Having hardware issues and second thoughts

[Werne]

Well, my gaming PC turned out to be a pile of malfunctioning electronics. First it started freezing after boot, then it started eating my RAM (as in literally, RAM modules would just disappear from BIOS/memtest/Debian), then my PC would shut down/restart for no good reason, the case buttons would refuse to work, USB hubs would go bonkers, and so on.

 

In the end I got a lot of programs simply disappearing from RAM, leaving a lot of broken pipes and runtime errors in dmesg output, which sounded a lot like a RAM failure to me. So I ran memtest for 15 minutes, which was blurping out error after error, before the modules disappeared entirely from memtest, my CPU burned out, northbridge got fried, one of the graphics cards got fried as well, a freakin' mess overall.

 

So I called the guys that sold all that stuff to me and they said they did have people coming back with a fried PC, common cause is the motherboard, the same one I have. I also have a warranty covering overclocking damage but that's irrelevant since the damage was cause by a malfunctioning mobo. So I checked everything that can be salvaged and transplanted parts that work to my old PC for the time being.

 

But now there's a problem, since the guys can't order all of the parts in the warranty period (30 days) since they ran out of them two days ago, they offered me a full refund on the mobo and CPU while replacing RAM and graphics card immediately.

 

And now I have second thoughts about going back to i5 3570K, the 1155 CPUs and mobos jumped in price since the guys began ordering Haswells about 2 months ago so I'd now have to pay nearly 100$ more for the same thing (+ wait a month and a half), add another 100$ for a Haswell i5 4570K + 1150 mobo, or go with a locked i5 (which I don't intend to). So I'm starting to think AMD.

 

 

 

From what I can see, the AMD FX 8320 is some 210$ and the ASRock 970 Pro3 R2.0 is another 100$ putting the price at cca 310$, while i5 3570K is 340$ alone and the same mobo I had is 135$, putting the total price at cca 475$. An i3 3220 + the same mobo is close to the price of FX. If I were to go i5 again, the difference between that and FX is 165-265$ (Ivy Bridge 165$, Haswell 265$), and that's a lot of money for me, in Haswell's case it's nearly double. When looking from that perspective, the FX seems to be more and more attractive even though it's slower (then again, I can overclock).

 

But I've been a bit confused, according to the "maximum memory speed supported" chart I found on the AMD site, an FX CPU can use a 1600MHz RAM modules when only two RAM slots are filled out of four available. I have two 4GB 1333MHz RAM modules and the mobo I intend to get has four slots, so... will it work with 1333? I'm thinking yes but it's better to be safe than sorry. What can I say, I never assembled a PC with an AMD CPU.

 

Also another thing, I have an Arctic Cooling Freezer 13 CPU cooler which kept my i5 at 9C below maximum manufacturer temperature at 1000RPM (2000RPM max). But i5 is a 77W CPU while the FX is 125W which is a lot more, would the cooler be able to keep an FX at an acceptable temperature? I really can't say, I haven't had much experience with CPU coolers or power-hungry CPUs.

 

All in all, I wouldn't use neither the i5 nor FX to their full potential unless running a benchmark since I'm not much of a gamer, I only grabbed an i5 because it was on -30% sale, so a cheaper option seems better for me if the RAM I have would work on it and the cooler would be able to actually keep it cool.

[Thor.]

Thats sucks to hear that Werne, having something fry like that is a awful experience.

 

AMD the 8350 is the what to go for gaming, like watch dogs has a minimum requirements of 4ghz, so in the future thats what i bet will be future specs for gaming since the new consoles will bring it up a notch.

 

Me I'm set for the next gen, but again amd is pushing my patients with micrustuttering, if they don't resolve that soon i'm switching.

 

if you want a decent video card and have no budget, loo out for the memory bandwidth, that's key to performance and latency. The Higher the latency the better the card.

The gtx690 wins in that category.

Edited October 9, 2013 by Thor.

[Werne]

Thats sucks to hear that Werne, having something fry like that is a awful experience.

Everything just went to hell during memtest, I didn't even have time to react. Once it stopped spewing errors and screen went black it shut down immediately, but it was all over by then. I hate when mobos break down, there's always collateral damage. :sad:

 

AMD the 8350 is the what to go for gaming, like watch dogs has a minimum requirements of 4ghz, so in the future thats what i bet will be future specs for gaming since the new consoles will bring it up a notch.

You know those Watchdogs specs were not the real specifications, right? Unless everyone will have octa-cores before the game comes out, I can't see those specs being realistic.

 

And I thought the FX 8320 is basically 8350 with a lower frequency out-of-the-box like the FX 8120/8150? Though I'm likely so wrong I can't even begin to understand it. Either way, I'll be overclocking it so hitting the 8350's 4.4GHz turbo and beyond should be fairly easy. But I won't be paying 100$ more for 400MHz, FX 8350 is 310$.

 

Also, from what I can see, the 8320 should work with 1333 RAM and should be adequately cooled by the Freezer 13 so I might as well go grab the mobo and CPU, unless I suddenly change my mind and go for Intel, which I doubt after seeing the price tag on those *shudders*.

 

Me I'm set for the next gen, but again amd is pushing my patients with micrustuttering, if they don't resolve that soon i'm switching.

 

if you want a decent video card and have no budget, loo out for the memory bandwidth, that's key to performance and latency. The Higher the latency the better the card.

The gtx690 wins in that category.

Oh, I'm on a budget, a tight one at that, wife is yapping at me for spending too much money, like her two tons of clothing is free. :rolleyes:

 

I'm even thinking of selling the other 7770 and going single-card (that'll likely happen), cards can be swapped out easily, the CPU is what matters the most to me. I don't play games much lately and I'm happy with 30FPS, that's why I had the high-end i5 CPU coupled with a low-end card.

 

Didn't have any micro-stutters in CFX though, they worked smooth. I've always been using the latest beta driver, the stable one also works well but I prefer beta since the performance is better.

 

By the way, that 690, it's way, waaay out of my price range, even the 7790 is too expensive for me, I got my 7770s as used for 100$ both while a brand new XFX Core Edition 7770 costs 150-200$, depending on whether it's Ghost or DD. If you didn't figure it out yet, prices around here suck, in any normal country I could get a 7850 for 150$ (but it costs 300$ in here). :dry:

 

 

 

EDIT: Bought the FX this morning, it's running on my backup 4GB 1333 memory until I get new modules from the store and I like the number of cores because I can compile software faster. Other than that, it's a bit slower than i5 overall, should be faster once I overclock it but I'm too tired to do that right now, tomorrow looks like it'll be a good day to overclock.

Edited October 10, 2013 by Werne