Thoughts on a monitor?

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Kovakx

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Jun 13, 2014
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Kovakx
Hi all

I'm interested in knowing what you all think? (apologies if this post is in the wrong place as well)

So, at some point I have to pony up for a new gaming monitor. I don't want anything larger than 24 inches, and preferably I'd like to keep it 20 inches (as far as I know there is nearly nothing worthwhile available in that size any more, seems bigger is better!).

Current build (ignore the monitor, though it is my current #1 monitor choice)
http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/user/Kovakx/saved/WFFXsY

At the moment I'm looking at the ASUS VG248QE, but at $300 it's a lot more than I want to spend. I'd like to get something in the $200 if possible.

Place your thoughts and suggestions here :D
 

GrammarGestapo

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Jun 8, 2014
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First of all, don't get windows 8. It's shit for anyone who is going to be derping around in the system files. It literally hides things from you. If you think you have to search for hidden files in windows 7, it gets 10 times worse in windows 8. Any system builder will tell you the same. Windows 7 actually runs most games better, and there are many applications that will not run on windows 8 without emulating windows 7.

If you're going to do any sort of modding, switching around game files, or file management: windows 7 is the way to go. Every time. without Exception.

Moving on, ditch the SSD, unless for some reason it's free since I can't see the price. If It's free, buy the shit out of it. It's most likely stupidly expensive and you will have to be constantly downloading and deleting data with something that size. You cannot do that on an SSD. Any SSD is actually bigger than what it says on the box. Every SSD comes with extra space that is not shown on any computer without special equipment. That space is reserved for depositing corrupted files every time you delete or overwrite things. On an SSD, every time you delete something, a small part of the SSD permanently corrupts, and you can never get that space back. Constantly deleting games and putting them back will put immense stress on that and eventually cause it to fail completely. SSD's are ONLY for data you will almost never move. If you have one, only put your favorite, most beloved, or most critical games/apps/systems on it. The kind that you will never delete. Having only an SSD is a recipe for disaster, as any netbook or laptop user can tell you. Those mobile PC's hard drives only last 1-3 years for a reason. Don't make the same mistake with a 1700 dollar PC. For 70-80 dollars, you can get a 7200 RPM 1tb hard drive that will only be slightly inferior in terms of loading time and boot time. By all means get an SSD eventually, but that should be an aftermarket upgrade to be used sparingly, not your main drive. Ever.

You probably don't need that liquid CPU cooler unless you intend to overclock that CPU to over 4.6 ghz. quite frankly, if you're overclocking an I5 to 4.6gz, you might as well buy a 4 core I7 that is already rated at 4 and go from there with a cheaper cooler. You probably aren't going to do that.
Just get a 40 dollar coolermaster CPU cooler, it will run a CPU at around 4.00 ghz cooler than you can imagine, even on tough games. Liquid cooled is for super-clockers and financial data servers. Not the average gamer.

You don't need that motherboard either. The system crystal is too fast for your CPU, I wouldn't recommend it unless you were getting a 6 core I7, and there's no way you're going to need the durability and slot space that has. For 100 dollars, you can get an ASUS motherboard with like 10 USB3.0 and 2.0 slots as well as tons of other goodies. That board is just too much for gaming and even light business purposes. It's more of a light-server board than a real gaming PC motherboard.

About the RAM, be careful mixing and matching colors. If its just cosmetic, go for it. But in my experience, kingston RAM changes by color. If the timing (totally different than the speed, it regards how it actually functions) is different from the white, you're in for a nasty surprise when you turn it on. Also, if you don't fill in all the RAM slots, make sure you read the motherboard manual as to which slots need to be occupied first. If you just load all the RAM and all the slots are filled it obviously doesn't matter, but if you have slots open, you could fry the RAM by putting it in in the wrong order.

I love your PSU. It's fantastic. Keep it. Great choice there.

With all the money you save from doing that, you can get any damn monitor you want.
 
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Kovakx

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Kovakx
Le grand sigh. So... I ran the build past multiple friends who have built PC's and got the 'it's okay' nod from them and very gradually pulled the trigger. I bought the pieces one at a time every time I saw a good discount on them so I saved a few hundred dollars on the build. But that advice would have been really good to read prior to buying and building. Thank you for the post!

You may have guessed, but this is was a first time build for me...

What issue's should I look out for with the CPU and the board as I haven't heard about conflicts with crystal speeds before (yes I was sucked in by the hype for the Hero and ended up paying top $ for it), it was the one piece I didn't get on sale. I was drawn to it like a moth to the flame, especially as when I last had a full box pc you needed a sound card, so I figured that as the Hero had a very good sfx chip I could save money and buy shiny...

Let's just chalk the board and the cooler up to inexperience and celebrate the fact that it's future proofed...?

I was under the impression that in general Windows 8 was a lighter on system resources and games were typically seeing better performance from that OS than W7? But Windows 8 is filth, and not the good filth either.

As to the SSD, I'm running it as my primary drive, which in retrospect may not have been the smartest idea, however I'm running several 500gb drives salvaged from my old laptop as back up and storage. Is best practice to have the OS on a HDD instead? Once I get the money together I will buy a larger TB drive and use that instead and keep the others for back up.

Kingston just released pretty colours so the RAM is fully compatible and it works a treat.

Yay for PSU!:rolleyes:
 

GrammarGestapo

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Le grand sigh. So... I ran the build past multiple friends who have built PC's and got the 'it's okay' nod from them and very gradually pulled the trigger. I bought the pieces one at a time every time I saw a good discount on them so I saved a few hundred dollars on the build. But that advice would have been really good to read prior to buying and building. Thank you for the post!

You may have guessed, but this is was a first time build for me...

What issue's should I look out for with the CPU and the board as I haven't heard about conflicts with crystal speeds before (yes I was sucked in by the hype for the Hero and ended up paying top $ for it), it was the one piece I didn't get on sale. I was drawn to it like a moth to the flame, especially as when I last had a full box pc you needed a sound card, so I figured that as the Hero had a very good sfx chip I could save money and buy shiny...

Let's just chalk the board and the cooler up to inexperience and celebrate the fact that it's future proofed...?

I was under the impression that in general Windows 8 was a lighter on system resources and games were typically seeing better performance from that OS than W7? But Windows 8 is filth, and not the good filth either.

As to the SSD, I'm running it as my primary drive, which in retrospect may not have been the smartest idea, however I'm running several 500gb drives salvaged from my old laptop as back up and storage. Is best practice to have the OS on a HDD instead? Once I get the money together I will buy a larger TB drive and use that instead and keep the others for back up.

Kingston just released pretty colours so the RAM is fully compatible and it works a treat.

Yay for PSU!:rolleyes:
OS is actually great for SSD. Contrary to what you might think, the OS really doesn't change much. However, the way I would do it is to partition (do you know what that is?) the drive, with maybe half of the 250gb dedicated to the OS and the OS only. It's a little late for that though.

Don't worry about crystal conflicts, that's just old PC tech talk. The system crystal is (or was, I'm no 100% sure about within the last 3 years XD) basically how fast the motherboard can operate. You could just as safely run an Intel Celeron processor on that as a 6 core I7. the system crystal just says, the CPU cannot operate faster than this, because the motherboard can't keep up. Superclockers are known to overclock their actual motherboards due to the insane speeds they get out of the CPU's themselves.

But yeah, its a great build. You can probably go five years and do nothing but upgrade the CPU, GPU, and add more RAM sticks. The only thing I would even consider worth upgrading would be the CPU! Everything else is top-of-the-line quality, just more than you needed to spend for normal use.

But yeah, if you ever have any questions, I'm a licensed PC tech who just finished renewing his certifications for 2014. Don't ask me about complex software though. I build PC's, I don't know how they work XD
 
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Kovakx

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Kovakx
To late for partitioning sadly.

CPU will be an upgrade at some point.

Once I have a new monitor the next project though is to build a new road bike for cycling!
 

Krystal LeChuck

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Moving on, ditch the SSD, unless for some reason it's free since I can't see the price. If It's free, buy the shit out of it. It's most likely stupidly expensive and you will have to be constantly downloading and deleting data with something that size. You cannot do that on an SSD. Any SSD is actually bigger than what it says on the box. Every SSD comes with extra space that is not shown on any computer without special equipment. That space is reserved for depositing corrupted files every time you delete or overwrite things. On an SSD, every time you delete something, a small part of the SSD permanently corrupts, and you can never get that space back. Constantly deleting games and putting them back will put immense stress on that and eventually cause it to fail completely. SSD's are ONLY for data you will almost never move. If you have one, only put your favorite, most beloved, or most critical games/apps/systems on it. The kind that you will never delete. Having only an SSD is a recipe for disaster, as any netbook or laptop user can tell you. Those mobile PC's hard drives only last 1-3 years for a reason. Don't make the same mistake with a 1700 dollar PC. For 70-80 dollars, you can get a 7200 RPM 1tb hard drive that will only be slightly inferior in terms of loading time and boot time. By all means get an SSD eventually, but that should be an aftermarket upgrade to be used sparingly, not your main drive. Ever.

You probably don't need that liquid CPU cooler unless you intend to overclock that CPU to over 4.6 ghz. quite frankly, if you're overclocking an I5 to 4.6gz, you might as well buy a 4 core I7 that is already rated at 4 and go from there with a cheaper cooler. You probably aren't going to do that.
Just get a 40 dollar coolermaster CPU cooler, it will run a CPU at around 4.00 ghz cooler than you can imagine, even on tough games. Liquid cooled is for super-clockers and financial data servers. Not the average gamer.

You don't need that motherboard either. The system crystal is too fast for your CPU, I wouldn't recommend it unless you were getting a 6 core I7, and there's no way you're going to need the durability and slot space that has. For 100 dollars, you can get an ASUS motherboard with like 10 USB3.0 and 2.0 slots as well as tons of other goodies. That board is just too much for gaming and even light business purposes. It's more of a light-server board than a real gaming PC motherboard.

With all the money you save from doing that, you can get any damn monitor you want.
The above parts must be the most misinformative piece of literature I've seen regarding PCs in my life's career as a Computer Scientist.

a) Starting with the SSD drives. Excuse me but what you are saying is insanely incorrect. You said only ONE thing right and that is that SSD drives have bigger capacities than advertised. YES they are bigger but due to the operating process. When you delete a page of data in an SSD drive, that page gets marked for deletion by the TRIM process. During this process which will occur in a FUTURE CYCLE and not immediately, the blocks the data resides are unusable TEMPORARILY. When the TRIM process occurs, those blocks are brought back in action and can be reoccupied by data.


b) Liquid cooled CPUs are great for any user. Why? Because they are silent. I am running my AMD FX-6300 at factory clock speeds and the fan is driving me nuts. If I could spare the expense I would liquid cool it without thinking twice. Plus liquid cooled systems have smaller airflow, hence less dust intake.

c) That motherboard is awesome, and provides him the ability to install a better CPU later on. This crystal story made me laugh. You do realise the motherboard does not only transfer data for the CPU, but involves memory buses, GPU, SATA controllers, USB controllers, etc? The faster it is, the better.
 

o-BHG-o

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b) Liquid cooled CPUs are great for any user. Why? Because they are silent. I am running my AMD FX-6300 at factory clock speeds and the fan is driving me nuts. If I could spare the expense I would liquid cool it without thinking twice. Plus liquid cooled systems have smaller airflow, hence less dust intake.
Good advice all round, I have to disagree with the comment about water cooling though. The Corsair H series have 120mm fans and they do get loud! My previous cooler to the H80 was a Dark Rock Pro, whilst idling I've seen the fans spin downs to a stop. Under load, gaming, with an i7 3820 O/Ced to 4.8Ghz it never breached 45c. The H80 is not quite a good at dealing with the temps and is much louder. Also is system crystal a thing? 15 years a sysadmin and system builder and I've never heard of this. QPI, FSB yes, crystals, no. Is this an American thing?
 

Krystal LeChuck

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Good advice all round, I have to disagree with the comment about water cooling though. The Corsair H series have 120mm fans and they do get loud! My previous cooler to the H80 was a Dark Rock Pro, whilst idling I've seen the fans spin downs to a stop. Under load, gaming, with an i7 3820 O/Ced to 4.8Ghz it never breached 45c. The H80 is not quite a good at dealing with the temps and is much louder. Also is system crystal a thing? 15 years a sysadmin and system builder and I've never heard of this. QPI, FSB yes, crystals, no. Is this an American thing?
There are a million ways to dissipate heat from liquid cooling radiators. Fans are not always required, and if you cannot avoid them there are many silent 120mm fans around. You can even fit a bigger radiator and avoid further cooling.

Regarding the crystal I GUESS he is referring to the mobo chipset. If not, no idea. I have never heard of it either for the past 22 years of my involvement with computers.
 

o-BHG-o

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There are a million ways to dissipate heat from liquid cooling radiators.
Tru dat. I'd love a full on custom loop!
I was referring to the Corsair H series (closed loop) that we both bought and comparing to an equivalent priced air cooler. Corsair H80/100 comes with 'silent' grade fans, it is not silent. I don't really mind as my GFX cards make all the noise. I like the airflow space in the case though, the Dark Rock is just huuuuuuuuuuge.

I want a crystal chipset!!!

My current rig, pre Corsair and GFX upgrade.

 

Krystal LeChuck

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Tru dat. I'd love a full on custom loop!
I was referring to the Corsair H series (closed loop) that we both bought and comparing to an equivalent priced air cooler. Corsair H80/100 comes with 'silent' grade fans, it is not silent. I don't really mind as my GFX cards make all the noise. I like the airflow space in the case though, the Dark Rock is just huuuuuuuuuuge.
What is the TDP of your cards? Maybe the radiator can handle them? If so you could get two headers for the cards to put into the loop.
 
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GrammarGestapo

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The above parts must be the most misinformative piece of literature I've seen regarding PCs in my life's career as a Computer Scientist.

a) Starting with the SSD drives. Excuse me but what you are saying is insanely incorrect. You said only ONE thing right and that is that SSD drives have bigger capacities than advertised. YES they are bigger but due to the operating process. When you delete a page of data in an SSD drive, that page gets marked for deletion by the TRIM process. During this process which will occur in a FUTURE CYCLE and not immediately, the blocks the data resides are unusable TEMPORARILY. When the TRIM process occurs, those blocks are brought back in action and can be reoccupied by data.


b) Liquid cooled CPUs are great for any user. Why? Because they are silent. I am running my AMD FX-6300 at factory clock speeds and the fan is driving me nuts. If I could spare the expense I would liquid cool it without thinking twice. Plus liquid cooled systems have smaller airflow, hence less dust intake.

c) That motherboard is awesome, and provides him the ability to install a better CPU later on. This crystal story made me laugh. You do realise the motherboard does not only transfer data for the CPU, but involves memory buses, GPU, SATA controllers, USB controllers, etc? The faster it is, the better.
hmmm, no. SSD's have limited write and re-write capabilities. They will not function with unlimited rewrites, as a disk would (well, discounting the fact that a disk is inherently going to break due to the fact its a spinning piece of metal).

2. CPU's can occasionally be underutilized by a low end motherboard, but the same is true for a higher end one. This is limited by a lot of factors. From the databus, to the motherboard's own functioning speed, to the CPU itself. REgardless, for an I5, he's not going to get any better performance out of that motherboard than if he spent less on one. 100 dollars will get him something he can use effectively and at no real loss to power.

3. I have never once heard my CPU fan. I've heard my system fans, but only rarely. What do you do? Put your head against the chassis? Or are you one of those people who have no idea what they are doing and make a shitty build that sounds like a helicopter?

4. This was obviously his first build. With the logic you're talking about, he might as well have spent 3000. We're trying to save money here because money IS an issue. Dear god, get a grasp on reality.

I don't have a computer science degree, but this is what they told me during Cisco Certification courses. I am certified, and other than the system crystal (which could very well be an outdated concept. I last remember reading about that in a 2001 A+ certification study guide), everything should be relatively up-to-date.

EDIT: nope, it isn't. Crystals are still fundamental to motherboard construction. They determine timing. I will review this though, you have proven a point that I may be completely outdated on some things. Besides, more review can't hurt.
 
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Egriz

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OP has already bought all the hardware for the build. No need to continue arguing about who knows more about computers. Considering that you both were wrong about certain topics, the argument is pointless.

If Kovakx needs further assistance on the build or any further tech support, he can open a new thread.
 
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