PC Build: Your thoughts please?

[bevo]

That's actually a good point. Look. The 6990 won't be able to play BF3 at max settings at 1080P+ at more than 60 FPS , no doubt. Neither will the 590 GTX. .

Are you serious. I was playing the BETA with a single 570 on it's highest settings, and getting good solid frame rates anywhere from a low of 35 up to mid 50s. The devs said SLI 580s will be fine for it at max settings. I can't imagine a 590 or sli 570's not maxing it out and dropping below 60.

If you keep waiting for the next best card you will never buy anything. You will know in a few days exactly what it takes, and I bet my SLi 570s will be playing it maxed out with framerates of at lest mid 50s probably never dropping under 60.

I really don't see the point in buying a 580. A 570 can be overclocked to a stock 580 in about 5 minutes with afterburner. The 150 and up price difference just doesn't seem worth it to me to only gain a small performace boost. The guy I bought my 570s from, sent me a PM and said he wishes he hadn't sold them to buy 580s. He said there wasn't mush of a performace boost at all, because of how well the 570 twin frozr IIIs overclocked.

If you plan on going triple screen though the 570s would have RAM issues. I haven't played a game yet that a single 570 couldn't max out, except for uber sampling in withcher 2, but even my SLi 570s only get about 20fps with it turned on. It's jsut bad coding for that.

The stock MSI GTX 570 can be had new for under 300$ new, and sells for around 230 used. If you plan on ever going SLi I would not buy it, just because it doesn't have the best cooling. It would though be a great buy if you just want a really good, not too expensive card now, and plan on going with new tech next year sometime. If you want a good 570 to go sli with later it will cost you around 360$ new, and around 280-310 used.

As far as worrying about being out of date next year, everyone will be out of date next year. And then all the people who buy Keplar cards will be out of date the following year when the new cards come out, that are suppose to be 4 times faster then Keplar.

Buy your setup with a GTX 570 and you will be playing any game out now, with maxed out graphics, and solid framerates, and probably any game in the future for at least a few months. If games do go a litlle past it. Buy another one after Keplar comes out for a cheaper price and go SLi and be good until the generation of 2013 cards are released. If you are positive you want a 580 and nothing else, make sure you get the 3gb version, as you would be more future proof with it.

Also on the cards do not forget about buying used. MSI has a 3 year warrenty based on serial number, and EVGA has a lifetime warenty that if you buy it from a forum and not ebay, most people will help you with if something ever happens to the card.

 

[NissanSkylineN1]

The BF3 beta did not apparently contain the full graphics settings that the retail game will have. My 6770 ran BF3 at max too, but with lower FPS, in the mid 30s when outside.

 

[Saidur_Ali]

No. Their pricing will be the same. The 3500K will be the same price as the 2500k. Also, the only difference between the Sandy Bridge CPUs and Ivy Bridge CPUS will be higher clock speeds. That is all. It is a part of the "Tick-Tock" roadmap Intel uses. The architecture will be identical. The only difference will be the clock speeds, the speedstep clock speeds and the Turbo Boost clock speeds, as well as a higher overclocking overhead. Why? Because hte Tri-gate transistor design allows a more stable switch of electricity flow in the transistors, thus allowing higher clock speeds. And now that clock speed doesn't not make as much of a difference as it used to, the 2500K is a good buy. Once the architecture changes, then the 2500K will fall down from it's throne, and become a regular processor, but not low end, as being low end will take a number of years (I predict 5). Also, the i5's full potential has not even been met with today's software.

Pricing will the same, yes probably. However performance for the money will change so like I mentioned a lower end CPU will be be faster than a older higher end Sandy Bridge one. It will be cheaper to get more performance.

Actually looking at Ivy Bridge, it is rumoured to have lower TDP, so it may have not much extra performance over a Sandy Bridge stock but overclocking the processors will give a huge performance improvement. 22nm is the key thing as well as the 3D transisters. 2500K will no longer be popular to buy unless the motherboard you have can not be upgraded to Ivy Bridge. I mean who would pay more money for a slower processor that takes more power in a few months time.

If you keep waiting for the next best card you will never buy anything.

This I disagree with, one thing is waiting years for the next card to come out than waiting for a few months to get a better card that is not using 2 year old 40nm technology. That statement is a bit like say you get a brand new F430 due to not wanting to wait a few more months for a 458, would you?

 

[NissanSkylineN1]

Pricing will the same, yes probably. However performance for the money will change so like I mentioned a lower end CPU will be be faster than a older higher end Sandy Bridge one. It will be cheaper to get more performance.

Actually looking at Ivy Bridge, it is rumoured to have lower TDP, so it may have not much extra performance over a Sandy Bridge stock but overclocking the processors will give a huge performance improvement. 22nm is the key thing as well as the 3D transisters. 2500K will no longer be popular to buy unless the motherboard you have can not be upgraded to Ivy Bridge. I mean who would pay more money for a slower processor that takes more power in a few months time.



This I disagree with, one thing is waiting years for the next card to come out than waiting for a few months to get a better card that is not using 2 year old 40nm technology. That statement is a bit like say you get a brand new F430 due to not wanting to wait a few more months for a 458, would you?

I disagree with both your points.

Ok, so you state that the low end quad core Ivy Bridge will top the 2600K easily. So let me ask you this question:

Which one is better:

An i7 975 or an i5 2300?

I would take the 975 hands down.

So what if Ivy Bridge uses less power? He isn't building a laptop.

Clock for clock: Why buy 2500K? Because Unlock Multiplier.

Secondly, game companies would want to make money. How can they make money when no one has the hardware that is powerful enough to run their games? Just because the lithography is larger doesn't mean that it will be slower, it just means it will run hotter.

 

[bevo]

This I disagree with, one thing is waiting years for the next card to come out than waiting for a few months to get a better card that is not using 2 year old 40nm technology. That statement is a bit like say you get a brand new F430 due to not wanting to wait a few more months for a 458, would you?

No one even knows when Keplar is suppsoe to come out. Nvidia says we will start seeing them at the end of the year, but they also said it would be a bottom to top release. That meens it could be the middle of next year before the top of the line ones are released. That means it could be 6-8 months before we see them.

One thing is that EVGA has a step up program. So if you buy from them you can just trade up when the new ones come out, and pay the price difference. Really though if you wait 6-8 months for the high end Keplar cards, then you buy one, in 6 -12 more months maxwell will be out.

You can't compare GPUs to cars either. A GTX 570 doesn't cost 100k. A 570 can be had for less then 300$. I would wait on the car, but I wouldn't wait 6 months for a better GPU when there are really good ones out there.

 

[Sharky.]

The 6990 won't be able to play BF3 at max settings at 1080P+ at more than 60 FPS , no doubt.

... what? You don't know a thing and should stop posting. Let people that actually know stuff help.

My 6770 ran BF3 at max too, but with lower FPS, in the mid 30s when outside.

My Crossfire 5770s (= CF 6770s ~= slightly declocked 6950) ran at 45+ maxed, a 580 would absolutely demolish my setup - if you have a 580 and don't get 60+ in BF3 then your card is a 560 in drag.

And 6870 Crossfire? Completely laughable. Having plenty of experience with Crossfire, the only cards I would ever consider (or suggest) Crossfiring are 6950s or 6970s.

Let me reiterate. You don't have a clue about all this so can you just let the people who DO know help? ktnxbai



To cut through the dreadful 'advice' Mr Nissan has provided, your build is great neema and I am very jelly of a 2500k/GTX580 combo. It'll be very powerful with only a 2600k/590 being able to top it by any appreciable margin and should have absolutely no trouble playing anything maxed.

 

[NissanSkylineN1]

So are you saying that Tom's Hardware is stupid? Because they suggest the Crossfire too. I also have proof of my 6770 running at max:

Doubt the picture that its me? Search up 7GR4MR0KZ on the Origin website and see that there is me, level 10 and also my PSN account on it. Also, from the browser thread, you can tell I love the Opera Browser.
So, instead of insulting and being outright rude, think a little before you post. I've had enough on the cocky attitude from some people on this forum.

 

[sesselpupser]

your build is great neema and I am very jelly of a 2500k/GTX580 combo. It'll be very powerful with only a 2600k/590 being able to top it by any appreciable margin and should have absolutely no trouble playing anything maxed.

Hey, I like this guy!

Seriously, though, I have read, understood, considered and researched all of your suggestions, and at the end of the day, the GTX 580 is still the card that I want, so while I'm extremely grateful for all of you taking the time to let me know your opinions, I can't agree with everyone so I just have to go with what I believe to be the best choice.

Now I'm thinking about getting the M4 128GB instead of the 64, it'll be an extra £70 but if I'm already paying £1,080 I might as well go £50 over budget (which is £1,100 for sure, now) and get twice the SSD space. Maybe then I can have my Origin games on the SSD and my Steam ones on the HDD, the main reason I would want that is because Battlefield 3 is the only online shooter I'm likely to play for the foreseeable future so it makes sense to give it the performance boost of being on the faster storage.

 

[bergauk]

Basically. Sometimes you have to change the boot order in the BIOS to get the DVD drive to boot first then after the installation change it back to HDD. RAM settings could also be off but most likely not.

I'd rather just leave boot from disk first. No need to change it. It'll just skip over it if there isn't anything there in the DVD drive. And if you have a bootable disk in there, you probably have a reason for it.

 

[Sharky.]

So are you saying that Tom's Hardware is stupid? Because they suggest the Crossfire too.

When the alternative card is a GTX580, CF 6870s are very stupid.

rest of post

What point are you trying to make with that?

 

[bergauk]

Basically. He likes Radeon cards way too much. If he doesn't want one. I wouldn't try and shove it down his throat.

 

[Terronium-12]

That's actually a good point. Look. The 6990 won't be able to play BF3 at max settings at 1080P+ at more than 60 FPS , no doubt.

Wait, wait, wait....what are you on about? This, right here, is why I inform people to disregard advice you hand out with an arm tied behind your head.

Neither will the 590 GTX.

...You really need to stop posting now.

So, when you consider this for other games in the future, your GTX 580 will be like a 6790 right now.

No, it won't. That's the same as saying my 6950 will be no different than, say, a 3870 X2 in the future. The performance gap between the two cards you're comparing are still going to be there regardless of the new cards that hit the market.

Making groundless comparisons to prove some type of inane, nonfactual statement doesn't do you any favors.

Here's something else to discredit you even further: in terms of raw performace, an HD4870 X2 is actually above my card and that's a full two (well, technically 1 1/2) generations ahead. The only thing that dispositions the X2 is it's inability to support native D3D11 and not a superset of 10.1 using some attributes from 11. Oh, and of course the thing runs hot enough to cook an egg on.

Get a 6770 for now, and buy a good 7990 (I still don't understand why they will do a 7 series, since there already has been a 7 series in ATI's lineup before like the 7000,7200, and the 7500).

So your advising him to purchase a 6770 in lieu of (and I know he's decided already, but that's not the point here) a 6990 to wait for something, a 7990, than in no way, shape, or form is guaranteed to be better than the 6990? Oh, and they're not calling it the 7000-series, they're calling it the HD7000-series. See the difference?

----

Now, I've once again fallen off the train and haven't been keeping up as much as I'd like to but I remember nVidia claiming they were going to release faster versions of the 580 and 590 to get in the face of the 6970 and 6990, respectively. If that remains true than the OP should look into it before hitting that "purchase" button.

 

[Casio]

Let me reiterate. You don't have a clue about all this so can you just let the people who DO know help? ktnxbai

+1

While crossfire 6870 may give similar frames to a GTX580 (Which I doubt), unless it's specifically needed to gain performance above what a single card can deliver, it's never a good idea to recommend dualcard (xfire/SLi) set-ups. It's not worth dealing with all the extra problems those set-ups come with unless you absolutely have too.

In addition, it also impedes the upgrade process down the line, as a year down the line, you can't just add an extra GPU if you want a cheap performance boost.

Also for everyone saying what BF3 will run and won't run. Stop. No one knows. The beta isn't a true indication as it didn't have all graphical options enabled. Seriously, the game is out in less than one ****ing week, so just chill, wait, and see how you go. No doubt the drivers will be ****ed up on the first week anyway (particularly for multi-card setups), so it's not a huge rush.

@neema_t

I personally would go with a 128GB SSD HDD as well. It's definitely worth while getting a performance increase in a number of programs/games as well. The way I see it is, I boot up run/applications a lot more often than I boot up Windows, and what's the point of booting up Windows in 4 seconds if Application X still takes 5 minutes to load up.

 

[12thgear]

While crossfire 6870 may give similar frames to a GTX580 (Which I doubt), unless it's specifically needed to gain performance above what a single card can deliver, it's never a good idea to recommend dualcard (xfire/SLi) set-ups. It's not worth dealing with all the extra problems those set-ups come with unless you absolutely have too.

Speaking of SLI/XF, The Tech Report had an article I thought was interesting, discussing GPU benchmarking, overall FPS vs perceived smoothness, and frame timing in multi GPU setups. It's a long read, but it's interesting. http://techreport.com/articles.x/21516

 

[bergauk]

Speaking of SLI/XF, The Tech Report had an article I thought was interesting, discussing GPU benchmarking, overall FPS vs perceived smoothness, and frame timing in multi GPU setups. It's a long read, but it's interesting. http://techreport.com/articles.x/21516

That's a pretty sweet read.

Makes me wonder if you could improve on SLI/CF. Instead of sending the frames to the first card like it normally happens, send BOTH sets of frames out at nearly the same time [you know, cause they're alternating] to another device of some sort, that renders them in at nearly the same time. Then have them go out to your monitor. Not sure if that makes sense really. Or if it would even help the problem.

Would look something like this I think.

Card C is obviously a PCIe 1x slot. But basically both Card A, and B dump the frames into C which splices them together, and produces the video out. Not sure if it would work. But it certainly would bring the load off Card A in my opinion. Oh and some sort of connector would need to be able to push the data onto Card C. Obviously.

Forgive me if it makes little to no sense, or is technologically impossible. I'm tired, and on cold medicine.

 

[chug-a-bug]

I was just looking at how I could reduce the price of the PSU, £140 sounds a bit high when the Corsair TX650 costs £75, but I'd prefer the extra overhead given that I've heard PSUs are more efficient when under less load, so a 750W PSU will be better than a 650W one at 600W.

Yes personally I'd go for one with a higher power rating and Corsair are good for these, also if in the future you have to upgrade and require more power a higher rated one is less likely to need to be replaced than one which is at it's limit, a little built in redundancy is alway good I find, I try and keep my PSU's for at least two builds.

As for parts, Scan and Aria as already mentioned but also eBuyer and Novatech are worth a look. As always, shop around. I would avoid eBay for the major components but it's great for the smaller items you need such as cables, fans, etc.

Yup, your parts are fine. The only things that are likely to ever be incompatible are the CPU and motherboard

And RAM. Most of the big manufacturers have details of which mobos they're compatible with, etc.

 

[bevo]

Yes personally I'd go for one with a higher power rating and Corsair are good for these, also if in the future you have to upgrade and require more power a higher rated one is less likely to need to be replaced than one which is at it's limit, a little built in redundancy is alway good I find, I try and keep my PSU's for at least two builds.
.

I thought I went with overkill on my PSU, but last night I checked to see how much my build used, and it was 812. If you are considering going sli in the future you might want to spend a few more buck and get a 1000 watt psu.

 

[Seismica]

In terms of the graphics card, you have the budget. Getting a lower end card as some (including myself I think) have suggested and then upgrading in the future is a false-economy. Getting the best card you can now is the better option. If you disregard the detailed analyses of the internal architecture of the cards, the simply fact of the matter is Nvidia is generally better but more expensive. The 580 GTX is an excellent card, one of the best. Realistically the only Radeon card that can top it is a 6990. Whilst you could top it with two lower cards in CF (6870s for example), One high end card is preferable to two mid-high cards as it will be a lot more efficient and will only use one PCI-E slot which means if you wanted to you could get a second 580 GTX for an upgrade in the future (Amongst various other reasons that have already been pointed out, like driver problems etc.).

I have no doubt that the i5 2500k/580 GTX combo will be able to run BF3 on max settings. However, I think it's a game where they have strived to use up as much processing power as possible, to become the next 'Crysis'. You have to agree, it is a very good marketing strategy because every PC gamer will want to see how their rig fares against others. If I get that game (Probably won't as it's on Origin) I will run it on medium settings to keep a stable framerate, I don't care if the textures are a tiny bit extra detailed, there is very little in it usually unless you have a 50" monitor.

 

[bevo]

That's actually a good point. Look. The 6990 won't be able to play BF3 at max settings at 1080P+ at more than 60 FPS , no doubt. Neither will the 590 GTX. So, when you consider this for other games in the future, your GTX 580 will be like a 6790 right now.Get a 6770 for now, and buy a good 7990 (I still don't understand why they will do a 7 series, since there already has been a 7 series in ATI's lineup before like the 7000,7200, and the 7500).

However, with the CPU, its really just the matter of overclocking to match the Ivy Bridge CPUs, since it is the same architecture, just with faster clock speeds thanks to the new transistor design.

Battlefield 3 is out, and a gtx 460 is able to play the game on max settings with above 30 FPS at 1080p. The gtx 570 is playing with lows in the 50s. I have 570's in sli and with one it's fine with sli I'm over 100 almost all the time.

I still think your best bet is the gtx 570. You can overclock it in about 5 minutes and it be faster then the 580s stock.

I really is amazing how good the game looks, but how easy it is to run. They did a great job on it.

 

[sesselpupser]

Battlefield 3 is out, and a gtx 460 is able to play the game on max settings with above 30 FPS at 1080p. The gtx 570 is playing with lows in the 50s. I have 570's in sli and with one it's fine with sli I'm over 100 almost all the time.

I still think your best bet is the gtx 570. You can overclock it in about 5 minutes and it be faster then the 580s stock.

I really is amazing how good the game looks, but how easy it is to run. They did a great job on it.

Am I being stupid when I say I don't understand why I should get a GTX 570? I mean, ok, it can be made as fast as a 580, but what about the extra RAM? Seems like an odd choice to spend what is still quite a lot of money for something that will become obsolete quicker than a 580. I'd ideally like to be able to leave the PC alone on the upgrades front for two years, and then when the next generation of consoles are out, upgrade again so I can play whatever.

Oh and I've decided on the 128GB M4, and I'm now strongly considering an 850W PSU just in case I do ever find a spare £400 (highly unlikely) for another GTX 580... Just because I don't want to SLI now doesn't mean I won't change my mind in a year or so, after all. You never know, I might suddenly get really into Arma II and then 'need' a ridiculous setup. I haven't looked at prices yet, though, but if it's not a lot more then I'll probably do that for a little more future proofing.

Edit: An 850W is only £7 more than a 750, both Gold certified, so that's that...

Even more edit: I've just played BF3, I tricked the release date checker. Let's just say that a 4870 isn't quite enough.

 

[bevo]

Am I being stupid when I say I don't understand why I should get a GTX 570? I mean, ok, it can be made as fast as a 580, but what about the extra RAM?
Edit: An 850W is only £7 more than a 750, both Gold certified, so that's that....

I went back through the thread and looked and couldn't find if you are panning on the 1.5gig or 3 gig 580. The 3 gig would be a good future proofing buy over the 570, but really when it comes down to the 1.5 580 vs the 1.28 570, the performance is less then 10 FPS.

I thought about going with either the 2.5 gig 570 or the 3 gig 580, but just couldn't bring myself to spend the extra money now. I'm hoping the 570s will make it until 2013 and I can skip the Keplar cards.

But you are right about the Vram to a point. At 1080p BF3 is hitting around 1400 on the vram. It hasn't made a bit of difference in the performance of my cards, but whos to say that next year a game will come out that pushes my 1250 cards past their limits on ram.

In all honesty though, I have read 20 arguments about what Vram does when it goes past the cards limit and have heard a bunch of different answers. I've heard it uses your normal Ram after it runs out, which it's almost as fast as my cards Ram. I've heard it uses the HDD, and many other things. Vram seems like a mysterious being,t hat nobody really knows how it works.

Really though I can't see spending an extra 150-200$ on the 1.5 gig card over the 570, but if you go up to the 3 gig 580 card, then you would be good to go for a long while, and not have to worry about it.

 

[sesselpupser]

In all honesty though, I have read 20 arguments about what Vram does when it goes past the cards limit and have heard a bunch of different answers. I've heard it uses your normal Ram after it runs out, which it's almost as fast as my cards Ram. I've heard it uses the HDD, and many other things. Vram seems like a mysterious being,t hat nobody really knows how it works.

I was planning on the 1.5GB, I haven't even looked to see how much the 3GB would cost but I don't think it's necessary given that we all thought BF3 would be some sort of performance black hole that wouldn't run on a 590 or 6990 or would need two 580's to run on ultra, yet it runs fine on previous generation cards, and even with my 4870, running it at 25-60fps on low settings, it looks better than 90% of the games I have.

I know that sounds contradictory, but when you look at it, most of the PC games we play are either console ports or developed in parallel with a console version, so it's very rare for a game to come out for PC that requires new hardware. With that in mind, it seems sensible to suggest that we won't really need to upgrade our machines until 2014, when the next console cycle is supposed to start, so it makes sense to me to get the best I can afford now because a) it can and will run almost everything at high settings, b) it may be good enough to at least play the first wave of games in the new cycle, c)... I forgot what c was.

I'm going to have a look at the 3GB 580 and at the same time think of stuff to sell so I might be able to afford one.

 

[Casio]

The extra VRAM, funnily enough, is more for SLi/Surround Set-ups, in 99% of games you won't get any benefit from a single card with extra VRAM.

If you Surround/Eyefinity, the VRAM doesn't 'add up', so if you're running 3x1080P screens on two 1.5GB cards, you will still only have 1.5GB of VRAM to use across the entire display, which is where issues can start to occur (We're talking 6000+ horizontal pixels). But even on a 2560x1440 30" Displays, extra VRAM doesn't actually help, it actually can even reduce frame-rates by 1%-2%.

That said, if the price difference is negligible, getting a 3GB 580 over a 1.5GB isn't a bad idea. As you're future proofing yourself if you ever want to go down the Surround route, upcoming games that may use obscene amounts of VRAM, and you'll get slightly be resale too.

 

[bergauk]

I was planning on the 1.5GB, I haven't even looked to see how much the 3GB would cost but I don't think it's necessary given that we all thought BF3 would be some sort of performance black hole that wouldn't run on a 590 or 6990 or would need two 580's to run on ultra, yet it runs fine on previous generation cards, and even with my 4870, running it at 25-60fps on low settings, it looks better than 90% of the games I have.

I know that sounds contradictory, but when you look at it, most of the PC games we play are either console ports or developed in parallel with a console version, so it's very rare for a game to come out for PC that requires new hardware. With that in mind, it seems sensible to suggest that we won't really need to upgrade our machines until 2014, when the next console cycle is supposed to start, so it makes sense to me to get the best I can afford now because a) it can and will run almost everything at high settings, b) it may be good enough to at least play the first wave of games in the new cycle, c)... I forgot what c was.

I'm going to have a look at the 3GB 580 and at the same time think of stuff to sell so I might be able to afford one.

In theory it makes sense. However, you have to take into account that most of the consoles play at a specific graphics detail, while most PC's on the otherhand can play a graphically enhanced version of the same game.

In short, the gameplay is the same, but the visual experience is going to be completely different.

You are right though, we should be fine for a pretty good amount of time.

 

[sesselpupser]

Hi guys,

I thought I'd let you know I've just finished the build and it worked perfectly on the very first boot. In the end the spec was pretty much unchanged, I got the 1.5GB GTX 580, a Corsair 850W Gold PSU and a 128GB M4 SSD, the rest was the same as I originally stated, I think.


When it came to installing Windows 7, though, at first it was telling me it couldn't prepare my computer for a reboot so it couldn't be installed. After about half an hour of head scratching I switched from AHCI to IDE (not sure what that does), which didn't work, then tried swapping the SSD from the 600Mbit (maybe?) SATA bus to the 300Mbit and it worked fine. So, all in all, I have been quite impressed as I was expecting a lot more effort than that.


I do have a couple of questions, though.

First of all, what's a normal temperature for the CPU and GPU to be running at, and are there other temperatures I should keep an eye on? I've read that the Fractal Design fans are pretty poor for air flow because they spin at a maximum of 900rpm, so I want to be sure my temperatures are acceptable. I expect that installing a piece of software that can monitor temperatures would answer this question, but as I haven't got a wi-fi card that will be tricky so I thought I'd ask.

There are only two fans in the chassis itself, one at the top of the rear panel and one at the bottom of the front. There's space for another at the front, two on top, one on the side and one on the bottom. If the cooling does turn out to be unacceptable, can I just buy two more fans, move the two that came with the case to the top and side (for example) and then replace them with newer, faster fans? Or can anyone else recommend a different solution? I don't want to go and buy a set of 7 fans at £10 each just yet... I have to go and buy a £20 wi-fi card tomorrow, I can't allow the PC to just take all my money like this!

I had a third question, but I just answered it myself with a bit of Google. Oh and a fourth but I will answer it for myself eventually, it won't matter until I get connected to the internet anyway as it's to do with antivirus software. In fact I'll just ask it anyway; what AV software would you recommend? I've heard good and bad about AVG and I have no idea what else there is, yet. I'd love to hear what you guys think if you feel like answering that one.

Cheers guys!

 

[nick09]

The 120mm fans actually run at 1350rpms. I'd only consider new fans if the temperatures are are a bit high for idle or annoy me with a buzz at full speed(I got a Fractual Design Core 3000 case and the 140mm fans have a low buzz noise at full speed). Seeing 90F-100F is normal on idle. It's only a problem if you are reaching TJMax on a stock cooler at stock speeds while on load.

I personally use Avast! Free Anti-virus and it is a low resource anti-virus and I've been using it for the past three years. I have not been having any problems with it and it actively scans your internet connection for viruses. I also use Malwarebytes for Anti-Malware protection. It's another free program you can use and it's a good program that has cleaned up some computers nicely that I've worked on.

 

[bergauk]

For Antivirus I would recommend Microsoft Security Essentials, it's free, lightweight, and highly configurable. I've tried AVG and Avast! as well, but they don't really cut it for me.

AVG is really resource hungry, and also very bad in terms of configurability, plus, it thinks the majority of things people run are viruses or infections.

Avast! in my opinion is only good if you can get the paid version. It comes with a lot of options and can be configured as far as you'd like to go, but in my opinion, the free version isn't as good.

MalwareBytes, as Nick mentioned is one of, if not, the best anti-malware out there at the moment, and probably will be for quite some time. The free version will do everything you'd ever want it to do. But the paid version will do just a bit more and add in Real Time Scanning and other things like that.

 

[NissanSkylineN1]

How about Avira?

 

[Seismica]

For Antivirus I would recommend Microsoft Security Essentials, it's free, lightweight, and highly configurable. I've tried AVG and Avast! as well, but they don't really cut it for me.

AVG is really resource hungry, and also very bad in terms of configurability, plus, it thinks the majority of things people run are viruses or infections.

Avast! in my opinion is only good if you can get the paid version. It comes with a lot of options and can be configured as far as you'd like to go, but in my opinion, the free version isn't as good.

MalwareBytes, as Nick mentioned is one of, if not, the best anti-malware out there at the moment, and probably will be for quite some time. The free version will do everything you'd ever want it to do. But the paid version will do just a bit more and add in Real Time Scanning and other things like that.

I second these recommendations. Microsoft Security Essentials and Malwarebytes anti-malware.

Avast is good too, never used it myself though. I think there is little difference between them, there is a lot of cross over when you compare how each copes with detecting and removing viruses, they work pretty much the same.

 

[sesselpupser]

Sounds like I'll be going with Microsoft Security Essentials and I'll also be keeping an eye on my temperatures for a while. I just went out to a few brick and mortar shops to get a 802.11n PCI card, I tried PC World/Comet, Argos and Currys; not one of them had anything, just a load of USB adaptors. Useless. I won't be home again until Friday though so I just ordered one from Amazon instead. I got a TP-Link TL-WN951N, it's PCI instead of PCIe because the PCIe one I could find was 150Mbps but the one I got was 300. I'm expecting problems when it comes to wi-fi, though, only because I have no luck when it comes to the internet. Nothing but problems.