General PC Help Thread - OP updated with useful links - READ

[TheTurnipKing]

Even if something is, IDE can support up to two devices at once.

PATA
1 x ATA133 2 Dev. Max

[Winckle]

Price to build a small form factor PC with an SSD, fair bit of memory and a graphics card that will be ok for Amnesium at most. Looking for something to browse web, media and some programming. I don't care for high-end PC gaming or even chart topping 3D games, just indie games is ok.

Any ideas?

It would be easier to figure out with a rough budget to work from.

[Alpha eX]

Price to build a small form factor PC with an SSD, fair bit of memory and a graphics card that will be ok for Amnesium at most. Looking for something to browse web, media and some programming. I don't care for high-end PC gaming or even chart topping 3D games, just indie games is ok.

Any ideas?

It would be easier to figure out with a rough budget to work from.

£300?

[Donk]

Price to build a small form factor PC with an SSD, fair bit of memory and a graphics card that will be ok for Amnesium at most. Looking for something to browse web, media and some programming. I don't care for high-end PC gaming or even chart topping 3D games, just indie games is ok.

Any ideas?

It would be easier to figure out with a rough budget to work from.

£300?

Falsey was selling his old pc for £200, if you buy that and spend £100 on an SSD then you'd have a pretty balling pc which can do modern gaming as well as the indie stuff.

[TheTurnipKing]

Yeah, without that it's pretty much a case of "which components fit this budget", not "which components will do this job".

I'm not saying that it's impossible to get parts that will fit your needs for that price. Merely that if do they fit your rather specialised needs, it will probably be co-incidence rather than design.

(Among other things, coding really benefits from a fast processor. Not so much for the coding itself, as for the inevitable compiling that follows it).

[bear]

A few minutes on the Overclockers site and I came up with this.




I think you have to go for a Fusion processor in that setup as it gets rid of the need for a seperate GPU and still offers relatively decent performance. I'm sure there are flaw with that setup but its almost in Aplhas ballpark so its a semi-decent base to work off.

[bear]

Quick change. The 3870k processor is the same price on Amazon as the processor in that build so include that instead.SSD is £8 cheaper as well. That almost covers the optical drive I forgot about.

[Stugene]

All righty, so my PC's case fans are a load of strawberry floating shite. I went for Antec TrueQuiets a few months ago, realised they shift no strawberry floating air at all, and replaced my main side exhaust with an Akasa Viper - which does and is a bloody good fan.

Now, I have space for 6 case fans (2 side [140mm, ~80mm], 2 top [140mm], 2 front [120mm, 140mm]) and an exhaust for my mobo's watercooler [120mm].
The two front fans are beneath my 5.12" drivebays. My lower side fan is beside my gfx card, the top side fan is next to my watercooler, because of this it needs to be a max of 100mm. My top fans are located directly above the motherboard. Currently I have one intake and like 5 exhausts (including my watercooler). I know this must be strawberry floating wrong. My graphics card keeps having little fits every once in a while, and my system is getting far, far too hot. Right now my strawberry floating processor is idling at 59c and my graphics card at 53c after about 8 hours of use.

I'm using a CoolerMaster CM690 II Advanced Case.

What I need are some recommendations for:

Airflow
Air intake at the front, exhaust at top. I'm pretty sure my lower side fan, next to my gpu, should be an exhaust to output the fuckton of hot air it produces. Should the top side be an intake or exhaust?
A powerful as strawberry float fan to act as an exhaust for my watercooler
I don't mind about noise, so long as it's not jet-engine level.
Fan Recommendations
Should I just buy 4 Akasa Vipers and a similar 80mm?
Fan Controller
Considering the Akasa Vipers are PWM, is it worth the cash to control their output? If not, where the hell can I buy PWM adaptors? I had to salvage one from another fan to use my existing Viper.

Also, welcome back Uncle Falsey!

Now you're back, I'll be needing this:

[False]

Hello, build guide incoming tonight - Ive been without internet which has been no end of fun, but has also meant that I couldnt finish the strawberry floater up.

[systematic]

All righty, so my PC's case fans are a load of strawberry floating shite. I went for Antec TrueQuiets a few months ago, realised they shift no strawberry floating air at all, and replaced my main side exhaust with an Akasa Viper - which does and is a bloody good fan.

Now, I have space for 6 case fans (2 side [140mm, ~80mm], 2 top [140mm], 2 front [120mm, 140mm]) and an exhaust for my mobo's watercooler [120mm].
The two front fans are beneath my 5.12" drivebays. My lower side fan is beside my gfx card, the top side fan is next to my watercooler, because of this it needs to be a max of 100mm. My top fans are located directly above the motherboard. Currently I have one intake and like 5 exhausts (including my watercooler). I know this must be strawberry floating wrong. My graphics card keeps having little fits every once in a while, and my system is getting far, far too hot. Right now my strawberry floating processor is idling at 59c and my graphics card at 53c after about 8 hours of use.

I'm using a CoolerMaster CM690 II Advanced Case.

What I need are some recommendations for:

Airflow
Air intake at the front, exhaust at top. I'm pretty sure my lower side fan, next to my gpu, should be an exhaust to output the fuckton of hot air it produces. Should the top side be an intake or exhaust?
A powerful as strawberry float fan to act as an exhaust for my watercooler
I don't mind about noise, so long as it's not jet-engine level.
Fan Recommendations
Should I just buy 4 Akasa Vipers and a similar 80mm?
Fan Controller
Considering the Akasa Vipers are PWM, is it worth the cash to control their output? If not, where the hell can I buy PWM adaptors? I had to salvage one from another fan to use my existing Viper.

Ideally you want a setup with positive air pressure. So you need more fans pulling in air than pushing it out of the case.

Turn your watercooler radiator into an intake. It makes more sense to have cool air passed through it than the hot air in your case.

[Stugene]

Ideally you want a setup with positive air pressure. So you need more fans pulling in air than pushing it out of the case.

Turn your watercooler radiator into an intake. It makes more sense to have cool air passed through it than the hot air in your case.

Cool, thanks for your help!

This is what my case can take:


This is my proposed layout:


The slightly opaque orange squares are side panel fan slots.

[HM]

Are there any decent 2/3 tb external hard drives about atm? Or would it be better to maybe build like a min-server?

I quite fancy having something external to regularly back up all my data to just in case.

[False]

New build guide. Kind of what Im thinking so far. Prices on just about everything have gone up this year, so bad times. Not much I could do with graphics recommendations. Old gen is old and prices are holding, new gen is too expensive for mainstream and the lower priced parts dont deliver. Give me GTX660! I chucked on a bonus SSD option rather than making it part of the default build.

** Denotes recommended value build.

Case
...£040 -- Antec 300 **
...£070 -- Fractal R3

Graphics card
...£150 -- NVIDIA GTX 560
...£180 -- NVIDIA GTX 560 Ti 448 core **

Hard drive
...~£070 -- Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB (if you can find one)
...£084 -- Seagate 2TB **

Memory
...£043 -- Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2x4GB) 1600MHz **

Motherboard
...£105 -- Gigabyte GA-Z77-D3H **
...£130 -- Asus P8Z77-V

Optical drive
...£013 -- Samsung DVD writer **
...£047 -- Samsung BluRay

Power supply
...£043 -- Antec Basiq Power 550W **
...£060 -- Coolermaster Silent Pro 600W (Modular)

Processor
...£180 -- Intel Core i5 3570K **

Bonus round - SSD
...£090 -- Crucial M4 128GB

Range: £644 - £884
Recommended: £688

And for the usual disclaimer, prices may be better/worse elsewhere. Prices are rounded and accurate as of now. Ill stick this in the OP if there are no glaring issues with it, but for now Ill leave it here for sounding off.

[systematic]

This is my proposed layout:


The slightly opaque orange squares are side panel fan slots.

This is how I'd configure the case:



I wouldn't use all of the fan slots (too many fans in a case running at full power causes turbulence which isn't very helpful) unless you're using a fan controller to limit the speed of some of the fans.

Your GPU is most likely sucking in air from the case and pushing it out of the back which is why the side and bottom fans would best be suited as intakes.

The CPU side fan would be useful if you were using a top down cooler but in your case it's redundant.

This setup is similiar to yours and it shows you the airflow route:

[7256930752]

Falsey, is the CPU in the new build compatible with the Asus P5Q motherboard?

[HM]

Right my fractal define r3 case turned up today, had a quick question about the fans.

It's got one rear and one front, with space for one more front, two top, and one bottom with another open grill there for airflow. I've got 2 fans on my antec case I could take off, where would be best to put them (if at all)?

[False]

Just add/remove whatever you like until you have the balance of cooling and volume that you want. Make sure you have the airflow going the right way though, there are airflow indicators on the side of the fans usually.

[HM]

Think I'll trial another one on the front taking air in and one on the top pushing air out. Sort of like this but without the bottom one:

[False]

Dont know what type of cpu cooler you have, but make sure it gets good airflow before you pull air out of the top.

[HM]

Dont know what type of cpu cooler you have, but make sure it gets good airflow before you pull air out of the top.

I've got the stock intel one that came with my cpu.

Shall i just leave it and see how good it is as standard?