Sniper24

Just like almost any other brand, Corsair PSUs range from excellent to below average. Never trust a brand name, only look at the specific models. :wink: 550-650W will give you a lot of room for OC experiments. For comparison: I'm running a Xeon E3-1230 v3 with a GTX 780 OC on a 450W Seasonic G-450 PSU without any problems. Even with Prime and Furmark running at the same time, the system only draws ~380W out of the outlet. An OCed i5 will need a bit more power than the Xeon, but the GTX 970 needs a bit less than the GTX 780, so your total power consumption should be roughly the same (10-20 Watts give or take). Should you ever wish to run SLI, a little more wattage may eventually be needed, although 650W is usually enough for two GTX 970s. A bigger PSU won't give you real disadvantages, it will just be running at a much lower efficiency when the system is running in idle mode (browsing the Internet, doing Office work etc.), so this will result in a few extra $ per year on your power bill. The Corsair CS is significantly better than the CX, but I just noticed it also uses a cheap sleeve bearing fan (which are not known for longevity) and rather mediocre quality capacitors. The other PSUs in my list are of better technical quality than the CS series, although the CS is by no means a bad unit. The Seasonic G-Series, Antec Edge and XFX XTR are technically identical, as they all use the same and very good Seasonic platform. Seasonic is one of the very few brands that actually build their own PSUs and sell them under their own name as well as being an OEM for other companies (others would be Super Flower, FSP/Fortron or HEC/Cougar). Almost all other brands like Corsair, Cooler Master, Rosewill, EVGA, Antec etc. don't build their PSUs themselves but use different OEMs for their units. So, in my list we got three different units based on the Seasonic G-Series. The Cooler Master VS is also a very good unit built by Enhance, while the Seasonic X is already a high end platform. None of these units have any real disadvantages. The Seasonic G and Cooler Master VS use a 2BB fan (dual ball bearing) and are semi-modular. The Antec Edge and the XFX XTR are fully modular and use an FDB fan (fluid dynamic bearing). Additionally the XFX is also semi-passive, which means the fan will only spin at loads above 20% or temperatures above 77°F, whichever comes first. The only thing worth mentioning is that the fan is a bit overpowered and tends to get very loud at higher loads. Seasonic X is also fully modular and has a semi-passive mode. Based on the current prices, the XFX would be my favorite choice if noise level doesn't matter too much. If it does, I'd go for the Antec Edge. Edit: Here's a review of the XFX XTR 650 which confirms what I mentioned above: http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/XFX/XTR650/ Edit2: While gaming, your rig should consume around 300W, so the XFX would still be operating at a rather quiet level.

Watch Dogs and Crysis 3 come to my mind, but in general you're right. For gaming alone the i5 is a great choice. For PSUs: 850W is way too much for a single GTX 970. Even with running Prime and Furmark at the same time, an OC i5 + GTX 970 build won't draw more than 400W out of the outlet, so any PSU above 650W is a waste of money IMHO. Furthermore, the Corsair CX are of rather poor quality. A cheap sleeve bearing fan, mediocre capacitors, group regulated etc. Take a look at this review: http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews&op=Story&reid=416 The 850W uses the same platform, so the (poor) results should be more or less the same. I'd recommend a smaller 550-650W DC-DC-unit with higher efficiency and better internal components, such as one of these: http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/PublicWishDetail.aspx?WishListNumber=24443591 Considering the mainboards, I'm not too much of an expert when it comes to OC, but both the Gigabyte Z97X-Gaming 5 and the Asus Z97-PRO GAMER are two of the standard recommendations for good, reliable and solid OC platforms. As the Gigabyte is cheaper than the Asus (at least in the US, over here the Asus is a bit cheaper), I'd go for the Gigabyte.

Both the MSI and the EVGA are fine cards. The MSI is probably the quietest GTX 970 available, while the EVGA is almost as quiet and marginally faster due to a higher core clock. The mainboard seems a bit too expensive. These ones are absolutely fine: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128709 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813132412 I'd also take some faster RAM, like this. In most games you won't notice a difference, but a few games (BF4 comes to my mind, but there are a few others as well) do profit from faster RAM. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231659 The Samsung 840 EVOs are EOL already and often suffer from slow downs. Just google for it. I'd recommend a Crucial MX100 256 Gb or the newer MX200 250 Gb. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148948 With the money you could save from buying the Arc Midi instead of the Graphite 760T you may also want to think about changing from the i5-4690K to the i7-4790K. The i5 is still perfectly fine, but more and more games do make use of the additional threads the i7 provides due to Hyper-Threading. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117369 I don't see a CPU cooler and a PSU in your list. You have these already?

The 4690K is what I was talking about anyway. And for the case: I didn't mean to say that the Define is a "cheap" case. It was meant in comparison to the Graphite 760T, which costs roughly twice. I use the Define R4 in my desktop PC, and I really love this case. :smile: @Skipjack647 The CPU in your list is the regular i5-4690, which cannot be overclocked. For OC you'd need the 4690K, a Z97 mainboard and a decent CPU fan. Z87 doesn't make sense anymore, as the Z97 costs the same but features some improvements (some of which you already mentioned). If you don't plan to overclock, you could also go for cheaper H97 or B85 mainboards.

No worries, the 3570K is still a good CPU (out of the box there's maybe 10-15% difference to the 4690K), but as prices for new ones are basically the same - at least over here in Germany, don't know for other parts of the world - there's not much sense in buying these old CPUs, unless you're going for a used one. Yes, the case will hold everything. Cheaper ones like the Defines you mentioned would be fine too, but if you like the Corsair go for it. ;) And please make sure to buy a decent PSU, not some over-labeled $30 Ultr4 Gam3r Powaaa piece of junk from the local DIY store. :devil:

Any specific reason why you'd like to buy an old i5-3570k + Z77 mainboard (released in 2012) instead of the newer i5-4690k + Z97 mobo?

Well, the CPU doesn't seem to be the bottleneck. None of the 2 cores/4 threads is overly busy at all. As I said before, even running SKSE without any other mod activated reduces the GPU load to below 80%. Anyway, after tweaking the .ini files a bit the game now runs at 30-35 fps with med to high settings and SKSE, and that's perfectly fine for me. I guess I should just go and enjoy the game instead of worrying too much about the fps. :wink: Thanks for your help guys.

Thanks InfamousNate, the log looks much better now, but still it hasn't changed anything in regards to fps and GPU load. I suspect a .dll is the reason for this...telling the GPU to only run at 75%. :ermm: Don't know whether this helps, but here are the SKSE logs: skse.log skse_loader.log skse_steam_loader.log

Hello everyone, I'm having a little problem with using SKSE as it seems to limit the GPU usage at ~ 75%, resulting in much lower fps compared to running Skyrim without SKSE. Searched the web and also here in the forums, but couldn't find any help so far. Ok, I'm running Skyrim on the following laptop: Intel i5-2450M (2,5 GHz) 8 Gb (2x4) Ram DDR3-1333 Nvidia GT 550M 2 Gb DDR3 Win 7 Ultimate 64bit I know it's not exactly a fast machine, however it runs the game smoothly with mid to high settings at 1366x768 - without SKSE that is... The game's installation path is F:\SteamLibrary\SteamApps\common\Skyrim Legendary Edition v.1.9.32.0 incl. Dragonborn, Dawnguard and Hearthfire NMM v. 0.54.10 beta SKSE beta build 1.7.2 This is what the LOOT report looks like: My problem now is: Without SKSE the GPU is running at 99% usage, giving me decent fps with mid to high settings. With SKSE however, the GPU only runs at 74-77%, resulting in significantly lower fps. From what I read, none of the above mods should be very demanding fsp-wise. I also ran Sykrim without any mods except SKSE, still the GPU was running at 75%. Although the game had been using the GT 550, I manually assigned the Nvidia GPU to TESV.exe, SkyrimLauncher.exe and even skse_loader.exe in the Nvidia Control Center. Now I'm a bit at a loss of what else I could do. Below are two screenies to show you what I mean. In the upper one (without SKSE) you can see the GPU running at 99% and close to 55 fps, in the lower one (with SKSE) GPU usage and fps are much less. :confused: Anyone seen this before? Any help appreciated, thanks.