New build questions

On 23/02/2014 10:33 AM, Mark wrote:
I've done two sample configurations, one Intel, one AMD:

http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/2Yz50
http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/2YyCY

Comments welcome :-)

(I might go for faster memory on the AMD version BTW)

(1) Not sure why you're going with the Noctua CPU cooler on either
system, they should come with their own stock cooler. Unless you're
looking for something a little quieter, or you're willing to overclock.
I don't know if the Noctua cooler will be quieter than the stock one, so
you may have checked into that one, which we're not aware of.

(2) The 650W PSU seems like overkill, if you look at both systems, they
are given an estimated power draw, and both systems show less than 300W
(AMD=218W, Intel=268W). About the only time it might make sense is if
you're planning to use this like a server and have lots of hard drives
attached to it, or if you're going to be doing multi-GPU's in Crossfire
or SLI. I'd say a 400W PSU should be sufficient.

(3) You've chosen a 1TB HDD as your secondary storage. I would suggest
going whole-hog and going with a 3-4TB HDD. Maybe by saving the money on
the cooler and the PSU. I just recently got a 3TB, and even though
specifications-wise it doesn't seem all that different any previous HDD
I had before, it's at least twice as fast as any other HDD in my system.
In fact, it's nearly half as fast my SSD! I was seeing 200 Mb/s
throughput at most file sizes. The data density that they're getting
into these newer 3 or 4TB drives is amazing, and that's how they get the
high throughput, just with more data density. In fact, the 4TB drives
have actually had their rotational rates slowed down from 7200 to 5900 RPM.

Yousuf Khan

On Sun, 23 Feb 2014 13:49:06 -0500, Yousuf Khan
wrote:

Thanks again :-)

I'll respond to both yours and Paul's comments in this post.

On 23/02/2014 10:33 AM, Mark wrote:
I've done two sample configurations, one Intel, one AMD:

http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/2Yz50
http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/2YyCY

Comments welcome :-)

(I might go for faster memory on the AMD version BTW)

(1) Not sure why you're going with the Noctua CPU cooler on either
system, they should come with their own stock cooler. Unless you're
looking for something a little quieter, or you're willing to overclock.
I don't know if the Noctua cooler will be quieter than the stock one, so
you may have checked into that one, which we're not aware of.

I picked this cooler since it is very quiet. I think both the Intel
and the AMD CPUs do come with a cooler. I've no idea about the noise
levels from the AMD stock cooler. The Intel ones I have are both
quiet (mostly) but do get noiser when spinning faster. And I guess
the newer CPUs will require more cooling than my C2D.

(2) The 650W PSU seems like overkill, if you look at both systems, they
are given an estimated power draw, and both systems show less than 300W
(AMD=218W, Intel=268W). About the only time it might make sense is if
you're planning to use this like a server and have lots of hard drives
attached to it, or if you're going to be doing multi-GPU's in Crossfire
or SLI. I'd say a 400W PSU should be sufficient.

I know the 650W PSU is overkill. I do want a (semi)modular PSU from a
good brand and there seems a lack of choice of lower power output
supplies right now. I'll keep checking. I don't intend to run
multiple graphics cards or fit loads of HDDs. Maybe a Corsair
CX430/500M would be a good alternative.

(3) You've chosen a 1TB HDD as your secondary storage. I would suggest
going whole-hog and going with a 3-4TB HDD. Maybe by saving the money on
the cooler and the PSU. I just recently got a 3TB, and even though
specifications-wise it doesn't seem all that different any previous HDD
I had before, it's at least twice as fast as any other HDD in my system.
In fact, it's nearly half as fast my SSD! I was seeing 200 Mb/s
throughput at most file sizes. The data density that they're getting
into these newer 3 or 4TB drives is amazing, and that's how they get the
high throughput, just with more data density. In fact, the 4TB drives
have actually had their rotational rates slowed down from 7200 to 5900 RPM.

TBH the HDD was a random choice, mainly to give me an estimate of
total cost. If I can save on the cooler and/or PSU I'll probably just
pocket the difference. The whole build is a little more expensive
than I expected anyway. The SSD for the primary drive should give me
plenty of speed and I am going to finish building a full server as
well for storage[1]. I'll get some big drives for the that.

I picked the HD 7770 for the Intel board because I believe the Intel
integrated graphics won't be adequate for the games I play (e.g.
Skyrim). The 7770 needs relatively little power compared to its
performance and it has axial fans (which are quiet).

According to some benchmarks memory speed makes a big difference to
the performance of the AMD APU so it is probably worth spending the
extra to get DDR3-2133. I haven't seen any similar benchmarks for
Intel CPUs.

The Gigabyte FM2+ motherboards do seem to ship with an old BIOS which
won't recognise the Kaveri processors so I would probably go for an
ASUS board instead. Owing to the drive recognition issues on the
Intel board I might reconsider this one too.

My current feeling is I will go for the AMD option since I don't a see
a big advantage (for me) to pay the extra for the Intel one. Both
options will be much faster than my current PC.

[1] I bought an HP microserver but have scavenaged the HDDs to replace
failed drives in other PCs.

On 22/02/2014 5:24 AM, Mark wrote:
On Fri, 21 Feb 2014 14:01:40 -0500, Yousuf Khan
wrote:
Split the difference, get an Intel processor with an AMD GPU. You'll
still get the advantages of Mantle.
But not HSA?

I don't know, I think it requires that the GPU & CPU conform to a
specific memory bus sharing protocol.

Yousuf Khan

On Sunday, February 23, 2014 5:40:48 PM UTC-5, Mark wrote:
I picked this cooler since it is very quiet. I think both the Intel
and the AMD CPUs do come with a cooler.

I have a different Noctua cooler, and I would highly recommend them. They are significantly quieter than stock coolers. In fact, stock coolers seem as loud as airplane engines in comparison to very good CPU coolers like Noctuas.

I know the 650W PSU is overkill. I do want a (semi)modular PSU from a
good brand and there seems a lack of choice of lower power output
supplies right now.

I have a different SeaSonic PSU, and again, I would highly recommend SeaSonic. Modular PSUs make building a computer much easier than non-modular PSUs, and the fan on my SeaSonic does not even turn on when under half load, making it completely quiet, which is the reason I also went with a bigger than needed PSU.
--
// T.Hsu

On 23/02/2014 5:40 PM, Mark wrote:
On Sun, 23 Feb 2014 13:49:06 -0500, Yousuf Khan
wrote:
(1) Not sure why you're going with the Noctua CPU cooler on either
system, they should come with their own stock cooler. Unless you're
looking for something a little quieter, or you're willing to overclock.
I don't know if the Noctua cooler will be quieter than the stock one, so
you may have checked into that one, which we're not aware of.

I picked this cooler since it is very quiet. I think both the Intel
and the AMD CPUs do come with a cooler. I've no idea about the noise
levels from the AMD stock cooler. The Intel ones I have are both
quiet (mostly) but do get noiser when spinning faster. And I guess
the newer CPUs will require more cooling than my C2D.

Well, all stock coolers that come with the processors are chosen so as
to be adequate to properly cool the processors that they are shipped with.

I've used nothing but stock coolers on all of my processors, not really
had any problems with their noise levels. When the case is closed up,
it's all muffled inside anyways.

I know the 650W PSU is overkill. I do want a (semi)modular PSU from a
good brand and there seems a lack of choice of lower power output
supplies right now. I'll keep checking. I don't intend to run
multiple graphics cards or fit loads of HDDs. Maybe a Corsair
CX430/500M would be a good alternative.

I personally have a Corsair 750W PSU, but I also have 6 HDD's, 1 SSD,
and an HD 6870 inside.

I had a 600W PSU before that, but it was proving to be inadequate for
the job, believe it or not. But not because it didn't have enough
overall power. One thing you should be aware of is that EU has some
pointless nanny-state power safety standards for PSU's. The power is
split over multiple rails in a PSU, and the main part of the wattage is
sent over the +12V rails. Notice I said "+12V rails" as in plural? There
isn't just a single +12V rail there could be multiple rails. The reason
for this is because of an EU requirement not to send more than 20A
through each rail, so PSU manufacturers had to split up the +12V into
multi-rails to make sure that no more than 20A went through each rail.
So you'll see PSU's advertised as triple-rail, quad-rail, etc. For
years, manufacturers sending to North America just followed the European
standards, rather than make separate models for NA and EU. So my 600W
was an EU standard PSU, which had quad-rails. It turned out that each
rail went to feed different parts of the system separately, so for
example one rail might feed the motherboard, another rail was for the
video card, another rail would feed the hard drives, fans, and leds,
etc. So even if one some of the components had plenty of power going to
them, other components didn't have enough. I used to find that my hard
drives were occasionally crashing. It took me several months to figure
this out. So I sold off the old 600W, and bought a 750W. By the time I
bought the 750W, PSU designs had changed, they were no longer adhering
to the silly EU design standards, and they now came with single-rail
+12V. So if these sorts of PSU's were around before, I wouldn't have
even needed a 600W, a single 500W would've been sufficient to power my
whole system. But since I was upgrading anyways, I figured it made no
sense to go backwards in power, so I went upwards to 750W.

I picked the HD 7770 for the Intel board because I believe the Intel
integrated graphics won't be adequate for the games I play (e.g.
Skyrim). The 7770 needs relatively little power compared to its
performance and it has axial fans (which are quiet).

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim system requirements | Can I Run The Elder
Scrolls V: Skyrim
http://systemrequirementslab.com/cyr...rim/11231/?p=a

Skyrim is not a very difficult game to run. Some integrated Intel
graphics might be sufficient to run it, such as the Intel GTX3+ graphics
in some of the high-end i7's.

According to some benchmarks memory speed makes a big difference to
the performance of the AMD APU so it is probably worth spending the
extra to get DDR3-2133. I haven't seen any similar benchmarks for
Intel CPUs.

Yeah, that's probably true. The Kaveri supports some overclocked
editions of DDR3 RAM that the Intel systems don't. Intel systems top out
at PC-1800, whereas the Kaveri goes upto PC-2133 XMP or AMP. Apparently
the Kaveri's GPU wants as much speed as it can get.

My current feeling is I will go for the AMD option since I don't a see
a big advantage (for me) to pay the extra for the Intel one. Both
options will be much faster than my current PC.

Interesting.

Yousuf Khan

On Mon, 24 Feb 2014 01:10:27 -0500, Yousuf Khan
wrote:

On 23/02/2014 5:40 PM, Mark wrote:
On Sun, 23 Feb 2014 13:49:06 -0500, Yousuf Khan
wrote:
(1) Not sure why you're going with the Noctua CPU cooler on either
system, they should come with their own stock cooler. Unless you're
looking for something a little quieter, or you're willing to overclock.
I don't know if the Noctua cooler will be quieter than the stock one, so
you may have checked into that one, which we're not aware of.

I picked this cooler since it is very quiet. I think both the Intel
and the AMD CPUs do come with a cooler. I've no idea about the noise
levels from the AMD stock cooler. The Intel ones I have are both
quiet (mostly) but do get noiser when spinning faster. And I guess
the newer CPUs will require more cooling than my C2D.

Well, all stock coolers that come with the processors are chosen so as
to be adequate to properly cool the processors that they are shipped with.

I'm not concerned about the ability to cool. It's the noise levels. I
have 3 Intel PCs with stock coolers already: one is very quiet, and
the others make some noise. This seems to be entirely down to the
speed of the fan.

I've used nothing but stock coolers on all of my processors, not really
had any problems with their noise levels. When the case is closed up,
it's all muffled inside anyways.

I can defintely (sometimes) hear an Intel stock cooler outside the
case here.

I know the 650W PSU is overkill. I do want a (semi)modular PSU from a
good brand and there seems a lack of choice of lower power output
supplies right now. I'll keep checking. I don't intend to run
multiple graphics cards or fit loads of HDDs. Maybe a Corsair
CX430/500M would be a good alternative.

I personally have a Corsair 750W PSU, but I also have 6 HDD's, 1 SSD,
and an HD 6870 inside.

--snip part about multirail PSUs--

I guess this means that all the reviews for PSUs I have read are
invalid owing to the different designs here in the EU. :-(

I picked the HD 7770 for the Intel board because I believe the Intel
integrated graphics won't be adequate for the games I play (e.g.
Skyrim). The 7770 needs relatively little power compared to its
performance and it has axial fans (which are quiet).

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim system requirements | Can I Run The Elder
Scrolls V: Skyrim
http://systemrequirementslab.com/cyr...rim/11231/?p=a

I had to upgrade my 7600GT card for a HD6670 to run Skyrim. From what
I understand the Intel integrated graphics is about as fast as the
7600GT (ignoring i7s). If this is true then I would need a dedicated
card for Skyrim. Anyway I might buy some more games if I have a fast
enough PC.

Skyrim is not a very difficult game to run. Some integrated Intel
graphics might be sufficient to run it, such as the Intel GTX3+ graphics
in some of the high-end i7's.

According to some benchmarks memory speed makes a big difference to
the performance of the AMD APU so it is probably worth spending the
extra to get DDR3-2133. I haven't seen any similar benchmarks for
Intel CPUs.

Yeah, that's probably true. The Kaveri supports some overclocked
editions of DDR3 RAM that the Intel systems don't. Intel systems top out
at PC-1800, whereas the Kaveri goes upto PC-2133 XMP or AMP. Apparently
the Kaveri's GPU wants as much speed as it can get.

My current feeling is I will go for the AMD option since I don't a see
a big advantage (for me) to pay the extra for the Intel one. Both
options will be much faster than my current PC.

Interesting.

:-)
--
(\__/) M.
(='.'=) If a man stands in a forest and no woman is around
(")_(") is he still wrong?

On 24/02/2014 5:30 AM, Mark wrote:
I had to upgrade my 7600GT card for a HD6670 to run Skyrim. From what
I understand the Intel integrated graphics is about as fast as the
7600GT (ignoring i7s). If this is true then I would need a dedicated
card for Skyrim. Anyway I might buy some more games if I have a fast
enough PC.

Well, if you had an HD 6670 already, wouldn't you just transfer that
your new computer? Or are you planning on keeping the existing computer?

The 7600GT is about a 7 or 8 years old now, circa 2006 or 2007.

Yousuf Khan

On Mon, 24 Feb 2014 16:34:45 -0500, Yousuf Khan
wrote:

On 24/02/2014 5:30 AM, Mark wrote:
I had to upgrade my 7600GT card for a HD6670 to run Skyrim. From what
I understand the Intel integrated graphics is about as fast as the
7600GT (ignoring i7s). If this is true then I would need a dedicated
card for Skyrim. Anyway I might buy some more games if I have a fast
enough PC.

Well, if you had an HD 6670 already, wouldn't you just transfer that
your new computer? Or are you planning on keeping the existing computer?

I intend to keep the old computer. It will replace an even older one
that's currently in use for the family. Also it's the only PC I have
with Firewire and I still need this.

The 7600GT is about a 7 or 8 years old now, circa 2006 or 2007.

Yes. However it was adequate for all the games I play, except Skyrim.
--
(\__/) M.
(='.'=) If a man stands in a forest and no woman is around
(")_(") is he still wrong?

Just in case anyone's interested here is the final parts list:

CoolerMaster Silencio 650 case
AMD A10-7850K CPU
Gigabyte GA-G1.Sniper A88X motherboard
Kingston HyperX 2*8GB DDR3-2133 RAM
Hitachi Ultrastar 7K4000 2TB HDD
BeQuiet L8 CM 430W PSU
Samsung 840 EVO 250GB SSD
Pioneer BDR-209DBK BD/DVD/CD Burner

On 14/03/2014 1:25 PM, Mark wrote:
Just in case anyone's interested here is the final parts list:

CoolerMaster Silencio 650 case
AMD A10-7850K CPU
Gigabyte GA-G1.Sniper A88X motherboard
Kingston HyperX 2*8GB DDR3-2133 RAM
Hitachi Ultrastar 7K4000 2TB HDD
BeQuiet L8 CM 430W PSU
Samsung 840 EVO 250GB SSD
Pioneer BDR-209DBK BD/DVD/CD Burner

Interesting! So you totally did away with a separate GPU, then? It's
like a few years ago when people stopped buying home phones, and just
made do with cell phones. People from earlier times would go, how can do
that?

Yousuf Khan