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It's been a long time...really long.

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TyRex

Member
Joined
Sep 12, 2002
Location
Indiana
Hey guys.

It's been quite awhile since I've been in the OC game. The rig in my sig is still being used. :shock:

I was hoping to get some feedback on the motherboard I've selected, and the other components, if you care to criticize.

First, I'll tell you a little about what I will be using this computer for. (I'll be using Mint 9 as my OS)

  • Professional photo editing (the GIMP)
  • Video encoding
  • WoW (using wine)
  • Scientific Computing. This is a big one. I would like to be able to take advantage of the GPU for floating point calcs using OpenCL or stream

I'm not as hard of an OCer as I was years ago. I don't plan on WCing, again. I'm also not willing to spend an extra 200 bucks just to milk out an extra 100-200 MHz.

The components I've selected are:

ASUS M4A89TD PRO/USB3
AMD Phenom II X3 740 Black Edition
COOLER MASTER Hyper 212
CORSAIR CMPSU-750TX
G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666)
SAPPHIRE 100289L Radeon HD 5670 (Redwood) 1GB 128-bit DDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16

Any suggestions would be appreciated. The above system with case is 700 shipped, which is where I would like to keep it. (Unless a small increase will net me a good performance boost)
 
:welcome: back! I can see it's been a long time. ;)


Most of your choices are good but I do have a couple of concerns.

Your gaming performance may suffer a small amount but I would go for more cores rather than L3 cache considering your other uses. Most photo editing and video compression apps will use however many cores you can give them, which means you'll increase your processing power quite a bit using an Athlon II X4 instead of a Phenom II X3 (there will be some loss from the lack of L3). Don't get me wrong, if your main concern is gaming you've made a very good choice - otherwise I'd consider the quad instead.

The other, and much smaller, concern is RAM. I understand you need a lot for your editing and compression software but 1333 CAS 9 wouldn't be my first choice. On the other hand, 1333 CAS 7 or 1600 CAS 9 (and I'd take the former, given a choice) is more expensive for 8 Gb in whatever form, 2x4 GB or 4X2 Gb. RAM performance is a small part of real world performance but you might take a look, anyway.

It looks like you've done your homework so there isn't much more to say. Your motherboard choice is one of the best for OC'ing, you've got one of the best, low-cost heatsinks out there, and the PSU should provide years of great service. I can't comment on the video - it's just not my thing.

Keep us posted ...! :)
 
Many thanks for the advice and welcome back. I think I'm going to take your recommendation and go with a quad, but I think I'll spend the extra to get a P2. Actually, I don't know what I'm going to do, now. Seeing todays price drop on the hex cores has me thinking about splurging on a 1075t, or a 1090t, even.

In regards to the memory, I have read your opinions about CAS latency and preferring a lower CAS over the next level of ram. I had planned on gambling with the CAS 9 and attempting to change the CAS to 7 in the bios.I know I could get away with that many years ago, but then again, CAS 2 was the gold standard back then. Is it more difficult to attempt this with DDR3?

Thanks again for the advice. It is great to see the OC forums still going strong.
 
I had planned on gambling with the CAS 9 and attempting to change the CAS to 7 in the bios.I know I could get away with that many years ago, but then again, CAS 2 was the gold standard back then. Is it more difficult to attempt this with DDR3?
T

I would be surprised if you get away with lower CASL from 9 to 7 without lowering the frequency and that would be counter productive.
 
I'm running an AMD Phenom IIx4 BE The biggest processor draw I do is video editing and encoding. My wife and I travel and rather than load the 5th wheel down with dvd's I've got a dvd player that does DIVX. I spend a lot of time encoding dvd to divx. I started out using a P4 2.93Ghz. Took all night to encode 1 season of MASH. (I've got the complete series)My phenom II will do it in a couple hours. You'll notice I do have it OCed but OCing these things is really easy. They OC very well. I'm at 3.6Ghz with moderate air cooling and crapy case. It isn't that much more for an x4 and you'll appreciate the power doing your video. Of course you might get lucky and be able to unlock the 4th core but it's a gamble. I'd spring for the 4th core.
 
a) ram you selected is 2T ram (called 2N now for some reason) you dont want that. Its a trick Gskill uses to push crappy RAM ICs on an unsuspecting public. they are not alone, but they are the biggest offender.

b) Save money on the board. ASUS makes quality products, but their RMA service is terrible

c) Less money on mobo more on CPU. It will make loads of difference unless you plan to OC.

d) USB3 ROCKS even for USB2 stuff, SATA3 though if its the same controller as the high end ASUS boards.. also sucks. You dont want that.

e) PSU is excessive for your setup as is. a 400W would be more than enough. You want to have enough PSU to more than handle your max needs (which can only be done running 3D tests and 2D tests at the same time.. Separate not workstation stuff that requires CPU to push 3D) Better quality, lower wattage is my call.
 
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Hey guys.

I went a little overboard on black friday. I ended up getting:

1090T
16 gigs rip jaws 1600
gigabyte 890fxa-ud5
asus cucore hd 5770
60 gig agility 2 SSD
2x 1.5 TB seagates
hyper 212+
corsair 750 HX

I'm thoroughly satisfied. However, I have an issue I need some advice on.

Last night, I decided to try a some OCing. I slowly upped the multi till I got to 4.0. I started running Mprime to test stability. I was getting errors, so upped the vcore till I got to 1.4. My system booted and everything looked great. However, as I was running mprime, one of my LAN ports just died. The green connection light comes on when a cord is plugged in, but the OS says no cable is connected. You can run a connection test in the bios, which I did, and it says there IS a connection.

I'm wondering if my little OC burnt out some of the LAN circuitry? Any thoughts?
 
I figured it out. (After a lot of searching)

Apparently, the RT 8111 lan chip stores a fault value under the right conditions. They only way to "reset" the chip is to power down the computer and unplug it for a few minutes. Of course, I thought it was BS when I read it, but sure enough it fixed it.

I absolutely LOVE this hex core
 
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