New gaming rig

[Malo]

Your CPU will be yawning in most games until then

 

[almighty]

I paid £80 for my used 2500k and £45 for my Z68 motherboard.

And that £125 got me a cool and fast 4.8Ghz that'll last this new console generation.

 

[homerdog]

Intel removes modest 'free' overclocking from standard Haswell CPUs

Unless this changed from Sandy/Ivy Bridge, you can OC the nonK CPUs by 4 bins.

http://techreport.com/news/24950/intel-removes-modest-free-overclocking-from-standard-haswell-cpus

Lol! I still recommend the non-K series chips though. The OC headroom of the K series isn't very high without extreme cooling, and again, TSX...

 

[Blazkowicz]

Haswell brings 256bit integer operations, FMA and few other additions, so it might not seem as a step over Ivy in current software, but in few years time it will make a difference. So unless you plan on changing CPU in the next 1-2 years you are right, otherwise I would go with Haswell K.

The new stuff seems to make a difference in heavy applications, for instance in offline 3D rendering engines and h264 encoders. You get a 4770K performing the same as a 3930K, that's impressive. That kind of software is readily updated when CPU with new SIMD instructions come out.

Haswell is a disappointment on power and heat and especially overclocking.
Maybe you can still do +5% of the base clock on Haswell non K (this overclocks everything, even PCIe bus)

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

I made some changes.

4770 non k instead of a k. Haswell doesn't seem to be any good at overclocking so i'm not going to bother.

Asus Gryphon instead of maximus gene. First of all the gene doesn't seem to be available anywhere. Also it's 50 euro's more expensive and now that i'm not going to overclock I might as well get the Gryphon. I doubt it's going to make any real difference in performance.

Memory will be 4x4gb of corsair vengance. It's the only 1600mhz 9c memory I could find that doesn't have those big heatspreaders on top of it that won't play nice with the big shuriken 2.

I'm looking at a different case as well. After reading some more the TF03 seems to be rather loud. I'm now looking at a corsair 350D and the Fractal design define mini.

I like the looks of the mini better but it's a bit limited on gpu space which might be a downside if I decide to keep my 560ti as a physix card later on. The 350D has space for 2 30cm gpu's so that should be more than enough.

And as a little extra I'll probably get a nice 1Gbps Internet connection as well I planned on using my mobile LTE modem for another year or so but it's not very fast (though not slow either) and the 1Gbps is only 24 euro's a month right now so that is too good to pass.

 

[homerdog]

Lol gigabit internet for $30 a month. I thought my 25/1mbit connection at $40 was good!

 

[Grall]

4770 non k instead of a k. Haswell doesn't seem to be any good at overclocking so i'm not going to bother.

I bought the K version, and it gets freaking scorching hot when volts bumped up to 1.2xx-something when setting multipliers up to 40 and letting BIOS handle voltage. I don't feel comfortable adjusting volts manually, I don't really know what the options do and I don't want to f something up. I already made a huge booboo once when I was tired and set multiple to 50x (!), rebooted, and windows promptly bluescreened of course, with a corrupt registry as a result... Lol.

Fortunately no serious damage seem to have been caused, the OS rolled back to a previous restore point, and CPU works fine from what I can tell. Heh.

So... Never mess with important expensive stuff when you're not 100% in the head!

Asus Gryphon instead of maximus gene.

Don't know anything about the gryphon, being Asus I'm sure it's a nice board, but the Gene is a friggin' beauty. REALLY nice, great quality components, very solid build, nice LEDs. Good layout too, connectors easy to access (for uATX anyway), and so on.

Memory will be 4x4gb of corsair vengance. It's the only 1600mhz 9c memory I could find that doesn't have those big heatspreaders on top of it that won't play nice with the big shuriken 2.

If you use tower cooler you can put the fan in a sucking position. I had to do that to fit my Dominator DIMMs. There's plenty space behind the CPU socket for the fan in the Gene at least.

After reading some more the TF03 seems to be rather loud.

Stock fans are universally SHITE. I ripped the fans out of my FT03 and put in 4-pin Noctuas instead. Not cheap, but they're very well made and quiet. Also come with quite short fan connectors which is very practical in a small enclosure (with extenders though, if you actually need the extra cable...)

The FT03 is a GREAT case. Very solidly built, most of it is metal and it's very easy to work in for being an uATX casing. Since it doesn't have a conventional front with drive bays you get to remove the front plate entirely (it snaps off easily using sturdy clips) and get easy access to the CPU/DIMM area from both the side and the front. It's also very clever in its design, well thought out regarding air flow, component layout and so on. Just make sure you get a modular power supply. I'm using a Corsair AX1200i. It is a nice, solid power supply, but not actually designed for this case. It's too long.

I'm considering ordering the 860i model instead which is 4cm shorter, which should give enough room, but I don't know if I should spend the extra money. I might just continue running without the rear plate attached...

I like the looks of the mini better but it's a bit limited on gpu space which might be a downside if I decide to keep my 560ti as a physix card later on.

The FT03 fits two geforce 770 cards. You can't have a boxy cooler on top though or you'll hit the lower fan shroud. This can be removed though, but if you want intake fans you have to put in two 80mm units instead.

And as a little extra I'll probably get a nice 1Gbps Internet connection as well

Nice. Doubt it is really any faster in practice than a 100-200mbit/s connection though. I often don't max out my downstream speed when downloading steam software for example.

It should be HUGELY better latency than LTE though, so if you care at all about online gaming it will be a vast improvement.

 

[joker454]

I bought the K version, and it gets freaking scorching hot when volts bumped up to 1.2xx-something when setting multipliers up to 40 and letting BIOS handle voltage. I don't feel comfortable adjusting volts manually, I don't really know what the options do and I don't want to f something up. I already made a huge booboo once when I was tired and set multiple to 50x (!), rebooted, and windows promptly bluescreened of course, with a corrupt registry as a result... Lol.

I'm using a cheap Asus board with my Haswell 4770k. I ran the Asus utility that lets it automatically figure out what the cpu can handle and in my case it put two cores at 4.5ghz, and two cores at 4.4ghz. To be safe I just set all four cores at 4.3ghz. That keeps it around 1.22v or so and it's been running fine that way even on overnight video encoding, that's with air cooling.

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

Don't know anything about the gryphon, being Asus I'm sure it's a nice board, but the Gene is a friggin' beauty. REALLY nice, great quality components, very solid build, nice LEDs. Good layout too, connectors easy to access (for uATX anyway), and so on.

It's supposed to be a really high quality board, it comes with a 5 year warranty as well. According to the reviews the board is well made and everything is in the right place. I don't care much about looks as I'll have windowless case anyway.

If you use tower cooler you can put the fan in a sucking position. I had to do that to fit my Dominator DIMMs. There's plenty space behind the CPU socket for the fan in the Gene at least.

That won't work with a big shuriken 2. I'm willing to look at different coolers but this one is only 35 euro's and very silent (under 10db).

Stock fans are universally SHITE. I ripped the fans out of my FT03 and put in 4-pin Noctuas instead. Not cheap, but they're very well made and quiet. Also come with quite short fan connectors which is very practical in a small enclosure (with extenders though, if you actually need the extra cable...)

I thought the coolers in my 5 year old coolermaster stacker were pretty good. I never noticed them making more than a background noise. As the FT03 isn't cheap and this build will be pretty expensive as well I'm not really too keen to spend even more on better fans. For the price of the FT03 I think it should come with atleast some half decent fans. The 350D seems to have decent fans and produces only 30db at 1 feet so it should be pretty silent at normal distances.

I think I'll get the Seasonic 650w km3. Will 650w be enough to power 2 fast gpu's?

Nice. Doubt it is really any faster in practice than a 100-200mbit/s connection though. I often don't max out my downstream speed when downloading steam software for example.

It should be HUGELY better latency than LTE though, so if you care at all about online gaming it will be a vast improvement.

Yeah LTE is useless for gaming. I'm lucky to get a 100ms ping and that is only in a best case scenario. During the evening when I'll actually have time to play games and on a real server it's atleast 200ms.

I have no clue how fast that gbit connection really is. My friend just got a 100mbit connection with the same provider (though there really is only one provider... well, the connection is offered by only one company, on top of that you have different providers who I think only have extra services but no own network) and when I speedtested it, it was only 26mbps.

Not that I really care, as long as it's fast enough to download large steam games in 1 or 2 hours. Besides, the price is the same for a lot of these connections (100mbit is the same as 1gbit), it just depends on your location on which connection you'll get.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

I'm using a cheap Asus board with my Haswell 4770k. I ran the Asus utility that lets it automatically figure out what the cpu can handle and in my case it put two cores at 4.5ghz, and two cores at 4.4ghz. To be safe I just set all four cores at 4.3ghz. That keeps it around 1.22v or so and it's been running fine that way even on overnight video encoding, that's with air cooling.

I did the same on mine, and got lucky. Mine does 4.7ghz on four cores and 4.8ghz on two cores according to the Asus utils. A thirty percent overclock just by clicking a button and people still complain it doesn't overclock enough . Yet it can still idle at 12 watts.

I use one of the Noctua NH-U14S coolers, so I had to choose a slightly wider case to fit it in, but it's enormous and works well, yet it's slim enough to let me fit RAM with tall heatsinks.

 

[homerdog]

I think I'll get the Seasonic 650w km3. Will 650w be enough to power 2 fast gpu's?

If you're not overclocking then yes, because fast GPUs aren't hitting the 300W TDP limit right now. Even the Titan tops out at 'only' 250W. 250Wx2 leaves 150W for the CPU and rest of the system, which should be plenty.

Of course if you start overclocking those GPUs, you may quickly run out of "juice". In that case I'd recommend something in the 700-750W range.

 

[Grall]

It's...well, maybe not inadvisable per se to max out, or almost max out a PSU because they're supposed to be able to take it, but it will certainly wear it out a lot faster than if loaded moderately. It'll run hotter meaning caps in particular degrade way faster, it'll run less efficient (IE: even hotter, and drawing more power), and it'll make more noise from its cooling fan.

Overall, I think there's a reason consumer electronics manufacturers specify their PSUs with ~40-50% overcapacity...

Mine does 4.7ghz on four cores and 4.8ghz on two cores according to the Asus utils.

Holy siht. My system was set to 4.2 on all fours by the ASUS thingy, then promptly bluescreened with a WHEA error when I ran Prime95 torture test on it. Maybe bad appliance of paste on the CPU making it run very hot, I'm not sure. I gotta take this thing apart anyway when my new fans finally arrive so I might just as well check out the paste as well.

One weird thing is, I try setting multiplier for 1 and 2 cores higher, yet the CPU never switches to these higher mults when I load it with just one or two thread workloads. Anyone have a clue what might be going wrong?

I use one of the Noctua NH-U14S coolers, so I had to choose a slightly wider case to fit it in

This one's too wide for my Gene mobo. Had to switch to an old NH-U12P, and it has only four heatpipes... "Only" btw. Sink barely heats up anyway when the cores sit at ~80C running Prime95 at 4GHz.

The fan on the U14 is awesome btw, I so wish I could wedge it in somehow, but alas, I cannot.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Holy siht. My system was set to 4.2 on all fours by the ASUS thingy, then promptly bluescreened with a WHEA error when I ran Prime95 torture test on it. Maybe bad appliance of paste on the CPU making it run very hot, I'm not sure. I gotta take this thing apart anyway when my new fans finally arrive so I might just as well check out the paste as well.

Supposedly Asus tested about 500 4770Ks and found only 10 percent would do 4.6+ reliably. You might be at the other end of the bell curve. I'm not too worried about non-typical workloads, as long as everything works day-to-day. MP4 encoding can only touch 83 degrees centigrade, but Intelburntest/Linpack has the CPU at 100 degrees and banging on the thermal limiter in a matter of seconds.

If you really think it's misapplied paste, try cleaning it off and trying again. The stuff that comes with the Nocuta heatsinks is supposed to be good, and they recommend just putting a 5mm blob in the middle of the heatspreader and squashing it down as you screw in the heatsink. They don't go for spreading it out manually or anything like that.

One weird thing is, I try setting multiplier for 1 and 2 cores higher, yet the CPU never switches to these higher mults when I load it with just one or two thread workloads. Anyone have a clue what might be going wrong?

Maybe there's always some other housekeeping tasks going on, or there's some arcane internal algorithm doing the load balancing. Have you tried using the Intel Extreme Tuning Utility?

This one's too wide for my Gene mobo. Had to switch to an old NH-U12P, and it has only four heatpipes... "Only" btw. Sink barely heats up anyway when the cores sit at ~80C running Prime95 at 4GHz.

The problem is Haswell is a small chip, and it's difficult to get heat out of it. As soon as you hit about 1.3v to overclock, the heat goes up dramatically, and it has to get out of a chip with a small surface area, through the poorly applied TIM, and into the heatspreader before it even reaches your heatsink. This seems to limit the cooling.

Supposedly the way to check it to try and boot at 4.6, and if you can get into Windows and the vcore is no more than about 1.26, then you've got a good one. If the chip is having to go to 1.3, then you're not going to be able to deal with the heat and go any higher.

Some people are getting better temps with de-lidding, but I'm not inclined to take a knife to my expensive chip when it's already getting a 30 percent overclock. I'm not that greedy, and quite frankly I want to use the thing, not spend weeks messing about with it.

The fan on the U14 is awesome btw, I so wish I could wedge it in somehow, but alas, I cannot.

There's always the U12 version with a 120mm fan and some slightly more sensible dimensions. I like these coolers because they are not as bonkers as the double towers, and they don't interfere with the RAM slots. Build quality is great and the fans are very quiet and reliable due to the oil bearings. Noctua have extensive compatibility lists on their website if you need to check the fit.

It's just as quiet, and these new Haswell boards do some very neat tricks in terms of reducing power (and thus heat) and dropping fanspeeds to keep things quiet. I've seen the CPU reported using as low as about 6 watts and as high as 180.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

This is interesting info if you're looking to go Haswell. Aria is one of the big UK tech e-tailers. ES is Engineering Sample.

Originally Posted by RawZ - Aria Forums
Just be careful about some reviews out there. A lot of them are using ES. Nothing wrong with that but some of the ES can do a lot higher Overclocks (stable and bootable) with a lot less voltage than retail. Mileage will vary a lot depending on what cooling method and if your retail CPU is a duffer. The motherboard isn't the limitation in this case. Don't go thinking I'll buy a £200+ motherboard for 4.6+ Overclocks as some of the cheaper ones I've tested do exactly the same. If you can keep CPU temps under 80C and not breach any higher than 1.35v (1.3v ideally), well done. I don't think it's worth hitting 1.4v even on custom water.

You may have noticed the other day we had some OEM speed-tested CPUs for sale. Whats interesting, these Haswell chip vary massively more so than other generations we've tested. Even though they were all from the same batch, to boot into the Windows desktop at 5GHz for example, a few can do so at 1.25v (like some ES CPUs I and reviewers have), others need 1.4-1.45v or higher.

Those of you who are speed binning yourself to get decent chips to OC stable 4.6-4.8 with decent cooling & temps, look for those chips than can boot into Windows at 5GHz with 1.25-1.3v.

Unfortunately, most are dogs. By that I mean 4.2-4.5 is probably going to be the max for most of you no matter what cooling method or motherboard. Lucky ones will hit 4.6. Anything 4.7 and over, count yourselves very lucky with your chip. Out of 60 tested, I found around 45 to be poor clockers. The others we're around 4.6-4.7. Very VERY few could do 4.8. The i7's are a flipping nightmare to get stable with high clocks as the hyper-threading rapes the temps when using OCCT 4.4.0 with AVX enabled on all logical cores. As some review site have claimed. 90-100C+ is true.

Is it worth it? Overclockers, yes. Gamers, not so much. Mr Joe Bloggs, no.

 

[Grall]

Supposedly Asus tested about 500 4770Ks and found only 10 percent would do 4.6+ reliably. You might be at the other end of the bell curve.

I'm at the crap-end of the bell curve, my rig threw two fatal exceptions and one bluescreen yesterday while WoWing with the CPU either at stock 37 multiplier or maaybe 39x, I can't remember, and RAM using XMP profile @2400MHz. Reset UEFI to default (again!, hardly changed anything this time), rebooted and played for over an hour without issue, although this doesn't necessarily mean anything.

Set RAM back to 2400 and ran memtest86 for hours while I slept, no errors detected, reset back to default (1333, I think) before booting back into windows. Gonna have to RMA something it feels like because this is unmanageable.

The stuff that comes with the Nocuta heatsinks is supposed to be good, and they recommend just putting a 5mm blob in the middle of the heatspreader

Yeh I know, I'm just wondering if the blob I put on was a bit too small, meaning perhaps it doesn't cover enough of the heatspreader. *shrug* The noctua stuff typically settles after a while IME, so maybe temps will improve in a bit. ...Except I'll be ripping off the sink sooner or later so it probably won't have time to settle anyhow.

Maybe there's always some other housekeeping tasks going on, or there's some arcane internal algorithm doing the load balancing.

I absolutely had the 39x turbo multiplier working at some point. It must be some UEFI setting buried amongst 200 others causing it. *shrug* Right now it refuses to go above 35x even with just one thread, which is just fucking stupid.

Have you tried using the Intel Extreme Tuning Utility?

Rather not installing 1000 different tweaking programs cluttering up my system TBH. Isn't that just for intel mobos anyway?

As soon as you hit about 1.3v to overclock, the heat goes up dramatically

Thank you, yes I noticed. My old C0 Nehalem was a far more thankful overclocker despite belching heat like crazy. Got a free 600+ MHz out of that workhorse no problem, keeping temps under 80C using a decent after-market heatsink (Noctua C12P SE14, 140mm fan)

quite frankly I want to use the thing, not spend weeks messing about with it.

Yeah, same here. I just want a bit more performance, more for peace of mind rather than anything else. Nothing too much to ask for I think!

There's always the U12 version with a 120mm fan and some slightly more sensible dimensions.

Yeah, you just reminded me of that. I had a look, and it's listed as out of stock at my preferred retailer.

these new Haswell boards do some very neat tricks in terms of reducing power (and thus heat) and dropping fanspeeds to keep things quiet.

Yeah, the ASUS utility does a good job tuning fan curves for silence, this rig is much MUCH more quiet than my old one, the video card fans included. The radials on those 6970s really make one hell of a racket in comparison. Too bad I'm still having throttling issues in heavy-duty games like Crysis series though. I'll have to try and wedge something bigger in between the boards than a zip-tie head to try and give more breathing room for the fans... Haven't figured out just what yet though. Heh.

Speaking of fan curves, too bad the fans only react to CPU temp and not GPU also. There are GPGPU stuff (and even some games) that hardly loads the CPU and grills the GPUs mightily. Oh well. Soon all GPUs will be integrated into the CPU anyway, so problem solved.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

I'm at the crap-end of the bell curve, my rig threw two fatal exceptions and one bluescreen yesterday while WoWing with the CPU either at stock 37 multiplier or maaybe 39x, I can't remember, and RAM using XMP profile @2400MHz. Reset UEFI to default (again!, hardly changed anything this time), rebooted and played for over an hour without issue, although this doesn't necessarily mean anything.

Set RAM back to 2400 and ran memtest86 for hours while I slept, no errors detected, reset back to default (1333, I think) before booting back into windows. Gonna have to RMA something it feels like because this is unmanageable.

It sounds like you may have some problem somewhere. I saw the same thing on a PC a couple of years back where it kept intermittently locking up. I thought RAM/CPU was the culprit, but they tested out fine under diagnostics. It turned out to be a faulty hard drive that would lock the system every time it tried to write to a particuar bad block that it couldn't remap. The system waited for the drive to remap and come back, and the drive never did. It took ages to figure out that problem wasn't in the memory or processor.

Have you updated the BIOS? It seems a lot of the Asus boards went out with a pre-release BIOS, and the only one on their website is a newer one.

Rather not installing 1000 different tweaking programs cluttering up my system TBH. Isn't that just for intel mobos anyway?

No, people are recommending it as better than the utils that come with the Asrock boards. The Asus utils are good, but I thought the Intel one might give you more info as to what is going on in your rig.

Thank you, yes I noticed. My old C0 Nehalem was a far more thankful overclocker despite belching heat like crazy. Got a free 600+ MHz out of that workhorse no problem, keeping temps under 80C using a decent after-market heatsink (Noctua C12P SE14, 140mm fan)

You see from my subsequent post that people are finding Haswell to be hugely variable, especially in terms of overclocking. Moreso than any other chip ever.

Yeah, the ASUS utility does a good job tuning fan curves for silence, this rig is much MUCH more quiet than my old one, the video card fans included. The radials on those 6970s really make one hell of a racket in comparison. Too bad I'm still having throttling issues in heavy-duty games like Crysis series though. I'll have to try and wedge something bigger in between the boards than a zip-tie head to try and give more breathing room for the fans... Haven't figured out just what yet though. Heh.

Tell me about it. For a while I was seriously considering getting a 7950 just so as not to put up with the now obvious noise of the 6950 radial fans, but I've decided to stick it out until the new cards are out at the end of they year. It's either that or get some sound insulation in the case, or risk the card by putting on an aftermarket cooler, but I'd rather put that money towards an 8950 or whatever the upcoming cards are going to be.

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

Just ordered the monitor. Took me two goddamn hours, the Japanese dell site hates foreign names... Will have to wait another 9 days before it arrives even though the dell site said only 1 ~ 2 days.

Will order the rest tomorrow though I might be in for a long wait >< Anyway I still havent decided on the cooler. The big shuriken is nice and quiet but it can get a little hot on the low fanspeed setting and I doubt those reviews are made in a 30+ degrees room (summer here is rather hot). Might get a mugen 4 instead.

 

[joker454]

Set RAM back to 2400 and ran memtest86 for hours while I slept, no errors detected, reset back to default (1333, I think) before booting back into windows. Gonna have to RMA something it feels like because this is unmanageable.

Have you tried keeping your cpu high but leaving your ram at around 1600? I ask because years back when I was overclocking my i7-2600k, I would have issues if I had my ram at anything other than 1600 speed, and this was with 1.65v 2400 speed rated ram. If I left my ram at 1600 then I could run the cpu at 5ghz and it would work great, but at faster ram speeds I'd have issues even at lower clock speeds. I ended up returning that 2400 speed ram and went instead with Vengeance 1.5v 1600 speed ram and that's worked great for years. I'm using that same ram on my new haswell build again at xmp 1600 profile with no issues at 4.3ghz, that's after many days straight of video encoding. In retrospect I wonder if the issues I had were because the 2400 ram was 1.65v, maybe 1.5v ram works better?

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

Hardware should arrive on Monday

I ended up buying:

i7 4770
asus gryphon m-atx
Coolermaster evo 212 (should just fit in the case)
2x8gb corsair vengeance 1600mhz cl10 (all cl9 memory had 3 week delivery time and I doubt it really makes any difference for gaming)
Seasonic 650w
Corsair Obsidian 350d
2tb seagate

In total about 1050 euro's (inc monitor) so I managed to stay within my budget pretty well.

 

[Davros]

so I managed to stay within my budget pretty well.

Well then that means you have enough for a ForceFeedback Steering Wheel