Help Building New Gaming PC reusing GTX 460

eskato

eskato

eskato

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14 May 2012
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9
Hello,
I want to build a new gaming PC, and I already have a GTX 460 from my previous computer. (gigabyte OC 1Gb) I'd really like to reuse my GTX460, which I think is still a good graphic card, and I'm thinking of buying another one to use in SLI.
I have chosen a few components and I'd like to be sure that everything is compatible. Also if you have some advice for better components of the same price, don't hesitate to comment!

Approximate Purchase Date: This month or the next one
Budget Range: £800-£900
System Usage: Gaming and programming
Parts Not Required: keyboard, mouse, monitor, speakers, OS
Country: England
Overclocking: probably a little
Monitor Resolution: 1920*1080

Details:
case: Antec 1100 (I'd like something smaller than 900 and 1200, which seem huge, but is it cool enough? and what about the noise?)
PSU: Corsair Enthusiast Series TX750 V2 (or 850)
motherboard: Asus Maximus V GENE (it's a mATX, so the 2 GTX will be very close to each others, is that a problem?)
CPU: i5 3750K (or i5 2500K)
GPU: SLI GTX 460 (is it just me or are they becoming rare?)
RAM: 8 Gb DDR3 1600Mhz (any advice?)
SSD: OCZ Agility 120Gb
HD: Western Digital 1To
DVD reader: (can I do without one?)

My main concerns are on the case, PSU and motherboard because I don't have much experience with them. But I'd like them to be reusable when the other components will grow old.
Thank you for your help.
 
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Hi and welcome,

Heres a rough spec for you,

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-3570K 3.40GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £173.99
1 x Gigabyte Z77X-D3H Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £104.99
1 x Antec 1100 Eleven Hundred Ultimate Gaming Tower Case - Black £99.98
1 x Crucial RealSSD M4 128GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive (CT128M4SSD2) £89.99
1 x Corsair Enthusiast Series TX750M High Performance 750W '80 Plus Bronze' Modular Power Supply (CP-9020003-UK) £86.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST1000DM003) £74.99
1 x Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3X2K2/8GX) £40.79
1 x Akasa AK-CC4007EP01 Nero 3 CPU Cooler (Socket LGA775/1155/1156/1366/2011/AMD AM2/AM2+/AM3/FM1) £23.99
1 x Samsung SH-S222BB/BEBE 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £15.98
Total : £726.68 (includes shipping : £12.50).

Click to expand...


The weekly offers change tomorrow, so these prices/and items on offer will change.

•GPU: SLI GTX 460 (is it just me or are they becoming rare?)
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They are becoming rare.

Also OCUK have just two GTX460's in stock, one of these uses a different memory bus and so cant be SLI'd with other 1Gb GTX460's.

Is your GTX460 a 1Gb or 756MB version? what make+model is it?

It might be worth thinking about selling your GTX460 and putting the money towards a faster card.
 
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Thank you for your reply. I see you changed the motherboard, is it a better one?
I'd really like to reuse my gtx 460, it's a gigabyte gtx 460 oc 1gb. So I will probably buy the same, although I though any gtx460 could work in SLI, is that wrong? But if OCUK doesn't have it stock, maybe I could buy it somewhere else.
 
eskato said:
Thank you for your reply. I see you changed the motherboard, is it a better one?
I'd really like to reuse my gtx 460, it's a gigabyte gtx 460 oc 1gb. So I will probably buy the same, although I though any gtx460 could work in SLI, is that wrong? But if OCUK doesn't have it stock, maybe I could buy it somewhere else.
Click to expand...

The motherboard is very good, supports SLI, also Gigabyte have a 3 year UK based warranty, so if anything goes wrong you dont have to ship to the Netherlands.

A GTX460 1GB can be SLI'd with another 1GB GTX460, not the smaller 756MB version.


The odd one out is this - http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-171-EA&groupid=701&catid=1914&subcat=1830 - which has a 192bit memory interface, it can only be SLI'd with ones like itself.


But there is also this one - http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-160-EA&groupid=701&catid=1914&subcat=1830 - which has the normal 256bit interface found on other GTX460 1GB cards and can be SLI'd with your card.
 
Thank you again for your (fast!) reply. It's good to know that the EVGA will be compatible with mine. Are you definitely sure all the other components you proposed are compatible? Also is the special CPU cooler really necessary? Or can the default one do the job?
About the SSD Crucial, it seems that it's slower to write than the OCZ Agility 120Gb (220Mb/sec vs 500Mb/sec) for the same price. But I may be wrong...
Also can OCUK build this configuration for me? Do you know how much will it cost?
 
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Okay, so it looks like crucial SSD is better!
Do you know if this case is very noisy and if it has lot of room for cable management?
Also, (sorry to ask again) do you know if OCUK can build this configuration for me and how much it would cost?
 
They wont build it for you, these two videos will help,

Videos are a good way of checking out a case,

 
eskato said:
Thank you again for your (fast!) reply. It's good to know that the EVGA will be compatible with mine. Are you definitely sure all the other components you proposed are compatible? Also is the special CPU cooler really necessary? Or can the default one do the job?
About the SSD Crucial, it seems that it's slower to write than the OCZ Agility 120Gb (220Mb/sec vs 500Mb/sec) for the same price. But I may be wrong...
Also can OCUK build this configuration for me? Do you know how much will it cost?
Click to expand...

Stulid knows his stuff fella. Post again before you buy and he will re work his spec to suit you taking the offers at the time into account.

I am a big fan of the 460 BUT the price to buy one new for SLI is off putting. Remember that the VRAM doesnt combine so you would still only have 1GB in SLI. If you can find one cheap 2nd hand fair enough (you know now about the compatibility issues). There were some 460 SCs going as B grade for £80 the other week which was a good price but they have now gone :(

YOUR BASKET
1 x Sapphire HD 6950 OC "Dual Fan Edition" 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £149.99
Total : £149.99 (includes shipping : FREE).



Considering that isn't much more than the 460 i would probably sell your 460 and get the card with more VRAM. If you want to dual card a 6950 a 650W PSU will be ample.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/314?vs=293
 
DVD reader: (can I do without one?)
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You can if you use steam/origin to purchase your games. An OS can be installed using a pendrive.
But if you have the actual discs, you will need it for installing your games and with some games its needed to actually play the game.
 
stulid said:
They wont build it for you
Click to expand...
Okay, that's a shame but thank you for the youtube links. I can't what them at work, but I'll watch them tonight.

Idleman said:
You can if you use steam/origin to purchase your games. An OS can be installed using a pendrive.
But if you have the actual discs, you will need it for installing your games and with some games its needed to actually play the game.
Click to expand...
You're right, I'll buy the one quoted by stulid

honosuseri said:
I am a big fan of the 460 BUT the price to buy one new for SLI is off putting. Remember that the VRAM doesnt combine so you would still only have 1GB in SLI. If you can find one cheap 2nd hand fair enough (you know now about the compatibility issues).
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You may be right, but my GTX 460 has a sentimental value :D
Also if you consider that the GTX460 that I already have is free, then the card you propose is more expensive and less powerful than GTX460 SLI. :p
I may have go for a GTX 660 instead, but they will only be released in September at least.:(
Note: I will only buy Nvidia GPU because I want to program them using CUDA.

Thank you all for your replies what do you know about noise level for such a config (especially the case)?
 
I own a 460 and have OC'd the proverbial out of it, I know how good they are and I was tempted to buy another when I saw my card going as B grade for £80 here. We were trying to point out the pitfalls/problems of SLI'ing the 460 that's all.

What are you using cuda for? If it's video encoding quick sync is much better and you get that from the intel CPUs IGP. Nvidias other "advantage" is HBAO lighting which you don't get from AMD.
 
honosuseri said:
We were trying to point out the pitfalls/problems of SLI'ing the 460 that's all.
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I understand, and you were right to point out that games will only see 1Gb of memory in total. (but I knew that already)
I think i'm going to use my GTX 460 alone for the moment and I will buy another one only when I found a good price. And if this doesn't happen before September, then I will get a GTX 660 !
honosuseri said:
What are you using cuda for? If it's video encoding quick sync is much better and you get that from the intel CPUs IGP. Nvidias other "advantage" is HBAO lighting which you don't get from AMD.
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I'm using CUDA to program real-time computational fluid dynamics softwares.
I've got a much better machine at work, but I'd like to be able to continue my program at home.
Also, having 2 GPUs will help me to practice multi-GPU programming.
 
After verification it seems that the CPU cooler quoted by stulid (Akasa AK-CC4007EP01 Nero 3 CPU Cooler) is quite noisy. Are there other CPU coolers less noisy and easy to install even for a newbie?
Thanks
 
eskato said:
After verification it seems that the CPU cooler quoted by stulid (Akasa AK-CC4007EP01 Nero 3 CPU Cooler) is quite noisy. Are there other CPU coolers less noisy and easy to install even for a newbie?
Thanks
Click to expand...

Depends what you call loud and how close you sit to the rig. Remember the GPU fan, especially if you have overclocked will mask most of the noise from the heatsink fan.

I've used the gelid tranquillo a lot. The case i use is almost always the zalman Z9 plus. So with 4 120mm case fans (no GPU installed) and the fan controller set to low for 2 of the fans, it was far from what I would call loud
 
It is indeed to define a noise level accurately, a computer may be noisy for some but quiet for others.
But I remember my gigabyte gtx 460 to be very quiet (not overclocked) so if you tell me that this CPU fan is quieter that the gpu fan, I'm very happy!
Do you think that the zalman Z9 case is better than the Antec 1100 ?
 
Case is very much personal preference. I use it because it is good value for money. It's about half the price of that antec case. Ok £50 doesn't sound like a lot but that's cash i prefer to put into the GPU budget for example.

The Z9 plus has 4 120mm fans, a digital temp display with fan controller and cable management. You don't get USB3 ports but you can add them either by adding a card reader at the front in the 3.5inch bay (like i have for £10ish) or some highend mobos come with USB3 "break out boxes" to sit in the front 3.5 inch bay instead.

The antec can take larger GPUs but you can fit a 7850 or a 670 in the Z9. Those two cards are really the best midrange choices at the mo. I never complain if people dont like the Z9, if you want to spend more that's cool but you can't really go wrong with using it.
 
Thank you very much but your useful insights, but I think I'll stick to the Antec 1100.
Which direction do you think the outflow of the CPU cooler should be directed to in the Antec 1100? To the top or to the back?
I'd like a cpu cooler with blue LED, because they look cool! What CPU cooler do you advice me to get?
Thanks
 
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