Wrong thread

It's 4oclock and I too lazy to come out with my own build, so I borrowed and modded from Minecrafer's build here.
https://forum.lowyat.net/index.php?showtopi...post&p=74314246
Intel Xeon E3-1231 V3 3.4GHz RM954
Asrock H97 Pro4 RM330
Gainward Phantom GTX970 RM1325
Corsair Value RAM 8GB DDR3 1600MHz RM229
WD Caviar Blue 1TB RM199
Seasonic M12II Evo 520W 80+ Bronze Fully Modular RM299
Budget case RM200
Samsung S22C170BS RM402.80
Logitech Wired K120 Keyboard RM29
Total: RM4k+/-

If you seriously want to squeeze in a SSD in the same budget, get non-phantom GTX970 (save RM50), find sub RM100 OEM case, get H97m/H87 (save another RM20-50) and try nego with the shop.

This post has been edited by Human10: May 13 2015, 04:03 AM

No, you can't install Haswell (or soon Broadwell) CPU on H6X mobo. Also old mobo may not have PCIE3.0, may bottleneck the GPU performance by little or more.

RAM may be reusable if it is single stick 4GB, preferably at least 1333Mhz speed for better compatibility with current RAM of speed 1600Mhz and above. You can skip the RAM first and see how the old 4GB work on your new rig first before deciding on how many more RAM to buy.

Casing is generally reusable as long as the size is acceptable but modern casing tend to have better design for mounting bigger size fan (12cm and above).

This post has been edited by Human10: May 13 2015, 12:18 PM

Check my suggestion above, the original build by Minecrafer is a 5k+ build. You just need to swap out the monitor for a decent 23/24" and you are good to go.

But personally, I will suggest you to get a GTX970 instead of GTX980 for the time being as next gen GPU by AMD is around the corner (hence GTX980 will get dethroned by 390x and 980TI), for sure to anticipate some price change on GTX980 soon after that. You can get a GTX970 and speculate on how the things go first before pulling the trigger for a GPU cost over RM2.3k. GTX970 cost starting RM1.3k to RM1.7k, the cheapest one will do since you just test water first.

This post has been edited by Human10: May 13 2015, 12:15 PM

No doubt GTX970

If can afford then GTX970, can't afford then 2nd hand 290 is great, many around for under RM700.

Really? Their power requirement only 5W different according to official specs?
http://www.geforce.com/hardware/desktop-gp.../specifications
http://www.geforce.com/hardware/desktop-gp.../specifications

You can also down clock it to make sure it stay under the maximum power consumption threshold at all time.

If you mean the 8+6 pins vs 6+6 pins, you can mod the connectors to make it compatible as long as you know what you are doing.

You can also try ITX cards which are designed to run at lower power consumption (there's only one 8 pins connector as you can see here).
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16814125706
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16814121912

EDITED: Ok, my bad. Seems like the original PSU of the X51 is rated for 330W only. It will be really risky to stress it too much. If possible consider change the PSU so you don't get limited just for it.
http://www.amazon.com/Alienware-X51-i7-377...B/dp/B009WAK676

This post has been edited by Human10: May 15 2015, 01:56 AM

In some way, yes.

People being anticipating 760's successor for a long time (760 launched back in mid of 2013 while 960 only come out after almost 1.5 years).

Somemore, the situation further agitated by the impressive performance and price of 970, people are expecting 960 to be on par or better than 770 while maintaining the advantages of Maxwell architecture.

But Nvidia decided to smash everyone's dream and make it an average performance card improved (but barely better in performance) from its predecessor. The situation is similar to GTX750TI vs GTX 650TI Boost. On paper it is about a half cut of GTX970, fitted with practically no headroom for be futureproof (128bit memory and 2GB GDDR5).



So TL;DR, 960 is not a card for bang for buckness.

This post has been edited by Human10: May 16 2015, 07:55 AM

Mind you the Nvidia recommended requirement is 500W (though I have to admit they usually put in lots of headroom).

Technically speaking, a proper and decent 450W will have no problem powering it. But the main problem here is there isn't much solid or decent 450W around. It will be risky to power it up in a cap ayam 450W.

Here's the PSU which is by same OEM as your PSU. Their design and power distribution probably hadn't changed much.
http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/Ant...y-Review/1487/7

Since the PSU is dual rail, each rail is capable of delivering up to about 15A of current or 180W of power.

Nvidia's official specs stated that reference GTX760 consume max 170W, and here a test on it proved it to be somewhere above 160W. Now you only left with under 20W of headroom.

But what's more interesting is non-reference GTX760, they always come factory overclocked and it will change the maximum power consumption of it.
https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/...GTX_760/25.html

Here we can see several GTX760 breached the 180W mark.
https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/MSI/GTX..._Gaming/22.html
https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/MSI/GeF..._Gaming/25.html
https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Gigabyt...orce_OC/25.html

This post has been edited by Human10: May 16 2015, 08:15 AM

Nah, 960 is a tier higher than 265 for sure (at least 20% different). AMD's same tier GPU is 280/285.
https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/MSI/GTX..._Gaming/29.html

This post has been edited by Human10: May 16 2015, 07:54 AM

Good enough for a 450W.

But it is still a 450W (360W to be precise IINM), running 760 on it is like running at the edge of a cliff. You can run, but any mistake and you fall off the cliff.

Max current for rail1 - 17A (204W)
http://www.fsplifestyle.com/documents/h2.pdf

Another thing I didn't factor in my post above is PSU can degrade over time, hence further gapping between the power requirement and capacity.

This post has been edited by Human10: May 16 2015, 01:32 PM

Somewhat overpriced.

Generally, i5 4440 is enough for most people. It should cost under RM700 IINM.
Some stores sell the mobo you quoted for RM320 before tax AFAIK.
8GB value RAM RM230.
Kingston V300 (not exactly a good performer, get liteon OEM drive better) RM430.
Bitfenix prodigy (before GST I recall it cost around RM350?)
Get a Seasonic PSU better, 520W modular at RM300 IIRC.

RM1660 + (670*1.06) = RM2370

Get a DVI to VGA adapter, sometimes its bundled together with the graphic card.


DVI-I port of your GPU should support analog signal and compatible with VGA.



This post has been edited by Human10: May 17 2015, 05:58 PM

1. If you are power users and often do heavy rendering, you can consider 5820k as it is just a tad more pricy than 4790k, but it is hexacore vs quadcore of 4790k. But mind you, it not going to be helpful in gaming much (any time soon) and you probably need some overclocking to match the clockspeed of normal i5/i7. Other than that, an entry Haswell-E rig will cost just a little over high end 4790k built (I assume you getting value DDR4 RAM).

2. 970 is a mid high range card which is surprisingly powerful for its price and a beast for 1080p gaming. But as always, if you have the money to burn, the more powerful the better. But practical wise, I will say grab a 970 now and speculate how things develop in the next couple of months (AMD R9 300 series and Nvidia 980TI).

3. Yup, k series is for overclocking. And generally, overclocking don't provide much gaming performance improvement as long as the clock is over 3.5Ghz. Example, gaming wise, i5 4460 probably can handle what i5 4690k can handle.

4. Seperate drive is cheaper and easier to maintain. Hybrid drive is for laptop which having limited HDD bay. It is not a concern (generally) for desktop users.

Budget wise, I will say 4k for rig along provide you with a pretty solid specs for gaming.

The durability or reliability of components are largely depend on your luck. The best you can help it is to operate them under cooler temperature and a solid and reliable power supply, that's all you can do. Also try to find parts with longer warranty. Many parts do have warranty of 2-3 years.

As for the PSU, you have a misconception there. A 1kW PSU doesn't mean it consume 1kW at all time. It just mean it can support up to 1kW. What it consume is still depend on the components you run and its efficiency. A system total power consumption of 400W on a 80% efficient PSU will draw 500W from your wall socket.

You can get cheaper and more optimised specs with custom build as compared to branded prebuild. Custom build also easier to maintain and upgrade as each parts function and warranty independent from another. For example, mobo bios update from mobo from vendors will be more often than branded prebuild.

Another thing to note is different brands have different brand reputation and different price. Generally Asus, gigabyte and MSI will be priced on the high side as compared to other brands.

Anything you can do on hybrid drive you can do it on SSD + HDD combo too. The best of course is install the game directly onto SSD, but if that isn't possible, some sorts of caching will help a little than purely install on HDD.

Cause many of them opt for overclocking build, and 4690k is the cheapest available. For us, we must pay about RM1k extra (different CPU, mono and 3rd party cooler) to change from non-OC i5 build to OC build, the marginal gain on gaming performance certainly don't justify the RM1k premium. Another thing is their price gapping don't seems as steep as ours. I7 is now almost double that of 4460, before all this price hike or GST saga, it is certainly less than that. Retailers know i7 is premium stuffs and people who planned to get one wouldn't be bothered by few hundreds extra. In short, but you see on the Internet may not be applicable directly on our local market.

This post has been edited by Human10: May 18 2015, 07:40 AM

Nah, my bet is we won't see 980TI until AMD's R9 390X is launched, that's the main reason for Nvidia to launch it.

680 and 970 is about 20-30% different in term of performance. The main reason 970 is recommended is for its price.
http://www.geforce.com/hardware/desktop-gp...970/performance

That't pretty much the most you can squeeze out of a 4k budget.

Performance wise, on 1080p its easy peasy, unless the game is a seriously sucks console ports.