I'm about to build my first computer. I've been researching parts for a while, and I finally have all the components. I am going to start building it now. Wish me luck! I'll post updates.

Case: Cooler Master HAF 932
CPU: I7 sandy vagina 2600k/ (enabling turbo boost to clock at 3.8GHZ)
Cooler: Cooler Master hyper 212
RAM: G-Skill ripjaws 8GB 1600mhz
Graphics card: EVGA GTX-570 superclocked
HD: WD caviar black 1TB 6GB/s
PSU: Cooler Master 800W 80 plus gold modular
DVD drive: Sony
OS: Windows 7 64
Other stuff: 2 Cooler Master blue LED fans for the case

I am going to add an SSD sometime soon.

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Did I read this right? Vagina you mean sandybridge?





dude it's worth getting SSD and I got 2x64gb SSD running in raid 0 and shit damn win 7 start so damn fast!

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PS3 Friend list name: Pantherxx Wii code 1629-0463-4657-0263 (revised 9/28/07) Steam ID - Pantherxx010 62BLU 75PLD Reactived 7/5/10 I dare you Click this!

I was making a joke, yes it's a sandybridge.

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I thought so! (joke part)

Hey this cpu is WORTH IT also my Corsair H80 closed loop watercool works great!

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PS3 Friend list name: Pantherxx Wii code 1629-0463-4657-0263 (revised 9/28/07) Steam ID - Pantherxx010 62BLU 75PLD Reactived 7/5/10 I dare you Click this!

Well, it fired right up. I'm pretty happy with that. Installed windows 7 and drivers, and everything is golden so far. I can't wait to see the difference on FFXIV, but that will have to wait till tomorrow.

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well I did my clean install of win 7 but I got upgrade version, due to this I need to reinstall win xp then I can upgrade it or it will not run on win 7 for more than 30 days XD. So Hunt of my XP goes on.

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PS3 Friend list name: Pantherxx Wii code 1629-0463-4657-0263 (revised 9/28/07) Steam ID - Pantherxx010 62BLU 75PLD Reactived 7/5/10 I dare you Click this!

You can fix that (install an upgrade version without upgrading) quite easily.

Assuming you've already installed Windows 7 but it's in "trial mode". Follow the instructions titled "Method #2" here (it's about halfway down the page):

http://www.winsupersite.com/article/win ... rade-media

If it doesn't work, try Method #3. Which is to reinstall Windows 7 on top of itself and choose "Upgrade". Because you "upgraded", it will activate with an Upgrade serial key. However in my experience, Method #2 works just fine.

ok ket I'll try it thanks brb

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PS3 Friend list name: Pantherxx Wii code 1629-0463-4657-0263 (revised 9/28/07) Steam ID - Pantherxx010 62BLU 75PLD Reactived 7/5/10 I dare you Click this!

WOOT! THANKS to KET! our computer wiz! #3rd really did the trick!

but 2nd didn't work as I did it careful! so no go.

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PS3 Friend list name: Pantherxx Wii code 1629-0463-4657-0263 (revised 9/28/07) Steam ID - Pantherxx010 62BLU 75PLD Reactived 7/5/10 I dare you Click this!

Kluya, that all looks awesome. The Coolermaster heatsink you got there is really great, you can do a little overclocking and still have it run cooler than the OEM one.



I personally don't think SSD's are worth it yet for normal home users due to the cost, but I also rarely shut down my computer so I don't worry about startup times lol.

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[In Yarr we trust.]

Nice sir! CG on PC rank up irl.

Thanks guys, i'm really excited about it.

I have a 1920X1080 LCD monitor and I prefer playing at full res...

I've only played Borderlands and FFXIV so far. Borderlands was easy to max out at 1920X1080, FFXIV not so much lol.

At 1920X1080 FFXIV has horrible vsync issues and there is no option to turn on vsync in the game. Forcing vsync through the nvidia control panel fixes the issue, but kills the frame rate. I have to run on standard settings at that resolution to get a good framerate with vsync on. At 1600X900 windowed (what I played on previous setup) I can crank the settings and get 60FPS since vsync isn't necessary at that res.

My old core duo CPU ran at 70-80% when running FFXIV. The I7 runs around 20% and always stays cool. The graphcs card runs @ 50% and kinda hot near 75-80 degrees when playing FFXIV.

I don't know what the fuck is needed to run this game maxed at 1920X1080 or higher. I just don't think it's possible with more than 30FPS haha. Expecially since this game doesn't recognize SLI or crossfire.

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The game does recognize SLI, i just tried it and i ran it on max and both of my gpu's were at ~95% @ 60fps. My CPU was at ~10% but that's because it's really OC'ed.

[Video Settings]
1920x1080
16xQ CSAA
10
3
Highest
[Graphics]
DOF
High
Highest

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Wow nice, what cards are you running? What is their temperature when running @ 95%? Do you have any v sync issues? (screan tearing). In the future i'm either going to buy another GTX 570 or just upgrade to a 580 since 2 570s draws so much power.

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I have 2x 480's but they're water cooled, so they run at ~35 max. I'd go for 2 570's if i were you, sli scales so well now, it's worth it. That 800w 80+ rated should handle the sli setup, in fact, it shouldn't go over 700w often with the sli setup. I don't have tearing, i have the common fps slow down when loading textures though (~5fps drop max).

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Ok cool thanks for the info. Your setup is awesome haha

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You should be able to max out FFXIV at 1920x1080 easily with that PC (barring the retarded 10 setting for the drawing distance or w/e it is that doesn't do shit anyway other than give you some crazy lag for no reason -- keep that at 8). I have an i7 950 OC'd to 3.8ish GHz (moderate OC since I'm only using air), 6 gigs of DDR3 1600 OC'd to 1670ish, and a GTX580 and I was usually running FFXIV at 60+ FPS everywhere with maxed AA and anisotropic filtering. I do have a SSD raid0 configuration but that doesn't affect FPS of course, just loading the game. Also, while on the topic of that, I'd recommend a SSD raid if you have money to burn, otherwise an old spindle HDD raid is fine, especially since SSD raids require you to break the raid, secure erase both of them, and rebuild the raid every year or so depending on how often you use them unless you don't care about performance degradation.

DO you have any special cooling on your GTX580 Kayne? I get so scared when the 570 runs above 80. I manually adjusted the GPU fan so it cranks up higher, and that seems to help a lot (fan noise doesn't bother me).

I don't know why, but FFXIV runs that card really hard. It hits 99% in camps even when i'm the only person there, and that's 1600X900 with no AA and everything between standard and high, AO off, DOF off.

I really regret not getting an SSD. RAID0 on SSD is so hardcore lol. I can't imagine those loading times. My budget is ok and i'll be getting SSD soon.

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nah, no special cooling, and yeah it gets pretty hot lol

Try monitoring some elements with EVGA Precision Kluya. Precision also has a soft fan control you could use to increase fan speeds at lower temperatures, i remember when the 570's first came out the fan would kick in late, so it would remain really hot. If you increase the fan speed at lower temps, it may help keep it cooler.

Also you can monitor mem usage, mem clock, core clock, shader clock. I think that 570 should run ff with pretty good frames at high graphical settings.

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I've been using that program and I love it. I used it to increase the default fan speeds at different temperatures, and that helps a lot! The standard settings are really low. The fan would run like 50% when the card temperature was in the 80s. That's crazy haha.

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Admittedly I haven't had to research into computer parts in ages, but this is the first I've heard of this, what's the dig?

For non-Intel (not sure if they implemented this yet anyway) RAID controllers you have to do this since the TRIM command won't work on RAID configs. I also have older SSDs so I'd have to do this anyway even if they weren't RAIDed. Usually it takes a while for the degradation to affect anything anyway, unless of course you're torrenting and installing/uninstalling a lot of shit, which in that case means it would probably only take around 3-4 months to happen.

I think I've been running mine for over a year now without breaking, formatting, and re-forming and I'm still at 7.9 for the WEI rating (which is something else you really don't want to run a lot since it looks like it's raping your HDDs when it's doing its test).

how old is your SSD?

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Sounds like SSD still has a few issues to overcome before I think about putting it in my next build, I thought maybe they'd got over the "limited writes" problem (by getting the number astronomically high). I'm not likely to build a new PC for another 1-2 years now though, so maybe it'll be all sorted by then. I don't like the idea of having to be careful or I'll "wear my harddrive out", even if I knew I'd never actually get that far, its nice to know it's not gonna fail after a year or two.

The only SSD I have is in my Terraria server, because I wanted to make it a 100% silent, completely fanless ITX server. The thing barely touches the HDD so it'll probably last effectively forever.

In fact loading times have never bothered me too much. As long as it's fast enough to stream data in-game without slowing it down, I don't mind if I gotta wait 7-8 seconds to load the next area instead of 3. I've rarely even bothered with RAIDs outside of servers I've set up.

Thinking about it, as much as I like building my own computers, I don't really care so much about top of the line builds. I don't bother with RAID, don't touch SSDs or water cooling, and I've never bothered SLIing graphics cards. I'm just not a performance nut. I used to play Unreal Tournament (1999) at 320x240 with about 5 frames per second and loved every minute of it, ha.