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Critique my build (1st timer)
I have always been intrigued to build my own PC, so this is my first crack at it. I have been doing a lot of reading on tech forums, and I have a fairly basic understanding of how to put a PC together after watching a few videos. My build is from absolute scratch because for the past 6 to 7 years, I have only used laptops. The main purpose of my build is to play games at mid to high settings. I'm looking forward to the release of GW2 and would really like to play it on max and 60fps. I wasn't sure if I should build the computer now because we still don't know the system requirements for GW2. However, after reading another thread about the prospect of price increases on hardware, I have decided that maybe now is a good time to build a PC.
Here is my build. All suggestions are welcome.
Case Lancool PC-K62 CPU i5 2500K
MOBO MSI P67A-GD65 (B3)
RAM CORSAIR VENGEANCE 8GB
GPU GTX 560 ti
PSU CORSAIR CMPSU-650TX 650W
HD WD Caviar Blue 500GB
Optical ASUS DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS
CPU Fan ZALMAN CNPS9500A-LED
Keyboard I-ROCKS KR-6820E-BK Black
Monitor ASUS VH236H BLACK 23"
Wifi Adapter ASUS USB-N13
I am going to OC the i5 but nothing crazy, so I'm wondering whether my PSU can handle it. The cost is about $1200 (which is within my budget) excluding the OS. I may be able to get Win7 from a friend; if not, then I'll have to buy it. Please let me know what you think.
Comments
I'd like to see direct links to the hardware you're buying, as some hardware isn't bad, really, but just overpriced. For example, if the memory is $50, then sure, it's a great deal. If exactly the same memory is $100, then it's badly overpriced and you should switch to something equivalent for cheaper.
Two components that I would swap out:
"PSU CORSAIR CMPSU-650TX 650W"
Nice power supply four year ago, but rather dated today. Even Corsair's own TX V2 line is much better, and tends to be cheaper. Depending on prices, something else is likely to be a better deal yet.
"HD WD Caviar Blue 500GB"
If you're not going to get an SSD, then at least get a WD Caviar Black. There's no need to make your computer more sluggish than necessary.
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I've never heard of I-rocks. Making a good keyboard isn't hard, so it will probably be fine. If you're stuck with a wireless network and need the wifi adapter because of that, then I guess you're stuck with it and you do what you have to do. But if you get a choice, then wired (ethernet) is better.
I was too lazy to add the urls for each component. I'll just add the newegg.ca links to give you a general idea of the pricing. I'm planning the order from ncix.com and they have price matching. So the final price for each of the parts will, in most cases, be cheaper than the price from newegg.
Case: Lancool PC-K62
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811112239&Tpk=pc-k62
CPU: i5 2500K
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115072
MOBO: MSI P67A-GD65 (B3)
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130574&Tpk=MSI%20P67A-GD65%20%28B3%29
RAM: CORSAIR VENGEANCE 8GB
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145345
GPU: GTX 560 ti
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127565
HD: WD Caviar Blue 500GB
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136073
Optical: ASUS DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827135204&Tpk=ASUS%20DRW-24B1ST%2fBLK%2fB%2fAS
CPU Fan: ZALMAN CNPS9500A-LED
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835118223&Tpk=ZALMAN%20CNPS9500A-LED
Keyboard: I-ROCKS KR-6820E-BK Black
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16823204015&Tpk=I-ROCKS%20KR-6820E-BK%20Black
Monitor: ASUS VH236H BLACK 23"
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824236059&Tpk=ASUS%20VH236H%20BLACK%2023%22
Wifi Adapter: ASUS USB-N13
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833320040CVF&Tpk=ASUS%20USB-N13
I also had questioned my choice of HD, but I'm not sure exactly what's the difference between the blue and the black caviars. Please enlighten me. As for the PSU, what should I get that could allow me to OC and upgrade to a more powerful GPU in the future? The motherboard does include ethernet, but I'm used to wifi in the apartment. I haven't had any serious issues with it so far. Thanks for your comments so far.
Some comments:
Lian Li makes nice cases, but they can be a little on the expensive side. That should offer plenty of space and plenty of airflow for you, though. For what it's worth, the case says that it supports video cards up to 29 cm long. The PCI Express specification allows cards up to 31 cm long. Very few cards approach that limit, though. The Radeon HD 6990 is the only card that I'm aware of that has ever been longer than 29 cm, and you'd need a higher end case (and a much larger budget) for that class of card (375 W TDP!) to make any sense, anyway.
The processor is appropriate to your build. So is the motherboard, provided that you're not going to go overboard with overclocking. If you want to overclock to 4.2 GHz and call that good enough, then the motherboard will be plenty good enough. If you want to shoot for 5 GHz and see if you can fry something, then the motherboard would be a little dicier. Overclocking Sandy Bridge to 5 GHz is dangerous no matter what motherboard you have, but there are some higher end motherboards that would make that sort of overclock a little less dangerous.
If you're buying from NCIX anyway, then you can get equivalent memory for a little cheaper:
http://ncix.com/products/?sku=57953&vpn=F3%2D12800CL9D%2D8GBXL&manufacture=G%2ESkill
Or the same capacity with a little less speed for substantially cheaper:
http://ncix.com/products/?sku=55544&vpn=996770&manufacture=Mushkin%20Enhanced
If you're overclocking the processor, then I'd probably go for the 1600 MHz memory, though.
Here's the same video card you picked from NCIX:
http://ncix.com/products/?sku=58303&vpn=N560GTX%2DTI%20Twin%20Frozr%20II%2FOC&manufacture=MSI%2FMicroStar
You can get about the same performance for cheaper, with less power consumption and a better power set by going with a Radeon HD 6950 instead:
http://ncix.com/products/?sku=62238&vpn=HD695XZDFC&manufacture=XFX
The MSI Twin Frozr II cooler is substantially better than the XFX cooler, though. The XFX card's cooling system will be adequate, but MSI's Twin Frozr coolers are excellent.
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When designing a hard drive, or a lot of other parts, there are trade-offs to be made. There are design decisions where a company can say, well, we could do this and it will work, or we could do that, and it will be a little bit nicer product (better performance, better reliability, quieter, etc.), but it will cost us an extra $1 to build. Western Digital's answer to this is to do both. Caviar Blue is their cheap but functional 7200 RPM hard drive line. Caviar Black is their high performance 7200 RPM hard drive line.
The fundamental reason why hard drives are slow is that, whenever the system tells a hard drive to read or write data, the hard drive has to wait until the drive heads and platters move to the right spot before it can do anything. The platter rotation speed is dictated by the 7200 RPM specification, so that's the same for all 7200 RPM hard drives. But the Caviar Black line is better at getting the drive head to the right spot, which means that it can start reading or writing the data sooner.
Now, once it starts reading or writing data, the sequential transfer speed is dictated by other factors such as platter density, and the Caviar Black line might not have an advantage over some competitors here. But in situations where hard drives are slow, the reason that they're slow is that most of their time is spent waiting for things to move to the right physical position before it can read or write anything. In a 4K random read test, as much as 99.6% of a typical hard drive's time can be spent not actually reading data, but waiting for things to move to the right spot so that it can read the requested data. That's a synthetic benchmark, but real programs can commonly push the analogous figure over 90%.
If a Caviar Black can reduce the time it takes to move things into position by 20% as compared to a Caviar Blue, then spending 20% less time waiting can easily translate into 15-20% better hard drive performance. In situations where you're wiating on your hard drive, that means you don't have to wait as long. The system will boot faster, programs will load faster, zoning screens in games will go faster, and so forth. Perhaps more important than this is that the very brief hard drive accesses will go faster, too, so for example, a browser will perform better.
How much better? If we use a WD Caviar Blue as a baseline, then on average, whenever your computer makes you sit there and wait for something other than a large Internet download, maybe a WD Caviar Black makes you wait 10-20% less time. That's substantial, and I'd say that's well worth $20. The real fix is a good solid state drive, which might make you wait 70% less time (though this varies wildly depending on how much of the waiting time is really spent on accessing storage), but SSDs are a lot more expensive.
To judge by New Egg's ratings, a WD Caviar Black is probably more reliable, too. Western Digital does give them a longer warranty, though you can do that with products that aren't more reliable, too.
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If you were designing a home network from scratch, then you'd start by saying, can we use wired? If you've got one modem and one computer, and they're right next to each other so that all you have to do is run an ethernet cable, then you can and should use a wired network. In that situation, there's no reason to even consider a wireless network. But there are some situations where a wired network would mean running long cables all over the house, and having to keep a laptop plugged in as you move it from one room to the next, and that can be awkward. The latter sort of situation is why some people are stuck with wireless.
Wired networks have some intrinsic advantages over wireless. First, wired is more reliable. Wireless networks can have interference problems, where it tries to send a signal from the wireless adapter to the modem or vice versa, and the signal isn't strong enough when it gets there. This can be because it was too weak in the first place, you're trying to send it too far, or other objects are getting in the way and interfering. Wired networks are immune to interference problems, as it goes through an ethernet cable, not through space where random other objects can get in the way.
Second, wired is more secure. If you're sending a signal through open space, then people outside your house can receive that signal, too. They can also send signals from outside your house that get picked up by the wireless router. This commonly leads to someone else leeching your bandwidth, which means you get worse performance because you have to share with someone else. This could also lead to someone eavesdropping on your system and stealing information as you transmit it. Now, password protection and encryption can help a lot, to the degree that someone looking to steal a wireless connection would ignore yours and look for someone else's unless they've got a vendetta against you in particular. But wired networks are completely immune to that sort of problem, as a hacker can't cause trouble without physical access to your system, that is, without breaking into your house.
Third, wired is cheaper. This is pretty self-explanatory.
Fourth, wired can be higher bandwidth. This doesn't matter much for most people, but if you need high LAN bandwidth (e.g., if you heavily use a NAS to make the same data available to multiple computers), then you can get a gigabit ethernet router and transfer data at over 100 MB/s. Wireless routers typically can't come anywhere remotely near that. Wireless routers can be fast enough to not be a problem for an Internet connection, though. Even a dirt cheap 100 Mbps ethernet router that tops out at around 12 MB/s is faster than an awful lot of wireless routers.
I don't know what your home situation is. Maybe you have some reason why you can't use a wired network, and need to use wireless. But if not, then you'd be better off going with a wired network.
I'm pretty set for the case that I picked out. It's mostly tooless installation, which is great for a first time builder like me. I'll take your suggestions for the RAM and HD. A few extra dollars invested in the caviar black would go a long way indeed. As for the PSU, I may go with http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151088&Tpk=Seasonic%20X650. It costs more, but it's also modular and gold certified. One question though, is 650W enough for OCing and the 560 ti?
"I'm pretty set for the case that I picked out. It's mostly tooless installation, which is great for a first time builder like me."
Note that needing "tools" means a screwdriver. I suppose that you'd rather have thumbscrews than to need a screwdriver. But it's not a huge deal if you need a screwdriver.
"One question though, is 650W enough for OCing and the 560 ti?"
Ah, the power supply. I was going to talk about that before and forgot.
Your processor has a TDP of 95 W. That's an honest TDP at stock speeds. If you're going to give it a pretty big overclock, then let's call it 200 W to be on the high side.
A GeForce GTX 560 Ti officially has a TDP of 170 W. But that's basically a lie on Nvidia's part. Let's call it 200 W. A GeForce GTX 560 Ti tends to use quite a bit more power in the real world than a Radeon HD 6950, and the latter card has an official TDP of 200 W. That 200 W estimate is probably on the high side, though, and is used to mean "we have hardware in place to ensure that the card cannot pull more than 200 W, because it will automatically clock down to save power if it tries to pull more than that."
Add in 100 W for everything else, which is a huge overestimate for most systems, and you have a system that could, under extreme, artificial loads, pull 500 W from the power supply. Under typical gaming loads, you're probably looking at something more like 300 W. A good quality 650 W power supply is plenty for that.
But that leaves open the question of, which 650 W power supply? The Seasonic X-650 that you link is a really great power supply. It's not just the energy efficiency, which is what the 80 PLUS Gold certification denotes. It's also ripple suppression, voltage regulation, high quality components (all Japanese capacitors, Sanyo Denki fan, etc.), and so forth.
If you'd rather save some money, you could try this:
http://ncix.com/products/?sku=59616&vpn=P1650SNLB9&manufacture=XFX
That's also made by Seasonic, and basically the same thing as the Corsair TX650 V2. It's quite a bit better than the power supply that you picked at first. And it's also cheap for something of that quality, even before the $20 mail-in rebate.
Personally, I love Lian Li cases, but I have to admit they are on the expensive side. I plan on re-using them through several builds, rather than starting each build from scratch, so that cost does get spread over several computers. "Tool-less" does just mean thumb screws instead of regular screws though - not a big deal really. They are machined well on the inside and out, have great internal accessibility, they have great ventilation, and I think most of them are all aluminum, which is a bonus.
600-650W is the "sweet spot" for most people building gaming computers. Quiz's numbers are roughly the same ones I use, and it seems that just about every CPU and single video card combination comes up to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 400-550. GIving yourself a bit of room for over clocks and future upgrades, and that puts you right in that 600-650 range. Enough room to over clock on what you have, and enough room to use pretty well any CPU and single video card as upgrades in the future. Any capacity over what you need just lowers the efficiency of the power supply and adds to the cost, so you don't wanna just go out and buy the biggest one you can find and call it a day, but you don't want to cut it so close that you add a new hard drive next year and suddenly find you don't have enough power to spare another 5W for that one new hard drive either.
The biggest difference between the Caviar Black and Blue is that the Black has a larger cache and twin heads and a dual core on-board processor. The Blue is your standard run-of-the-mill hard drive, nothing special about it at all really. In either case, it won't matter if you use SATA 2 (3.0) or SATA3 (6.0) for them, as neither drive can come close to saturating either bus. But the Caviar Black is noticeably faster than most every other non-SSD drive out there. If you can't or don't want to jump to SSD-level, then there is no other choice than Caviar Black right now really.
Aside from going wired on your network (which I recommend if possible as well, but I don't do it because I can't either), I have two other recommendations:
a) Use Powerline Ethernet. This works great as long as you don't have to go through a lot of circuit breakers. You plug an adapter into your wall next to your router, and another next to your computer, and then ethernet cable plugs into those adapters. No drivers, it just uses the power lines in your home as connected ethernet cables. It competes with the fastest WiFI-N speeds for real-world transfer, and doesn't have nearly as much problem with interference or random drop-outs.
b) If you absolutely must use WiFi, then use a Wireless Bridge instead of a WiFi Adapater. WiFI adapters like the one you have picked out will need a driver, and drivers range from marginal to downright crappy, not to mention can have OS Upgrade compatibility issues. A bridge is basically a WiFi antenna you set on your desk with an ethernet jack: you configure it using ethernet, and then your computer connects over it's ethernet card. No drivers, and ~any~ device that works over ethernet will work over the bridge. In fact, you can have multiple devices using the same bridge (via a hub or switch). It costs a bit more, but the lack of hassle and the fact that you only need 1 for many devices makes it totally worth while.
Overall though - solid build. Good luck with it and let us know how it turns out.
quoted from newegg
"The Lian Li Lancool PC-K62 features a 140mm intake fan in the front and a 120mm exhaust fan at the rear as well as two 140mm exhaust fans on the top for efficient ventilation and effective system cooling."
so... lets see, it has ONE 140mm INTAKE fan, and 2 x 140mm + 1 x 120mm exhaust fan IN the case. thats NOT counting the exhaust fan(S) included in the powersupply and video card(s)
the key to efficent cooling is to balance the INTAKE cooling air with exhaust hot air. if you have too much exhaust relative to intake, you create a partial vacuum which reduce the effectiveness of ALL your exhaust fans. (not to mention excessive dust coming from various leakage areas around the case.
you are trying to learn to build a machine, so i'll let you figure out the logic behind that decision. i'll simply supply the information for you to make better decisions:)
however, i'd offer some examples of what I would personally pick at that price range
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811163182&Tpk=silverstone%20tj08-e
or
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129021
examine the choices i made carefully and try to explain why i would pick those cases.
this way you will actually learn to build a machine
Thanks for pointing that out. I guess you're trying to tell me that I should match air in-take with exhausts. If I decide to stick with the Lancool, perhaps I can turn off one of the top 140mm exhaust fans. That way I can get a better balance. Furthermore, I can install the PSU so that it draws in air from the bottom of the case; however, I'm not sure how effective that will be.
I'm not so sure about your first suggestion because it's a micro-atx case, which means I would have to change my motherboard to micro-atx. I prefer the regular atx to micro.
I had also considered the Antec 900 when I was looking at cases. It's a very good case, but I chose the Lancool because the interior is painted black; it has tooless installation, and it comes with a few dust filters.
So would disconnecting one of the exhaust fans prevent the potential partial vaccum?
You don't want a Micro ATX case. That's too small.
The Lian Li case will be fine. You don't need massive amounts of airflow, and it will have plenty for your needs. The air will move faster through the front vent than it leaves through the rear vents, but it will work just fine. Even if the interior of the case gets a couple of degrees warmer than it would in a $100 case optimized more for higher airflow, that won't be a problem for you, with a good cooler on the processor and video card.
Now, if you were getting two GeForce GTX 560 Tis in SLI, then I'd say to get a different case. But I wouldn't be worried about airflow with the case you're looking at.
You sure about that, because I'm pretty sure it doesn't work that way...
You don't really need to worry about "partial vacuums"... unless you do something silly like rig every single fan to blow outward and hook up a shopvac to your heatsink, you'll be just fine. You don't need to balance out your intake and outtake fans: if one side is overbalanced with the other, it just serves as positive head and lets that fan push that much more air. It all self-balances unless you severely overdo it, and you'd need like a jet turbine to do that.
Your going to have to deal with dust regardless, you can't get enough of a positive pressure on a case to not have to worry about it, unless you use caulk and a high pressure blower to keep 2psi+ on your case, you aren't going to make near enough positive pressure with typical 120mm cooling fans to make any difference what so ever in dust. The best you can do are filters on the fans. And if the case doesn't come with them, they are easy enough to add - the stuff is cheap at Home Depot.
The ATX standard says "Front to Back, Bottom to Top" for air flow direction, it doesn't specify anything about needing to balance your fans. So long as you have whatever fans you have installed in your computer pointing in that direction, they will all be fine, you just don't want fans pointing in opposite directions working against each other.
it would help, however, disconnected fan also count as one of the leakage points that i mentioned earlier. it's where dust comes into the case when the existing cooling system remains unbalanced. when you disconnect a fan, you have to consider the placement of that potential leakage point. if the placement of that leakage point is near an exhaust, hot air may recycle back into the case causing a thermal short circuit. the degree of thermal feedback depends on how bad the unbalance is inside the case. if you have 1 x 140mm intake, vs 1 x 140mm + 1 x 120mm + video card + powersupply exhaust, the degree of partial vacuum is still quite significant. so dust will be coming in from the 140mm fan that you disconnected.
you are on the right track thinking about disconnecting the 140mm fan, however what would be a better solution in that trend of thought is actually taping off that area with duct tape or something of that nature so it doesnt become a potential leakage area with a placement near hot exhaust.
as for the microATX case, most people who does not intend to use SLi/crossfire really only need a microATX board. in the past, microATX boards are cheap featureless boards. however the demand for high performance microATX boards has risen and manufactures have started build high end enthusiast grade microATX boards for "LAN party machine" builds. the TJ08-E case is build specificlly designed to satisfy that market. for example the drive cage is removable if you want to use 11" videocards and the case if actually large enough even if you want to use a 2 card SLi/crossfire configuration. the TJ08-E also comes with a 180mm air penetrator filtered intake fan which will deliver enough cooling air even for SLi/Crossfire.
as for the antec case, I put that out there to see if you would disconnect the 200mm fan on the top:) if you disconnect the 200mm fan on the top and tape that section off, you will actually have a fairly balanced cooling system where you have 2 x 120mm intake vs 1x 120mm exhaust + video card + powersupply. even if you decide to tape off the 120mm exhaust instead of the 200mm exhaust, the vacuum created isnt enough to pull too much dust into the case and heat flows upward naturally anyway.
lian-li cases are nice however they've never been cheap:D I know because i've owned one for over 10 years:) however, the lancool wasnt one of their better designed cases. if you MUST have a lian-li, consider
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811112315
it's a microATX case which is similar to the TJ08-E. to limit yourself to lian-li at your budget point isnt going to get you a good mid/full tower. the next best choice is antec which will get you a nice case at that price range. there are other cases and these are simply examples to make you think about the logic behind your choice.
the main reason for this excerise is to make you think about your priorities when it comes to system building. some people prefer looks over function, which is a valid choice. however they must understand the cost isn't just in $, but the amount of work down the road to keep that case clean from dust.
You should ~never~ tape off or disable a fan or air intake/exhaust.
That is horrible advice.
If you have a problem with ventilation, point the fan in the right direction...
well... size is relative
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131758
if it gets the job done, and have the functionality you are looking for, it'd works just fine in my book:)
if the case is designed properly i would agree:) however that isnt always the case.
not quite a 2 psi+ blower but here is a demo of a older case design which isnt as ideal as the newer case design from silverstone
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qe-2ZqmSGug
and this one
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLOg9yI3rjs
physics doesn't stop working just because it's not the in ATX specification:p it's not hard to add up your intake sources and subtract the exhaust sources to figure out a rough idea of what kind of case pressure you are going to have.
Ok, watched those videos because I was interested...
Dude, that has nothing to do with positive pressure. That just shows airflow. You just need your fans in the right direction. And positive pressure has nothing to do with cooling, and smoke being blown straight into an intake duct on a video demonstrates little with how dust in your environment is going to affect your computer.
Blocking off vents, or unplugging fans, just for the sake of "positive pressure" is a bad idea. I strongly recommend against it. Air flow is what you want, and that doesn't matter if all your fans are sucking or blowing or how many of each you have, they just need to be going in the same direction.
In fact, in the second video, they have all the outtake fans turned off - That's a bad idea because your power supply and video card kinda depend on outtake fans, but just goes to show that you don't need "balanced" fans, you just need total air flow. And the fact that their pinwheel is spinning doesn't prove positive pressure, it just proves air flow is going in the right direction... I can get a pinwheel to move if I just stick it in front of a fan in my room, that doesn't mean my room is pressurized to any beneficial degree.
That's what physics said when I asked it, anyway...
All fans blowing out is fine if you have other air vents that aren't covered by fans that will be appropriate to allow air in. All fans blowing in is fine if you have other air vents that aren't covered by fans and will be adequate to let air out. You'd kind of rather have fans on both, but it isn't entirely necessary. I guess you don't want dead air where the airflow goes from the intake to the exhaust while leaving heat to accumulate in areas where the air doesn't move at all.
What you don't want is all fans blowing air in, and no other air vents, or all fans blowing air out, and no other air vents. I guess the former is hard to do, as the power supply fan usually blows air out. You don't want all hot air for the whole case going through the power supply, though, unless it's a pretty low power system. Or I guess you don't want too little airflow, such as trying to cool a gaming computer with only a single 80 mm case fan, regardless of whether it's blowing in or out.
As for the thermal "short circuit" that psyclum worries about, that's more a problem of how you arrange the room. If you the computer case inside a cabinet with no airflow through the cabinet itself, then you're going to get that sort of problem. If you have a case sitting on the ground in an open room, it's not going to be a problem for most case designs. Maybe it's something to worry about more if you're realistically putting out 1000 W, but not for 300 W.
Now, if you do what I caught my sister doing once, with a space heater pointed at the air intake vents, then you get a problem. But that was heat from the space heater, not exhaust heat from the computer. But even a gaming computer putting out 300 W is far, far shy of what a lot of other household appliances use. A lot of refrigerators will put out a lot more heat than that, and don't have any case fans at all, but we don't worry about them overheating unless we leave door open.
The case will either be on my hardwood floor or more likely, elevated on a small tool shelf. I haven't read any reviews that discussed air-flow and/or thermal short circuiting problems with the case. I still have time to do more research into the case because many of the MIRs are ending at the end of July, so I'll have to wait until August to see the new deals.
The other thing is that the aethetics of the micro-ATX cases really turn me off, and it limits future upgrades since I have to use an m-ATX motherboard. I doubt that I'll be using SLI in the future because I don't play those FPS games which require high-end GPUs. Therefore, the heat generated overall should be within acceptable perameters of the case, shouldn't it?
In the meantime, I'll do a little more research.
NOW we are getting into the meat of the discussion:) the key to a successful system build is to find out what the client REALLY want (that would be you in this discussion)
your "limitations" in this case include aesthetics and future upgrades. whether that can be accomplished within your budget (aluminium case for aesthetics and a regular sized ATX case for upgradability) is questionable, but at least now you know the issues involved and can work towards a solution. generally speaking, a "well designed" aluminium case of that size run around $200. if you must satisfy those requirements in your budget, then compromises must be made. if you decide you can live w/o an aluminium case, then you will get closer to a well designed case.
another concern reguarding a well designed case include acoustical performance. generally speaking, you want to accomplish your cooling needs with as little noise as possible, since most computer cases are located quite close to the end user. to satisfy thermal concerns of the machine, it can't be placed in a closed area for the sake of cutting out the noise. noise concerns come in 2 forms, frequency and decible. generally speaking lower frequency noise is easier to dismiss or less noticable. larger fans generate lower frequency noise because it can deliver the same volume of cooling air at a lower speed. and, slower spinning fan generate lower decible to begin with due to lower fan blade friction at lower pressure differential created by moving the air.
what does all this jargon mean? here are general rules of thumb when selecting a well designed case.
1. larger fans spinning at low RPM is prefered when looking at case design.
2. a balanced airflow design requires less fans(less noise and dust concerns) to accomplish the same cooling capacity
3. placement of intake fans should be as far away from exhaust fans as possible to reduce the mixing of warm and cool air.
4. always try to select a case with filtered intake fans. (dust is the biggest reason for thermal performance degradation)
i'm not here to tell you what to buy, simply letting you know what issues are involved in selecting a case and help you make a better decision when finding the right part for your machine. i gave you examples to think about because they outline some of the main concerns in selecting a well designed case, but the end choice is yours since it's YOUR machine:)
well... air "flows" due to a differential in pressure. the weather channel proves that every day:p fans simply create artifical pressure differential to move the air. the fan blades "push" air out of a given space creating a difference in pressure between the space the fan blades are and ambient pressure.
the pinwheel was spinning AFTER they removed the exhaust fan indicates the pressure inside the case is higher then ambient pressure outside the case. so the "pressurized" case is "leaking" air out via where the exhaust fan used to be.
I think the issue you are having trouble with is the word "pressure". just because there is a pressure differential doesnt mean it has to be a large difference. air can flow with as little as 1 millibar (1 millibar = 0.014503774 psi) pressure differential. it wont move very fast:D but it does move. when you are talking about large difference in pressure you are talking about hurricane/tornado speed flows. the standard atmospheric pressure is 1013.25 mbar. the lowest recorded atmospheric pressure of hurricane katrina was 902 mbar. that is slightly more then 100mbar difference which comes out to less then 1.5 PSI difference in pressure between standard atmospheric pressure and catagory 5 hurricane
of course, i know this is not a valid example of pressure differential in this context, but it's an extream example to show you that it doesnt take a large 2psi blower to generate a "pressurized" container(case) and generate enough airflow to cool down a 300 to 600 watt system:)
airflow, or more specificlly cooling system capacity is based on speed and volume of cooling air flowing across hotspots. large fans provides larger volume hince require less speed to accomplish the same task. pressure is simply a measure of airflow direction in this context.
Nope, I have issue with what I consider to be poor advice. But any further discussion on it doesn't really serve to help the OP make their purchasing decision, so I'll let it lie.
You make a good argument, I just happen to think it's wrong. I can get into the technical aspects of it as well, but it doesn't serve anything other than to feed the flames at this point.
hehe aye, it wouldnt be the internet if we dont have different opinions:) i simply offer my opinion for the OP to make his own judgement. learning to take in different opinions and make an educated decision is part of a good system builder. one must be able to see pass the marketing jargon to see the true value of a component. otherwise he'd just get buried by all the big numbers and marketing jargon that ibuypower and sites like that spew out. seeing true value in a component requires research and a fair understanding of what makes something good. examples i put out simply stimulates his mind in thinking about why or what makes the part good/bad. they are prime examples of case architecture in his price range which features that are either over-engineered or under-engineered for his purpose. now he is able to decide what he wants once he has thought about what he REALLY want:)
Hey guys,
I just finished building my system last night. It took quite a while just to put all the pieces together. I stuck to my initial build and swapped the parts that you have suggested. I went with the Lancool case in the end, and I think the temps are pretty decent.
Now for some noob questions.
1) What are acceptable temps for the cpu? I haven't OCed it yet; so at stock speeds, it hovers around 30~32 celcius on idle and shoots up to high 50s on full load. I used Prime95 (running 4 threads) and SpeedFan to check the temps.
2) How long should I stress test the cpu to check for stability after I OC?
3) What should my memmory speeds read? I have CPU-Z, but the numbers make little sense to me.
4) Would I see any significant gains in graphics if I OC the twin frozr II?
5) For some odd reason, I cannot view Youtube vids in full screen. The biggest I can get it is about a quarter of my screen. I haven't install the drivers for my monitor, could that be the reason?
Thanks.
i would say get samsung screen!why?they make the screen!
23 inch 1080p 24 hertz (120 hertz/5,tv)hdmi,3 millisecond or less.
i dont mention 24 hertz for monitor cause they dont support 24 hertz anymore sadly ,the minimum is 60 hertz(beurk)
Grats on the build!
CPU temps can go as high as 90C-100C and "probably" be fine, some CPU's are more sensitive than others, and once breakdown gets so bad on extreme over clocks it doesn't matter what temperature your at it still won't be stable. Of course, the cooler the better. 50C under load is pretty decent.
Stress testing, my rule of thumb is run it until the temperature hasn't changed for at least an hour - on air coolers that's not too long, under 3 hours usually.
Memory speeds have a bunch of different parameters. The only number that really means a whole lot is the frequency. 1333Mhz is standard for DDR3 for most gaming systems, it can come slower and go much faster, but the gains are pretty wimpy (keep in mind it's triple data rate, CPU-Z reports the base rate so you may need to multiple that by 3. Here's a good post for understanding what all those numbers mean:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/275873-30-memory-please-read-posting
As far as over clocking the video, and over clocking in general. My advice is to try it out just for kicks and see how fast you can get them on your installation - it will vary a bit because of temperature and your exact cards, but get an idea of where you can go with them. Then, turn it back to stock. Only run OC'ed if you find something that absolutely needs the extra speed: otherwise your just wasting electricity and generating more heat and noise on a system so that you can run a game at 134FPS versus 120FPS so that it can all be VSynced back down to 60FPS in the first place. So to answer the question: would you see gains if you OCed your video? Yes - but if they are over 60FPS at stock in the first place, those gains are pretty trivial and don't do anything for you.
As far as Youtube goes: probably something to do with your web browser. Monitor drivers typically only contain resolution/refresh parameters for quirky non-standard resolutions and color correction profiles, and wouldn't have much to do with Youtube I would think.