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My new gaming/HTPC rig - comments & advice welcomed

3K views 75 replies 14 participants last post by  60SXRD 
#1 ·
i5 3570K currently @ 3.8GHz

Gigabyte GA-Z77X-D3H Mobo

2 x 4GB Corsair Vengeance 2133 RAM CMZ8GX3MZA2133C11B

Gigabyte GTX670 GV-N670OC-2GD

Auzen X-Fi HT HD Soundcard

Sandisk 240G Extreme SSD

1TB WD Black HDD

1TB WD Green HDD

Corsair TX-850W Power Supply

Coolermaster Hyper 212 Evo

Silverstone Raven V2 Case

Pioneer Blu-ray drive/burner

Win7 64 Home Premium


Just got everything up and running last weekend and plan on doing some tweaking tomorrow. So far so good but haven't done much gaming yet to see how it performs. I'm running HDMI into a Denon AVR-4311ci 7.1 connected to a 60" Sony SXRD 1080p HDTV.


Thanks!
 
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#2 ·
Looks like a very solid system should do good..
 
#4 ·
Thanks. I got the RAM for a really good price - I may add another 8GB later if I find another deal.
 
#6 ·
How is having an aftermarket heatsink a bad idea in any situation? No matter what the situation, a good after market heatsink is always a good idea and I'd doubt you'll find many others (other than you) that think otherwise. Less heat is always good.
 
#7 ·
10C cooler at the CPU has zero effect on the user experience. A 10C difference is also not enough to change whether the CPU is going to die before it's obsolete. His 400mhz over clock is also nothing that would not have happened on the stock cooler. Sure, maybe he could push it a bit further with a 20C temperature drop at load, but if you are over clocking to the point where temperature actually comes in to play, then you are flirting with instability on a daily basis.


A giant aftermarket heat sink is the PC version of the giant aftermarket spoiler on a Honda Civic. In this case he neglected a proper amount of ram, which is like leaving the stock tires on that Civic with the giant wing on its back. You know, the thing that will actually effect performance and the user experience.


Pre-cached programs load faster. Full stop. A 10C cooler CPU does nothing faster.
 
#8 ·
All the gaming performance in the world means very little without stability, cooler running components can mean greater stability over time and obviously greater potential regarding CPU oc'ing.


Honestly most of the stock coolers are barely adequate, especially for cpu intensive applications running for hours at a time.


In my opinion the Hyper 212 Evo is an excellent yet inexpensive addition.


Jason
 
#9 ·
Nobody here is advocating instability, but these things aren't the fragile snowflakes that you guys apparently think that they are. Modern CPUs are rated to work in the 80C range. Running an idle of 45C and a load of 65C on the stock cooler is not remotely enough of an extreme to effect stability or failure before the thing is useless simply due to age. We have graveyards of Pentium 4s sitting out there, Intel's hottest chip ever. They are sitting in those graveyards because they are dog slow, not because they were eaten by heat.


The argument is not "The Hyper 212 is a waste of money". It is a perfectly fine heatsink and a good value overall. The argument is that this person just built a fancy new system, starved the thing for ram, then splurged in other areas that have no user-noticeable effect. Then, once made aware of the ram deficiency he proceeded to supply us with the logical failure of "Whoa whoa whoa! Fifty more dollars?!? What am I, made of cash monies?". There are a number of luxury items in this system, yet he skimped on a core component. The argument is that the Hyper 212 and DDR3-2133 are poor allocations of resources with no positive result, and those same resources could have been spent elsewhere to better and noticeable effect.


Buying a Hyper 212 is a great choice, after you already have 16GB of ram.
 
#11 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by darklordjames  /t/1462316/my-new-gaming-htpc-rig-comments-advice-welcomed#post_23058119


It will spit out great 1080p gaming. You really should have gone for 2x8GB of slower ram at the same price though. 8GB is starving the crap out of that system, and having the extra ram will have a far greater impact on your experience than faster clocked ram.


Is there any benchamarks proving that 16gb will be better then having 8gb.. I am just trying to find out of there is any merit in what you are saying as I myself Only got 8gb thinking more would be a waste and from what I have heard it would be??
 
#12 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by darklordjames  /t/1462316/my-new-gaming-htpc-rig-comments-advice-welcomed#post_23059564


Nobody here is advocating instability, but these things aren't the fragile snowflakes that you guys apparently think that they are. Modern CPUs are rated to work in the 80C range. Running an idle of 45C and a load of 65C on the stock cooler is not remotely enough of an extreme to effect stability or failure before the thing is useless simply due to age. We have graveyards of Pentium 4s sitting out there, Intel's hottest chip ever. They are sitting in those graveyards because they are dog slow, not because they were eaten by heat.


The argument is not "The Hyper 212 is a waste of money". It is a perfectly fine heatsink and a good value overall. The argument is that this person just built a fancy new system, starved the thing for ram, then splurged in other areas that have no user-noticeable effect. Then, once made aware of the ram deficiency he proceeded to supply us with the logical failure of "Whoa whoa whoa! Fifty more dollars?!? What am I, made of cash monies?". There are a number of luxury items in this system, yet he skimped on a core component. The argument is that the Hyper 212 and DDR3-2133 are poor allocations of resources with no positive result, and those same resources could have been spent elsewhere to better and noticeable effect.


Buying a Hyper 212 is a great choice, after you already have 16GB of ram.

dlj,


The OP never stated what you claim about $50 more anywhere in this thread that I can see (maybe it was deleted?) and the only one I see raising any stink in here is you (per the norm).


There has been bench after bench that show there is almost no gain for gaming by going over 8gig of ram and that parts list looks mostly like a gaming rig to me.


The honest truth is that even if he added another 8 gig of ram he would rarely notice a difference which equates to miliseconds in most cases (unless doing video editing and things of that nature, sure there are situations/apps that benefit from it but the truth is the majority simply do not need it).


With that said... who are you to constantly tell everyone they are wrong and made poor choices or how they should have spent their own money, you come across as someone that is just bitter all day long every single day (smile once in a while).


The know it all attitude does not serve anyone well, many of us here know more about many things but offer assistance without blatantly insulting people (you should try it).


I think I am seeing a motive here but I don't want to call you on it because it will serve no purpose, so I'll take the high road on that one and hope you can take some constructive advice.


Try to knock a bit of that chip off your shoulder and maybe people will have more respect for your knowledge/opinions.



Regards,

Jason
 
#17 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by darklordjames  /t/1462316/my-new-gaming-htpc-rig-comments-advice-welcomed#post_23059564


Nobody here is advocating instability, but these things aren't the fragile snowflakes that you guys apparently think that they are. Modern CPUs are rated to work in the 80C range. Running an idle of 45C and a load of 65C on the stock cooler is not remotely enough of an extreme to effect stability or failure before the thing is useless simply due to age. We have graveyards of Pentium 4s sitting out there, Intel's hottest chip ever. They are sitting in those graveyards because they are dog slow, not because they were eaten by heat.

Who's to say he won't OC it more now that he has some proper cooling? You're crazy if you think that 10C is nothing. Also you have no idea how many P4's crapped out due to heat, so why even reference it. I was building at that times and it was a HUGE problem. I don't know where you get your info but you may want to think about getting another source.
 
#21 ·
"Is there any benchamarks proving that 16gb will be better then having 8gb.. I am just trying to find out of there is any merit in what you are saying as I myself Only got 8gb thinking more would be a waste and from what I have heard it would be??"


Except in cases where the game failed to load a resource early enough due to ram constraints and has to go all the way out to storage at render time, more ram does not make framerates better. What it does is let WIndows precache files for you, and more importantly, hit the swap file a whole lot less. At 8GB Windows hits the swapfile all the time, and every time it is an emergency. At 16GB Windows gets to dump to swap at its leisure. It's the difference between waiting for swap activity to finish, and not noticing it ever taking place. It absolutely effects load times.


With 16GB Windows also has enough space to precache titles that you commonly play. This results in shorter initial loads for games, and shorter loads while inside the title. As I keep saying around here, even loading in to ram from an SSD takes time. Having the data already there before you know you want to use it takes zero time. "Zero" time always wins over "some" time. It would be stupid to argue otherwise.



"I think I am seeing a motive here but I don't want to call you on it because it will serve no purpose"


Oh man! What's my secret agenda? Come on, go ahead and share your conspiracy theories with us!
Is it that I bought 32GB of ram and you think I have some sort of buyer's remorse over it? That's the best thing I can think of.




At the desktop, Chrome and Steam open. 9GB in use. That scenario commonly fluctuates between 9 and 11GB. Already sitting beyond the 8GB limit that you guys love so much, what happens when I go to load a game? Well, a good chunk of Skyrim, TF2 and Guild Wars 2 is sitting in that 14GB of cached data, so they load up extremely fast. If Windows decides to dump some stuff to swap, it does it later, after I'm already shooting Blu in the face. What would happen on an 8GB system? Hold on! We gotta wait for a bunch of crap to dump to swap. Now we gotta load it in from storage. Now we can think about actually starting the game. Oh, you're quitting the game? Hold on! Gotta grab a bunch of stuff from swap again. We didn't have enough room to just leave it in ram while you were playing. At 16GB? It probably never left ram.


As I've repeatedly admitted, 32GB is totally a little bit overkill, but only by about 8GB. 24GB is a stupid amount of ram to have in a system, and 16GB is too small for my personal use, hence, 32. For most people? 16GB will be fine, and is a great improvement in the user experience over 8GB.


It is really simple math that we are talking about here guys. Nine apples is more than an eight apple bucket will hold. You want to put another three apples in there on top of the nine apples you're already trying to cram in to this small bucket? Those apples do not fit.
 
#22 ·
Sorry dlj but you are manipulating those mem numbers or there is something wrong with your pc.


I am on here typing this in IE while Crysis 3 (in game), MPC-HC (active 1080p madVR/SVP/ReClock ), Serviio (active 1080p stream), Steam (Big Picture), MSI afterburner, ZoneAlarm, Avast and I still have over 50% of my memory free (of 12 gig).


Please let it go, you simply do not know as much as you like to think you do and there is no reason to argue.


FULL STOP.


Jason
 
#23 ·
"Sorry dlj but you are manipulating those mem numbers"


Dude. I was joking about the conspiracy theories. I didn't expect to just come straight out and admit that that's what you think is going on. Duuuude...


The only thing "wrong" with my system is that I'm giving Windows as much ram as it actually wants. Your definition of "wrong" must be different from the rest of ours.


You see 50% free on 12GB? Good! You know why? Windows has worked really hard to dump to swap. You'd see the exact same thing on 2GB and be just about as correct in your assessment of the situation.
 
#24 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by darklordjames  /t/1462316/my-new-gaming-htpc-rig-comments-advice-welcomed#post_23061897


"Sorry dlj but you are manipulating those mem numbers"


Dude. I was joking about the conspiracy theories. I didn't expect to just come straight out and admit that that's what you think is going on. Duuuude...


The only thing "wrong" with my system is that I'm giving Windows as much ram as it actually wants. Your definition of "wrong" must be different from the rest of ours.


You see 50% free on 12GB? Good! You know why? Windows has worked really hard to dump to swap. You'd see the exact same thing on 2GB and be just about as correct in your assessment of the situation.

That's not what I think at all actually and I never stated it was.



There is a reason why 'your assessment' is different from the vast majority... because it simply is not accurate, it's just your opinion that anyone without 16GB of ram has an incapable pc.


I have a friend that is a Pro gamer, guess what... he uses 8 gig of ultra fast mem and a liquid cooled PC (I'll let him know DLJ said he's missing out without that extra ram).



Aside from all that my main point was why are you always so grumpy and just plain rude to people?


I mean when they deserve it that's one thing (see irony) but you are just constantly pissy.



I have already had several PM's from others here saying they agree and thanks for speaking up.


Regardless of what each of us think we know there are always others out there that know more, brush some of that huge chip off my friend.


Jason
 
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