New computer build

[punisher]

Only thing I will pick on , just to be different, is the motherboard. If you SLI another video card in there, your remaining PCIE slots are effectively gone due to double slot coolers. Sometimes that comes back to bite you. Some ATX boards even have 2 PCI-E slots between 16X slots one and two so you have extra space for that top card to get air into the cooler.

Never use a Micro ATX when you can use a full size board. It can save future headaches.

 

[LC]

I just finished building this one last weekend.
Your family member/friend should be very happy with the one you built. Nice Job.

 

[MrHorspwer]

I'll pick on two things:

1) Should have spent the extra couple bucks and picked up a GTX 970 instead of the 770. The extra RAM is worth it, especially if he's going to be playing any of the upcoming AAA titles. They have a voracious appetite and will eat up any RAM you give it: 2 GB isn't enough anymore.

2) The power supply is way overkill for that system, especially considering the price premium of that particular EVGA unit.

For the price difference between the EVGA and a Corsair HX650 (which is also 80 PLUS GOLD and fully modular, just like the EVGA), you could have paid for the difference between the 970 and 770. As a bonus, the 970 is much more power efficient than the 770, still giving a ton of headroom to even a 650 watt PSU.

Or... you could have bought my lightly used Gigabyte GTX 770 that I'm selling to buy a GTX 970

 

[SLCraig]

Great looking rig... I am a bit behind the times so I am not even totally familiar with all the parts and their advantages...
I do love the Coolermaster 212 cooler.. I have been using one for years and I think it's my favorite cooler of all time. (cheap, keeps things cool, quiet) - can't go wrong.

I am still rocking an i7 2600K with some goodies under the hood. And honestly, the thing still plays everything I throw at it perfectly... Maybe I'll upgrade it next year or something if I can find some spare cash.

 

[Nick R]

Man I wish my case looked that clean inside

 

[MrHorspwer]

Originally Posted By: SLCraig
I am still rocking an i7 2600K with some goodies under the hood. And honestly, the thing still plays everything I throw at it perfectly... Maybe I'll upgrade it next year or something if I can find some spare cash.


There is nothing wrong with the 2600K. It is still a high performing CPU with more overlocking headroom than anything Intel has put out since, including Devil's Canyon. Seriously, Ivy Bridge and Haswell were each a 10-20% bump, but with stunted overlocking ability. Obviously, it's a non-issue which one to take if you're building a new system, but Intel hasn't made a very strong case for upgrading from Sandy Bridge from a pure performance perspective.

Because everyone is sharing pictures...

Yes, it's a 2600K

 

[Nick R]

Originally Posted By: MrHorspwer
Originally Posted By: SLCraig
I am still rocking an i7 2600K with some goodies under the hood. And honestly, the thing still plays everything I throw at it perfectly... Maybe I'll upgrade it next year or something if I can find some spare cash.


There is nothing wrong with the 2600K. It is still a high performing CPU with more overlocking headroom than anything Intel has put out since, including Devil's Canyon. Seriously, Ivy Bridge and Haswell were each a 10-20% bump, but with stunted overlocking ability. Obviously, it's a non-issue which one to take if you're building a new system, but Intel hasn't made a very strong case for upgrading from Sandy Bridge from a pure performance perspective.

Because everyone is sharing pictures...

Yes, it's a 2600K

Yeah I'm thinking my next big upgrade will be when Skylake comes out at the end of next year/early 2016. There is no real reason to upgrade from my 2500k right now.

 

[Colt45ws]

Originally Posted By: punisher
Only thing I will pick on , just to be different, is the motherboard. If you SLI another video card in there, your remaining PCIE slots are effectively gone due to double slot coolers. Sometimes that comes back to bite you. Some ATX boards even have 2 PCI-E slots between 16X slots one and two so you have extra space for that top card to get air into the cooler.

Never use a Micro ATX when you can use a full size board. It can save future headaches.




There is actually a x16 slot (x4 electrically) above the bottom PCIe slot. You'd want to use the bottom for SLI as it would be x8 off the CPU.

To tell the truth....the mATX MB was a bit of a goof. I had one picked out, and then when I went to buy it was out of stock. So I quickly found an alternate. Oops. Little bit too quickly.
I don't think it will affect anything, though.


Nick, your system looks like mine. This is the first time Ive done a clean build. It took me like 4 hours to get it together and wired up. I couldve slapped it together in under an hour and it wouldve looked like that.

Im still running my old i7-980x system. Just cracked 40k hours on it. Figure around 50k Ill replace it, which would be a little over a year from now. So, about when Nick is planning an upgrade.

 

[OVERKILL]

Originally Posted By: MrHorspwer
Originally Posted By: SLCraig
I am still rocking an i7 2600K with some goodies under the hood. And honestly, the thing still plays everything I throw at it perfectly... Maybe I'll upgrade it next year or something if I can find some spare cash.


There is nothing wrong with the 2600K. It is still a high performing CPU with more overlocking headroom than anything Intel has put out since, including Devil's Canyon. Seriously, Ivy Bridge and Haswell were each a 10-20% bump, but with stunted overlocking ability. Obviously, it's a non-issue which one to take if you're building a new system, but Intel hasn't made a very strong case for upgrading from Sandy Bridge from a pure performance perspective.

Because everyone is sharing pictures...

Yes, it's a 2600K

Great looking rig!

I'm still rocking an i5 750 @ 4Ghz, LOL! Also using Corsair water. But my case isn't as tidy as yours

Last two I did that were that clean were these ones:

 

[Colt45ws]

So, I install Win8 get drivers installed and think, "This was easy. Its already done and ready to ship. I better test it though."
Fire up Prime95 for 8 thread 8-4096K FFT 4096MB ram.
Insta-reboot.
Try it again with in-place small FFT.
Insta-reboot.
Figured it would have to fight me on something. Have to figure out why its being a POS.

 

[Rand]

I'd probably pull the video card use built in video, and 1 memory chip and see what happens? whats the cpu temp? some of the hiper 212+ were almost defective without some evening of the plate/tubes that are against the cpu.

Most likely some kind of driver issue. whats the voltage? is the memory over .5 volt higher than the cpu?

 

[Colt45ws]

I dont think its a driver issue. Or graphics issue.
Im running Memtest86+ right now. I tried it the first time around in SMP mode and it was fine through all cores until in tried to load all 8 and it rebooted. Im running single thread mode right now. 80% through with no errors. Cpu temp is in the 50C range. But I dont know load temp because it restarts within a couple seconds of going full load.

 

[Colt45ws]

Something to do with hyperthreading. I disabled it in BIOS and everything is cool now. Unknown why right now. Full load temps under IBT is in the mid 60s. Goning to try reenabling it, but running only 4 threads still instead of all 8.

 

[Colt45ws]

So, I discovered that if I lock the CPU at 4GHz I can run 8 thread IBT just fine. Itll run in the mid-high 60s for temps, and about 100W power. If I leave it in Auto and try to do that, itll run up to 150W and crash. If it does not crash the temps will climb up towards 100C.
Funny thing is, its not any faster. I dont know what the deal is. The thermal and power management should not be allowing that, but it is. Everything is enabled. Im not trying to OC here, just run stock configuration.

 

[redhat]

The new Intel's have Turbo Boost which will automatically over clock. The 4790K will Turbo Boost up to 4.4GHz.

Sounds like it may be getting too hot. Do you have the CPU cooler manually set on a fan level or automatically controlled?

 

[Colt45ws]

Yes, it will, but only within thermal and power limits. Locked at 4GHz its pulling 100W and Vcore is about 1.1V or so.
Allowed to do what it wants, itll run at 4.4GHz even with all threads full load.
Which that right there says something is wrong, because the turbo for 4 cores running is 2 steps, not 4.
Also, Vcore is INSANE!
1.5V and UP!
150W power consumption. Instantly overheats.

 

[Rand]

sounds like some kind of overclocking mode in the bios?

also memtest+ has always been unstable in multi-threaded mode.

it crashes on my i5-2500k and I was wondering about it..
but it also crashes on the work cadstation which is a double of my home computer.

single threaded it works fine.

 

[Nick R]

You are going to manually set the voltage offset. 1.5V on a haswell is insane. Something isn't right in the motherboard defaults.

 

[Rand]

Originally Posted By: Nick R
You are going to manually set the voltage offset. 1.5V on a haswell is insane. Something isn't right in the motherboard defaults.


I had to do that as well, but I was overclocking, Is there some sort of auto overclock mode for that MB?

sometimes with UEFI bios just clicking a picture can load a whole bunch of settings.

 

[Colt45ws]

It was a bad BIOS. I still think its doing something stupid that I have to work around, but its workable now.
I upgraded to the latest F4 Bios for this board and the voltages were much better, about 1.25V. Full load, it was still trying to lock 4.4GHz and pull about 135W resulting in load temps in the 90s. But, at least it was stable for the minute or so I let it run at that level.
I disabled the memory XMP (actually I loaded optimized defaults) and It much better. Turbo is working to specification. I still think its pulling more power than it should, about 120W, but its stable and not too hot. About 80C on the dot. Voltage is perfect from what I can gather, about 1.16V. Ill leave it alone as long as it passes testing.