• Politics are not permitted. There's plenty of places to discuss that elsewhere, and a hot pepper forum is not the place. Thank you for respecting the community!

THP PC builders Unite!!!

Started playing with my system BIOS features today.

Overclocked the CPU (3.6GHz) to 4.0GHz and moved the RAM up to 1866MHz... which is what the RAM is supposed to be running at. Weird that the mobo doesn't auto-configure for that. Anyway, ran the Win7 media test, and surprisingly scored a 7.7... the scores on my CPU and RAM stayed the same, but my GPU scored a bit higher.

Then I pumped the CPU up to the max that the BIOS will allow (4.3GHz) and set the RAM at 2400MHz. Ran the test again, and scored 7.6! The CPU scored higher (was 7.7... now 7.8), but the GPU scored lower. WTF!?! Maybe I need to play with voltage settings?

And I haven't messed with the PCIe bus speed yet. Still things to tweak.
 
http://pcpartpicker.com/b/zYu

Already getting some random comments from peeps on there.

what i find in the PC world is people are either amd or intel. and they stick with that brand, and lots of people talk trash on AMD and its because theyread all these benchmark test which are great for knowing what things can do but for what most people use their comps for they would never notice the difference between intel and amd. i know that my machine was significantly cheaper wit hthe FX-8150 over an intel build.
 
Office 2010 Spell Check fun.

Spell check says this is perfect, right ;)

1DB44D5A-4044-46F8-A01E-8021360362DE-3787-0000053E6B39D684_zpsf72be2a2.jpg
 
Just finished my new build:

I7-3770k (running at 4.5Ghz)
Coolermaster 212 EVO
Asrock Extreme4 z77
Crucial ballistix 16GB (8x2) DDR3-1600
Coolermaster HAF XM

Recycled from my old build:

Radeon HD 6970
Creative X-FI Titanium HD
Corsair 90GB Force GT
2 x 2TB mechanical HDDs
Corsair 650W PSU


Got it OC'd at 4.5GHZ @ 1.136V with temps at about 70C under full load. Haven't had to tweak the voltage at all, just the multiplier so I imagine I could get it quite a bit higher. Stable after running prime95 for ~12 hrs.

So, turns out I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed...I couldn't figure out why in the HELL I wasn't seeing massive improvements in FPS in games after upgrading from my phenom II x6 1035t (2.6Ghz) processor....well turns out if you have a CPU stress test running minimized in the background it kinda hurts performance. :banghead: After roughly an hr of troubleshooting I noticed an icon I didn't recognize in my system tray. Turns out when I thought I closed prime95 I just minimized it.

After getting that little problem sorted out & booting up Arma 3....

f801B9C.jpg


With the CPU upgrade I went from 15-25 fps in arma 3 on mostly medium settings with no AA & ~20-40% GPU usage to 30-60 fps in very high/ultra with 4x AA with 80-99% GPU usage. It's nice to finally be getting my money's worth out of that GPU, previously I've been CPU limited in every game except BF3 which could effectively use all 6 cores of my other shitty CPU. Should've done this ages ago.

Edit: Speaking of Arma3, I've still got a couple alpha invites if anybody wants one.
 
Do you find sometimes that your having to explain computers to someone that doesn't understand it? I found this a year or so ago and have yet to have anyone fail to understand what I'm talking about when they use it. Enjoy, it's a hoot!

 
Was going to upgrade-----I only do it when I can go up at least a GHZ for under a grand (board included)--and gets me more tech for further upgrades.
 
Had it priced out @ $980, and my monitor quit.
$260 for that and it blows my self imposed limit.
 
Without setting a limit and goal, the UPS guy would be stopping by every few days.
 
Been there, done that, got the closet full of spare parts.
 
Back
Top