Hello and down to business...

MrFSU · Post by **MrFSU** » Sun Feb 01, 2015 4:01 pm

Hi everyone,

Thanks to Flying Penguin for extending an invite for me to come onto this BBS. I'm one of his friend from an old LAN group we called "Red-Eye." My name comes from Florida State University, whose teams I have been a fan of since the late 80's. (Not a gra-ju-ut, just a fan!)

Anyway, I currently have a 3-4 year old Dell i7 920 that I replaced the power supply on and added a Geforce GTX 660ti and 12 gigs of RAM. It currently has an old 2TB drive for storage. I mainly play single player FPS games and recently "smoked the crack" that is Elite:Dangerous. I've ordered a head tracking unit and am giving my 2 year old Thrustmaster HOTAS a workout daily on that game. I also hooked up a total of 3 Dell 1920x1200 monitors to that card and am amazed I'm getting circa 30fps in Elite. But I want more....

So, DOWN TO BUSINESS...

I've configured this (http://pcpartpicker.com/user/mrfsu/saved/wQqV3C) as a potential new build for everyone to critique. Penguin has warned me of the perils of SLI/Crossfire, but I refuse to listen!!! LOL, but if enough of you can beat some sense into me, I'll get a one card solution and tone down the power supply in that build.

I hope to be a useful member of this forum, now let the hazing begin!

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Sun Feb 01, 2015 4:44 pm

DOOD. If you're willing to spend $600+ for two cards in SLI, do yourself a big favor and just get a single GPU GTX 980 or whatever the AMD equivalent is for the same price. Less headaches & better performance IMO.

A note on the RipJaws RAM - MAKE SURE it works with your mobo without any custom timing. Ripjaws and other "performance" RAM usually doesn't work out of the box with the default timing, and you'll have the headache of having to figure out what timing to use. Had that happen to plenty people I know.

If you don't intend to overclock I wouldn't even buy that fancy performance RAM - there's zero benefit. Good old Crucial does the job, just use their online database to get the RAM matched to your mobo:

http://www.crucial.com/usa/en/fatal1ty- ... /CT6203801

You can save a little money and go with a Core i5 processor. The additional cores in the Core i7 isn't going to much for you in games, but if you intend to do any video transcoding then yeah, you want a Core i7.

Nuby1Canuby · Post by **Nuby1Canuby** » Sun Feb 01, 2015 7:00 pm

What resolution are you going to be using? It looks like Elite Dangerous isn't that demanding on the graphics cards.
The benchmarks I saw had it running 160 frames per second at 1920x1080 on a single GTX 970. Even at 3840x2160 it was averaging 50 FPS on a single GTX 970.
http://www.hardwarepal.com/elite-danger ... rformance/

In most games crossfire 290x probably averages about 40% faster then a single GTX 980 when it is working and about 15% slower then a single GTX 980 when it isn't.

Dual cards make a bigger difference at higher resolutions:
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVID ... LI/20.html

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Sun Feb 01, 2015 10:20 pm

Nuby: He's doing triple screens at 1920x1200, so that would be 5760 x 1200.

Alex: Nuby is running triple screens with AMD hardware, and can advise you about that.

There were flickering issues with both Crossfire and SLI in Elite Dangerous. NVidia has released a driver that seems to have fixed it for most people since at least late December. AMD seems not to have a Crossfire profile for Elite yet, and still suffers from flickering and performance issues according to several threads like this one (following quote is from a post this month):
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showth ... p=27567427

I haven't found a game that doesn't run in SLI in windowed mode. A performance hit for sure but still far better than a single card by a long way. It does appear that nVidia are the better for getting SLI working over AMD getting Crossfire working. I had to help someone earlier to get Crossfire working in Elite Dangerous, as AMD still don't have a Crossfire profile out and even with the fix, it gives flickering effects, whereas nVidia have had SLI working since I got the game on release back in early December (and possibly before that?).

It's stuff like this that turned me off on SLI (and lack of support for it in COD AW). I don't want to waste time figuring out a hack to make a game work properly - not in this day in age. I want to fire up the game and just have it work.

Now that said, if you can get a substantial performance benefit from SLI/Crossfire then it may be worth the headaches for you.

You might want to do some more research on Elite forums, and see what SLI/Crossfire setups people are using, and what pitfalls there may be. Seems NVidia SLI is more reliable for Elite right now from what I've found Googling around.

Here's one thread I found, with a recent post at the end (1/25/15). Guy has dual 290s and not having any joy:
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=76806

eGoCeNTRoNiX · Post by **eGoCeNTRoNiX** » Mon Feb 02, 2015 12:03 am

I'm running 2x5770s in XFire and I've had no issues what so ever.. But, I only play wow.. lol My system is about 5 years old now and it hasn't even begun to show it's age.. But again, I'm not playing anything new/demanding.. haha.. But, I'll throw out one piece of advice my mom always gave me.. Fewer parts = fewer problems.. But, you can see I don't always listen..

Triple screens, that's got to be a trip..

Good Luck with your build!

wvjohn · Post by **wvjohn** » Mon Feb 02, 2015 9:37 am

Nice build. Don't know anything about sli/xfire. I just run a single 1920x. The dual amd setup is a pretty good value now that bitcoining is over, but lots of power and heat.

What FP said about ram is worth considering. I am using my old ripjaws in my new build - GA-Z97X-UD5H /I7-4790K/MSI GTX 970 Gaming - and it is being fussy about dual channel timings. It is listed as compatible. Works fine in single channel. Maybe look at a review for your mobo to see what works out of the box. Many of the modern mobos let you increase the ram speed without oc'ing the cpu.

If you're going to run dual vids you might want to think about a case with top venting - that's gonna be a lot of heat. My case is similar to the one you specced - it's an older Lian Li I think but it has 2x140mm top exhaust fans, 1x 140mm front intake and 1x120mm rear top intake. The psu sits at the bottom of the case.

Might want to check out Mugen4 Scythe hsf as well. I had the one you specced in my old rig and it worked well, but the Mugan is about 2x as big and reviews show it is close to water cooling. I've just played around a little with my cpu and ran a stress test @ 4.4 ghz for about 15 minutes and it stayed in the mid 40s. I did have to move the fan to side away from ram to get access to the ram slots.

Looks like it will be a fun rig!

normalicy · Post by **normalicy** » Mon Feb 02, 2015 9:33 pm

Every time I think of going dual, it just doesn't make sense. It's either a better deal to go with the higher end card or it just plain uses a ton of power.

MrFSU · Post by **MrFSU** » Tue Feb 03, 2015 8:37 am

Yeah when I started I was pretty dead set on going SLI but I'm slowly getting beat down on that thought. It seems to work well with some specific configs, but certainly not all. I will now research some of the high end single card (but SLI capable) Nvidia cards and see which one I'll get since I still need it to run 3 1920x1200 displays (5760x1200) at a good frame rate with the visuals cranked up.

I'll tone down the power supply but I think I'll keep the mobo and proc I chose because of the 40 PCIe lanes vs 28 on the lower end processor. As for the RAM and cooler... Yeah I probably won't be overclocking but I did make sure that ram was listed as compatible on the mobo manufacturers page. It's got a pretty good list and there are several other options from quite a few different brands. This one I chose was fast and on sale...

As for the case, this one seemed to have good ventilation (top fans or radiator can be installed) and looks very easy to work with.

Thanks for the input guys, much appreciated!

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Tue Feb 03, 2015 9:45 am

Just beware. Just because the ripjaws is listed as compatible, doesn't mean it will work with default timing. That's the problem with performance Ram. If you're not overclocking, go with Crucial. The kit I linked was acrually cheaper than the ripjaws and free shipping.

ZYFER · Post by **ZYFER** » Tue Feb 03, 2015 11:43 am

SLi/Crossfire isn't what is cracked up to be. Not every game supports it properly and there can be issues. It also expands your need for cooling while not giving you overly superior results. Having two cards doesn't mean your performance is doubled.

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Tue Feb 03, 2015 5:24 pm

Alex, I'll have have to check numbers, but if you go with NVidia GTX 970 (Sli) or single GTX 980 (with option to add a 2nd one in a year or two for SLI) then you won't need a very powerful PSU. The 900 series is incredibly power efficient. They also run cool.

Losbot · Post by **Losbot** » Tue Feb 03, 2015 5:25 pm

Alex, I would have to agree with a high end single card.
I used SLI for the last 3 builds and now I'm on a single card with no SLI worries. It's just not worth the aggravation when things don't 'click'.

Err · Post by **Err** » Tue Feb 03, 2015 7:09 pm

Nice build! As FP mentioned, check the RAM timings and voltage. I'd choose something that you don't have to mess with in the BIOS to get it working correctly. I would also go with a single card. I used to run 2 x 560tis and while they ran great with most games, I don't miss them. I currently tun a 780 SC and couldn't be happier. Remember that having an extra card doesn't double your VRAM. I'd go with a 980 for that amount of cash.

I'd highly recommend a 512 SSD. Crucial, Samsung, and Intel all make good drives. It really helps texture heavy games load faster. Plus you'll boot in about 20 seconds.

MrFSU · Post by **MrFSU** » Tue Feb 03, 2015 11:39 pm

I ordered an Intel 530 series 480GB drive for $200 the other day on Newegg so that will be going into that build...

And ok I concede on the SLI... I'll likely get a 980 or something similar. And I'll get a 750-850ish power supply for the potential SLI in the future.

Ok I heard no rumblings about that case either so I'll go with that... Looks like very good reviews on it..

I will update when I put it all together! Thanks again!

MrFSU · Post by **MrFSU** » Tue Feb 03, 2015 11:41 pm

FlyingPenguin wrote:Alex, I'll have have to check numbers, but if you go with NVidia GTX 970 (Sli) or single GTX 980 (with option to add a 2nd one in a year or two for SLI) then you won't need a very powerful PSU. The 900 series is incredibly power efficient. They also run cool.

Yeah that pcparts site calculates approximate watt usage with your build. With SLI I had I was at approx 812 watts. I'll see what it is with nvidia card