PC Hardware and building thread

[DELTAprime]

Am I the only one that thinks putting 3 super expensive Corsair ML LED fans in the front of a NZXT H440 is a waste of money when you can get non-LED fans that perform similarly for cheaper?

Here's the H440 for reference. https://www.nzxt.com/products/h440-white

[DELTAprime]

Kaby Lake reviews are finally official as of today. Just as the leaked reviews said, there's nothing much to see here except slightly improved power efficiency and temps allowing for a higher clock speed. I'm going to get a 7700k, but I'm going to wait for it to drop a little in price cause you know day one prices are gonna suck.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnIIlOF5D6U&t=0s

Z270 boards are also out. Again nothing much to see here but having a second M.2 port on most boards is a nice feature. I'll be getting the Asus ROG Maximus IX Hero. That will be a nice upgrade for me. I'm in the middle of transitioning from mITX to ATX so I'll be going from a tiny board to a full size board.

http://www.asus.com/au/Motherboards/...XIMUS-IX-HERO/

[TAAUBlaster]

Am I the only one that thinks putting 3 super expensive Corsair ML LED fans in the front of a NZXT H440 is a waste of money when you can get non-LED fans that perform similarly for cheaper?

Here's the H440 for reference. https://www.nzxt.com/products/h440-white

LED fans look nice but I've always just bought regular non-LED ones for the front of my PC's because I'm a tightarse

[kup]

LED fans would be distracting. I am the type who even places black tape on Power LEDs to tone down the light. I can't stand non onscreen lighting.

For proper cooling, go Hydro. I have done so for years now and have a very quiet PC as a result. When I built a second PC with standard fans, that now feels like a vacuum cleaner.

[DELTAprime]

So CES is wrapping up and there wasn't anything released there aside from Intel Kaby Lake CPU's and Z270 boards I have any interest in whatsoever. My interest in AMD Ryzen was killed by the all motherboard manufacturers confirming they are not doing high end motherboards for Ryzen and they will only make low end and mid tier products.

So that leaves my buying a Z270 board and 7700k CPU. The prices locally for the 7700k are about the same as you would expect to pay if you imported one from the US. But the Motherboards are being gouged by the local retailers. When I get paid this week I'm ordering a Maximus IX Hero from Amazon. The US price is $219 USD the AU price is $439 AUD before any shipping is added on, even with the fastest shipping from Amazon it's $50 - $70 cheaper converted to AUD.

[philby]

Well the Geforce GTX 1080 Ti has been leaked via a job posting. I have to wonder how stupid high the Australia Tax will be on that one. http://www.pcworld.com/article/31511...scription.html

interesting...i splurged on a 980ti when we built our system a year or so ago but dont think i need to upgrade it at the moment!

seems like cpu sector is really slow at the moment, nothing much happening there for ages!

[DELTAprime]

interesting...i splurged on a 980ti when we built our system a year or so ago but dont think i need to upgrade it at the moment!

seems like cpu sector is really slow at the moment, nothing much happening there for ages!

Actually CPU's are heating up. AMD Ryzen is coming "by the end of Q1". So far we have seen benchmarks where it outperforms a Intel 6900k which is a $1100USD CPU and knowing AMD they will price Ryzen cheaper than Intel's equivalent. That said people are expecting it to come in at $350USD (same price as the Intel 6700k) which I think is just dreaming.

That said it's one thing to have a CPU that can beat the 8 Core 16 Thread 6900k which is clocked low because of heat and power concerns at media rendering like they have shown. It's another thing to beat the Intel 7700k which is a 4C 8T higher clocked CPU at what it's best at, gaming. For me why would I buy the AMD Ryzen which is best as a media rendering CPU when I can buy a 7700k which is the current best gaming CPU on the market.

[DELTAprime]

So it turns out that just by changing my motherboard and going with 3400mhz memory instead of 2400mhz I have gone from being bottlenecked by my 6600k in GTA V to putting the bottleneck back on my GPU. Faster memory really does help performance, don't believe to old line that "RAM speed doesn't matter".

[DELTAprime]

Bleeping Expletive!!! Just had to do a full format and reinstall because the last Windows 10 update broke some stuff preventing me from updating Nvidia drivers.

[kup]

Bleeping Expletive!!! Just had to do a full format and reinstall because the last Windows 10 update broke some stuff preventing me from updating Nvidia drivers.

That happened to me when I first updated to Win10 early on the 'free update' program. I uninstalled it because of that.

Recently though, I upgraded again on my main PC and it seems to be behaving. Previously I had noticeable performance decrease from Win7 but now seems fine.