Desktop Computers

Quaid_sl said:

Depends on what games you play. Got any examples?

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Right now I'm prepping for ArcheAge. But pretty much any FPS or MMO and I'll likely try it out at some point.

Elurin_sl said:

Right now I'm prepping for ArcheAge. But pretty much any FPS or MMO and I'll likely try it out at some point.

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Well, it all depends on what you prioritize. ArcheAge will look best on an IPS panel, but you'll get better response times on a TN panel. However, your GPU isnt really powerful enough for the benefits of a TN panel to shine through.

I'd get a nice fast IPS panel. I did a ton of research about 4 months ago and settled on this guy, and I have nothing but praise:Amazon.com: Dell P2414H WHXV7 24-Inch Screen LED-Lit Monitor: Computers Accessories

I play MMORPGs with a smattering of twitchy FPS games, and I find this monitor (for the price) to be very very satisfactory.

amazon is selling a lot of logitech products at 50% sale right now, i like my logitech g19 keyboard and mouse with 20+ buttons. the g13 gamepad is also on sale
Amazon.com: Logitech - Computers Accessories: Electronics

There's also theSteelseries Diablo 3 mousefor 28$. It's from the Sensei [RAW] Line (Black Glossy, Black Rubberized, Heat Orange, Frost Blue, Diablo III, Guild Wars 2, Call of Duty Black Ops II, and World of Tanks) meaning they're identical inside. Pretty much the best laser sensor you can buy but it's still worse than some optical ones (99% of users wouldn't notice the difference anyway).

Ok so I'm getting ready to buy a new CPU and Motherboard after troubleshooting some intermittent freezing issues but I wanted to throw out there what I have done in case anyone sees anything I have missed.

1. First step is check drivers, installed programs, etc.
I was mostly able to skip this step since when it first started happening I assumed it was time for my yearly Windows format/clean install and just went ahead and did it. In the process I purchased a new hard drive I had been wanting for awhile and did the clean install on the new hard drive and left the old hard drive as is but as a secondary SATA drive (possibly to dual boot later if for whatever reason I wanted to).

Results: Freezing stopped for awhile then popped up again this morning.

2. Second step: Check memory
I performed a windows mem test when I first got the memory and it checked out but I did a full on memtest86 today after this new series of freezing issues. It passed through several iterations.

3. 3rd step - PSU issues. I am thinking the likeihood of this is extremely low since PSU issues result in random restarts or complete system shut downs. I also have this computer on a fairly decent surge protector as a matter of course. The power supply is maybe 1 to 1.5 years old and rated 650 + I think. I'm not overclocking or running anything in SLI so i'm not worried about getting close to it's limit.

4. 4th step - Test the CPU. I did buy it used and I could see if there is someplace local that can test the CPU but CPU problems are ULTRA-Rare plus if it is a bad CPU I am just going to end up buying a new CPU and motherboard anyway. The CPU temp. on the motherboard shows an average of 40 and I am not using a stock cooler even though I could since I haven't overlocked. It seems to be running fine as ever.

5. 5th step - Motherboard - It's an old motherboard Nvidia EVGA P55 that I loved dearly but it is 3 or 4 years old now. I think it came out in 2009 so I'm fairly certain the 3yr old warranty is way past being up. None of the capacitors look bad and I did perform a bios update without issues a month ago.

6. 6th step video card. This should have been an earlier step but I'm not sure it is even relevant. When the freezing happens all sound cuts out also which suggest to me it's not on the video card end. Plus I clean installed the drivers with the new hard drive and the freezing happened again a few days later. Failing video card may cause issues but system freezing usually isn't one of them.


I should note that the system freezing has occurred at all times. While playing game. While browsing. While watching twitch. While logging on after a fresh reboot. While logging on after having gone to sleep over night. While the Windows loading screen was loading during a fresh boot.After being off for a few hours then immediately after turning back on.

All of these scenarios had me heavily leaning towards memory but two things that threw me off were that windows memory test and memtest86 came back clean after multiple iterations and I had no problems with the same memory for 6 months now.

Groover_sl said:

Try running prime95 torture test. Fails quickly? probably memory, maybe cpu. Fails later maybe mobo/psu. Doesn't fail? Try running occt full system load or whatever test it's called. If that doesn't crash your system, there's a good chance it's your video card. You haven't said what it is, but a lot of the older Nvidia cards fail in the exact way you're describing.

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Thanks for this advice it made me keep troubleshooting before I bit the bullet on $500 of new mobo + cpu hardware. It was really odd that the crashes only ever occurred when loading or in windows. I figured if it was a mobo issue it should happen sometimes on startup before getting to windows but I had no other explanations. Prime test turned out nothing so I opened my case up and just finger touched everything to check the heat and lo and behold the video was hot enough to burn. Turns out my video card fan isn't working anymore. Going to take it apart a bit to see why but figure that's a pretty definite cause of issues. Time to go for a 760!

Well nevermind to that. Turns out the GPU just doesn't run the fan until the card hits 85 C. Ran Furturemark for GPU stress test and watched GPU-Z for about 15 minutes. Could even hear the fan kick on once it hit 85 C. Well card is already on it's way (go impulse buying) and a new corsair modular 750 power supply so at least I can replace the power supply and see if that makes a difference.

Grabbed a Logitech G 710. The alt codes, I'm guessing, will work on this one.

Also grabbed a 502 PROTEUS CORE. Sounds stupid, but I'm guessing it works. I used Logitech since before it was popular to be an unpopular Jew....and I'm not Jewish.

I only recently went away from Logitech to try a Corsair Vengeance M65. It's a technical marvel utterly let down by its software and ergonomics. The software it comes with would be a joke in 1995; now its just quaint in the same way that getting dragged to my death by my testicles from the back of a 1983 truck....kind of quaint.

Beyond that, it's the first gaming peripheral EVER that I've not been able to game with. AT ALL. All the angles are all wrong, and the software really, really sucks.

I'm kind of looking forward to these Logitech bits.

Logitech g502 was a huge disappointment for me. Hate the way the LMB/RMB feel, and the left side buttons are poorly placed.

Groover_sl said:

Glad you figured it out; the random crashes are the worst to troubleshoot. I suggested OCCT because it's one of the few that can stress everything at once and really put a worst case retarded load on power delivery.

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Well to finish the story (for now.... duh duh duhhhhh) I purchased a new video card and Corsair modular 750 watt power supply. I did the Antec power supply recommend guide and it turns out I should have been running a minimum of 720 watts so maybe it was my semi-generic power supply unable to handle the load. (I think it was rated 650).

I did a memory stick by memory stick (and slot) check and had freezes on every individual memory stick so after that and memtest and widows memtest I was about as sure as I could get that it wasn't the memory. Then I went into my bios and upped my memory frequency to 1600 (which all of my memory is rated to support) and the freezes started happening VERY frequently. Like under a minute loading Windows every time. So then I downstepped the memory to 1066 and everything was suddenly ultra stable. Could run anything I wanted without freezes.

I figured at that point it was either the memory (again I know I know shouldn't be possible at this point) or my PSU simply didn't have the voltage to keep up. Now with my new 750 power supply, GTX 760 (probably didn't need a new card but oh well) and memory set to 1333 I haven't had a single freeze or hiccup going on an hour now. Fingers crossed but I hope this troubleshoot helps someone in the future.

kegkilla_sl said:

i'm assuming you know this already, but the PS4 and xbox one are going to put out a lot better performance than a PC with their equivalent cards.

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Toned down graphics will do that.

Direct access to the hardware and no overhead from all the shit we run in the background will givethem a boost of performance over that graph, but it's gonna be 10-15% not 100%.

I got my system built. I went AMD over Intel though. The cost savings helped bring the price closer to 1K instead of 1200+. The power is supposed to be somewhere inbetween the I5 and the I7. I went with a corsair case and 650 Watt power supply. The case is nice with 2 large fans that I can adjust the speeds on as I need. The outside reminds me of storm trooper armor. It has lots of room to work in.

I had a copy of Windows 7 Home Premium addition and thought that would work. I was wrong. This thing is giving all sorts of problems that range from turning my monitor lavendar to not being able to validate the disc. I go to validate and it just sits constantly spinning in circles. I did click the authorization tab at the top that I had not noticed the first time and it still spun away. I guess I will be getting 8.1 and redoing this part of the build. Was hoping I could get away with using the 7 disc.

Other than that, the building of the system was actually not to bad. It was kind of puzzle like with all the wires having to attach at various point on the board or the case. I can see why people charge what they do charge. It did take some time.

Mahes_sl said:

I got my system built. I went AMD over Intel though. The cost savings helped bring the price closer to 1K instead of 1200+. The power is supposed to be somewhere inbetween the I5 and the I7.

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supposed to be, but isn't. I wouldn't have done that if I were you, assuming this is a gaming PC.

At absolute best, a high-end AMD processor might be on par with a high-end Intel processor, but there's a lot of instances where it isn't. And the AMD uses more power as well.

Intel Core i5-4670K vs AMD FX-4350 Gaming-Performance - CPUs - Reviews : ocaholic

About half the games benchmarked have the Intel at a significant advantage, and the other half still has the Intel at an advantage, just less significantly so(sometimes less than 10%)

Yes, the AMD can outperform the Intel in programs that take advantage of multiple cores, but the Intel stomps AMD in single-core performance, and the vast majority of games(like 99%) only use 1 processor core.

I would have skimped elsewhere if you wanted to save a couple hundred dollars. You could have bought a nice Intel i5 and been set on your CPU for 5+ years at least.

Look at the dropoff here once you get down to an AMD 8350:
Intel Core i5-4670K Gaming Performance | bit-tech.net

1440p monitors seem to have taken a price drop here recently:

Qnix for $270 -Qnix QX2710 LED Evolution II Multi TRUE10 SE 27 2560x1440 Overclockable Monitor | eBay

Yamakasi Catleap for $260 -New 27 Yamakasi Catleap Q270 SE 2560x1440 s IPS LED WQHD DVI D Monitor | eBay

Achieva(refurb) for $199 -Used Refurbished Achieva QH270 Ipsi 27 034 s IPS 2560x1440 LED Computer Monitor | eBay

Perfect time to grab another one.

edit: arghh, can't find anyone with free shipping to Romania.

If the GPU is the same, and given 100% identical physical specs otherwise, the xbone/ps4 would out perform a PC running the same game. Keg is a piece of shit but he's right.