The Gaming PC Building/Upgrade Thread

[Twistedpixel]

Garcian Smith said:

Do not rely upon Newegg reviews - or any other user-aggregate reviews, for that matter - for accurate reports of failure rates. The plural of "anecdote" is not "data." For what it's worth, though: Most ECS mobos have a 4-egg or higher rating on Newegg.

If your GPU fan makes a lot of noise, then it's probably the result of poor cabling/airflow in your case. Even the cheapest GPU fans should not produce enough noise to be heard over your CPU/case/PSU fans, unless you're specifically building a cool'n'quiet system. Check out that chart that I linked in my last post for more info.

Also, every PC power supply buying guide in existence will tell you to avoid purchasing cheap PSUs. The PSU is the one component in your PC that can severely damage, or even nuke entirely, every single other component in the box. In addition, cheap PSUs usually do not provide the power that they are rated to provide, are likely horribly inefficient, and may cause long boot times, memory errors, or random shutdowns. This is a well-documented fact and I don't know why you're arguing otherwise.

If the OP is really concerned about the PSU that I recommended, I could easily recommend one at a higher wattage that's not too much more money. However, he shouldn't be: an entire system sporting a Radeon 4850, running at full 3D load, only draws 231 watts of power. A quality 350W PSU can handle that with one arm (cable?) tied behind its back.

Putting aside for the moment that you don't cite a source for this claim: Why, exactly, does the OP need to push 27% fewer pixels, especially given that he's on a tight budget and isn't running at a GPU-intensive resolution?

As for the RAM issue: After scouring Google, I finally came across some benchmarks comparing a 512mb vs 1gb Radeon 4850. This chart shows a performance gain of less than 1 FPS for that extra 512 MB on Mass Effect. This chart shows about a 1-2 FPS gain, on average, for Call of Duty 4. And finally, again, only about 1-2 FPS on Frontlines: Fuel of War. The only game that shows any significant difference (about 4-5 FPS) is Crysis, and that's the exception rather than the rule due to the unique way that the engine is programmed (if you need any more proof that this is unusual, the 1 GB 4850 actually outperforms the 512mb 4870 - which is a more powerful card overall - at most resolutions in Crysis.) So if you want to pay extra money for a 1 FPS gain on most games, then go ahead, but in this thread I'm in the business of advising people to not waste their money.

In conclusion: Either please start citing some sources or take your misinformed opinions elsewhere.

The user reviews for the ECS motherboards have a spike in the one or two egg range compared to other better brands. Reading through user reviews there are considerably higher proportion of DOA motherboards compared to brands like Gigabyte and it was stated several times that their tech support sucks. Newegg is a more savvy userbase than say Amazon.com, so I do put some trust in the user review scores to steer me away from obviously bad products. ECS are not bad, but they aren't amazing either. I would never suggest for a less experienced user to get anything less than a top quality brand motherboard because it involves significant hassle to trouble shoot a PC which doesn't start, and significant stress as well.

Do you really need me to provide you with a graph to show noise vs load? I thought something like that was obvious. If a GPU doesn't have a fan controller then it has to spin at terminal velocity whilst the other components are idle. Its the idle noise, not the noise at load which concerned me here.

Regarding the power supply, your own links warn against a PSU like the Seasonic. Since information about it is scarce I will have to assume that its got two 12v rails as dictated by specifications. Since one rail is primarily dedicated to the CPU and the other is primarily dedicated towards the GPU subsystem and the combined 12v load is 324 one can assume that 160W max is available to the GPU componentry. You would run the 12V rail supplying the GPU at over 70% load for typical use? The GPU itself could exceed its typical design power in certain situations and ATI even suggests a 450W PSU.

As for RAM, its becoming increasingly difficult to even find a graphics card in the mid range which has less than 1GB of ram. I go from experience here. When there was 128MB ram standard, people said no you don't need 256mb, don't pay extra. They were proved wrong, the 256MB cards had much longer legs than the 128MB cards. When there was 256MB ram standard people said no you don't need 512MB of ram, don't pay extra. They were proved wrong once again. But now you're saying 1GB is standard now, but don't pay extra for it, get an EOL 512MB card. The benchmarks at the time showed little difference, but given a couple more years and they showed up with significant differences. Are you assuming that hes going to be replacing the system internals within a couple of years?