System Builder Marathon Q3 2014: Mainstream Enthusiast PC

[Onus]

To touch on something I mentioned in Paul's thread, Don did you happen to point an IR thermometer at the mobo VRMs during your testing?

 

[Crashman]

First of all, Onus is right. Second of all, one often needs a BIG change in cooling to see a SMALL change in temperature with Haswell.The "90's" might have improved TIM, but as we've seen from the motherboard roundups it isn't a cure-all. You're still getting luck-of the draw, you're just drawing from a slightly better deck.

Any cooler reviews that use a CPU with superior thermal conductivity are irrelevant, which is why I don't post links to irrelevant sites.

I kind of feel like this discussion is devolving but, here is a what I would hope you would consider a "relevant" link to a 212 evo on what you would have to agree is a cpu without superior thermal conductivity.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/enthusiast-pc-under-1300,3856-14.html

Your own testing shows 53 above ambient on a clearly inferior thermal package.
If you still believe the EVO couldn't cut it, I will personally send you one with a stick of Arctice Silver and some detailed instructions on best application method and await your testing.

I've used both coolers, Stock the EVO is a close match, add a 2nd stock fan and it's superior.
I am in no way affiliated with Cooler Master.
Just a rabid fanboy of the EVO, I guess

I have the EVO, I've used it well, and Don has used it in many of his builds. I'm pretty sure he'd be up against his CPU's thermal limit if he'd used it, but maybe he'd be just below it. It's not something I'd want to try if I were him: I have one here that hits 77C over-ambient at 1.25V core (much less than he used) on a Core i7-4770K.

 

[fkr]

you can get any i5 k-series for $225 then spend another $30 on a cooler which takes you to $255 all together. if you spend another $45 on a cooler ($75 all together) then you could have just bought a i7 3770 for $300.

All I am trying to get across is that unless you just enjoy overclocking everything like i do then it is just a waste to spend more than $35 on a CPU cooler . No quad CF/SLI configuration needs anything more than an i5 and as far as productivity goes getting an i7 will serve you better than an overclocked i5.

Oh, I completely agree with this (not sure why anyone would buy two coolers though). Furthermore, if overclocking is not a goal (but it was in this SBM build), the only reason for any aftermarket cooler is to reduce noise, in which case $20 ought to do it (I've seen the Hyper212+ at that price lately; competitors are often there too).

I know overclocking was a goal with this build as I said in an earlier post that it was a nice experiment about price/performance especially when you take into account if your CPU will even be able to overclock that well. Of course you do not need a second CPU cooler I was just trying to illustrate the difference of spending more for the CPU cooler instead of getting a better CPU. I just really question spending $80+ dollars on a CPU cooler unless you are already spending the $500-1000 on the CPU. If you are spending that much then sure pulling every last ounce of power makes sense since you cannot get a better CPU anyway.

Overall a great set of builds for this quarter and I really enjoyed the read, especially the budget build.

 

[cleeve]

Why would you orient the Noctua-14 vertically here? Wouldn't you want it horizontal, with the 2 fans pulling cool air in front the front intake fans, and pushing it out toward the rear exhaust fan?

Because Horizontally the RAM was even more difficult to deal with.

 

[Rapajez]

Why would you orient the Noctua-14 vertically here? Wouldn't you want it horizontal, with the 2 fans pulling cool air in front the front intake fans, and pushing it out toward the rear exhaust fan?

Because Horizontally the RAM was even more difficult to deal with.

Couldn't you have applied your "hacksaw" mod to the other stick and called it a day? Not sure how big a difference it would have made in the end, but it seems like overall airflow would be a little hampered.

I guess for most users, the takeaway would be "don't buy big RAM heat-syncs if you want a big air cooler".

 

[Crashman]

Why would you orient the Noctua-14 vertically here? Wouldn't you want it horizontal, with the 2 fans pulling cool air in front the front intake fans, and pushing it out toward the rear exhaust fan?

Because Horizontally the RAM was even more difficult to deal with.

Couldn't you have applied your "hacksaw" mod to the other stick and called it a day? Not sure how big a difference it would have made in the end, but it seems like overall airflow would be a little hampered.

I guess for most users, the takeaway would be "don't buy big RAM heat-syncs if you want a big air cooler".

The easiest solution is outlined in my NH-D14 review. You get shorter RAM. Look at the high-end build: RipJaws X fits but requires the fan to be raised, Ares fits even better.

 

[blorgus]

I'm looking at building something along these lines but looking to shave some dollars off the motherboard purchase, and possibly the processor since I don't usually end up messing with the overclocking anyway, and now that the 970 IS available I'm planning on going with that for the GPU.

Anyone have suggestions for a motherboard under $100 that could work, thoughts on taking the processor a step back and/or suggestions for an alternate processor, or all of the above?

 

[RedJaron]

Anyone have suggestions for a motherboard under $100 that could work, thoughts on taking the processor a step back and/or suggestions for an alternate processor, or all of the above?

If you don't want to OC, an i5-4460 would be a nice route. You still get a true quad-core and you can also save money by staying with the stock cooler. The ASRock H97M Pro4 is usually around $80 and is a very nice board if you're not OCing. However it is an H chipset, so it won't support SLI. For SLI the ASRock Z97M Pro4 is right at $100.

 

[fwupow]

Wow! Tom's Hardware has essentially become unusable for me. The amount of advertising and tracking is off the chain and choking my wee little EeePc to death and beyond. The page load time is longer than the content is worth.

On another note, AMD is pretty much over isn't it? Basically nothing has changed since 2011 which in some ways is good, but it's like the mobo industry has given up on AMD. The only AM3+ Mobo to ever support 4-way SLI or 4-way Crossfire X was the Gigabyte GA 990FXA-UD7 and it's Out-Of-Stock everywhere. That is really a sad state of affairs because it's like "Yeah, we're not even trying to play in gamerville." Asus Crosshair V Formula Z Vicks 44 (Seriously?) Republic of Gamers (Really? and U can only do 3-way X-fire?) This is what I call giving up. Most games don't even really tax the cpu, so an All AMD system ought to be putting up some respectable 3DMark(s) with a good 4-way CrossFire board. AMD and it's Mobo people need to get their act together. Even if they can't make a CPU that competes with Intel, why not the PCIe 3.0 and chipset upgrades?

 

[blorgus]

RE: SLI and CrossFire, i went with a pair of Crossfired Radeon HD 4870's on my last build and I'd say my results were pretty mixed. A few games it made a noticeable difference to playability (I remember this being especially true of Mass Effect 3), but in a lot of games the performance boost seemed minimal and in still others there'd be bad strobing. What's the attitude towards those techs these days? My gut instinct is to funnel that money into buying 1 higher-end GPU rather than splitting it up over two mid-range ones.

 

[Rapajez]

AMD fixed the strobing/stuttering 1 or 2 generations ago. In general, unless you're playing on a 4K monitor, you're better off with 1 fast card. It eliminates SLI/CF problems and driver issues, and it leaves up the option of purchasing a 2nd card for SLI/CF down the road.

 

[RedJaron]

My gut instinct is to funnel that money into buying 1 higher-end GPU rather than splitting it up over two mid-range ones.

The reason you'd see inconsistent results in older games is because multi-card support wasn't as refined as it is now. Some games scaled well, some poorly, and some completely ignored the second card. Most games now support SLI/XFire, but you still have that random that doesn't like SLI, that doesn't like the XFire profile, or whatever.

My usual advice is to go with one GPU. Most gaming systems don't benefit from multi-GPUs these days because the vast majority of gamers are still playing on a single display. A mid-range card is powerful enough to comfortably run most games at 1080p on med-high settings. There isn't anything wrong with getting a more powerful card and hoping for some extra longevity out of it, though.

You need good money invested in displays to make use of massive graphical horsepower. That means triple displays, 120Hz+ screen(s), or 4K screen. Outside of that, there's usually not a point other than bragging rights. Funnily enough, the very top-end cards are in a strange place right now. They're strong enough that they're wasted on single 1080p60 screens, but they're not always strong enough on their own to power 4K or triple-screen gaming on the highest settings.

I'm not a fan of getting one card now and then planning to add-in a second in the future. You might be a generation or two behind by the time you upgrade. At that point, you're spending money on old tech to double your power draw and are limited to SLI/XFire performance scaling. And that's assuming you can still find the card you need. I would rather spend money on a new card with support for new rendering tech and better power efficiency. If you want multiple GPUs, you're best off getting them from the beginning.

 

[Onus]

Although I made sure my last "big" systems both had SLI/Crossfire capability, I've never run more than one card myself. I'm not even using my HD7970 these days (but might soon as I consolidate my systems).

 

[Rapajez]

Agreed with RedJaron, but usually we're only talking an extra $20-30 on the mobo, and $30-40 on a stronger PSU (especially these days, with the 900 series), and you at least leave open the option of a future SLI/CF setup.