Post your gaming setup!

[Trilicity]

It answers an awful lot of questions I don't think anyone asked, but it's an awful lot more civil than the YouTube side was earlier, and that's much appreciated.

But here's where I scratch my head: 100 bucks is nothing for the CPU, but for the PSU 20 bucks does matter? You say it's gold rated, but the models I've seen from Raidmax aren't, could you provide a link for the particular model? That's just me wondering. It's not a bad build, although I really disagree with the choice of some components.

Note: I am in fact not Deltrus, just so you know.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817152044
but it was 1200 watts i cant find the 1200 watt model

[Shinzai]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817152044
but it was 1200 watts i cant find the 1200 watt model

Raidmax RX-1200AE

[Butler Log]

Can you explain the rationale behind buying a 1200W PSU for a single 7970 (even a dual 7970 setup can be run with half that wattage) to me?

[Holo]

Heh, 750 would have been enough for that build.

But oh well

[Tonyctattoo]

got some pictures but its not much to look at. but it runs well.

http://i.imgur.com/f04nQ.png
http://i.imgur.com/WYTBI.png

basically
msi motherboard
i5 3550
8gb ram
amd hd 7870 2gb
corsair cx 600
and a 128 gb ssd (think its kingston
in a coolermaster haf 912

[at05gt]

Just recently upgraded my rig:

Antec 300 case
Thermaltake TR-2 430w power supply (yes 430w is more then enough)
Gigabyte 970A-DS3 AM3+ motherboard
AMD FX-8150 octa core cpu
Cooler Master Hyper 101a cpu cooler with push/pull dual fans
8gb Patriot Viper 3 1600MHz ram
ASUS Radeon HD7750 1gb GDDR5 (running main gaming screen)
XFX Radeon HD4650 1gb (running secondary monitor off PCI-E x4 slot)



(yes I know my cabling looks like trash, no window in the side panel so no need to make it look clean)

[Xuvial]

Not bad, but what did you upgrade exactly (and what were you using previously)? At first glance your specs look a tad...unbalanced, atleast for gaming purposes.

[Milkshake86]

Usually the best acoustics are produced when the sub is on the floor. O.o

It doesnt have to be anywhere bass has no direction, ideally forcing a direction is best. The corner on a solid shelf or desk would be about the same as a the floor in a nice corner.

[Armond]

(yes I know my cabling looks like trash, no window in the side panel so no need to make it look clean)

Well, the other point of cable management is to help the air flow.

As for me:

Case: Cooler Master HAF 912
CPU: Intel Core i5-2500k @ 5.0 GHz
Heatsink: Corsair Air Series A70
GPU: EVGA GeForce GTX 560 Ti DS Superclocked 1024 MB GDDR5 <-- Quality card for the price, and my plans to upgrade this box are merely to fit another one in.
SSD: Crucial 128 GB m4
HD: Western Digital Caviar Green 2 TB <-- This had the same RPM and cache as the Caviar Blacks, but was 2 TB for $120 instead of 1 TB for $100 and 1.5 TB for $110. Caviar Black 2 TB was around $200 at the time.
RAM: Corsair Vengeance Blue 8 GB (2x4 GB) PC3-12800 1600 mHz DDR3 SDRAM
MOBO: ASRock Z68 PRO3 GEN3 Intel Z68 ATX DDR3 1066 <-- This is honestly a piece of crap. It's advertised as full-sized ATX, but it's actually somewhere between ATX and micro ATX, which means my fan is covering one of my RAM slots. I should have done more research before buying it.
DVD: Asus 24x SATA DVD-RW <-- I admit to having never used this since the initial drivers/OS install.
PSU: CORSAIR Enthusiast Series TX750 <-- Bigger than necessary for the second graphics card I'll add later.
OS: Windows 7 Pro 64bit
Monitor 1: Samsung P2770HD 27-Inch HDTV Monitor <-- This was a steal. Refurbished, but from Samsung (a brand I trust) and through the Amazon Warehouse (whose return policy I trust), for $262.32 instead of around $450.
Monitor 2: Vizio E220MV 22-Inch HDTV <-- This was around $200 retail, but with employee discount I got some hookup cables and such for half off + boosted my numbers for that month.
Mouse: Razer Naga 12-button SWTOR edition.
Keyboard: Gigaware keyboard you can find in any radioshack for like 25 bucks.
Speakers: Gigaware 50W speakers you can find in most radioshacks for like 40 bucks.
Desk: Walker Edison 3-piece Contemporary Glass and Steel Desk <-- This thing is ridiculously sexy, and it was on sale for $90 instead of around $160.

[Xuvial]

Neat build. Voltage and temps for that 5ghz OC on your i5 2500K? Really interested :P

[Armond]

Neat build. Voltage and temps for that 5ghz OC on your i5 2500K? Really interested :P

She's idling right now in the 17-24*C range as I do calculus homework, running IRC, firefox, atunes, msn, stuff like that. Under full load, I don't often see her break 70*C. I think the highest I've ever seen is 76*C. (Warning is 85*C, safety cutoff is 98*C.) Voltage idle is 1.192-1.200 V, under load goes up to 1.496-1.512V. I have seen it tickle the warning level of 1.520V, but I watched CPU-Z like a hawk for about an hour and never saw the voltage go past that.

Disturbingly enough, however, when I booted Prime95 to double check those numbers just now, I bluescreened x101 (needs more voltage). Hrm.

[at05gt]

Not bad, but what did you upgrade exactly (and what were you using previously)? At first glance your specs look a tad...unbalanced, atleast for gaming purposes.

Pretty much everything, the only pieces left from the old computer are the hard drives and DVD drive. As for the specs of the old computer, its far too abysmal to list, I literally cry when I look at the pieces and how horrid they are.

Ya the specs are slightly off, it's a work in progress, gonna add another 8 gigs of matched ram, and possibly swap my boot drive to an SSD. Thinking about a corsair H40/H50 for water cooling the CPU as well.

[Wries]

And unless it's changed, most TVs still don't have a square pixel. What is it again, 1.6 factor on the width compared to height.

Most TV panels should have square pixels and to my knowledge they do. Even during the (digital) SD widescreen anamorphic era the panels usually had square pixels while the actual transmission was in 720x576 stretched to either 1024x576 (16:9) or 768x576 (4:3). Newer HD broadcasting standards, namely 1920x1080 and 1280x720, are supposed to be viewed on completely square pixels.

[ladyz2hot]

Pc Spec:
Corsair 650D
Intel i5 3570k
Asus Sabertooth Z77
8GB Corsair Vengeance LP 1600MHz
ASUS HD7850-DC2-2GD5
OCZ Agility 3 SSD 120GB
Seagate Barracuda 1Tb
Corsair H100
Corsair Enthusiast Series TX650 V2

http://s1177.photobucket.com/albums/...t=DSC00550.jpg
http://s1177.photobucket.com/albums/...t=DSC00544.jpg
http://s1177.photobucket.com/albums/...t=DSC00545.jpg
http://s1177.photobucket.com/albums/...t=Udklip-3.png

[at05gt]

You guys have just Gigantic cases, I'm happy with my Antec 300 but my god the size of some of your front intake fans is a bit ridiculous. :P

@Armond I'm kind of limited given the size of my case, I dont have the back panel room to route cables behind the motherboard, what can you recommend I could do to improve airflow/cabling look, given what you can see in my pics?

[Drunkenvalley]

Most TV panels should have square pixels and to my knowledge they do. Even during the (digital) SD widescreen anamorphic era the panels usually had square pixels while the actual transmission was in 720x576 stretched to either 1024x576 (16:9) or 768x576 (4:3). Newer HD broadcasting standards, namely 1920x1080 and 1280x720, are supposed to be viewed on completely square pixels.

Thanks for the clarification.

[Xuvial]

You guys have just Gigantic cases, I'm happy with my Antec 300 but my god the size of some of your front intake fans is a bit ridiculous. :P

Most "spacious" mid towers have a 180mm-200mm intake fan, it's the quietest and most effective fan for most purposes since it can spin at super-low RPM's and push the same amount of air as a smaller fan spinning much faster.

I'll admit the term "mid tower" really has lost meaning nowadays since so many of them are normal-sized (like your Antec 300) going to borderline full-tower sizes (like my Storm Sniper). The biggest advantage is of course cable management, more room to work in, more room to expand, etc.

Believe it or not, recently there has been something of a trend going on with PC builders/enthusiasts who are trying to get AWAY from huge builds and going for the smallest form factors. There's been a sudden shift towards building mini-ITX/uATX rigs, but still using top-of-the-range hardware. E.g. cramming an i5 3570K + Z77 mini-ITX board + GTX680 into a tiny case, so at first look it seems to be a modest little family PC, and then you see it pushing max settings in BF3/Crysis 2 at high framerates and wonder "dude what the fuck is in that little box?!". There's just...a crazy joy in the idea of building a cute little rig that performs equal or better to massive monsters that are 3x bigger!

For example look at this watercooled mini-ITX build featured over at ROG:
http://rog.asus.com/152712012/news/p...x-lan-monster/

Can you think of anything more awesome?

Now even I really really feel like building my own little mini-ITX beast, but I have to slap myself keep myself reminded to spend money responsibly and be satisfied with what I have :P

@Armond I'm kind of limited given the size of my case, I dont have the back panel room to route cables behind the motherboard, what can you recommend I could do to improve airflow/cabling look, given what you can see in my pics?

There really isn't much you can do since there is no back panel routing. You're using a non-modular PSU (meh Thermaltake) so it's going to be sprouting a huge web of cables which you can't detach. The most you can do is tie cables together in bunches, coil all the cables not in use around the bottom with cable ties/etc, try to push them out of the way of airflow.

[glo]

She's idling right now in the 17-24*C range as I do calculus homework, running IRC, firefox, atunes, msn, stuff like that. Under full load, I don't often see her break 70*C. I think the highest I've ever seen is 76*C. (Warning is 85*C, safety cutoff is 98*C.) Voltage idle is 1.192-1.200 V, under load goes up to 1.496-1.512V. I have seen it tickle the warning level of 1.520V, but I watched CPU-Z like a hawk for about an hour and never saw the voltage go past that.

Disturbingly enough, however, when I booted Prime95 to double check those numbers just now, I bluescreened x101 (needs more voltage). Hrm.

Hmm... 17c would mean room temperatures in the high 40s or 10c~.

That aside, if your other claims are true, it would be very wise not to raise your already dangerously high voltage any more. You'll end up frying the chip.

[Ghâzh]

HD: Western Digital Caviar Green 2 TB <-- This had the same RPM and cache as the Caviar Blacks, but was 2 TB for $120 instead of 1 TB for $100 and 1.5 TB for $110. Caviar Black 2 TB was around $200 at the time.

Which caviar green would that be? :-P Not dissing the choice, just saying.. Greens have lower RPM and cache than blacks, that's the whole point of them. (less speed -> less power = less sound and heat)

[Armond]

@Armond I'm kind of limited given the size of my case, I dont have the back panel room to route cables behind the motherboard, what can you recommend I could do to improve airflow/cabling look, given what you can see in my pics?

I'd honestly recommend buying a pound of cable ties and going to town. I don't have the time right now to take a pic of my box, but it looks something like a roller coaster - there's a path the general bunch of cables follows, and it obviously splits from time to time, but everything is as bunched up as I could get it.

Hmm... 17c would mean room temperatures in the high 40s or 10c~.

That aside, if your other claims are true, it would be very wise not to raise your already dangerously high voltage any more. You'll end up frying the chip.

My room is a warm one. It's 7:30 AM and it's already 72*F/22.3*C in here. Later tonight, after I get home, I expect it'll be closer to 76-80*F.

And yeah, not touching those settings. I actually built this guy about six months ago, and that bluescreen in my previous post is the first one I've had. Not gonna touch that vcore setting.

Which caviar green would that be? :-P Not dissing the choice, just saying.. Greens have lower RPM and cache than blacks, that's the whole point of them. (less speed -> less power = less sound and heat)

I know, right? I was pretty surprised too. But check it out - I spent a good ten minutes flipping between the green and the black before I decided I must be crazy and got the green.