Get your RIGS out for the lads! - Part 4

Theydon Bois

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The last few pics as a recap of part three:

Ok guys, a bit of an update on my gaming rig. AS A long term AMD fanboy it is with a heavy heart I have to announce the purchase of an Nvidia graphics card.

My HD6870 has done sterling work in my PC for the last 8 months, and my original plan was to buy another when prices fell to crossfire. However I have had driver issues with crossfire before, and would prefer a more powerful single card. The 7950 or 7970 would have been my first choice but they are still too dear for me.

Then I spotted a 6/12 old gtx580 for sale on here for £180. With me selling my 6870 for £80 this means it has only cost be £100 to upgrade. What swung it for me is that I am a huge fan of the batman arkham asylum / city games, and being able to play them in their physx'ed up glory was a major draw.

Feeling like a traitor I did the deal and bought the 580. Here are the pics.

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This is the pc as it was with the 6870. I have stripped the watercooling stuff out temporarily which sorting out the graphics cards as it makes it easier to swap cards about.

The H50 is ok but nowhere near as good as my proper WC loop. I have had to back the cpu overclock off to 3.8Ghz while gaming as the H50 can't cope with the temperatures of the 4.0GHz I normally run with the full WC set up, and I was getting hard crashes after an hour of so of gaming :(.

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GTX580 in all its glory. It looks massive compared to the 6870. This model is the MSI twin frozrII OC edition with a factory OC to 800mhz. I am sure I will be able to improve on that once I get it under water.

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580 fitted. I was a bit worried about space in the case but it fits absolutely fine. Driver installation was completely painless, and soon I was up and running.

First impressions of the card are good. I always though these fermi cards were hot and noisy going by their online rep, but this card is neither. at idle is clocks back to a frankly unbelievable 51/135 Mhz at 0.96 V and still runs windows aero fine. Idle temps are mid 30s, full load mid 60s which similar to the 6870. The cooler is also very quiet indeed, I can't hear it at all behind the case fans, though I am having to run them faster than normal to keep the cpu cool.

I finished the last half of crysis 2 on the 580 and even when maxxed out the gameplay was perfect with no slow down at all. It played ok on the 6870 as well, but I had to drop from ultra to extreme settings.

I had a quick game of batman and again it played fine. I haven't got the the heavy physx sections yet but even early on you can see the difference. I still find the game stutters a but in sections, but it seems even people with sli 590s get a bit of this in this game on DX11. I think it is an issue with the game rather than he hardware.

Next mission will be to restore the WC set up and try overclocking the card with afterburner.
 
And a few more:

Just dropped a new drive in so took a photo, got the new 670 too :-D

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^very neat^

Built my new mini-itx machine today. Hoping to do some 'light' gaming on it! :rolleyes:

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All from Ebuyer. Total cost £230.

Once on the desk you can barely see the case at all, or hear it for that matter. I've been using it all day and it really is virtually inaudible.

Actually I haven't checked any temps yet, better make sure the fan is working!!!

For general use it zips along too, very pleased. Haven't tried any games yet but hopefully it's manage a couple of old titles.

In the future I may consider popping in a higher spec CPU and using it to do my HD video encoding jobs. Tbh, I'd probably go with an AMD platform if I did that as the onboard GPU's are meant to be much better for gaming.



Here's a pic with my 1440p Korean import in place

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Are you cack handed too? :D
 
@ rjw3715 - Many thanks for chipping in when you did, you've saved me a small fortune in cables I wouldn't have been able to use. :smashin: Although my PC case has rubber covered holes on the motherboard plate for cable routing, I'm struggling to get it to hide even normal cables never mind extensions. :( A shame really because I really like those premodded braided cables. If I could have pimped the inside of my case out with those it would have looked mint. As it is, it's starting to look like a spaghetti explosion again. :facepalm:
 
I think that was actually a Carlsberg though. :smashin:

And what's wrong with being a leftie! :D
 
I'm a leftie but play with a right handed mouse.

Just what I've always done and feels comfortable and natural.

Strangely play golf right handed too.
 
I'm also a leftie but play with a right handed mouse :p
 
Added my Sammy 830 256Gb SSD the other day, and with my broken internet, have been downloading updates at 9k/sec.

I went to clone the drive, but it threw up an error and I couldnt be bothered to go through it all (working on a load of crap at work, dont need it at home as well) so just did a fresh install.

I also removed the heatsink and reapplied the TIM as it looked like I had applied it with a trowel.

Just before the paint brush and hoover get in there:

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Where the magic happens:

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Theydon Bois said:
Added my Sammy 830 256Gb SSD the other day, and with my broken internet, have been downloading updates at 9k/sec.

I went to clone the drive, but it threw up an error and I couldnt be bothered to go through it all (working on a load of crap at work, dont need it at home as well) so just did a fresh install.

I also removed the heatsink and reapplied the TIM as it looked like I had applied it with a trowel.

Just before the paint brush and hoover get in there:

Where the magic happens:

Very nice. What case is that? And would it fit a dual rad in the top?
 
Corsair 650D, and unsure if it can, but would imagine so. Check to confirm.
 
I hope to add to this thread soon! I should get all of my parts to build my rig over the weekend. I have never done anything like wire tucking so need to watch some video's and give it a shot!
 
Need a new case myself. Looking at inwin ones in microdirect. They seem to have good features and build quality seems good. Any thoughts?
 
Quick update on my mini-itx celeron machine. Just been playing Portal 2 on it (forgot how much I love that game :love:) and it runs remarkably well at 1366x768. :thumbsup:

No AA though that just ruins the fps. I tried to get injectSMAA to work with it but nothing seemed to happen. Shame, maybe it doesn't work with Intel GPUs. :thumbsdow
 
Nice rigs lads, I finally updated my system after 3 years you can find the specs in my sig. Pictures will be coming soon! Next upgrade will probably be a SSD :)

Can anyone tell me what desktop case Bigbud has?
 
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I've got the same headphones only thing I dislike is they are a bit on the quiet side. And I thought my cable management was bad ;)
 
A few pics to follow as I didn't put some up a while back (when I changed case and motherboard).

How it started off: CM690 and Asus P8Z68-V LX to Fractal Design Define XL and Gigabyte GA-Z77-D3H

From:
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To:
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IIRC these were quick phone pics in poor light so apologies for the quality.
 
And now the cooler has been swapped out as well as the PSU. Cooler has gone from the Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro to the Noctua NH-U12P and the PSU has gone from the FSP CM Aurum 650W to the Seasonic SS-1000XP.

Freezer Pro 7:
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Finished, with the Noctua in:
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Big difference, very tidy build in the Define:thumbsup:
What's the difference like between the Arctic & the Noctua coolers Ash?
 
I though cack handed was when you were left handed?
 

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