GPU Buying Guide - (Read first post)

As far as I know, only the B series comes in a 700W model, which basically makes it an office-grade power supply 😬

http://www.coolermaster.com/powersup...v-series/v700/

But yeah, there's a good chance it's just a B-tier unit (your standard mid-range power supply). I've got a feeling he bought a pre-built PC from that link—people love showing off those high-end rigs 🤣 . It’ll hold up, though; he should have enough headroom. As long as it isn't one of those budget Elite or Thunder series models from CM, he should be fine
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Timothy Kim60 said:http://www.coolermaster.com/powersup...v-series/v700/

It’ll likely be a B-series unit (decent enough, if you don't expect miracles). My guess is he bought a pre-built PC—people love showing off those high-end rigs 🤣 . It should hold up, though. It’s got plenty of headroom. As long as it isn't one of those bottom-tier Elite or Thunder models from CM, it'll do the job.

I have the B-series

Fair enough, you're right. It’s definitely not top-tier stuff. If you had gone with $200 (assuming this is the link), you could have picked up a much higher quality power supply

Timothy Kim60 said:Fair enough. It’s not exactly top-tier hardware. For $200, you could have easily picked up a much more reliable power supply

It's too late now 😁. Can I actually run that GPU given the power supply situation?

I think you can

Timothy Kim60 said:In my opinion, you can

Thanks, 🙂

Timothy Kim60 said:The temperature is higher—though not high enough to cause damage—and that gray tint left on the copper shouldn't be an issue, provided there isn't any thick, crusty residue you can actually feel with your finger; the grain size seems fine. Just keep in mind that if your room is sitting at 86°F and your case lacks decent airflow, those temps aren't actually that surprising. How high does it peak while you're gaming? (You can track that using MSI Afterburner or various other monitoring tools like PlayClaw)

So, yesterday I spent about three or four hours straight playing The Witcher 3, and from what I could tell while watching the temps, they hovered around 78°C—though Afterburner showed a peak of 81°C later on, which I guess happened at some point without me noticing. I checked my room temperature, and it’s hovering around 85°F. My case isn't exactly top-tier (it's a Thermaltake Commander MS-III) and I just have the front and rear fans installed. A side fan might not be a bad idea, though I'm not entirely sure it would even fit. Also, it feels to me like this Gigabyte Windforce 3 pushes air more radially than axially, which probably messes with the overall airflow too.
I honestly think I applied way too much paste—now that I'm doing a little digging online, everyone is saying you should aim for a grain of rice rather than a grain of a pea😁 which makes sense, given how small that surface area is compared to the processor itself. It might not be a bad idea to redo it all.
I can't seem to find this IC Diamond paste anywhere in stock. I also stumbled upon this
regarding that specific paste. Honestly, the selection of thermal pastes available here in the States is pretty lackluster. I've been looking at Arctic Cooling, but I'm not seeing anything significantly better than that.
Also, regarding the cleaning, he recommends using isopropyl alcohol. Now, what on earth is that supposed to be? From my Googling, it sounds like something people use when they're making cannabis oil😁 Can I just use regular high-percentage rubbing alcohol from a drugstore, or do I really need to hunt down this specific stuff? I have this screen cleaner that's supposedly natural and free of both alcohol and ammonia (though the ingredients aren't clearly listed anywhere). Think that would work for cleaning the chip? 😁

A buddy of mine just used nail polish remover to clean off some old thermal paste. I’m not totally sure if that was a genius move or a disaster waiting to happen. Anyone here with more experience than me care to weigh in?

It might be worth giving it another shot, because this cooler is an absolute beast. According to one GPU benchmark I saw, it stays under 60°C even under full load—though, obviously, a benchmark isn't quite the same as a sustained stress test, especially if you factor in higher ambient temperatures. As for cleaning it, I’m no chemist, but theoretically, nothing should cause issues since it shouldn't eat through those materials (at least, that's my guess). That said, I wouldn't go overboard experimenting with random chemicals if you don't have to. If you can't find 70% isopropyl alcohol at a drugstore, I've personally used high-proof vodka or even some heavy-duty degreaser 😁

You could honestly use pretty much anything, even some kind of solvent, on the heat spreader...

My own little trick before cleaning is to run an OCCT stress test or just play a game for a bit; it’s much easier to get that old paste off when everything is nice and warm!

Okay, things are looking way better now! I gave the heatsink a good scrub with some 70% isopropyl alcohol and applied a much more modest amount of Artic Silver. After running an OCCT burn-in test for about 20 minutes—with the ambient room temperature sitting at a warm 28.6°C—the temps topped out at 73 degrees. That is a literal 10-degree drop from where I was before.
I definitely overdid it with the thermal paste the first time around; even though it didn't look like a massive glob, there was clearly too much excess squeezing out around the chip, which I suppose just choked the cooling process. While I was at it, I decided to refresh the paste on the CPU as well, which shaved off another 2 or 3 degrees. Honestly, I’m really happy with how this paste performs.
Given how hot it is outside right now, I think these temperatures are perfectly fine—plus, once the weather cools down in a month or so, I expect everything to drop by another 8 degrees or so.
Anyway, a huge thanks to Timothy Kim60 and everyone else for the solid advice.

Timothy Kim60 said:You really need to download Driver Sweeper. Once you’ve done a standard uninstallation of your drivers through the Control Panel, just fire up that program, check the boxes for both ATI and Nvidia display drivers, hit analyze, and then run the removal to wipe out every last trace of those leftover files. Otherwise, you're just asking for trouble. I don't know what you're trying to get at here, but if this is some kind of test to see if I'm paying attention, consider me fully briefed. If there’s an actual point you're trying to make, quit stalling and lay it out clearly. I don't have all day to decipher cryptic one-word prompts. Get to the point.

Look, it’s really not that complicated. You just go straight to the official Nvidia website to grab the drivers—since Gainward is basically just a vendor for Nvidia anyway—and then you can just let the automatic detection tool handle the heavy lifting for you. Click.If you’re asking me which OS or specific series I would personally pick, that’s a whole different conversation—but if you want to know exactly which graphics card you're currently running, just pull up Speccy. It'll give you the full breakdown.

I’ve done everything by the book—completely wiped out the old drivers and everything—and Nvidia actually recognized the new card, but now I’m hitting a massive wall. Every single time I try to run the installer, it hangs at exactly 14% and throws a "7-Zip: Data Error" message right in my face. Are you kidding me? What the hell am I supposed to do with that? I'm seriously losing my mind here. Can anyone please walk me through this? 🙂

What's the deal? Shouldn't the drivers straight from the official Nvidia site be ready to go right away?

Timothy Kim60 said:What’s the deal with the zip file? Shouldn't the drivers straight from the official Nvidia site be ready to go for an instant install?

Look, when I try to go through step two—the automatic route—it keeps flagging me, saying I don't have the latest Java version installed. This is after I've already gone through the absolute nightmare of installing Java five separate times and trying that automatic installer five more times, only to have it fail every single time! So, I finally gave up and tried step one, the manual method. It finds my graphics card and offers me a package to download, but then—get this—I hit that exact same error message again.

velvetnomad44 said:When I try Step 2—the automatic route—it keeps telling me I don't have the latest Java version. I've already tried installing Java five times, plus five attempts at the auto-install itself, all failed. So, I went back to Step 1 for the manual setup. It found my graphics card and offered the package for download, but then that same error pops up again.

Honestly, you might just need to reinstall the OS—these kinds of crashes usually aren't a good sign.

+1

Is there any way to hook up an external GPU to an iMac so I can actually play decent games? This Mac is from 2014—cost me a fortune back then—and the built-in Intel graphics are pretty much useless for anything serious.

To's a no on the first one—it's just not really built for gaming.

But maybe give us the specific iMac model you're working with so we can take a look.

Not really, that sounds like a massive headache and way too expensive... I'd probably just grab a desktop for $4k-$5k instead. 😁