New PC

[Teho]

Allright, so I've been wanting to build a new PC for quite some time now. My old one was built three and a half years ago, and apart from another HD, a hi-def soundcard and an upgrade from 1 to 2 GB RAM it hasn't been done much with in that time.

I decided to pull out all the stops for this one and not care too much about cost, within reason of course. Apart from the HDs, the DVD drive and the soundcard, everything should be new and top of the line this time. So back in early July I went to the norwegian webshop komplett.no and started browsing.

First thing of course, the motherboard. It should be the new socket AM3 standard, and of course support DDR3 RAM of the bloody fast kind. First one I looked at was the ASUS Crosshair III Formula at £160 but I soon ruled that out. First off, it cost a bit more than the others and one of the reasons for that was that it has extremely good onboard sound. Well, I don't need that. Granted, the soundcard I have (an Asus Xonar D2) is a hi-fi card and not a gaming card, but it does support some techs like EAX2 so is well enough. Also on that motherboard where some silly gimmicks like a hundred little lights for every little thing on it that will light green or red depending on the status of the thing it's next to. Stupid. But the final nail in the coffin was that it has only one of the good old PCI slots. I sort of require two (soundcard and the option to put in the catweasel), so that's that.

I ended up with an Asus M4A78T-E at a little over £100 (the prices I quote throughout here are very rough conversions of the norwegian prices). It has the things I want, socket AM3, DD3 SDRAM, 2600MHz bus, and not much of what I don't need so suits me. Fares well in reviews too, so was happy with this choice.

On with the processor then. Haven't gone multicore before because up until recently I've felt there hasn't really been that much call for it. But now I went with the AMD Phenom II X4 955 which is quad core as the name suggests. Apart from that it's 3.2GHz with an 8GB cache. And has most of AMD's techs. I saw a product test which tested it against three other top processors out now, and it consistently placed second in most tests. Which was fine, the better one cost a lot more and was actually older tech-wise. Pricetag of the Phenom II was £210 though, so not so cheap either. But allright.

All who commented on the Phenom II agreed on one thing though. The standard fan that comes with it generates a hell of a lot of noise. I don't mind a little noise from my systems, but this was apparently a real problem. One of the commenters recommended a Noctua NH-U12P fan and heatsink, I looked up some reviews on that that really praised it (mentioning that you can get 3.6GHz out of the Phenom II effortlessly with it) so went with that as well, at around £70.

RAM was easy. Corsair Dominator 2x2GB 1600MHz DD3 RAM. Around £80. Done and done.

For the graphics card I looked at the current GeForce line. Top model these days is the GTX 295, but that is very expensive. Looking at the GTX 285 line, I spotted the ones from EVGA. I've actually never heard of them, but the thing with their cards is they come overclocked out of the box. So their GTX 285 has performance close to the stock 295s. Again reviews were favourable, so that's what I went with. An EVGA GeForce GTX 285 2GB PhysX CUDA for £360, by far the most expensive item as the graphics cards usually is. There was one catch though, komplett.no wouldn't actually have them in stock until early august. But I could live with that. Thought I'd just use my old 7800 in the meantime.

For the PSU, I first used a calculator that told me what I had would pull around 430W at 90%, around 490W at a theoretical 100%. I thought about using my old 500W PSU for a few seconds, but that's cutting it a little close and besides it's been running nearly 24/7 for well over three years. So figured I'd get something in the 600W-650W range. I ended up having a choice between two; a 600W Cooler Master Silent Pro or a 620W Cooler Master Real Power. The lesser one was actually the more expensive one as it has a higher quality and thus more silent fan. As I said, that doesn't bother me too much so I looked at a review at the 620W one first. And it was terrible. The 5V rail on it was absolutely hopeless, and the other rails didn't really deliver either. Reviews for the 600W one was far better though, so got that at around £90.

So now remains a cabinet. I've never bothered much about the aesthetics of a cabinet. It needs to be functional. Which means spacious. I looked at what was available and read the comments and found one that got praise for being fairly big with great airflow. This was a Cooler Master HAF 932, at £140.

So that put the total pricetag at just under £1.100. I know that doesn't quite add up, as I said I'm just roughly converting the norwegian prices as I go here.

I ordered the stuff, and decided to just drive over there and collect it rather than have it sent in the post. It is a 50 km drive one way, so normally when I order stuff from there I just have them send it. But figured the post would be expensive with all this, and it's not like I'm not used to driving distances anyhow.

First thing I noticed when I got it home and started unpacking was that *maybe* I should have looked a little closer at the specs of that cab before I ordered it. It's big. And by that I mean friggin' HUGE! Here's a pic of it sitting next to my old cab, which also is slightly bigger than your average one I might add:



However this turned out to be a good thing after all, because that heatsink and fan I got is also a bit, well, friggin' HUGE! Here's a pic of the interior with everything but the soundcard and graphicscard in it:



The motherboard is standard ATX form, which may give you a better idea of the size of that cab. The fans at the top, in the side panel and at the front are all 230mm while the rear one is 140mm. The heatsink may not look that big here but believe me, it is. I can actually not get to the fourth RAM slot because of the fan, and may have trouble even getting to the third. I can easily put the fan on the other side but that would introduce a conflict of interests with the rear fan, wouldn't it. And the entire thing can be mounted sideways instead but that would of course just make things worse.

As for the drive bays, they're pretty easy to use. Slide the drive in and push a button to lock it in place, and that's all there is to it. The HD bays are a bit more fiddly. You have to put the HDs in small caddies, and you have to do some bending and pushing to do that. Once done though they too easily slide in and lock in place. However they now have the connectors facing towards the back wall, so you have to take off the other side panel to connect everything.

Plenty of options on the front panel of the cab as well; four USB ports, a firewire and an e-SATA port. That's nice.

And it turned out that the motherboard has an onboard GPU, so I didn't need to bother with putting in my old one while I wait for the new card. Great stuff. So, with everything connected, it's time to turn the thing on. So I hit the power button..

and lights come on.. good..

Fans start up.. good..

DVD drive starts spinning wildy.. er, not so good..

No image on the monitor.. ummm..

Absolutely no activity from the HDs.. BUGGER!

That's right, the bloody thing didn't WORK! I unplugged everything and doublechecked all I had done in there, but couldn't see that I had made any mistakes. So there was nothing for it but to take the darn thing all the way back the next day. I had migrated the HDs from my old system, and I figured I wouldn't be too long without a PC so didn't bother putting them back. They told me "about ten days" when I delivered it. After two weeks I give them a call and say "Look, I'm not stupid. I know there's a perfectly good reason why it's not done yet and that you're not just leaving it because you're dicks, but, you know, any idea how long this is going to take?"

The guy I spoke to had no idea of course since he didn't work in repairs. But he'd been down there the day before, and had seen they really had a lot of machines in now...

It took three weeks in the end. Drove all the way back up there *again* and collected it. Got it with a note attached: "CPU defective, have replaced". Right, took it back home, opened it and checked that everything was in order in there before hooking it all up again and hitting the power button..

and the lights came on, and the fans started, and lo and behold we have picture and HD activity: YESS!!

So now comes the Windows installation, the driver installation, the windows update merry-go-round, et cetera, et cetera. At one point I have to leave, my dad needs help with moving some stuff so I start the PC moving some large folders I had backed up and leave it to it. I come back after five hours, and the PC seems to still be running. But there's no response whatsoever from any kind of input. I think it must have crashed, so a bit annoyed I hit the reset button..

and the lights come on.. of course..

Fans start up.. of course..

A couple of ticks from the HD.. ah, that's reassuring..

No picture on the monitor.. ummmm..

Nothing more happens. BUGGER!

I immediately realise it's the exact same behaviour it had before, the reason there were HD ticks instead of the DVD drive spinning wildly was because I'd changed the boot priority in the BIOS at one point. This of course was on a saturday, so I couldn't even take it back the next day. Spoke to them on the phone on monday though and was promised that since they'd just had it in they'd give it priority over their other repair jobs. So, *AGAIN* I drive all the way in there with it. And again I decide not to put my HDs back in my old system since this time it wasn't going to take long, and besides the old Windows installation didn't exist anymore. Turned out that I will from now on always yank out all HDs before leaving a PC for repair with them, the reason will soon become apparent.

It didn't take a few days of course, it took nearly another two weeks. Gah! Then, I get a phonecall. It's the guy fixing my PC. And he's swedish. Not a problem, norwegians and swedes can usually talk to eachother in their own language and understand eachother fine. As could we. He said he'd replaced the motherboard this time, which surprised me as I was sure it was the CPU again. And some other fault that caused the CPU failures. But not so. He said "I've replaced the motherboard, and I have picture now." "Ah, good" I answer. And then he asks: "On the form you've crossed that you have valuable data on the HDs?" I say yes. When you deliver a PC for repair there you have to fill out this form, with type of error, specs and such and one of the things on it is if you have valuable data on the HDs. "Well, nothing actually that vital" I say, "but there is my pictures and music collection and such". Like the rom collections, and pirated games and movies I think to myself.

He says: "I'd like to format one of the drives and install Windows for you." And I must have been silent for several seconds trying to figure out why on earth he would want to do that. But in the end I just asked "Why on earth do you want to do that?" "Oh, just to make sure everything works ok" he replied. So I say "Well, unless the PC killed the HDs (at this point I crossed myself, many of you will know why) there is a perfectly fine Windows installation with the correct drivers and everything on one of the drives, can't you just boot that?" He hesitated for a second before he said "No, I'd rather format one and start a fresh install," he said. "Just to be sure."

I'm not going to quote the rest of the conversation. I kept saying no and asking why he felt he needed to do this, and he kept saying he always did that just to check that everything worked. I couldn't believe it. I can't believe it. They just format customer's HDs just like that 'just to check'!? The previous guy who changed the CPU didn't! Naturally I wouldn't let him as I had allready put stuff on my fresh install I didn't want to lose, and he was getting really annoyed that I wouldn't. In the end he gave up and said I could come get it the next day, but he wouldn't guarantee that it would boot properly since he couldn't check it! "If the hardware works, I'll deal with the software end, don't worry about it." I told him, and we ended the conversation.

So the next day I drive in there *YET AGAIN* and pick it up. I mention the crazy swede and his insisting on formatting a drive to the guy at the pickup-point. And he just smiles and says "Yeah, some of the guys in there are a little weird.." "So they just format peoples drives on a regular basis?" I ask. He shrugs "I guess they just like formatting stuff. I don't know." In disbelief I sign for the PC and leave, and on the drive home it clicks. Why would a guy working in a place like that like to format and install OS's? There is a lot of *waiting* involved with formatting and installing Windows. Which means; coffee-breaks! It's the only explanation I can think of. And if that Occam's Razor thing is anything to go by, it's probably the right one.

When I got the PC home I of course opened it first to have a quick browse in there. And he hasn't connected the HDs to the motherboard! Everything else is fine, but all the SATA cables are disconnected. What is this guy's problem? I had half a mind to disassemble the heatsink to check his job with the cooling paste, but decided enough was enough. I'll see it on the temperatures if anything is wrong there.

Hooked it all up and it worked fine, and has worked fine for a day and a half now. Fingers crossed that it stays this way. I'd love to start performance testing this new rig, but the graphics card still hasn't arrived! It was supposed to be here early this month but now they say they're not getting it before early september!

*sigh*

But you know, after all this I still don't have anything bad to say about this shop. I've used it for many years and have so far only had positive experiences. They've always been kind and helpful and always provided great service. Allthough this past month's experiences hasn't been that good I still recommend them and will still use them.

But I don't think I'll ever give them my HDs again. And if I do have to take a PC back, when I hand it over I'll give them one specific instruction: "Don't give it to the swede!"

[Tiago]

OMG look at the size of this post ....

Enjoy your new system Teho !

[Harrison]

That was quite some journey in both time and distance before you managed to get a fully up and running system. I'm glad it finally all now seems to be working.

And I hope your new graphics card turns up soon...

But I have one question. Why did you opt to go for an nVidia card? With the current range of nVidia cards they are definitely fast, but they are also very highly overpriced. When I built my new PC at the end of March I looked though all of the performance charts and reviews online and concluded that the ATI Radeon HD 48XX range of cards is much better. A huge price to performance value compared to nVidia's cards.

I ended up purchasing an XFi Radeon HD 4870 1GB XxX (factory overclocked) and it is a brilliant card for the price. These can now be purchased for just over £130 and out perform a GTX260 in most tests.

And now the newer faster card, the ATI Radeon HD 4890 1GB is under £150 and is a brilliant card for the money. And with that price you can buy 2 of those and connect them in crossfire mode (similar to SLI) for less money than a single GTX295.

If your nVidia card is still taking time to arrive I would highly recommend you take a look at the Radeon 4890 cards and consider cancelling your order. My 4870 can run all games released to date at maximum settings with a resolution of 1280x1024 and with framerates that never drop below 60fps, which is impressive. The 2D graphics quality is also better than nVidia cards for the desktop and programs like Photoshop.

I personally just don't see a reason to spend so much on the high end nVidia cards at the moment because of the ATI 48xx range.

It is also interesting that you went for a Quad core Phenom II. It would be good to see what real world performance you can get out of it. I've been an AMD CPU fan for years, with my last Intel chip being a Pentium 2. But with my new system I switched back and bought an Intel Core 2 Quad CPU. They just out perform all current AMD chips by some margin, run much cooler than current AMD chips, and have amazing overclocking abilities. It is a complete switch around from the last round of CPUs where these exact properties were what made the AMD64 chips so good.

My Q6600 has a standard speed of 2.4GHz, but running with an Arctic Cooler Freezer 7 Pro heatsink I have it overclocked to 3GHz without issue. It idles at about 20 degrees, and under full load only hits about 40 degrees max. Quite an amazing chip. And I've read other Intels are just as good. The very cheap E5200 (which I just used to build someone a new system) for example is 2.2GHz standard, and can easily be overclocked to 3.6GHz, even on stock cooling. The only thing I hate about the current Intel CPUs is the heatsink connection to the motherboard. It is fiddly and hard to fit compared to AMD ones.

If I were buying a new CPU now though I would look at the higher up Q9550 or Q9650 chips as their prices are falling fast.

Regarding your heatsink. That was quite an expensive heatsink! I hope it performs well? Did you looks at the Arctic Cooler Freezer 7 Pro coolers? They are only about £22 and perform brilliantly, although still just as large as your new one going by your pictures. I have the Freezer 7 Pro in both AMD in Intel forms, with the AMD one fitted on my old AMD64 3700+ CPU overclocked to 2.6GHz and now used as my emulation system. And there is now a new Rev.2 of this heatsink that is meant to perform even better with a near silent 92mm fan.

Finally there is one thing I noticed about your setup that might be an issue. The 600W PSU. nVidia cards suck a lot of power from the PSU under load. A GTX285 is stated as needing 40A on the 12V rail it's using, which a lot of PSUs cannot deliver. Most people use at least 1kW PSUs with these cards. Again the ATI 4870 cards are much more energy efficient and run perfectly well on even a 500W PSU.

Just some food for thought.

[Demon Cleaner]

I just spend 20 minutes of time (at work) to read this, thanks

Btw, how many 3.5" bays has your CoolerMaster case? I mean for HDDs? And were the fans already built-in or did you buy them and put them inside?

[Harrison]

I forgot to say anything about the case. I've not seen that case first hand but it does look good from your pictures. And you will need one that big to fit the GTX285 into it!

And locating PSUs at the bottom is definitely a good move in recent case design. It removes the excess heat they also generate from the rest of the components. I especially like cases with the 2 chamber design like the P180.

One question though about PSUs at the bottom. Did you have to mount the PSU upsidedown so the PSU fan is pointing upwards? If so the only concern I would then have is something falling down into the fan blades.

[Tiago]

I just spend 20 minutes of time (at work) to read this, thanks

Btw, how many 3.5" bays has your CoolerMaster case? I mean for HDDs? And were the fans already built-in or did you buy them and put them inside?

If the replys continues, in the end of the day it will take us 2 hours to read it...

[Teho]

Uh, yes. Sorry about the post length guys. Didn't realise it got that long.

Tell you the truth, Harrison, I don't keep up with developments in PC hardware. Only when I'm about to build a new system do I start looking at what's available these days. And when deciding on something I pick out a couple of interesting options and pick one based on various reviews and comparisons if they exist. May sound like I threw the specs together in half an hour, but that isn't the case. Spent most of a saturday in fact. You do have some interesting observations, like the graphics card. I may just follow up on that. My reason for going with nVidia is that my previous was one which I was happy with, and the one before that was an ATI that I wasn't happy with. Simple as that. I had no idea that currently nVidia is a poor choice compared to ATI, none of the sites I read said so. But praised the performance of the 285. And top shelf cards has always been +£300 as far as I can remember, so the price wasn't unexpected. But you raise some interesting points here, and I definitely will be looking some more at what options I have here, particularily since the one I ordered is so delayed.

I went with the Phenom II because I've always been happy with AMD too. And as I said, I saw a thorough comparison where it was consistently outperformed only by the Core i7 920. Your Core 2 Quad was part of the same comparison, and it and the Phenom II was mostly on par with eachother if I recall correctly. It's here if you want to look at it.

As for that heatsink, no I didn't look at any others. One person commenting on the CPU highly recommded it, and I checked a review that also did so I just went with it. I've never used anything but stock cooling before, so have no idea at all which makes to look at and which to avoid, and what the fair prices are. Oh well, so it was expensive. Haven't installed any monitoring software yet, so can only say what's in the BIOS, namely that the CPU idles at 30 degrees, which I understand is low for this CPU.

I did take my time in selecting the PSU though. I am confident it will suffice. I used this calculator which seems fairly up to date, and it concludes I should actually require less than 500W. Adding 20% for safety sake seems common sense, and I checked a thorough test to make sure that this one does deliver what it says. I know that many PSUs don't quite reach the levels they should, and as I said before the first one I looked at certainly didn't! But the one I got should deliver according to tests, so I think it will be ok.

Hadn't seen cases where the PSU can be mounted at the bottom before, myself. So cases this size are fairly common now? Never saw them before, and I was quite surprised by the size when I got it. Wouldn't surprise me to learn that it's just me who's been out of touch, though. Wouldn't be the first time. There are vent holes in the bottom of the case, so no need for mounting the PSU upside down. I've been thinking about fashioning some taller feet for the case so the air from the PSU fan can flow easier, especially since the case will be standing on carpet.

Btw, how many 3.5" bays has your CoolerMaster case? I mean for HDDs? And were the fans already built-in or did you buy them and put them inside?

There are 5 HDD bays. I have only three drives for now, so I use the top, middle and bottom bay for better air flow. All the case fans came with the case, I didn't add any of them. You have several options for different kinds of fans, the top 230mm can be replaced with up to three 120mm ones, while there's room for four 120mm's instead of the single 230mm in the side for example.

[Demon Cleaner]

Tell you the truth, Harrison, I don't keep up with developments in PC hardware. Only when I'm about to build a new system do I start looking at what's available these days. And when deciding on something I pick out a couple of interesting options and pick one based on various reviews and comparisons if they exist.

This is the same for me, usually when I'm buying some new stuff, especially when it comes to PCs, I start reading what's new on the market, and what's good. Funny is that today I got a magazine about PC hardware which I ordered some days ago, so there might be something interesting inside

Btw, I always used cooling hardware from Zalman so far, which I think is very good.

[Harrison]

Zalman make some good products that is true. Recently I've always gone with Arctic Cooling products for heatsinks because they seem to perform very well for their price.

For PSUs the best you can buy is meant to be PC P&C PSU's.

The main thing to look for when buying a PSU isn't actually the total Wattage they can deliver, but the Amp rating on each rail. And for modern PCs it is better to get a PSU with a single or two +12V rails instead of 4 or 5. This is so that the Amps being supplied can be delivered on that single rail, instead of being split between them all, meaning one rail only gets about 20A.

For the GTX285 it needs up to 40A on a single rail, so Teho make sure your PSU can deliver that on a single rail. You should however be OK if you delivers at least 20A though, but more is better.

But definitely take a look at the ATI Radeon HD 4890 1GB cards as they are powerful cards for the money. Or for the most powerful ATI card look at the 4870 x2 which is a dual graphics card like the GTX295, but still cheaper than the GTX285. And ATI graphics drivers are now very good, but you will still find some people saying they won't buy ATI because of the drivers.

BTW, if any of you need some advice on current PC hardware just ask. I try to keep up with current PC hardware so should be able to give a few tips. I never like to pay over the odds for PC hardware so am always looking for the best value for money for the performance hardware delivers.

[Demon Cleaner]

I use Enermax PSUs.

http://www.enermaxusa.com/

BTW, if any of you need some advice on current PC hardware just ask. I try to keep up with current PC hardware so should be able to give a few tips. I never like to pay over the odds for PC hardware so am always looking for the best value for money for the performance hardware delivers.

Will keep that in mind.