Custom PC build advise

[mrapoc]

For future reference this is pretty useful

http://choosemypc.net/

 

[ohio_grad_06]

I think with the SSD and new cooler that will definitely help. Then you can use the old hard drive you had as a secondary drive for storage.

 

[joydivision]

Do not consider selling one of them cases and PSUs for £24 unless you have a very good insurance policy! Have you ever seen the output from an oscilloscope from what them? On the 12v rail they are up and down as if it was a sine wave the voltage is that unstable.

I do not compromise on power supplies even if it is a budget system. I tend to go for the cheaper Corsair units.

Edit since read you have bought an EVGA unit Spending the extra money will be well well worth it. The cheap PSUs you get with the cases also lie about their capacity. 500W my a......

 

[ohio_grad_06]

Ha. I tend to use a cheaper EVGA or corsair even with budget builds. I don't want someone's house to catch fire and the computer to get the blaem.

 

[joydivision]

Yep at least the EVGA and Corsairs while still fairly cheap (Taiwanese caps etc) will be at least safe. I think they are both made by Chanell Well.

 

[Robando]

My psu ignorance is now some what resolved. In the past the majority of my own pc's have been off the shelf average units. The psu's were most likely unbranded junk. Not once did I have any psu issues, lucky I guess.

Almost got the PC finished just waiting for the graphics card and the ssd, should arrive next week. I did test the system with a spare graphics card and all boots into bios just fine. Only problem I had was the hyper 212 evo cooler is big and covers 1 of the ram slots. The corsair ram has tall heatsinks that won't fit under the cooler. I have 2 installed no problems but would have to either swap the fan for a slimline one or remove the heatsink from the last ram module to fit more.

 

[jbartlett323]

Um, so I hope you haven't actually bought that board yet... but I see you have....
I had a friend get that same board/proc combo in a CyberPower. It never ran right. That board will only do 1.5v on the RAM, which means you can never hit a respectable bus speed as it will be bottle-necked by the low max bus of the RAM. Good news is, with this set up, stock cooling is fine, but performance is abysmal. You need to upgrade to a board that will supply 1.6v and run XMP (which this board claims it will, and is in the BIOS, but XMP requires 1.6v and it will not stay set if you set it) to get at least 2133MHz RAM that will allow the full throughput of that proc. Glad to see you already got an aftermarket cooler because that thing is HOT at full speed...

 

[Robando]

Hi jbartlett323, shame you did not see my first few posts, I've bought it now, oh well
The ram ran at 1333 but selected xmp and ran at 1866. It booted up and loaded ubuntu on usb no problems.
How long ago did your friend have the board?
Hopefully a bios update can fix any issues, fingers crossed it will be ok.
Thanks for the advise.

 

[ohio_grad_06]

System will run fine. If you think the cooler is an issue, that bracket can mount on the other side of the cooler to pull air out. It should over clock fine that cpu has an unlocked multiplier. The cooler should actually come with spare brackets so you can set up another 120 mm fan as a push pull configuration for more air flow.

 

[jbartlett323]

Hi jbartlett323, shame you did not see my first few posts, I've bought it now, oh well
The ram ran at 1333 but selected xmp and ran at 1866. It booted up and loaded ubuntu on usb no problems.
How long ago did your friend have the board?
Hopefully a bios update can fix any issues, fingers crossed it will be ok.
Thanks for the advise.

So what speed is your RAM rated for? 1866 is not really a problem, as its still relatively slow for DDR3 and can run on only 1.5v, so its possible that you will be alright. Although at 1866, your still missing out on some processing bandwidth.
He just upgraded to an AsRock Extreme9 last month because of this issue. No, a BIOS update will not fix it, as it is a hardware limitation on the board, because its a low end board. Maybe a new board revision will fix it, but again at this price point, I would seriously doubt that Gigabyte will bother.
Don't bother to overclock, you will not see any gains. May get higher clock speeds, sure, but clocks are already great at stock, you need Bus width and Bus speed, especially for video editing. Gotta be able to get large data sets in and out of the processor quickly, but with a bottle-necked bus this can't happen as well.

 

[Robando]

System will run fine. If you think the cooler is an issue, that bracket can mount on the other side of the cooler to pull air out. It should over clock fine that cpu has an unlocked multiplier. The cooler should actually come with spare brackets so you can set up another 120 mm fan as a push pull configuration for more air flow.

The cooler fan was blowing up through the cooler but as the cooler fins are so wide only 1 ram module would fit lol. It's now blowing to the back of the case which only covers 1 ram slot. As you suggested the fan positioned on the other side pulling air would solve this issue. The cpu temps at idle are 21C so no problems there.

The ssd turned up so I installed Lubuntu which runs very fast, using a meager 400mb ram at idle. I may switch back to ubuntu depending on hardware compatability, slight issue with ethernet lan adapter and usb ports.

So what speed is your RAM rated for? 1866 is not really a problem, as its still relatively slow for DDR3 and can run on only 1.5v, so its possible that you will be alright. Although at 1866, your still missing out on some processing bandwidth.
He just upgraded to an AsRock Extreme9 last month because of this issue. No, a BIOS update will not fix it, as it is a hardware limitation on the board, because its a low end board. Maybe a new board revision will fix it, but again at this price point, I would seriously doubt that Gigabyte will bother.
Don't bother to overclock, you will not see any gains. May get higher clock speeds, sure, butios clocks are already great at stock, you need Bus width and Bus speed, especially for video editing. Gotta be able to get large data sets in and out of the processor quickly, but with a bottle-necked bus this can't happen as well.

Yes ram rated at 1866 so no issues at this speed. I did have a quick look at the ram voltage settings and your right 1.5v max. That said the system runs fast enough and doubt I need to overclock anyway.
After all this is a budget system that will be used for basic video editing ( I don't intend to be the next spielberg ) and general use. Before I was running lightworks on a duo core 2.3 ghz laptop 4gb DDR2, on lubuntu which almost handled the 720 video edits. Fingers crossed I know it will work.

 

[ianh21]

i would have got a smaller watt psu and ssd drive. i would have also choosen a different chip as well but nice system.

 

[ohio_grad_06]

I humbly disagree about the PSU. The 500 watt version on that PSU is only 10 dollars less on newegg. As far as the chip, yes, there are better performing ones out. Rumor is AMD is talking about a new CPU called Zen that is supposed to release in 2016-2017 and supposedly be about a 40% performance jump vs their current lineup.

 

[Altster]

There are some good used workstations systems out there and here is one that is close to your budget, this is what I would recommend:
Dell Precision T3500 Workstation - 3.2 GHz Hex Xeon/12GB/250GB HD/Quadro/Win7
http://www.ebay.com/itm/221754296609?_trksid=p2055119.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT

Intel Xeon W3670 3.2 GHz Hex Core 64 bit CPU with 12 MB Cache (6 Cores) [speed rating 8648]
(VS the AMD FX-8350 Eight-Core speed rating 9021)
12 GB DDR3 Ram
Western Digital 250 GB 7200 RPM SATA hard drive
6 rear USB 2.0 port & 2 Front USB 2.0 ports
Rear eSATA port
Front and rear firewire ports
Two PCIe x16 slots, two PCIe x4 slots and 2 PCI slots
Gigabit Ethernet Port
1 Rear Serial port
Parallel port
ATI Radeon X1300 PCIe graphics card with 256 MB RAM and dual DVI outputs (Supports dual monitors)
Windows 7 Professional x64 with license and install DVD

The power supply that comes with these systems are powerful to run whatever you need.
Check the benchmark rating here: http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_list.php

I think I might have one of these units in our shop - probably not with that much RAM or that very same Hex-Core cpu. If anyone is interested let me know - either here in in an email.

I've got a T3400 with a Core-2 Quad here at home and just really like it!

 

[ohio_grad_06]

Only thing about the build above, it's a workstation build. The one he has probably could double as a gamer's box as well.

 

[Robando]

Yes the pc plays games really well on medium to high settings.

Quick update...

The system is running superb with Ubuntu 15.04. It's fast and editing videos with Lightworks is a breeze. I am running a dual boot with Win 7 on the other SSD partition. I don't really use windows unless I have to but I have installed all drivers etc... and win 7 runs quick to . Overall I am very happy with the build and would like to thank everyone for their help and advise.

 

[cypress]

Very clean build the wire management looks excellent!

 

[MDD1963]

Most folks think that an AMD 3.7 Ghz processor might seem faster at most everyday things we do with computers compared to say, an i3/3.2 Ghz...; problem is, it usually is not true. (AMD's latest laptops seem to do very well, however) In most benchmarks, the AMD needs to be clocked at 4 Ghz to defeat an Intel i3 at 3.2 GHz, or, approximately so, sometimes a little better, sometimes a little worse.

From 1996- 2005, I was sort of rooting for AMD processors; they've not been competitive since then, truthfully. (Once Intel came out with Conroe core, AMD has been about 2-3 years behind)

 

[SpaceSquad]

Most folks think that an AMD 3.7 Ghz processor might seem faster at most everyday things we do with computers compared to say, an i3/3.2 Ghz...; problem is, it usually is not true. (AMD's latest laptops seem to do very well, however) In most benchmarks, the AMD needs to be clocked at 4 Ghz to defeat an Intel i3 at 3.2 GHz, or, approximately so, sometimes a little better, sometimes a little worse.

From 1996- 2005, I was sort of rooting for AMD processors; they've not been competitive since then, truthfully. (Once Intel came out with Conroe core, AMD has been about 2-3 years behind)

I like how you compare an entire brand, AMD, with a specific line of Intel Core processors.

Depends on which exact CPU and the application involved. Some apps/games can use multiple cores easily...some cannot. So in some cases a Haswell i3 will outperform a FX-6xxx(for example) and in some cases it won't.

 

[ohio_grad_06]

Well this should make you happy then. AMD announced a new cpu lineup called zen. They claim a 40% jump in performance.


http://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-zen-cpu-radeon-hbm,29053.html

Hopefully this is true because even if you love Intel, competition is good for everyone.