The SSD mounting brackets did not like the case. Where in the heck can you order these(my case only came with one):

I found them on coolermaster's international site but I'd rather not order in Euros or GBP or whatever. Or, what will work equivalently that I can find on Newegg? I had to be creative to get those things in their slots...

All in all, looks like I massively improved my game! I'm sitting at my parent's house with crappy internet so I can't download PS2 and BF3 to check framerates at the moment, though

 

[mfenn]

So, build is up, and here are the results:
1. Freaking little thing that hooks onto the edge of the GPU broke off the mobo(on the pci-e 3.0 slot) during installation. I'm guessing the screw will keep it secure, though.

Yeah, the screw on the bracket is plenty to keep the card in place.

2. When I built my previous PC in 2010, it was faster than a HDD, but it installed very slow. I put windows on the Agi 3, and wtf, it installed in like just a few minutes...installing on my vertex 2 takes that long just to get to where it will begin to install.....and boot time...insanely fast, even compared to the Vertex 2. Is it possible I've had my vertex 2 in the wrong SATA slot?

A Vertex 2 is a SATA 3Gb/s drive, so it wouldn't have mattered. OS installation is basically a purely sequential operation, so SATA 6Gb/s can really make its presence known.

3. I ran ATTO on one of my Vertex 4's and it got up to about 400,000 read for 2048 -8192, see this for comparison http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1888/4/ . That's fast(right?), but it's a big drop from that review(over 500,000. Note: my Vertex 4s are the 128s, that review is 256/512). Did I do something wrong there? I have them plugged into the two SATA 6gb/s slots that are by themselves away from the SATA2s.

The units in ATTO are KB/s, so 400,000 is 400 MB/s. Yes, that's fast. The 128GB versions use fewer Flash chips, so they are slower than the 256GB and 512GB version. Check out the Anantech Bench, you'll see that 400 MB/s is just about right for your drive.

4. I did a software RAID stripe and it didn't do jack different in ATTO. I know it isn't worth it but I'm on a tinkering rage, do you have to set up hardware raid before you install windows or can you do that after? If you have to do it before then no biggie.

You should theoretically see a doubling of performance with a RAID0 (stripe). Windows software RAID is horrible though, so I'm not surprised that you didn't see an improvement. Yes, creating an Intel "hardware" RAID will blow away the data on the drives, necessitating a reinstall.

5. I did a very crappy power cable management job(read: thick mass of cables smooshed into the bottom). As long as they aren't blocking airflow to the mobo and CPU area, it's OK, right?

Correct.

6. The SSD mounting brackets did not like the case. Where in the heck can you order these(my case only came with one):

I found them on coolermaster's international site but I'd rather not order in Euros or GBP or whatever. Or, what will work equivalently that I can find on Newegg? I had to be creative to get those things in their slots...

Here's the US link.

All in all, looks like I massively improved my game! I'm sitting at my parent's house with crappy internet so I can't download PS2 and BF3 to check framerates at the moment, though

Glad you like it!