Building a Desktop Computer

[NYCHitman1]

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

 

[NYCHitman1]

Dang. Nobody knows anything about SLI?

 

[Xyro]

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.

 

[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.

 

[Xyro]

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.

Does it make a significant difference to performance?

 

[NYCHitman1]

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.

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.

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).

 

[NYCHitman1]

Pics will be up on Friday night folks!

 

[NYCHitman1]

 

[johnlgalt]

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....

 

[Xyro]

I have the Gigabyte GA-Z68A-D3H-B3 mobo.

Yeah, yours is a 16/8 board:

GIGABYTE - Motherboard - Socket 1155 - GA-Z68A-D3H-B3 (rev. 1.0)

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 job with the build

 

[NYCHitman1]

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.

 

[BlueBiker]

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.

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.

Great pix Hitman!

 

[johnlgalt]

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.

You posted it in the guides section IIRC.

D'oh! Never fear, johnny's here https://plus.google.com/photos/1115...s/5651237958108325121?authkey=CJ7Ky8zc8MPpoAE

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.

 

[tacticool777]

This thread is tempting me to build a new desktop. lol

 

[BlueBiker]

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).

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)

 

[BlueBiker]

Hey pokal, what's in your build? I'm still running my Core i7-870 going smooth & fast.

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

 

[NYCHitman1]

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.

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.

 

[mplevy]

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.

 

[NYCHitman1]

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?

 

[mplevy]

$170 plus a $20 MIR and a $15 Newegg gift card/code so net is $145, though the gift card/code can't be used on that purchase.

One of the guys I game with picked up the 60 GB version and says his only regret is not getting the 120 GB version.

 

[NYCHitman1]

$170 plus a $20 MIR and a $15 Newegg gift card/code so net is $145, though the gift card/code can't be used on that purchase.

One of the guys I game with picked up the 60 GB version and says his only regret is not getting the 120 GB version.

I assume that you plan on using it as your primary gaming drive, yes?

 

[mplevy]

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.

 

[NYCHitman1]

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.

 

[mplevy]

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...

 

[NYCHitman1]

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...

Ahh-some!