[MEGATHREAD] Personal Computer - Updated builds thanks to Logical Increments

[Titanium Man]

Yes, i did. Would you recommend for me to go amd or intel?

[Ad Bot]

[lcyGamma]

Well if you can find an AMD CPU that is gives you the performance you need and is well priced, there is no reason why not to go with one. Or if you are just on a budget, AMD has a good range of affordable CPUs as well.

It just depends what you need and want.

I prefer Intel, they generally benchmark better when dealing with the higher end spectrum and my mobo supports the i3/5/7 CPUs anyway.

[Titanium Man]

Ok, if i pick an amd ii phenom 965 and a 7770, and 16gb of ram, how well will it play games?

[Tokthree]

Don't bother getting 16GB of RAM, get 8GB and save some cash.
I have a Phenom II 965 BE myself and I could play BF3 on high at 50-70 FPS with a HD 6770, it should be even better than that, it's a very good combo for the price

[Titanium Man]

Ok, thats great. Probably what i will get. Thanks. Sorry if I am so stupid, but should i get a new motherboard? Currently, I have a m2n78-la violet6, a reletavely old mobo.

[lcyGamma]

Hold the phone. Don't buy a new CPU if you are getting a new mobo, you might get one with a different socket and could be given more options.

I don't recommend 16GB of ram if you want to save cash either. Unless you NEED it for stuff like Photoshop, which is the least excuse to have it.

If your motherboard can fit all the new components well sure. Motherboards do affect computer performance, perhaps more than people realize, so it may be worth it.

[Titanium Man]

Well, since my case can only support the micro atx size, my options are limited. I am thinking upgrading frm the m2n78-la violet 6 to this - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128565

Do you think its worth the upgrade? The sockets are the same, except this one accepts the newer am3+ cpus too.

[Tokthree]

Would give you some upgrade options in the future, I'd go with it

[Titanium Man]

Last question - does hard drive speed majorly affect gaming? Like BF3 or some stuff like that?

[Tokthree]

You might notice some minor reduction in load times, but nothing that really matters.
If you're thinking of upgrading your HDD due to capacity reasons then I'd recommend the Western Digital Caviar Black series, I have the 1TB model and it's served me very well

[lcyGamma]

What is your rig Tok? In detail.

[KoopaScooper]

I don't recommend 16GB of ram if you want to save cash either. Unless you NEED it for stuff like Photoshop, which is the least excuse to have it.

Even Photoshop doesn't eat up this much memory when that's all you're doing, when I was editing 2 insane res pictures (around 5304x15365 each,) the most I ate was 1.6GB out of the 2.4GB Photoshop can allocate. 8GB is enough. The only time I would possibly even consider needing 16GB would be with multiple virtual machines, possibly home video editing or some stuff like that, or having a ramdisk.

Last question - does hard drive speed majorly affect gaming? Like BF3 or some stuff like that?

It only affects loading times, and if you get a modern drive, you shouldn't really have to worry about it. If you want insanely fast loading times, get an SSD.

[Tokthree]

What is your rig Tok? In detail.

Asrock 970 Extreme3

Phenom II x4 965 BE 3.4 GHz (Going to upgrade to a FX piledriver when I'm done with the other things as the Phenom is bottlenecking my GPU)

Arctic Cooling Freezer 13 (Only aftermarket cooler that would fit my DELL motherboard, also going to upgrade to a Hyper 212 EVO soon)

4x2GB Kingston HyperX Blu 1333MHz DDR3

XFX HD 7870

BeQuiet Pure Power 630W Modular (Going to be upgrading later on due to cable-length issues with my case, this is an aesthetic upgrade more than anything else so it's low priority)

Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB SATA 6Gb/s

Xigmatec Alfar - With Window - Black With Orange Accents (Going to be putting some nice LED's in this later on, also an aesthetic choice so it's at the bottom of the list with my PSU)

Case has 2 of Xigmatec's own 120mm fans which match the Black/Orange scheme of the case and 1 really old Akasa 120mm that my brother found under his bed and gave to me, every little helps, right? Case has room for 3 more fans and I'll be getting them around the same time as my new CPU cooler.

Edit; Forgot to mention that I'm starting to think that my GPU issue might be with the card or the motherboard themselves, not with the drivers or my connection.
I dunno though, the most I've managed to find regarding my issue is some guy making a thread saying "Oh I have this problem with the HD 7870 and I'm pretty certain it's the drivers, I've tried everything else so I'm damn certain" and a bunch of other turbonerds saying "Oh you might need to undervolt it and underclock it and check the soldering on the PCB and maybe touch it up yourself, I know I've had a few situations where sucking a richard helped me out, blah blah blah" so I dunno, I might need to check it out on my brothers motherboard if he'll let me

[MackTheHunter]

Bump. Still waiting on the backplate.

I undervolted my processor at a stable level and managed to reach a good temp of 45 Celsius with my H100 (full FFT stress test). Joy.

[Flush535]

Just built my computer! It's pretty awesome :D