Four year itch!

maloflora · 17 May 2015 at 08:02

Hi all,

Once more I find myself bowing to your expertise in advice about upgrading.

Quick stocktake: Jan 2011 I built myself a PC from components advised by your good selves, consisting of the following:

Radon Intel Core i5 760 2.80GHz @ 4.00GHz Overclocked Bundle, including Gigabyte P55-USB3
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 460 - recently replaced with an R9 270
Antec TruePower New Modular 650W Power Supply
Antec 300 Three Hundred Ultimate Gaming Case
Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - now added to with a 128Gb SSD
Sony Optiarc AD-7260S 24x DVDąRW SATA ReWriter (Black)

I'm running the whole thing overclocked at 220 Bus speed and 4GHz CPU speed. This powers a Samsung 22" 1680x1050 monitor. However, I'm tempted to upgrade to 1440p gaming, as I think it'll feel like a big step up. In total I'd like to spend around £600-£1000, though I'm happy to spend a bit to future-proof.

First question: Is this a good move at the right time?

Second question: Are these the right kind of options I should be looking at?

Monitor: AOC Q2770Pqu
Gigabyte Z97X-Gaming 7 - Devils Canyon Core i7 4790K CPU & Motherboard Bundle
GeForce GTX 970 OC
TeamGroup Vulcan RED 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 PC3-19200C11 2400MHz

Third question: am I ok transferring the case, power supply and drives over to go along with the above? I would sell the R9 270 probably?

Fourth question: CPU cooling. I'm quite tempted by something like the Corsair Hydro H100i but I'd have to change case to a full tower to put something like inside. Is that a good idea?

PC would mainly be used for gaming.

Thanks for any advice!

M

maloflora · 17 May 2015 at 13:32

Hi Stulid,

Thanks for replying so quickly. The RAM was Corsair Dominator 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel.

The SSD is a Toshiba Thnsnh128gbst. Something like http://toshiba.semicon-storage.com/eu/product/storage-products/client-ssd/hg5d.html

Any thoughts on cooling? That might take me to a full tower case. Grateful for any tips.

maloflora · 17 May 2015 at 13:46

Ah yes, that might be a problem. I still rip CDs to FLAC I'm afraid! So old-fashioned...

maloflora · 17 May 2015 at 20:57

Thanks for all the help Stu!

Will think a bit more and come back for a final check if that's ok - still hankering after a full tower a bit like the Enthoo Primo just to give me some watercooling options in the future.

maloflora · 20 May 2015 at 21:07

So here's where I am.

Monitor: AOC Q2770Pqu or Acer B276HULA
Gigabyte Z97X-Gaming 7 - Devils Canyon Core i7 4790K CPU & Motherboard Bundle
MSI GeForce GTX 970 Gaming Edition
TeamGroup Vulcan RED 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-19200C11 2400MHz
Corsair Hydro H100i
Phantex Enthoo Primo

Now, a couple of last questions please! Should I get a couple of power cable extensions (CPU 4 pin and 20 pin) as I'm worried the old PSU cables might not be long enough to stretch all the way to the top of the monster case?

Also, there seem to be some issues around connecting the case's fan hub to various connectors on the motherboard. Do I plug the H100i into the CPU_OPT and the fan hub into the CPU_FAN? I'm confused by PWMs...

All help very welcome again!

maloflora · 23 May 2015 at 19:39

All done! Fun day building and routing cables and then the endless windows install.

Can I check some temps please?

H110i GT: idle 25C, Prime 95 10 minute load 55C
GTX: 20 mins of Valley benchmark 65C

Do those sound ok?

Thanks for all the help! The Primo is a brilliant case!

maloflora · 23 May 2015 at 21:35

Done that thanks - F6 flashed to F7 and enabled XMP. Not sure if I'll know the difference but nice to know everything's working hard!

maloflora · 24 May 2015 at 08:03

I'm still worried about temperatures.

45 mins on Prime 95, most of the time it's around 60-65C, but sometimes spends time at 80C then comes back down again. This is on performance mode for the H110iGT. Is this just a problem with the artificial nature of prime 95? Or have I done something wrong with seating the cooler? I'm pretty sure I have the backplate the right way around, but I only hand-tightened the thumbscrew, not with a screwdriver.

I don't want to have to do it again unless I really have to as I suppose I'd have to clean off the thermal paste and reapply.

maloflora · 24 May 2015 at 14:08

Ok did three runs of Realbench. Topped out at 61C, and mainly hovered around 51-55C.

How's that?

maloflora · 25 May 2015 at 10:54

Thanks!

I'm wondering if some of this is down to some automatic overclocking by the Gigabyte board. It's using 'optimised defaults' which according to CPUID means a CPU VCORE of 1.308V and a VID of 1.287 (max values). Of course, the automatic turbo boost of Intel is also kicking in, with a max of 4.4 GHz.

Do these look right? Or should I try and set the board to a plain and simple no overclocking mode to test it?

Or alternatively it may all be fine and I should stop obsessing.

Happy to move to another thread in another forum if that helps.

maloflora · 25 May 2015 at 13:01

Update: have manually dropped VCORE down to 1.18V and did three runs of RealBench. Result: temps dropped by 10C, no instability!