Building a (Quite Baller) Game Box for around 1-grand

[Sheena]

no you did not have it cooled properly. you buy reference cards and think they will run cool.. uh no?

think of it like this.

you buy a big block v8, but choose not to cool it with fans and only a tiny radiator. how is that going to work out? not very well.

here, you bought a 550ti with the reference cooler (reference card means EVGA/AMD branded cards, and not third party vendors such as MSI, gigabyte, zotac, etc)

your mistake is buying great hardware, but buying it from the wrong company, then labeling ALL ti's as running hot.

thats literally like saying i blew a fi sub, so all fi subs suck dick, so now i only run sundown.

i mean thats absolutely great that you think you know what your doing, you randomly threw some hardware into the shopping cart without any reviews what so ever and you got a shit result.. your fault, not nvidias.

in this build i see you got smart with a dual 92mm fan for your raedeon card, so you wont see any heat issues from it.

but please dont bash "ti's" just because you bought the wrong kind.

[Dwn4BassAlan]

no you did not have it cooled properly. you buy reference cards and think they will run cool.. uh no?

think of it like this.

you buy a big block v8, but choose not to cool it with fans and only a tiny radiator. how is that going to work out? not very well.

here, you bought a 550ti with the reference cooler (reference card means EVGA/AMD branded cards, and not third party vendors such as MSI, gigabyte, zotac, etc)

your mistake is buying great hardware, but buying it from the wrong company, then labeling ALL ti's as running hot.

thats literally like saying i blew a fi sub, so all fi subs suck dick, so now i only run sundown.

i mean thats absolutely great that you think you know what your doing, you randomly threw some hardware into the shopping cart without any reviews what so ever and you got a shit result.. your fault, not nvidias.

in this build i see you got smart with a dual 92mm fan for your raedeon card, so you wont see any heat issues from it.

but please dont bash "ti's" just because you bought the wrong kind.

You know what your actually right, except that I do not expect it to run cool, I did my share yet it still overheated.

I dont only buy reference cards but the EVGA was on sale, so to clarify, in my opinion the EVGA might run pretty hot unless you get it a good fan OK?

[Sheena]

theres a rule of thumb when building computers.

reference cards for light gaming.. you sacrifice performance for noise reduction.

third party vendor cards for normal and heavy gaming.. you sacrifice noise reduction for performance.

if you want performance and noise reduction, you have to look into water cooling solutions.

i would use reference cards if my client was going to play ported games from consoles.. like the call of dutys.

[Dwn4BassAlan]

theres a rule of thumb when building computers.

reference cards for light gaming.. you sacrifice performance for noise reduction.

third party vendor cards for normal and heavy gaming.. you sacrifice noise reduction for performance.

if you want performance and noise reduction, you have to look into water cooling solutions.

i would use reference cards if my client was going to play ported games from consoles.. like the call of dutys.

Good to know.

[Maxim]

theres a rule of thumb when building computers.

reference cards for light gaming.. you sacrifice performance for noise reduction.

third party vendor cards for normal and heavy gaming.. you sacrifice noise reduction for performance.

if you want performance and noise reduction, you have to look into water cooling solutions.

i would use reference cards if my client was going to play ported games from consoles.. like the call of dutys.

This is contradicting itself in a way. Though EVGA usually sticks to the reference design for coolers it is very common for them to "SuperClock" cards (sell them pre-overclocked about 5%+). MSI, Gigabyte, Zotac, XFX, Sapphire, and nearly every other brand all sell reference cards when a new card first launches and then ~2-3 months following the release they come out with custom cooler designs.

The custom designs occasionally offer pre-overclocks but are usually just a re-design of the cooler for the card to lower temperatures which (generally) offers more room for overclocking. The "reference" design has nothing to do with the card's performance other than temperatures and potential overclocking limits. You can have an absolutely dominating gaming computer with reference design graphics cards (I'm doing so myself)

[Sheena]

im not saying reference cards are shit, just you will hands down get better cooling with a third party cooling solution. theres no denying it.

which is what this was originally about when he said ti's overheat.

not about clocks and performance, about cooling.

and its very common knowledge to know that when someone says msi, gigabyte, or zotac, we are not talking about their reference design. we are talking about their complete custom PCB reworked power phases, and custom cooling solution designs.

to this day i'm not sure why you're against me on everything i say, you always find something to pick at and take it way out of context maxim.

[Maxim]

reference cards for light gaming.. you sacrifice performance for noise reduction.

third party vendor cards for normal and heavy gaming.. you sacrifice noise reduction for performance.

I got confused by this. I read this as saying custom cards offer more performance but you have to sacrifice by having less noise reduction, whereas you'll normally get better performance AND a quieter card. I didn't want someone else to read it the way I did.

I don't mean to pick stuff out of a conversation nor do I just oppose stuff for the sake of opposing it. I just try to make sure everything's accurate and makes sense for the people who read it and don't know what they're doing.

[Sheena]

i figured it didnt need explaining.. but basically what i meant was...

reference cards produce much more heat than a customized cooling solution card such as ones from msi, gigabyte, zotac, or even the superclocked cards from EVGA.

"stock" coolers (aka reference designed coolers) will require you to downclock/raise the fan speed to a much higher decibel level than most people are comfortable with.

in a sense you lose performance because there arent may people out there that can live with a gpu fan at 80% or higher, and lets face it, the fan is pretty damn loud.

they will revert to downclocking/downvolting the card (in most cases).

where as with a non stock cooler the fans are much louder in the 60-80% range, so when you buy a non stock cooler, you kind of understand that its going to be loud.

in the end you dont end up sacrificing performance because a fan at 80%+ on a stock cooler will be the same as a custom cooler at 30-40%.

personally, i never understood the need for a gaming computer to be quiet.. they already glow bright fuckin colors.

[Maxim]

I don't mean to be nit-picky, but the general purpose of non-stock coolers is to increase cooling potential WITHOUT increasing noise.

http://www.tomshardw...eview,3217.html

Tom's reviews 7 GTX 670's. 1 reference design from nVidia and 6 aftermarket cards (all overclocked out of the box).

All the cards put up superior performance to the reference card due to their overclocks. Most of the aftermarket cards (ASUS's offering stands out most) post lower temperatures while maintaining the same or lower noise output. The Zotac card makes considerably more noise (3.8dB) but also comes with the highest overclock and posts the highest scores in 3DMark of all the cards tested. Were it clocked down nearly 200mHz to where the nVidia card were I'm confident that it would run with even lower temps (it's already the coolest) and less noise than the reference card under load.

[Sheena]

I don't mean to be nit-picky, but the general purpose of non-stock coolers is to increase cooling potential WITHOUT increasing noise.

http://www.tomshardw...eview,3217.html

Tom's reviews 7 GTX 670's. 1 reference design from nVidia and 6 aftermarket cards (all overclocked out of the box).

All the cards put up superior performance to the reference card due to their overclocks. Most of the aftermarket cards (ASUS's offering stands out most) post lower temperatures while maintaining the same or lower noise output. The Zotac card makes considerably more noise (3.8dB) but also comes with the highest overclock and posts the highest scores in 3DMark of all the cards tested. Were it clocked down nearly 200mHz to where the nVidia card were I'm confident that it would run with even lower temps (it's already the coolest) and less noise than the reference card under load.

is what i was saying.