INFO: Building/Buying a Desktop (PC or Mac)

[Kez]

Originally Posted by Sean

I'm kind of wary of the 4850s after reading all those user comments - nearly every post is "runs hot, loud fan, fan speed problems, ect".

Been reading the reviews of the new ATI cards as well, and what you left out mentioning in those reviews was that it was fine if you upped the fan speed to around 40-50% instead of the 30% that it seemed to be set to as the default. I should clarify that the reviews I've been looking at were for the 4870 as opposed to the 4850, maybe there is a difference, but so far it looks like a fan speed tweak is all thats needed to take care of the temperature issues.

[Sean]

Yes, except the fan is a jet engine when you turn it up.

[Lefazz]

Yeah, I'm concerned about the heat and noise too. I have a windowed case that has no air ventilation on the side so I'm wondering if it's gonna soar in temperature.

If heat/noise turns out to be a problem, I plan on getting this for the 4850: Newegg.com - ZALMAN VF1000 2 Ball VGA Cooler - VGA Cooling

In total, making it a $220 card. Still worth it.

[EmiliaEQ]

Originally Posted by Lefazz

Yeah, I'm concerned about the heat and noise too. I have a windowed case that has no air ventilation on the side so I'm wondering if it's gonna soar in temperature

I would HIGLY recommend not to buy a 4850 or 4870 now.
You will surely get a several "extra coolers" from many manufacturers.

8800GT Default : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814150252
8800GT v1 : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814127329
8800GT v2 : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814122047
8800GT v3 : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814121227
8800GT v4 : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814130351 (specially this one)
8800GT v5 : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814121221
8800GT v6 : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814134035


My point beeing, that we will very soon se 4800's with special non generic coolers.
Coolers that will offer a much better performance than the stock ones.

Having no ventilation on the side is not really a problem.
Because if you have a good 12cm at the back, the 12cm + the power supply will extract the hot air.
However some components will become a lot hotter (mainly CPU & bottom part of the case).

You can still buy something like this : http://www.pc-look.com/boutik/Prod_T...__8725_fr.html

[Candiarie]

I just built a new system with a 4850 and haven't really noticed the sound at all. Taking it out of the case even after the system's just been idling a few minutes isn't fun though, the thing does indeed get hot as hell.

[Darus Grey]

Well I got my 4870 in today and ran some non-scientific tests for AOC:

EVGA GTX280 FTW edition(running at it's factory OC settings):

2560x1600 every single setting maxed: http://www.darusgrey.org/celegtx2.png 22fps
2560x1600 with default High settings: http://www.darusgrey.org/celegtx1.png 44fps

Visiontek 4870:
2560x1600 every single setting maxed: http://www.darusgrey.org/celeati1.png 22fps
2560x1600 with default High settings: http://www.darusgrey.org/celeati2.png 31fps

Not a comparative but I imagine most people play in 1680x1050 or less so here's two shots of what to expect for that:

1680x1050 all settings maxed:
http://www.darusgrey.org/celeati161.png 32fps
1680x1050 default high:
http://www.darusgrey.org/celeati162.png 38 fps

177.41 Nvidia drivers vs 8.7 ATI drivers(most ati complaints with aoc are fixed in this release).

Standard system specs:

E8400 C2D OC'd to 4700mhz
Evga 790i(gonna end up replacing this if I stick with ati =/)
8gb DD3 at 2000mhz

I'm actually really surprised. At maxed out settings on 2560x1600 the 4870 performs on par with the GTX280, well it performs less well on lower settings.

The only drawback is at 2560x1600 I'm getting some infrequent microstuttering that I didn't get with the GTX280. I imagine this is mostly due to 512mb vs 1gb.

At $300 or less I think it's a clear winner.

[Eomer]

Okay, so I'm going to be replacing both my desktop and HTPC systems in the near future. They're 3 and 5+ years old respectively (for the most part, some parts are newer) and getting pretty goddamn creeky. I have a plan in mind for what I'm going to do with them, so that's not my question.

Currently my desktop has 4x250gb drives in a RAID 5 setup for music, video, and pr0n storage. It's pretty much full at this point. When I build my new desktop, I'd rather NOT have a raid 5 array running in it. While it's worked quite well up to this point, I'm looking at going with a NAS box instead so I don't have to constantly have my desktop running when I want to listen to music or whatever on the HTPC.

Is a NAS box a good solution? While I'm pretty good with computers, I've never bothered with Linux and have no fucking interest whatsoever in it. Money isn't a big concern here, ease of use, performance and expandibility is what I'm looking for. I guess I could build a custom box for it with a hardware raid controller, but it seems like I could just get a pre-built NAS box for about the same damn price anyway, so why bother?

Who makes good NAS boxes, what should I be looking for, and so on? Some seem to have properietary schemes for setting up your drives and allowing hot swapping, easy expansion and so on that doesn't appear to be standard raid 5 or 6, should I use them or stick with the tried and true standard forms of raid?

Budget wise I guess I'm looking at $500-$1500 for the box without drives.

Netgear ReadyNAS™ NV+ 4-Bay Gigabit Desktop Network Storage (Bare Unit - No Disk) at Memory Express Computers

Is that a good one? What kind of future proofability do these things have? Some say "up to 2tb of storage (based on 4x500gb drives)" but are they capable of handling say, 4x2tb drives when they come out?

[Candiarie]

Slashdot has had a few posts in the last few weeks asking the same question Eomer. It might be worth checking out the suggestions there as well. I skimmed through most of them and don't seem to remember anything worthwhile being not overpriced, though.

[Stroker Ace]

Alright, my 24 inch NEC CRT is finally shitting out on me and I am looking into a new monitor.

Newegg.com - SAMSUNG T260 Rose-Black 25.5" 5ms Touch of Color Series HDMI Widescreen LCD Monitor 300 cd/m2 DC 20000:1 - LCD Monitors

I'm leaning toward the T260 as I hear from a few display nerds that is the best one for gaming that doesn't break the $1000 mark. Any recommendations?

[Lonin]

Originally Posted by Stroker Ace

Alright, my 24 inch NEC CRT is finally shitting out on me and I am looking into a new monitor.

Newegg.com - SAMSUNG T260 Rose-Black 25.5" 5ms Touch of Color Series HDMI Widescreen LCD Monitor 300 cd/m2 DC 20000:1 - LCD Monitors

I'm leaning toward the T260 as I hear from a few display nerds that is the best one for gaming that doesn't break the $1000 mark. Any recommendations?

Unless you really need amazing contrast ratios and color reproduction, I'd just grab a 24" model from virtually any decent company for way less. Most are Samsung panels anyway, just in a different casing.

I ordered two 4850's on Newegg for $300 total over the weekend (the deal is still up as far as I know) along with a new mobo, proc and ram. I'll be getting it Thurs and should have some benchmarks soon after. I really don't see the point in buying any other graphics solution at this point unless you either want absolute top of the line and money is no object or have an Nvidia chipset and don't want to switch. The benchmarks for two 4850's are just insane for the price.

[irronn]

Originally Posted by Stroker Ace

Alright, my 24 inch NEC CRT is finally shitting out on me and I am looking into a new monitor.

Newegg.com - SAMSUNG T260 Rose-Black 25.5" 5ms Touch of Color Series HDMI Widescreen LCD Monitor 300 cd/m2 DC 20000:1 - LCD Monitors

I'm leaning toward the T260 as I hear from a few display nerds that is the best one for gaming that doesn't break the $1000 mark. Any recommendations?

Ive been looking into getting a 24' LCD as well, and been doing a bit of research. Im not an expert, but from what Ive read the BenQ V2400W and G2400WD monitors seem to be held in high regard.

Check out the reviews at hardforum:
Displays - [H]ard|Forum

The BenQ V2400W is cheaper (~$400 with promo code from hard forums) than the 260 and pretty solid from what Ive read. Its a little weird how hard everyone at Hardforum is nutriding the V2400W though. From what I've read the G2400 is pretty good too, But the monitor itsself is not as pretty looking, if you care.

V2400W: BenQ Global - Computing

I think Im going to end up getting the V2400W, but I want to research things a bit more.

[Lefazz]

Originally Posted by Lonin

I ordered two 4850's on Newegg for $300 total over the weekend (the deal is still up as far as I know) along with a new mobo, proc and ram.

What kind of power supply will you be using? I thought I read that two 48xxs require a crazy amount of wattage.

[ChewieTobbacca]

Two 4850's will be fine. The 4870's are the ones that suck a lot more power.

P.S.: Simple heat / fan fix (xml editing, easy) until RivaTuner is out for the 4800's (end of the month iirc): Guru3D.com Forums - View Single Post - Radeon HD 4850 Heat issues

Can't wait for the 4870X2's though... sex:

[Lefazz]

Oh my God what happened:

NVDA: Basic Chart for NVIDIA CORP - Yahoo! Finance

[Eomer]

Holy jesus, I'm buying Nvidia! Hasn't done much good for AMD's stock though.