COmputer setup

[quote=Searz][quote=SkidmarkD] 1: I'm fully aware of the specs of the new NVidia cards.[/quote] 'Specs' aren't everything. Architecture is :P [quote]GTX 680 = €500-€575 GTX 770 = €450-€550 5% performance increase for less money, how can you say no to that?[/quote] Has the pricing even been confirmed yet? (not that I doubt it, but nothing is certain before confirmation) Still, only reason 680 is so expensive is because they've kept the price up on purpose. HD7970/7950 have dropped significantly and are considerably better price/performance. [quote]I like the look. Only reason I'm thinkng of getting it. :D There are a few others I've looked at, but the coloring didn't fit, ie clashed between items.[/quote] How often are you looking at the inside of your PC? :P Functionality trumps looks any day of the week. Seriously, you really should give the motherboards with proper sound chips a look, because I know how bad improper sound chips can be. [quote]Leaking watercoolers are common in self built solutions, quite rare in the complete sets. thinking about it cause it's a more elegant solution that the huge 1kg block of metal sitting on the CPU.[/quote] You'll still have that huge 1kg block of metal, just someplace else. The benefit of water over good air-cooling is pretty minimal, especially with pre-built solutions like Corsair's H80/100. (the cooling of the best water coolers is roughly equal to that of the best air coolers) Any water cooling has problems really. Either in price or in functionality. That's the sad truth. [quote]The HD 4870 wasn't released until mid 2008, more than a year after I assembled my computer. Your computer, given that it orignally came with a HD4870, is less than 5 years old.[/quote] Ah, that sounds about right. So 5 years this summer then. It was close enough for a guess :3 [quote]I could wait for the next gen ATI cards, but then not a few months later NVidia would release even better cards, a few months later ATI would do the same. At a certain point, you're gonna have to bite the bullet and buy a systems that's gonna be outdated 6 months later. I'm gonna do it now, when both Intel and NVidia are releasing new/updated hardware at roughly the same time.[/quote] Yes and no. According to roadmaps from Intel they're not going to release a new architecture(just possibly a "shrink") for the desktop platform for two years after Haswell. They're going to focus heavily on mobile instead. So now's a perfect time to grab a new CPU.[/quote]

[quote=Phil Collins]Searz, what do you feel about Corsair keyboards/headsets/mice? As for my setup... AMD FX 8120 8-core processor CPU AMD Radeon HD 7670 2GB GPU 16GB DDR3 Memory 2TB Hard Drive 300W Power supply Corsair Vengeance 1500 Headset Corsair Vengeance K90 Keyboard Corsair Vengeance M65 Mouse[/quote]

[quote=Searz][quote=Phil Collins] Searz, what do you feel about Corsair keyboards/headsets/mice?[/quote] They're kind of hit and miss, but the general quality should be pretty good at the very least. They've made a few headsets with bad sound and all wireless ones (V2000) pick up noise and has worse sound than most wired ones. But their Vengeance series has [i]okay[/i] sound. Can't vouch for mic quality, but the build quality should be good and okay sound for the price they're selling them at makes them a pretty attractive choice. You've made a pretty good purchase in headsets. They kinda failed with their first series of keyboards since they mixed rubber dome and mechanical switches. A lot of people got very annoyed and confused by that. Their newer releases were better in that regard. They also seem to be favoring separate macro keys when most other manufacturers integrate macro functionality into the normal keys on the keyboard. Separate keys for Macros seem pretty pointless to me honestly, and they also make your keyboard bigger, so that's a definite con in my opinion. Their K70 seems like their best model right now with a set of nice functions and good looks, despite being a bit on the expensive side. Seeing as you've got a keyboard from their first series, you've made a less than optimal purchase. Also, the jarring difference between the "MMO-keys" at the side and the silver is pretty bad, in my personal opinion. Mice is a big part personal preference. I've tried a couple of mice myself, but I'm having a lot of trouble with size as my hands are very large. Most mice are simply too small for me to hold comfortably, so I've been sticking to the Logitech MX518/G400 design. As for your mouse, I don't think there's much objectively wrong with it and if you like the way it feels in your hand then you've likely made a good purchase. (but it helps to be able to compare how different mice feel in your hand, if you've only used one gaming mouse then it's hard to know if the shape is any good :P) [quote]300W Power supply[/quote] Lol, I've got a 350W PSU lying around among my old parts.[/quote]

[quote=Searz][quote=SkidmarkD] Akshully, performance is. :D[/quote] Well, yea, and it's the architecture that decides the overall performance :P [quote]From the reviews I've seen, the GTX 670 is on the same level as the HD7970. Some games scoring higher, others lower. Some builds scoring better than others. Going from current pricing, which I'm following on a bi-daily basis, the MSI HD 7970 Lightning Boost, delivering the best performance atm, is still ~€70 more expensive than the ASUS GTX 670. It's the only HD 7970 I considered, cause price/performance, the ASUS or eVGA GTX 670's outperform the other HD 7970's. (ie better priced for similar performance)[/quote] Old reviews don't tell the whole story. AMD has made radical performance increases with their drivers. 7970 performs overall just below GTX680, better in some games and worse in some. The only problem right now is that AMD drivers have bad rendering times (it's a complicated phenomena), but AMD has been working on drivers to solve that for a while now and it's getting a lot better in the beta drivers they've released. Oh, and DO NOT buy overclocked cards if they cost more than the normal. It's a huge waste of money. Buy a normal one, spend 5minutes overclocking your card and you'll have the same if not better performance than the overclocked one. Also worth noting is that this generation of architechture in AMD cards overclock a lot better than Nvidia's do. [quote]at least once a month, when I clean it.[/quote] That's a lot of cleaning O.o I had that case before and I cleaned it like once a year and that was more than enough. Define R4 has dust filters, so now I don't even need to do it once a year :D [quote]As for sound: I don't have speakers. I do have the Logitech G35 headset. Since it uses USB, any and all sound chips/cards are useless.[/quote] Oh damn. Yea, that's true. Not only that, but your headset has also been pretty much slammed by professional sound-reviewers in the audio department D: [quote]The Noctua NH-D14 and the Be Quiet Dark Rock pro 2 are the only ones able to compete with watercoolers. Other air coolers run hotter.[/quote] No. Have a look at Thermalright Silver Arrow. It beats both Corsair H80i and H100i hands down in terms of dBA/degrees. Sound level is very important when it comes to cooling too, something many hardware sites either don't have the tools to measure or just don't bother with for some reason. [spoiler=here's a good graph on that(er.. it needs to have a white background to see the text so download it and open it)][img=http://www.sweclockers.com/image/diagram/3371?k=57a8e7c4377ab9d01610566fed6cfa8f][/spoiler] [quote]For a normal user, watercooling is just a more expensive way of getting more noise. Once you start overclocking, then you'll start appreciating the watercooling just a bit more.[/quote] Well, I'm personally overclocking 0.8GHz(to 3.8) and sitting on temps of 20°C on idle and 40°C on load, with an air cooler, all at a very low sound level. Heck, my 7200RPM HDDs easily make more sound than all the fans in my case (4fans, counting the one on the CPU cooler).[/quote]

[quote=Searz][quote=SkidmarkD] We obviously use different reviewers. Yours doesn't state socket, nor voltage, nor load, nor fan speed settings. In none of the reviews I've checked can I find a temp of 61°C for that cooler. Heck, I have a hard time finding any review that has the same temp readings as the graph you posted.[/quote] Well, it obviously won't state any settings since I'm only linking to an image, not the review >.> The review is in Swedish (on the biggest hardware site in Sweden, it's a very, very trustworthy site), so I thought it'd be useless to link it. I can easily find most of those numbers for you though. Intel Core i7 2600K @ 4,6 GHz (1,35 V) 1300RPM(12V) From the graph you can see that the 'Silver Arrow' has considerably better cooling per sound level, but if you've got problems with your ears it might not matter that much in the end. Still, it does prove that air-cooling can be just as effective as closed watercooling systems. Fun fact: 'Silver Arrow' weighs 800grams compared to the 1200 of Noctua D-14 and it also performs slightly better. Damn, that cooler is beastly. I almost wanna buy it, despite being quite happy with my current one. [spoiler=not entirely certain of the validity of the review, but I doubt there's any reason for distrust][img=http://www.xbitlabs.com/images/coolers/thermalright-silver-arrow/24_diagrt%28xbt%29.png][/spoiler] [quote]Seeing the huge differences in reviews, one can say they ain't binding. One review might show this one is better, another review might show that one is better, but when several reviews show similar numbers, it's worth looking into. The GTX 670 jumped out, pure on price/performance. I'm expecting the GTX 770 to do the same. (first reviews will tell more)[/quote] Well, yes, but you'll need to consider the fact that some hardware sites use old numbers to compare the newer cards to. And sometimes there's just a big boost in performance simply from a driver update. Here's a relevant example: HD7970/50 and HD7870/50 has very similar architecture and a few months back (shortly after the release of Nvidia's new cards, I believe) they made an update to their drivers that rewrote the entire memory handling, this did introduce a few bugs (such as bad rendering times), but it also improved performance significantly across the board. How many reviewers do you think update their reviews with the new drivers? Most don't, because there's just not enough incentive. Reviews are very time-consuming and updating one with new numbers isn't really a "click-magnet" (clicks=advertising money). That's also why some reviews use old numbers from older cards. Sweclockers talked about this in one of their videos (that's the site that did the fan review) and clearly stated that they always use the latest drivers and new numbers for all the cards in the GPU tests they make. Also, the 770 won't do 'the same'. The 760 will, because they're pretty much pushing the models down one notch in the 700series. [quote]As for the headset: It blocks out sounds. Living near a railway does have its downsides.[/quote] It's called 'closed headphones'. Many manufacturers often refer to it as noise-canceling though. There are three kinds of headphones: closed, half open and open. Closed headphones often have better base and "push"(not entirely sure what word to use here) in the sound, while open have more of a 'natural' sound (and half open are obviously a mix of the two). Closed headphones are the most common, to my knowledge. [quote]After working in high noise environments for over a decade now, my hearing isn't what it used to be. Meaning the quality of sound is mostly lost on me. O_O[/quote] Oh, that changes things significantly, lol. [quote]But the most important thing: It covers the ear entirely. Have had headsets that squish the ears against the head. I'll never ever ever ever buy one of those ever again.[/quote] Yup, those are horrible. But most good ones in the 100$ range and up should not be problematic. [quote]My cat didn't like thick cables. Anything thin, like normal headset/speaker/charger cables got eaten. The thicker ones he didn't touch. Lost 3 headsets, 2 chargers to om nom nommed cables.[/quote] Really? O.o That's one special cat, lol. You should post a picture of the cat :)[/quote]

[quote=Searz][quote=SkidmarkD] RAWR. GTX 780 is for sale. Friggen expensive. Still a better deal than the Titan, but not worth the increased performance over a HD 7970, at least not for that price. Which is €649.90 - €679.90 (eVGA and ASUS)[/quote] Well, duh. I told you that it was a binned Titan chip :P[/quote]

[quote=Arkharan]I feel like this thread is like a huge e-peen fight. MSI GD55-Z77 Intel core i7 3770 (yes not k, I hate my life ): ) Corsair enthusiast series tx750 Antec Nine Hundred Two EVGA Superclocked GTX 660 16 GB ddr3 kingston hyperxblu @1600 cl9(I think) - 2 dimms / 4 Western digital caviar black 1tb OCZ Vertex 4 128gb I think besides the processor that I tbh I should've waited (low on funds, not patient) to get a "k" overall my comp was a good price/performance purchase. I'll throw some money in 2-3 years for a new mobo / processor besides that a graphic card eventually :P.[/quote]

[quote=Pheyniex]Intel Pentium IV 3.6GHz Asus nVidia 6800Gtx Some Asus Socket 773 Motherboard Seagate ~100Gb HDD 2x 1Gb DDR3 RAM (?) don't remember many details.[/quote]

[quote=Satella]>2013 >Still using P4 Y U NO UPGRADE[/quote]

[quote=Pheyniex]^bc it's my 2005 desktop and i still need a fortran code whore.[/quote]