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The PC Building Thread

I noticed, sorry yours shouldn't be crashing then.
If your motherboard dosn't like OFFSET mode then just change the voltage manually until it is stable.
 
Mine is set to + OFFSET value, I am currently thinking about doing mine upto 4.8GHZ, but might require a water cooler to do that.
Which is an upgrade I can't be arsed with as my next upgrade is a 256GB SSD for my laptop.
 
I've been reading a few guides and they say the offset has to be the difference between the VID and vcore at load. In that case I need to have an offset of about -0.100.
 
Chris Davies said:
I'm looking for some advice and I've looked around in spurts, only for the costs of my dream PC to mount up and put me off the idea for another month.

I was initially looking to make a mini-ITX machine for portability reasons, but seeing how little power the mini-ITX PSUs are restricted to (and the external PSUs seem ropey), I'd settle for something a bit bigger.

The dream is to make something that will be able to play Battlefield 3 on the absolute maximum settings. I'm reading that this is only possible with an i7 and a very expensive graphics card, rather than an i5 and a £250-or-less graphics card. Does that sound about right?

All I've managed to decide on is a certain liquid cooling system (because the sound of fans on my current machine is doing my head in, I've replaced the thermal paste but even when the CPU's at a cool temperature the fan reaches 100% within 10 minutes of booting)...
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You can get the Bitfenix Prodigy ITX case that takes full size ATX PSU's with room for cable management and is a steal for the price its going for and is roomy as hell.

Will be building a Ivy bridge itx rig with this case and this case also takes current gen videocards with no problems at all.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5867/bitfenix-prodigy-review-the-affordable-performable-miniitx
 
Ern Dog said:
How necessary is OCing? Is it something that must be done to play games with the ultra settings?
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No not at all.
How good your GPU is depends on whether you can play games in ULTRA.

Overclocking just makes your CPU run faster under full load. My CPU runs at 4.5GHZ under load instead of 3.8GHZ.
 
bsmaff said:
No not at all.
How good your GPU is depends on whether you can play games in ULTRA.
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I am planning on getting a OEM 7870, if that is sufficient to play games on max settings does that mean I can skimp on the CPU? Was looking at a i5 3570, could I save a few quid and get a bottom range i5 instead, or even an i3?
 
Ern Dog said:
I am planning on getting a OEM 7870, if that is sufficient to play games on max settings does that mean I can skimp on the CPU? Was looking at a i5 3570, could I save a few quid and get a bottom range i5 instead, or even an i3?
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I would still get the i5 as there is no better processor price - performance wise.

Also you would be able to play all games maxed out except BF3 with that graphics card.
 
The 7870 probably makes more sense now the prices have fallen. Before it was not worth getting one because a much cheaper 7850 could match it for performance with a little overclocking.
 
I have found the OEM 7870 for £185 which seems like a great price to me.

My current PC can just about run PES2013, its playable but feels a little funny as I guess the frame rate is quite low. I wonder would an OC help me here? I have an Asus P5N7A-VM mobo which has an integrated GeForce 9300 GPU, the specifics of the other specs I cant be sure of at the moment just that its a 2.5 dual core Intel with 4gb ram. I gave the GPU the max 512mb memory and played about with Nvidia software to get where I am, can I push it a bit further with the hardware I have? I have googled the mobo and OCing and found that it is possible but its like reading latin, given that the mobo allows for OC would the rest of my components have to comply or can they just say no?
 
I took my 2500k off its overclock, I just found the higher temps weren't worth it as I wasn't noticing any improvement in games anyway.
 
I must admit, I'm tempted not to bother with it. Every guide I read talks about using different settings. Enabling this, disabling that - then the next guide will completely contradict it.

I've not read anything yet that competently explains offset overclocking.
 
Not my thing but this seems a really good deal for PC/PS3

http://www.gameseek....ulti1ynu813c5xh

SL-6694-RD.jpg
and
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for £49.72

(RRP £84.98 You save £35.26 (41%))
 
Guys quick question, the problem I have is that the case I am getting recommends that the GPU has the fan mounted at the rear of the card. The cards I can find like this are OEM, scan FX or Club 3D Radeon 7870s or for a similar price the Nvidia 660Ti.
I was just scanning some shops for prices and found an oem radeon 7870 for £165, this is a discount that is only applied for the next 20 hours. This makes it considerably cheaper than the other options. Are OEM cards OK? I dont know who makes them, AMD I guess. I can find no info on Scan FX and not a massive amount on Club 3D. Does anyone know if these are trusted manufacturers? The Nvidia looks like a safe bet as its made by EVGA but the price puts it at £60 more than the discounted Radeon. Do you think its safe to go with the OEM card?
 
Chaps, just to let you know my pc has been up and running now for just over a week and its great

Thanks for all your help in answering my many questions, much appreciated and special mention to bsmaff for his help with windows 7 : )
 
danhammer said:
Chaps, just to let you know my pc has been up and running now for just over a week and its great

Thanks for all your help in answering my many questions, much appreciated and special mention to bsmaff for his help with windows 7 : )
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Are you on Steam yet, Dan?
 
danhammer said:
Chaps, just to let you know my pc has been up and running now for just over a week and its great

Thanks for all your help in answering my many questions, much appreciated and special mention to bsmaff for his help with windows 7 : )
Click to expand...

How are you getting on with your 7850? Does it run nice and cool, and is the fan quiet? Or have you not really pushed it yet?
 
danhammer said:
yeah it runs really quiet, not sure how to push it though - would that just be uppping the ante in catalyst centre?
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The simplest way to do it is within catalyst. I can't remember all the names of the settings off the top of my head as I haven't got access to my PC right now, but look for something called AMD Overdrive. It should be just below the menu where you set the anti-aliasing settings and what not. Here you'll see sliders for the core clock, memory clock and power limit.

The core clock slider should go to a max of 1050Mhz if you slide it all the way to the right. Give it a go - from what understand nearly all 7850's can go to 1050Mhz without a problem.

Memory I would leave at the stock setting (1250Mhz I think) as the gains from overclocking it are small and can cause instability if you go too high. I've heard that memory overclocking using Catalyst isn't great anyway.

The power setting - just up it to +20.

That's it. Just make sure the check box is enabled at the top of the menu to allow overdrive settings.

If all you play is PES and FIFA then you probably don't need to bother with the above, but for anything demanding you will get a good jump is FPS by doing the above.

Obviously keep an eye on your temps but 1050MHz is a very mild overclock for these cards.
 
He blokes any of you know why i would be getting micro stuttering on fifa13? It's really pissing me off. Thanks for your quick response..
 
Have you try enabling either one, or all of these?

Lock to 60FPS
Disable Windows Aero Theme
Wait for Vsync
 
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