New Racing PC
New Racing PC
Well as those of you from Gone Broke Racing know my PC racing career was brought to a sudden halt by one of my cats deciding to liberally spray the interior of my PC with urine...How delighted was I when I turned it on to be greeted by a fizzle, pop and fans and LEDs turning on at off at random. Took out MoBo, my brand new graphics card and probably the processor.
My darling wife who knows just how into sim racing I have become disappears, expecting blood and mayhem...well what's the point...I mean there is nothing you can do, cats are cats and when you choose to own a giant Bengal tom, well you just have to take the rough with the smooth.
Anyhoo, the darling wife reappears and presses €700 into my hand, our holiday fund for next year, and says "I can give you a little more next week get a new one"
So to the internet I went, looking at pre builds I realized to even replace the one I had to the same specs was going to cost more like €1200 and to get close to a decent cutting edge mid range gaming system more like €1800
The guys at GBR said build one, it will be cheaper...Hmm, I used to build my own...why not see what is out there, what bargains can be found and what I could do in budget, with a few quid I could throw in I had €1000 and here is what I got, just under budget.
AMD 990FX(AM3+) Military-Grade Motherboard with Aerospace-Grade CeraM!X Cooling Tech
AMD Bulldozer FX-4100 Socket AM3+ 4 Core Processor - 3.60GHz, 3.80GHz Turbo
Corsair CMZ16GX3M4A1600C9 16GB 1600MHz CL9 DDR3 Vengeance Memory Four Module Kit
Palit Nvidia GeForce GTX 670 Graphics Card (2GB GDDR5, Kepler Architecture, 3004MHz Memory Clock, PCI Express 3.0
Corsair CMPSU-650HX Professional Series 650W Power Supply
Coolermaster Storm Enforcer Mid Tower ATX Case
Two 1 TB drives, DVD writer, Card Reader, 3.5 drive recycled from old machine.
Can't wait to put this lot together, it's going to be one mother of a rig, in a few months I am going to throw in another GTX 670 and that should do for a few years, With a liquid cooling solution that CPU will overclock to 5GHz, and the MoBo is right on the bleeding edge, so it is as future proofed as i can get.
very nice man. Expandibilty is key when building your own PC rig and you have a lot of room to grow with those components. the only weak thing on there I would have considered to futureproof is the power supply... 650w wont cut it for dual gtx670s with cooling etc. A better power supply is relitively cheap though.
also when you go to buy your secong 670 make sure its the same exact model/brand or else you may run into problems running SLI.
Yup both points noted, I was going for a bigger PSU but the delivery date was two months away, so I dropped back a notch to get one in stock, it may be enough though as it is sold as SLI ready and is a true 650w unlike some cheaper PSU's that cheat the figures. and the Palit is one of the less power hungry, but that is an easy component to swap out anyway if I need to, being modular I wont even need to recable just get the next model up and plug it into the loom. I also want to go SSD in the not too distant future and that will reduce the power demand...but for the here and now, I will be a happy puppy
....mind you I bet Rf2 will still glitch, thay have a long way to go with that sim.
The Corsair power supplies are top notch. I have been using one for almost 2 years and had no problems. Looks like a solid build you have coming your way.
You'll find that its pretty easy now on building these things yourself and you won't have to put up with all the trial software companies cram on new computers.
One thing though watch a few videos about proper thermal paste application. I found a couple on youtube by tom's hardware that were really good. That stuff is messy and can really do damage if not applied to the CPU correctly.
I agree, I use Corsair in both of my desktop PCs. I did have a 650 W PSU fail in one of my rigs. The RMA process was simple, and I had a new PSU in hand within a week or so. I had newegg send me a new one that cost less than $40, and I am keeping the replacement as a backup.
One thing I have learned as part of building and maintaining my own PCs is the value of having extra parts and cables on hand. You never know when you will need them.
Yeah not my first build, been a few years but the process will be the same. I am using the system disk from my last PC as there is just too much stuff that has been downloaded, updated etc to go from scratch, second time I have transplanted an OS from one computer to the next, many happy hours of tinkering with drivers and wiping of defunct crud...that will take longer than the build but with my crappy data limits it has to be done.
Yes, I have had to re-format the hard drive of my gaming PC twice in the last month, and even though I had back ups, I ended up re-downloading lots of stuff, at least 50 GB or so. I can see how difficult and expensive that would be with your kind of data limits.
Yea I hate the getting everything back up to speed part. I just built a home server so it made my last reformat and install of windows a little less painful.
LOL I have bits from computers that are now 20 years old, I have the one I'm replacing that has some serviceable parts...I may even rebuild that...anyone need a 133meg pentium? how about a 56k modem?...At the moment I am looking at the joys of USB 3...oh for a bit more budget, still there is some cool upgrades for sata drives I may take a look at and I can see a full SSD system in my future.
50 gigs? two months allowance in one hit LOL It is kinda satisfying though when you do finish a transplant...and boy you know your system inside and out...just wish I was doing it rather that typing about it, I miss firing up rFactor 1 or iRacing and trying to find a competitive time for a GBR race, or rF2 and trying to get it to work right
All the parts bar the memory are due to arrive monday or tuesday, sodding memory hasn't even shipped yet so that is going to be frustrating in the short term...added a Seagate 750GB Momentus XT Serial 2.5 inch 7200 RPM 32MB 6GB/S SATA Solid State Hybrid Hard Drive to the build, clever wee yoke that monitors program usage and moves the files you use most to it's onboard RAM for high speed access, boot times get slashed but unlike pure SSD's you retain the big storage of a conventional HDD. Some Turtle Beach DX11 suround sound phones also ordered, of course they wont work on the Box with my wheel so a MS wireless headset is also ordered so Knights shitty audio should soon be a thing of the past.
Good choice on the Momentus XT, I have a few friends using them and they seem to be an excellent choice for a build on a budget, i think they take a bit of 'bedding in' before you get the full advantage out of them whilst the caching algorithms do their thing though
Yeah, darling wife is getting an Xbox elite as she says it is somthing she uses and I have got the last couple, so onboard wifi could be something that may solidify the connection to the network here a little better that going via a PC. Still have to get the connection to the Cell sorted, it is unlikely I will be able to race tonight...will give it a try though. But as you say getting there, a couple of weeks should see me back on PC and Xbox bigger and better than before...Just hoping my current box lives long enough to transfer all the data from one to the other.
Yay memory status just switched to shipped, could be back PC racing by next weekend,
How much to neuter the cat?
Cat is already neutered more's the pity
Good to hear Knight. Glad it sounds like it's all getting sorted pretty quick. Hope it all pans out for you.
Oh mate I cant wait, it may not be the best computer among the GBR crew but for a single screen set up it will fly, now just get the interwebs sorted and I can get back to trying to finish a race LOL
So Amazon have refunded my cat damaged GTX570, fortunately it was just within the 28 day no questions asked period... result. Parts for the new comp are starting to arrive, Case, GTX670 and CPU so far...what will the postey bring today. wish it would all come at once patience is not one of my more outstanding virtues.
Everything here for the computer but the PSU...Damn this MoBo is a nice piece of kit, makes me wish I had spent a little more on the case to do it justice never seen so many outputs, some of which I had never heard of, dropped a little behind the tech curve . So everything is installed and looking sexy, so hope the PSU arrives tomorrow as that is my birthday, and there has been a long tradition of me spending my birthday cursing over new tech...and I do predict some amount of cursing as I nurse this thing to life
I love getting new computer bits
I normally run this after everything is installed and updated
http://www.passmark.com/download/pt_download.htm
Gives you a final score after it tests everything.
I normally run it once a month to ensure my PC is running at its best.
LOL I do the same on my desktops...can't wait to fire it up.
Don't forget the guard dog/moisture repellent device...
Yay PSU arrived today, the PC is up and running...and running fast. No problems at all with the OS, all sorted and conflicts resolved in about forty minutes. Now all I need is the new Box to arrive and the internet sorted out and Knight is back were he needs to be, happily racing away
Awesome fella. Just need your net sorted now.
Well the last piece of the setup is on it's way, the third moniter. So triple screens on the race rig hopefully by the end of the week. Shame it's only for PC and Forza will have to remain single, but at the rate Xboxes die I am not going that route. Hopfully when the 720 arrives on the scene that will have three screen capabilaty out the box. Hopefully setup goes smoothly but my one odd monitor may throw up a problem...time will tell.
That is what I said too, the problem for me was that once I did triple screens for PC sim racing, I had to have it for PS3 and Xbox as well. Speaking of Xboxes dying, my Arcade Xbox has started to get screen freezes and so I replaced it with a new Xbox last night. That is my seventh Xbox since 2005!!!!
@ craig. I have screen freezes on my middle screen only. It only happens in private rooms. Switch xboxes around and it still happens. I think its some sort of triple screen glitch.
Mine freezes regularly now, whether I am racing online or not. Its very irritating, happens almost every time I play. I love my Xbox 360, and am therefore a glutton for punishment, but its the most unreliable piece of electronics I have ever owned. But, that being said, the new Xbox seems to be significantly improved. So, now I have three of them.
Yeah my budget has been pushed to breaking point what with the new PC, two monitors and having to replace the Xbox that has just died...so Forza will remain single screen no matter how much I want that on three screens too...I would also need another HDMI monitor and it was hard enough to explain why I had to by a fifth monitor as it was