New build, slow memory?

[voodoovyper]

So I posted my build on PC Part Picker and someone questioned why I purchased slow memory. Here's the build:

Intel Core i7-3770K
CPU Cooler: Zalman CNPS9900MAX-B
Asus SABERTOOTH Z77
G.Skill Ripjaws 16GB DDR3-1600
Crucial M4 256GB SSD
Seagate Barracuda 2TB 7200RPM HDD
Kingston HyperX 3K 120GB SSD
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 670 2GB
Cooler Master HAF 932 Advanced
Cooler Master Silent Pro M 850W PSU
Asus VS247H-P 23.6\\\" Monitor
CyberPower 1350A UPS

Is this guy right? Could I have purchased a better memory set for this build? What do you guys think?

 

[abekl]

The guy doesn't know what he's talking about. 1600MHz is the standard memory for ddr3 systems these days.

 

[voodoovyper]

The guy doesn't know what he's talking about. 1600MHz is the standard memory for ddr3 systems these days.

Well, is it bottle-necking the system in anyway? Is there a better memory that would give noticeable increase in performance for this particular build? I'm not saying this guy is or isn't well versed with this, but seeing someone state that made me at least want to question it.

 

[abekl]

The board supports up to 1866 MHz memory. Which would give you a very small performance bump over 1600MHz memory. I mean very very small bump. Noneed to spend money on it.

 

[Deleted member 217926]

^ Agreed. The integrated memory controller does not need RAM faster than DDR3 1600. You will see a 1% or less increase from going over that. The only exception is if you are rendering or encoding video professionally you would see a 4% to 5% increase in performance that would pay for itself over time. In gaming the benefit is 0.

Also if it's a gaming build the i5 3570k is a better choice.

I would get a Samsung 830 or Crucial M4 over that SSD. Here is the 256GB version for $162.

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/887983-REG//BI/865/KBID/1173


Coolermaster power supplies are crap. If you only want to run a single GTX 670 a 550w power supply is sufficient. For 2 in Sli a 750w model is fine. Stick with Corsair, Seasonic, PC Power and Cooling, XFX, Silverstone, Enermax, OCZ or Antec. Avoid Coolermaster and Thermaltake. They are priced like quality power supplies but most are not.

 

[photonboy]

^ Agreed. The integrated memory controller does not need RAM faster than DDR3 1600. You will see a 1% or less increase from going over that. The only exception is if you are rendering or encoding video professionally you would see a 4% to 5% increase in performance that would pay for itself over time. In gaming the benefit is 0.

Also if it's a gaming build the i5 3570k is a better choice.

I would get a Samsung 830 or Crucial M4 over that SSD. Here is the 256GB version for $162.

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/887983-REG//BI/865/KBID/1173


Coolermaster power supplies are crap. If you only want to run a single GTX 670 a 550w power supply is sufficient. For 2 in Sli a 750w model is fine. Stick with Corsair, Seasonic, PC Power and Cooling, XFX, Silverstone, Enermax, OCZ or Antec. Avoid Coolermaster and Thermaltake. They are priced like quality power supplies but most are not.

I agree with MOST of what you're saying.
- Samsung 830 is the most reliable choice (and it DOES really matter)
- i5-3570K is the best value CPU for gamers (the i7-3770K just has hyperthreads that a game won't use. Take the $100 difference and put it towards an awesome GTX680 like the Asus GTX680 TOP card for $540.)

It's actually almost IMPOSSIBLE to use hyperthreads. Some video conversion programs can fully, but even that's changing as they use GPU accelerated methods (OpenCL or a dedicated decoder), or the CPU software simply is bottlenecked by a plugin that's insufficiently multi-threaded (doesn't support eight threads).
- 1600MHz can't bottleneck that system in any noticeable way and is the best value by far
- I agree about Coolermaster likely being not a good PSU.

The ONLY thing I would slightly disagree on is this:
While a quality 550W would be adequate for even a stock GTX680 based system, I recommend a 750W to minimize noise. A 750Watt PSU will be quieter than a similar 550W PSU. Above 750Watts for this system and you're likely wasting your money as noise won't be reduced.

 

[Deleted member 217926]

3570K on sale at Tigerdirect for $179.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2373004&sku=I69-3570K&SRCCODE=LINKSHARE&cm_mmc_o=-ddCjC1bELltzywCjC-d2CjCdwwp&AffiliateID=lw9MynSeamY-vRMu0WF2nGgW7Br8nkj_EA

 

[photonboy]

BTW, here's a list of games I've confirmed will run better on the ASUS GTX680 TOP card than any GTX670. Not saying a GTX670 card isn't good, I'm just saying that if you have the money and WANT the best gaming experience here are the facts.

Games than BENEFIT from a GTX680 vs GTX670 (partial list):
- Witcher 2
- BF3
- Crysis 1 and 2
- Divinity 2
- Alice the Madness Returns (at 60FPS)
- Bulletstorm
- SKYRIM (plus official HD texture pack)
- Total War Shogun 2
- Anno 2070
- Metro 2033 (eats hardware for breakfast. Even my GTX680 dropped to 22FPS on full quality!)
- Batman Arkham City (disable DX11 features and PHYSX completely if you dislike STUTTER. I finally did and the visual difference is minor, but the game runs far, far smoother.)

Games that run the SAME on either card:
- Angry Birds
- Diablo 3
- Torchlight
- Bioshock 1
... (this list is very, very long.)

*Almost any game on the market will look awesome on a GTX670. Just to be clear, for games that are on the first list are bottlenecked by the GPU. While they look better on a GTX680 vs GTX670, most of the games wouldn't benefit from a better card. For example, Witcher 2 ran at 60FPS (barely) with everything enabled except "ubersampling" a feature which wouldn't make much of an impact likely in quality.

I strongly suggest using Adaptive VSYNC and tweaking games so you achieve 60FPS 95% to 100% of the time. I always start a game with FRAPS running and experiment if need be so I'm not constantly dropping below 60FPS.

If you don't know what Adaptive VSYNC is:
http://www.geforce.com/whats-new/articles/nvidia-geforce-301.42-whql-drivers-released/#nvidia-adaptive-vsync

It should NOT be enabled globally in your NVIDIA Control Panel, but rather on a per-game basis. (under "manager 3D settings ... "

If you do enable it Globally it might be okay, but I like to disable VSYNC sometimes for a game to see what the FPS is. If you have GLOBAL VSYNC enabled then everything is capped, regardless of what you do.

 

[voodoovyper]

Thank you all for the replies. I should add that all the components have already been purchased and I built the comp about 2 weeks ago! A few of the commenters on PC Part Picker also stated the PSU was over-kill, but I also did not specify that I am interested in adding another GTX 670 for SLI. And in this case, I believe it's better to be safe than sorry when a 850W doesn't cost all that much more than what would've been more fitting for the current build.

Money wasn't an issue, but performance for the dollar mattered. At the time, the hard drives I bought were on sale. As for the GPU, I didn't want to shell out massive amounts of extra money for the newest card with the newest features that only gave a slight boost to performance. I got what I thought was reasonably priced for today's market and am satisfied with my build. Just some ignorant clown on PC Part Picker had to make some note about the memory with zero elaboration.

They also didn't seem to understand my decision for multiple hard drives. Quite a few asked why actually. The 120gb ssd is for the OS and apps, the 256gb ssd is for Steam and games, and the 2tb hdd is for data, documents, pictures etc. Is this so abnormal?

 

[voodoovyper]

Best answer selected by voodoovyper.

 

[voodoovyper]

BTW, here's a list of games I've confirmed will run better on the ASUS GTX680 TOP card than any GTX670. Not saying a GTX670 card isn't good, I'm just saying that if you have the money and WANT the best gaming experience here are the facts.

Games than BENEFIT from a GTX680 vs GTX670 (partial list):
- Witcher 2
- BF3
- Crysis 1 and 2
- Divinity 2
- Alice the Madness Returns (at 60FPS)
- Bulletstorm
- SKYRIM (plus official HD texture pack)
- Total War Shogun 2
- Anno 2070
- Metro 2033 (eats hardware for breakfast. Even my GTX680 dropped to 22FPS on full quality!)
- Batman Arkham City (disable DX11 features and PHYSX completely if you dislike STUTTER. I finally did and the visual difference is minor, but the game runs far, far smoother.)

Games that run the SAME on either card:
- Angry Birds
- Diablo 3
- Torchlight
- Bioshock 1
... (this list is very, very long.)

*Almost any game on the market will look awesome on a GTX670. Just to be clear, for games that are on the first list are bottlenecked by the GPU. While they look better on a GTX680 vs GTX670, most of the games wouldn't benefit from a better card. For example, Witcher 2 ran at 60FPS (barely) with everything enabled except "ubersampling" a feature which wouldn't make much of an impact likely in quality.

I strongly suggest using Adaptive VSYNC and tweaking games so you achieve 60FPS 95% to 100% of the time. I always start a game with FRAPS running and experiment if need be so I'm not constantly dropping below 60FPS.

If you don't know what Adaptive VSYNC is:
http://www.geforce.com/whats-new/articles/nvidia-geforce-301.42-whql-drivers-released/#nvidia-adaptive-vsync

It should NOT be enabled globally in your NVIDIA Control Panel, but rather on a per-game basis. (under "manager 3D settings ... "

If you do enable it Globally it might be okay, but I like to disable VSYNC sometimes for a game to see what the FPS is. If you have GLOBAL VSYNC enabled then everything is capped, regardless of what you do.

Thanks for the info on Adaptive VSYNC. I do a similar process with my games as well. I run fraps in the background and go through the graphics settings for each game and see how much it effects the fps. In almost every game, however, I keep vsync enabled. I can't stand the screen tearing effect without it on.

 

[photonboy]

Thank you all for the replies. I should add that all the components have already been purchased and I built the comp about 2 weeks ago! A few of the commenters on PC Part Picker also stated the PSU was over-kill, but I also did not specify that I am interested in adding another GTX 670 for SLI. And in this case, I believe it's better to be safe than sorry when a 850W doesn't cost all that much more than what would've been more fitting for the current build.

Money wasn't an issue, but performance for the dollar mattered. At the time, the hard drives I bought were on sale. As for the GPU, I didn't want to shell out massive amounts of extra money for the newest card with the newest features that only gave a slight boost to performance. I got what I thought was reasonably priced for today's market and am satisfied with my build. Just some ignorant clown on PC Part Picker had to make some note about the memory with zero elaboration.

They also didn't seem to understand my decision for multiple hard drives. Quite a few asked why actually. The 120gb ssd is for the OS and apps, the 256gb ssd is for Steam and games, and the 2tb hdd is for data, documents, pictures etc. Is this so abnormal?

There's nothing specifically WRONG with that. I have an SSD for Windows and STEAM on a 2TB hard drive. However, I don't see why you didn't just go with a single large SSD for Windows/apps and STEAM. Anyway, you have a nice gaming rig now so enjoy it.