Just sold my dvd collection, therefore I'm looking for a new CPU/Mobo combo. Basically looking at i5 type stuff because I've heard that provides the best cost/performance ratio. Is Sandybridge worth looking at?
I'd like to overclock but its not a primary concern. There are so many different i5/i7 cpus doing the rounds I've got no clue what is gonna be the best for me. Cheers.
(http://img688.imageshack.us/img688/637/i5spec.jpg)
Personally i'd go for the latter cooler, or if you can afford £10-20 more you can look at the Noctua range (Mattscott can confirm which one he has), don't forget system fans if your room is warm!
All noctua stuff kicks ass really, as long as it fits, you can't go wrong ;D
NH-U12p is what I have, but I think there's a 'newer' one :cheers:
Thanks for the advice. Can the IGP be disabled? Or is there an option without it? I have a decent enough GPU right now.
Quote from: Adrock on January 26, 2012, 14:44:40 PM
Thanks for the advice. Can the IGP be disabled? Or is there an option without it? I have a decent enough GPU right now.
Yes.
Some boards don't even use it, I've had both types, it's no big deal to offski it.
Quote from: Adrock on January 26, 2012, 14:44:40 PM
Thanks for the advice. Can the IGP be disabled? Or is there an option without it? I have a decent enough GPU right now.
Its part and parcel with Z68 based boards, doesn't mean to say you gotta use it, and the Z68's get recommended over the P67 all the time now.
Sounds fine by me. Ta very much for the help. Now all I have to do is explain the expenditure to the missus.
Would an Asus M2A-VM + CPU + Mem have any second hand value? Got 6GB of various memory stuffed in the board.
Quote from: Adrock on January 26, 2012, 17:44:15 PM
Sounds fine by me. Ta very much for the help. Now all I have to do is explain the expenditure to the missus.
Would an Asus M2A-VM + CPU + Mem have any second hand value? Got 6GB of various memory stuffed in the board.
Could be worth something, post cpu details and ram details and ill let you know. :D
AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ Socket AM2 2.6GHz Energy Efficient L2 1MB (2x512KB) Cache Retail Boxed Processor - Thats what the order history tells me I bought.
As for the memory, I had a 2 x 1GB sticks and 2 x 2GB sticks. I'm not entirely sure what the brand is but I think Crucial for the 2gb sticks rings a bell.
I've been browsing stuff out of interest and was wondering what all the different models of Gigabyte mobo are about? There are tons of em.
The 5000+ and Mobo and Ram you could sell as a bundle on Ebay quite easily, do a search of completed listings to check prices or put up here on the forums as a Dual core Athlon is still a capable system so someone might buy it, although i would be tempted to get the other bits cheap and build a system to sell to someone in the family that needs an upgrade!
As for the different motherboards, they will differ from features, the board i linked you has all you need to OC, it might not have Firewire but the next model might, it might not have 110 sata ports but the next model might etc.
I've been looking at coolers and the Corsair H60 intrigues me. Anyone had any experience with these? I have a fear of hanging 1kg+ of heavy heatsink from a mobo.
I wouldn't really bother with it tbh....
the whole idea behind water cooling is to take the heat from your tiny cpu and spread it over a massive radiator... the radiator on the H60 isn't really big enough for that....
if you want water cooling you could probably buy yourself a heat sink, pump, pipe and radiator for not a lot more.... but it would run quieter and keep your cpu a lot cooler than the H60 would/could
as long as your case temps are cool, you'll do just as well with air cooling - the only real advantage of the H60 system over air cooling is that the radiator is attached to the case side so always gets cool fresh air :-)
The H60 isn't very good tbh forgot about overclocking if you do, the H100 is worth having and get's good reviews.
I wouldn't worry too much about having a big cooler, modern sockets are designed to take them, it's not like the old days where they are hanging off a couple of small lugs on the side of the socket and slightest rocking on installing could very easily damaging your CPU.
I currently have one of the biggest coolers available a Noctua NH-D14, it was a doddle to install and is rock solid with no chance of going anywhere ( Pic's here. (http://www.tekforums.net/computing-technology-web-communication/new-sandy-bridge-gaming-comp/msg182330/#msg182330))
Jesus christ, That cooler is stupidly big :o
My next worry is will this stuff fit in a midi tower or am I looking at buying a new case too? I never realised how big the coolers were.
Quote from: Adrock on February 03, 2012, 13:03:09 PM
Jesus christ, That cooler is stupidly big :o
My next worry is will this stuff fit in a midi tower or am I looking at buying a new case too? I never realised how big the coolers were.
You might well need a new case depending on the clearance your case has :P
Ah sh*t, why is it always just a small upgrade but ends up the whole hog. I'm gonna have to invent some form of cloak to make a full size case look like my midi tower to the wife's eyes.
All this just so I can play some PS2 and Wii games on a pc. There is a fault in my logic somewhere.
I think you should be ok with a midi case....
my little brother has the same NH-D14 as Shaun and it fits no problem.... it does depend a bit on which exact case you have.... but I think most should be ok :-)
At least a case can be had cheaply and it wont affect the performance of the pc, cooling withstanding. Its something I can tell the missus I simply MUST have as the new mobo/cpu/cooler dont fit into the old case.
If I play dumb I may have a chance.......
Quote from: Adrock on February 03, 2012, 13:27:15 PM
At least a case can be had cheaply and it wont affect the performance of the pc, cooling withstanding. Its something I can tell the missus I simply MUST have as the new mobo/cpu/cooler dont fit into the old case.
If I play dumb I may have a chance.......
Thermaltake Dokker is what i use and it has a SATA dock in the top of it built in, the only problem is that you cant use the top drive bay cus the dock cable sticks in the way, i cant believe they still sell them like this tbh, talk about major design flaw.
The NH-D14 will fit in most modern midi cases you need 160mm clearance, I had a slight issue with its height due to my case being slightly older and having an internal door which houses 4x120mm fans, so lose about 3 inches from overall width, a midi case such as: http://www.coolermaster.co.uk/product.php?product_id=6632 it would fit fine.
While the NH-D14 is big it is cleverly designed most of the bulk is put in the "dead space" of the case where it isn't blocking or affecting other things only thing you have to watch is not getting Ram with tall heat spreaders, standard sized Ram fits fine.
Cheers for that.
I'm gonna go to the computer fair at Euston tomorrow and see what kind of prices they are offering. Round the corner on Tottenham Court Road there is a half decent shop which seems to have very competitive pricing too. I could be lugging lotsa sh*te on the underground tomorrow.
Euston eh? ease your pain at the Bree Louise ;D
Its been a while. Got the upgrade 3 or 4 weeks ago and have been happily playing around with it so thanks for the advice. Went for a beastly Noctua thing to cool the cpu and I'm happy to say it all installed very well. The case is tight on clearance for the side cover but it just fits.
For stuff like temp monitoring and stress testing to ensure my overclock is stable what would you guys recommend?
IBT stress test is very stressful indeed but it does not take ages to run.
http://downloads.guru3d.com/IntelBurnTest-v2.3-download-2047.html
Make sure that you do not have anything running in the background & have a fire extinguisher handy :)
Use maximum or high settings levels for memory 15 or 20 runs.
Typically on my setup it peaks about 10c higher than Orthos but i run Orthos for 8 hours minimum on
after it has passed IBT.
I also run a combination of other stress tests for GPU & also some games.
To monitor temps i use Core temp( http://www.alcpu.com/CoreTemp/) &
i use CPU-Z for other information( v core etc) (http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/cpu-z.html).
Note that the VID shown in Core temp is not V core.
Thanks for the info, spied your post on my phone earlier and booted my main machine up to start getting it read and blue screens have started and aren't stopping.
I'm getting bad system config info, memory management and another memory one. I thought maybe it was RAM related but then windows came up with wanting to scan the hard drive. It found 351 large files or summit and I stopped it scanning at 10000% complete because it had been one for well over an hour and I thought 100% complete would be sufficient :/
The only thing in my pc that isn't brand new is the hard drive and PSU. I'm thinking the hard drive is the issue as it sounds like lotsa windows stuff has become corrupt. Any ideas?
it could be the HD... but bad memory is more likely...
can you run memtest ?
how many sticks do you have installed ?
can you take half out and run like that for a while ?
(then swap them over if t still happens)
I was hoping beyond all hope it wasn't bad memory because its brand bloody new. It'll be a shame if it is though as I'm not in the area where I bought the RAM from for a while.
Best go check I suppose :(
Posting from the machine now. Memtest86+ is a wonderful thing. Stuck it on a USB stick and had a flood of red error messages after the initial tests. Swapped out a stick and still got it, swapped the sticks around and everything was hunkey dorey. Such a shame That the bloody memory, which is about a month old, has failed on me.
At least I still have 4GB until I get back down to Tottenham Court Road. Now onto stress testing.
What are my rights with regards returning it? I understand my contract is with the retailer so they HAVE to deal with my problem, but am I also right in thinking that because its failed at such an early stage I'm allowed to ask for a new one rather than repair (I know they'd never repair them anyway)?
What brand is the memory? If it's from a decent manf. like Crucial you might find an RMA to them for replacement quicker, but if you have the retailers number it's worth giving them a call first, by right as you said it is their responsibility under warranty. They won't ever repair, they will just replace and RMA the old stick on your behalf, you should be able to insist on a direct swap if they are a decent bricks and mortar.
Got it changed on the spot, managed to take a detour and sneak to the shop yesterday :w00t:
15 runs of maximum IBT gave me about 67c maximum, also there were no errors so I'm happy about that, my cpu is running at 4.3ghz. Orthos will be the next stop to make entirely sure this beast is stable, it was never perfect until I changed the ram. Blue screens were regular occurrences but I was putting it down to the overclock being too much.
Ta very much again.
It's a good tip for anyone when building a new rig, always run a thorough memory test as well as benchies to be sure you don't have a duff stick that will only occasionally show its true colours. :)