Need Some Assistance

rob999

rob999

rob999

Associate
Joined
10 Nov 2012
Posts
9
Merry Xmas All

It's been a long time since I posted anything on here. I think I was clocking AMD Bartons at the time.

I need a little help speccing a build for my son.

I think we have decided on an I5 6600K

OC do a bundle with a MSI Z170A GAMING PRO is this a good start?
Also looked at Asus Z170Pro Gaming Pro

What amount of memory is best 8 or 16 gb and what speed? I have reached brain meltdown looking at all the options!

OC have a Kolink Case with 600w PSU which looks ok

Going for a Samsung 500Gb SSD

Hmmm Graphics?? He wants a GTX970 because his mate has had one for Xmas but that means dad's will be putting his hand deeper in his pocket :eek: Give me a clue are they really that much better than a £100 card.

What cooler? The Hyper 212 looks in the right price range. Don't really want to go down the water route.

He's got £500 and dads stumping up the rest, it's part of his Xmas pressie.

Don't really want go above £800 all in.

Got all the other stuff.

My days of spending days trying to get the max overclock are long gone but I'll obviously spend time tweaking it to something reasonable. I hope he gets the bug and starts to do it himself.
He plays all kind of games. His current PC is an old Dell T5400 with 2 Quad core Xeons that I put a GFX card in and clocked it up to 3.4 Ghz. It really struggles with some of his games but it is really a server.

I hope to go down to Overclockers tomorrow, I live 3 miles from them.

Thanks in advance

Rob
 
The MSI bundle is fine, don`t know anything about kolink, GTX970 is the dogs at 1080 will run all at max and will do so for a good while, if you want to spoil him or scrooge him up to you, yes theres a huge difference from a 100 quid card. Case is personal choice, power supply if you intend him to OC get something decent. Avexir RAM has a juicy discount right now and is good stuff. My suggestion...

My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £552.65
(includes shipping: £11.70)
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8GB is fine, no harm going 16GB if the price isn't too much more but for most people's use not essential. There is little benefit going mad on super high end memory even on Skylake you have to go to extremes to see meaningful difference in performance in games, etc.

Definitely worth spending some money on a reasonably decent size and performance SSD as that can make a fair difference in game load times and the amount of messing around you have to do if you have a big steam collection, etc.

I'd be wary of bundled PSUs unless you know for sure its a decent brand with higher end systems like i5s and i7s, etc. even if its adequate now PSUs are under a fair bit of stress over their lifetime and degrade over time and might not be suitable in the long run.

GPU performance wise depends a lot on what he plays but the cards just above £100 can be 60% slower or more in some games compared to the cards in the GTX970 bracket which is quite a big difference.
 
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Defintley spend some money on the PSU rather than getting a case included ones, which is this one btw:
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/kolink-kl-600-600w-80-plus-bronze-power-supply-ca-012-kk.html

I can't find any information quickly about its quality but I certainly wouldn't trust it.
I'd go with an Antec, Superflower or Seasonic PSU around the £50 price point, the EVGA might be a good one too just look up technical reviews of the various ones :)

8GB of RAM is fine for most situations however if your a heavy user with multiple applications / games running at once then 16GB will be nice, and there are some decent deals on RAM atm.
 
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That's all fine and will work a treat. The PSU is an excellent choice and made by Seasonic - I was going to say that 750w is overdoing it unnecessarily, but at that price it's a steal.

Can'tr say I like the look of the case but then that's personal preference. It will house everything easily and has decent cooling potential.

You could get slightly quicker RAM for a couple of quid more, but you really won't see any difference so there's no point.

All looks good - don't forget a cooler :)
 
Thanks Mate

I'd forgot the cooler :o

I have been looking at the Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo CPU Cooler.

Will this be ok for a mildish overclock?
 
It's a 4 year old design and whilst certainly better than a stock cooler, there are better options. Any of the ones below represent either better value for money or better cooling.

I have the original Matterhorn in a build at home and it's always been flawless and handles a reasonable overclock well whilst being quiet

My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £95.47
(includes shipping: £10.50)
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Can`t see anything wrong with that, personally i would get 16gb of RAM, when i had 8gb windows cried for more memory when i even went near BF4. But im running 3 screens and tend to have a lot of junk running so you should have a nice fast games machine there.:)
 
Bought the system above but had to change the case as the cooler wouldn't fit in the Koloink.

Built it for my lad but it won't post. Got a red CPU led on the motherboard.

All the fans spin up apart from the GFX card and all the leds light up.

Checked everything gods knows how many times but to no avail.

Spent all day on Google. No bent pins or anything obvious.

Tried to post with nothing connected but still the same. Any ideas?

Looks like I've got a duff cpu or motherboard.

What are OC's like for replacing stuff?
 
Best bet would be to post a thread in the customer service section of the forum and see what they advise.

A basic one but easy to overlook - you did mount the motherboard on the little stands so its not directly sitting on the metal tray beneath?
 
Hi

Yes the motherboard is on the stand offs
The 8 pin ATX connector is in. The PSU has 2 I'll try the other one.
Tried no memory and 1 stick
Removed GFX card
Unplugged all the drives.
Still get Red CPU LED on motherboard which indicates CPU not present or failed.

Just checked the CMOS battery and it's 3.1 volts.

Cleared Bios and unplugged everything except the Power On connector, just going to boot it and see if it comes to life. If not it's a trip down the Overclockers for a replacement.
 
Could be the 8 pin connector as you mention.

I plugged in the one for my GPU (not marked up) and it took me a while to figure it out. Was fine after swapping it over.
 
Tried it again but get nothing.
Just the fans spin up and the LEDs on the board.
Still getting the red CPU fail.

Just boxed the motherboard and CPU back up for a trip to OC's, luckily I only live 3 miles away :)
 
Hi All

Everything is working ok now Thanks for the help.

My son is well impressed.

Had a quick go at an overclock. Seems very stable at 4.5 Ghz std voltage.

3 cores ran ok at 4.7 apart from Core 0.

Temps seem a bit hot at 79C but that was at VCore 1.37v

It's quiet and his bedroom is a lot cooler than the Xeon.

GFX at 1400Mhz overboost

Need to spend some time finding the sweet spot
 
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