"Rate my Rig" thread

[Starglider]

Fit-testing the liquid cooling components;



There is more tubing on the other side of the case (to reduce the amount over the motherboard). This is a single-loop setup, albeit a fairly complex one.



I've used a mix of 3/8th and 1/2 inch ID tubing and barb and compression fittings, as appropriate for different bits of the loop. It's fairly restrictive but that problem is solvable simply by using two of the most powerful pumps available.

[Zixinus]

Ok, Stargrlider: what the hell are you using that for? Some sort of server machine or something?

Oh, and I was being bored while I discovered this: A GT630 card with 4 gigs or VRAM. Which sounds pretty good from where I can tell: that 4 gigabytes of VRAM is pretty rare (other 4-gig cards go for ten times as much as that) and the 630GT seems fairly new. Is it worthwhile for the price of roughly 74$ (56 euro)?

[Ace Pace]

Oh, and I was being bored while I discovered this: A GT630 card with 4 gigs or VRAM. Which sounds pretty good from where I can tell: that 4 gigabytes of VRAM is pretty rare (other 4-gig cards go for ten times as much as that) and the 630GT seems fairly new. Is it worthwhile for the price of roughly 74$ (56 euro)?

I'd comment on VRAM usage, but it's totally irrelevant. A 630 is a low end card that is incapable of utilizing 1GB of RAM, nevermind 4. Google.

[Zixinus]

Oh, and I was being bored while I discovered this: A GT630 card with 4 gigs or VRAM. Which sounds pretty good from where I can tell: that 4 gigabytes of VRAM is pretty rare (other 4-gig cards go for ten times as much as that) and the 630GT seems fairly new. Is it worthwhile for the price of roughly 74$ (56 euro)?

I'd comment on VRAM usage, but it's totally irrelevant. A 630 is a low end card that is incapable of utilizing 1GB of RAM, nevermind 4. Google.

Ah, so its worthless. Thanks for satisfying my curiosity.

[XaLEv]

Can anyone tell me the thickness of the backplates used with the Hyper 212 Plus and Evo? I'm looking into the possibility of using one of them in a case without a cutout and I want to know if it would be too thick to fit between the board and the tray. The board standoff length is 8 millimeters.

[Beowulf]

It's about time for me to replace my system. I'm looking at the following bits:

Intel Core i5-3570K Ivy Bridge 3.4GHz
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6819116504
$229.99

ASUS P8Z77-I Deluxe
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813131840
$195.99

EVGA 02G-P4-3667-KR GeForce GTX 660 Ti FTW 2GB
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814130816
$319.99

SILVERSTONE Black FT03B-MINI Mini ITX Case
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6811163197
$135.99

SILVERSTONE 450W SFX12V Power Supply
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6817256084
$99.99

SAMSUNG 830 Series 2.5" 256GB Solid State Drive (SSD)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820147164
$169.99

Crucial Ballistix 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3 1600
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820148561
$84.99

Antec Kuhler H2O 620 Liquid CPU Cooler System
http://amzn.com/B004LWYE4Q
$49.99

Silverstone Slot Load Optical Drive
http://amzn.com/B004X9PHFC
$69.60

Thoughts?

[Starglider]

Ok, Stargrlider: what the hell are you using that for? Some sort of server machine or something?

These particular multi-GPU workstations are used for
(a) Development & integration of auto-parallelising C++/Java/C#-to-OpenCL supercompiler.
(b) Dev & test of assorted finance pricing, reporting and fraud detection grid compute workflows.

Oh, and I was being bored while I discovered this: A GT630 card with 4 gigs or VRAM.

That strikes me as spectacularly pointless.

[Dominus Atheos]

Beowulf

Unless I am completely confused by that crazy case, that graphics card is too long to fit in it.

[Executor32]

I thought so, too, but then I remembered that I'd seen that case before. IIRC, the motherboard is mounted such that all the ports are at the bottom of the case, so expansion cards would be vertical and there would be enough room for that card.

[Beowulf]

Beowulf

Unless I am completely confused by that crazy case, that graphics card is too long to fit in it.

You are completely confused by that crazy case. Should fit fine. 10" card, case fits 10" cards. All the ports are at the top of the case, as the MB gets oriented oddly.

[Singular Intellect]

Just recently upgraded my computer system:

Rampage IV Extreme w/ DDR3 1866, 7.1 Audio, Gigabit Lan, PCI-E, 4-way CrossFireX / SLI
Core™ i7-3930K Processor, 3.20GHz w/ 12MB Cache
Zalman CNPS12X Triple Fan CPU Cooler w/ Blue LED
Vengeance LP 16GB DDR3 1600MHz CL10 Dual Channel Kit (2 x 8GB) (purchased 64GB total)
ZX Series 1250W Modular Power Supply

Next upgrade components I intend to purchase is a SLI GPU config setup (two or three cards), although on recommendations from others I'm holding off until newer GPUs become available later this year. Currently running a dual monitor display, but may upgrade those as well to two or three 1080P HD monitors, depending on sizes and available desk space.

[Zixinus]

Which would be a greater factor in performance?

Buying a Samsung 840 series 120GB SDD drive and then put all my games on that (for reference, I have old HHDs with unknown spin performance atm)?

Or upgrading my venerable XFX-made HD4850 with a HD7750 or higher? The HD7750 cards seem to be in what is an affordable price range for me atm, and would have double the GPU power (as this and this and this seem to be).

[phongn]

The 840 non-pro 120GB will have relatively limited write life. The 240GB (and the pro series) should last much longer.

An SSD will improve everyday usability and speed the loading of games. A new GPU will improve your framerates, particularly on newer games. You'll have to decide on what you want to have. (I went to an SSD)

[Ace Pace]

Performance measured in what?
For general usability, an SSD is the best thing you can do today, far more important than any other metric (unless you have a low amount of RAM).
For games themselves? Boosting the graphics power would indeed improve game perf

[Zixinus]

Forgot to mention, but yes, game performance. My graphics card seems fine atm, I can play games like Dead Space 3 or Skyrim just fine.

My worry is that my HDDs have become too slow. One of them still uses ATA connection (system drive), rather than SATA. I cannot tell either one's rotation speed.

Here's my rationale: Games nowadays are using bigger and bigger HD textures. So, I figure getting an SDD (a pro version of that 120gb one, for not much more) might be a better investment, as the difference between an HDD's and SDD's is massive right now and upgrading that way will make more a difference. New graphics cards on the other hand show up every few months, and if games run fine now, I can afford to wait until the card's GPU is three times or more faster than what I have now.

Is that wrong? I don't keep up with what's new in the PC hardware world very much.

[phongn]

If your machine uses SATA-1.5gb, even a mechanical hard drive can saturate that for sequential reads. Most texture reads should be that, and generally will only appear at level loading or somesuch. Your games will load faster, and levels will load faster, but the general in-play experience will not change.

The best advantage would be to have your system (and most-used applications) run off the SSD. The difference in usability will be absolutely shocking.

[Zixinus]

My motherboard's SATA connector is described by the manufacturer as "4x SATA 3Gb/s connectors supporting up to 4 SATA 3Gb/s devices" (I have a . Assuming that's Gigabit, that's still 384 megabytes/s, and a benchmark on my better HDD says that its data transfer rate is speed is around 72.66 MB/s (the benchmark was done by a software called HARDiNFOR 7).
The SDD is am looking at (a Samsung 840 pro, 128gb) has the write speed of 390mb/s and read of 530 mb/s.

So, thank you phongn for raising that point, it was indeed one worth checking. Am I right then, then the motherboard isn't, and unlikely to be the bottleneck?

Because I then plan to buy the SDD, split it in two partitions. One for system and the others strictly as an install path for games.

[Zixinus]

Oh, and I forgot to add in my last post and only realized it after my edit window expired: I have a Gigabyte GA-M68M-S2P motherboard.

[phongn]

Don't partition the SSD. Your motherboard will technically be a bottleneck (3gbit = 300MB/sec - transfer speeds are typically base-10) on the SSD but in practice you'll never notice it.

[Zixinus]

Don't partition the SSD.

Why not?

[Ace Pace]

Don't partition the SSD.

Why not?

Why yes?

[The Grim Squeaker]

Don't partition the SSD.

Why not?

Why yes?

OS Partition for easy recovery/wiping and the rest for everything else?

(I don't bother with it due to sheery lazyness, but I didn't know there were arguments against it, saving space estimates..?)

[Ace Pace]

OS Partition for easy recovery/wiping and the rest for everything else?

(I don't bother with it due to sheery lazyness, but I didn't know there were arguments against it, saving space estimates..?)

What the hell are you doing in 2013 worrying about OS recovery? Do you routinely fuck up your OS or partitions that badly?
Multiple partitions complicate your life when you need more room for one of the partitions, repartitioning may be a pain in some setups.

If anything, today, I'd merge multiple drives into a single logical partition unless I have a distinct reason to do otherwise.

[Zixinus]

Don't partition the SSD.

Why not?

Why yes?

Force of habit from when Microsoft (and probably a whole lot of other entities or just stuff that I don't know about) didn't try to make software developers put their stuff all over the place, and when games actually put all the stuff they needed to run into just one directory.

Of course, as I type this, I realize that this is no longer a valid concern, because even games today will bury all their stuff like savegames into microsoft's directory-maze, whether I like it or not. Or perhaps even whether THEY like it or not. If I want to backup my saves from various modern games from modern games, I bypass using default explorers and just Total Commander to see all the hidden folders where my particular game's savegame might or might not be.

So, TL;DNR: Good point, I can't think of any good reason. Dur.

[phongn]

Force of habit from when Microsoft (and probably a whole lot of other entities or just stuff that I don't know about) didn't try to make software developers put their stuff all over the place, and when games actually put all the stuff they needed to run into just one directory.

Single-directory is terrible security practice. Normal users should not and must not be required to write to an application directory just to save their content; that data belongs somewhere in the user profile directory. Similarly, a bunch of things belong in %AppData%.

EDIT: If you can wait, I'd save up for a larger SSD so you won't have to worry about running out of space or monkeying with things like moving apps back and forth between an SSD and spinning media.