That Thermaltake Lvl 10 case is sexy as hell. The cable management in there looks pretty darn good too. If there's anything that I could upgrade in the near future, it'll definitely be my case.
I've just taken a look at the case, I don't know, it looks like its a transformer ready to morph.. lol.. gotta admit though, the more I see it, the more I like it.
OMG it is a transformer! lol
Last edited by pasqo83; January 8th, 2012 at 01:01 PM.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by pasqo83
I've just taken a look at the case, I don't know, it looks like its a transformer ready to morph.. lol.. gotta admit though, the more I see it, the more I like it.
@IOWA - I can't even find it now, but chances are they probably did. lol.. how cool is that, imagine that is a fully motorised computer, how about taking that every where with you. All you need is 20AAA batteries for the PC itself and 10 for the remote and your on your way! lol
Yeah i quite like it, its a monster, loads of room for upgrade, extra hard drive and optical drive space or memory card slots etc... it hides the cables really well. the blue lights at the front where you have the additional usb and firewire are bloody powerful though lol.. only downside is it attracts dirt quite quickly,
Im not sure if it was just mine or not though, i get this vibration noise, everywhere and I mean everywhere is nice and tight and even got to the point I used a spirit leveler to make sure it was sitting level where it was positioned, can't figure it out, nothing moves on the bar-stand! lol
I was going to do the whole water setup with it but it would of cost me another £300 quid for the setup so couldnt be bothered with it.. Again, another upgrade option.
My first option was a Coolermaster Cosmos S, just love the look and build of it, but it was bigger than the HAF so chose that, plus the fact I got the HAF for £60 at the time when it was selling for £130, I couldn't really say no to that now could I. lol..
I would get it, you won't be disappointed - have you got one at the moment or still in the looking stages?
Check your actual fans - as in the blades - for vibration. A lot of times lower priced / quality fans will vibrate, particularly when they hang upside down (and thus are fighting gravity when blowing versus when not moving). Also, dust build up on the fan blades quickly will cause them to come out of balance and cause vibration as well. If you used the screws to secure them to the case versus to 'old style' rubber ... not grommets, but fasteners / holders, for lack of a better word, then the vibration transfers to the case rather easily.
3 solutions:
Keep your fans clean, and change the orientation of any that hang downward
Buy liquid-bearing fans for a much smoother / silent approach
u=Use the rubber holders I mentioned (or, conversely, apply thin rubber / silicon O-rings between the fans and the case to minimize vibration transfer).
Quote:
Originally Posted by NYCHitman1
That Thermaltake Lvl 10 case is sexy as hell. The cable management in there looks pretty darn good too. If there's anything that I could upgrade in the near future, it'll definitely be my case.
The Level 10 GT - the Original Level 10 was the all metal case built by Tt in association with BMW, and still retails for ~500, and is simply not as nice as the GT, but the outer housing for the GT is plastic - it's one and only (thus far) real downfall.
The Level 10 GT Snow Edition <-- I almost got this instead, but then realized I liked the all black look instead.
The Level 10 GT LCS (Liquid Cooling System) <-- too pricey for me, but I may 'upgrade' to it if I deem it worthy, probably not, though, since I have the Corsair H00 CPU Liquid Cooler already.
K so I built this rig for my little cousin for $ 500... it runs games like WoW, SW:TOR, and SC2 on high-ultra settings @ 60 fps. It can also run skyrim on high @55-60 fps full time.
I'll put the specs here, and write down later what you can upgrade, and give you my own rig's specs to compare...
- CPU: intel i3 2100 $120
- case: Coolermaster haf 912 $40
- cooling system: 200mm front intake, 200mm top exhaust, 120mm rear (included), 120mm side intake (included) ($20 total for the two 200mm fans)
- RAM: Gskill 2x4gb ddr3 1600mhz ram ($45)
- graphics card: ati radeon 6870 ($150)
- motherboard: MSI g43a-p67 $120
- PSU: Corsair TX 750
- HDD: i think it was a seagate, but 320gb drive for 30 bucks lol
- optical drive: asus cd/dvd burner 18 bucks
- media drive: none
- sound card: the one on the mobo is pretty good...
In my own rig:
- CPU: i5 2500k overclocked to 4.8ghz
- case: Coolermaster HAF 932
- cooling system: watercooled graphics cards, a noctua cpu cooler, and i have a strong intake, and strong top exhaust, and a crappy rear exhaust... cpu load temps 64c, gpu load temps 65C
- RAM: gskill eco 16gb ddr3 2100mhz ._.
- graphics card: 2x ati radeon HD 6990
- motherboard: msi board I forget name lol
- PSU: Corsair 1200w
- HDD: no hdd main drives, I have two 256gb SSD in raid 0, and a 500gb storage drive
- optical drive: none, as I stopped using CDs a few years ago :P
My rig runs BF3 on all maxed out settings at 60 fps. My cousin's can pull high settings with 4x AA and get 50+ fps... and it cost 1/3 the price of mine lols
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Yep, though I did not really use but one in my case. The fans are replaceable, and most places where 140 mm fans are there are also pre-drilled holes for 120 mm, and along the bottom you can put in a fan as I did.
Where else were you looking? Because the three 210mm fans that come with it are both quiet and moving (and by that I mean good CFMs).
I thought (briefly) about mounting the old HD cage I have from my old Tt case, the VArmour, in the three unused 5.25" drive bays, but decided that it was too much work to make it fit lol....
So, you have a 210 mm in the door for intake, a 210 mm in the front for intake across the hot swap bays, and you have a 210 mm on top for exhaust, plus a final 140 mm at the back for exhaust that draws cold air in the front 5.25" bays, across RAM and CPU cooler, and out the back.
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Yep, though I did not really use but one in my case. The fans are replaceable, and most places where 140 mm fans are there are also pre-drilled holes for 120 mm, and along the bottom you can put in a fan as I did.
Where else were you looking? Because the three 210mm fans that come with it are both quiet and moving (and by that I mean good CFMs).
I thought (briefly) about mounting the old HD cage I have from my old Tt case, the VArmour, in the three unused 5.25" drive bays, but decided that it was too much work to make it fit lol....
So, you have a 210 mm in the door for intake, a 210 mm in the front for intake across the hot swap bays, and you have a 210 mm on top for exhaust, plus a final 140 mm at the back for exhaust that draws cold air in the front 5.25" bays, across RAM and CPU cooler, and out the back.
I was just curious since I may want to mount another 120/140 for a little extra cooling.
Last edited by NYCHitman1; January 11th, 2012 at 09:59 AM.
Looks like I'll be biting the bullet and ordering the three upgrade pieces next week. I'm gonna try to post some pictures once I have finished the build.
Looks like I'll be biting the bullet and ordering the three upgrade pieces next week. I'm gonna try to post some pictures once I have finished the build.
Excellent, hope that goes well! Would you mind posting some frame rates before and after? Curious to see what kind of improvement you get.
Dude - I'm breaking 100 continuous on Deus Ex: Human Revolution, and Arkham City is way more fun now.
Skyrim? Well, let me just say this:
I had everything maxed out on a pair of 260s SLId with a 250 thrown in for PhysX. I still have everything maxed out on my current setup - but wow. It really looks different. It plays different - everything is a lot smoother, a lot more polished, and *fast!*
My next build will probably still be along triple channel memory and CPUs, unless Intel phases that out. I figure it's time for a 24 GB beast....with nothing but SSDs for System drives and Possibly VelociRaptors for data (Although, I'm telling you - a pair of 7200 rpm mech drives really kick when they want to).
Time to go to another forum - I need advice on the next tablet to buy - preferably *without* a data plan, as I already have my phone for that....
Dude - I'm breaking 100 continuous on Deus Ex: Human Revolution, and Arkham City is way more fun now.
Skyrim? Well, let me just say this:
I had everything maxed out on a pair of 260s SLId with a 250 thrown in for PhysX. I still have everything maxed out on my current setup - but wow. It really looks different. It plays different - everything is a lot smoother, a lot more polished, and *fast!*
My next build will probably still be along triple channel memory and CPUs, unless Intel phases that out. I figure it's time for a 24 GB beast....with nothing but SSDs for System drives and Possibly VelociRaptors for data (Although, I'm telling you - a pair of 7200 rpm mech drives really kick when they want to).
Time to go to another forum - I need advice on the next tablet to buy - preferably *without* a data plan, as I already have my phone for that....
Did I ever link the pics in here of my build?
Nope, you haven't posted any pics of your build. At least not that I am aware of. I just started Skyrim yesterday on PC, and I'm playing with everything maxed out. I didn't check how much FPS I was getting since I always play with vsync on, but it was smooth as butter with only 1 GTX 560 Ti Superclocked.
As for the tab, how much are you willing to put out?
If you can get the wiring clean/neat, go clear window. It's really up to you though.
Oh, I know. I was just looking for public opinion. I'm leaning towards the clear window, but wanted public opinion (for some unknown reason). That baby will be as sparkly clean (wire wise) as those sparkly teeth on Orbit gum commercials lol.
Ah, I didn't pick up on that before. Totally reconfigurable w/removable drive bays. Sweet!
Got enough fan spaces? That sucker's gonna sound like a jet engine if you really max it out.
I have an ancient steel full AT tower case. You can almost hear an echo in the thing, and it used to be a pain to route IDE & floppy cables all the way across to the drives.
Ah, I didn't pick up on that before. Totally reconfigurable w/removable drive bays. Sweet!
Got enough fan spaces? That sucker's gonna sound like a jet engine if you really max it out.
I have an ancient steel full AT tower case. You can almost hear an echo in the thing, and it used to be a pain to route IDE & floppy cables all the way across to the drives.
That's actually one of the added benefits of having the mesh window. It comes with four slots for 120mm fans. I could also mount two 120's on the bottom of the case near the PSU.
In retrospect, I kinda wish that I got an X58 board instead of Z68 for SLI purposes, but a little late for that now.
In retrospect, I kinda wish that I got an X58 board instead of Z68 for SLI purposes, but a little late for that now.
I think you can still run SLI, just not with as many PCIe lanes. Someone else surely knows better, but I thought that only the absolute latest fastest video boards were constrained by x8 lanes.
Anyway, your Z68 is 2.5yrs newer and can support full 6Gb/s SATA which the X58 can't. Also your CPU probably has both AVX and Quick Sync, neither of which is available on an X58 CPU. Oh yeah, and your CPU supports much faster RAM also.
Seems like big win to me (no offense to johnlgalt w/his fire-breathing X58).
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I think you can still run SLI, just not with as many PCIe lanes. Someone else surely knows better, but I thought that only the absolute latest fastest video boards were constrained by x8 lanes.
Anyway, your Z68 is 2.5yrs newer and can support full 6Gb/s SATA which the X58 can't. Also your CPU probably has both AVX and Quick Sync, neither of which is available on an X58 CPU. Oh yeah, and your CPU supports much faster RAM also.
Seems like big win to me (no offense to johnlgalt w/his fire-breathing X58).
I'm in agreement with you. I like all of the upsides of having a Z68 board, but unfortunately I only have 1 PCIe 2.0 x16 port that will run at full speed of x16. The other two ports scale down to x8 and x4 respectively. If I'm not mistaken, I believe if I did SLI - I would be forcing both of my cards to run at x8, which supposedly doesn't experience that much of performance degradation.
At least that's what it sounded like from the research I completed yesterday. Hopefully John being the mad scientist and all, maybe he can help me figure out the complete specifications of this small issue at hand.
EDIT: After doing some calculations (financial and otherwise), I'm trashing the whole SLI idea. Instead, I will be going big and getting the EVGA Superclocked GTX 580.
EDIT 2: I still am curious about the SLI thing, so if anyone has answers.. I would appreciate it lol
Last edited by NYCHitman1; February 3rd, 2012 at 06:01 AM.
I've only built a single card machine so I'm not 100% sure, but yeah, I reached a similar conclusion when I was researching motherboards.
From what I gathered, many of the motherboards within my price range would knock them both down to x8 if you added a second card. I don't know how significant that drop in bandwidth is though. I believe you can get ones that support two x16 cards, but obviously you're going to have to pay for the privilege.
EDIT: Which Z68 board do you have, specifically? It sounds like the standard is only 8/8 but there are some 16/16 variants out there.
Last edited by Xyro; February 6th, 2012 at 10:16 PM.
EDIT: Which Z68 board do you have, specifically? It sounds like the standard is only 8/8 but there are some 16/16 variants out there.
I have the Gigabyte GA-Z68A-D3H-B3 mobo.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Slug
SLI (and Crossfire afaik) require both cards operating at the same bus speed. So a x16 will drop down to x8 if used with a card in a x8-capable slot.
Ok, that sounds about right with what I originally thought after doing some digging around.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Xyro
Does it make a significant difference to performance?
I would assume that the degradation in performance varies from GPU to GPU, but I have heard of people running two GTX 580s in SLI and only having like a 3-4% drop in overall performance (when running in dual x8 mode).
Last edited by NYCHitman1; February 7th, 2012 at 06:06 AM.
Nice, man. I can understand your decisions versus mine, and more power to you! The (main) reason I opted for my case was the hot swappable drive bays - I can slap in 2 more SATA drives at will. Also, My x58 does do SLI, but I have two x16 slots and two x8 slots, so I have to be picky and choosy as to which slots I use. Since I am now not using SLI anymore, both my main GA and the dedicated PhysX card are in the x16 slots for max performance (and let's face it, with my 560 the 260 really is overkill on PhysX).
Slick pics NYC. Glad you got a new rig up and going.
One day I am going to have real money to build a true fun system for gaming and coding, but as a grad student I have to make do with what I can. Since the CPU was homeless in my possession for 2+ years, I built around it. Otherwise, it would have been a different story entirely....
1 x PCI Express x16 slot, running at x16 (PCIEX16)
* For optimum performance, if only one PCI Express graphics card is to be installed, be sure to install it in the PCIEX16 slot.
1 x PCI Express x16 slot, running at x8 (PCIEX8)
* The PCIEX8 slot shares bandwidth with the PCIEX16 slot. When the PCIEX8 slot is populated, the PCIEX16 slot will operate at up to x8 mode.
Nice, man. I can understand your decisions versus mine, and more power to you! The (main) reason I opted for my case was the hot swappable drive bays - I can slap in 2 more SATA drives at will. Also, My x58 does do SLI, but I have two x16 slots and two x8 slots, so I have to be picky and choosy as to which slots I use. Since I am now not using SLI anymore, both my main GA and the dedicated PhysX card are in the x16 slots for max performance (and let's face it, with my 560 the 260 really is overkill on PhysX).
Slick pics NYC. Glad you got a new rig up and going.
One day I am going to have real money to build a true fun system for gaming and coding, but as a grad student I have to make do with what I can. Since the CPU was homeless in my possession for 2+ years, I built around it. Otherwise, it would have been a different story entirely....
I definitely understand. I just used a small portion of my tax return to fund these new acquisitions, plus I had a $75 Amazon gift card that was itching to get used. I'm happy. I went in and added 2 Xigmatek 120mm white LED case fans which are now mounted on the mesh window (instead of the clear window). I guess I was feeling a little insecure about how hot the GPU ran, but these two fans easily cooled it down by a good 10-13c.
In any event, the GTX 580 is GINORMOUS. I actually sold my GTX 560 Ti on eBay for $200, which also made me super happy.
SLI (and Crossfire afaik) require both cards operating at the same bus speed. So a x16 will drop down to x8 if used with a card in a x8-capable slot.
I'm not sure that requirement has always been true. There actually is a little slop room, as you can Crossfire a 5750 with a 5770. I think some 16+8 motherboards don't actually have 24 PCIe lanes allocated for the two slots, so they have no choice but to provide 8+8 when both slots are in use.
Quote:
Originally Posted by NYCHitman1
I would assume that the degradation in performance varies from GPU to GPU, but I have heard of people running two GTX 580s in SLI and only having like a 3-4% drop in overall performance (when running in dual x8 mode).
That sounds right. I'm guessing the penalty is worse at higher resolutions, which need more bandwidth.
Nope, you haven't posted any pics of your build. At least not that I am aware of. I just started Skyrim yesterday on PC, and I'm playing with everything maxed out. I didn't check how much FPS I was getting since I always play with vsync on, but it was smooth as butter with only 1 GTX 560 Ti Superclocked.
As for the tab, how much are you willing to put out?
I'm looking for beastliness as well as lost of storage space, and I know the iPads 64GB are ~$800, so probably around that - however I'm anti-iAnything, so it'll have to be Android based. I played with the Transformer Prime in a local BB, and it was pretty neat, but I really need to research both the processors as well as expandability in these things.
I'm not sure that requirement has always been true. There actually is a little slop room, as you can Crossfire a 5750 with a 5770. I think some 16+8 motherboards don't actually have 24 PCIe lanes allocated for the two slots, so they have no choice but to provide 8+8 when both slots are in use.
Actually, they have to be of the same family when it comes to SLI. You can't share a 560 and a 480, but you can share a 570 and a 580, with the slower of the two cards being the bottleneck (the faster card scales down).
Even with my 260s, one was factory flashed to SSC bios and the other was stock, so SLI'd they'd operate at the stock speeds - but using eVGA's Precision utility, I OC'd the stock card to the SSC speeds and thus it didn't matter which card was the primary.
As for the number of lanes, yeah, I originally wanted the the X58 Classified mobo with the quad PCIe setup - they had an extra NF200 chip to accommodate the extra lane requirements so you could run 3 X 16 + 1 x 8, IIRC. It was ghastly expensive, though, for a mobo.
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As for the number of lanes, yeah, I originally wanted the the X58 Classified mobo with the quad PCIe setup - they had an extra NF200 chip to accommodate the extra lane requirements so you could run 3 X 16 + 1 x 8, IIRC. It was ghastly expensive, though, for a mobo.
Ouch, you'd better really need that capability (or be independently wealthy, that works too).
Quote:
Originally Posted by tacticool777
This thread is tempting me to build a new desktop. lol
So what's stopping you? Get to the Micro Center in North Jersey / Paterson and take advantage of the 3-day weekend to get that new bad boy rig together! (And pls post pix afterward)
Hey pokal, what's in your build? I'm still running my Core i7-870 going smooth & fast.
Quote:
Originally Posted by pokal
these are some elements that is necessaries in your desktop pc
- CPU
- case
- cooling system
- RAM
- graphics card
- motherboard
- PSU
- HDD
- optical drive
- media drive
- sound card
I'm looking for beastliness as well as lost of storage space, and I know the iPads 64GB are ~$800, so probably around that - however I'm anti-iAnything, so it'll have to be Android based. I played with the Transformer Prime in a local BB, and it was pretty neat, but I really need to research both the processors as well as expandability in these things.
As far as the TFP goes, it's the best of the best of the Android tablets currently. I'm anti-iAnything as well. I have contemplated purchasing a TFP, but I think I'm either going to wait for the 300T or 7" model.
Quote:
Originally Posted by pokal
these are some elements that is necessaries in your desktop pc
- CPU
- case
- cooling system
- RAM
- graphics card
- motherboard
- PSU
- HDD
- optical drive
- media drive
- sound card
You don't really need a sound card since a vast majority of modern motherboards come with onboard HD audio. I'm a little confused by your reference to a "media drive". Are you stating that he/she should purchase two HDDs? One for system boot and the second for media storage? If that is the case, SSD would be the way to go for system files and 500 GB+ for media (1 TB is generally the sweet spot, but are relatively expensive since the whole disaster that occurred where they are manufactured). Cooling system seems relatively useless to me also. Unless this person intends on having a 3 or 4-way SLI, water cooling is not worth the extra $. Just buy a nice case with quality air flow and add a few fans.. voila easier on the pocket and the rig.
Last edited by NYCHitman1; February 18th, 2012 at 12:13 PM.
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After a month of thought (my previous post in this thread was on Jan. 6), I decided a slight upgrade was in order.
My current build is:
Asus Crosshair III Formula
AMD Phenom II x4 955 BE
8 GB (4x2GB) OCZ BE memory
EVGA GeForec GTX470
2x1TB and 1x2TB WD Black HDD
ThermalTake 850w modular PSU
I decided to jump on the SSD bandwagon and I'm upgrading the MB to support the full SATA III speed of the thing. I'll have the following new parts on Monday:
Asus Sabertooth 990FX MB
OCZ Vertex 3 120 GB SSD
Everything else will stay the same, and when an enticing AMD chip drops (current Bulldozer offerings don't look spectacular), I can just drop it in.
After a month of thought (my previous post in this thread was on Jan. 6), I decided a slight upgrade was in order.
My current build is:
Asus Crosshair III Formula
AMD Phenom II x4 955 BE
8 GB (4x2GB) OCZ BE memory
EVGA GeForec GTX470
2x1TB and 1x2TB WD Black HDD
ThermalTake 850w modular PSU
I decided to jump on the SSD bandwagon and I'm upgrading the MB to support the full SATA III speed of the thing. I'll have the following new parts on Monday:
Asus Sabertooth 990FX MB
OCZ Vertex 3 120 GB SSD
Everything else will stay the same, and when an enticing AMD chip drops (current Bulldozer offerings don't look spectacular), I can just drop it in.
How much did the SSD run you? I've been debating for some time if I wanted to make the jump, but I couldn't justify the cost for one of these bad boys. Does it come with a data migration kit?
I'll be my OS drive and the games I care about load times the most will be on that drive with everything else on one of the 1 TB spinning drives. I also plan on moving my user folder to a different drive using a registry edit.
On the data transfer kit question, since this is only a gaming machine I'll just reinstall Windows and all the games and apps, especially since I'm swapping the MB at the same time. The drive DOES come with an adapter kit to fit it in a 3.5" bay.
I'll be my OS drive and the games I care about load times the most will be on that drive with everything else on one of the 1 TB spinning drives. I also plan on moving my user folder to a different drive using a registry edit.
On the data transfer kit question, since this is only a gaming machine I'll just reinstall Windows and all the games and apps, especially since I'm swapping the MB at the same time. The drive DOES come with an adapter kit to fit it in a 3.5" bay.
Yeahhhh, fresh install does sound about right. I'm lazy and was curious how a migration would go, but after giving it extra thought - it would be twice the amount of work than just going from fresh.
It took all of about 20-25 minutes from first boot up to desktop, this was for the installation of Windows. I couldn't believe it! Now to install all the updates (SP1 is done) then my apps. but I should be gaming by the time dinner rolls around.
Gotta love it when UPS comes early (I took the holiday off), he was here by noon. Machine booted up first time, which is always nice...
It took all of about 20-25 minutes from first boot up to desktop, this was for the installation of Windows. I couldn't believe it! Now to install all the updates (SP1 is done) then my apps. but I should be gaming by the time dinner rolls around.
Gotta love it when UPS comes early (I took the holiday off), he was here by noon. Machine booted up first time, which is always nice...
- have you got one at the moment or still in the looking stages?
button.
