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GRINDCORE MEGGIDO
Feb 28, 1985


pienipple posted:

On the other hand you can't really get away with passively cooling video cards anymore. My Radeon 9600 was passively cooled, as is the FX5500 in that Socket A system.

I put an accellero s1 on a 7850 and 750ti, both just cooled by case airflow. Stock heatsinks designed for fans won't cut it, though.

I really hope Zen rocks. But, even if it does, will there be great boards for it, and mini ITX and nvme and such?

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Truga
May 4, 2014
Lipstick Apathy
Low powered $30 GPUs you throw into an OEM office PC, when the one it shipped with dies because the fan died, are still passively cooled :v:

Anime Schoolgirl
Nov 28, 2002

wipeout posted:

I really hope Zen rocks. But, even if it does, will there be great boards for it, and mini ITX and nvme and such?
I just want ECC support

EmpyreanFlux
Mar 1, 2013

The AUDACITY! The IMPUDENCE! The unabated NERVE!

wipeout posted:

I put an accellero s1 on a 7850 and 750ti, both just cooled by case airflow. Stock heatsinks designed for fans won't cut it, though.

I really hope Zen rocks. But, even if it does, will there be great boards for it, and mini ITX and nvme and such?

I don't see why there wouldn't be, I think Zen was announced to be 95W TDP target which is the same as their APU line up now, and those have mini-itx.

Rastor
Jun 2, 2001

Beautiful Ninja posted:

You can get a GTX 750 or 750 Ti passively cooled nowadays without having to do anything insane.

It does look kind of ridiculous though.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Palit/GTX_750_Ti_KalmX/

A Bad King
Jul 17, 2009


Suppose the oil man,
He comes to town.
And you don't lay money down.

Yet Mr. King,
He killed the thread
The other day.
Well I wonder.
Who's gonna go to Hell?
From my experience, passive cooling on modern graphics means you cannot really tax the graphics card. Even with great airflow in the case, you won't be able to play any game for much longer than an hour before you're approaching 90C.

pienipple
Mar 20, 2009

That's wrong!

Angry Fish posted:

:colbert:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102950

Sapphire 6670 I had installed for "Dual Graphics" "performance" on my aging Llano build. I chucked it last December for a 280X and now suffer from a serious CPU bottleneck on Witcher 3.

edit:


Jfc, that thing is expensive for a radiator. :stare:

Dang that's huge! My 9600 just had a little dinky heatsink right over the GPU and that was it. I played a shitload of games on it too.

A Bad King
Jul 17, 2009


Suppose the oil man,
He comes to town.
And you don't lay money down.

Yet Mr. King,
He killed the thread
The other day.
Well I wonder.
Who's gonna go to Hell?

pienipple posted:

Dang that's huge! My 9600 just had a little dinky heatsink right over the GPU and that was it. I played a shitload of games on it too.

It wasn't actually quite that big. :shrug: It was perfect for a tiny profile PC, and who uses the PCIe 1x slot anyways? It did have the weird heat-pipe-and-sink-to-the-side thing going on. I still have it in a storage bin.

Paul MaudDib
May 3, 2006

TEAM NVIDIA:
FORUM POLICE
I'm another AMD fanboy from way back when. My first computer of my own was a K6-2 400, then an Athlon XP 1800+, then an Athlon 64 3200, then an X2 3800+, and finally a Phenom II X4 830 (yes, it's actually a real part). Did a lot of video encoding on the family Tbird back in the day too.

Angry Fish posted:

Sapphire 6670 I had installed for "Dual Graphics" "performance" on my aging Llano build. I chucked it last December for a 280X and now suffer from a serious CPU bottleneck on Witcher 3.

What else do you expect? AMD is OK for low-end gaming but it's not gonna work for anything intensive/high settings/high FPS.

You can probably get substantially improved performance with even a low-end Intel system. The G3258 has crazy single-threaded performance when you overclock the poo poo out of it (often hits 30-50% overclock, in single threaded games that lets it keep up with a stock 4770K) and you can get a bundle with a mobo for like sub-$100. Microcenter is always running crazy deals on Intel mobos/processors and they have been running a bundle deal since forever - get an i3/i5/i7 and a mobo and get $40 off, which takes their prices from "10-20% below newegg" to "you'd be stupid not to". Like, a 4690K and Z97 mobo for $250, or 4790K and mobo for $320.

quote:

Jfc, that thing is expensive for a radiator. :stare:

High end cooling is a whole different ballgame in terms of price. You can pick up an open-loop liquid cooling starter kit for like $150-$225 and beyond there each major component might easily cost between $100 and $250. For comparison a GPU water block costs about $110-125.

When you factor in the 19% VAT that's included in the listed price and how low the Euro is against the dollar that's actually not too absurd for a piece of specialty hardware. There are a lot of other niches that are just as spendy too.

Paul MaudDib
May 3, 2006

TEAM NVIDIA:
FORUM POLICE

Angry Fish posted:

From my experience, passive cooling on modern graphics means you cannot really tax the graphics card. Even with great airflow in the case, you won't be able to play any game for much longer than an hour before you're approaching 90C.

Yeah that's pretty much right. Surface area will only get you so far, you really do need air moving across it before it will dissipate much and convection is not all that powerful. Something like a 750ti would have the best shot since TDP is only 60W but in most cases the temperature will probably build up over time if you keep loading it down.

Really those passive cards are meant for silent media PCs where the GPU load is limited to running an H264 decoder, not serious gaming. A cheap CPU AIO cooler and a GPU bracket is probably a better solution if you want silent gaming.

I had a Zotac GT640 with a similar passive setup that I used for CUDA development. A few times I did big batch runs where it was loaded up to 100% for a couple hours. I think it would get up to the mid-80s, but I wasn't sitting there watching it. It did idle pretty hot - even at a typical desktop workload it would run mid 50s. It was also a bitch to fit into a case, even some workstation cases had problems.

Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 01:35 on Jun 11, 2015

Shaocaholica
Oct 29, 2002

Fig. 5E
I really want to see a massively machined heatsink with some ICs bolted to it. Like the new Mac Pro only to the nth level. Add a big really slow fan or fast one for that matter.

nftyw
Dec 27, 2006

It is a game... where you will put your life on the line.
Lipstick Apathy

Nostrum posted:

It astounds me to this day that AMD effectively left their entire platform in VIA, SiS (remember them!)

I remember making two or three cheap socket a machines using the K7S5As. Barebones as poo poo, the onboard LAN often crashed when playing Quake II and the onboard sound was a joke but if you managed to get it all to play nice, SiS motherboards were surprisingly functional. No clue if I even have them hanging around collecting dust anymore.

Their graphics cards though, holy poo poo. I loaded up Everquest on one and had nightmarish worlds of no textures and walls with stretched out merchant's faces in the shops. :gonk:

nftyw fucked around with this message at 02:10 on Jun 11, 2015

BOOTY-ADE
Aug 30, 2006

BIG KOOL TELLIN' Y'ALL TO KEEP IT TIGHT

Truga posted:

Low powered $30 GPUs you throw into an OEM office PC, when the one it shipped with dies because the fan died, are still passively cooled :v:

Man, I still remember back when I started doing modding in high school when folks were taking huge gently caress-off CPU heatsinks, drilling holes in them and mounting on video cards of the time. It was always hilarious seeing a Radeon 9000 series card with this massive aluminum heatsink making the board flex, I saw pictures on an old overclocking forum of a guy who did that and had to make a bracket system to keep the card from flexing and falling out of its AGP/PCI-E slot :laffo: Ah, those were the days...

Troubadour
Mar 1, 2001
Forum Veteran

nftyw posted:

I remember making two or three cheap socket a machines using the K7S5As.

I had one of these mainboards for years and it was pretty great for my purposes. Eventually I upgraded and donated the machine to a computer lab in my housing complex I lived in then. One day it stopped booting and I took out the board to have a look (I suspected leaking caps). I looked up and down it and every single capacitor on the board, a couple dozen in all, was bulging and leaking. Par for the course for that generation really, but it was impressive how comprehensive the level of failure was.

GRINDCORE MEGGIDO
Feb 28, 1985


Angry Fish posted:

From my experience, passive cooling on modern graphics means you cannot really tax the graphics card. Even with great airflow in the case, you won't be able to play any game for much longer than an hour before you're approaching 90C.

I'm using a passive 750ti. The only fan in the box is a 140mm 700rpm intake for the CPU cooler. Enough air flows around the CPU cooler and out the side panel vents to stop the GPU being in a cooling dead zone. It stays under 75deg, fully gaming loaded, and could run games constantly.

7850 in another box hits 85 Max, same cooler (accellero s1). Up to 120W in a well vented case hasn't been a problem here, but I'm in blighty so the room temp rarely hits 30deg. Bastard weather.

GRINDCORE MEGGIDO fucked around with this message at 21:39 on Jun 11, 2015

Shaocaholica
Oct 29, 2002

Fig. 5E
Does anyone remember how the memory controllers on the Nforce2 chipset worked? Obviously 2 exact DIMMs would be dual channel but what about 3? Would it be dual channel until the 3rd DIMM is needed or is it single channel for all memory if 3 DIMMs are installed?


edit: Well this is confusing

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=133591

Shaocaholica fucked around with this message at 20:14 on Jun 11, 2015

pienipple
Mar 20, 2009

That's wrong!
As far as I ever knew you needed paired dimms for dual channel at the time. the 1+2 = 3 thing is new to me.

Shaocaholica
Oct 29, 2002

Fig. 5E
Seems like you could put them in however the gently caress you wanted and if you're lucky you'd get a 4-10% boost in throughput. Yeah there's a right way but the difference, it seems, between optimal and not-optimal wasn't really anything to write about. With 3 of the same DIMM, there's no wrong way to order them.

Shaocaholica
Oct 29, 2002

Fig. 5E
So...the Athlon XP build is going to get started.

Should I go with something classic:





Telekol Minitel-128 :getin:

Or something practical:



edit:

gonna need one of these too

Shaocaholica fucked around with this message at 23:51 on Jun 11, 2015

EmpyreanFlux
Mar 1, 2013

The AUDACITY! The IMPUDENCE! The unabated NERVE!
Me being me, I'd do everything in my power to push performance and would just choose a case with excellent airflow.

Also, goddamn you I now have an itch for a nostalgia build. Sweet dreams old Athlon 1000C build.

pienipple
Mar 20, 2009

That's wrong!
Whatever it is, make sure it has good airflow. I don't really recommend vintage cases because they have such lovely air paths. (Also they're ugly and heavy)

The Corsair 100R is pretty plain looking, don't know if the USB 3 front ports would work with a regular USB header. And it has a window so you can look at the ugly baby poo poo brown motherboard :v:

This is similarly simple looking while having modern amenities and some nice big, quiet fans.

mayodreams
Jul 4, 2003


Hello darkness,
my old friend
Or continue down the nostalgia train with the decendant of one of the hottest cases at the time:

http://www.antec.com/product.php?id=705218&fid=5022021

The OG Sonata was my first non lovely $60 case and it housed my OC"d Barton.

Paul MaudDib
May 3, 2006

TEAM NVIDIA:
FORUM POLICE
If you're going for an overclocked build you should use a Mobile Athlon XP to get some extra headroom.

Somewhere I think I still have my old Athlon XP t-shirt.

I did some looking and it appears that you can still get aftermarket replacement coolers, since you guys mentioned that was an issue.

Paul MaudDib
May 3, 2006

TEAM NVIDIA:
FORUM POLICE

pienipple posted:

Whatever it is, make sure it has good airflow. I don't really recommend vintage cases because they have such lovely air paths. (Also they're ugly and heavy)

The Corsair 100R is pretty plain looking, don't know if the USB 3 front ports would work with a regular USB header. And it has a window so you can look at the ugly baby poo poo brown motherboard :v:

It absolutely will not. If you don't want a vintage case you need to give up on USB 3.0 here and now. Maybe if somewhere you can dig out a motherboard with a PCIE slot you could run a USB 3.0 addon card.

Buy a Source S340, abandon the USB 3.0 ports, and call it a day. Unless you need to boot from a CD drive.

Shaocaholica
Oct 29, 2002

Fig. 5E
I feel like PC cases have been way way cheap over the years since the PIII days. Taking into account inflation, they must either not be making much money on them given how much space and weight they take up for shipping or they have drastically reduced the production cost and increased economy of scale.

Nintendo Kid
Aug 4, 2011

by Smythe

Shaocaholica posted:

I feel like PC cases have been way way cheap over the years since the PIII days. Taking into account inflation, they must either not be making much money on them given how much space and weight they take up for shipping or they have drastically reduced the production cost and increased economy of scale.

They're not exactly milling them out of solid platinum, you realize? Also boxy things are about the cheapest thing you can ship/store in a warehouse.

Tanreall
Apr 27, 2004

Did I mention I was gay for pirate ducks?

~SMcD
They get huge discounts from places like UPS for doing a lot of volume as well but I get what you're saying. If you tried to ship some of these cases yourself the cost of shipping would be more than the cost of the case.

Shaocaholica
Oct 29, 2002

Fig. 5E

Nintendo Kid posted:

They're not exactly milling them out of solid platinum, you realize? Also boxy things are about the cheapest thing you can ship/store in a warehouse.

They're not trivially simple. Lots(relatively) of stamping operations. I'm not talking about those $200 cases either but these sub $50 with dirt cheap or free shipping. They can't be making much on that. I remember $50 was dirt cheap for a case over 10 years ago.

Nintendo Kid
Aug 4, 2011

by Smythe

Shaocaholica posted:

They're not trivially simple. Lots(relatively) of stamping operations. I'm not talking about those $200 cases either but these sub $50 with dirt cheap or free shipping. They can't be making much on that. I remember $50 was dirt cheap for a case over 10 years ago.

10 years ago they were ripping you off more than they do now. The base materials used are cheap as hell, at least in the amounts used. Manufacturing from that is also very cheap, since they're really quite simple designs. And shipping to the place you buy from costs a lot less than you seem to think.

A quick look over at Alibaba shows you that Chinese suppliers can hook you up with standard cheap case designs for $4-$8 per unit, depending on how many units you'll purchase at once. Then shipping them over to the states is quite cheap per unit, it certainly doesn't add $30 per case. And those are just prices they'll offer if you're some random schmuck who might only want a run of 500-50,000 cases - if you're a big time case company you can negotiate even lower.

Tanreall
Apr 27, 2004

Did I mention I was gay for pirate ducks?

~SMcD
I was talking about shipping here in the states. That little Corsair 100R would cost $30+ to ship from CA to NY at the absolute slowest pace without insurance.

Nintendo Kid
Aug 4, 2011

by Smythe

Tanreall posted:

I was talking about shipping here in the states. That little Corsair 100R would cost $30+ to ship from CA to NY at the absolute slowest pace without insurance.

First off, those companies usually maintain warehouses on both coasts, and sometimes one around Chicago or Kansas. As such, they minimize domestic shipping. So that means they'll rarely pay more than like $10 to actually ship it to you (as an example of sending that weight and dimensions + some wiggle room for packaging, from the continental east coast to like Chicago. Oh and that's with Priority Mail which includes free $50 shipping too.). And that's just using the cheapest rates that you as a regular schmoe can get just by using paypal's USPS discounts. UPS and FedEx and a reasonable amount of shipments per month can get you much lower rates - at my last job we shipped enough to get heavy discounts so we could send a fully loaded tower case across the country from Virginia to California for $8, and we were pretty small time.

Secondly, even if they paid $30 out of a $50 case price to ship it across the country.. .they still paid $5 or less to actually have it manufactured and somewhere on the order of $2-$4 per case shipped or less to get it from China into the US. So worst case, they paid $39 for in us shipping, manufacturing the case, and getting int into the US. That leaves them a profit of $11, or 22% of the purchase price. That ain't cutting it close!

Tanreall
Apr 27, 2004

Did I mention I was gay for pirate ducks?

~SMcD
I agree, I was just showing what it looks like to an individual. Volume shippers get crazy discounts like 60%+ off shipping rates. I'm sure they're still making a lot of money on the cases.

Shaocaholica
Oct 29, 2002

Fig. 5E
So if cases aren't low margin PC parts what are?

Truga
May 4, 2014
Lipstick Apathy
No parts are low margin. If it has "computer" in the name, it's a high margin product, even if it's just a "computer desk" made of 4 metal rods and a plank.

HalloKitty
Sep 30, 2005

Adjust the bass and let the Alpine blast

Shaocaholica posted:

So...the Athlon XP build is going to get started.

Should I go with something classic:





Telekol Minitel-128 :getin:

Or something practical:



edit:

gonna need one of these too



Man, if you want the most baller case of those times, we're talking an early Coolermaster ATCS case, like the ATC-201.

At the same time, any case with translucent coloured plastic is of the times too. An enormous example is the Juno P6. It's hard to find anything on that case these days.

Whatever you decide, it should probably have some roughly cut blowholes and only 80mm Deltas.

HalloKitty fucked around with this message at 10:03 on Jun 12, 2015

future ghost
Dec 5, 2005

:byetankie:
Gun Saliva

HalloKitty posted:

Man, if you want the most baller case of those times, we're talking an early Coolermaster ATCS case, like the ATC-201.

At the same time, any case with translucent coloured plastic is of the times too. An enormous example is the Juno P6. It's hard to find anything on that case these days.

Whatever you decide, it should probably have some roughly cut blowholes and only 80mm Deltas.
Umm I think you meant to write Chieftec fulltower case and 92mm vantec tornadoes. You want the full experience you gotta sacrifice.

HalloKitty
Sep 30, 2005

Adjust the bass and let the Alpine blast

cisco privilege posted:

Umm I think you meant to write Chieftec fulltower case and 92mm vantec tornadoes. You want the full experience you gotta sacrifice.

Most cases had spaces for 80mm fans from my memory, but I guess there were exceptions. Still, I think of Deltas as the defining overkill fan of the time.

Gotta have a slightly ghetto-looking baybus to complete your fannage, though.

HalloKitty fucked around with this message at 13:46 on Jun 12, 2015

Gwaihir
Dec 8, 2009
Hair Elf

cisco privilege posted:

Umm I think you meant to write Chieftec fulltower case and 92mm vantec tornadoes. You want the full experience you gotta sacrifice.

Vantec? Delta screamers or :getout:

Varkk
Apr 17, 2004

Should he also go looking for a game theatre xp soundcard and associated breakout box?
Also some cold cathode lights just inside the rough cut Perspex window.

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PC LOAD LETTER
May 23, 2005
WTF?!

Shaocaholica posted:

I feel like PC cases have been way way cheap over the years since the PIII days.
Yea they're cheaper but the quality in general has dropped big time on your cheap cases. Particularly vs the stuff made in the 80's. Those AT cases were generally built like tanks. If you want a good well built case you still have to spend a fair amount.

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