PC build

[RGG:Dale]

CAS:Coolermaster Dominator CM-692 Mid-Tower Gaming Case (Black Color)
CD:LG CH10LS20 10X BLU-RAY Reader & 16X DVD?R/?RW Drive (please select the Blue Ray software in the Software section) [+34]
CD2:NONE
CPU:Intel? Core? i7 2600K Quad Core 3.4GHz 8MB cache LGA1155 + HD Graphics ***Overclockable XXX***
FA_HDD:None
FAN:Asetek 510LC / Xtremegear Liquid Cooling system w/ 120mm Radiator (Asetek CPU Water Cooling ***Overclockable XXX***)
FLASHMEDIA:INTERNAL 52in1 Flash Media Reader/Writer (BLACK COLOR)
HDD:64 GB Crucial M4 Series SATA III Gaming MLC Solid State Disk (128GB (64GBx2) Raid 0 Extreme Performance [+86])
HDD2:1TB SATA-III 6.0Gb/s 7200RPM Hard Drive (Single Hard Drive) (2TB (1TBx2) Raid 0 Extreme Performance [+43])
KEYBOARD:Logitec USB Keyboard (Black)
MEMORY:8GB (4x2GB) PC12800 DDR3/1600mhz Dual Channel Memory (Kingston Hyper X Blu Series w/Heat Spreader ***Overclockable XXX***)
MOTHERBOARD:[CrossFireX/SLI] Asus P8Z68-V Pro Intel Z68 Chipset DDR3 ATX Mainboard w/ BT GO! LucidLogix Virtu and Intel Smart Response Technology & 7.1 HD Audio, GbLAN, USB3.0, 4x SATA-III RAID, 3 Gen2 PCIe, 2 PCIe X1 & 2 PCI ***Overclockable XXX***
MOUSE:Logitech Optical USB Mouse (Black)
NETWORK :O NBOARD 10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT -- As standard on all PCs
OS:Microsoft? Windows? 7 Home Premium (64-bit Edition)
POWERSUPPLY:1000 Watts Power Supplies [+37] (Cyberpower 1000watt Gaming Power Supply SLI/CrossFire Ready)
SOUND:Asus Xonar DX 7.1 PCI-Express Sound Card [+53]
USB:Built-in USB 2.0 Ports
VC_PHYSX:NVIDIA GeForce GT 430 1GB 16X PCI Express [+41] (Major Brand Power by NVIDIA)
VIDEO:NVIDIA GeForce GTX580 1536MB 16X PCI Express (Major Brand Power by NVIDIA)
WNC CI-E Wireless 802.11n 300Mbps Network Interface Card [+17]
_PRICE(+1496)


just need a verdict on the build?

[Cossack]

Be carefully with HDD raid 0, if you can better create raid 10, because with no backup you lose one disk, second one becomes completely useless. About SSD's, they don't need such backup

About GT 430... It might bottleneck the GTX 580, but I'm not sure.

Everything else at first look looks nice.

[RGG:Dale]

the Gt430 is basically a physx graphics card not a second graphics card so it should just focus on that one thing, the reason for this is that someone told me to get it as a physx card due to Arma 3 being heavily reliant on that form of graphics.

thankyou for the feed back

[Cossack]

Yeah, but here is the deal - GTX 580 is so awesome high end card and you put that GT 430, it might bottleneck your GTX 580, because the GT 430 might can't keep up and in the end GTX 580 doing all physx can perform better without GT 430.

Thats the problem, so GT 430 might become useless.

[RGG:Dale]

i see what you mean, i guess it will require connecting and disconnecting the GT430 and testing out high end games with FPS counter on, the thing is when i was choosing a card just for the Physx there was a limited selection.

so i went online had a browse and chose one which was more suited to the task, the thing is it only works with some games which have this type of software which seperates the two graphics cards, i think the GT430 becomes obsolete in any other form of game.

i know its wiki but its the only list i could find which gave an exstensive list of the games which use this form of software PhysX - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

heres another forum topic, they are using a 460+430 as a benchmark so it has less relevance but you get more of an idea. Is a Geforce gt 430 enough for physx - Guru3D.com Forums

so im not really sure :S lol, one of the comments in that thread said "get the 430 as the amount of games which use physx is small and the cost of the GC is less, but there is a better chance of OC" i just hope it wont be obsolete when Arma 3 comes out as thats the main reason for getting a Physx card

[Cossack]

Well, I done little research and my conclusion is that gt 430 could be to slow. You need something like GTS 450, GTX 550 Ti or something like that. I really no have idea about 430, but I guess it will be to slow.

Anyway mate, don't bother that much and worry about Physx, 580 will handle it.

[RGG:Dale]

yay!!!

thanks for the help mate

[SnipingCoward]

Personally I never go with dual-channel mainboards, I always go tripple channel (RAM accrodingly ofcourse).

If you are thinking about maybe later gettinga RAM upgrade keep in mind that your Windows verson will be limited to 16GB.
Memory Limits for Windows Releases (Windows)


For your mainboard:
The specs read: 2 x PCIe 2.0 x16 (x16 or dual x8) http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_ ... ifications
I suggest you check if that means it will clock down to x8 once you plug in a second card (that would really suck imho).



As for the 430:
Are you going to cool the cards with the water cooling as well?
If not I would probably go with only one card and try to overclock it. This way you only have to cope with the heat of one card thus hopefully have more room for overclocking (temperature wise).


Raid: Raid10 requires at least four disks, no? I kind of think that its a) not possible to hook up those 4 drives because they are on different controllers (chipset wise) and b) it probably slows down the sdds.

When you get the PC you should double check that all the drives are actually connected to the SATAIII ports and also that both cards are slotted into the x16 slots. (I can imagine the guys at the assembly scewing that one up).

[RGG:Dale]

ill tell you what, because i havent got much experience with watercooling, i will take a pic of the inside and send you a PM when i get the chance Snipingcoward, and you can tell me if theyve set it up right and what i have to do accordingly from there.

if thats okay mate?

[Pedz]

SnipingCoward;1639547']Personally I never go with dual-channel mainboards, I always go tripple channel (RAM accrodingly ofcourse).

If you are thinking about maybe later gettinga RAM upgrade keep in mind that your Windows verson will be limited to 16GB.
Memory Limits for Windows Releases (Windows)


For your mainboard:
The specs read: 2 x PCIe 2.0 x16 (x16 or dual x8) ASUSTeK Computer Inc. - Motherboards- ASUS P8Z68-V PRO
I suggest you check if that means it will clock down to x8 once you plug in a second card (that would really suck imho).



As for the 430:
Are you going to cool the cards with the water cooling as well?
If not I would probably go with only one card and try to overclock it. This way you only have to cope with the heat of one card thus hopefully have more room for overclocking (temperature wise).


Raid: Raid10 requires at least four disks, no? I kind of think that its a) not possible to hook up those 4 drives because they are on different controllers (chipset wise) and b) it probably slows down the sdds.

When you get the PC you should double check that all the drives are actually connected to the SATAIII ports and also that both cards are slotted into the x16 slots. (I can imagine the guys at the assembly scewing that one up).

No modern day GPU is limited by the x8 slot on a motherboard. Possibly in the future, but then still the GPUs in SLI have the SLI bridge to combine any way... You will see no fps difference in x8 than x16 for a dual card system.

Also Triple channel vs dual channel is pretty much the same boat, the speed of the ram is much more important, and the processor it self. Seeing as Sandy Bridge CPUs only support dual channel, thats all he can get. Also Sandy bridge has limited PCIE lanes hence the limitation to x16 or 2x8.

But honestly I do not see the point in these physx cards, the 580GTX will be able to munch away at it all by its own, or you could even task the CPU with that job, with hyper-threading the i7 could manage that..

[Cossack]

Raid: Raid10 requires at least four disks, no? I kind of think that its a) not possible to hook up those 4 drives because they are on different controllers (chipset wise) and b) it probably slows down the sdds.

Ah, yeah, I forgot its SATA III... My bad. ops: Yeah, you need four drives for raid 10, but mobo can't do that (if only the drives are SATA II because there is four SATA II ports).

[Pedz]

Ah, yeah, I forgot its SATA III... My bad. ops: Yeah, you need four drives for raid 10, but mobo can't do that (if only the drives are SATA II because there is four SATA II ports).

To be honest even with RAID 0, your data is still pretty safe with HDDs nowadays, I have ot yet had any HDD fail on me, and I've got some that date back to the days when a 32GB HDD was huge!!

(Also running RAID 0 at the moment, and the speed improvement is worth that minuscule risk imo )

[HARRISON1973]

I run 2 GTX480's SLI and a dedicated 8800GT for physx. Works like a charm. Physx doesn't need to be as fast as your main GPU, it just needs to take the strain of physx processing.

How does PhysX work with SLI and multi-GPU configurations?
When two, three, or four matched GPUs are working in SLI, PhysX runs on one GPU, while graphics rendering runs on all GPUs. The NVIDIA drivers optimize the available resources across all GPUs to balance PhysX computation and graphics rendering. Therefore users can expect much higher frame rates and a better overall experience with SLI.

A new configuration that?s now possible with PhysX is 2 non-matched (heterogeneous) GPUs. In this configuration, one GPU renders graphics (typically the more powerful GPU) while the second GPU is completely dedicated to PhysX. By offloading PhysX to a dedicated GPU, users will experience smoother gaming.

Finally we can put the above two configurations all into 1 PC! This would be SLI plus a dedicated PhysX GPU. Similarly to the 2 heterogeneous GPU case, graphics rendering takes place in the GPUs now connected in SLI while the non-matched GPU is dedicated to PhysX computation.

<---Physx FAQ here--->

[Mad-Mike]

Hope you have good cooling, my 580 gets really hot!

[Pedz]

Hope you have good cooling, my 580 gets really hot!

how hot is really hot? my 2x OC'd 570's get to mid/high 70's on load, but thats well under the limit for GPUs

[HARRISON1973]

Hope you have good cooling, my 580 gets really hot!

I have a CoolerMaster Stacker 832 with 9 120mm fans (4 side, 1 front, 1 top, 1 back, 2 bottom). Top/back/bottom blow out, front/side blow in. Highest temps I have seen are with ArmA2 (1920x1080 32in Samsung) maxed out and they reached 74c but usually hover about 68-70c. Airflow is key with any top end cards. Not to mention cleaning the cards fins, fan blades, and intake filters regularly.