New PC build!
Nov. 28th, 2011 12:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
philmophlegmI built myself a new gaming PC over the weekend. Kept the existing case, monitor, keyboard, mouse and speakers, so it doesn't actually look new at all, but the important bits are all brand new. (I did dust them a bit...)
Intel Core i7-2700K*
Asus Maximus IV Gene-Z Intel Z68 motherboard**
8gb Corsair XMS RAM 1600-9-9-9-24***
Geforce GTX580****
Corsair M4 256gb Solid State Disk*****
Samsung Spinpoint F3 1tb hard disk******
Windows 7 64-bit
BeQuiet Dark Rock Advanced CPU cooler
BeQuiet Dark Power Pro PSU (I had this sitting around in a box, as any of you who were at Wightfrag may remember...)
Relatively trouble-free build. Biggest problem was that the height of the CPU cooler was such that even in my frankly enormous case, it wouldn't actually fit unless I removed the nice, big (200mm), quiet fan mounted on the left side panel of the case. I was able to fit another fan (a 120mm job) in the bottom of the case to partially compensate but I was slightly concerned that either noise or temperatures or both would be higher. (Bigger fans are quieter than smaller ones since to shift a given volume of air in a given period, they don't have to spin so fast, and it is the spinning that makes the noise.)
I needn't have worried. I left it on overnight number crunching through prime numbers on all of the processor cores (a traditional stability test for new PCs) and it's still going having reached maximum temperatures of 45degrees C on the CPU and 33degrees C on the motherboard. This suggests plenty of overclocking potential if I feel the need.
3D Mark testing initially suggested that the machine was not quite as fast as would be expected, but the smallest of overclocks to the GPU has reversed that and again, there seems to be plenty of headroom.
Fingers crossed (and famous last words) but this is looking like one of my more straightforward builds.
* Very new CPU - only actually came out in the last fortnight. Currently the fastest Sandybridge processor, at least until the new Sandybridge-E CPUs are released.
** A Micro-ATX motherboard. It's small, but really has everything I need, and has the usual Asus build quality. (Asus: definitely one of my favoured component manufacturers. Worth paying extra for.) Also, since I intend to build a media centre PC sometime next year which will also have a Micro-ATX mobo, having one in my main gaming PC now will mean that when the gaming PC gets upgraded in a few years, I can move the mobo to the media centre box.
*** 1600 seems the sweet spot between performance and price. Also because of the size of the CPU cooler I went for low-profile DIMMs (i.e. without massive heatsinks) because I was worried that one of the DIMMs would need to sit under the cooler. I was right. RAM with big heatsinks would not have fitted.
**** Specifically an MSI GeForce GTX 580 OC Twin FrozR II 1536MB. That's a slightly pre-overclocked card with a custom cooler. The 580 is the fastest graphics card you can get with a single GPU on board. This build I decided against two cards in SLI or one card with two GPUs and have taken the single high-end GPU route.
***** My first SSD! And big enough to contain Windows and all my Steam games. First impression - this is the fastest booting PC I have ever seen. From power on to Windows desktop (including typing in the login password) in not very many seconds.
****** Files and stuff will go on the big hard disk. When I initially specced this machine, this hard disk was priced at £40. In the two weeks between speccing and buying, the price went up to £120. This is because of the floods in Thailand, which have disrupted supplies of a single crucial component. There is now a worldwide shortage of hard disks.
Intel Core i7-2700K*
Asus Maximus IV Gene-Z Intel Z68 motherboard**
8gb Corsair XMS RAM 1600-9-9-9-24***
Geforce GTX580****
Corsair M4 256gb Solid State Disk*****
Samsung Spinpoint F3 1tb hard disk******
Windows 7 64-bit
BeQuiet Dark Rock Advanced CPU cooler
BeQuiet Dark Power Pro PSU (I had this sitting around in a box, as any of you who were at Wightfrag may remember...)
Relatively trouble-free build. Biggest problem was that the height of the CPU cooler was such that even in my frankly enormous case, it wouldn't actually fit unless I removed the nice, big (200mm), quiet fan mounted on the left side panel of the case. I was able to fit another fan (a 120mm job) in the bottom of the case to partially compensate but I was slightly concerned that either noise or temperatures or both would be higher. (Bigger fans are quieter than smaller ones since to shift a given volume of air in a given period, they don't have to spin so fast, and it is the spinning that makes the noise.)
I needn't have worried. I left it on overnight number crunching through prime numbers on all of the processor cores (a traditional stability test for new PCs) and it's still going having reached maximum temperatures of 45degrees C on the CPU and 33degrees C on the motherboard. This suggests plenty of overclocking potential if I feel the need.
3D Mark testing initially suggested that the machine was not quite as fast as would be expected, but the smallest of overclocks to the GPU has reversed that and again, there seems to be plenty of headroom.
Fingers crossed (and famous last words) but this is looking like one of my more straightforward builds.
* Very new CPU - only actually came out in the last fortnight. Currently the fastest Sandybridge processor, at least until the new Sandybridge-E CPUs are released.
** A Micro-ATX motherboard. It's small, but really has everything I need, and has the usual Asus build quality. (Asus: definitely one of my favoured component manufacturers. Worth paying extra for.) Also, since I intend to build a media centre PC sometime next year which will also have a Micro-ATX mobo, having one in my main gaming PC now will mean that when the gaming PC gets upgraded in a few years, I can move the mobo to the media centre box.
*** 1600 seems the sweet spot between performance and price. Also because of the size of the CPU cooler I went for low-profile DIMMs (i.e. without massive heatsinks) because I was worried that one of the DIMMs would need to sit under the cooler. I was right. RAM with big heatsinks would not have fitted.
**** Specifically an MSI GeForce GTX 580 OC Twin FrozR II 1536MB. That's a slightly pre-overclocked card with a custom cooler. The 580 is the fastest graphics card you can get with a single GPU on board. This build I decided against two cards in SLI or one card with two GPUs and have taken the single high-end GPU route.
***** My first SSD! And big enough to contain Windows and all my Steam games. First impression - this is the fastest booting PC I have ever seen. From power on to Windows desktop (including typing in the login password) in not very many seconds.
****** Files and stuff will go on the big hard disk. When I initially specced this machine, this hard disk was priced at £40. In the two weeks between speccing and buying, the price went up to £120. This is because of the floods in Thailand, which have disrupted supplies of a single crucial component. There is now a worldwide shortage of hard disks.
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Date: 2011-11-28 02:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-28 08:05 pm (UTC)How many FPS will you get in Football Manager now?
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Date: 2011-11-28 10:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-28 11:11 pm (UTC)