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Sirmike

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Jun 15, 2015
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I'm currently running this

cool master mid case
AMD Quad core Phenom 2 x4 9750 at 2.5 g
Mobo--- asus (hp) M2N68-La (narra3)
4G corsair ram
250g hard drive
Zalman oversized heat sink
Antecedent True power 550watt psu
AMD Radeon HD4870 Saphire graphics card

I'm going to build new system in a couple months ...

I want to upgrade current machine to run eyefinity . I have 2 options
1-buy a decent card that's in the eyefinity group ?
2-buy one of the gpu cards that I'm putting in new build ?
Option 2 is fine if the computer will support it I'm going to run 2x R9 280's
I can buy 1 now and one later and then put it in the new build .... THOUGHTS ?

I want to play around with a 3x1 setup but on new build I want 5x1 portrait
 
Solution
hotter-than-Vishera
I've just studied these sorts of things on my own and I try to stay up to date on the newest stuff. Let's just say that in the computer science profession, it's best to understand the stuff that does what you tell it to. Also it's great knowing what's best for gaming, I am a pretty solid PC gamer.

But back to a short-term graphics card: Your CPU's really weak so you can't get too good a graphics card, otherwise you will not experience any returns. I'd say either an EVGA FTW GTX 750 Ti, a Sapphire Dual-X R7 265, or an Asus Strix GTX 960. One of those should be a decent enough stopgap measure. They can run games decently but not three 1080p monitors.
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Not sure why that post "If" popped up.

You could build off the current board. The X79 platform is not as expensive as the X99 platform, as it still uses DDR3 RAM and you already have the other expensive part, the RAM. You can also grab the cheapest Ivy Bridge Extreme processor for about as much as the top Devil's Canyon processor.

Here are some suggestions if you feel you can sell the Rampage IV Extreme for a profit, these suggestions are based on total price excluding a case or optical drives. As long as the case supports ATX sized motherboards and is at least a mid-tower that has space for an 11" graphics card - be warned, I don't know how long the R9 Fury will be, it will be bigger than the Fury X no doubt - that case should work.

$680:
CPU: AMD FX 8350 ($170)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO ($30)
Motherboard: Asus M5A99 Pro ($120)
GPU: AMD Radeon R9 380 ($200)
PSU: Corsair CX750M ($80)
RAM: Crucial Ballistix Tactical 2x4GB DDR3 1600MHz CAS Latency 8 ($54)
HDD: Western Digital Blue 1TB WD10EZEX
Note: Newegg has a combo where if you buy the motherboard, CPU, and power supply in this kit, you get a $22 discount.

$900:
CPU: Intel Core i5-4690K ($240)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO
Motherboard: ASRock Z97 Extreme4 ($100)
GPU: EVGA GTX 970 FTW ($325)
RAM: Crucial Ballistix Tactical 2x4GB DDR3 1600MHz CAS Latency 8 ($54)
PSU: Rosewill Hive-650 ($64)
HDD: WD Black 1TB ($75)

CPU: Intel Core i5-4690k ($240)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO ($30)
Motherboard: ASRock Z97 Extreme4 ($100)
GPU: Asus STRIX GTX 980 ($500)

$1400:
CPU: Intel Core i7-4790k ($340)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO ($30)
Motherboard: Asus Z97-A ($140)
GPU: AMD R9 FURY ($550) *Make sure this is the "Fury", not the "Fury X". These cards will be out soon - the Fury X will be out Tuesday and the Fury will not be far behind it.
RAM: G.Skill Trident X DDR3-1600 CAS Latency 7 ($135)
SSD: Patriot Blaze 120GB ($50)
HDD: Western Digital Black 1TB WD1003FZEX ($75)
PSU: Corsair CX750M, Cooler Master G750M, or EVGA SuperNOVA NEX 750W ($74)



There are two reasons other than overclocking why you'd buy a ROG board: Quality components, and eye candy. I have a ROG Maximus VII HERO and it is the prettiest thing I have ever seen. It's basically a quality work that I didn't want to cheap out on. And you already have it, and you got it for cheap.

$700 pre-GPU
CPU: Intel Core i7-4820k ($320)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO ($30)
RAM: G.Skill Trident X DDR3-1600 CL7 2x8GB ($105) *On sale for $30 lower than usual
HDD: WD Black 1TB ($75)
PSU: Rosewill VALENS-700M ($90)
Case: Rosewill Armor-EVO ($72)

The GPU will vary based on how much money you have available. Keep an eye on whichever ones you might be able to afford. Since you have to dump so much into the CPU (that is the cheapest one that fits the Rampage IV) I'd recommend, at least in the near future, getting a card worth more than the CPU.

$200: AMD R9 380
$325: GTX 970 cheapest models
$390: EVGA GTX 970 FTW+
$500: GTX 980 cheapest models
$550: AMD R9 Fury
$620: Asus GTX 980 ROG Matrix
$650: GTX 980 Ti or R9 Fury X
$700: Aftermarket GTX 980 Ti (Gigabyte G1 Gaming, Asus Direct CU III, Asus ROG Matrix)

When you look at a graphics card, it should tell you what power pins are required. If the card requires two 8-pin connectors or more, then you need to buy the Rosewill Hive-750 instead of the Rosewill Valens-700 to keep plenty of breathing room. I know offhand that the Fury X requires this, the Fury likely requires this and aftermarket GTX 980 Ti cards with big aircoolers may require this. The Hive-750 costs the same as the Valens-700 because it has lower efficiency.
Something else to keep in mind is that the Fury X uses a liquid system. While it's probably maintenance free, accidents do happen.... which has partly kept me from LCS units in the past. However the Fury X is demonstrating itself to be an interesting chip, perhaps more so than the 980 Ti.
 
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I would definitely say the 4820k. It will perform better in gaming because it has a higher frequency of 3.7 GHz, and it's a newer CPU than the 3930K (the 4820k is an Ivy Bridge, the 3000 series. 3930K is a Sandy Bridge, the 2000 series. Intel's Extreme processors are always 1000 more than the rest of the architecture series.). Since it's newer, it means that it has more IPC, making it stronger per-core. It's therefore better for gaming, having a higher clock speed as well as a higher per-core performance, both of which being what games really need to perform. Plus, the X930K series generally costs $500-600 while the X820K series can be had for about $330.
 
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That is very iffy. If you are only running one graphics card, no. If you are running multiple graphics cards or are doing something else to use lots of PCIE lanes, maybe. If you are frequently using heavily threaded processes like streaming, recording or rendering, then probably. The big thing is that the 4930k still has a slower clock speed, and thus lesser performance per core, than the 4820k. Also, the 4930k costs almost twice as much as the 4820k. The 4930k does have 6 physical cores, however, and 40 PCIE lanes instead of 28. The former means you can do a better job running more processes at once, and the latter means you can control more devices plugged into your PCIE slots such as expensive SSDs, high-capacity wireless cards, extra USB ports, and most importantly, multiple graphics cards.
But since your budget isn't extravagantly huge, I would say you should be looking at one graphics card, and that you would be getting much more for your money with a 4820k.
 
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I have a razer barracuda sound card ... Is this garbage .. I'm not planning on using it I have 2 other sound cards already .. Is it worth keeping .. Is there a used listing forum on toms or ?
 
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The Barracuda doesn't seem bad at all, it is not cheap and it has 7.1 surround. It's got a decent rating on Newegg even though they do not sell it anymore. Keep a few things in mind, though:

- If you use a USB headset like I do, your sound card is irrelevant.
- Asus usually tries to do a good job on the sound card on their ROG boards. They sort of have been getting away with renaming the Realtek ALC1150 sound codec into the "ROG SupremeFX" onboard sound card, and that's because they do a good job isolating the sound card from electrical interference. As a ROG user I can testify that my boards onboard sound was pretty clean, although I'm a gamer, not an audiophile. That's one of the big things about a dedicated sound card.

Basically I think you should keep a dedicated sound card if you have speakers for a home theater style setup, or to use surround sound with 3.5mm cable headphones. USB headsets, such as the Logitech G930, typically have their own hardware and use the USB ports to bypass the computer's sound card altogether
 
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I put them in classifieds for 20 bucks each I don't forsee anyone will actually buy them but if they do maybe it will get put to use .. As I'm not a gamer but when the system gets done
I plan on starting . I am a musician. I listen to a ton of music . I am pushing a set of klipsch thx 4.1 speakers .i haven't looked at new sound cards too much but I will for sure at some point ..
Here's a track from the last cd I recorded bass on

http://youtu.be/8W6gSGtdqIQ
Ccv
 
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Well Asus makes some highly acclaimed sound cards, the Xonar series is supposed to be good. I do mean audiophile-good. Many other manufacturers make solid bass heavy gamer cards but generally Asus' Xonar cards are pretty good.
 
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Hey well I guess it didn't sink in until I tried installing a newer card in that older amd ..... Lol
FAIL .... I guess when that mobo was built they never anticipated
The video cards being the size they are cause this sucker will not let me seat the card unless hard drive sata cables are unplugged it doesn't fit ...
 
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I took cover off gpu 1- to see if it fit and worked . And to clean the coil ... Any throats on what I can do to make that work lol ..
Do I upgrade board and amd cpu ..recommendations ???
Remember this at the most will be for sale or something when other build is done so I don't want to go crazy
 
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You mean you took the shroud off your GPU? Well as far as that goes you can't/shouldn't do much to the GPU chip itself. You might want to replace the thermal paste but that's about it. Graphics cards are not modular like a desktop in general is. Might be nice to maybe replace the VRAM or add extra stream processors but you can't do much to improve your graphics card beyond overclocking it. The way it physically comes is the way it stays unless you do an aesthetic mod like paint the shroud.
 
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Im sorry ..i think my typing skills lost you …I will start from the top I went ahead and purchased a gpu for this older amd system …I found one on craigslist local spent very little on this xfx radeon HD 6950 2gb …. This thing is almost a foot long and it looks like they did that for air cooling purposes …anyway I removed the Radeon HD4870 and installed the Hd 6950 I noticed that the card will not seat in the pci-e slot to were it clicks “in seat” its because this card is hitting the top of the sata cable connections on the board …now I took the card back out and removed the plastic cover over the blower wheel on the card …as I expected very dirty in the coil in the card …I cleaned it up ..then installed the card without the plastic cover just to get an idea how far the card sat and then took the pictures I posted…. Do you think that a 90 deg angled low profile sata cable would work ???
Just looking for ideas??
 
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I don't think it would honestly hurt the airflow. How blower coolers like most reference designs - and this is a reference card, make no mistake - work is that the fan pulls air in, sometimes from the end of the shroud that you'd be cutting, the end adjacent to the SATA ports. The air passes through/over the heatsinks at the GPU chip, and then is ejected out the back of the case. In this scenario, the air is either being pulled in via the blower fan, in which case it could be bad because some air is not being directed over the chip if it escapes by the SATA ports in the newly-cut hole, or unaffecting. If the air is being pulled in via the back of the card, then this is a good thing as the card can now intake more air and do a better job cooling.
 
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CPU: Intel Core i7-4820k ($320)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO ($30)
RAM: G.Skill Trident X DDR3-1600 CL7 2x8GB ($105) *On sale for $30 lower than usual
HDD: WD Black 1TB ($75)
PSU: Rosewill VALENS-700M ($90)
Case: Rosewill Armor-EVO ($72)
You recommended these items on my current Rampage IV extreme ...
Is there a site that gives me a list of all cpu's that will work for that board ??
The i7 4820k
I seen ALOT of builds with this board and a lot of them used the i7 39xx 6core
I'm slowly getting parts ....as of right now
I need to get
PSU , GPU , RAM , SSD , HDD
I went with the h440 nzxt case ... It seemed like it took hours for me to make a decision on that case .. I even had to get 2 emails from Eric at nzxt stating that board will fit ... Lol


http://pcpartpicker.com/user/Sirmike/saved/YbVXsY
 
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Hi, before you buy anything. What's the ambient temperature where you live.

Buying a high-end CPU like i7 39xx or i7 4770k requires at least an NH-D14 or 2x120mm Rad water cooler to tame it.
 
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