New PC Build

[Gizmo]

After more than 5 years my trusty gaming machine has been updated. This was a full system build. Running Windows 8 Pro 64Bit.

Motherboard - MSI Z77 MPower
CPU - Intel 1155 3770K
Cooler - Corsair H100i
Memory - G.Skill Ripjaws Z 16GB 2133 MHZ
SSD - OCZ Vector 256GB
HDD - 2 x 2TB in RADI0
GPU - Asus 7970
PSU - Corsair AX860i
Case - Corsair D650
Monitor - Samsung S27A950 27inch
Keyboard - Corsair Vengeance K90
Mouse - Corsair - Vengeance M60
Speakers - Corsair SP2500
Headset - Corsair Vengeance 1500

[Scottie]

I've always been a bit daunted by water cooling... but that looks sweet

[Gizmo]

This unit makes it easy man. All you have to do is screw it in. It's a sealed unit.

http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?mai ... s_id=22307" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[petey]

I have the same cooling unit and it is brilliantly simple but very effective.

Sent from my HTC One XL using Tapatalk 2

[Shonky]

I agree, these sealed setups make water cooling so simple compared to what they used to be. Makes the swiftech system I bought 5 or 6 years ago look overly complicated.

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk 2

[wobblysauce]

You only need to watch out about the other components around the CPU, E.g Power caps, Ram etc.. that require some flow of air, which they would normally get from a Air based cooler.

But you have 3 exhaust fans(top/rear) that should cover it, some cases don't have the flow.


Just as long as it does not get like this..

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[ysu]

Guys (Gizmo/Petey) how do you find that water cooler noise-wise?
Is it noisier to quieter than your average air-cooled solution?
And importantly: are you usually keen about a silent pc?

[petey]

It is quiet as a mouse. I'm not overly fussed about everything being quiet however the new gfx card I just put in is noisy as hell which is mildly annoying.

The fan on the radiator is barely noticeable and there is no water noise.

Sent from my HTC One XL using Tapatalk 2

[Shonky]

Guys (Gizmo/Petey) how do you find that water cooler noise-wise?
Is it noisier to quieter than your average air-cooled solution?
And importantly: are you usually keen about a silent pc?

I would say the biggest advantage of water cooling is the lack of noise, it can be a 40 degree day and my CPU will be kicking along 10-15 degrees above ambient for the most part, and it's still quiet, whereas air would be sounding like a hair dryer and pushing 70-80 degrees.

[ysu]

Erm...air is not necessarily noisy. My current air solution is quiet, very quiet.
The silverstone fortress combined with scythe mugen v2 on the cpu does a stellar job. I can remove the fan from the heatsink and it still runs without trouble - but with the heavy o/c (3.4 instead of 2.4) one fan is probably a good idea, so that's what I got, but it's a big fan on low spin.

However, I've got 2x670 in SLI and those things, even with the double-fan solution from gigabyte, are hot. Not too noisy, surprisingly; but maybe the nV driver isn't spinning the fans up enough?

Now the situation is that I am thinking about upgrading the core to an i7-3770 most likely. That the scythe mugen won't fit. So I was thinking there maybe some nice water solution to cool it all (cpu+video cards, maybe ram as well). So I wouldn't have to worry about heat - and maybe it'd be good to reduce noise too, under load definitely. But the idle noise is an important factor - that's what I'm listening to all day while working. When gaming, I've my headphones on, so it'd have to be rather noisy to be a bother.

But then as I'm looking around, most custom wc solutions are

1) very costly, ppl are talking in the $500+ region, easy
2) very fiddly to install
3) I'm still a bit worried about letting pressurised water run around in there, especiall with simple barbed tube connections - but the proper ones are much costlier


Edit: this looks nice, hey! It's the same case I got. I wouldn't mind this sort of setup - but with 2 cards in SLI it's gotta be funnier.



Edit2:
hm...there are nice SLI kits out there. eg

[Scottie]

1500W!!?!?!??!!?!?£$&$^!&*$%!*&£$£!&$

OMFG, what the hell is in that thing?!??!!

[ysu]

Not much by the looks, two cards in SLI - for which about half of that PSU would have been enough.
It seems there are people whose e-peen grows with the power of their PSU

[MADCAP]

Gizmo how much for the Tower Setup? I am looking for a new PC Tower for pure iRacing - need to work out what to buy as i have no idea

[Gizmo]

If the systems only purpose is to run iRacing then this is alittle overkill. I get between 250-300 fps. It feels sooooo smooth with the 120Hz monitor.

Pricing is below;
CPU - $340
Cooler - $150
Motherboard - $199
Ram - $135
SSD - $275
HDD - $99 each
GPU - $479
PSU - $279
Case - $198

You can get that under $2000 just by using a decent air cooler, a slightly cheaper PSU and just going with one 2TB drive.

May I ask what your budget is and if you just need the tower or do you also need a monitor, keyboard and mouse? Do you currently have an SSD?

[ysu]

You can save a tad on the CPU, it's way way overkill to go for the i7-3770k
eg the i5-3570 (k if you want to o/c) is quite comparable. ~$240 for the K version (open o/c) $100 off the price already and you'll never see the difference unless you're doing something extremely cpu intensive like video encoding often

I'd actually go for this if I wanted cheaper:
$185 Gigabyte G1. Sniper M3 (sound blaster on board, but watch the form factor - not sure if it's compatible with any atx case) or ($170) Gigabyte Z77X-UD5H
$240 i5-3570K
$85 Noctua NH-D14 (the best performing air cooler nowadays) or a ($130) Corsair H80i - closed water loop
$131 Corsair Vengeance 16GB(2x 8GB) DDR3-1866MHz
$300.00 2Gb GTX660Ti WF2 Gigabyte Video card

This will give you plenty of grunt to run iRacing - or other games - unless you're planning on really high resolutions (over the normal 'full HD')

You'll still have extremely good performance.


Add something like an Antec neo 620W psu for ~$100 (yes it can easily run this setup)
Then an Antec Nine Hundred TWO for around $130

I think we've saved quite a bit here, without compromising much at all

[Gizmo]

I was going to suggest something along those lines also You have to be carful with the NH-D14 though, because it's very wide it can intrude on the rams heatsinks.

[MADCAP]

If the systems only purpose is to run iRacing then this is alittle overkill. I get between 250-300 fps. It feels sooooo smooth with the 120Hz monitor.

Pricing is below;
CPU - $340
Cooler - $150
Motherboard - $199
Ram - $135
SSD - $275
HDD - $99 each
GPU - $479
PSU - $279
Case - $198

You can get that under $2000 just by using a decent air cooler, a slightly cheaper PSU and just going with one 2TB drive.

May I ask what your budget is and if you just need the tower or do you also need a monitor, keyboard and mouse? Do you currently have an SSD?

I also want to run triple 27" monitors, as for SSD i only have a iMac running bootcamp to play iRacing - but need to build a game machine to support iRacing and possible other games in future.

[ysu]

I also want to run triple 27" monitors, as for SSD i only have a iMac running bootcamp to play iRacing - but need to build a game machine to support iRacing and possible other games in future.

Well, that means you want an SLI config, preferably large memory cards. 2x670 4GB will probably do, or if you have money to burn 2x680 - the rest can stay. You could get a 690 but it's really just 2x670 for a higher price, so you can SLI that in two slots. Of course you can go ATI. I do not have good experience with ATI cards, though, so I can't recommend them.

And in this case you might also want to check the mobo. I'd chose one where the SLI card slots are 3 slots apart, Eg the orig one quoted by Giz is an excellent choice, or the gigabyte G1.sniper 3 (not the M version) - but it's $350. Still got the sound blaster sound on-board which beats all the Realtek audio chips out there hands down.
Also, look at a case with good airflow (or even a complete water cooling solution) - these components will generate plenty of heat. My preference is the SilverStone Fortress Ft02 (positive pressure and the hot air moves UP - the way it wants to go) . But I'm sure there are plenty of other good tower cases out there. Or simply go for an open setup, that you can cool with a desk fan
Oh and a bigger PSU might not hurt, around 750W.

If you go water, god save you. It seems to me it'll cost a lot in both money and work-hours. You even need to select the gfx cards so they're ref. design (so you can get a wc block which cools the whole thing ram and all).

[Gizmo]

You get some pretty awesome performance from 2x660ti in sli. As for SLI or Corssfire being a must to run iRacing on 3 screens. I cannot comment on that as I've only ever run it on a single monitor. If you post that question on the iRacing forums i'm sure some of the guys can answer it.

[Scottie]

Scottie can vouch for the 2x 660 Ti's, they're doing a great job!

[ysu]

Scottie can vouch for the 2x 660 Ti's, they're doing a great job!

are you on triple screens, too?

I've read that the internal memory bus limitations (iirc) are holding these cards back on larger resolutions. It maybe bs after all

[MADCAP]

Looking at Gizmo's for a reference this is what i have in my cart for my new PC build what else do i need? So far its around $2500

Galaxy GeForce GTX 680 2GB Galaxy GeForce GTX 680 2GB In stock $479.00 or ASUS Radeon HD7970 DirectCU II TOP 3GB $479
Gigabyte G1-Sniper3 Motherboard Gigabyte G1-Sniper3 Motherboard In stock $355.00
Corsair AX860i Platinum Power Supply Corsair AX860i Platinum Power Supply In stock $279.00
Corsair Obsidian 650D Case Corsair Obsidian 650D Case In stock $195.00
Corsair Hydro Series H100i CPU Cooler Corsair Hydro Series H100i CPU Cooler In stock $145.00
Intel Core i7 3770K Intel Core i7 3770K In stock $345.00
G.Skill Ripjaws Z F3-12800CL9Q-16GBZL 16GB (4x4GB) DDR3 In stock $149.00
Seagate Barracuda 2TB ST2000DM001 Seagate Barracuda 2TB ST2000DM001

Cheers
Frank

[wobblysauce]

Scottie can vouch for the 2x 660 Ti's, they're doing a great job!

are you on triple screens, too?

I've read that the internal memory bus limitations (iirc) are holding these cards back on larger resolutions. It maybe bs after all

Issue is with Sli/Crossfire(2 cards or 2 cores on one card.) configurations has and is for me at least. The min-frame drop yes you get a higher total fps then a single card, but the odd min-frame drops really show up and makes the illusion of bad performance worse then the Single card running lower total fps but having a general higher min-frame rate.. making you feel like a smoother game play experience.

But people have different eyes and see results. Eg myself most Fluorescent lights to me Flicker badly.. and yet other people see a constant glow like a filament bulb.

Each to there own and try it yourself.

[Scottie]

Wobbly's eyesight must be running at 200Hz

Yeah, having fun with the 3 screens... I figured 2 of these cards was better and slightly cheaper than one 670/680 for handling the action... because of your point. I read the memory thing too and thought 2 of them would cover it off!

[wobblysauce]

Atm.. if memory serves(lol pun), BF3 is the highest use of GPU memory in a game.. so you should be fine.. with your current setup, as there good cards. the only bad point with them was the smaller memory pool.. but you covered it with 2 of them.