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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Mon Sep 18, 2017 20:39 
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That does actually look spectacular. No other word for it... Actually, maybe fabulous will do? Yeah, it's fabulous.


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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Mon Sep 18, 2017 21:14 
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Jesus, that's an incredible thing to be fair. How much did it cost you in the end? I looked back through the last few pages of the thread but I couldn't see a final figure posted (unless I'm just being an idiot).


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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Mon Sep 18, 2017 22:25 
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Bamba wrote:
Jesus, that's an incredible thing to be fair. How much did it cost you in the end? I looked back through the last few pages of the thread but I couldn't see a final figure posted (unless I'm just being an idiot).


There wasn't really any change from £2500......

Thing is though, I went through many different configurations and even the 'budget' option was coming in at £1800-£1900 (this is to achieve the goal of 2560x1440@60FPS@ULTRA, with enough M2 SSD and SATA SSD storage for OS, applications and all games, and enough high quality HDD storage for everything else, to last for years without any upgrading), so I figured I'd just do the stretch and get exactly the system I wanted.

That said it wasn't 'no holds barred', so I went for a 1700X instead of an 1800X as they're very close in performance when overclocked yet the 1700X is over £100 cheaper, limited the M2 SSD to 250GB, went for a 1080 instead of a 1080Ti, and stuff like that. (Otherwise the price was quite easily tipping up over £3000, and I'd set myself a £2500 limit.)

I also wanted a very quiet system so chose the case, PSU and fans on that basis, and also a motherboard that could control them all properly.

It's twelve full years since I last bought an entire new PC, so I figured it was worth getting the one I wanted.


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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Mon Sep 18, 2017 22:45 
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He looks like a karaoke machine. ;)


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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Mon Sep 18, 2017 23:33 
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Lovely tidy build - looks good.

Also, nice hearth, Hearthly. Am I the only one that finds the backgrounds to photos (eg what's on the shelf) quite interesting?

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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Tue Sep 19, 2017 7:38 
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TheVision wrote:
That does actually look spectacular. No other word for it... Actually, maybe fabulous will do? Yeah, it's fabulous.


:this:

That's is a really nice looking machine, love that case :)

My current PC is a long term loan from work, a test workstation we built to prove the worth of GPU processing for some mad scientists at work. They soon moved onto a more enterprise solution that is now 200 1080i in one farm.

It was sat gathering dust so I grabbed it, its now starting to annoy me around little things like USB and performance issues, I could rebuild it but really need to dump it back at work, so new PC is required

Will go for this case, but need to get leaking roof and some other money eating jobs done on the house first.


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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Tue Sep 19, 2017 8:07 
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Sir Taxalot wrote:
Also, nice hearth, Hearthly. Am I the only one that finds the backgrounds to photos (eg what's on the shelf) quite interesting?


You mean on the shelves of the PC case?

In the first pic the black box with the two red lights on it is my UPS (PC and monitor are connected to this), and in the second one the smaller black box is an old external 2TB hard drive that I used for (one of) my backups. This is due to be retired and replaced with a 4TB external hard drive to match the data drive in the new PC. (The new 4TB drive is 2.5 inch instead of 3.5 inch, doesn't need external power, and I saw it sustain 120MB/s on a large data copy over the weekend, which is quite something.)

The carpet is a disaster and needs replacing. A cream carpet with a toddler didn't do it any favours when we moved into the house.....

EDIT - As for the hearth the house is an old Victorian town house (built 1895 IIRC, or is it 1885?), a lot of the original features are still in place and it seems a shame to remove them.


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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Tue Sep 19, 2017 8:29 
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Quote:
The carpet is a disaster and needs replacing. A cream carpet with a toddler didn't do it any favours when we moved into the house.....


When you get around to a new carpet ask for Smart Strand or similar, you can get this in cream and other light colours and its pretty much stain resistant.

You need to get onto cleaning any stains straight away, or if not they will come out with a Rug Dr or similar cleaner.

As the proud owner of 2 messy kids I can recommend it :)

Not sure that Smart Strand is a UK brand but any supplier will know what you mean and be able to quote for carpet that has the same specification.

Price wise its not to bad if you avoid getting deep "Shag Pile " type carpet, ours is just normal depth.

Back to PC's now :)


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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Tue Sep 19, 2017 9:36 
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Nice one man. Not my cup of tea, but still very nice all the same :) bit square for me :D Still knee deep in my old skool build here.

Image

IDed the CPU as a 2400+ Palomino and 512mb ram. More than enough for the games I want to run. My friend Gareth machined a new top for the water block so it's all fitted now and ready to go.

Image

Current state of affairs. Radiator is in, fans are in, lots of wiring etc done. I also made a shroud for the GPU so I could remove the 40mm bumblebee fan and fit an 80mm that I can control.

Image

And bought this for a tenner from a chum.

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I am going to have to connect it up in power terms to the old rig, then run the USB cable into my Win 10 machine to set the fan/pumps etc.

And yes, I know it's garish and it's gaudy etc. That is the whole point. We went from beige to DFI Lanparty.

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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Tue Sep 19, 2017 14:09 
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Nice PC, Hearthly. I'd be desperately disappointed if it weren't anything other than spectacular for the outlay. Enjoy it!

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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Sat Sep 23, 2017 13:43 
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Got the Turtle Beach fitted.

Image

Image

I believe they call this pornography.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XHMYERF4So

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=963P8Rfd7Kc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPDssHE6vwU

Took a lot of digging and fiddling around to get those running properly/smoothly.

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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Sat Sep 23, 2017 17:04 
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I admire your dedication to the cause :) Never did get on with Daytona but the original Sega Rally remains a true arcade racer masterpiece, I remember me and my brother duelling each other over an extended Christmas/New Year visit when he was over one year in the late 90s, and we ended up trying to shave hundredths of a second of each other's race times. (This was on the Saturn version.)

I never bothered with the PC versions of these games at the time, simply because I already had a Saturn and the Saturn versions of the games, and PC gaming was a bit (lol) shonky, what with Windows 95/98 and early iterations of DirectX and the whole thing generally being a blue screen fiesta of disaster. PC gaming was something you did because it was the only place to get stuff like Command & Conquer Red Alert, not because it was your preferred platform......

Back to my spod-land, just for the sake of interest I chucked the CinebenchR15 benchmark at my old PC and my new PC, since they're both fully operational and it's a chance to get a direct comparison of CPU performance between the old i7-920 and the new Ryzen 1700X (the kind of stats that aren't generally available even on THE BIG INTERNETS because it's a relatively obscure comparison to do).

Anyway, you can see below the results. There are:

Single threaded performance for both CPUs, so this is the raw processing power of a single CPU core. I was pleased to see Ryzen considerably faster than the old i7 (about 50%), which of course it should be as it's nearly 10 years newer, but then again it's well known that Intel's architecture has better IPC than Ryzen, but I guess the i7-920 is just too damn old now. It'd be interesting to see numbers for newer i5/i7s. (Although the Ryzen does have a 400MHz speed advantage, so on raw IPC the individual cores really aren't miles apart.)

Quad-threaded performance for both CPUs, as expected the Ryzen is well ahead here but not massively so, less differential than between the single threaded tests.

16-threaded performance from the Ryzen, which needless to say blows the old i7 out of the water.

To be totally fair I should go into the BIOS on the old PC and enable hyper-threading so it can at least have a crack with 8 threads, but it's not got a monitor attached to it or anything else (literally just a power cable and a network cable), so I can't be bothered with that.

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i7_1thread.JPG

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Ryzen_4thread.JPG

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Ryzen_16thread.JPG


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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Sat Sep 23, 2017 17:46 
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D'oh Mrs Hearthly and Jnr both have i5-4690s in their PCs, far more modern iterations of the i5/i7 lines. They're running at 3.5GHz.

1-thread result - 160 (versus 150 for Ryzen)

4-thread result - 584 (versus 491 for Ryzen)

So a single more modern Haswell Intel core (Haswell was released in 2014) at 3.5GHz, kicks a bit harder than a single Ryzen core at 3.8GHz.

TBH this is about what I was expecting, I've placed a bet with choosing Ryzen that the future of gaming is more cores, not more clock frequency.


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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Sat Sep 23, 2017 17:57 
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The laughable thing about the Sega PC games is that they were unplayable at launch. The hardware to run them simply did not exist, so if you were an early adopter (like me) you were let down. Virtua Fighter was playable in a tiny window but yeah, Sega Rally and Daytona? forget it. It wasn't until about four years later (around '99) that you could finally max them out and man it was worth the wait. They both use Direct X. Daytona was on DX3 (lmao) and Rally DX5. However, neither of them used Direct3D or DirectDraw so you have to disable it and leave the page open in DXDIAG to get them working smoothly, without them going from 10-100 FPS repetitively. I have even bought this thing too :D

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In flawless as new condition for £7 inc. Set it up today, works a treat (that was partially why I wanted the Santa Cruz as it has a game port). Had loads of fun with this project. It's been so cheap too. The brand new GPU was the most expensive single part at a whopping £14.55. Mobo CPU and RAM were £20 etc. Kept me busy too, and I still have a meter of these things coming :D

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Your Ryzen looks about perfect. Some of the guys on the forums I visit have hit 1700 and more in CB but only on 1800X oddly. No one seems to know why, the clock speeds are no higher :S weird eh? My 14c 28T Broadwell Xeon hits around 2100. That's at the full 14 core clock of 2.8ghz. I was in a bit of a weird situ as I already had 16gb quad channel DDR4 2133 (pretty useless for Ryzen, you want 3200 on two sticks really) so it meant not only buying a Ryzen 1700 and a B350 Strix but also more ram. And I was loathe to, because I had paid £60 for memory coolers for mine. The Xeon was £360 (less than a 1800x by quite a bit) and I splashed out on a new board (X99 SLi Plus by MSI) because it was in the Amazon Warehouse for £110. So I spent less on this kit than it would have cost me to go Ryzen and it's quite a chunk ahead when threading.

On 4 cores it clocks to 3.1ghz, which works out about the same speed as my old 5820k. Which I ran stock, because on an Alienware you need to apply the OC every time you boot Windows and that happened about three times before I got bored of it. It's faster though, being Broadwell E over Haswell. Once I finally get done messing about with PCs I want to go bac k to VMware and reinstate my PC as a MAC and god knows what else I used to play with. Hence all the cores...

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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Sat Sep 23, 2017 18:02 
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Hearthly wrote:
D'oh Mrs Hearthly and Jnr both have i5-4690s in their PCs, far more modern iterations of the i5/i7 lines. They're running at 3.5GHz.

1-thread result - 160 (versus 150 for Ryzen)

4-thread result - 584 (versus 491 for Ryzen)

So a single more modern Haswell Intel core (Haswell was released in 2014) at 3.5GHz, kicks a bit harder than a single Ryzen core at 3.8GHz.

TBH this is about what I was expecting, I've placed a bet with choosing Ryzen that the future of gaming is more cores, not more clock frequency.


That's pretty strange. Maybe it's the clock speed? I know that Ryzen should be around Broadwell IPC so that is strange that Haswell is ahead.

The future of gaming is really all about GPUs. Next consoles will come with Navi, which means Mgpu which means we will finally get dual/quad core GPUs. AMD officially ditched Crossfire X recently btw.. Not that I needed telling, I was the mug who bought two Fury X *doh*.

But yeah, AMD are all about Infinity Fabric now and GPUs are next..

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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Sat Sep 23, 2017 18:29 
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Hey Hearty I saw your exact PC box with all the lights and fans at a stand at EGX and did a little spaff in my undercrackers.

Then I saw a £5500 PC with the liquid cooling pipes and junk and wiped my genitals on it.


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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Sun Sep 24, 2017 9:03 
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Satsuma wrote:
Hey Hearty I saw your exact PC box with all the lights and fans at a stand at EGX and did a little spaff in my undercrackers.


Yeah it's somewhat ubiquitous at the moment, several PC builders (including Scan) are featuring it in their advertisements in Custom PC and PC Pro for their systems, and are also supplying review PCs in the case as well. (Either the 460X RGB or its big brother the 570X RGB.)

It's quite understandable IMO, I think it's hands-down the nicest looking PC case I've ever seen, even in its 'basic' form with just the three RGB fans in the front with the two tempered glass panels.

Populate it with MORE SHINIES as I have, and I think it's getting into the realms of being trouser quivering. Entirely subjective of course, most of the chaps at work think it's a gaudy abomination and one chap commented that it looked like a spaceship from a Spielberg film had landed in our lounge.

Then again you only need to look at the car I'm driving around in at the moment to see I'm clearly in the grips of some sort of dreadful midlife crisis.


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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Tue Sep 26, 2017 13:46 
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With a good clean and lube up this should be fun :D never had one before.

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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Tue Sep 26, 2017 14:41 
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I used to have one of those, was a very good wheel as memory serves. Played the original Midtown Madness with it, and one of the first TOCA games, amongst others.

Strong force feedback.

Had to plug it into the back of the soundcard I think through the gameport thingy? As was the style of the times.

Yours appears to have a USB connector so maybe mine was an older variant, or I'm imagining the gameport connection.

825/1000 - Would wheel again.


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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Tue Sep 26, 2017 14:57 
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I remember selling those at Game. Proper expensive they were if I remember rightly.

I once gave my friend a 'Rock Bottom' into the display of them.


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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Tue Sep 26, 2017 15:35 
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Yeah this one is USB. I couldn't find a game port one, then I realised I would have to disconnect the game pad so USB was probably better any way. Looks like it needs a good clean up and I will use my RC car teflon oil (for shocks) as it worked a treat on the front panel of one of my PCs (it was squeaking etc). Midtown Madness eh? *flick flick flick*....

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Just a small part of my collection.

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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Tue Sep 26, 2017 15:40 
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Why do you have 3 copies of mafia?

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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Tue Sep 26, 2017 15:41 
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haha I don't it's 3 CDs mush :)

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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Tue Sep 26, 2017 15:50 
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Why do you have 3 cds?

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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Tue Sep 26, 2017 15:53 
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Because that is how many you need to install the game.

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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Tue Sep 26, 2017 15:54 
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Why didn't they use a dvd?

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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Tue Sep 26, 2017 16:05 
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MaliA wrote:
Why didn't they use a dvd?

Not everyone had a DVD drive in 2002


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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Tue Sep 26, 2017 16:10 
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Why didn't they wait until 2004?

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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Tue Sep 26, 2017 16:26 
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If you think this is bad, you should have seen the size of the box it came in!


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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Tue Sep 26, 2017 16:30 
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TheVision wrote:
If you think this is bad, you should have seen the size of the box it came in!


rather than doing an obvi-Title, I'll share the most oversized box I purchased during my PC-gaming days. And it was fucking unplayable too.


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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Tue Sep 26, 2017 16:38 
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Again, from my time at Game, PC boxes were ridiculous but compilation PC boxes were the worst. I remember there being several compilation boxes that were easily over 45cm wide as well as being normal height and width.


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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Tue Sep 26, 2017 16:49 
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TheVision wrote:
If you think this is bad, you should have seen the size of the box it came in!


At one point I had all of them. Then my ex wife complained that the walk in closet was pretty much floor to ceiling half full of my games. So that is when I bought the 400 (IIRC) binder and deboxed all of them :( *harumph*. I kept all of the inserts and sleeves though, but yeah wish I had all of them now. I even had the ltd ed steelcase Quake 3 for Linux ! All you needed to do was download a 52mb file and it ran on Windows also.

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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Wed Sep 27, 2017 8:51 
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JohnCoffey wrote:
lube up this should be fun


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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Wed Sep 27, 2017 9:41 
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You are going to like it, not a alot

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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Wed Sep 27, 2017 15:12 
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Quote:
Populate it with MORE SHINIES as I have, and I think it's getting into the realms of being trouser quivering. Entirely subjective of course, most of the chaps at work think it's a gaudy abomination and one chap commented that it looked like a spaceship from a Spielberg film had landed in our lounge.


How many hard drives will the case take? I went through a few system configs on Scan with this case and it appeared to offer a system and then one more drive?


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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Wed Sep 27, 2017 15:46 
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asfish wrote:
Quote:
Populate it with MORE SHINIES as I have, and I think it's getting into the realms of being trouser quivering. Entirely subjective of course, most of the chaps at work think it's a gaudy abomination and one chap commented that it looked like a spaceship from a Spielberg film had landed in our lounge.


How many hard drives will the case take? I went through a few system configs on Scan with this case and it appeared to offer a system and then one more drive?


2x3.5
3x2.5

http://www.corsair.com/en-gb/crystal-se ... tower-case

https://www.scan.co.uk/products/corsair ... ans-usb-30

Not everything you might want is listed in the configurator, for example on my build the only options for extra fans were basic fans, I had to specify the three extra RGB fans as part of the follow-up call. (This was also the case with the RGB RAM, and indeed 3200MHz RAM at that, as the configurator only went up to 2400MHz RAM.)


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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Fri Sep 29, 2017 10:39 
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DVD has been covered (bottom) in sound deadening. Sides of the CD bay also.

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And slowly it starts going back together.

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Image

Just two panels to design, cut etc.

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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Sun Oct 01, 2017 13:49 
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It's mostly done now.

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Image

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I was right about the desk. It is about the cheapest, well placed wheel stand you can get for £23. Unfortunately you were right Hearth, the steering wheel is a frikkin maniac !

The desk flexes a little back and forth due to its poor construction and whilst this was fine back in 2001 with a regular passive steering wheel this one shakes everything to bits lol. I busted the car on MM last night and it shook so violently that my Ecig fell off the desk :D

Going to have to reinforce it a little I think. I decided to order a separate chair too, as dragging my huge heffer across the cow rug is a PITA.

Image

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Steelcase Let's B. Got it for a great price really. As I managed to cram a headphone amp up on the desk I got one of these.

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To hold a pair of cans.

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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Sun Oct 01, 2017 15:47 
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I can’t help feel that that ginormous rig (see I’m all about the lingo now) is wasted on that pissy little monitor.


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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Sun Oct 01, 2017 16:14 
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Satsuma wrote:
I can’t help feel that that ginormous rig (see I’m all about the lingo now) is wasted on that pissy little monitor.

It's a retro build, innit?


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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Sun Oct 01, 2017 20:35 
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That isn't a strong steering wheel. Try a direct drive wheel from OSW or Accuforce which can literally cause you injury if dial them up too far.

http://www.f1simulatormaniac.com/direct ... ing-wheel/

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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Sun Oct 01, 2017 20:40 
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Satsuma wrote:
I can’t help feel that that ginormous rig (see I’m all about the lingo now) is wasted on that pissy little monitor.


The problem is resolution. Most of these games max out at 640x480, then stretch. None are wide screen, nor would work with it. So buying a monitor is quite tricky. I would never have another CRT so the 17" (1280x1024) is about as far as I dare push the 3Dlabs. Remember, this card is less powerful than a Geforce 2. There are some 19" monitors around that are that res, but I could not find one without damage to the screen and that would drive me nuts. The Dell was only £18, and if you had something like that back in 2003 you would have been exceedingly well off. IIRC a 19" Belinea LCD back then was about a grand at least.

17" LCD is around the same size screen wise as a 19" CRT. Back in those days I rocked a 17" Belinea CRT with Nakamichi speakers and sub built into the base. So this is actually better.

Lonewolves wrote:
That isn't a strong steering wheel. Try a direct drive wheel from OSW or Accuforce which can literally cause you injury if dial them up too far.

http://www.f1simulatormaniac.com/direct ... ing-wheel/


That would likely break the desk lol.

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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Fri Oct 06, 2017 8:20 
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So Intel have hurried to market with their new Coffee Lake chips, thanks to AMD giving them an almighty kick up the arse with Ryzen and making Intel's existing mainstream and enthusiast CPU ranges look pretty fucking stupid.

Long story short is they've moved to 6/12 (cores/threads) in the i7 space for the first time (and the i5 gets 6 physical cores for the first time), whilst maintaining their superior IPC and high clock speeds - the i7 8700K overclocks comfortably to 5.0GHz (!).

Price wise they are getting pitched right into mix with Ryzen (the i7 around the 1700X's price point, and the i5 at the 1600's price point).

TBH if these had existed when I'd bought my new PC I'd probably have gone with the i7 8700K, but then again it was inevitable Intel would hit back against Ryzen with something impressive so it's not a surprise.

Ryzen's 8-core CPUs only best the 8700K in very heavy multi-threaded tasks (i.e. all 8 cores are utilised, whereby the 8 physical cores (16 threads) can outpace the 6 physical cores (12 threads)), but even then it's not a total stomping.

Also, whilst the 8700K is undeniably the better gaming CPU (and indeed the best gaming CPU in the world right now, full stop), once you crank the resolution up to 1440p (or higher) the GPU becomes far more of a factor, so the tests that DF have done in the link below don't tell the whole story. (They deliberately run these tests in what is effectively a CPU-bound scenario.)

Make no mistake though, these chips wouldn't exist at this price point were it not for Ryzen. (Some of the tech sites are saying Intel have brought their plans forward some 6-9 months due to the 'Ryzen Effect'.)

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digit ... 00k-review


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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Fri Oct 06, 2017 11:34 
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If you wanted 8700k performance you could have just got a 7700k. In gaming there will be practically no difference, unless of course you are GPU bound but if you have a top end mainstream CPU that is unlikely.

These days pretty much any mainstream CPU is good enough for gaming. Even something like the Ryzen 1200 puts up a good show of itself. Going from a bottom end CPU to a top end one? if you have a decent GPU you can gain about 30%. However, if in that game you are already hitting 90 FPS then who GAF? and that is how it is with CPUs. This is why I only upgrade my CPU every 2-3 years and each time I have I have gone for higher core count over IPC and clock speed. Mostly because at 14 cores all loaded my CPU is perfectly well behaved and only hits 60c max. With a Intel mainstream CPU not only do you need to delid it* but you then need the rag the crap out of it.

*Don't expect all retail samples to hit 5ghz. Not without a delid and then very good cooling. Once again Intel have chosen to use paste and once again it will hinder the end user. It's that 5ghz carrot all over again.

I'm not Intel's biggest fan (even though I run Intel CPUs in 2/4 of my computers) but even I know that they are just getting worse. Z370 boards are quite expensive (£85 premium over most of their B350 counterparts) and it is being dropped in about 6 months time in favour of Z390. Which IMO is what Intel should have had ready but instead of taking Ryzen seriously they were too busy sat around on their arses. By then the next wave of Ryzen is expected, which will hopefully get around this clock speed "bug" it seems to suffer from. If they can get it up toward 4.5ghz it will again be right up there.

AMD still make the best CPU to buy right now. The 1600. It has dropped to £180, half the money of a 8700k. The board is at least £40 cheaper (apples to apples) and you most certainly don't lose half of the performance. 30% at best.

Which goes back to the current state of CPUs, IMO. I don't ever buy the fastest I buy what represents the best VFM and what is a true upgrade. You don't need the fastest one to game you just need a good GPU.

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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Fri Oct 06, 2017 19:04 
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Oh for sure I totally agree with all of that, I made a conscious decision to get the 1700X even though the 7700K was generally regarded to be the 'best gaming CPU'. The future is more cores and 8 physical cores for the same money as 4 physical cores (16 vs 8 threads) made good sense, the 8 core CPU from Intel when I bought the PC was £530 IIRC.

Of course Intel were going to hit back with something pretty quickly, although even there all they've really done with Coffee Lake is bump the core count by two, bumped the clock speed a bit, told everyone they need a new motherboard, and called it good. (i.e. It's still basically the same architecture.)

Plus looking at the pricing the 8700K is looking like it'll be a $400/£400 part, so a fair bump from the 1700X and about the same as an 1800X.

A few more benchmarks are coming out now and as expected, once you bump the resolution to 1440p (and even more so at 4K), the differential between the CPUs shrinks or even disappears completely, as the GPU takes on more of the workload - and who puts together the sort of PC we're talking about here to game at 1080p?

My target for the build was 1440p@60FPS@ULTRA+vsync and it's not missed a beat in anything so it's job done as far as I'm concerned.

This guy puts it very clearly, Intel have brought their roadmap forward 6-9 months, and Coffee Lake only exists because of Ryzen. I'd rather give my money to AMD, I don't like Intel as a company.

https://youtu.be/lmEAzxIfeDo?t=13m44s


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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Fri Oct 06, 2017 21:19 
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I'm kind of in two minds about Jay. As he was climbing the ladder he was a complete fanboy, but these days he is far more accepting of other parts. Which is nice, because otherwise I doubt I would have watched more than a couple of his vids. I must be getting old (or getting young?) because I watch Youtube quite a lot now. Far more than I ever have before.

But yeah, he makes a good point when he says that this CPU would not exist until 2018 if not for AMD. TBH? the way Intel are with cores? I sometimes wonder if it would have hit the mainstream at all if it weren't for Ryzen. Intel are notoriously stingy with cores. They have been making massively cored silicon for many years yet have kept it at half of its capable clocks and sold as a totally locked down Xeon. I mean, you can easily get a 12 core Ivy chip that drops straight into a X79 board. Ironically I upgraded my daily rig (which is ironic because I no longer use it daily lol, not since getting rid of the Alienware X99 board which had a very aggressive fan profile and swapped it out for a X99 SLi Plus) but just before I stopped using it* I upgraded it to a Xeon 2680V2 OEM. It's a 3.4ghz 8c/16t Ivy chip and I paid a ton for it just before Xmas last year. Before that I had the same chip, but it only ran 2ghz. Any way, the Xeon I ended up with is also a 2680, but a V4.

Sorry, now I am being completely geeky and very boring. :nerd:

* I also put a full cover water block on the Fury X to shut it up as well, with a nice fat Coolgate rad on a separate loop. So when I get off my fat ass I will plug that into the living room TV and use it on there. I just need a Xbone wireless dongle and a couple of battery packs/charger for the controller. The cable does reach, but only if you have it dangling through the air. I'm back into Fallout 4 now, and I am getting too old to be spending eight hours sitting in a PC chair.

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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Sun Oct 15, 2017 10:50 
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Great video about Coffee Lake here, if you're like, a proper nerd :nerd:

Dodgy shenanigans from Intel! Ryzen must have really rattled them.



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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Sun Oct 15, 2017 12:31 
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To be honest if every CL chip could do the same frequencies and it could be guaranteed that would not be bad at all for people who don't like overclocking. Overclocking has gotten easier over recent years to the point where all you had to do was go ahead and tap in a number and a volt value. MCE is a good idea, but it's Intel's recent statement about how they are not guaranteeing clocks that gets me.

I can't remember what letter of the alphabet it was now but going back to the I7 920 if you had one from C? D? batch it was a complete dog. Some could not overclock at all.

So MCE is a bit naughty because it definitely skews reviews and makes it look far better than it actually is (CL). Bit-tech just interviewed the top guy at Asus, Alex. Well worth a read mate. They seem to be a bit jaded at Intel atm. Especially as they have just released two 370 Strix boards that don't even work properly and don't really seem to give a crap (more on that below).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCAQpvFhiUs

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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Sun Oct 15, 2017 13:48 
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I watched that yesterday :) I quite enjoy that guy's videos.

As for the CL thing, you have to wonder why Intel are stating a base clock of 2.8GHz for the low-end i5, and as the chap in the video surmises, it's because once you get normal production CPUs (not Intel's hand-picked examples) on lower-end motherboards (not high-end 370 chipset motherboards which are all that exist at the moment) - these 3.8GHz boosts across all cores will magically cease to exist, but it won't really matter as all the reviews are out already, even if the chips themselves can't be bought as it's effectively a paper launch.


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 Post subject: Re: PC gaming hardware thread.
PostPosted: Tue Oct 17, 2017 13:41 
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I'm really liking this chap's YouTube output, I've signed up for that PATREON thing so I can start to chuck a couple of quid his way every month.



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