The PC Building Thread

Talking of thermal paste, is there any particular technology of paste that makes a significant difference, ie shaves off at least 5c over standard paste? Need to get some more and as my new motherboard has lots of built in overclocking functions I'm tempted to see what I can get out of my old CPU :)
 
This is probably against the grain of this thread but thought it would be the best placed to ask.

I'm not very knowledgeable about building PC's but I am keen to get myself a new gaming PC. Rather than asking for advice on how to build, are there any retailers in the UK that you would consider decently priced for a ready made gaming PC? I want something powerful so I can run the most demanding games easily.

Along with that, are there any excellent monitors/screens that are regarding as cutting edge?

Thanks for any advice.
 
tc811 said:
How does a 3D monitor compare to a 2D monitor with an H-IPS panel, like the Dell U2410? Or even the Catleap Q270?

List of IPS panel monitors:

http://www.pchardwarehelp.com/guides/s-ips-lcd-list.php
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You need all the equipment to play 3D games but have heard very good things about 3D gaming from people who have played 3D games.
The person said Oblivion and Skyrim are both amazing in 3D as when going through dungeons you actually really feel like you are there.

When my monitor breaks I will prob get a 3D monitor next.
 
Speaking of which does anyone know of a place to purchase decent dust covers for one's monitors ?

I keep everything extremely clean and am very pernickety about even the smallest amount of dust.

Benq-Siemens used to provide dust covers with their monitors but the ones I have from ASUS do not.
 
Anyone recommend any websites which you choose the parts and have it delivered set up?

I know scan do it but only if you buy every part.
 
I'v ended up going with Scan's "It's a No-Brainer!" deal for today only. Compared to what I was originally getting, I'd say its the same and cheaper.

vgkccn.jpg
 
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I already have some things in my current case, but what I was originally getting, this is a better deal.
 
Some of the components are just seem pricey.
The SSD drive is very expensive especially for the an average performance one.

I assume you actually ordered all the components already?

The RAM is just your bog standard stuff as well as the latency timings are standard.
The motherboard should also be exchanged as there are better boards on the market now, mainly the MSI which is the same price as the Gigabyte.

But the cost just seems high considering there is no graphics card on the order.

Also I noticed the "no brainer" also doesn't come assembled so you have to build it yourself anyway. So you would be much better off buying the better components from different websites saving yourself some cash SCAN have a good reputation but you do pay a premium for it. They are up there with Novatech in regards to being the rip off merchants of the industry.
 
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I do know that it all comes as parts.

As I said, I don't have a problem with it to what I was originally intending to get. It'll be better than my current setup, and will have spare money for when I need to upgrade anything else in the future.
 
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uksix said:
I do know that it all comes as parts.

As I said, I don't have a problem with it to what I was originally intending to get. It'll be better than my current setup, and will have spare money for when I need to upgrade anything else in the future.
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I was just saying if you have not ordered it yet. I wouldn't it is overpriced and you can get better components for less money.
 
I don't think the SSD in that build is especially over-priced but I do agree that you can save yourself maybe £10 by shopping around. Performance of the Crucial M4 isn't that bad either. I've got the 64gb version and have no complaints about it. Read speed is very good but other drives have better write speeds. A good feature of the M4 is that the firmware can be updated within Windows. I don't know if that's a standard feature of SSDs now?

Also the Gigabyte GA-Z77-D3H is the same board as mine and, again, I've got no complaints. It's a budget board but it does everything I want and has an easy to use BIOS. I'm not interested in SLI/Crossfire so it's fine for me. It has received good reviews too.
 
Jamezinho said:
I don't think the SSD in that build is especially over-priced but I do agree that you can save yourself maybe £10 by shopping around. Performance of the Crucial M4 isn't that bad either. I've got the 64gb version and have no complaints about it. Read speed is very good but other drives have better write speeds. A good feature of the M4 is that the firmware can be updated within Windows. I don't know if that's a standard feature of SSDs now?

Also the Gigabyte GA-Z77-D3H is the same board as mine and, again, I've got no complaints. It's a budget board but it does everything I want and has an easy to use BIOS. I'm not interested in SLI/Crossfire so it's fine for me. It has received good reviews too.
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The crucial M4 is a high performance budget SSD, which has not really lost much of it's price where as the OCZ Vertex 3 which is still a very high performance SSD, well still 2nd, 3rd quickest on the market but since the Vertex 4 has come out you can now get the 120GB one for £80 which is £10 cheaper than he is paying for a lower performance SSD.

Most SSD's now have their firmware upgradable in Windows as both my OCZ ones were upgradable in Windows.

In regards to motherboards the MSI Z77A-G43 is probably the best budget motherboard at present, but MSI has recently released the G45 which I can only assume without reading superseeds the G43.

I know most people on here eventually just do what they want to do anyway but can only offer advise based on knowledge and experience, but it is their choice whether they take it or not at the end of the day.
 
That's fair enough. You know much more than me but I just wanted to chip in and say that the SSD and Mobo aren't bad options from my experience. But I did notice on Ebuyer that the OCZ 120gb Agility 3 and the Samsung 128gb 830 are up for around the £75 mark so they are definitely better options than the Crucial M4.

I'm undecided as to whether I should pick up another SSD or not. My HDD was taken over from my old desktop so it's not that big by today's standards and I'm down to less than 60gb storage after filling it with games. I'm not sure whether to spend out on a 256gb SSD for my games or just save the money and get something like a 1TB Seagate Barracuda which I'll probably never fill?

SSD's are great and all, but once a game has loaded up do they offer any other advantages over a HDD? I guess less power consumption and noise are factors.
 
Jamezinho said:
That's fair enough. You know much more than me but I just wanted to chip in and say that the SSD and Mobo aren't bad options from my experience. But I did notice on Ebuyer that the OCZ 120gb Agility 3 and the Samsung 128gb 830 are up for around the £75 mark so they are definitely better options than the Crucial M4.

I'm undecided as to whether I should pick up another SSD or not. My HDD was taken over from my old desktop so it's not that big by today's standards and I'm down to less than 60gb storage after filling it with games. I'm not sure whether to spend out on a 256gb SSD for my games or just save the money and get something like a 1TB Seagate Barracuda which I'll probably never fill?

SSD's are great and all, but once a game has loaded up do they offer any other advantages over a HDD? I guess less power consumption and noise are factors.
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I only have a 120GB SSD which I use for Windows and applications like Office and other apps.
But I have all my games and emulators on a HD.

As with games they take up so much room that you would need a 512GB SSD to be able to have a decent amount installed as well as Windows.

As you said I don't know what the performance increase is except for much quicker loading times in games, but once the game is loaded would an SSD be beneficial?
And let's face it games don't take that long to load on PC's anyway but booting is a different matter an SSD adds an incredible amount of performance to a computer during boot time and system response.
 
bsmaff said:
I only have a 120GB SSD which I use for Windows and applications like Office and other apps.
But I have all my games and emulators on a HD.

As with games they take up so much room that you would need a 512GB SSD to be able to have a decent amount installed as well as Windows.

As you said I don't know what the performance increase is except for much quicker loading times in games, but once the game is loaded would an SSD be beneficial?
And let's face it games don't take that long to load on PC's anyway but booting is a different matter an SSD adds an incredible amount of performance to a computer during boot time and system response.
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This. The SSD which I ordered is just for the OS and certain programs whilst my HDD will be used for Games and Photoshop work.
 
bsmaff said:
I only have a 120GB SSD which I use for Windows and applications like Office and other apps.
But I have all my games and emulators on a HD.

As with games they take up so much room that you would need a 512GB SSD to be able to have a decent amount installed as well as Windows.

As you said I don't know what the performance increase is except for much quicker loading times in games, but once the game is loaded would an SSD be beneficial?
And let's face it games don't take that long to load on PC's anyway but booting is a different matter an SSD adds an incredible amount of performance to a computer during boot time and system response.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I think you may have made my mind up for me. Although SSD prices have been on the slide they seem to have stabilised a bit of late and a 256gb SSD is going to set me back £150 at the least. For about £60-70 I can pick up a good quality 1TB drive. With the SSD I'd be constantly worrying about space and also they are not really designed to be used and abused like an HDD (number of writes).

The load times of an SSD are fantastic. I did stick a couple of games on my boot drive just to experience it. But as you say they are not that bad on a HDD anyway (and I'm not that impatient) and once you're in-game the advantages of an SSD are less apparent.

Also, can you offer advice on overclocking a GPU? I've got a Sapphire 7850 (OC Edition) which has dual cooling and I've heard it's a really good overclocker. I've heard it can offer 7870 performance quite easily and can even be taken up to 1200MHz core clock. What's the best way to do it? MSI Afterburner or just use Catalyst? What's a good program to test for GPU stability?

I've had a look at this video but there's no mention of adjusting voltage/power settings which I though was required for overclocking?

YouTube - How To Overclock Sapphire Graphics Cards

Any advice appreciated.
 
Overclocking graphics cards are different to overclocking a CPU.

I can't really offer much advise though about overclocking GPU's as I have only ever done it twice and the second time I messed my card up with complete graphics corruption and even after then underclocking it, it was never the same again and had to buy a new card.

But it is pretty easy and straight forward to do and there should be loads of forums and guides out there to assist you. I don't know about now but people used to have GPU bios updates that overclocked the GPU via the bios rather than using software.
 
DagsJT said:
CCL are pretty good for pre-built PC's.

I'm interested in a 3D monitor and this seems to be the best at the moment:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/...&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=467128533&pf_rd_i=468294
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I recently Purchased this monitor to try out 3D gaming. It is great and really enjoyed it. Only downside was that I can't do HD3D gaming with this monitor. But not too bothered now as its looks great any way. definatly recomend.

onto my computer I now have

Asus GTX 560Ti DirectCU II 1GB GDDR5 Dual DVI Mini HDMI PCI-E Graphics Card
Antec 300 ultimate gaming case
Intel core i3 530 2.93ghz
Gigabyte GA-H55M-UD2H Intel H55 Micro atx motherboard
Corsair 850W HX Modular PSU
500gb hd
8 gb ram
Blu ray drive
3D plus HD monitor

Sadly I have gone and done the stupid and though that if my motherboard can do cross fire it could do SLI. I was wrong so I can only have 1 GTX 560.The card is only 1GB of vram which limits me having games on max settings. its good but I really wanted to get better so im looking at getting a new motherboard with SLI capabilitys and a I5 or I7 proccesor. Then afterwards look at SLI my GTX 560 or just get a better high end card depending on whats needed...
 
Everyone gets to ask one dumb question a day right? Here's mine! ;)

So I buy a new SSD http://www.kingston.com/us/ssd/vplus/#svp200s3 it says it has the following specs:

Sequential reads: SATA Rev. 3.0 - 535MB/s
Sequential writes2:SATA Rev. 3.0 -120GB – 480MB/s
Sustained Random 4k Read/Write2: 120GB – 20,000/44,000 IOPS
Max Random 4k Read/Write2: 120GB – 85,000/55,000 IOPS

I run AS SSD Benchmark and get this:

ssdtestamdsatadriver.png


My motherboard is an ASUS M5A97 motherboard which is Sata3 and I'm using Sata3 rated Sata cables to connect it to the motherboard


I think this was the result from when I was using the generic MS Sata driver on my old Sata2 motherboard:

ssdtestsata2mobomsdrive.png


So despite upgrading to a newer supposedly much faster motherboard the SSD speeds have actually pretty much gone down, and either way the speeds I'm getting are nothing like the supposed 535MB/s reads and 480MB/s writes advertised? Am I missing something obvious here and/or being dumb or is something not configured/working right in my system?
 
I have the same SSD and get similarly slow speeds unfortunately. I posted an unfavourable review of it on Ebuyer, oddly enough they decided to stick with all the 5 star reviews instead.

as-ssd-benchkingstonsfvkyr.png
 
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