Low Power - No Noise - Gaming Rig

[ivanlabrie]

Trust me it's the best paste there is and by a large margin with a 8ww/mk heat transfer rate (liquid pro), only downside is it can't be used with aluuminum...but I've yet to see a modern heatsink or ihs made out of aluminum.
As for the peltier, forget it! You need double or more the size of a pelt to dissipate a given heat load, annd the heat generated is equal to the sum of the original heatload plus the pelts rating and then some more. You would need to water cool the peltier for that to work.

 

[ivanlabrie]

Trust me it's the best paste there is and by a large margin with a 82w/mk heat transfer rate (liquid pro), only downside is it can't be used with aluuminum...but I've yet to see a modern heatsink or ihs made out of aluminum.
As for the peltier, forget it! You need double or more the size of a pelt to dissipate a given heat load, annd the heat generated is equal to the sum of the original heatload plus the pelts rating and then some more. You would need to water cool the peltier for that to work.

 

[Knufire]

Pretty sure the NVIDIA GPUs are more power efficient.

 

[azanimefan]

Pretty sure the NVIDIA GPUs are more power efficient.

yeah... but there is surprising little heat info on them.

From what i've seen, though they're more energy efficient, they run hotter then a Radeon... worse, the 670 (which would be the next step up from the 7870) seems to run hotter then the 7950 and 7970... both of which the gpu heatsink maker claims it can't cool. (its a shame too because apparently it uses less power then the 7870)

 

[Knufire]

Probably because they can run hotter...the power consumption and heat output of silicon chips is basically equivalent.

Just because Sandy Bridge runs at a max of 95C and Bulldozer run at a max of something like 60C doesn't mean Sandy is harder to cool. Despite the operating temperature, the 95W chip is much easier to cool that the 120W chip. Same thing applies.

 

[ivanlabrie]

Yeah, you could get away with a 650ti easily...I'd look into that, but whatever's cheaper would be best, plus the 7870 with current drivers performs real good.
Kepler boost might complicate the matter with a 660ti or higher card.

 

[azanimefan]

i'm going back to the drawing board.

I've decided i can't just build an Intel system, with news in 2 years intel will no longer make socketed chips (but rather solder their chips to the MB). Frankly, I was always bugged by the fact that I was going to use an Intel for this build... and now i know why i was so troubled.

Intel was never an OC friendly company. For years they intentionally locked their CPUs to prevent OC, because they wanted you to pay a premium for their best chip, rather then buy a slower one and get the same performance. They're still basically doing this with their current lineup, and while they "allow" overclocking, it's limited, intentionally. They only started to cater to the oc community recently, to deal the deathblow to AMD... and now they seem to be on the edge of doing it... they're blithely moving on with their original oc/hobbiest unfriendly business model.

Well AMD is dying in part because they're lead by idiots... but I'm not going to let that stop me from giving them money. the longer they remain viable, the better for all of us.

The FX8350 is "good enough" for a high end system... i'm only troubled by the high energy drain, and i'm doubtful i'll be able to cool it passively. So this whole project is back on the drawing board while i study this more.

 

[MIAHALLEN]

...the longer they remain viable, the better for all of us...

+1

If green team is what you want, I won't talk you out of it

 

[ivanlabrie]

Green team reminds me of nvidia, cause of the current red logos...

I'd say trinity a10-5800k is good for a passive rig, no need for a dedicated gpu and a passive 6670 for dual ggraphics is easily cooled without fans...

 

[azanimefan]

Green team reminds me of nvidia, cause of the current red logos...

I'd say trinity a10-5800k is good for a passive rig, no need for a dedicated gpu and a passive 6670 for dual ggraphics is easily cooled without fans...

true... but how much performance could be squeezed out of it? I've been looking into just that build (just before seeing your post), as I've seen the A10 in day to day tasks and have been impressed.

I mean anyone with half a brain would make sure it was a GDDR5 ram on the 6670, since when in duel graphics mode, the system will use the card's memory instead of system memory... so the faster ram will be useful.

Probably would have to skip the whole duel graphics mode, unless i can somehow overclock the combo to produce similar numbers to a 7870... which i don't think is likely.

you'd obviously go with 1866 DDR3, for system ram, as the trinity seems to be the most sensitive chip to ram i've seen in a while.

In the end though I doubt anyone would call it a high performance gaming rig... which sorta bums me out... unless i could figure out a way to overclock it into the stratosphere... but then i'd probably need to figure out a watercooling system with passive rads... mmmm

I've gotta go back to the drawing board on this one. I think the big thing to make this a "performance" system would be to achieve a high enough and stable overclock to make this thing indistinguishable from an i5... i don't expect to match one... not with a $120 APU.... but close enough no one using it could tell the difference.

 

[ivanlabrie]

Depending on the taqsk, it will be pretty close, and as good as a passive rig will get.
Passive water could work, but I haven't researched that enough.
If you need good single thread performance you're screwed with the apu btw, it's good for gaming and mainstream computing. And fun to overclock
I'd go with a 2400 cl9 or 2666 c10 kit though, unless you find used bbse or psc ram.

 

[azanimefan]

i suppose... i guess if i get a PCI card to move the sound off chip that will give me a jump in performance as well (I've seen that net you as much as a 25% increase in FPS, depending... course with modern CPUs i doubt i'd get more then 5fps additional... but even that would be big...)

 

[ivanlabrie]

Not sure on the impact, it may impact how much you can overclock your cpu but not so sure unless you run multi gpus...

 

[azanimefan]

well i figure pulling as many resources as i can off the CPU might allow a slightly better OC, and probably allow a little better FPS...

 

[Knufire]

The amount of processing power game audio takes is pretty insignificant compared to the power of modern CPUs. Much more drastic as you get older. But while graphics and AI processing and what not has gotten more intensive as hardware gets more powerful, audio is a much slower field.

 

[Conumdrum]

+1, yep. Audio uses very very little.

 

[azanimefan]

I know it uses little, but when playing a game that's taking 100% of the CPU the audio starts to become a minor issue.

On an i5 i doubt you'd notice, but we are talking about milking the most performance as possible out of a freaking a10 here... even 2 or 3 fps improvement would be nice... and probably worth the $20-$30 for a discrete sound card (as well as the elimination of sound stuttering when the system is overloaded).

Frankly... while i know the A10 is a good CPU all things considered... i'm not sure i can get the performance out of it for the $$ spent on it, that would impress a hard core PC gamer. I really am looking for some serious input on this one. I dislike charging at windmills... generally I like knowing the performance envelope i'm looking at, and then stretching it. Unfortunately the data on these parts isn't enough for me to make value judgements on build concepts.

For example, If i stick a 7870 in it will the CPU (even overclocked) bottleneck it? Spending 300+ on a GPU to get 200 worth of graphic performance isn't a value. At what point does the CPU bottleneck the system on one of these? There is plenty of info on an i3 and this question but little on the A10... And while I know the i3 is a better chip stock then an a10, can i overclock one enough to overcome the difference then use that i3 data as a reference for the gpu? Better yet, when duel graphics is working to the best of it's abilities, at what level does that bring the graphics up to? a 7770? or are we looking at a 7750? Worse? I don't know. Some of the info i've seen indicates duel graphics would equal a 7770... others it would be much worse then a 7750... Until i know these two answers making an informed decision on a GPU would be impossible

Probably need to start a thread in the AMD forum on this question.

 

[Conumdrum]

Maybe the A10 isn't good for your needs then? No game should even ever come close to 100% on a CPU.

 

[ivanlabrie]

If you're gonna use a discrete card, and not dual graphics an APU is pointless imho.
Get a low voltage sandy or ivy bridge part, no need to oc. Run it passive and get a 7870...
Or, get a Trinity chip a 6670 run that passive and use dual graphics. It performs ok, plenty for gaming at 1080p.

 

[Boulard83]

If you're gonna use a discrete card, and not dual graphics an APU is pointless imho.
Get a low voltage sandy or ivy bridge part, no need to oc. Run it passive and get a 7870...
Or, get a Trinity chip a 6670 run that passive and use dual graphics. It performs ok, plenty for gaming at 1080p.

+1 on that.

Get a 3570K, clock it as you can with the cooling youll have. Put a good GPU like a 7870 or a GTX660. Those dont output that much heat and im sure you can fin a way to run these fanless with aftermarket cooler.