Desktop Computers

gogusrl

gogusrl

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Fadaar_sl said:
Does the i5-4670K overclock pretty well? Was thinking about going that route withhttp://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16835181032as a cooler since my case (Corsair 800D) is pretty much perfect for it. I love that case, I see no reason to get a new one for many years. It'll probably last me 3-4 hardware upgrades.
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These 100$ watercooling systems are all crap. Water is nice if you're willing to spend some money, but for 100$ or under, you're much better off with a high end air cooler (thermalright / noctua / etc).
 
Joeboo

Joeboo

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I went with a Corsair H100i water cooler not because I could push significantly higher overclocks than a good air cooler, but because it is much, much quieter. Air cooling can easily be just as good, for less money, but you're going to hear it when that fan hits max RPMs. Since I'm able to mount 4 120mm fans on my water cooler radiator, they never have to hit max RPMs under max processor load. They can keep my 3570K quite cool at under 50% RPMs, and they only have to go up to 50% under stress-test conditions, under normal gaming with a 4.6ghz overclock, all 4 fans usually sit at about 25% max RPM load, while keeping my processor in the 50-60 degree celsius range.

All that being said, I still can't push my 3570K past 4.6GHz for very long, but at least it's damn quiet while doing so. Between the H100i water cooler and my SSD drive, my tower basically makes no noticeable noise, even with it sitting on the floor only a few feet away from me.

I also like the space issues. Mounting a radiator to the top of my case rather than having a MASSIVE heatsink/fan contraption right in the middle of my motherboard was well worth it to me as well.
 
Noodleface

Noodleface

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Having an SSD has made me feel like I was living in the darkages before. Like going from 56k to whatever Comcast offers now (50mb/s?). I got a 256GB Samsung and the thing is great.

i5's overclock really well. i7's use a lot of power and cost so much more, you can achieve very close to the same results by OC'ing the i5. I mean if money is no object then go ahead, but personally I would go for an i5.
 
gogusrl

gogusrl

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Mine is completely silent as well, and that's the main reason I was suggesting a decent air cooler. I'm running a Scythe Mugen @ 800 rpm, an Arctic Cooling xtreme something @600rpm on my 6970 all in a Lian-Li case with 4 x 600 rpm fans. There's a lot of room to upgrade but I don't need to because you can never hear it.

Looking at thisreviewyou're pretty much trading degrees Celsius for decibels and I'd rather have my cpu 3 degrees hotter than 3 decibels louder specially when the first one is half the price as well.


edit : Don't get me wrong, I recognize the advantages of watercooling and the performance it can offer but until I can afford something like this, I'm gonna stick with high end air cooling rather than low end water cooling.

 
jeydax

jeydax

Death and Taxes
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Does anyone here have experience building a HTPC's? I've been just starting to get a parts list put together for my girlfriend's apartment. She gave me a budget of $500. I've decided if I'm building her a computer I'm going to buy myself a workable video card that can play games decently at low to medium settings without pulling out my hair (hence the standalone card and 8 gigs of ram).

Does anyone have any input they could chime in with?

Here's the build as of right now:http://pcpartpicker.com/user/jeydax/saved/1ITb
 
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W4RH34D_sl

shitlord
661
3
jeydax_sl said:
Does anyone here have experience building a HTPC's? I've been just starting to get a parts list put together for my girlfriend's apartment. She gave me a budget of $500. I've decided if I'm building her a computer I'm going to buy myself a workable video card that can play games decently at low to medium settings without pulling out my hair (hence the standalone card and 8 gigs of ram).

Does anyone have any input they could chime in with?

Here's the build as of right now:http://pcpartpicker.com/user/jeydax/saved/1ITb
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I would look at APU's for 1080p content.
 
Eomer

Eomer

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I'd strongly consider a full ATX case like a Silverstone LC20. Unless size is a major concern for you. It's no bigger than a standard receiver, and gives you a lot more flexibility with GPU's, cooling, drives and the like. Not cheap though.
 
jeydax

jeydax

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Yeah thats the thing Eomer, I gotta stick on the cheap for her build.

@W4RH34D: I can't possibly imagine AMD or Intel's APU's being any better for 1080p than the 650 Ti could they?
 
mkopec

mkopec

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Back to the water/vs air debate, Mine is pretty silent as well, I never hear it at a modest OC to 4.3 and I got the 212 evo. My temps on idle are around 28C and rarely push 50C under gaming load. (Now in the summer it runs a bit hotter in idle, about 33C, but the max temps are unchanged.) When I built my bros comp like a year back, he got the Corsair water cooler thing and it was ok, it was the one with the smaller radiator. It still used a 12cm fan which I mounted in a push pull config on the back of his cases 12cm fan. The temps were like 2-4C better than mine and the sound difference was negligible. It did leave more room around his mo-bo but who gives a shit? Its under his desk and the cases I buy have no fucking windows anyway. Also I found the thing to be a pain in the ass to install because the tubes seemed too rigid and were hard to bend into the position that I needed on the back of the case. It felt really awkward to install, I felt like I was always on the verge of bending the tubes a bit to much. But it was not harder than the CM212 overall.

I feel its really a wash for the temps and sound, only difference was the price, which he paid like $50 more than my CM212. Now again, this is one of the cheap Corsair all in one self contained closed loop systems, its not a high end water cooling solution, which I would never fuck with anyway because of the risks. Its just not worth it in todays rigs where you can get an extra +/-1Ghz out of your processor with the stock cooler. I guess I just dont give a shit enough to even give it a though. To be honest the loudest component in the 2 systems I have (2500K and 3570K) is the video card anyway. The air coolers with the 12CM fans are virtually silent. I cant say enough about those CM 212 coolers. I mean for the price/performance you just cannot beat them IMO. Yeah, Im sure you can spend an extra $100 for something better and maybe get another 5C better, but is it really worth it? At a certain point youre just chasing the law of diminishing returns.
 
Joeboo

Joeboo

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The Cooler Master H-series of water coolers have made rapid progress as far as sound goes. The first H100s were pretty loud, the H100i was a LOT quieter, and now the new H110 is another significant step quieter again. As far as temperatures go, the H100i was a small improvement over the H100, and the new H110 is basically the same as the H100i. The cooling hasn't progressed much at all(unless you count equal cooling at vastly reduced fan RPMs as cooling progress). Actual temperatures haven't dropped much throughout the series.
 
W

W4RH34D_sl

shitlord
661
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I picked up an h80i to replace my h50 bc i lost the bracket for intel mobos bc i was on amd at the time. Very, very pleased with the H80i. I don't use the fancy throttle stuff, i let the motherboard software control them.

The h50 was dead silent, I can hear this one a little, but then again, I have a 500mhz oc most of the time.

I personally hate windows 8, but it has sped up a few ancient pentium 4 computers my customers use.
 
Noodleface

Noodleface

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Pentium 4, jesus christ. And I thought the dudes at work that were refusing to upgrade from WinXP were bad.
 
W

W4RH34D_sl

shitlord
661
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jeydax_sl said:
Yeah thats the thing Eomer, I gotta stick on the cheap for her build.

@W4RH34D: I can't possibly imagine AMD or Intel's APU's being any better for 1080p than the 650 Ti could they?
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nope the 650ti is overkill, though. The apu would save you energy and money. You could go with a very small form factor and small case. The 650ti won't do you wrong by any means but it will increase your heat ouput and how much space you need in the case.
 
jeydax

jeydax

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Yup definitely know it is over kill for 1080p. I need the 650 Ti for when she isn't home and I want to game here and there. Mostly just run League of Legends and maybe some CS:GO.
 
Intrinsic

Intrinsic

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joeboo_sl said:
The Cooler Master H-series of water coolers have made rapid progress as far as sound goes. The first H100s were pretty loud, the H100i was a LOT quieter, and now the new H110 is another significant step quieter again. As far as temperatures go, the H100i was a small improvement over the H100, and the new H110 is basically the same as the H100i. The cooling hasn't progressed much at all(unless you count equal cooling at vastly reduced fan RPMs as cooling progress). Actual temperatures haven't dropped much throughout the series.
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Man is it just me or is the pump, or whatever, for the H100i louder than anything? Sitting quietly downstairs I can hear the damn thing. Granted my upstairs computer room opens up to the downstairs living room, but still. The only thing louder than the H100i pump is the SLI 670's fans when under full load. But that I hope and/or expect.
 
Joeboo

Joeboo

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Intrinsic_sl said:
Man is it just me or is the pump, or whatever, for the H100i louder than anything? Sitting quietly downstairs I can hear the damn thing. Granted my upstairs computer room opens up to the downstairs living room, but still. The only thing louder than the H100i pump is the SLI 670's fans when under full load. But that I hope and/or expect.
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I've heard that on several different forums from some H100i owners. They released a driver update for the pump that supposedly fixed the noise issue for the small amount of people that were having it. Might check out Cooler Masters website for the newest firmware. I really don't have a clue how firmware effects the sound output of a pump, but it supposedly works.
 
Denaut

Denaut

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jeydax_sl said:
Yup definitely know it is over kill for 1080p. I need the 650 Ti for when she isn't home and I want to game here and there. Mostly just run League of Legends and maybe some CS:GO.
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Hmm... going out on a limb here (haven't really researched this) but maybe an Intel NUC + NAS (or custom NUC enclosure with Hard Drive Space) would work well? A high end model with Haswell's integrated GPU would probably run LoL and CS just fine. Or, even cheaper, a Raspberry Pi running Raspbmc and a NAS should I think be able to stream movies at 1080p and it would be quite cheap for a whole kit, probably only like $70 (plus the NAS). You can't game on that though.
 
Intrinsic

Intrinsic

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joeboo_sl said:
I've heard that on several different forums from some H100i owners. They released a driver update for the pump that supposedly fixed the noise issue for the small amount of people that were having it. Might check out Cooler Masters website for the newest firmware. I really don't have a clue how firmware effects the sound output of a pump, but it supposedly works.
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Holy shit, updated to the 1.0.5 firmware and this thing is disconcertingly silent now. After having that background noise for the last few months it is almost jarring. Thanks for the heads up.
 
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