PC parts and upgrades thread

There’s a few threads on new builds here on Mudspike, thought it’d be nice to have one that can easily be hijacked by anyone who has a few questions. Allow me to get started.

What’s the best Z270 motherboard in terms of price/quality? I’ve been looking at the MSI krait gaming Z270. It looks to be doing decent in benchmarks, only being readily outperformed by €400+ motherboards by a few %, it also supports all 5 of my casefans. Would it be a decent choice or should I try to find an ASUS motherboard no matter what?

How’s 140mm watercooling compared to 280mm? despite having a full-tower, apparently it cannot mount a 280mm radiator. I understand having twice the surface area is going to be much more effective, but would something like a H55 or H75 be enough to keep a 7700K cool? I don’t plan on doing anything crazy with the clock. Or should I save up a few more coins and get a new tower with a H110 or H115i.

Managed to hold off this purchase for only so long, but this week the mailman brought some presents :slight_smile:

Ended up buying a H75 back in Feb wich kept my old FX8350 perfectly cold for its last few months of service.

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How are you finding your new rig? I am getting new CPU/Mobo/RAM for Christmas to replace my old i7 920 which has served me well and has been running a 3.7Ghz overclock for about 7 years without issues.
I am in a quandary over what to go for. If I go for a 7700K and Prime A like you I avoid the premium of the 8th gen chipset.
However an i5 8600k paired with a prime A/Z370 board will be similar money for newer tech and I may still have some budget left for an M.2 drive. I wonder if anyone has any views on the subject

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So far so good. X-Plane 11 shows the seperate cycles for CPU and GPU, and so far the i7 7700k is spending over half of its time idling as it is waiting for the R9 290 to do its part of the calculations. The M.2 drive is nice, but subjectively, the gains do not seem as big as the benches make you seem believe. It boots up fast and it loads fast but not so insanely fast that you’d think it blows a SATA SSD out of the water. I wouldn’t wanna return it but I would have a hard time recommending it, considering they’re about 40% more expensive than regular SSD’s.

The RAM has been slightly problematic as well. Anything running faster than 2400MHz or so requires an overclock, but RAM sold as higher than that usually has a profile set by the manufacturer at wich it is supposed to run, called an XMP profile. Unfortunatly, that profile led to instability on my system, so I had to disable to XMP’s and run at native clock speeds. You overclocked your old CPU, and these profiles are as simple as flipping a switch in the BIOS, but if you don’t want the hassle, you might want to stay away from the (O.C) marked hardware.

But for simming, the new equipment is great, and the CPU still king. The old AMD bulldozer couldn’t keep up with some of the more intensely designed missions like can be found in bunyap’s/wags’ Operation Epsom, or the ACM and BFM campaigns from maple flag missions. Combined with the old GPU it’s not a perfect 60 FPS, but good enough to turn off the FPS counter and enjoy the flight rather than watch the numbers. In games like ARMA III, wich already seemed to have some intel bias, I was able to up the view distance from 800 metres to in excess of 10 000 metres, wich made flying fast movers in that game actually kinda fun.

I haven’t really looked at the 8th gen yet, and can’t provide a meaningful comment. But I heard the new gen doesn’t support anything less than a Z370 chipset, despite being the same FCLGA-1151 socket? Might be worth it to get a Z370 chip then, to future proof yourself, unless they decide to drop support for that as well, come next generations.

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Anyone looking to upgrade CPU, this is a steal. 7700k for $249.

I have a AMD Radeon HD7870, and I figured it would be time for an upgrade. Unfortunately there seems to be very little out there if anything at all that offers a better bang for the buck, with even 150 euro cards being on par performance wise. What is happening? Am I looking at the wrong websites?

Are the R series not cheap anymore? I went from a 7870 to a 970 to a 1070. The 970 was perfect for 1080p gaming, runs pretty much everything on ultra still.

I still have the gtx 970 that’s about a year old I’ll sell you cheap. I don’t know how much you are looking to spend.

Not sure what the next step would be, 1050 cards look relatively cheap but from what I’ve seen is that they don’t offer any extra performance. the 980/970 cards are not to be had anywhere anymore and their last selling price was still 450 euro’s minimum. I think the prices are out of whack because of the whole Bit coin deal.

Thanks for the offer but I prefer to buy local so I can get warranty replacement on it when it breaks. Hence I am trying to figure out what a good upgrade would be that is still for sale.

I feel your pain.

I am on an R9 290X, and have been waiting for a long time for the price of the GTX1070 to drop.
With all the crypto currency mining, GPU power has not really become any cheaper since the release of the GTX 10xx series

Yeah, it has remained at 500 euro’s ever since release for 1.5 years now… With a massive bump last summer.

I hate cryptocurrency and hope that house of cards will collapse soon.

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I was thinking like $200 for the gtx 970. 400 euros for a gtx 970? That is crazy. Have you tried microcenter?

http://www.microcenter.com/product/468947/GeForce_GTX_1060_Overclocked_3GB_GDDR5_Video_Card

You can get the 3gb 1060 for $200 and the 6gb 1060 for $300.

Hmm. 850 Evo 1tb is $400 + tax cad right now. Tempting.

Yeah the 1060 is still quite significant in price unfortunately. Alas!

Just checked and the 1060 3GB(I was looking at the 6GB) is 225, roughly. Would you say that that is a good bang for the buck?

More vram the better, especially for xplane. 3gb won’t cut it.

That’s a shame, because that adds over a 100 euro’s to the price(the hike from 3 to 6 gig). Currently got 2 gig on my HD7870.

I mean others may have a different opinion, but I regularly busted 3gb vram in xplane.

Not a surprise, I can run X-plane 10 but it has a long loading time.

The 3gb would probably be ok if you lower the settings enough, but I don’t think it would be a significant enough increase over the 7870 to justify the price. I know you don’t want to buy a used one, but you can find 970s in that 200 price range, and I know you can max most games at 1080p with that.

I’d say you probably want a 6gb 1060 or a used 970/80 to give you the most gains at that price point. I don’t have experience with the new AMDs, but they are supposed to be solid with a lower price than nvidia. The 580 is 8gbs and can be had for under 300.

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Cheers, that gives me a few new options to look into. I do like AMD’s hardware and software and their general attitude to the computer market.