Partial Upgrade to Setup

[tjlee2]

1. Purpose- Upgrading so I can play Guild Wars 2 on max settings, and hopefully not too much slow down in WvW large battle (ideally above 30 fps). Primarily want to upgrade GPU.

2. Budget- $400-500 for GPU, ideally the only thing that needs an upgrade. If other components will bottleneck may need to reduce cost. Total would be ok as long it's under $800, but lower is better.

3. Country- USA

4. Preference- None

5. Current Parts- Listing all parts as I have concern about bottleneck. Would like to keep what I can and only swap out for new part if necessary.

CPU- Intel Core i5 760 @ 2.8GHz

Mobo- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128425

RAM- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820231277
~2X2

Current GPU- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814102908

Power Supply- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817139004

Case- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811129042
~Concern about circulation in a mid tower.

6. Overclock- Have never done it, but may explore the possibility

7. Resolution- 1920X1080

8. Time Table- Within the next month, before GW2 release

9. Others- No additional software with upgrade.

Additional- Currently looking at following 3 GPU. GPU forums is suggesting 670 given sufficient budget. Although I'm not sure if that's the particular 670 they are recommending.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814130604

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814130593

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...scrollFullInfo

Thank you very much for your time.

TJL

 

[Durvelle27]

your links don't work

 

[lehtv]

i5-760 should be fine for a GTX 670 in all but CPU heavy games as long as you OC it properly. It's also OK to buy a new GPU even if it will be slightly bottlenecked - you'll get another boost in performance when you upgrade your CPU, and the CPU then will support another GPU upgrade or two before it needs to be upgraded.

 

[Durvelle27]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814125423

or

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814130782

 

[tjlee2]

Sorry about that. Links updated.

 

[lehtv]

OK. That board should be good for overclocking the i5-760 to 4GHz with the right cooling. It's going to consume quite a bit of power though, the 550W PSU (being a corsair with 492W on the +12V) should handle it but it'd be better to have some safety headroom. Maybe limit your OC to 3.5GHz.

You can test for CPU bottlenecking in a particular game by lowering display resolution - if there is no bottleneck, the framerate should increase in proportion to the ratio of the pixel counts of the resolutions. In case that didn't make sense: e.g. 1920x1080 vs 1600x900 is a difference of 2.07Mpix vs 1.44Mpix, or a ratio of 1.44. If your framerate increases by roughly 40-45%, you're good, if it increases by noticeably less you're CPU bottlenecked. Make sure vsync is off.

Antec 300 fine for overclocking. I would recommend installing two 800-1200RPM 120mm front fans in addition to the stock exhaust fans.

Given your budget I'd recommend a Noctua cooler. Noctua is awesome in that they will ship you installation brackets free of charge for not yet supported CPU sockets. So when you upgrade your CPU to Intel Haswell in a year, you will be able to use the same cooler.

Noctua U12P SE2 $76
Noctua C14 $80 after promo, downflow cooler (cools your RAM and mobo too)

 

[tjlee2]

I will go ahead with the Gigabyte recommended by Durvelle27. I think I will read more about OC before making the fan purchases as it's something completely new to me. I will also need to gauge the power consumption, and if OC is an option I may just get a new power supply to be able to do it more safely.

Hopefully I'm not missing anything. And thank you all very much for your help.

 

[iiiankiii]

I think if you overclock, you can nearly match those IB and SB chips. I have my i5-750 clocked at 3.8ghz for a few years without any problem. At that speed, it should shift the bottle neck back to the GPU.

 

[mfenn]

1. Purpose- Upgrading so I can play Guild Wars 2 on max settings, and hopefully not too much slow down in WvW large battle (ideally above 30 fps). Primarily want to upgrade GPU.

Are you in the beta or have some other way to test the performance? I typically recommend against upgrading hardware in anticipation of unreleased games because you never know what the performance characteristics of that game will be. It could heavily favor Nvidia or AMD, or it might turn out to run fine on your current setup.

 

[tjlee2]

The game had a Beta weekend event about a month ago, so I had some experience with the game and how it performed on my PC. It was definitely not optimized, but my current unit isn't really that good anyways since I also have some issues running other games.

I tried to use some stability testing tools on my CPU with HWMonitor. After checking some values, I'm actually more concerned about my cooling unit than anything else. My room temp is 22C, and using LinX my CPU was over 90C. When running a game, my GPU was going 68C and my CPU was ~86C. I'm pretty sure these values are unacceptable, and I probably shouldn't be trying OC with current setup. I'm going to see if I can clean up the inside a bit to reduce the heat and will probably just purchase the units suggested by lehtv before anything else.

Please let me know if I misunderstood anything. Thank you again for your assistance.

 

[lehtv]

The GPU temperature is more than fine.

But the CPU does run way too hot for my liking. A good aftermarket cooler should chip around 30 degrees off of that load temperature, maybe more. My i7 920 runs at 65C during Prime95. It's overclocked by 20% (stock volts) and cooled by a quiet Scythe Mugen 2, comparable to most coolers at the $50 price point, as well as the Noctua coolers I linked. Noctua just costs more due to being Noctua, their heatsinks and fans are extremely good quality and their customer and product support is great. Noctua D14 would be a tier higher in performance but also more expensive and more massive, in my opinion not needed. I would prefer the downflow cooler. You can of course consider cheaper heatsinks too, like the popular Hyper 212 Evo (fine for a moderate OC)

 

[tjlee2]

I bought the one you suggested ($75). I'm going to clean up and install it, check the new numbers, then go from there. It's also nice that the cooler works with 1155 if I do end up needing to upgrade my CPU.

Thank you for your help.

 

[lehtv]

You will not be disappointed

 

[mfenn]

I bought the one you suggested ($75). I'm going to clean up and install it, check the new numbers, then go from there. It's also nice that the cooler works with 1155 if I do end up needing to upgrade my CPU.

Thank you for your help.

:thumbsup: The D14 is an absolute beast of a cooler. You should be able to get the temps way down assuming you have some reasonable airflow inside the case.

 

[tjlee2]

Well, I opened up my PC to clean out dust. When I got to the stock cooler, I realize it has become loose. After fiddling with it, I can no longer turn on my PC. It would automatically shutdown while trying to boot up. I'm assuming it's an overheating issue. I'm gonna see what I can do to pin-point the problem.

In the event that the whole thing is blown, I'm planning to grab a new Mobo and CPU to replace it. I would like to keep the RAM, and I've only looked at the popular items.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819115072

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813131837

Thanks in advance.

 

[krnmastersgt]

How exactly did you clean out the dust? Typically people use compressed air and while it does usually get the dust out it can also knock them into some unusual places, maybe cause a short on the board.

And you said the stock cooler was loose, how did you find out? If it was loose the whole time and giving you those temps I don't see how properly mounting it/cleaning out dust should only lower the temps, not raise them to the point of thermal-triggered shutdowns.

 

[tjlee2]

I was cleaning using compressed air.

After cleaning, I checked the temp. I went from idle at ~53C to about 46-47C.

Then I shut it off and then installed a new SSD. The power cable was positioned kind of weird so I had to try to bend it (If I accidentally touched the cooler at some point, I think this would be it). I finished installing the SSD and then turned the PC back on. Now I'm idling at 80C.

I opened it back up to check the cooler, and noticed it was lose on one end. I tried to re-secure it. Afterwards I tried to turn my PC back on. It gets to loading OS then shuts off. I tried it a few more times with the case open, and waited longer each time. I make more progress but it eventually shuts down. I almost made it to windows screen the last time before it went down. It's not much to base a conclusion off but that's why I think it's an overheating issue.

Oh, I also removed the new SSD during the boot ups just so it's more controlled. Didn't change anything, not that a SSD would add 40C to the CPU.

I won't be able to do much more till I get the new cooler. I took the stock off and it's pretty screwed up. One of the edges fell off >.>

Should have been monitoring this whole time. Lesson learned.

Edit: Typos

 

[krnmastersgt]

I was going to ask if you could just check your hardware/temperature monitor in the BIOS to see what kind of idle you were getting that hit the TJMax temp. Might I ask what you found wrong with the stock cooler? Did you bend/break some of the push-pins? While the design leaves a lot to be desired, the push-pins are still a very easy way to mount a cooler so I don't see how it could become lose short of having 1 of them basically ripped off.

Also unsure of how plugging in a SATA power cable to the SSD had you hitting your CPU cooler but oh well, what's done is done. I guess now all you can do is wait for the D14 to show up for that system to be up and running again.

 

[tjlee2]

The stock cooler had one of the push-pins basically detach, so it's no longer locked in place.

Would it be ok to monitor in BIOS with a cooler that's basically not secured in place anymore?

I don't know if I did hit it or not when I was moving the power cable, but that was the only time I applied any force in the case. I can't imagine any other time. I don't recall touching it either (maybe I didn't).

Yes, that new cooler can't come soon enough ><

 

[krnmastersgt]

I wouldn't risk damaging the chip from constantly trying to turn it on when it's turning itself off from hitting the TJ max temps. I'd say just leave it alone till you have the D14 or see if anything is actually broken on the stock cooler, as opposed to just in the wrong position so it doesn't fasten itself in place or something.

Truth be told I have run the Intel stock coolers with broken push pins before by having the system on it's side, it's nowhere near the ideal contact pressure or anything but if you really needed the system to power on for something that is an option. I'd recommend just waiting for the D14 though.

 

[tjlee2]

I will do so. Thanks for the help.

 

[lehtv]

I thought you ordered U12P SE2 instead of D14?

 

[tjlee2]

Yeah I ordered U12p SE2. Based on feedback, I'm not sure if D14 would have fit in my case. I forgot to make that correction with the whole computer won't turn on thing distracting me >.>;

 

[tjlee2]

I've looked around the forums for a little more information. I think if I need a new CPU (I will find out tonight. The cooler gets here today. Yay for fast shipping) I will go with

http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0354589

For Mobo, I'm looking at the following (the ASRock and Asus has equivalents at Micro Center. The Gigabyte is not available)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...&amp;SID=u00000687

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813157293

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128502

I also saw this suggestion in another thread

http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0387627

and additionally saw pretty cheap RAM suggestion. Would it matter much to go from my current RAM

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...&amp;SID=u00000687

to the 8GB suggested here?

http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0382101

I am still planning to grab the suggested GPU

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814125423

Thank you for your help in advance.

 

[lehtv]

I'd recommend the newer i5-3570K for $190 and an Asrock Z77 Pro3 for $95 - $50 off or whatever the combo discount for 3570K+Z77 is these days. You know the CPU and the combo discount are in-store only?

Your current RAM is fine for the new setup unless you find you're maxing out the capacity