My Rebuilt PC

[OC-NightHawk]

I have been in the process of rebuilding my PC over the last few months in preparation for changing out to an updated Intel (or AMD if they knock my socks off) platform .

I have three Dell 1080P monitors and a fourth one just kind of there that I use to track my hardware.

My mouse and keyboard are a Razer Blackwidow Chroma and a Naga Epic Chroma. I use a Naga Kraken 7.1 Chroma gaming headset.

My Cooler Master Elite Mid Tower case has been replaced by a Corsair Graphite 780T Black. I love the extra size and space it provides for things. You can see in one of my screen shots where I have secured my Netgear Wireless AC USB3 adapter to the top of my drive cage and used an internal USB header for it. My motherboard only has USB2 but it is enough to be faster then my Comcrap internet connection so it will do until the motherboard is upgraded.

My older cooling solution was a basic cooler master upgrade that was just like the Intel heatsink fan that came with my LGA775 socket based processor except a little better. I replaced it with a Cooler Master V8 GTS which is a little more noisy but not much and keeps the temps at 41 Celsius even while gaming which is very impressive considering the processor used to get up to 78 Celsius while gaming.

I had to update the PSU because the one I had didn't have long enough power cables. I had heard very good things about the EVGA G2 and intended to get it. However the Best Buy locations all around my house and commute home didn't have one in stock. Disappointed but in need of a power supply so I could actually use my machine I settled for a Corsair CX750M power supply. At least I was able to use my store credit I had and only had to pay $45 for the unit so I'm not out of much money if it can't perform and I make the trip out to Microcenter to grab the PSU I really wanted.

The rest of my build is:

Asus P5N-D
8GB DDR2
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9650
2 x NVidia GeForce GTX 560 Ti in 2 way SLI
2 x 1 TB 7200 RPM hard drives
1 x 3 TB 7200 ROM hard drive

My next upgrade will be swapping out the two 1TB 7200 RPM hard drives for two 1TB SSD drives and setting them up in RAID 0. I figure even though my CPU isn't fast most of my perceived sluggishness of my system is the hard drives are just slow by todays standards.

After that I'll upgrade the motherboard, CPU and RAM. Lastly I'll upgrade the graphics and then I'll look into getting some higher resolution monitors.

 

[trents]

Your CPU is still pretty relevant, actually.

Moving from a spinner to an SSD is the biggest performance bang for the buck there is. I would discourage you from going with RAID 0 and two 1 TB SSD's however. You will notice no performance gain in daily computing. The strength of SSD technology is lightening fast seek times because of no moving parts and putting them in a striped RAID configuration won't enhance that at all. It will only take longer to boot up because of having to inital the RAID array. And even in large sequential file transfers (which most of us don't need to do very often) where striped RAID really helps with spinners, the performance gain with SSDs would be largely mitigated by the bandwidth limitations of the SATA bus. My advice to you would be to get one quality 500 gb SSD and then use a large spinner drive for mass storage. Load the OS and the programs on the SSD and store the mass data on the spinner. Then take the money saved and apply it to other upgrades of the system that will pack more punch. For instance, you might look at purchasing one very good video card instead of the two in SLI that you now employ. SLI and Crossfire only improve video performance in games that can take advantage of that technology and not all do. One very good card is better than two mediocre ones in a wide range of scenarios.

 

[EarthDog]

+1 to the above except...

the performance gain with SSDs would be largely mitigated by the bandwidth limitations of the SATA bus.

...this is false. Bandwidth about doubles with SSD's in R0 far eclipsing the SATA bandiwidth limts. It does this because they are using two different SATA ports. Each port has full access to its throughput.

There is a bit of random access loss, but the amount is really not worth mentioning (though some seem to do so) as its still leaps and bounds faster than a HDD.

 

[trents]

+1 to the above except......this is false. Bandwidth about doubles with SSD's in R0 far eclipsing the SATA bandiwidth limts. It does this because they are using two different SATA ports. Each port has full access to its throughput.

There is a bit of random access loss, but the amount is really not worth mentioning (though some seem to do so) as its still leaps and bounds faster than a HDD.

Thanks for the correction. Wasn't aware of that. But still, how much of the kind of file transfers would he be doing that would show much gain from RAID 0? In my mind, the biggest gain for the average user to be had from SSDs in RAID 0 comes from doubling the storage capacity if you have two small drives. Even then there is the reliability issue which I think is not as great as it is fro spinners, at least at the front end of SSD life span. They tend to be less prone to dying early on than spinners do.

 

[t1nm4n]

I'm sorta jealous of your monitor set up there

What they say is true, you will wish you never owned a HDD after using SSDs, and not all SSDs are built equal (don't go cheap). R0 SSDs sounds nice, looks great on benchmarks, but for everyday every user stuff, it's wasted. I got two SSDs in R0, it loads games just a hair slower, transitions from map/levels/zones just a hair slower.

I have this Intel 520 series, I think it's about 3 years old, in my laptop that is mounted to this rickety stand in my Semi truck and it takes a beating going down the road, suffers from all sorts of heat from the sun and the abuse of pretty much staying on for weeks at a time, the drive shows 100% life left. So they are very reliable IMO.

This is the Smart Info from Intel software.



Not sure what all the numbers mean, but that's some reads from it I can tell you that much, and the hours on has to be wrong or something.

 

[OC-NightHawk]

The monitors are great for work. I would like to buy X plane on steam and try out flying with it spanning monitors but I don't think that I have the horse power for more then one 1080P image.

If I upgraded my graphics cards to a single GTX 980 would I be able to run all four monitors from it? If not can I put in one of my old GeForce 8800 GTS cards in it for the other two screens. Will my games know I want to use the GTX 980 and not the old card there just for the extra monitors?

So I should not bother with RAID0 for the SSDs? I guess I could just swap out one of the 1TB spinners for a 1TB ssd. That way I still have the same storage space and my is wood be much more responsive.

I bumped my CPU to 3.1 GHz this evening and encoded a DVD using makemkv to decode and handbrake to format it for iTunes. The temperatures got as high as 48 Celsius over the course of a hour and a half. I think I can bump it up a little more tomorrow.

 

[ATMINSIDE]

If I upgraded my graphics cards to a single GTX 980 would I be able to run all four monitors from it? If not can I put in one of my old 8800

Yes. I run games at 5760x1080 on my 980.
You can run all four monitors from it, provided you buy the proper adapters. (Most 980's come with 3x DisplayPort, 1x HDMI, and 1x DVI but check before buying).

 

[OC-NightHawk]

Sweet! My monitors have display port and DVI on them and I have very nice display port cables. That would actually be a step up in my opinion as my display port cables are longer then my DVI cables. That would free up my second pair 2.0 x16 port. I might even be able to leave my existing drives alone and install one of those new Intel pcie ssd cards that are 1TB.

 

[ATMINSIDE]

Do some research and make sure that your motherboard will boot from a PCIe SSD

 

[OC-NightHawk]

Do some research and make sure that your motherboard will boot from a PCIe SSD

That is a good point. I guess even if it can't I could have it for a fast scratch drive.

 

[EarthDog]

I guess even if it can't I could have it for a fast scratch drive.

Sounds like a waste of money in that capacity...

 

[OC-NightHawk]

Do some research and make sure that your motherboard will boot from a PCIe SSD

Sounds like a waste of money in that capacity...

My current setup has my programs installed on my primary 1TB drive. My games are on the second 1TB drive. I could not fit everything on to one 1TB SSD.

I like the idea of gaining a TB SSD without losing one of my spinner drives. That frees me to replace it with a 4TB spinner drive because my 3TB drive is close to full.

This machine hosts my iTunes movies that I stream to my Apple TV in the living room and the one in my den.

I also use it for gaming and work. My work is not very demanding in terms of computer power but I still dabble in the world of computer art as a hobby. I'll take all the hard drive space I can get.

Maybe scratch disk wasn't the best term to describe my use for it. I meant it is where the origin and steam libraries will go.

 

[ATMINSIDE]

Install the 1TB SATA SSD (850 EVO is a great option), unhook all other drives.
Install Windows.
Hook up your HDD's.
Call it a day.

Basically, keep your OS, programs, and games on the SSD. Keep your files on the HDD's.

 

[OC-NightHawk]

That sounds good. I think I'll pick up that SSD next pay day. Then I'll do a fresh install of Windows 8.1 Pro onto the SSD.

Here is a screenshot of my computer playing Mass Effect 2 with max settings and v sync enabled. This is with my processor overclocked to 3.3GHz. The two graphics cards are running at stock speeds but I didn't unlink the RAM.


Before at stock 3GHz I was getting 45 FPS standing still and ~30fps while moving. I'm not sure why the frame rate is higher while I'm not moving. With a 10 percent increase in my CPU speed it seems I gained ~15 fps while moving and standing still so now I get to the 60 fps cap when not moving and roughly 45 fps while moving around. I scaled the image down using GIMP from the original 1080P image to 720P so the file would be small enough to upload.


Below is the information on the computer after alt tabbing out of the game. The temps seem stable just under 50 Celsius while in the game.


I'm curious to see how much faster a DVD encode is now. If it can keep pace with or exceed the Quad Core 2.3GHz Core i7 in my Late 2012 Mac Mini I would be very happy.

 

[RJARRRPCGP]

That sounds good. I think I'll pick up that SSD next pay day. Then I'll do a fresh install of Windows 8.1 Pro onto the SSD.

Here is a screenshot of my computer playing Mass Effect 2 with max settings and v sync enabled. This is with my processor overclocked to 3.3GHz. The two graphics cards are running at stock speeds but I didn't unlink the RAM.


Before at stock 3GHz I was getting 45 FPS standing still and ~30fps while moving. I'm not sure why the frame rate is higher while I'm not moving. With a 10 percent increase in my CPU speed it seems I gained ~15 fps while moving and standing still so now I get to the 60 fps cap when not moving and roughly 45 fps while moving around. I scaled the image down using GIMP from the original 1080P image to 720P so the file would be small enough to upload.
View attachment 164682

Below is the information on the computer after alt tabbing out of the game. The temps seem stable just under 50 Celsius while in the game.
View attachment 164681

I'm curious to see how much faster a DVD encode is now. If it can keep pace with or exceed the Quad Core 2.3GHz Core i7 in my Late 2012 Mac Mini I would be very happy.

Looks like you can do 3.6 easily unlike a 65 nm. At that core clock, my 65 nm (Q6600) already requires 1.4 V Vcore.

Should be able to hit 3.6 with stock Vcore.
(I know that you should with CPU load line calibration)
(Vdroop may make that impossible)

(While with my Q6600, fat chance of that!)

Makes me want to get a Yorkie!

 

[OC-NightHawk]

I gave it 4 DVDs to encode last night and went to bed. It crunched through everything and according to the hardware temps the first two cores maxed at 53C and the second two maxed at 51C. I'm going to load the machine down with a bluray to crunch on while I'm at work and check back on it when I get home. At stock speeds it takes this machine 7 hours to encode a bluray HD feature length video. I'm interested to see what the difference would be bumped up.

If everything goes smoothly I'll trying bumping the clock speed up a little bit more. Every little bit helps. I gained 15 FPS in game on Mass Effect 2. I know that is an older game but I enjoy the series. I know on The Old Republic the frame rate on the game reported that my frame rate was limited by my CPU. I had some higher settings on it but I couldn't max it out either. It would be interesting to see what FPS I get in it now with the same settings. If I can get myself another 15 FPS on Mass Effect 2 so it never dips below 60 FPS that would more then I could have hoped for and would be very happy. If not this is still a big improvement.

I've read that my motherboard isn't very good at handling higher voltages. Notorious is the word that comes to mind. I'd like to keep the voltages at stock. But then again I would also like to reach 4GHz. Well see.

 

[trents]

The problem with that motherboard is that is has no heat sink on the VRM area. That's the components that lie between the socket and the I/O ports (and sometimes off to the right side as well) responsible for producing the power used by the CPU. It consists of flat little rectangular chips called "mosfets", capacitors and "chokes". It is an 8 power phase rated board, which is good, but it would help to put some heat sinks on the mosfets as they are the most vulnerable component on the board. You can buy a package of aftermarket heat sinks just for that: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...gclid=CJaZzZ2risYCFVOUfgoddbQAsw&gclsrc=aw.ds

And setting a small fan, say 50mm, to blow on the area also helps.

 

[EarthDog]

Im confused... what board are you talking about trents? The one in the first post (ASUS P5N-D) and in the pictures is 3+1 phase with no heatsinks. Your point still remains, but, did I miss a mobo switch somewhere?

That could be a contributing factor to the overclocking goals for sure.

EDIT: I see the pic you added... guessing that was just a typo.

 

[trents]

4 phase power according to what I'm seeing people say on the net. Don't know where I got 8 phase from . Four phase: that's not good either. OC-Night Hawk, I would look at getting a beefier board. Might be some good used ones on ebay.

 

[EarthDog]

As I said 3+1(4). 3 for the CPU and 1 for the Memory.

Here is an overclocking guide for that board. Again, not beefy, lots of vdroop because of the lack of power, but.. you can...
http://www.overclock.net/t/305177/asus-p5n-d-750i-guide

I wouldn't spend a dime on that platform to upgrade just to overclock.. Save that money for a system upgrade.