Protis also charges an assembly fee, so they aren't quite as budget-friendly as they might initially seem.
I'm leaning toward the Haswell build too; that other combination just isn't worth it$167 anymore. A mere 5% bump in IPC—with the clock speeds being identical—is practically imperceptible during gaming, especially when you aren't running a high-end GPU, let alone a 560Ti. As Amy Vaughn12 pointed out, you'd be better off putting that money toward a 120GB SSD or$167 a beefier graphics card for the overall build, which will actually make a noticeable difference.
Check your power supply (open up the case and snap a photo of the label)
Here’s my take for $1000 regarding the PSU. Your hard drive is definitely SATA (so that stays), your RAM stays, and the case should be fine too (an mATX motherboard, small cooler, and a short GPU will definitely fit).
If you swing by Micro Center with your components, they'll likely put it all together for free since they're known for being super helpful and flexible.
By being a member of the PC enthusiast forums, you get a 3% discount ($31 off the top figure listed below).
With this setup, you'll get the best possible Battlefield 4 performance. An Athlon 840 would just bottleneck an R9 270 in multiplayer, and this card is actually more powerful than a 260X while being almost $100 cheaper than the other suggestion. I'm assuming you're playing multiplayer, since that's really what that game is built for. If you're strictly sticking to SP, it's a different story and the first option might work.
Regarding the resolution—is that the maximum your monitor supports, or did you pick that lower resolution because your current PC is struggling?
Brian Thomas60 said:Hey everyone, I ran Super Pi on both my rigs yesterday and the results actually threw me for a loop. It looks like my AMD build is outperforming the Intel one? What exactly is Super Pi measuring here—is it just the CPU performance, or does RAM speed play a role too?
Super Pi is a single-threaded benchmark, but since both CPUs are being tested on a single core, the difference is negligible. Back then, AMD had the edge with more advanced architecture—essentially higher IPC (instructions per clock)—which explains why you're seeing those numbers.
To be honest, those benchmarks are pretty much trivial nowadays (hardly useful even for basic web browsing); you can pick up significantly more powerful hardware for next to nothing these days.
I’ve occasionally found myself squinting after staring at a 15" 768p screen for too long—even though my vision is perfectly fine. It feels like there's this massive wave of relaxation when you switch to a larger display. Because of that, I don't think moving to a native 1080p resolution on a 15" panel is any harder on the eyes. Like others have pointed out, your best bets are to increase the scaling, take breaks from looking at the screen, or just hook up an external monitor. If you aren't planning on lugging the laptop everywhere, definitely aim for a 17" model in the future.
Zachary Smith2 said:Does anyone know of a program that can completely wipe my hard drive basically format it so I can just do a fresh install of Windows?
You actually handle that during the installation process itself...
Exactly, Accenture. Once you factor in shipping costs, those lower-tier hexes actually end up being more expensive in the long run. I put one together in a build for a buddy (g1820 + 250X), and honestly, seeing it in person like this, it looks solid.
That link you sent isn't working. The Thermaltake unit from that link—the Gold 500W—is a solid choice for about $70.
I’m not sure what else you’re looking to build later, but Best Buy has the FSP Hyper Pro 600W listed below $167, and it comes with a 5-year warranty. That said, those top two options from your link are higher quality and definitely more than enough power for your needs.
Look, an i7 Haswell under a heavy stress test (rendering is probably the closest thing you'll see to real-world load) hits nearly 100°C when you're just using the stock cooler click!!! So, that 70°C maximum you're worried about? That's nothing. Just so you know, most overclocking tutorials consider anything north of 80°C to be "not recommended"—though that doesn't mean the chip is going to die if it crosses that line.
The i7-4790K—the "Devil's Canyon" (Haswell Refresh)—actually features slightly better thermal paste under the IHS compared to the original Haswell. Here are the temperatures we saw after overclocking it with a beastly Noctua cooler:
To start things off, our specific unit hit 4.5 GHz at 1.3V quite easily, which was exactly what we expected. It remained perfectly stable during extended OCCT stress tests, with total system power draw climbing to about 180W. Pushing further, we bumped the voltage to 1.35V and the multiplier to 47. This resulted in a clock speed of 4.7GHz, and the processor proved itself stable here as well, even though temperatures climbed up to 88°C. During this, we kept the VCCIN at 1.9V, the Ring voltage at 1.175V, and set the System Agent, I/O Analog, and I/O Digital voltages to +0.1V over nominal. The CPU even managed to wake up at 4.8 GHz; however, while it passed all the benchmarks, it failed the stability test after 25 minutes of OCCT. Therefore, the absolute stable OC frequency is 4.7GHz, making it objectively worse than our old 4770K, which reached 4.9GHz.
Bottom line: I really don't think you have a heating problem.
You don't even need to open the case. Just pull up CPU-Z, head over to the SPD section, select the specific RAM slot you're looking at, and there’s the product serial number right in front of you.
If you’re planning on overclocking, you can grab a Ninja 3 cooler in the admin section for about $50. Plus, you've got an i5 4460 and a budget-friendly motherboard listed under the finance category.
From what I can gather, the official website doesn't even list Windows 7 drivers for that legacy series. You actually have to hunt them down under the integrated motherboard graphics section, since the notebook category only goes back as far as the HD series.
He’s insisting that the D: drive was never even formatted.
It’s probably a good thing he hasn't checked back on the forum since that post last night (at least not from his usual login location).
- Did someone try to take the hardware apart? (Could be a loose connection). - Run a health check on the drive using something like CrystalDiskInfo or HD Tune.
Head over to your Control Panel—or Add/Remove Programs, whatever you call it these days—and wipe Catalyst from the system. Once that's done, grab the latest version directly from the Intel site.
http://support.intel.com/en-us/download
If you aren't quite sure what hardware you're running, just use the "automatically detect" feature.
When you opt for a custom installation, I'd recommend installing everything—the control software, the drivers, HDMI support, etc.—but you can probably skip Gaming Evolved.
