Back into the PC Master Race. It was never a total absence but still.

[Cyan]

The original Sonic and Sega All Stars Racing was a good game. I had the X360 version -unlocked framerate, max fps was around 40 something-, but the sequel Sonic and Sega All Stars Racing Transformed is a step above. What a great game! In some ways it is better than Mario Kart --though not at everything. It is the game I am playing the most as of late.

The themed tracks have some remarkable designs. Among my favourites there is the representation of a fetish game, Golden Axe, and Shinobi.

 

[Cyan]

For those on a budget and interested in a mechanical keyboard, this video has at least one great recommendation:

 

[Cyan]

Overclock wise I settled at a 2% overclock for the GPU. It is not much, but I don't want it to go over 120W nor over temps of 88º. In that sense, the best utilities to test the limits of the GPU has been Crysis, The Witcher 3 and Crysis 2. With settings that ran fine -even if you knew you were close to the limit- on 3d Mark and completed the benchmarks just fine, those games easily throw you to the OS.

A 4% overclock was also very stable, but sometimes the wattage went over 128W or so, and the temps can easily reach 88ºC. For instance, I am not sure if this is an actual artefact or just that the kid went into view and that's how the game gradually shows it as if some culling were going on. I have never observed a single artefact in the game whatever the resolution and/or oc.




Edit: obviously not an artefact, the kid becomes transparent when he is entering into view.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

What type, how many and where are your fans located in the case? The GPU appears to run a bit hot for a 570. I know the MSI Armor cooler is not the biggest, but on a 120W it should keep it lower than 88c. I suspect you might have some airflow issues going on, although nothing major as everything is running stable.

 

[Cyan]

What type, how many and where are your fans located in the case? The GPU appears to run a bit hot for a 570. I know the MSI Armor cooler is not the biggest, but on a 120W it should keep it lower than 88c. I suspect you might have some airflow issues going on, although nothing major as everything is running stable.

the box is a micro ATX one, like the mobo, and very cheap. There isn't a single fan inside . Got it because I was on a budget. It doesn't help either that, as of late, while I live in a mountainous, very rainy region, there is heatwave here, temperatures reaching 30ºC.

With a 2% OC the gpu delivers a 228,7GB/s of bandwidth compared to the 240GB/s of a 4% OC but the temps improve. In The Witcher 3, the temp decreases very very fast if you play Gwent or go into the menus, so the game can be taxing on the gpu and get to 88º but after a few seconds of opening the inventory,map,etc, screen, it decreases to 70º or less.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

Wow ok, I really recommend you to install at least one intake and one exhaust fan if it's possible to do so in that case. Intake preferably pushing air to the GPU fans and the exhaust fan near the CPU cooler. 2 fans total would do wonders there. Even better would be 2 intake fans with dust filters creating positive pressure in the case with one fan exhausting.

Take a look of this video.

 

[Cyan]

Wow ok, I really recommend you to install at least one intake and one exhaust fan if it's possible to do so in that case. Intake preferably pushing air to the GPU fans and the exhaust fan near the CPU cooler. 2 fans total would do wonders there. Even better would be 2 intake fans with dust filters creating positive pressure in the case with one fan exhausting.

Take a look of this video.

thanks for the recommendation. I subscribed to that channel less than a month ago although I hadn't seen that video before. I tend to favour small systems with power efficient but quite capable hardware, but I forgot that little detail. "Engineering" your own device can be really fun, and when I got it it was just the tip of the iceberg. The case is relatively empty so there is enough space for a couple of good fans.


On a different note, I set the max voltage of my CPU to 1.25V and set it to 3,8GHz without XFR (didn't want to go to 3,9GHz though it is doable with stock heatskin, the Wraith Spire) and these are the results:

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Wow ok, I really recommend you to install at least one intake and one exhaust fan if it's possible to do so in that case. Intake preferably pushing air to the GPU fans and the exhaust fan near the CPU cooler. 2 fans total would do wonders there. Even better would be 2 intake fans with dust filters creating positive pressure in the case with one fan exhausting.

Take a look of this video.

Totally depends on the case. My Sugo SG13 (mini-ITX) build uses a single 120 cm intake fan set to 600 RPM (Noctua ultra slow rpm fan). It needs minimal cooling, but part of that is that the GPU I used (GTX 1070), drew air in directly from the vents in the side panel and exhausted hot out the rear. So I just needed it to move a tiny bit of air over the 2.5" HDDs and provide a little bit of air flow to direct cool air to the CPU (i5 2500k) and direct heat away from the CPU heatsink/fan via directed air flow.

So in my situation the major generator of heat doesn't dump any of the heat into the case nor use any potentially hot air in the case.

Regards,
SB

 

[DuckThor Evil]

Totally depends on the case. My Sugo SG13 (mini-ITX) build uses a single 120 cm intake fan set to 600 RPM (Noctua ultra slow rpm fan). It needs minimal cooling, but part of that is that the GPU I used (GTX 1070), drew air in directly from the vents in the side panel and exhausted hot out the rear. So I just needed it to move a tiny bit of air over the 2.5" HDDs and provide a little bit of air flow to direct cool air to the CPU (i5 2500k) and direct heat away from the CPU heatsink/fan via directed air flow.

So in my situation the major generator of heat doesn't dump any of the heat into the case nor use any potentially hot air in the case.

Regards,
SB

Well my advice was obviously targeted at his case/component selection His card dumps the air inside the case and he has 0 fans compared to your 1 fan, while his setup needs more ventilation than yours.

 

[Davros]

Ive just noticed something from cyan's screenshots
He's playing the p.c version of Crysis with a gamepad - shame on you.....

 

[Cyan]

Ive just noticed something from cyan's screenshots
He's playing the p.c version of Crysis with a gamepad - shame on you.....

FPS on controller? Best joke in 2017 for sure. In games I played with a controller (joystick is for PC) like Call of Juarez, it takes me a lot to become used to the keyboard controls, especially for little things like jumping, opening doors, interact, etc.

Redout is by far the game that consumes more video memory, of those I've played til now.

Why overclock at all for a mere 4% ?

I don't overclock anymore. The card runs almost everything at 1080p 60fps by default.

Plus, it sounds like a mystery, but I am beating all my previous benchmarks with much better results using default gpu settings. In fact long before I overclocked my card I had some results that I never managed to beat afterwards. From 3D Mark to Call of Juarez DX10 benchmark, etc etc etc. There is no need to overclock this card at all. CPU timing settings are stable at 13-13-13-13-26 btw.

 

[Cyan]

Inspired by Age of Empires Definitive Edition minimum PassMark requirements, I downloaded PassMark here, https://www.passmark.com/download/pt_download.htm What a great tool! It is perhaps the best benchmark tool I tried to date. Too bad they only give you a 30 day-trial.

But I found out that my RX 570 is a pretty good GPU overall, and a GPU Compute little critter.








2D Graphics is not its forte but it is okay.


Now the BIGGEST disappointment. Memory latency is soooooo bad. I have it at 13-13-13-13-26 (maybe it is ignoring those values). Gotta reset the values to default or 14-14-14-14-34 and see what happens.


CPU does fine.


Disk, meh, it's okay for a typical hard drive.


Global is quite good.


Mem test is also good, maybe if I improve the latency..


This is the total result. Still..not happy with the mem latency.

 

[Cyan]

Run some tests after cleaning up the memory closing some apps, and these are the results of the mem tests. Found out that the best results I get are from the memory at 13-13-13-13-26. Still the memory latency of my computer is soooooo bad.

Default timings 16-18-18-18-36


BIOS suggested timings 14-16-16-16-34


Personal settings 13-13-13-13-26. Best result, though that isn't saying much.

 

[Cyan]

Wow ok, I really recommend you to install at least one intake and one exhaust fan if it's possible to do so in that case. Intake preferably pushing air to the GPU fans and the exhaust fan near the CPU cooler. 2 fans total would do wonders there. Even better would be 2 intake fans with dust filters creating positive pressure in the case with one fan exhausting.

Take a look of this video.

tomorrow I am going to the city and I shall look into a couple of fans for my case. The picture below shows my case and according to the official specs you can add a 1x 8cm rear fan and 1x 8cm side fan. Hopefully I can find 80mm fans, they don't seem to be the most common ones.

 

[Malo]

It looks like the front bottom has a grill and possible place to mount an intake fan? You'll be much better off with front intake and rear exhaust.

edit: nevermind "up to 2 fans". Airflow isn't going to be very good.

80mm aren't preferable as you need to run them faster to push a decent amount of air whereas most cases nowadays are 120mm fans with large blades that spin slower but have much higher cfm still. Without changing case you don't really have much choice though. Try to get decent quality PWM fans.

 

[pjbliverpool]

It looks like the front bottom has a grill and possible place to mount an intake fan? You'll be much better off with front intake and rear exhaust.

edit: nevermind "up to 2 fans". Airflow isn't going to be very good.

80mm aren't preferable as you need to run them faster to push a decent amount of air whereas most cases nowadays are 120mm fans with large blades that spin slower but have much higher cfm still. Without changing case you don't really have much choice though. Try to get decent quality PWM fans.

I've run with no case fans at all for the last 20 years lol.

 

[Cyan]

It looks like the front bottom has a grill and possible place to mount an intake fan? You'll be much better off with front intake and rear exhaust.

edit: nevermind "up to 2 fans". Airflow isn't going to be very good.

80mm aren't preferable as you need to run them faster to push a decent amount of air whereas most cases nowadays are 120mm fans with large blades that spin slower but have much higher cfm still. Without changing case you don't really have much choice though. Try to get decent quality PWM fans.

I got these two, budget ones, the Nox Knik and the Tacens Aura II:

Two more to arrive tomorrow, gotta check the Airflow (CFM) and if it is better I am going to change the fan placed at the side, which I am using as the intake fan. The one in the rear is the exhaust fan.

The front grill has been a good exhaust place when I messed it all up. I shall share some of my newbie experiences installing fans in a post, later.

I've run with no case fans at all for the last 20 years lol.

trust me it makes a huge difference, even in a mediocre box and with a couple of small 8cm fans like mine. TW3 went from GPU temps of 88º-89ºC without inner cooling to a max of 78º at max wattage (around 120W), even in long sessions, which is amazing taking into account the GPU can now breathe and those are cheap fans.

when the gpu is idle, it went from 51º to 31º..

Picture from The Witcher 3.
https://s11.postimg.org/nzxwz9qar/witcher3_2017_06_28_16_51_59_461.png

 

[Cyan]

some experiments and mistakes I unconsciously made after installing cooling fans within the case for the first time ever.

- I placed the good looking side of both fans towards the exterior of the case, which means both fans were set for intake. I realised my mistake later. Even so, cooling was already much better than non cooling at all! Temps went from 88-89ºC to 81ºC, but the grill at the front of the case was exhausting a LOT of heat.

-One of the fans had a MOLEX power connector as an accessory, so since I hadn't read the mobo manual, I used that connector. It works, but the mobo can't control the speed of the fan, so it was always running at an average speed.

- Later after reading the manual, I connected both fans to the System 1 and System 2 fan power connector (the mobo has only power connections for two fans). Thankfully my mobo has a BIOS feature called Smart Fan Control to control the fans so I don't need software like Speedfan and it does a great job.

- The fan with the best CFM was the one used as exhaust, while the other one was used for intake. I think it works better this way.

Now my PC can run demanding stuff without the GPU achieving dangerous temperatures of 88-89C -max is 90- and without sounding like a plane about to take off. Weather has been very rainy and cool these days where I live after the heatwave a week ago, but it doesn't matter, til yesterday I was experiencing high temps with demanding software.

 

[Cyan]

tested the CPU too with Prime95 stress tests to create heat. Max of my CPU is now 74º, it was 84ºC before. Both fans cost 11€ and it was a steal taking into account the benefits. Next is Vega -I've saved close to 400€ for now- and a new power supply and SSD, then 4k monitor, but this is going to take time.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I've always relied on my PSU fan for exhaust.