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New GPU for HTPC Gaming Machine

dampchimp

dampchimp

dampchimp

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Joined
2 Jul 2015
Posts
16
Looking for some advice on the best GPU.

Budget: £400 (though less is obviously better)
Games: Typical AAA stuff
Target: 1080p 60FPS with all the fancies turned on

Some other things to note, I have a Silverstone GD05 case, so need a smallish card (max length 11", width 4.92"), connected to my TV, so 1080p 60fps is the maximum I will need, but I do want to be able to turn everything up to max without worrying about frame rates. Ideally it should be as quiet and cool as possible as it is in the living room in a smallish case. Not massively bothered about overclocking as I just want to keep it as cool and quiet as possible and not be too worried about tweaking things.

I think my list is GTX 1070 (probably "overkill", but does seem to give me some decent headroom), GTX 1060 or RX480 (both seem good choices, but do seem to be close enough to hitting their limits at 1080p at the moment, where I do worry I would have to start dropping settings pretty soon). RX480 seems a good choice, but bit worried about heat and noise and supply of AIB cards seems limited and most of those seem to have huge coolers which wouldn't fit my case.

Anything else I should be considering?
 
I've got a small case and game at 1080p and went for the 1070.

Plenty of performance to spare which means you can run cooler/quieter or run DSR to make things really nice.

11" is plenty, the lengths are listed on the products specs. If I were you I would get one of the cards where the fans don't kick in until a certain temp.

I have a blower card to try and get more heat out of my case...mine runs hot but the fan doesn;t bother me, even at full whack.

980ti I would avoid as it's old tech, not as efficient and less Vram.
 
If this is for an HTPC then I guess it's going to be hooked up to a TV running a 1080p? I wouldn't look at anything near as power hungry and powerful as a 980Ti. At around £230 you could get a a Radeon RX 480 or a Geforce 1060. Plenty of power for 1080p and other HTPC duties (I'm still using a 5770 in mine) there is not need to spend that much cash.
 
RX 480 won't run everything maxed out at 1080p with constant 60fps now not to mention in the future. I know coz I got one in my HTPC.
 
spikerules said:
Really? benchmarks had those games in the 70's at 1080p?
Click to expand...

People keep looking at benchmarks all the time but that doesn't tell the whole story. When playing the game from start to finish you will get a lot of fps drops that you won't get in the benchmark.
Also people tend to look at average fps when it's the lowest fps than matters the most.
For me benchmarks only tell which card is faster that's all.
Oh and I'm running my RX 480 at 1300 with upped power limit to stop it from throttling.
 
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Thanks all for your responses.

This is my case here: http://www.silverstonetek.com/product.php?pid=241

My main limitation is the height of the case and the height (or width I guess) of the card which is limited to 4.92". This means that any non-standard cooler seems to be too high.

Whilst it is built inside an HTPC (to allow me to get wife approval to have it in the living room), it is used as a gaming rig primarily.

Thinking that a founders style blower card would probably be best as they would exhaust the heat and tend not to be too "tall".
 
I run a EVGA SC 980. Just the right height but I also use two of these bad boys to help.

image.png


I was going to go Nano, but the reports of coil whine put me off.
 
I need to have a look. They are as rare as rocking horse ****, and I believe they were only made for an certain Alienware PC in the past. The problem is they aren't wired like your normal 6/8 pin power connectors, so I had to remove the pins and reinsert them in the correct locations.

Like I said I'll have a look to see where I got them from.
 
dampchimp said:
Was tempted by the one on sale at the moment for £342 https://www.overclockers.co.uk/evga...s-graphics-card-06g-p4-4993-kr-gx-288-ea.html but it appears to be a bit long. :mad:
Click to expand...

It's about 0.5" longer then the founders edition and remaining dimensions are the same.
But yeah in a case like that the best bet would be a blower style cooler since airflow will be somewhat restricted.
I went with reference RX 480 in my HTPC for the same reason.

How about this.? https://www.overclockers.co.uk/kfa2-geforce-gtx-1070-reference-blower-8192mb-gddr5-pci-express-graphics-card-70nsh6dhk6vk-gx-090-kf.html
 
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For HTPC now I'd be looking at x265/HEVC decode hardware, that rules out (iirc) all AMD cards except RX480 (but it is meant to be very good at encode/decode, not seen a great /reviewinvestigation into it though) and on the nvidia side it's the 960/950 (too slow to bother with really) and 10xx series cards.

So realistically RX480/1060 are fairly close or 1070 for the extra performance.
 
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