PC Build: Your thoughts please?

Just a quick update for anyone interested; the PC is working fine but has room for improvements. It can run BF3 maxed at 4x MSAA which looks pretty nice (massive understatement) and I tried Dirt 3 (a recent-ish game, if not renowned for being a good benchmark) maxed last night and got in the region of 80fps on the timedemo.

However, the airflow isn't great; the GPU idle temp is around 30-35C in a 22C room, the CPU is around 40-50C, and under load the GPU has been seen to hit 85C. When I can afford them I'm getting some higher flow fans, probably four; two front intakes, one side intake and one rear exhaust and I'll move the two I have to the top as exhausts, probably, so hopefully I'll have positive pressure in the case to help it extract dust.

Also the DVD player seems to be unable to read the motherboard software DVD but other computers do (I copied the software off it anyway so it doesn't really matter) and it also reads DVD-Rs, so I don't understand the problem.

Oh and one other thing is that I can't install the software I need for the various functions of my motherboard, for example there's one thing that's supposed to boost graphics performance (possibly by sharing the built in VGA?) and some other stuff, but that doesn't bother me too much.

Basically my plan for now is to improve the cooling so I can think about overclocking the GPU a little. A friend of mine claims to have OC'd his 580 to 900MHz, mine is at 800MHz now, that's a fair chunk of speed really. His case is pretty much entirely mesh, I think it's called a LANmaster or something, it's black and yellow so it basically just looks like a toolbox. I imagine he has very few airflow issues with it, though!
 
Please excuse this grave dig but I have a new question that I didn't really think was worth an entire thread of it's own...

So I'm still running the default Intel cooler, I think it's time for a change because I'd like to overclock my processor (i5 2500K) to whatever is considered a sensible speed (I really have no idea how to overclock or what my target should be, but I can read up on that later). Also my CPU still idles around 40C which I'm kind of uncomfortable with, seeing as how I often read people saying theirs is usually about 30C.

I'm looking at the Corsair H80, I would be considering the H100 (as it's only £10 more expensive) if it would fit in my case, which is a Fractal Design Define R3, but apparently it doesn't owing to the fact that the top slots are 140mm/120mm and it needs 2x120mm next to each other, so the 120mm mounting holes are spaced just a little too far apart. I've also read that there's probably insufficient clearance between the radiator-fan arrangement and the motherboard anyway, so I don't really want to spend £83 to prove this theory.

So, the H80. I've heard it's loud if supplied with even a little too much voltage but I could make a voltage limiting circuit (probably just a simple voltage divider) or use a fan speed controller to finely adjust it down to 12V so that doesn't bother me. I'd be mounting the radiator on the rear fan port as an exhaust, so I'm also wondering if the radiator itself would impede the air flow exiting the case. Then again as long as my graphics card (which is now an MSI GTX 680 Twin Frozr III OC, by the way, which is much cooler than the 580 was (currently idling at 26C, 61C at it's hottest over the past five days)) doesn't get hotter as a result I wouldn't mind the resulting increase in air pressure inside the case.

Can anyone recommend it to me or should I be looking elsewhere? Cheers guys.
 
Go for a single 120mm rad. You can't use a 240mm rad because there is no room for one(50MM with 25mm thick rad and then a 25mm thick fan will hit the motherboard). You should look at Thermaltake rads, they are a new design and on paper(from at least the best 240mm model I've looked at) they seem better. Other than that you can look into an air cooled heatsink, as almost any of them will do better cooling than a Intel stock model.
 
Thanks nick, that's helpful. I had a look at the Thermaltake Water 2.0 Pro but at that price I think the H80 is more appealing; £72 for the H80, £110 for the Water 2.0... Unless there's a model I've missed? Most reviews I've seen feature the Corsairs quite high in the ratings, the H100 is right up there but it just won't fit which is a pain in the backside, it's a real shame as it's only £10 more!
 
You could get the kuhler 920 for about the same price as the H80(The rad on the H80 is 38mm thick while the Antec rad is 49mm thick, thus more surface area to cool, that would be in theory). Here is a comparison between the two. Another option is to get a air cooler. Those are cheaper and even the Noctua cooler they used to test was quite a bit cheaper and a fair performer. But the king of air-cooled heatsinks is the NH-D14. Still cheaper than the H80 and will perform the same or better. Plus it's deadly silent compared to the fans that come with water coolers.
 
Hmm, seems like the Kuhler 920 isn't any better than the H80 according to that comparison. The NH-D14 does look like a good option but apparently the socket 2011-specific one is better than the all-socket version, so the one I'd end up with isn't actually better than the H80 (on 'high' anyway, low isn't listed) according to that second link. I just wonder how noticeable the difference in noise would be considering my case is soundproofed and how the higher than apparently average temperatures inside the case would affect an air cooler, if at all. I think I'll investigate various companies' return policies and try both... Thanks again!
 
It's the same product but the SE version has different fans and mounting system(SE only comes with 2011 mounting. Gotta pay attention to that fact). Though the only improvement the SE comes with is the addition of PWM controlled fans(of course you can use the 7V adapter instead but really these fans are quiet). Both have 6 year warranties.
 
If you're going to be seriously pushing volts and overclocking the living crap out of the CPU, go the water cooling. Liquid coolers don't really start to perform well until they've got a challenge. Once they see serious heat, that's where they pull away from air cooling. Personally I'd suggest the H80, it might be 2 or 3c warmer but it's quieter than Antec's fans. Unless of course you've got aftermarket fans such as Noctua fans, then it's whichever tickles your fancy.

If you're just going to say, go for 4.5GHz or something reasonable, stick with air cooling. It will be quieter and perform more than adequately.
 
So at roughly 4.5GHz the H80 and NH-D14 perform about the same? I figured liquid would be cooler than air at any speed, but now that I think about it I don't think that makes sense. Hmm, I'm not sure, thermodynamics wasn't part of my engineering course!

I wasn't planning to go as high as 5GHz because I get the feeling that'll impact the life span of the chip quite significantly, I think 4.5-4.6GHz would be a nice number to settle on. I would like to keep the CPU as cool as possible though to maximise it's life span more than anything, and a bit of noise, as long as it's only a bit of noise and not a lot of noise, and £10 isn't really that big a deal for me if the H80 is better at that speed.

Still, I have no experience with these things so it may be that I'm worrying about nothing. Are there any other coolers to consider aside from the NH-D14 and H80 or am I safe to just choose between those two? Seems like whichever I go for will do but I'd rather not spend £60 now and then £70 later when I could just spend £70 now, that's all.

Thanks for your help, chaps!
 
Another option is to run completely silent, like using this cooler. Personally I wish I could get my hands on this cooler but it's not in the US. Quite a bit expensive but it's the price you pay for a completely passive cooler. But as for the the temps from a NH-D14, read this. Mind you that's a CPU that has a 130W TDP being overclocked from 2.66GHz to 4GHz. If you look at the charts here(Look at the Delta temps, it cuts the difference a heatsink may get from room temperature), you will notice that the NH-D14 is on even terms against a H100 in cooling performance.

Another option is the Thermalright Silver Arrow, same performance as the NH-D14 but it's a good choice if you don't like the light brown and dark brown colors.
 
neema_t
So at roughly 4.5GHz the H80 and NH-D14 perform about the same? I figured liquid would be cooler than air at any speed, but now that I think about it I don't think that makes sense. Hmm, I'm not sure, thermodynamics wasn't part of my engineering course!

I wasn't planning to go as high as 5GHz because I get the feeling that'll impact the life span of the chip quite significantly, I think 4.5-4.6GHz would be a nice number to settle on. I would like to keep the CPU as cool as possible though to maximise it's life span more than anything, and a bit of noise, as long as it's only a bit of noise and not a lot of noise, and £10 isn't really that big a deal for me if the H80 is better at that speed.

Still, I have no experience with these things so it may be that I'm worrying about nothing. Are there any other coolers to consider aside from the NH-D14 and H80 or am I safe to just choose between those two? Seems like whichever I go for will do but I'd rather not spend £60 now and then £70 later when I could just spend £70 now, that's all.

Thanks for your help, chaps!

You don't need to worry about hitting 5 GHz. All you need is to make sure your GPU is no longer being bottlenecked by your i5.

My advice: run an all in one liquid cooler and check you performance at 4.0, 4.2, 4.4 and stop when your GPU is being 99/100% utilized.

Heat is what can actually degrade the life of the chip. More voltage and higher processor frequency = greater heat output. This requires better cooling than what the stock CPU fan/heat sink can offer. Heat is your enemy (this is as long as you are within manufacturers voltage specs; go above what voltage the chip was rated to handle and all bets are off).

Every processor is different in regards to what the required voltage will be for a specific frequency. The max suggested voltage (from Intel) for the 2500k is 1.5 V. You should be sitting at around 1.2 something or less right now (unless my memory is completely off). This is alot of headroom in which you can exceed at least a 1 GHz overclock from. Max suggested temp (from Intel is around 90 C; I believe. Someone correct me if I am wrong). You shouldn't even see 60 with an H80 (I believe the max temp for my i5 at 4.6 GHz at around 1.38 V was 52 C full load).

Be prepared to stability test for several hours. OCing isn't just changing the numbers in the BIOS and go. Each time I find an overclock I run stability tests for at least 6-8 hours. Some people prefer to run 24 hours. What this is doing is putting your CPU and memory at full load for several hours and giving calculations to the CPU for it to process. If an error comes back, you are unstable and will need to modify your overclock parameters. This ensures that the processor is stable under the new frequency, voltage, and any other settings you have inherently had to modify in the BIOS. However, this does not ensure that your processor is 100% stable. In fact, nothing really does (besides being in Intel's lab). Reason being is because you could stability to test for 8 hours and have an error at 8 hours and 1 minute. You could run Prime blend for 24 hours and be 24 hours stable but have an error at 25. Long story short: you only know you are stable for however long you have stability tested for; so, you will want to at least stability test for how many hours you typically have the PC on during any given day.

Overclock.net is the best place to go for advice.

If you would like a step by step guide to overclocking the i5 I can send you one as well.

Edit: However, one thing I must add before you partake in this adventure... Make sure your GPU drivers and BIOS are the most recent available, and that all tech specs look correct in GPU-Z. I am sure you have already done this but just in case I will reiterate.

Your GPU not being fully utilized could be from simply not being recognized correctly or insufficient drivers (third party drivers are also available). Also, ensure you have used the driver sweep / regedit method of removing previous drivers so they do not interfere with the performance of your card. If this does not increase usage then attempt a slight overclock on your current CPU using the stock fan. Try 3.9-4.0 GHz with a slight voltage increase (watch your temps ensuring you do not break 85 C). If your GPU utilization increases with the overclock then get a cooler and study up.
 
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^ That.

Also, heat isn't about clock speed. It's all about the voltages. The only way to really tell is to experiment, every chip is different.

But yeah, if you're looking to break records, go water. If not, and you're looking for silence but still great performance, go air.
 
From my experience, a Corsair H60 coupled with a stock AMD 955BE will have a temperature of about 28c with no load. With a load I'd hazard a guess of maybe 45-50c? If you can keep the the case temps down, the radiator will perform much much better than if you've got hot air going every which way inside the case.

Another fun fact about the Corsair coolers, is they come with the mounting hardware to do a push/pull setup on the rads. So you can take advantage of that for even more performance.
 
Ok, I think I have to post something that may cause a ripple of facepalms across the world, but please bear in mind this thread was originally asking for help to build my first ever PC and that was only in November last year so I still consider myself a noob with these things.

I'm pretty sure my card isn't being bottlenecked by my i5, Afterburner says it reaches 99% utilisation* basically all the time in games where I'm not getting an easy 60fps (i.e. Arma II and Just Cause 2 at 5040x1050). The reason I want to overclock is because last time I ran the free 3D Mark 11 benchmark it appeared to show that the CPU physics calculation test was where my PC was dropping the ball (just remembered what the CPU physics test looks like, no pun intended), so I wonder if I'm losing frames to that in games. It's odd, too, that in Battlefield 3 I can run it on Ultra settings and have a frame rate in excess of 70fps most of the time, but every time a vehicle explodes the frame rate drops; I imagine that's because the CPU is being used to calculate the physics (I'm pretty sure BF3 doesn't use PhysX, anyway). Therefore, a faster CPU = faster physics calculations = possibly fewer frame rate issues.

Does that sound even halfway legitimate or am I talking out of my arse?

Another example I can think of is Arma II, I just ran the night-time benchmark to compare high video settings to low ones to see what happens. With my normal settings I got between 9 and 15fps (it's an unrealistically huge battle so you never really see that sort of stuff in-game), but then I set it to the 'very low' preset and changed the resolution to 640x480... I got 25-30fps. Yeah, it's double the frame rate, but it's far, far less than half or even a quarter of my usual settings so that suggests to my soft, inexperienced brain that the CPU is bottlenecking at least Arma II and possibly BF3 as well.

In normal play, I get around 20-35fps in Arma II, sometimes it'll go as high as 60fps (I have Nvidia's Adaptive V-sync turned on at the moment so it may be higher), but every now and then it dips below 20fps and that's when I start to notice it. It's only temporary, though, which is another reason for me to suspect it's a CPU bottleneck; it's as if something is being loaded and as soon as it stops loading the frame rate goes up again, I've tested that by just not moving when the frame rate drops to make sure it's not the graphics card being taxed by drawing stuff. So if a 1GHz overclock can keep the frame rate above 20fps at all times, I'd quite like to get on that.

As I'm only looking to overclock to 4.5GHz I think I'll go with the NH-D14, unless it turns out that overclocking won't help me in the slightest, that is. Apologies if this post is really weirdly written, I've spent ages writing it and now I have to run so I haven't checked it.



* I've just thought, seeing as I have a GTX 680 which automatically clocks itself according to requirements, does that mean it'll always be at 99% utilisation? There's a separate 'Power' graph in Afterburner which ranges, in my use anyway, from 10 to 306% which is frankly bizarre as the power limit is set to 100%.
 
Your situation (at least to me) makes sense. I could see why you would want to overclock :lol: . Overclocking the CPU should help you in that situation, but to what extent remains to be seen.

If it makes you feel any better I'll probably be in the same boat you are once I start benchmarking/overclocking my new PC. :( I do find it shocking that you're getting such low FPS's on a game like ArmA II (unless I misread something).
 
-Arma 2 is coded to run rendering calculations on the CPU when on low / very low settings (integrated graphics chip). This is why you are seeing absurd values. Also, take into consideration Arma is "open world" so it is dependent on hard drive access and CPU processing. Bump up the visual settings to the highest available and turn down the draw distance (if you do not have a SSD). An SSD and a nice CPU overclock ensure I don't see anything near unplayable frame rates.

-When you run V-Sync you are decreasing your potential refresh rate by somewhere around 50%. Your GPU is told to "wait" until your monitor is ready and you end up losing frames in the process. Adaptive V-Sync somewhat alleviates this problem. If you are running (Adaptive) V-Sync and over 60 FPS (if that is the refresh rate of your monitor) then that is why the GPU load decreases.

-You are not going to see improvements in refresh rate in every title. Only the ones that are CPU heavy.

-Benchmarks highlighting difference in refresh rate with a CPU intensive title (different processors same GPU).

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/sandy-bridge-core-i7-2600k-core-i5-2500k,2833-19.html#

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cpus/2011/01/03/intel-sandy-bridge-review/10

-Physics score will increase on any synthetic benchmark measuring the refresh rate of physics calculations when you overclock.

-Power limit on your GPU could be related to actual power supplied to the board. Or is that actually related to utilization?
 
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Your situation (at least to me) makes sense. I could see why you would want to overclock :lol: . Overclocking the CPU should help you in that situation, but to what extent remains to be seen.

If it makes you feel any better I'll probably be in the same boat you are once I start benchmarking/overclocking my new PC. :( I do find it shocking that you're getting such low FPS's on a game like ArmA II (unless I misread something).

Arma II is just notoriously poorly optimised and I'm running it across three 1680x1050 monitors so I'm personally not that surprised! Almost all other games run great though and because of Arma II's pace you honestly don't often notice the frame rate taking a dive until it hits the low 20's, so I'd like to keep it above 20fps at least with hardware tweaking (because I'm too attached to how it looks to consider turning it down!).

I've got just enough space on my SSD to install Arma II now that I've deleted all three of my Origin games that aren't BF3 so I think I'll give that a go and see if there's any appreciable difference, I'm sure there would be. The only problem with that is I'd then have to install Take On Helicopters as well... I don't have enough room for that!


As tlowr said I'm not trying to break any records, just trying to hurry things up a little, so I think I'll go with the NH-D14. So, which thermal paste? Is Arctic Silver 5 still the best or have things changed since I attempted (and failed) to fix my PS3's YLOD?
 
Use whatever is provided with the cooler. There isn't really much of a temp difference to warrant spending extra money on replacement TIM and the best there is isn't even available to the general public (manufacturers have access to this and typically will use it on aftermarket coolers).
 

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