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Reaper978

New computer: suggestions?

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DoomUK said:

Don't want to throw a spanner in the works, but my OCZ PSU has provided me with 8 years of unwavering service. Even the colourful LED shines brilliantly to this day.

Point being, back in those days OCZ were a respectable manufacturer. What happened to them?

That's great that it works to this day, but with a sample size of n=1, anecdotal evidence just doesn't tell us much about the brand. Let's see some of the issues brought up about OCZ:

OCZ falsely advertising SSD capacity and quality:
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1594470

OCZ PSU Problems:
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=852207&highlight=Neo2+ocz+powerstream

OCZ takes first place by a comfortable margin... in SSD return rates:
http://www.behardware.com/articles/881-7/components-returns-rates-7.html

I don't think OCZ was ever a respectable brand. They have had a very negative history in the hardware enthusiast community in the past 10 years. On the upside, their customer support is reported to be good.

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Mr. T said:

What about Cooler Master PSUs?

They're fine. They're manufactured by Seasonic.

Basically, almost all of the PSUs, Antec, Corsair, OCZ, Cooler Master, etc. are designed by their respective company, but manufactured by Seasonic.

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Yea a decent PSU is a must, dont take shortcuts.

I had fairly decent one a while back, but it blew. I was low on money and bought a cheapy. I was due a big upgrade anyway so just wanted a few more months out of it.

However this cheap PSU blew after a few weeks and took out my main board. I ended up doing my upgrade a bit earlier lol

Because of this I bought a decent Corsair PSU and have never had any issues with it, dont even worry about it because I know its good quality, and handles my power requirements nicely.

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Computer PSUs are the nightmare of every EE. Way too cramped, poorly cooled and cheaply made for the kinds of voltages, performance stability and power levels they are called to handle.

Just think about it, PC-XTs used PSUs with a form factor twice as large as an AT/ATX one for maximum powers of 200W. Later on AT/ATX PSUs remained at a constant 150-200W for almost a decade (up and until the Pentium II era) and then the same form factor was called to handle power loads ranging from 400 to 1000 W, with exactly the same space to fit "adequate" cooling and safety measures. Guess how that might work out...

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Doom Marine said:

The good brand list that I personally endorse:

CPU: At this point, Intel dominates, there is no counter to this.
MOBO: Asus, excellent build quality
RAM: G-Skill, Corsair
SSD: Crucial, Samsung, Intel
Fans/Heatsink: Noctua, Corsair
PSU: Corsair, Antec, Seasonic (Seasonic actually produces PSU for the others)

Does everyone agree with this list? Any additions or comments on it would be appreciated.

Thanks for the info, Doom Marine. Should I limit my search to just the brands on your list, or are there any other brands that come to mind as being good?

Are the intel cpus just faster or better quality, or both?

And I'm supposing that I'm supposed to get all the parts online via the likes of Newegg and thereabouts?

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Reaper978 said:

Does everyone agree with this list? Any additions or comments on it would be appreciated.

Thanks for the info, Doom Marine. Should I limit my search to just the brands on your list, or are there any other brands that come to mind as being good?

Are the intel cpus just faster or better quality, or both?

And I'm supposing that I'm supposed to get all the parts online via the likes of Newegg and thereabouts?

If you're willing to research product reviews, then you should be able to come to your own conclusions about what brand is good. If nothing else, compile a list of what you're going to buy, and let everyone else comment on it.

Intel CPUs are faster and better quality.

You should make an account on [H]ardForum and ask these questions. I use and contribute on there as far as overclocking and PC building goes.

Search Google for buying parts.

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Reaper978 said:

Now what about thermal compound for the cpu and what's the best way for applying it? Thanks for the info, guys.

CPUs come with thermal paste applied to them, assuming your case isn't completely sealed and you aren't going to overclock the out of box thermal paste is more than fine.

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I haven't gotten a CPU with thermal paste on it already.

To apply the paste, just put some on a bit of card (I use my own business cards) and put it over the CPU until you have a nice thin but even coat. Look up a tutorial lol

/edit

Oh yeah, it's not very useful unless you attach a cooler to it!

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Jodwin said:

CPUs come with thermal paste applied to them


Haven't ever seen this on a CPU that was not part of a prebuilt/laptop, or a GPU/mobo chipset. Any aftermarket CPU upgrade comes with the CPU package clean & unspoiled, but no paste in the packaging (I think). Unless you mean those adhesive thermal pads that were populaar in the Pentium III era.

In any case, you can use generic electronics thermal paste, or even heavy grease (with a high drip point).

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Bloodshedder said:

Retail boxed CPUs generally come with thermal paste pre-applied to the heatsink.


Ohhhhhhh on the stock cooler. OK, that makes more sense now.

That PC you posted up is OK. The CPU is way overpowered compared to that graphics card though. You will be better off building your own.

Just make sure you get an ATX case with an ATX motherboard, which should be socket LGA 1155. Everything else should "just work".

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Bloodshedder said:

Retail boxed CPUs generally come with thermal paste pre-applied to the heatsink.


Yeah, Jodwin reminded me that they started re-bundling heatsinks with those pre-applied heat pads. Last time I saw that was in the Pentium III era.

I'm pretty sure that ub3r 1337 0v3rcl0xx0rz d00dz like Doom Marine just scrape them off and replace them with some ub3r1337 th3rm4l p4$+3 anyway ;-)

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Maes said:

I'm pretty sure that ub3r 1337 0v3rcl0xx0rz d00dz like Doom Marine just scrape them off and replace them with some ub3r1337 th3rm4l p4$+3 anyway ;-)

You're wrong, I use my own semen, which doubles as an economical adhesive.

Reaper 978: That PC looks like a pretty good deal. But you can do better, component quality-wise, if you shopped the parts yourself:

https://secure.newegg.com/WishList/MySavedWishDetail.aspx?ID=21736865

As for the operating system, Windows 8 is a terrible waste of operating system that I have on my guest PC, and can't recommend. The 64-bit version of Windows 7 can be found on Ebay for as low as $80:

http://www.ebay.com/sch/Software-/18793/i.html?LH_BIN=1&LH_ItemCondition=1000&_from=R40&_nkw=%22windows%207%22%2064&_mPrRngCbx=1&_udhi=102

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Doom Marine said:

You're wrong, I use my own semen


No, Doom Marine. Your semen is the ub3r1337 th3rm4l p4$+3.
And then Doom Marine was an Arctic Silver syringe.

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Reaper978 said:

I have to say I'm not exactly comfortable choosing every component of a computer, I'm afraid the motherboard won't fit the case, or something else will go wrong. That being said, I found this computer http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=5653786
What do you think of this one?


Doesn't look like a terrible deal, but the GPU and aesthetic choices are pretty WTF. White case, black keyboard, red mouse? And as previously mentioned, I don't know why anyone would get a CPU that powerful and not a proper GPU to back it up.

Mind you it'll run everything pretty well still, but you'll probably find the GPU to be a bottleneck if you go that route. As most people in this thread are saying, be a man, build your own computer. Seriously, it's not that hard, and if you shop around, or hell, get us to shop around for you, you'll learn something and feel a mild sense of accomplishment from building piece-by-piece the chunk of technology you use to access the interwebs every single day.

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Mr. T said:

Just make sure you get an ATX case with an ATX motherboard, which should be socket LGA 1155. Everything else should "just work".

This. These things are pretty well standardized, so there shouldn't be any problems. The only thing you might want to look out for is your graphics card's length and the stated maximum card size of the case. That's pretty much the only thing that could cause troubles.

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Jodwin said:

This. These things are pretty well standardized, so there shouldn't be any problems.


Stuff like where the holes for mobo screws should go or how large the PSU vane should be are standardized indeed. However, stuff like e.g. the minimum distance between the edge of the mobo and the optical/hard drive bays are not. You really need a case with plenty of leeway, otherwise it will be a PITA to install or upgrade, or even simply working around the mobo frequently.

Also, some (mostly older, luckily) cases may be "AT/ATX compliant" in the sense that the screw holes are all in the right place but still have some fucked up arrangements like e.g. the PSU horizontally overlapping with the motherboard, forcing you to remove it everytime you want to access some connector on the mobo or even the CPU itself. Other bad stuff to watch out is the presence of internal frame bars running over the MB etc.

"Slim line" or "compact" cases are the worst offenders in this respect. And DO NOT buy anything using a non-standard CPU size, especially if prebuilt (sadly, HP, Compaq etc. prebuilts seem to do this a lot).

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Any suggestions on motherboards? I like your suggestion of the i5 3470, Doom Marine. Motherboards are a pretty overwhelming topic, I can see, there are so many and all the different formats. Last but not least, cases, do you have any recommended brands for cases?

I think building the computer won't be so difficult for me, just finding which parts to get.

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Honestly? You are better off waiting for the new consoles. Rumor has it that the PS4 will cost around 600 dollars. But unlike PCs, you won't have to worry about upgrading for quite a while. Just look at the Xbox 360. Of course, you won't be able to enjoy all the bells and whistles of the PC, but consoles are designed for only one thing in mind and that is gaming which means better optimization, which is why you are able to run Crysis 3 on almost medium settings on 7 year old hardware.

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Reaper978 said:

Any suggestions on motherboards? I like your suggestion of the i5 3470, Doom Marine. Motherboards are a pretty overwhelming topic, I can see, there are so many and all the different formats. Last but not least, cases, do you have any recommended brands for cases?

I think building the computer won't be so difficult for me, just finding which parts to get.

I was going to let you figure it out, but let's get this over with... Here's a build that trumps that ugly iBuyPower PC at a similar price:

$200 - Intel i5-3470 3.2 GHz, Quad Core CPU
$120 - Asus P8Z77-M Mobo
$082 - 16GB Corsair RAM
$360 - Galaxy GTX 670 2GB
$120 - Crucial M4 128GB SSD
$085 - WD Black 500GB HDD
$070 - Corsair CX600 PSU
$060 - Antec Three Hundred Illusion Case
-----
$1097

Let's compare this list with that iBuyPower PC that you proposed:

1. 600W PSU vs 500W PSU.
2. GTX 670 vs Radeon 7850. GTX 670 wins.
3. Better SSD, I doubt that SSD in their system is the quality of Crucial's.
4. Case Design. It's subjective, but Antec's case is made of steel.

The only thing that iBuyPower PC has over my proposed build, is a 3770 CPU, vs 3470 CPU. Notice that the advantages are mostly in video encoding, but gaming-wise, the difference is academic. Furthermore, there's nothing that's stopping you from getting a 3770 outright for your custom system for about $100 more.

I'll just leave the optical drive and monitor up to you. Personally, I have no use for optical drives in my system, as I've installed my OS through USB flash drives.

Oh, and don't forget Windows 7!

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DooM_RO said:

Stuff about consoles


Actually, rather than being super-optimized and chock-full of exclusive custom chips giving them overwhelming advantages over pee-cees (like it used to be in the past, like in the 90s or even the 80s), consoles made after the year 2000 are much more conservative and "generic" in their architecture, to the point of being little more than PCs in disguise (like the first XBOX).

The only element keeping them afloat for 5 or more years at a time is simply a planned market lifetime, and forced compliance/constraining of developers to the limits of the hardware. Sure, during the consoles' lifetime the envelope is surely pushed harder and harder and there might be room for optimizations too, which would probably not have been discovered/explored on a platform which is much more "liberal" in system requirements constraints (the pee-cee), but they are less exciting than the ones you might discover e.g. on the PSX, the Neo Geo or the SNES.

They tried to do that with pee-cees too in the past (the various MPC Standards), and in theory software developers should release most of their titles conforming to these requirements, making "multimedia" affordable for everyone...well, they didn't, not for long at least. Those specs were really low-end entry-level for the time they were finalized, and especially the gaming industry pushed on MUCH harder than that. E.g. MPC2 would've been near-marginal for Doom, and MPC3 would've been barely acceptable for Quake.

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Thanks for the list Doom Marine, after looking around at some similarly themed threads on hardforum, I think we're going to use your list. One more question though: I would have to get a heatsink and fan for the cpu as well, though, wouldn't I?

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No, you won't. CPU will come with fan and heatsink. You're not overclocking, so the thermal dissipation unit that comes with the Intel CPU is good enough.

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Hey Doom Marine.
I'm currently looking into buying a new machine. I'll be using it for playing games, obviously, but also creating mods/games and I'd like to be able to compete with the upcoming PS4 and XBOX performance wise. Naturally we haven't seen those perform yet and only know the specs for the PS4, but what would you recommend? 1 680 GTX, 2 in SLI or the TITAN?

It seems to me the (single) 680 GTX is already struggling in games like Crysis 3.

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Your guess is as good as mine.

From what I've seen from the PS4 announcement, it has 8 cores, and 8GB of unified GDDR5. This raises a big green flag in terms of what kind of step-up we'll be seeing in future games.

Graphically speaking, the PS4's 1.84 TFLOP puts it at the AMD 7850 level... but historically speaking, numbers alone has never told the entire story about the performance output when programmed to the metal. Let's not forget that the XBox 360 and PS3 had the equivalent of a GeForce 7800 for graphics processing... and with direct to metal programming, they can compete with a PC several-folds more powerful than them.

Judging from Killzone 4's PS4 Gameplay Demo, the environmental scale and fidelity will ask a lot as a PC port. How much GPU power on the PC will it take to compete? I don't know.

Depending on how patient you are, I would wait until after the PS4's release to determine the level of hardware required (my guess is TOTL PC hardware). That said, if you're itching for an upgrade, let's start a new thread.

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Well. This machine is from early 2007, though upgraded to a HD 5870 in 2009 or 10 because the 8800 GTX died. So that's a Core2Duo 2.667 with 4GB of something something memory. I've been plenty patient already :D
Creating levels for Phobos is actually very taxing on this system. Especially seeing how the levels are roughly 3-4 times the size of those in Doom3. Also, Idtech and AMD is a match made in hell. What really irks me though is that playing games like Far Cry 3 or Crysis 3 has become unbearably slow.

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