Need to upgrade my potato computer!

[Husker]

This whole thing has been a big learning process for me. Thanks for all your help. I'll defiantly pay a little more attention to what mother board I go with. The Ram I'm looking at is 1866 I belive.
Up until now I had no idea a quality PSU what that important. I knew you needed enough voltage to power all the components and leaving some padding wasn't a bad idea. What I didn't know was how much they vary quality wise.
For me this is next level PC building last time I considered building one I just went with cases that came with a PSU already installed.

Thank you guys so much!

 

[Annitias]

This whole thing has been a big learning process for me. Thanks for all your help. I'll defiantly pay a little more attention to what mother board I go with. The Ram I'm looking at is 1866 I belive.
Up until now I had no idea a quality PSU what that important. I knew you needed enough voltage to power all the components and leaving some padding wasn't a bad idea. What I didn't know was how much they vary quality wise.
For me this is next level PC building last time I considered building one I just went with cases that came with a PSU already installed.

Thank you guys so much!

http://www.overclock.net/t/183810/faq-recommended-power-supplies

Thats a great start there.

 

[Husker]

So I mostly surf the forum on my phone so I just saw your signature pic RussianJ and its fucking majestic.

 

[that_frog_kurtis]

Husker have you looked at /r/buildapc and/or logicalincrements.com? I found they helped me heaps when I built my current rig.

 

[CrashMan054]

I usually go to tom's hardware if I need help.

 

[Shar Treuse]

The problem probably lies with your motherboard. I recently build quite a monster (i5-4440, 2 GTX 980, 16 GB RAM) looked into 1866MHz sticks and sadly noticed that almost no motherboard can actually handle 1866MHz yet. My ASUS Maximus Hero VII can go up to 1600MHz, no more.

It's any motherboard, funny enough though mine is also an Asus, a Rampage IV Extreme. I can get 1866MHz with 2 sticks, but then I lose the quad-channel bus width yielding a slower overall memory throughput.

 

[Shar Treuse]

I usually go to tom's hardware if I need help.

I have up on places like Tom's Hardware a while ago, because they generally end up being industry butt-kissers. Tom's fell hard for a while, but I must admit they've gotten better since then.

As for specific PSU recommendations, Cooler Master had a real bad rep for a while, but it was due to the fans. I have had a new Silent Pro M850 PSU from them since they remedied the problem and it has been rock solid for the past year. It's modular, so you onl use the cables you need for your hardware and leave the rest in the box.

 

[ghost53574]

Also I should note that dual and quad channel technology does not massively increase timings in reading and writing from VRAM. The only reason why I currently have a 2x8 configuration in dual channel mode is because I only need 16GB of VRAM currently but as soon as I can afford another set of 2x8 memory modules then I am going to upgrade to 4x8.

 

[Shar Treuse]

On an x79 board quad channel RAM yields a significant performance increase in transfer rate due to the inherent bandwidth increase. If you have 4 DIMM slots but the board isn't quad channel, you'll get nothing. While the performance increase is about the same compared to using 1866MHz over 1600MHz, I originally used this build for 3D animation as well as gaming, where more RAM is always better. If you're not doing something that requires more than 16GB (gaming doesn't and won't for at least a year or so) then anything more is going to be a waste of money.

 

[ghost53574]

It is already clear that the OP is going to use this system for at least gaming, hence the controller capabilities for VRAM does not matter but even so if you are not running task intensive operations that require fast read/writes to VRAM (like copying very very large files or using graphic applications that require more CPU work than a GPU) then you do not need to care if you have dual channel, quad channel, or no channel for VRAM.

 

[Shar Treuse]

You'd need at least one. :)

 

[ghost53574]

Lol you know what I mean, but you got me. YOU GOT ME!

 

[Shar Treuse]

I have, hoever, done some fairly extensive testing and found that there is a performance advantage at least on my rig for going dual channel, and another small one for quad, in games. It's not a huge advantage, and certainly worth spending big money on, but since I already needed a huge amount of memory for 3D work it's nice to get the extra benefit. Now that I don't do that anymore, it's debatable whether I would get benefit out of going with 2 sticks of 2133MHz or 2400MHz, assuming they will work at all in my board at such speeds (reports are inconclusive, with some users of my exact board claiming to have had success and others not doing so well). It all comes down to whether I won the silicon lottery with my i7-3930K and its integrated memory controller.

 

[ghost53574]

Well generally the faster the clock is and lower the CAS Latency is the greater improvement you will see. So yes 2000+ is overall going to have a more noticeable difference then a 1600+, but as I said you don't need to fret about it if you are not doing something like me or you.

For example, having a couple games open, GNS3 + VM's, terminals, MSVS, Mono, Music, and other crap it really does eat up your VRAM. I have 16GB right now and I mostly use 75-90% of it half of the time I am on my rig everyday...

 

[Husker]

… Drunk PC component shopping is a bad idea...

 

[CrashMan054]

… Drunk PC component shopping is a bad idea...

"Why did I buy this commodore 64?"

 

[Husker]

Commodore 128, give me some credit!

 

[Husker]

Well that escalated quickly! I have all my components ordered. Hopefully I'll have everything in and put together by the 10th. Can someone suggest a good online resource to help me assemble everything once I get all the components in?

 

[Shar Treuse]

You may need to adapt based on what case and parts you got.Make sure you use an anti-static wrist strap, not everyone has my natual talent for assembling a computer without burning out components via static discharge.

Cheers!