PC Hardware and building thread

[DELTAprime]

AIOs/CLCs are not really any extra effort and they run nice and cool. I forget if you're going Intel or AMD but I do not recommend using an Intel CPU without a good 240 or 280mm AIO anymore because frankly Intel CPUs run incredibly hot. AMD CPUs run cooler, but with their XFR2 technology working very similar to Nvidia's GPU Boost the cooler your CPU is the faster it will run.

Just get an AIO with a 6th Gen Asetek pump. This particular AIO is the only 280mm with a 6th gen pump. https://www.corsair.com/ww/en/Catego.../CW-9060032-WW
This is the 360mm with the same pump. https://www.corsair.com/ww/en/Catego.../CW-9060031-WW
And here's the 120mm if you don't have room for the larger units, but you're probably better off buying a MASSIVE air cooler than a 120mm for CPUs in particular. https://www.corsair.com/ww/en/Catego.../CW-9060036-WW

The reason you want a 6th gen Asetek pump and not anything else is the big selling point on the 6th gen pump is reliability and so far only these products have a 6th gen pump.

Also don't bother putting an AIO on a GPU, GPUs run much cooler than CPUs thanks to their big massive heat syncs and better thermal conductivity.

[UltraMarginal]

reliability? how do we know they are reliable if they are just getting on to the market?
How unreliable is the older generation pumps and hardware? do you mean, spill fluid all over your motherboard unreliable, or stop pumping and cook your CPU unreliable?

this is kind of why I'm a bit shy of one of these, an air cooled system gives good temperatures as far as I'm aware and is much less likely to fail. even if the fan/s fail the heat sink will still promote convection.

[DELTAprime]

As in the pump fails and while it doesn't cook your CPU because modern CPUs have temperature protection, it will trigger overtemp protection. My Kraken which uses the 5th gen pump died the other week, but I think it might be electronics related, not pump.

The new 6th gen pumps are designed to be much more reliable than the old pumps. In PC land manufactures products are tested before release and given a Mean Time Between Failure (which is not always published). Asetek would not be able to say their 6th gen pumps are more reliable if their testing did not show a higher MTBF.

Besides, teardowns of the 6th gen pump show it's been heavily redesigned and is much less fragile.

[UltraMarginal]

Well, I've learned something new today, (except for the MTBF)

I guess I can go home now.
Interesting and good to know. I was looking at a intel i7 8700, but I figure it's so long since I started looking I should probably do a quick pass on what is currently on the market and ensure I'm happy with my selections.

[prjkt]

Life has been getting in the way, I think I'm going to go with a ARC Midi R2. case. it's a nice combination of price design and looks like it has well designed filters etc.

I was planning on a complete air cooled build but seeing a lot of case reviews I'm seeing a whole lot of closed loop water cooling setups. is it worth the effort?

I really like the Fractal Design cases, using a Meshify C myself - no where near as many 3.5" bays (mine has 2, which I've filled, along with filling the three drive 2.5" panel.)

Also using one of their 280mm AIO coolers, good balance of cable routing (everything from the CPU block) and quiet performance.

Interesting to hear about the different pump lifetimes, might have to keep my eye on that for my next build...

in other news, here's the latest thing I have running on my new machine:

[Akky82]

Well, looks like i have a bit more research to do, was mislead about how hard it is to watercool but after seeing that corsair setup i have 3 questions. Currently planning on a build, anything stick out in it or does it look fine (i havent been in the know for about 10 years when lwork started getting me laptops that were better than my pc at the time, there may be better/cheaper alternatives to something, especially dont know about ram):

- i7 8700 (was originally going for 8600k)

- Asus TUF Z370 plus gaming (was tossing up between this and gigabyte auros, but most people i talked to swear by asus for mobo)

- Corsair vengeance LPX 3000 DDR4

- Antec 80+gold Earth Watts 650W

- Samsung Evo 970 m.2 250GB

- WD Black 1 or 2TB

- Noctua NH-D15

- not sure on a case yet, was originally looking at corsair c270R, then a carbide 540 air, but this talk of fractal design has me interested, i like the meshify c.


Essentially, I'd like to use it for gaming, I've tried some games lately on my laptop (3rd gen i7, radeon m7600) and its struggling, then I found myself the reciever of a gigabyte 8gb gtx1080 windforce and a 27" monitor so the decision was made to build.


So the second question is, if Im not looking to OC, is there any reason I should spend the extra 70 bucks and get that corsair hydro H115i setup (or similar)? I'm sure I could do it all myself but money is a small factor I'm taking into consideration (ie getting just the next best bit for everything all adds up).

Third question, any realistic reason to grab 3200 over 3000 RAM?

Cheers in advance for any help.

[DELTAprime]

Well, looks like i have a bit more research to do, was mislead about how hard it is to watercool but after seeing that corsair setup i have 3 questions. Currently planning on a build, anything stick out in it or does it look fine (i havent been in the know for about 10 years when lwork started getting me laptops that were better than my pc at the time, there may be better/cheaper alternatives to something, especially dont know about ram):

- i7 8700 (was originally going for 8600k)

- Asus TUF Z370 plus gaming (was tossing up between this and gigabyte auros, but most people i talked to swear by asus for mobo)

- Corsair vengeance LPX 3000 DDR4

- Antec 80+gold Earth Watts 650W

- Samsung Evo 970 m.2 250GB

- WD Black 1 or 2TB

- Noctua NH-D15

- not sure on a case yet, was originally looking at corsair c270R, then a carbide 540 air, but this talk of fractal design has me interested, i like the meshify c.


Essentially, I'd like to use it for gaming, I've tried some games lately on my laptop (3rd gen i7, radeon m7600) and its struggling, then I found myself the reciever of a gigabyte 8gb gtx1080 windforce and a 27" monitor so the decision was made to build.


So the second question is, if Im not looking to OC, is there any reason I should spend the extra 70 bucks and get that corsair hydro H115i setup (or similar)? I'm sure I could do it all myself but money is a small factor I'm taking into consideration (ie getting just the next best bit for everything all adds up).

Third question, any realistic reason to grab 3200 over 3000 RAM?

Cheers in advance for any help.

Ok, so first thing is I recommend you don't get a TUF motherboard. While the Asus TUF series was a good choice several generations ago as they were built to last they are now incredibly cheaply built and contrary to the name are not expected to last very long. An Asus Prime Z370 board should be the minimum board to go with in the Asus lineup.

On the Intel side of things faster memory doesn't make a huge difference in performance unlike AMD where you need to buy very specific memory in order to achieve good performance.

Next are you certain want a locked CPU? If you can afford it the 8700k is the way to go but between the 8700 and the 8600k I'd actually recommend the 8600k. For gaming you don't need 12 threads and a higher single core clock like you can get with a very basic overclock of the 8600k will be more beneficial for gaming. You really only need the threads and cores of the 8700k and 2700X if you are doing things like video rendering, CAD or streaming. Yes it is very nice to have that little extra bump in perf from extra threads but it's not 100% necessary for gaming and I get the sense you're trying to do this cheap.

Also that Noctua cooler is fine for overclocking and perfect for a locked CPU. AIOs perform better, but they are not mandatory.

[Akky82]

Ok, so first thing is I recommend you don't get a TUF motherboard. While the Asus TUF series was a good choice several generations ago as they were built to last they are now incredibly cheaply built and contrary to the name are not expected to last very long. An Asus Prime Z370 board should be the minimum board to go with in the Asus lineup.

On the Intel side of things faster memory doesn't make a huge difference in performance unlike AMD where you need to buy very specific memory in order to achieve good performance.

Next are you certain want a locked CPU? If you can afford it the 8700k is the way to go but between the 8700 and the 8600k I'd actually recommend the 8600k. For gaming you don't need 12 threads and a higher single core clock like you can get with a very basic overclock of the 8600k will be more beneficial for gaming. You really only need the threads and cores of the 8700k and 2700X if you are doing things like video rendering, CAD or streaming. Yes it is very nice to have that little extra bump in perf from extra threads but it's not 100% necessary for gaming and I get the sense you're trying to do this cheap.

Also that Noctua cooler is fine for overclocking and perfect for a locked CPU. AIOs perform better, but they are not mandatory.

Hey thanks for the reply, I was actually looking at a prime board (not really digging tuf yellow but im not fussed about looks or RBG), it's mainly friends from Singapore swearing by asus and lamenting that they're so expensive over there. Also one friend that works for ubisoft was mentioning about games in the future using more cores/threads (not sure on the terminology) and noted that some mmorpg Blessed online is using the lot at the moment on a 7th gen i5 (I may be misunderstanding). Point is, 70 bucks is 70 bucks and the more Im reading today the more likely I am to go with 8600k because Im sure it wont be any time soon that I'll have to worry.

Back to the board, any recommendations for another brand? Say gigabyte? auros ultra gaming at 239 seems reasonable, or just an auros with 3 slots for 209. My sister in law runs a shop and though she's doing more ipad/iphone repairs lately she always recommends gigabyte for builds she does for customers (I'd prefer to do it myself, surely a mechanical engineer can put together his own pc right?), plus I'mnot sure I want her knowing exactly how much I'mspending, because the wife certainly wont... Also CAD will more than likely be on the table but dont think it will be often enough to be worth it (not even enough to get away with tax claim at the moment).

[DELTAprime]

The Asus Z370 Prime-A and MSI Z370 Tomahawk are in a similar price bracket to the TUF boards, maybe spend a little extra (around $250 vs $230) and get something like the MSI Z370M Pro Gaming AC. You really get what you pay for with motherboards. That said you don't need to spend the type of money I do on motherboards with the Asus ROG Maximus and Crosshair series boards to get something decent. Also you pay a little premium with Asus products vs Gigabyte, MSI and Asrock.

Also don't worry about games using all threads and cores of a CPU any time soon. The only big titles in recent times that are hammering the CPU to the point you need more cores and threads are Watch Dogs 2 which is poorly optimised on PC and Assassin's Creed Origins which has an overly aggressive DRM scheme that uses 100% of the spare CPU cycles to make sure you're not pirating the game. In both cases it's an unrealistic example of how games run. Most games still use 4 threads maximum with most using less and the 8600k has 6 threads plus it can be clocked higher with very basic overclocking allowing for much better gaming performance.

EDIT: Also what's your budget?

[Akky82]

The Asus Z370 Prime-A and MSI Z370 Tomahawk are in a similar price bracket to the TUF boards, maybe spend a little extra (around $250 vs $230) and get something like the MSI Z370M Pro Gaming AC. You really get what you pay for with motherboards. That said you don't need to spend the type of money I do on motherboards with the Asus ROG Maximus and Crosshair series boards to get something decent. Also you pay a little premium with Asus products vs Gigabyte, MSI and Asrock.

Also don't worry about games using all threads and cores of a CPU any time soon. The only big titles in recent times that are hammering the CPU to the point you need more cores and threads are Watch Dogs 2 which is poorly optimised on PC and Assassin's Creed Origins which has an overly aggressive DRM scheme that uses 100% of the spare CPU cycles to make sure you're not pirating the game. In both cases it's an unrealistic example of how games run. Most games still use 4 threads maximum with most using less and the 8600k has 6 threads plus it can be clocked higher with very basic overclocking allowing for much better gaming performance.

EDIT: Also what's your budget?

1600 give or take (including win10) have to replace the hard drive in my laptop to hand-me-down it to my wife because her old hand-me-down laptop is pretty much gone (battery, screen, some keys (damn kids heh), slow as). My laptop has a small ssd (older 190MB/s ~225GB) at the moment, it wont be enough for her.