The PC Building Thread

Without knowing the full extent of the damage, I am not sure.

Looking at the pictures, it appears the card works with either or anyway, so if the waterblock isn't working, it does not look like it affects the card too much.

Are you buying the card from a friend?
 
bsmaff said:
Without knowing the full extent of the damage, I am not sure.

Looking at the pictures, it appears the card works with either or anyway, so if the waterblock isn't working, it does not look like it affects the card too much.

Are you buying the card from a friend?
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No it's off AVF. He seems a sound bloke reading through his post and he's sold quite a lot of things on there before with no issues. He said it sprung a leak as he was pulling his PC apart but it still works fine.

Here's the pics he put up.

IMG_0992.JPG IMG_0996.JPG IMG_0997.JPG
 
Is anyone on here a member of the Overclockers UK forum?

The deal I was doing has fallen through and I'm cardless, so was wondering if anyone who has access to the members market can have a look to see if there are any 980TI or 1070's on there
 
Guys i need more help lol

When I upgraded earlier this year I went cheap so have older tech. I've got an i5 3570k and need to OC it so I need a motherboard capable of doing it.

I have found someone selling a Gigabyte Z68X-UD5-B3 and someone may be selling a Asus P8Z77VLX2.

The price normally for these are ridiculous for their age at £120+ but I may be able to get one at half that. It's looking more likely that it will be the Gigabyte I may be getting but is it worth getting a Z68 chipset or should I hold out and wait for a Z77 chipset?
 
Do all you guys overclock your GPU?

I just wondered how much of an increase in FPS you see if you do.
 
Coopz said:
Do all you guys overclock your GPU?

I just wondered how much of an increase in FPS you see if you do.
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Never done GPU overclock, due to issues in the past with pixilation and other issues. But GPU's might be a lot better at overclocking compared to the last time I tried.

It is apparently incredibly easy to do though.

However if you do decide to overclock, you will see an increase of 10-15% on FPS if you overclock a 1070/1080, but it all depends if you think the extra boost is worthwhile.
 
From what I have been reading they say it's kind of a waste not to overclock as its a free performance boost with no ill effects when its set up properly.

If you push it too far you will get crashes and pixelation like you mention but you just back it off a little until that stops and that's your OC.

It is really easy to do as well, I've been playing about with it. You can just add 100-150mhz to the core clock without doing anything else if you want and get a little boost without even touching the power limit or voltage.

So far I have upped the power limit by 10% and put 150mhz on the core clock and 500mhz on the memory clock and am getting an extra 5 FPS on the Valley benchmark. I'm gonna have more of a play and see what I can get out of it adding a bit of voltage, the good thing is that MSI afterburner has a limit to what you can do so you should have no fears of damaging your card.

I'd give it a go if I were you, you might get lucky and get a great boost out of it.

Edit: Put the wrong settings i have at present
 
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So the max i can get is +155 mhz on the core clock and +520 mhz on the memory clock and that gets me 6.4 extra FPS, a 11% boost.

It'll do for free.

I guess I was an unlucky one in the "silicon lottery" as I've seen banded about lol as it's quite low.
 
Coopz said:
From what I have been reading they say it's kind of a waste not to overclock as its a free performance boost with no ill effects when its set up properly.

If you push it too far you will get crashes and pixelation like you mention but you just back it off a little until that stops and that's your OC.

It is really easy to do as well, I've been playing about with it. You can just add 100-150mhz to the core clock without doing anything else if you want and get a little boost without even touching the power limit or voltage.

So far I have upped the power limit by 10% and put 150mhz on the core clock and 500mhz on the memory clock and am getting an extra 5 FPS on the Valley benchmark. I'm gonna have more of a play and see what I can get out of it adding a bit of voltage, the good thing is that MSI afterburner has a limit to what you can do so you should have no fears of damaging your card.

I'd give it a go if I were you, you might get lucky and get a great boost out of it.

Edit: Put the wrong settings i have at present
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Maybe its a waste to not overclock. But only if you plan to keep your GPU for 4 years.

If you plan to keep the GPU for the entire console generation [like 7-10 years] then its better to stay at stock clocks. Less chance of killing the GPU faster.
 
Coopz said:
I ended up just keeping mine at stock anyway in the end lol
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Well least you know you can do it and get a nice boost when you need it, but my 1070 runs every game I play fine.

I won't overclock mine and will just upgrade as soon as the GTX 270 comes out, which should be next year sometime.
 
Looking for a bit of PC advice please chaps!

I finished Divinity Original Sin on the PS4 only to discover that the sequel is PC-exclusive (at the time of writing). I had an ancient PC in the loft so I thought, it's not doing anything, why not get it down for a laugh.

When I say "ancient", it's seven years old... It's an ASRock P45TS motherboard with one of the highest processor specs it will support (quad core but I can't remember specifics*) with 4GB of DDR3 and a Radeon HD5770. I believe the PSU is a Corsair 550W.

*EDIT: It might be the Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650.

Anyway, to my absolute shock, it runs Football Manager 2018 beautifully at 1080p, and it runs Divinity Original Sin 2 at something like 1366x768.

The hard drive died after a couple of months so I got myself a teeny tiny 100gb SSD for £50, and that made a huge difference to loading times etc... But now I'm starting to play more often, and I'd love to up the resolution.

What are the chances of a video card upgrade being enough to let me run a game like Divinity Original Sin 2 at 1080p at 30fps?

I'm never going to play blockbusters on the PC - only stuff like Football Manager, Jack Nicklaus Perfect Golf and Divinity Original Sin 2. It's not worth building a new PC for, and I haven't got that money to drop anyway (and I doubt I'd get much money if I sold my current setup).

I'm just looking at the GTX 750, GTX 760 and the GTX 1050, which I'm reading are good budget buys (with the 1050 being the "1080p standard" but I think that's just begging for a bottleneck). I don't want to run everything on "high", let alone "ultra" - I just wanted to get to 1080p with a solid frame-rate.

Also, where's the best place to buy from?

Thanks guys!
 
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Chris Davies said:
What are the chances of a video card upgrade being enough to let me run a game like Divinity Original Sin 2 at 1080p at 30fps?
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Looking at the CPU it is near the equivalent of a 2nd Gen i3, so although not great with a decent GPU it will run games in 1080p - Probably feels a struggle playing FM on it compared to more modern CPU's.. My laptop takes an additional 2-4 hours to complete a season compared to my main PC as the CPU takes so much longer to process in-between fixtures.

A 1050 gets a lot of different opinions from people - They are pretty much capable of running most games at 1080p on MED/HIGH settings, which is pretty much what you want.

For half the money you could purchase a 960 GTX on eBay - Looking around you can pick one up for around £50 - £60 and they perform on average 15% faster than a 1050 and about 2-3% faster than a 1050TI.
 
bsmaff said:
For half the money you could purchase a 960 GTX on eBay - Looking around you can pick one up for around £50 - £60 and they perform on average 15% faster than a 1050 and about 2-3% faster than a 1050TI.
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The 760/960 has become my focus after realising this, but preferably the 960 given they're less power-hungry.

Where are you seeing them for £50-£60 though?! I'm trying on eBay but not getting close to that, I saw a 760 go for £70 last night and was sort-of kicking myself.
 
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Im investing in a new PC. What do you think?
 
I see your purchasing an ITX motherboard for a Mid tower case..
Is there any reason for that? As ITX boards are normally a lot more expensive than other boards.

Without checking prices of latest processor prices at the moment, I would probably consider getting a new 8th Generation Coffee Lake CPU, rather than an old Skylake CPU - performance wise your looking at an increase of 10-20% difference in CPU performance.

After buying one recently I would also ditch the old style SSD, and get a Western Digital Black NVMe SSD.
I recently bought the 970 EVO M2 NVMe SSD, my computer is booted before the screen is even turned on, and I have noticed a slight improvement in Windows too. - Statistically they are 5x faster than normal SSD's, although this isn't the reality.
 
Thanks for the tip.
Got my new PC for a litte bit more than 800EURs yeserday. Spared no expenses. It runs Wildlands on ultra butter smooth, also it works perfectly for 3d rendering.
It is here in its box ready to go i just have to fire it up when i have some time.

Also i have to find some place for it as i cant keep it on the floor as it will suck in all the dust.
 
Howdy Folks, Folkettes and Folkx's!

Don't think I mentioned it on here but I'm planning a Ryzen Black Friday upgrade (my long beloved AMD FX 8350 is finally being retired). My current Amazon cart:

sM978vO.png


The RAM is a placeholder, I'll finalise the specific make/model during Black Friday (my only criteria is 16/32gb 3200+ Samsung B-die). I don't want to spend more than around 800 EUR in total so depending on discounts (or lack thereof), I may drop the SSD to 500gb and the RAM to 16gb.

I want to limit my purchases to Amazon, preferably Spain as I have Prime but I'm not against ordering from another EU Amazon if the price is better inc Postage. Advice/feedback welcomed :)
 
Nothing wrong with the spec.

The Ryzen processors now give so much more bang per buck than Intel, it is now near impossible to recommend an Intel chip to anyone.

Myself personally I have a 256GB 970 M2 EVO as a boot drive, OS and applications and a separate 256GB 970 PRO M2 SSD for games.
You have the M2 NVMe drive and I would keep to that, they are noticeably quicker than the old SATA SSD drives.

RAM is a question do you think you will notice the difference between 16 and 32GB, I can't it seems 16GB is the current sweet spot at the moment, so if it helps budget at the moment upgrade when you feel you need too.
I used to have 32GB, but bought it when RAM was cheap a year+ ago and sold it for £75 profit when RAM went stupid in price and TBH I can't tell a difference between 16GB and 32GB.
But then I am also not doing loads of video production or similar in Adobe, so probably the reason why I can't tell any difference.

In regards to pricing, I don't know how Amazon UK compare to Amazon Spain, but I know RAM has been coming down in price recently.
 
Gah wrote a long reply and the browser froze :(

Yeah only just discovered NVME last night, massive speed difference over SATA SSD so definitely getting one of those as big as I can afford, prefer to have two so I can split the OS&Apps and Games but I'm not sure if I could fit two on the motherboard and still have the GPU running at optimal speeds.

Regarding the RAM I am seeing more and more games using 10-12gb and that doesn't leave masses for background processes and/or the OS so if I can find the right Samsung B-die deal then I'll go for it, 32gb would also give me the option of a RAMcache which could be useful for some games, I'm open to 2x8gb now, we'll see :)
 
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