Partial Upgrade?
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[sYn]
[Moderator] Elitist



Posts: 8374

PostPosted: Wed, 14th Mar 2012 19:44    Post subject: Partial Upgrade?
I'm getting a bonus next month which, as it turns out hasn't already been spent yet on useless crap I don't need! WOO!

My current PC setup is pretty ancient so I'm looking for spend around £400 getting it updated a bit, I might be able to stretch to £500.. but not sure until the money hits my bank in a few weeks! So, I'm looking to grab something from the the page that follows, purely due to laziness on my part and from what I can tell I wont actually be paying more for a free overclock/test service.

http://www.scan.co.uk/3xs-overclocked-bundles

The question is, what should I get? Its been a while since I've looked into things so any advice would be awesome. Just to note, I'm only upgrading CPU/MOBO/RAM/COOLER everything else is staying as it is, got a decent dual PSU setup, a bunch of SATA drives (SSD will come in August maybe?) and a HD 5800.

All thoughts welcome! Unless they are disagreeing with me. Razz
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sabin1981
Mostly Cursed



Posts: 87805

PostPosted: Wed, 14th Mar 2012 20:10    Post subject:
IMO? For £400 it would definitely be this;

Radius - Intel Core i5 2500K - Overclocked to 4.7Ghz

with the mobo changed to the Asus P8Z68-V GEN3 and the cooler changed from the DarkRock to the Corsair H60. Brings the total to £399.89 Very Happy
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[sYn]
[Moderator] Elitist



Posts: 8374

PostPosted: Wed, 14th Mar 2012 21:48    Post subject:
You wouldn't go for the i7 2500/2600 and hike the price up a bit? I *may* have more than £400 to play with so it would be good having a few options above the £400 mark too Very Happy.

The default EDGE build for example: £483.95
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sabin1981
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Posts: 87805

PostPosted: Wed, 14th Mar 2012 21:55    Post subject:
Well sure, if you're willing to push just a bit more - the i7 is by far the better choice, but I still recommend switching the cooler to one of the liquid coolers, either the Kuhla or the H80. That ends up bumping the price by over £100, up to £507 instead of £399 for the i5.
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Epsilon
Dr. Strangelove



Posts: 9240
Location: War Room
PostPosted: Wed, 14th Mar 2012 23:21    Post subject:
The good noctua coolers are on par with the closed circuit water coolers in my experience, also they don't come with the risk that watercooling does.

I'm currently using a NOCTUA NH-D14 and I'm very happy with it since it effectively cools my 2600k@4.5ghz keeping it around 45-58 degrees depending on workload, prime95 pushed it to 64 during my initial stresstest.
It's also very quiet at 17db which is around the same level of noise you'd have in a water cooling kit due to radiator.
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sabin1981
Mostly Cursed



Posts: 87805

PostPosted: Wed, 14th Mar 2012 23:45    Post subject:
Whereas my experience with Noctua is far less fruitful and my opinion is significantly less flattering Razz My NH-U12p was a joke, had to be replaced twice and still didn't offer any decent cooling whatsoever, so I just gave it up for loss. Had my 3.6Ghz E7200 idling at 50c and full load at just shy of 68c. My Corsair H80, on the other hand, is whisper quiet and is keeping my i5-2500k@4.5Ghz at 27-30c 0-20% use and no higher than 44 at load.

I would definitely recommend this over anything else so far, the results are just that good.
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Epsilon
Dr. Strangelove



Posts: 9240
Location: War Room
PostPosted: Fri, 16th Mar 2012 22:43    Post subject:
Thats very strange, this is my third Noctua cooler I've had them in my last 3 systems, never had those issues. They generally get favorable reviews aswell.
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LeoNatan
☢ NFOHump Despot ☢



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Location: Ramat HaSharon, Israel 🇮🇱
PostPosted: Fri, 16th Mar 2012 22:45    Post subject:
I have D14 as well, and it is fantastic. Smile
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sabin1981
Mostly Cursed



Posts: 87805

PostPosted: Fri, 16th Mar 2012 22:52    Post subject:
The heatsink never seemed to absorb any of the heat, it was ice-cold to the touch 24/7, no matter the load, and the CPU temps were way too high. I RMAed it and the customer support was excellent, replaced the heatsink at no charge for the device or the postage and didn't even ask for the old one back. Same deal. Absolutely no heat transfer of any kind. I RMAed it again, once more; same deal. I never had any trouble on my previous AC Freezer Pro and I've had no trouble with my current H80.

I'm not saying Noctua coolers are bad, just that mine didn't work.
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[sYn]
[Moderator] Elitist



Posts: 8374

PostPosted: Mon, 2nd Apr 2012 22:50    Post subject:
So I went with the following, still waiting for delivery, I believe its still going through the OC testing:

i7 2600k (OC'd to 4.7Ghz)
Corsair H80 Cooler
Gigabyte GA-Z68XP-UD4 Gen3
16GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3

Going to be running it with the following that I currently have:

XFX 5870
Antec P190
NeoLink 650P and NeoLink 550S PSU's

I got the H80 thinking the H100 wouldn't fit in my case, then realised it would after buying.. hopefully it will still do the job. Now I need to go find the 200mm fan it used to have strapped inside of it that I had to remove to fit the HSF in my current build!

It better arrive tomorrow :\..
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[sYn]
[Moderator] Elitist



Posts: 8374

PostPosted: Thu, 21st Mar 2013 02:18    Post subject:
NECRO!

So.. I have found myself a new injection of cash and despite the wedding I have to pay for I've decided I deserve a new GPU. For those who recall my threads a long long time ago now, my GPU has always been a major pain in my ass:

- Crashes (drive) when trying to do video acceleration in flash/media players
- Some odd issues with on monitor constantly changing resolutions to 640x480 and being a pain to change back.
- Screen tearing on the desktop..

Any who, its been fucked for ages but as it still technically functioned I've not replaced it.

How should I upgrade? Spec is still as above (although I have SSD now too). I run at 2x1900x1200 1x1280x1024.
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[sYn]
[Moderator] Elitist



Posts: 8374

PostPosted: Mon, 25th Mar 2013 09:35    Post subject:
*bump*
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Werelds
Special Little Man



Posts: 15098
Location: 0100111001001100
PostPosted: Mon, 25th Mar 2013 09:50    Post subject:
Assuming prices for you are the same as they are here in NL: 7950 or 7970.

I just cannot recommend a 680 when it's 100 EUR more expensive than a 7970, same for a 670 over a 7950 (670 costs the same as a 7970 atm). Nvidia are riding the marketing train, feeding off the "ZOMG TITAN R FASTEST" hype to sell their existing stuff at inflated prices.
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Breezer_




Posts: 10843
Location: Finland
PostPosted: Mon, 25th Mar 2013 11:27    Post subject:
7950 with good aftermarket cooler, you should buy "Boost" edition to be sure that you can overclock your card, since like 90% of 7950/7970 are voltage locked now :/ Boost edition uses 1.25V bios which should take your card to 1100-1200 core if its a good overclocker.
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SpykeZ




Posts: 23710

PostPosted: Mon, 25th Mar 2013 17:48    Post subject:
No point in any of the liquid all in ones unless you're getting the Swiftech. Might pay a bit more but you're getting a Swiftech manufactured pump with the ability to add more tonthe loop.


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Breezer_




Posts: 10843
Location: Finland
PostPosted: Mon, 25th Mar 2013 18:00    Post subject:
Tho the release batch of H220 has been massive disaster, pumps blowing up etc... Seems to happen even to Swiftech. 3 Broken units in finnish forum, and there is like 6 owners now Very Happy
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[sYn]
[Moderator] Elitist



Posts: 8374

PostPosted: Mon, 25th Mar 2013 18:27    Post subject:
The H80 has done me well these past few months but I wish I'd either waited and gone the whole hog with full on watercooling. Still, for the price, its doing a fantastic job at cooling with minimal effort and the same cost as a air cooler (pretty much).

Thanks for the advice about going for ATI, slightly upsetting as I was hoping to avoid ATI given the disaster I had with the last card.. but if its the best for the price it makes sense. I'm so far behind in GPU hardware these days, are we expecting any new releases soon that will bring the current gen prices down?
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Breezer_




Posts: 10843
Location: Finland
PostPosted: Mon, 25th Mar 2013 18:28    Post subject:
Dont think we are gonna see anything new this year, expect some overpriced Titan "cut down" versions from Nvidia.
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Werelds
Special Little Man



Posts: 15098
Location: 0100111001001100
PostPosted: Mon, 25th Mar 2013 19:26    Post subject:
No, we won't see anything until late Q4 this or Q1 next year Smile

And I'm pretty sure you just got unlucky on your card, my 5870 had absolutely no issues. Quite the opposite in fact, considering I could get to 975 MHz on stock voltage with mine Razz

That said, considering you run multiple monitors, Nvidia is still shit as ever with that. When I have multiple turned on and set to extend, at completely random points shit starts lagging in Windows. Literally just drops to like 10 FPS. Similarly, it is a 100% guaranteed Aero warning ("Do you want to disable Aero for performance?"). I have not had that message since I disconnected my secondary monitor. Not once. And neither my 5870 nor 6950 ever had any problems with that Smile
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[sYn]
[Moderator] Elitist



Posts: 8374

PostPosted: Mon, 25th Mar 2013 19:55    Post subject:
Yeah, to be fair eyeinfinity alone is enough to make me stick with ATI. Looking at the benchmarks it seems that the 7970 is the way to go. I'm keen to keep away from XFX (my last card manufacturer) out of principle. The gigabyte cards come in pre-overclocked varieties and look to have the "Arctic Accelero Xtreme" cooler attached as stock.

Any thoughts on the following:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/3gb-gigabyte-radeon-hd-7970-overclocked-5500mhz-gddr5-28nm-gpu-1000mhz-2048-cores-dvi-i-hdmi-2x-mdp-

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/3gb-gigabyte-radeon-hd-7970-6000mhz-gddr5-28nm-gpu-1100mhz-2048-cores-dl-dvi-i-hdmi-2x-mdp-plus-free

365.75 feels like its getting on the high side, especially for such a small jump in clock speed. Still, ATI have locked down non-authorised overclocks now haven't they?
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Breezer_




Posts: 10843
Location: Finland
PostPosted: Mon, 25th Mar 2013 20:23    Post subject:
its good cooler but nowhere near of Accelero Xtreme tho. The voltage is now locked on most cards, but that doesnt really matter if you buy GHZ card, it will have stock 1.25V which is pretty much max guaranteed safe voltage (1.3V max in afterburner). So a 7970 with 1.25V is gonna for sure hit 1100 core atleast, after that its lottery.
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[sYn]
[Moderator] Elitist



Posts: 8374

PostPosted: Mon, 25th Mar 2013 23:02    Post subject:
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Breezer_




Posts: 10843
Location: Finland
PostPosted: Mon, 25th Mar 2013 23:36    Post subject:
yeah it is pretty good choice Razz
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Werelds
Special Little Man



Posts: 15098
Location: 0100111001001100
PostPosted: Mon, 25th Mar 2013 23:58    Post subject:
Yep, go for the Vapor-X - although I must admit I haven't actually read any reviews on the 7970 Vapor-X, the previous ones were always among the best, if not the best Smile
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[sYn]
[Moderator] Elitist



Posts: 8374

PostPosted: Tue, 26th Mar 2013 02:44    Post subject:
Went for it! BOOM!
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