Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Lightningfalcon]

I'm finally commited to building a gaming PC.  I don't care about being able to run the newest games at max settings, but I would like to be able to run somewhat modern games, like New Vegas at decent settings and with playable FPS.   
The parts I'm currently looking at are these-
Gigabyte Z87 LGA 1150 2 Way SLI HDMI DVI ATX Motherboard
Cache 3.5-Inch Internal Bare Drive ST1000DM003
Intel Core i5-4570 3.2GHz LGA 1150
SUS R9270-DC2OC-2GD5
I have two older computers I'm scavenging the case, PSU, and whatever else I can.  I will upgrade these later this year.  The parts I'm looking to use so far are the case, fans, PSU, and possibly the RAM.   I still haven't finished removing the parts yet, so I don't the model's of the fan or the RAM is.  Old parts that I identified so far-
HPC-420-302 DF
PNY VCG6800GAPB

So, now the questions.
1.  Is the PSU enough, or will I need to upgade that too?  If so, what is the minimum it will need to be? 
2.  Would it be better to upgrade the fans, or will old ones work just as well, as long as they are in good condition?
3.  Can the case be too large?  I don't have any concerns about being able to fit parts in, but would size have any adverse effects?
4.  Is the old graphics card listed good enough to act as a substitute for about half a year or so?  Or is it completely outdated?

Any help with finding better parts would also be appreciated, along with any good guides.   

[nenjin]

1. That PSU is enough to squeak by. Two 12-volt rails is good. To be safe I'd have at least 550w, 600 maybe. You don't need much more than that unless you have SLI cards or something like a water cooler. The unfortunate part about power consumption and video gaming is, you won't necessarily know you don't have enough until your system is under load. If you're getting an Intel Motherboard, I'd suggest Intel Desktop Utilities. You can monitor powe consumption when you start the system and it assumes some reasonable benchmarks for temps and voltage. If you're close to the yellow before the system is under load, consider upgrading.

You can also always spec out the power consumption of each part and total it up to see how close you are.

2. Fans are fans for the most part. If they work, are clean and you have enough of them you should be ok.

3. A large case might do somethings to the thermal dynamics of the system under load, but generally I'd rather have more room than less. Having to take out x to fool with y is irritating as hell, and the bigger your fingers are the more space you want. Smaller is also usually worse for heat distribution as well.

4. It's an OK card. You will struggle with higher end things like online FPS, RTSes not Starcraft, ect... The memory on the card is plenty for most low-to-mid end gaming. You might have to reduce settings on something super shiny to maintain frame rates.

[gimlet]

1)  The PSU is really really marginal.  Be SUPER careful how you connect things to it - 2 rail is a disadvantage for these things compared to single rail.  Looking at the PSU specs, you should hope that the PCIE power connector is connected to 12V2.  Make sure ALL other 12V stuff goes on 12V1.  (or vice versa, depending on where the mobo/sata connectors will be pulling their power).  The R9-270 TDP alone is a bit under 150 watts, 12V2 max is 18A x 12v = 216 watts (which actually makes no sense, as the PSU spec says that's the total of 12V1+12V2 - something is really fishy).   Look really carefully at where the sata connectors is drawing power from - that's your other 12V draw although it's relatively minor (prob around 30w max), on top of the amount that might go through the motherboard to the video card.  If you divide it right you can probably get by.

The 5v isn't so great either - 4570 has TDP of 85 watts, the motherboard is usually at least 70 watts, the total is really unliikely to be under 160 watts + you have to allow some room for the disk drives, and a bit less for the fans.   Errrrr - if there's no surprises, you can *probably* squeak in, but don't even think of overclocking anything, ever.  Even plugging in 1 more pcie card would scare me.  Turn off everything in the bios you don't need - all those floppy ports, unused USB and sata, onboard graphics once you get your video card, etc.

4) The old card is an AGP slot card, it's not gonna fit in your new motherboard at all.

You might be able to get by with the onboard graphics for a while, they have been getting better and better.  Nowhere near a decent card like the 270 though.

That's kind of an expensive board, you're paying for features you're not gonna use - onboard graphics/DVI/HDMI since you'll be adding a real card, SLI capability and 2 more full-sized pcie slots for starters.   You could almost certainly save a few bucks with a less-featured version of that - a super quick look finds http://www.amazon.com/Gigabyte-Intel-6Gbps-Motherboards-GA-Z87-HD3/dp/B00D94X6AK which is $30 cheaper....   Look at reviews, compare the features that you're actually gonna use.

EDIT:  Also, do you live near a city with a Microcenter?   They have pretty good cpu/mobo combos - for example you could get the 4670K + Gigabyte GA-Z87-HD3 LGA 1150 mobo for a total of $285 (plus tax, unfortunately)

[Lightningfalcon]

Unfortunately, there are no stores that sell any computer parts nearby.   
Is there any advantage to a Intel Z87 with a i5-4570 compared to an ASUS M5A97 with a AMD FD6350? 

[nenjin]

2 rail is a disadvantage for these things compared to single rail.

I don't understand this. I've always used 2-12 volt rails and never had any problems. It's vastly preferable to sticking all your high consumption items on a single rail.

[gimlet]

Wow, I way prefer single rail, that way I don't have to look at the fine print on the PSU and watch carefully how to divide up the load properly between the rails.   How is having to do this extra task, risking your PSU if you make a mistake,  "vastly better" than having the entire 12V capacity of the PSU available no matter which connectors you use?   It's especially bad if you have 2 rails and 3 big loads like video cards in a mining machine, where they'll always be on - now what?   There's gonna be one rail that's only 50% used, and one rail close to max - I *hate* distributions like that.   Or worse, it's not modular and the connections are fixed - then there's a lot of the supposed rated capacity that I can't use, and I have to look very very carefully at the rating and connectors of each 12V rail to see if there's actually enough capacity through the right connectors to run my gear.

What advantages do you see in multi-rail?  Why do you dislike putting "all your high consumption items on a single rail", if they're well within the capacity of that rail?  I really don't understand...

Is there any advantage to a Intel Z87  with a i5-4570 compared to an ASUS M5A97  with a AMD FD6350?

A slight price advantage, but for performance in gaming and most other tasks it's better to have fewer, faster cores (4 in the 4570) than 6 slower cores (FD6350).   You can look at benchmarks of each on the games you're wanting to play to really compare though.

[Lightningfalcon]

Ok, so now my list is this-
Kingston 4GB KHX1600
ASUS-M5A97
AMD FD6350
EVGA GeForce GTX 650
Seagate Barracuda 1 TB HDD

About how much power will this take?   And other then the PSU, a mouse, monitor, and a keyboard, is there anything else that I need to purchase?

[nenjin]

What advantages do you see in multi-rail?  Why do you dislike putting "all your high consumption items on a single rail", if they're well within the capacity of that rail?  I really don't understand...

I'll admit, my knowledge is old and not exactly detailed. But my understanding was you don't want two primary items competing for power on the same rail, because if you're close to capacity one of them gets less than optimal voltage.

As for the potential of frying components not connecting them to the right rails.....I've never had this problem. But I do always take the time to read the documentation and try to make informed choices when hooking things up.

Maybe this is it:

if they're well within the capacity of that rail?

I'm generally running close to the margins because, back in the day, I could never afford to buy a bigger PSU than I needed, I always needed to save cost more than I needed the flex room. (Which was always a bummer when upgrading to a higher video card.) I may be outmoded in my thinking, but I'd still rather have primary components on their own rails if I can help it.

[foil]

The parts you just listed are miles behind the 1st ones in performance.

What sort of money do you want to spend?

Also how old is the old computer as the cpu cooler, power supply and other parts might not fit if its from a agp era system.

[lordcooper]

I'll price you up a build if you give us a budget, country and a few examples of games you'll be wanting to play.

[Lightningfalcon]

So, my Dad had gone ahead and made me order the previously listed parts.   He had some brand loyalty still left, and demanded I get an ASUS motherboard with an AMD processor.   The parts finally arrived yesterday.  Instead of getting a new PSU he just got some cable adapters so that it would work.  So now to my current problem-
Everything is hooked up, and the computer turns on.  The ASUS motherboard screen comes on, saying to hold either F2 or Delete to go to the BIOS screen, but doing so only succeeds a small portion of the time.  When this happens I try to boot from my USB, so I can install Ubuntu, but the computer just restarts. When it doesn't go to ASUS's special boot-up screen, it just cycles back, and my monitor goes to power saving mode for a few moments.   Most of the time on startup I don't get any beeps, while occasionally I'll get one short beep, which according to the manual means-

Code: [Select]

VGA detected
Quick Boot set to disabled
No Keyboard detectedIs this a problem with the power supply, which is the old one stated in my original post, or is it something else?

[jaass]

BIOS wouldn't boot up if there wasn't enough power. If a recall correctly that booting with Linux LiveUSB had problems with EFI BIOS.

Here is the documentation on it
Linux Fix