Opinions On My New/Upgraded Computer - Calgarypuck Forums - The Unofficial Calgary Flames Fan Community

Nehkara · 01-09-2013, 10:51 AM

Hey guys!

I am going to be building a PC here in the very near future. Mostly new parts but a few will be re-used (HDD, SSD, Internal Blu-Ray Drive, GPU).

This will be my setup:

NEW:

MSI Z77A-G45 Motherboard
Intel i5-3570K CPU
Antec Kuhler 920 Liquid CPU Cooler
16 GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3 1600 MHz Corsair Vengeance CL10 RAM
Corsair CX750 750 watt PSU
Corsair C70 Vengeance Case (Military Green

)

Recycled:

1 TB Western Digital Black HDD
120 GB Corsair Force Series SSD
ASUS Internal Blu-Ray Optical Drive
AMD Radeon HD 6950 2GB Video Card (To be replaced in ~4 months by new card)

What I am wondering is if there are any weaknesses in the above build? Things that don't work well together, etc?

As far as I can tell my next upgrade after this would be to get a faster/larger SSD.

Also, one last side question: I have Windows 7 64-bit. Is it worth the upgrade to Windows 8 for a gaming PC? I have heard mixed reviews.

Comments/suggestions are welcome!

Edit: Removed Radeon 7970.

PsYcNeT · 01-09-2013, 11:01 AM

Looks pretty ballin' to me. Though you may want to wait 3 or so months, since Intel is releasing the Haswell series in March/April.

It's also rumoured that nVidia sped up production on the 700 series video cards, so something like a 770 may be out by then and have better performance at the same price point as a 7970 GHz.

Nehkara · 01-09-2013, 12:01 PM

Thanks PsYcNeT!

I thought about waiting for Haswell but all indications are that those CPUs will not be much of an improvement on existing CPUs. Haswell apparently is focused on low-power/mobile processors and while there will be new generations of the "high end" desktop processors, they don't look to be any more powerful really.

On the flip side, I did not know that nVidia was coming to market with the 700 series so soon, I'll check that out!

PsYcNeT · 01-09-2013, 12:07 PM

Even if the Haswell CPUs are only incrementally better than the Gen3 i5/i7s, you might find it drops the price a bit too...though the price drop from a i5-2500k to an i5-3570k was like, $20...

On the topic of RAM, Samsung started rolling out production line DDR4 sticks last September (though for server setups), so it's possible Haswell will feature a new RAM set as well.

Nehkara · 01-09-2013, 01:16 PM

Well... AMD did their best to confuse me. For the OEM market, they will be launching their 8000 series GPUs this week but none of them will actually be updated GPUs, they are all just rebranded 7000 series cards.

HOWEVER, they are still going to be releasing a line of GPUs that actually are higher performing (what was supposed to be the 8900 series are code-named Curacao LE, Pro, and XT).

The question now is... if there is an OEM release of 8000 series cards that hold the exact same number designations (which are really 7000 series cards) as the actual more powerful retail 8000 series cards, how does that work?

Can we assume that the more powerful parts like the Curacao XT will now hold different designations? (Radeon HOLYWOWTHISISAPOWERFULCARD 1500 SuperXTXMega???)

My head hurts.

Anyway, those cards are supposed to be coming out in the second quarter of 2013 (Apr-Jun) so I will probably get the Curacao XT. It sounds like the 700 series from nVidia will arrive after the new series from AMD.

For now I think I will scrap the plan to get a 7970 GHz edition and just keep running my trusty Radeon HD 6950 2GB.

Kipperriffic · 01-09-2013, 06:30 PM

That is more than enough to run every program today; whether its a game or some other heavy program

Im staying away from Windows 8 simply because, like you, I've heard people say its not that good...they could be wrong; I have not done any research into it. And I'm just comfortable with Win 7 so why change...

Jacks · 01-09-2013, 06:49 PM

Never tried Win8 but you can't go wrong avoiding every second edition of Windows.

Win 3.11 - Great
Win 95 - Okay but really buggy
Win 98SE - Good
Win ME - Crap
Win XP - Great
Win Vista - Crap
Win 7 - Good
Win 8 - ?

Canuck-Hater · 01-10-2013, 02:27 PM

I'm also thinking of building a new computer but I can't decide between a few motherboards, I was thinking of getting either:
http://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/MX38605
or
http://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/MX32591

Any advice?

OldDutch · 01-11-2013, 09:12 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jacks

Never tried Win8 but you can't go wrong avoiding every second edition of Windows.

Win 3.11 - Great
Win 95 - Okay but really buggy
Win 98SE - Good
Win ME - Crap
Win2000 - Excellent (Prob best quality OS ever released be MSFT )
Win XP - Great
Win Vista - Crap
Win 7 - Good
Win 8 - ?

I agree, but Fixed to add the only time MSFT ever realeased back to back winners.

TorqueDog · 01-11-2013, 11:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jacks

Never tried Win8 but you can't go wrong avoiding every second edition of Windows.

Win 3.11 - Great
Win 95 - Okay but really buggy
Win 98 - Ehhh
Win 98SE - Good
Win ME - Crap
Win 2000 - Great
Win XP - Great
Win Vista - Crap
Win 7 - Good
Win 8 - ?

Fixed again.

And I don't think I need to say that I think Win 8 is awesome.

morgin · 01-11-2013, 11:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TorqueDog

Fixed again.

And I don't think I need to say that I think Win 8 is awesome.

Vista wasn't "crap". Vista was a totally capable OS with ####ty third party driver support and deployed by hardware vendors on machines that just couldn't handle it. Vista is at worst "ok", but generally speaking vista hate is so ridiculous.

Bobblehead · 01-11-2013, 11:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by OldDutch

I agree, but Fixed to add the only time MSFT ever realeased back to back winners.

I'd disagree. Not about how good Win2000 was, but Win2000 wasn't a consumer OS.

And Windows 3.1 wasn't really an OS. It was more of a shell on top of MS-DOS.

I still think Windows (and MS Office) got such a stranglehold on the market because it was so pirated in its early days. So many people shared Win3.1 and then found out how easy it was in a GUI environment (no commands to memorize! Very little typing!) that it became the standard.

Rathji · 01-11-2013, 11:48 AM

Most of the Vista hate, IMHO, is based on 3 things:

UAC - This was a problem because whenever poorly coded 3rd party applications were requesting privileges to run (not just install). It also didn't play well with some hardware, causing the delay for the prompt to come up to be really long.

Timing - It came out during a time when computing power available in machines was growing at a pretty good clip. If you had a 2 year old machine and tried to install Vista on it, likely it was well below the recommended specs to actually do anything. If that same situation had happened today, it wouldn't have such a big impact.

Drivers - I can't even count the number of printers and video cards that I have had to upgrade due to bad/non-existent Vista drivers.

2 of those problems are not directly the fault of MS.

On a more Windows 8 related note:

I just finished my 30day free trial of Start8, a product of Stardock that removes most of the problems that a typical user of Windows 8 would have. Basically, it replaces the new start menu with a fully tweakable Windows 7 style start menu. Plus, it is just $5. I cannot stress enough how good it is, even if you don't really mind the new Start menu.

It is also available in a bundle right now, with Decor8, a product which adds some more customizability to the start screen, which is normally only a choice of maybe a dozen colour/patterns combinations, for $8.

https://store.stardock.com/product.a...=ESD-SDS-W1220

Jacks · 01-11-2013, 01:16 PM

I never really thought of Win 2000 as a consumer level OS. Same with NT 4.0 which was excellent but not the best choice for home users.

Disclaimer: I never used Win 2000, only going by what I was told.

PsYcNeT · 01-11-2013, 01:32 PM

To weigh in on Windows 8, I just yesterday received my new laptop with Windows 8 pre-loaded. After about 4 hours of installing an mSATA SSD, reducing the primary partition, cloning it to the SSD, removing the HDD, reinstalling the HDD, deleting all the unnecessary partitions, and smiling because I didn't fail at doing what a apparently a lot of people have trouble with (forgetting the step to change the SSDs partition system to the same as the existing HDD before cloning I assume is the big one), I have to say:

I like Windows 8. It's neat.

Inglewood Jack · 01-11-2013, 01:38 PM

there needs to be a Windows deathmatch to determine the greatest of all time. my vote is still for 7, for the combination of speed, stability and ease of use. in 3.5 years on both home and work computers, I have not experienced a single fatal error that required any sort of hard reset. cannot say that at all about any previous edition. Win7 still suffers from rot over time though, I wonder if 8 did anything to address that.

TorqueDog · 01-11-2013, 01:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by morgin

Vista wasn't "crap". Vista was a totally capable OS with ####ty third party driver support and deployed by hardware vendors on machines that just couldn't handle it. Vista is at worst "ok", but generally speaking vista hate is so ridiculous.

I actually didn't add Vista = Crap. That was already there.

I was an early-adopter of Vista and routinely touted that Vista was better than XP, where stability and recovery from failure was concerned: Even with the less-than-ideal driver support under Vista RTM, I experienced far far FAR fewer STOP errors under Vista than I ever did under XP SP2.

On the other hand, one major complaint I had with Vista was the feel and responsiveness of the OS. Start > Computer, I see my hard drive. I double click the hard drive, it spends five minutes pondering the meaning of life before finally opening the drive. During this five minute coffee break Explorer.exe seems to be taking, nothing disk intensive is happening in the background. I click on the 'Computer' window only to get the swirling Vista 'busy' cursor and the window fades, letting me know that it is no longer responding to me.

It wasn't always consistent or really measurable, but sometimes Vista would arbitrarily shart itself doing completely routine and mundane tasks, like opening a drive or a folder, with no rhyme or reason. I once sat at my computer shouting "WHAT ARE YOU DOING THAT IS SO MUCH MORE IMPORTANT THAN WHAT I JUST ASKED YOU TO DO? WHAT? SERIOUSLY." Just drove me insane at times.

PsYcNeT · 01-11-2013, 01:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TorqueDog

I actually didn't add Vista = Crap. That was already there.

I was an early-adopter of Vista and routinely touted that Vista was better than XP, where stability and recovery from failure was concerned: Even with the less-than-ideal driver support under Vista RTM, I experienced far far FAR fewer STOP errors under Vista than I ever did under XP SP2.

On the other hand, one major complaint I had with Vista was the feel and responsiveness of the OS. Start > Computer, I see my hard drive. I double click the hard drive, it spends five minutes pondering the meaning of life before finally opening the drive. During this five minute coffee break Explorer.exe seems to be taking, nothing disk intensive is happening in the background. I click on the 'Computer' window only to get the swirling Vista 'busy' cursor and the window fades, letting me know that it is no longer responding to me.

It wasn't always consistent or really measurable, but sometimes Vista would arbitrarily shart itself doing completely routine and mundane tasks, like opening a drive or a folder, with no rhyme or reason. I once sat at my computer shouting "WHAT ARE YOU DOING THAT IS SO MUCH MORE IMPORTANT THAN WHAT I JUST ASKED YOU TO DO? WHAT? SERIOUSLY." Just drove me insane at times.

This is the best thing about the SSD revolution. I honestly can't STAND to use a PC with it's OS on a mechanical HDD. It's so goddamn painful.

sclitheroe · 01-11-2013, 09:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bobblehead

And Windows 3.1 wasn't really an OS. It was more of a shell on top of MS-DOS.

It was an operating system - DOS was essentially its real-mode bootloader. But once Windows 3.1 was up and running, it implemented a complete API for performing all I/O and memory management - it therefore qualifies as an operating system in it's own right.

Brannigans Law · 02-13-2013, 10:51 PM

Didn't want to create a new thread so bumping this.. I'm looking at a new build and I'm trying to pick components based on bang for buck but also quiet pieces. I'm looking at video cards and memory express under 300 dollars. Can anyone recommend a whisper quiet video card that stays quiet even under heavy loads? Or as quiet as can be expected at heavy loads? Thanks

Seems to be
http://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/MX38931

vs

http://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/MX40143