[GAMING PC] Draco1962's "Old" PC build

[davidj1987]

I know that Gigabyte OC series cards aren't too bad. I almost bought an OC'ed 560 TI years ago from Gigabyte but I got a better deal on a reference EVGA card. Are you going to be doing a lot of gaming?

You should be able to hit 4Ghz at stock volts if you have a good 2600k or any 1155 chip for that matter. I had a 2600k with a Gigabyte P67 MB that was $300+ and the highest end UD7 model and it was a horrible overclocker but your mileage may vary.

[Draco1962]

Probably won't worry about OCing the mobo, at least at first until I see how it does without. WIth the GT 440 I can get some decent video on most of the highest settings with Skyrim, and I think that the 660 should do considerably better. I don't get into gaming to the extent that I must have the highest possible graphics to be pleased. Since it is a decent rig, I will probably do more gaming than I have with my Xbox 360. I have pretty much decided to forego the jump to the next gen consoles and get back into the PC gaming a bit more.

[davidj1987]

You should be fine at 1080p if you take it easy on some of the settings and AA/AF.

[u-man]

for thermal paste i use the following : http://www.coollaboratory.com/de/produkte/liquid-ultra/

believe me, this is the best you can get. the only downside it have is, you can NOT use coolers with a aluminium base. but you will be rewarded with a extra -3 to -5 celsius , comparing to ANY other thermalpaste and i tried a lot . this is liquid metal, if you put this on, it looks like soldering tin when it melts .

since i discovered this paste, i dont use any other paste anymore.... this is the real shit.

[Draco1962]

I sprung for the Gigabyte GeForce GTX 660 OC 2GB GDDR5 and got it at $184.99. While it is PCIe 3, it is fully backwards compatible with PCIe 2. At most, I am going to lose a few FPS due to the decreased bandwidth, but the card's stats and faster RAM will more than compensate IMO.

I don't have any frame rate monitoring software installed to test, but the new GPU came with a free copy of Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag. The GTX 440 ran smooth with the medium settings and no PhysX running. I maxed it out with the new GPU in-game settings at 1080p resolution and it was definitely better than what i have seen on my son's Xbox 360 in full HD and is likely exceeding Xbox One territory.

[hansolo77]

Offtopic; Xbox One's territory is only SLIGHTLY better than the 360's. I'm shocked, and still going to wait before buying mine. Apparently, it isn't native 1080p, and there are a lot of graphic glitches and slowdowns. They mad rushed to get the console out and it'll cost them severely. It's not as good as the PS4 as far as the hardware is concerned, and it's more expensive to boot because they included a NOT REQUIRED additional piece of hardware (Kinect) that's driving their prices through the roof. Don't get me wrong, I will probably get one anyway. I'm a Halo fanboy and Halo 5 is going to be XB1 exclusive. I'll just wait till they get a better version out.

[Draco1962]

At this point, I will wait for a PC version to come out if at all. I love the franchise, but not enough to spring for a One when i have a more than capable PC. If it doesn't release for PC then I will have to live vicariously through others. I have the original Xbox and a 360 and that is enough consoles for me!

[davidj1987]

I sprung for the Gigabyte GeForce GTX 660 OC 2GB GDDR5 and got it at $184.99. While it is PCIe 3, it is fully backwards compatible with PCIe 2. At most, I am going to lose a few FPS due to the decreased bandwidth, but the card's stats and faster RAM will more than compensate IMO.

I don't have any frame rate monitoring software installed to test, but the new GPU came with a free copy of Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag. The GTX 440 ran smooth with the medium settings and no PhysX running. I maxed it out with the new GPU in-game settings at 1080p resolution and it was definitely better than what i have seen on my son's Xobox 360 in full HD and is likely exceeding Xbox One territory.

Are you sure you'll really see a difference? I was told the GTX 660 wasn't much slower (5-15%) than a GTX 580 (came out prior to PCI-E 3.0) while the 660Ti was on equal levels, trading blows with a GTX 580 but either way it sips power in comparison.

[Draco1962]

I don't think I will see much if any difference to be honest. A few FPS is probably going to be hardly perceptible to most. For most of what I play, I have more than enough overhead to get me by for a while.

[Draco1962]

Final update- So far the cooling is consistant at around 30C +/- 2 C at idle and, at most, in the low 50C range when pushing the new GPU to max settings playing Assassins Creed: Black Flag.

SInce Windows 8.1 did away with displaying the WEI (Windows Experience Index) scores and running them directly, I was able to do so via cmd line. Here are my latest:

<SystemScore>7.9</SystemScore>

<MemoryScore>7.9</MemoryScore>

<CpuScore>7.9</CpuScore>

<CPUSubAggScore>7.7</CPUSubAggScore>

<VideoEncodeScore>8</VideoEncodeScore>

<GraphicsScore>8.2</GraphicsScore>

<Dx9SubScore>8.2</Dx9SubScore>

<Dx10SubScore>0</Dx10SubScore>

<GamingScore>8.2</GamingScore>

<StdDefPlaybackScore>TRUE</StdDefPlaybackScore>

<HighDefPlaybackScore>TRUE</HighDefPlaybackScore>

<DiskScore>7.9</DiskScore>

So 7.9 for the overall which isn't too bad on a scale of 0-9. I think this rig will serve me well for a few years!

[tthurman]

Sweet!

Your going to love the 40" display

[Draco1962]

Just need to decide on wall mount options. I have two monitors, one of which will be secondary and on the desktop. Considering a wall mounted shelf for my consoles.

[tthurman]

Man, that's going to be the bomb!

I've used three of this monoprice tilting model, and one of these for 50 and up screens, and highly recommend them. They could be a little to fixed for your application though!

Edited December 26, 2014 by tthurman

[Draco1962]

I decided not to clone the old OCZ Agility 3 SSD over to the new Samsung Evo 840 SSD and go with a new Windows 8.1 install instead. Install had a few minor hiccups due to BIOS boot order settings that had to be tweaked and the install was successful.

My Velociraptor is not showing up in BIOS. So back at it again tomorrow to check the cabling to make sure I didn't knock something loose. Once that's resolved, it is time to do some cleanup/backup of the secondary drives, put a fresh format on them, and then start reinstalling everything.

[Shermo]

Run this with your samsung drive

http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/minisite/SSD/downloads/software/Samsung_Performance_Restoration_V11.zip

They have a issue with old files. They run slow. 10mb/s in some cases.

Well just in case you didn't know

[Draco1962]

Thanks for the tip. That was one of the first things updated.

Looks like I'll be tearing-down my PC. I'm not sure if what's going on, but now only a secondary drive is being detected by BIOS. I'm not sure if it is the PSU or data cables so I have my work cut out for the day.

[Draco1962]

I was able to rule-out the PSU as well as the cabling. For some reason, this Intel motherboard is a little dodgy when it comes to recognizing the HDDs, even though the most recent BIOS update supposedly fixes said dodginess. Now time to begin reinstalling all my goodies. Oh joy...

[Draco1962]

Now that I have upgraded to Windows 10 Pro, I am thinking about making some changes to the hardware again. Instead of having a separate GPU for each of the two monitors, I am thinking about running two GPUs in a non-SLI configuration with, the faster and newer Gigabyte GeForce GTX 660 2GB DDR5 GPU running the two monitors and the older Galaxy GeForce GT440 IGB DDR3 GPU running as a dedicated PhysX processor as illustrated in this article.

I have a 750 Watt PSU and the newer card recommends minimum 450W while the older card recommends 300W. I am pretty sure that I am not going to exceed the overall needs of the PC for power. If anything, there may be some minor heat issues, but I am running on average about 30-35C and maybe in the low 40C range during times of max carnage.

Has anyone tried this before? Is it worth the effort?

[stigzler]

No, but yes.

[tthurman]

My last two cards have been 750Ti's after years of AMD only GPU's. That said, I didn't even know you could do this

I'd do it, and fire up some of the Arkham series!

Seems the pinball game devs could have a field day with this feature.

[Draco1962]

From some of what I read, for those games that support hardware PhysX, have had better rendering using two identical nVidia Cards with one for the monitors and the other PhysX dedicated instead of SLI.

[Draco1962]

Has been a while and there have been no major changes in my current rig other than a future upgrade to an additional 4TB of storage and the recent changes for my desk area with a wall mount for my Sammy and 3 Xbox consoles. Excuse the mess as the area is still a WIP, but so far I am liking the change!

 

[stigzler]

Awesome setup. What's the console at the bottom?

[Draco1962]

Original Xbox. My mini Microsoft Xbox totem with Master Chief's helmet as the head.

[tthurman]

I believe he's referring to what I believe to be a desktop power distribution unit at the bottom

Nice clean setup!