Feedback on my PC

So I'm gonna build a PC in about 2 weeks and with some help I put together the following system:

Intel Core i5 3350P Boxed
Gigabyte GA-H61M-D2H-USB3
Sapphire R9 280X 3GB GDDR5 OC DUAL-X
Zalman Z9 Plus
Crucial Ballistix BLS2CP4G3D1609DS1S00CEU x2 (16GB total)
Cooler Master B500
Samsung 840 EVO 120GB

Price isn't that much of an issue, but obviously I'm getting a good gaming PC while still getting a lot of bang for buck.

So if any of you got some good suggestion let me know.
Of course do explain why it would be better, preferably with some numbers showing me the difference. ;)

Thanks.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Intel-I5-347.../dp/B0083U94CO

Seems to be cheaper (least on amazon) and slightly faster, and with more stuff on it. (~5% better on cpu benchmarks)

GFX card you might as well hold off until the 8xx series come in from nvidia next year, if you can wait a few months. From what I've read it's going to be a fairly large jump as they move to smaller chip size, which is why I am holding off buying anything until then.

Will 120GB be enough? Maybe stick in a hybrid with it for general grunt work.


Don't forget Win7! /troll

Win 7 on a SSD? Are you crazy!!!

I've looked at the 3470 and read about it, but the consensus is that while it's faster, it won't matter for games, since it's not a bottleneck. The 3350 is cheaper here, so I'm still leaning towards that.

My videocard is getting really old now (4890), so I really need the upgrade, I can always sell this one and buy a new one in about a year.

Obviously I'll be sticking my HDD's in there, got over 8TB around the house in different systems, so I got more then enough. :P

Thanks for the input, will definitely check out the processor a little more.

PassMark Software - Video Card Benchmarks - High End Video Cards

Maybe a 760? 90 marks for $60 seems expensive. Unless you like ATI? I've only owned one ATI card and it overheated like a nuclear reactor with no cooling rods. From what I understand if you only really want to go ATI if you are getting an AMD processor these days as they work really well together.

I have a 450 atm, waiting on an 880 for Star Citizen.

It doesn't tell me which version of the 760 is being used here, both clock speed and memory differs a lot per model, making the 4GB 40 euro more expensive and if I don't go for the lowest clockspeed it's even 50 more expensive, putting the price at 268 euro. The 3GB ATI is 258.

In BF4 the following scores are set:
R9 280X AMD 39,7 / 57,3
R9 280X Intel 38,7 / 56,3

GTX 760 AMD 28,7 / 41,7
GTX 760 Intel 28,3 / 42,5

That's on 1920x1080 ultra settings, first number is minimum framerate, second average framerate.

There is a reason why the numbers differ so much from the average, that's because DICE used some of the new features in AMD cards and will release an update improving on that.
If more games will support this, which is actually expected, then there will be a major difference between the 2 cards. Even Nvidia's latest can't win it from the AMD cards on BF4, even though they do win slightly with other games.

As with the scores you showed, these scores don't tell me which versions are being used either, so that's quite annoying. In the end, if I were to buy 1 I would go for the 4GB version, I'm planning to get a 2560 screen (not sure if I want to get 21:9 or a regular 16:9), at which point I can use every little bit of extra power. With the smaller price difference as well (60 would have definitely put me over the edge), 280x just offers me more of what I want against a slightly less attractive price.
In the end it's really that technology which will likely go a long way from AMD that puts the 280x over the 760, because if BF4 is any indication, then Nvidia is gonna have a rough time.

That said of course, I could go for the 760 and get an upgrade in a year. So meh for choices.

Star Citizen/Elite should be great, still not made up my mind which I want, I'll just wait for the reviews. ;)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Robert

PassMark Software - Video Card Benchmarks - High End Video Cards

Maybe a 760? 90 marks for $60 seems expensive. Unless you like ATI? I've only owned one ATI card and it overheated like a nuclear reactor with no cooling rods. From what I understand if you only really want to go ATI if you are getting an AMD processor these days as they work really well together.

I have a 450 atm, waiting on an 880 for Star Citizen.

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Used to! AMD & Ati used to be bum buddies and Intel & Nvidia used to bump uglies. Nowdays using a specific configuration won't actually give you any performance increases unless it's clearing a bottleneck.

@ Benji, I agree with you there about the CPU, the differences are minimal and you really won't see any difference at all TBH. Also keep in mind the 280X is brand new, so not only do we only have a few weeks worth of tests to go off, we also have very early stage drivers which should see a performance increase over the next few revisions/updates.

With these new games however (such as BF4) they have actually been designing them based off certain brands/features, so some will simply run better on an Ati card or an Nvidia card. Just like how they will perform differently on the PS4 and Xbox One (and runs at different resolutions).

The 280x is actually not brand new, it's the same GPU as is used on the 7970 cards, so I doubt we will see much improvement.

I know that games are designed with specific features, however Mantle is what interests me, which may get used by Nvidia and Intel as well.
PS it will also be used with Star Citizen.
Mantle (API) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Getting a card now that supports Mantle, is to me a huge advantage over an Nvidia.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by GohanSSJ

The 280x is actually not brand new, it's the same GPU as is used on the 7970 cards, so I doubt we will see much improvement.

I know that games are designed with specific features, however Mantle is what interests me, which may get used by Nvidia and Intel as well.
PS it will also be used with Star Citizen.
Mantle (API) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Getting a card now that supports Mantle, is to me a huge advantage over an Nvidia.

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Yeh nar the 280 & 270 are just rebranded Tahiti chips (again) but the 290 AFAIK is the "new" card. I was just going off an assumption that they would share a driver package with the R90 rather than the 79XX series. Doesn't make sense the 290 would use 79xx drivers, and doesn't make sense they would make 270/80 use a different driver package than the 290. But eh i could be wrong, these are just my assumptions.

Well I honestly don't know how the drivers will be going, my assumption is that they are the same since the chip is the same.

Simple fact is that I haven't looked at hardware much for the past couple of years, so while I keep updated on the major things, it's not until I'm buying stuff that I look closely at all the differences. Since my last build was over 4 years ago, I'm pretty outdated. :P

Got my new PC, did some minor changes, got an Crucial M500 120GB SSD, it's reading speed of small files is faster, while it's actual writing speed is slightly slower (though quicker in some areas), this while Samsung claims 450MB writing speed vs 120MB writing speed of the Crucial, well Samsung talks absolute shit and the 450 can only be reproduced in optimum situations. I've found none of these reproductions in reviews btw.
Got a different power supply, simply because the other one was unavailable, so a Thermaltake 530 watt.
I got a different case, the one I wanted was unavailable as well, so I got a Sharkoon REX3 Value.
And I got a different videocard, well only slightly, it's a 7970 (same GPU), which is slightly faster and most important offered me the Gold card for 3 free games, whereas they did not offer that with any of the new cards. So since I wanted both FarCry 3 Blood Dragon and Saints Row 4 (and got Thief as well when it's released), it definitely got me some extra value while the card was about 10 euro's cheaper. :)

Here is the sad part though, 1 of the parts does not work, me and my brother build it, but it didn't work, display wouldn't turn on and we got some beeps, we exchange some parts (memory, videocard, power supply) with my old pc, but nothing worked, so my brother took it with him, having the same socket he will be going through all the hardware to determine the problem, sadly he's quite busy, so might take a few days. :(

The beeps didn't give any clue as to the problem?

Nah, they were not specific to anything. :S

Beeps could be due to the fact that that mobo only supports ram speeds up to 1333 and your ram is 1600?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Monolith

Beeps could be due to the fact that that mobo only supports ram speeds up to 1333 and your ram is 1600?

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The RAM will be underclocked by the mobo and run at 1333mhz in that case ;)

Here where I live an used hd 7970 is about the same price as gtx 760 so :thumbup:

What were the beeps? Look up your BIOS manufacturer, they will have a list of beep codes. It should be telling you exactly what the problem is.

Also i'm skeptic about 530W being sufficient for a 7970 esp at full load. I would run GPU stress test (once you get it up) to make sure it won't shut down at full load.

& as above, ya your RAM will just auto down-clock if that's the case. tightens up the timings though.

Mainboard supports it.

The power supply is more then enough, people keep thinking you need more, but the fact is that you don't.

Right now I got a 4890 on a 400 watt and that's been running fine for years, the power usage of this PC is higher then my new one. On top of that on the biggest PC site in the Netherlands (Tweakers.net) there is a best buy guide every once in a while, they are running a even more powerful system with the same GPU, on a 520 watt power supply, noting it as more then sufficient.

If you guy buy a power supply, just go do the math, the 7970 has a usage of 257 watt on maximum load, that leaves over 270 for the rest of the system, so yeah, it's absolutely no problem.