Building My First Gaming Rig - I need help

[hamtran]

First Question:

Parts are not here yet, but I just wanted to DL some of the drivers onto a drive to install on my rig beforehand

I've downloaded some of the drivers for my ASRock Z77 Extreme4 onto my USB drive, but they were all in .zip format and then when I used WinRAR to unzip them, each driver had a bunch of different files with one "setup" application, is that normal?

picture -


Second Question:
Can someone either tell me or link me to reasonable idle/load temps for both the GPU and CPU? I will be using GPU-Z/CPU-Z to monitor these once I put the rig together

 

[Immortal_Hero]

Yep, you run the set up application, it uses the other files.

 

[yume]

idle gpu temp measured with gpu-z: 29-30 usually to maximum 32 ( ASUS 560 ti). Load temp, I got to 70-75 in 3dFur... In game I hit around 40-45 I think...
NOTE: The board is over clocked to 900 Mhz! Stock voltage
And the CPU....never actually looked at my cpu temps.... doh.. i'll get back to you soon

 

[hamtran]

Alright guys, it's finally done, from concept to reality - it took me three months and five days, and I couldn't have done it without you guys.

-- I will upload higher res photos at a later point, these were taken with my iPhone:




It runs L4D2 all settings maxed @ 300 FPS (sometimes dips when theres a lot of action) and BF3 all settings ultra, with no AA @ about 60-70FPS average (as high as 120, low as 40 - depending on the action)

I do have one question though, is my GPU-Z (the highlighted section) correct? It says PCI-e X16 @ x8, idk what that means.

 

[Horrerblade]

you need to take your gpu and put it in the top most pcie slot the one that is right under the 212+ and above the cmos battery you will gain at max about 5% performance so if you do want to move it then go ahead though its not necessary also what type of oc are you running?

 

[hamtran]

you need to take your gpu and put it in the top most pcie slot the one that is right under the 212+ and above the cmos battery you will gain at max about 5% performance so if you do want to move it then go ahead though its not necessary also what type of oc are you running?

I did not overclock yet and I had some difficulties with the mobo - everytime I put the card in the topmost (x16) slot, it would not be detected

 

[hamtran]

lol nvm I reseated it back into the slot i thought didnt work and now it does, when i rebooted, it originally did load the 670 drivers I installed, but then I rebooted after "found new hardware" and then it went ahead and restarted my pc and all the drivers are good

hopefully

 

[Horrerblade]

so it is working?

 

[hamtran]

yea its all good, can anybody recommend a good program to monitor heat for CPU/GPU (preferably w/ an ingame overlay like FRAPS), I've heard of PlayClaw but IDK

 

[Horrerblade]

dont know about ingame but as a stand alone core temp is good and i think msi afterburned might have a overlay like that

 

[ivanlabrie]

dont know about ingame but as a stand alone core temp is good and i think msi afterburned might have a overlay like that

As usual this guy is right on...Coretemp is awesome, and Afterburner shows a graph with your clocks and temps, which is really useful. (specially for Nvidia 6xx cards, with Kepler boost and whatnot)

Congrats on your rig!

 

[hamtran]

As usual this guy is right on...Coretemp is awesome, and Afterburner shows a graph with your clocks and temps, which is really useful. (specially for Nvidia 6xx cards, with Kepler boost and whatnot)

Congrats on your rig!

thanks! There were a lot of build hiccups but I think I've managed to sort out cable management and I'm pretty much ready for any PC game of today.

EDIT#1: I could use some help with the ram though. I don't know how to have my system correctly detect the 1600MHz of my RAM (volts, etc.)

 

[Horrerblade]

well like what do you mean most motherboards will already adjust the ram to the factory spec. but the timings are off some times so you can go in you your mobo go to the oc tweaker and then under the ram section there it should say loud xmp settings click on that and select the xmp 1.21 and that should tighten up your timeings a little and get you up to your manufacturer spec. (btw to see what speed you ram is running go to cpuz and under Memory under timings where it says dram Frequency double that and you will see what i am talking about.)

ps thanks ivanlabrie lol

 

[hamtran]

well like what do you mean most motherboards will already adjust the ram to the factory spec. but the timings are off some times so you can go in you your mobo go to the oc tweaker and then under the ram section there it should say load xmp settings click on that and select the xmp 1.21 and that should tighten up your timeings a little and get you up to your manufacturer spec. (btw to see what speed you ram is running go to cpuz and under Memory under timings where it says dram Frequency double that and you will see what i am talking about.)

ps thanks ivanlabrie lol

lol nvm I just fixed it in bios