RF Generation Message Board

At the moment this is kinda placeholder text, I will edit this first post as time goes on and people contribute.

This should be a thread for helping people with PC builds and ideas. I imagine there will be lots of links posted as well as specific parts mentioned.



EDITs and posts coming soon!


Should I put up one of those 'under construction' gifs?



Some useful links.  This will be added to and updated over time. Give me hints on what should go here  :)

Trying to pick out hardware?
http://www.pcper.com/hwlb
http://pcpartpicker.com/
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html
http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html

This is going to be very helpful.

To get this rolling I have a few questions.

How often should I upgrade my PC or its parts?
Mid Tower vs Mini ITX vs Micro ATX?
Sometimes you can't have someone there with you helping, so what are some good tutorials for newbie builders (video and step-by-step guides)?

first question: i judge the need for upgrades based on how well the computer can handle the games i'm playing (or whatever else you mostly use it for). when it gets to the point where i'm playing a new game on all low settings, or getting really low frame rate on medium, and anything higher is completely unplayable, that's when i know it's time to upgrade. that's my personal preference though, some people have no problem playing games on low settings, but for me if i'm buying a PC just for gaming i want the games to play smooth and look good doing it.

second question: that's somewhat personal preference, and somewhat based on what you plan on putting in it. i don't know micro or mini ATX well but if they can't handle more than 1 hard drive, you would have problems if you wanted to setup a RAID backup system, or anything like that. most mid to high end video cards are also massive (up to a foot long in some cases), you're not going to fit that in a micro or mini case, even some mid sized towers won't fit that. cooling is also much better in bigger cases. i personally have a full sized tower, the Antec 1200.

third question: i don't have any experience with that but i'm sure there are thousands of good video tutorials on youtube.

Techquickie has quite a few interesting videos that may help you understand some things: https://www.youtube.com/user/Techquickie
e.g: PC Cases:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2szW0ROdNHs

Great video, very informative. Thanks mumboking

Always remember Moore's Law. Its why I try to keep my budget for a new build under $1000. I'm in the preplanning stages of my next tower, I probably won't start actually buying parts until next year though. Most of the parts I'm looking at by then will be much cheaper.

I think one of the most misleading things about computers is how often they must be upgraded.  The idea that a PC needs to be frequently upgraded is a millstone left over from the late eighties to mid-nineties, when one could count on the computer you just bought to be obsolete within a few months of purchase.  These days things tend to be more balanced, with predictable highs and lows.  While there is not quite yet a "PC cycle" one can depend on upgrading within two to four years of PC purchase (depending on how current and what types of games you want to play), with the bulk of the "reliable" next-gen GPUs hitting the shelves a year after console release.  Count on spending about half of what a current console costs.

CPU: 4-8 years (maybe longer)
RAM: Same as CPU (ultimately depending on trends)
GPU: 2-4 years (depending on what you get initially and what you play)
PSU: Depends on GPU (although the higher wattage PSU you get the longer in between upgrades)

All of this relies on all the parts not actually dying in between upgrades.

UPDATE: Nice, mumboking.  That guy completely nailed it.  Such a confusing subject in only five minutes.

I just looked at Shoboni's rig again, and thinking of building one just like him. It seems he got alot of good stuff for pretty cheap.

He also has many more: e.g: Power Supplies
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqThn3C-zg4

Awesome!  He got quite a deal.  The only thing I will add to that is to consider a better video card, but that is something I will always say.  I have the same one (GeForce GTX 750Ti 2GB) and will have to think about an upgrade as Elite: Dangerous and Star Citizen slowly approach.  Zelda ALTTP may be on the chopping block...

I did, I'm getting 44-60FPS on BF4 at 1080(upsamlped from like 900p)/Ultra and High settings. The 750ti is really a beast relative to how cheap you can get it.

Games have been handing out bloated spec sheets, the list for The Evil Within says I have no business running it but I can play at high-settings and 900p even in it's horrible optimized state. Shadow of Mordor also runs on medium-high from what I've seen.  

Edit: sorry about the double post. I've been posting a lot on a forum that combines double posts and it got me spoiled :b.

The point is that a top of the line $10k rig is going to cost less than half that in a couple years. And good rigs around $1k can last awhile. I'm approaching 4 years with mine and it still handles a lot of big releases on medium to high settings fairly well despite a bottlenecked GPU and some other reasons. Having 12GB of RAM certainly helps. Anyway, back on topic.

While the perceived physical limitations of wires and transistors in processors becomes an essential brick wall, with current designs already merely a few molecules in diameter, then efficiency and core threading will become more important in wiring designs. Humans will find some way around current limitations, just like they found a way around the high cost and failure rates of vacuum tubes with the bipolar junction transistor, which lead to integrated circuit chips that power everything now.

bombatomba has it right too, and i disagree that it's a good idea to stay under $1000. unless you really can't afford higher, then in the long run it's actually cheaper to get something a little pricier up front. cheap components are more likely to fail sooner, and many parts of the PC you'll have no need at all to upgrade when you're ready for a new computer. things like a good monitor(s), keyboard, mouse, sound system, tower, etc all have no reason to be changed when you upgrade, so if you spend a little extra up front you're less likely to need to replace these parts in the long run.

i've upgraded nothing in my current PC in the past 5 years, excluding one failed hard drive after about six months (the replacement has been great ever since), and a new GPU fan. i can still play all modern games (that i've tried anyway) with decent frame rate (at least 20-40 FPS). for example Battlefield 4 runs fine on my PC at medium to high settings, 1080p resolution and around 30 FPS. i have no plans to upgrade it for at least another year or 2, though i may need to consider a new GPU sooner than later if i get any new games this year.

i can't remember for sure but i think i had spent around $2000 Canadian. you can definitely get a cheaper PC, but you should expect that with a cheaper one you'll want to upgrade it sooner, the more money you spend up front the more life you'll get out of it (barring any part failures).

edit: just saw psycho's post, by more expensive i don't mean 10k for a computer, that's crazy...anything above $3000 is totally excessive for any gaming needs. but i think $1500 - $2500 is where you're going to get the best bang for your buck in the long run.

It's funny, I just subscribed to that guy who mumboking has been posting videos of other channel,  LinusTechTips
http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXuqSBlHAE6Xw-yeJA0Tunw a week or two ago and have been watching a bunch of his videos. I didn't know about his  Techquickie
channel until now. Looking through it I found this one, which seems right in line with what we are talking about:


6:05 long
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCQdOt0s61U



A year ago, to refresh me on building a PC, I watched this 1:22:27 long video on how a PC is put together:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUzdNcZeM-s

That is already a year old but it is it was helpful to me at the time. I bought that motherboard so that is partly why. That channel has newer videos on the same topic but I haven't watched them:

https://www.youtube.com/user/asusrog/videos



Since this is the internet, there are OVER 9000! videos on PC building, those are just ones I know of.

I was given a "super tower" when i was in high school. I always called it a server tower. I was told it had been one (or part?) of the schools servers at some point in time. By the time i got it it was already ancient.

I don't remember if it ended up getting thrown away or is still buried in a closet.
Would a 20(+?) year old tower still be useful?

Might be good for building a retro rig with Windows XP for 90s/00s games if it has decent specs for the time.

I spent about $1k on my rig when I built it. That included the monitor and $200 for Windows 7. So I only spent a little less than $700 on my tower. I recommend the $1k for the first build more than anything, the reason being that you're still learning how to connect everything, and its easier to put stuff in wrong or fry something and have to send it back. I had to send my first CPU back because the pins got bent in shipping. That was the last major part I needed and had to wait an extra week. It was disappointing to say the least.

My next build is going to be around $1k as well, but its going to be 100% on parts, with another monitor, but that still gives me an extra $200 to spend on better parts. I've also lined out everything I'm gutting from my current rig, like RAM, HDDs, DVD drive, and the extra fan I installed. If you're trying to get the same bang I'm planning on getting for your first tower then you might want to push the budget up to $1500 if you want a dual monitor setup from the start. I can toss together a bunch of budget parts in my old tower and give it to my parents after I get the new tower ready and built.

Mine was like $680 for the tower and $120 for the monitor(and another $130 for windows because I found out to late swapping drives from a OEM doesn't work with windows 8)

I'm waiting on some parts before I can build my new PC.

I'll be going from this:
Processor: Intel Pentium G620 2.6GHz (http://ark.intel.com/products/53480/)
Motherboard: ASUS P8H61-M LE/USB3 (http://www.asus.com/uk/Motherboards/P8H61M_LEUSB3/)
Memory: 1x2GB 1333MHz(I think) Kingston HyperX Blu (Running at 1066MHz. CPU limitation...)
Storage: Seagate 500GB HDD, Western Digital 500GB HDD
Graphics Card: Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 3470 256MB (http://www.sapphiretech.com/presentation/product/product_index.aspx?pid=158)
Case: Generic unbranded black case
Power Supply: Antec HCG-520 (http://www.antec.com/product.php?id=705196&fid=5022035)
Optical Drive: Optiarc AD-7280S (http://www.sony-optiarc.us/endoflifeproducts/dvddrives/desktop/ad7280s.html)
Operating System: Win7 Ultimate

To this:
Processor: Intel Core i5-4690k 3.9GHz (http://ark.intel.com/products/80811/)
Motherboard: ASUS Z97-C (http://www.asus.com/uk/Motherboards/Z97C/)
Memory: 2x4GB 2133MHz G.Skill kit  (http://www.gskill.com/en/product/f3-17000cl11d-8gbxl)(which I will run at 1600MHz. It was cheaper than 1600MHz versions :shrug:)
Storage: Seagate 750GB HDD, Seagate 500GB HDD, Western Digital 500GB HDD
Graphics Card: Undecided.
Case: Corsair SPEC-03 Red LED (http://www.corsair.com/en-gb/carbide-series-spec-03-red-led-mid-tower-gaming-case)
Power Supply: Antec HCG-520 (http://www.antec.com/product.php?id=705196&fid=5022035)
Optical Drive: Undecided.
Operating System: Win7 Ultimate

:slick:

So for operating system should I go Windows 7 or 8

8.1, it's honestly the same as Windows 7 under the hood and they might drop Win7 soon since 10 is coming out.

internet hearsay has told me that windows 8 will give you nothing but problems while gaming. i have no personal experience with it though, so that could all be BS. windows 7 has zero problems for me with gaming so far.

While you can get away with DOSbox for older stuff, nothing beats having a period-era PC for Win95 and old XP.  Some things just don't run right.

I really love all this PC talk.  Everybody giving specs for their rigs.  Man, it's just great to see.


That is awesome.  The old G620 was a workhorse for its day, but stepping up to that 4th Gen i5 is going to be really great.  Keep us up to date with the VC.

My PC was patched together with parts I bought and pulled out of the scrap from work.  It is mostly an ASUS gaming rig with some extra stuff.

Proc: Intel Core i7-3770
Mobo: ASUS? (not really sure)
Memory: 16GB Corsair 1600 (overkill, but I don't want to buy RAM again)
HDD: 1x 80GB SSD (for Windows) and 1x 500GB HDD for games (I really have to upgrade that last one)
PSU: 575w pulled from a larger HP.  Has coil whine but otherwise fully checks out with the multimeter
OS: Win7 Home Premium.  It was the COA on the case so I didn't have to pay extra.  No XP Mode for me (on this computer, that is).


Lol.  I was wondering how long this would take.  I have Win7 on my gaming machines as well as Linux Mint 17 (KDE).  I think a lot of the problems with Win8 were between GFWL and Steam, but I think that got ironed out for Win8.1

I think it is, I've played everything from SiN to The Evil Within on it and not had a problem.


Here's my build(I have posted on PCpartpicker for easy linking)

https://pcpartpicker.com/b/KtKZxr

TL;DR of it

FX-8320(Eight-Core, 3.5GHz/4.0Ghz Turbo)
750ti(2GB)
8GB RAM(1600Mhz, 2x4GB)
Blu-Ray Drive
2x1TB HDDs

The VC?

The new CPU and MoBo are in my town now, according to the tracking. They'll probably arrive tomorrow. :D

Skip 8/8.1. Either stick with Win7 or wait for Win10

it will probably be a year before I can get enough money to buy a pc, so I probably will wait for 10

Lol.  Your video card, man.  It says undecided in your post above.


I didn't want to say it (afraid to start a flame-off).  Plus I use Linux for most of my gaming, so who am I to talk.

Ah. I'm going to wait and see how the GTX960 is before I decide.
I was looking at an HD 7770 originally, then I saw the R9 270X and then I saw the GTX 970/980.
It's like: "This might be the one... No, wait... This card! Oh, hold on.. this new one's more expensive but it uses less power and performs better... :-\"

I heard windows 10 will be gaming friendly at least that is supposed to be a part of the announcement that is coming up soon.

I have enough parts to build a working PC!
[img width=288 height=512]http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll222/mumboking/Photos/DSC_0365.jpg[/img]
I can't build it today though. Not enough space and time. :(

The PSU is not in the picture, as it's still packed away somewhere.

Woot!







I think we need to start a different thread on old PC's, showing them off and upgrading them, that would rock.





The Windows 8 thing,

I don't get the dislike for it. We've had it since it was just Windows 8, now we are on 8.1.  The complaints people had seem to be not an issue on 8.1, at least to me. Sure, the start menu is different but not annoyingly so. It's ran really smooth for us. It's certainly more well behaved than the Win 7 laptop we also use. The few games I've had issues on (it's only been a couple) seemed to be programmers fault and not Windows. Google searches have always fixed any game related hiccups quickly. I like it. I would try and dissuade anyone from choosing Win 7 over Win 8.1. The upgrade from Win 8 to 8.1 was free, it sounds like upgrading to Win 10 will be free too.

My wife uses Win 8.1 for work all day long plus for playing games, I use it for.....uh.....playing games. It's great. Stop being internet people and just like it.


 ;)

Thanks nupoile!

I just erased about three paragraphs of bitter oaths with the intention of breaking it down to two points:

1) IT hates it because they have to deal with the fallout.  It was just too much for Joe User to swallow in one gulp, and MS knew it.
2) It should have been sold at greatly reduced cost with the intention of making the next OS free for consumers.  MS makes more than enough with fees in the commercial industry to make this happen (fees that most people wouldn't believe).  Instead they conceded more ground to their competition and raised the price of Win7.

Personally I don't care that much, as I am a functional Linux user.  The two Windows machines in my home are so because that is the COA they came with.  The only one I wouldn't change is my wife's laptop, because she would just throw the thing out the window after a few days in frustration.  Well, maybe not, but it would cost me a ton of grief getting her acclimated to the darn thing, knowing that within a few years I'd have to do it again with the next one.  Plus Windows just talks too much over the network.  Talktalktalktalk.  It's like one of those annoying people at a long checkout line who can't stop complaining how long the checkout line is.

:laugh: :laugh: :laugh:

Okay, I have to admit I don't know about it from the IT side of things.

I built my new PC yesterday. Took a few hours for Memtest86+ to do three passes:
[img width=512 height=288]https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B5VW10KIQAA31Ik.jpg:large[/img]
Yeah, this is underclocked 2133MHz RAM. It defaulted to 1600MHz 11-11-11-??-?? 1.6V, but I changed that to 1600MHz 8-8-8-24-2N 1.5V.
[img width=512 height=288]https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B5V5rHmCEAASsvj.jpg:large[/img]

I tested it using Ubuntu from a Live USB. I'm impressed! :D It handled 2160p video on YouTube rather well (I'll only use 720p normally, 1080p if full screen.).
For fun I decided to try a WebGL game called BananaBread (https://developer.cdn.mozilla.net/media/uploads/demos/a/z/azakai/3baf4ad7e600cbda06ec46efec5ec3b8/bananabread_1373485124_demo_package/index.html). I first heard of it a few years ago, but it popped into my head when I was thinking of ways to test the system.
I've just tried it on this computer (using the "Hanger" map on high res) and it runs around 10fps. That's pathetic, compared to the 35+ on the new build. :D
According to lm-sensors on Ubuntu, it idles around 32°c and doesn't seem to go over 50°c!

Not sure when I'll actually put a hard drive in it and install Windows though... I have to clear and clean the space around where it'll live. :-\
I also might need a new PSU for it, as it turns out that the 520W PSU I thought we had was actually a 450W PSU. I might go for a 600W-650W modular/semi-modular one.

Over the Christmas holidays I ordered myself a new video card, an SSD, 8GB of RAM (nice upgrade from my 4GB),  and a new cube case.

This was the first time I built a computer; my first attempt ended in frustration and I took all the components to the local computer store to have them do the work. For the second go at building a PC I made sure I had the whole day to work. Everything was actually fairly easy. I took pictures of the old case and hardware for reference and had to text Bil a couple times with questions but other than that everything was very straight forward.

Once all the parts were in place it was the moment of truth...

[img width=700 height=933]http://i1340.photobucket.com/albums/o736/Fleach/-923794248_zpsny0dt41v.jpg[/img]

It works!

Then it was time to put on the finishing touches, hook up all the peripherals and admire a job well done.

[img width=700 height=758]http://i1340.photobucket.com/albums/o736/Fleach/2015-01-01%2019.12.07_zpsij3slhvg.png[/img]

It's so boxy. I like it!

[img width=700 height=933]http://i1340.photobucket.com/albums/o736/Fleach/20150101_191024_zpsw8rf4m9v.jpg[/img]


The breakdown of the new parts are: Gigabyte GTX 760 OC video card, Corsair Vengeance 8GB RAM, Corsair Air 540. The SSD is being restocked by the NCIX warehouse. :(

[img width=700 height=393]http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c394/bombatomba77/20150110_100640_zpsknoby2lr.jpg[/img]



Okay, so it's not really mine.  At least not forever.  The salesman at work accidentally ordered one too many for a customer, and told me I could borrow it for the weekend (or so).  Pretty sure he wants it, as he has a pretty wicked virtual reality setup at his house.

[img width=512 height=384]http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll222/mumboking/Photos/DSC_0515.jpg[/img]

Hmm... What's this? :D

Unfortunately, Ubuntu 14.04 doesn't have the drivers available in the repositories. :(
I could use a different way of installing them, but I don't want to do it those ways.

The funny thing is, it performs way worse with the 970 than with the on board graphics, at least without the NVidia drivers installed. The reason for that is because there's no 3D acceleration with the open source drivers it's using.

Doh!  Stinks that they don't have the drivers in the repo.  I've installed the drivers on the website before, but half the time I've suffered catastrophic crashes and forced to recover in command line.  This was in Linux Mint, though, and not in my current OS of choice (Manjaro).

That you don't have 3D acceleration with the Ubuntu nouveau driver is surprising.  Does anyone know if the Ubuntu driver is different than the one offered in Manjaro (i.e., the AUR)?  Mine even has a little Nvidia icon next to it, and I'm pretty sure I get acceleration with it.  Not nearly as good as the proprietary Nvidia driver, but not bad either.

woah I missed this thread when it first started. I'm a perpetual upgrader haha. Currently my build is...

i5-4690k
ASRock Z97 Xtreme3
16GB Kingston Fury HyperX Red
Zotac GTX 970

250GB Samsung EVO SSD
3TB WD HDD

all of this is in a Rosewill Blackhawk case which I added a Cooler Master EVO Hyper 212 cooler to, along w/ a Pioneer bluray drive. I've got this dual-outputting to the Acer 23" LED monitor at my desk via DVI and mirrored to my Toshiba TV at my couch via HDMI. This way I can easily switch between keyboard/mouse (WASD mechanical, Logitech G502) at my desk, or Xbox 360/Xbox One controllers on my couch.

Anyway, I love building PC's and I've actually assembled 5 or 6 in the last 2 years for myself and others. I just find the process really rewarding, and will def be glad to help out in any way I can in this thread. :)

Yeah... That's why I'd rather not install drivers through other means.

The latest driver available in the repos is 331, whereas 343 or higher is required for the 970.
lspci reports the card as "VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation Device 13c2 (rev a1)"

oh and here's my desk:

[img width=700 height=393]http://i.imgur.com/8zlhX8J.jpg[/img]

I could have just edited my post, but this doesn't hurt...
That's similar to mine. :P

i5-4690K
ASUS Z79-C
8GB G.Skill
MSI GTX 970 GAMING 4G

I only have the stock cooling and a DVD burner though.

That stinks.  Personally, I'd install them anyways, mumbo.  I mean, you have that awesome card.  If you run into any problems just purge the drivers in recovery:

sudo apt-get purge nvidia-current

Eventually, I'll be running Windows 7 Ultimate x64 on this PC, so it's not that big of a deal... Would be nice to have it working in Ubuntu though. I'm not that keen on attempting recovery if a problem occurs.

I might try a different Ubuntu install on another drive to test it on later (later being when I feel like it).

Before I installed the card, I ran a Video Stress Test in Half-Life 2: Lost Coast on near full settings and was getting decent framerates (AVG. ~50FPS).
With the card installed, I try the same and get ~2FPS on the menu. Not worth running the test when it's doing that. :P

Nice, noise.  Next year I'll have to upgrade my GPU.  Seeing both you and Mumbo's rig makes me a bit itchy for a new card.  Granted, I don't own any games that tax my 750ti, but I do love me some new hardware.  Luckily I won't have to upgrade my CPU for a couple of years (at least).


I hear you.  My main gaming rig is W7 x64.   I used Manjaro XFCE in the beginning, but I got sick of the workarounds to play my Windows Steam games, so I turned it into a Windows rig.  I still use my Manjaro laptop to play games, though (I can't quit Linux), and once I redesign my network I'll be Steam streaming to that laptop (unless I want to make use of the surround speakers).