Maximum PC

I recently purchase and installed some items found here.

viewtopic.php?f=35&t=141093

Now after a few months of use i will review them all..


First i will review the steelseries 64225 Black USB or PS/2 Wired 6Gv2 Keyboard

Yes the keyboard is strong. and heavy.. and feels awsome... and is super smooth... however it has flaws.. the keys feel a bit to small and a bit to close together.. i gots me some fat hands though man... got like a pinky to index reach of something around the tilde to 9 key. but overall its a great board that takes a bit of getting used to .. but once you do its real nice to have and now i feel crappy whenever i touch a normal keyboard.

next is the

Logitech G9x Black Two modes scroll USB Wired Laser 5700 dpi Gaming Mouse

This mouse in my honest opinion is very disappointing. the middle scroll wheel is HORRIBLY hard to press down.. the click wheel scroll is to hard and the smooth wheel is to smooth..
the built in profile stuff is cool and all.. but this is not a mobile mouse.. it has its own damn weight case... it came with all the bells and whisles.. and for all intensive purposes is a really quality mouse... it just feels and functions very awkwardly.. However i may be biased because i had my logitech mx 500 for about 7 years and it was everything a mouse should strive to live up to..

third is the Antec Three Hundred Illusion Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case

its a pretty good case.. lotsa fans.. kina lets alot of noise through... seems on the cheaper side of mid quality.. i give it a 7.. 8 if you count the amount of fans as a huge bonus.

fourth is AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition Deneb 3.4GHz Socket AM3 125W Quad-Core Processor HDZ965FBGMBOX

Its a processor.. it goes.. honestly i have not really noticed anything significantly good nor significantly bad.. its a processor it works.. how good or bad it works.. not sure..

fifth is the GIGABYTE GA-990FXA-UD3 AM3+ AMD 990FX SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard

i will tell you right now this board gets a 10... because when i installed it i made the mistake of grabbing on to those massive handles (oops heatsinks.) on top of it and lowered it into the case.. i felt the heatsingls detatch from the surface and dangle from the springs... at this point it was to late to let go... i lowered the board in and the springs reset the heatsinks... and somehow the computer boot... and this mobo seemed to have every feature and whistle on it.. and it seemed really high quality out of the box.. so ya.. a win..

Next came 16gb of G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 8GB 4x2

Its ram it works my computer works.. boom worth the 42 bucks..

next is crucial M4 CT064M4SSD2 2.5" 64GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

GREAT DRIVE.. to small to fit anything but windows on.. nobody told me windows takes up like 40 gigs.. so now i gotta watch loading screens in guild wars 2... PLEASE RECOMEND A GOOD SATA 3 SSD FOR ME THAT IS OVER 120 GB AND I WILL BUY IT RIGHT NOW... anyway i give the 64 gb m4 a 0 of ten for being so damn small...

next comes the EVGA SuperClocked 01G-P3-1563-AR GeForce GTX 560 Ti (Fermi) 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card
Im honestly dissapointed.. its loud.. hot.. and honestly does not show a whole lot for it.. i still cant crank gw2 up to max.. i still get slowdown or skip in nearly every newish game i play..
for example witcher 2 cannot be played at max settings 1080 with this card..

to me it seems like a 5 out of 10... honestly it does..

next is the Antec BP550 Plus 550W Continuous Power ATX12V V2.2 80 PLUS Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply

seems like a great power supply however i bought one that was apparently to small to run a 660 so i had to pick a gtx 560 ti and regret that decision now.

so a bit bit bigger and this powersupply would have been awsome.. but i give it a 7 of 10 for limitation..

thats it for my review.. if you have any part recomendations.. please lemme know.. i will sideline my parts and buy those.

I do believe that your Antec 550 watt PSU will be suitable for up to a GTX 660 Ti. At least according to nVidia:
http://www.nvidia.in/object/geforce-gtx ... pContent=2

Unfortunately, your build occurred about a month or so before the release of nVidia's GTX 660. But hindsight is 20/20 right? Honestly, no one knew (at least not in reality) what the GTX 660 would do to the GPU market. nVidia released a relative bargain card for the mid-high-end gamer in the GTX 660, and prices for everything else fell to adjust to it. Sometimes (or seemingly all the time) that's how PC building goes. But try not to feel bad, as I can guarantee that something better/cheaper/faster/stronger is just around the corner yet again.

Umm, I have the SAME M4 64GB. When I install Windows 7 Professional, I still have well over 30GB of space left BEFORE disabling system restore and hibernation. Which version are you installing?!

IMHO the problem may not be the card, you could be CPU bottlenecked especially in GW2:

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and about SSD's - Personally, I was never a fan of installing the OS on an SSD - so when the Z68 boards came out with the ssh cache / smart response I jumped on it and built my game rig on that chipset and the venerable 2500k (arguably the most popular gaming config) with the stipulation, I can get a small SSD just to cache the big, slow spinning drives.
Since it was available on Z68 (successor to P67), perhaps the next gen z78's will have it (as the current z77's do not) and you can consider an upgrade to the i5-xxxk series ship and a z78.


cheers

I agree with Gutter's response on the SSD. I too have a 64GB SSD and after loading Windows and various programs (including office 2010 and VMWare workstation) I have 30GB free. Try disabling hibernation and move the page file to another drive. Also, turn off indexing. These are recommended per SSD instructions. You'll see about 20+ gb get free.

Also, did you leave between 6-10% of the drive as unformatted, unpartitioned space? I got 30GB free after I left that room free.....again per the SSD instructions.

Two things:
First, I think you're demanding an awful lot from the 560 Ti. It's a mid-high card - I'm sure at the next lower setting, you should see decent graphics.

Don't get me wrong, I think the price of graphics cards is getting excessive. The 460 was $200; the 560 Ti was at least $300 when it came out. Too much in my opinion.

Second, the reason you're seeing much less space on your SSD is because of the page file. Windows automatically creates a page file on the boot drive that equals the amount of RAM you have in a system. So people using 4GB of RAM will see 12GB more space than you (people with 8GB will see 8GB more). You can adjust the page file size, but I wouldn't make it any smaller than 1GB.

Hope this helps.

He's got 16gb of RAM, turn that page file off. At most place it on secondary drive. I got 16gb of ram and have the 30gb free on my ssd.

No, reduce it to like 1GB or something. Some programs will complain if you don't have a page file. At least, this was back in 2009 or so and Photoshop was usually the complainer.

ok guys some news.

You were all right. And then some


First.

The m4 was big enough.. i was to dumb to realize my pagefile was way to large.

second:

the biggest problem with my performance was my ssd was not actually set up right.. once i got that going..BOOM GOES THE DYNOMITE... SO ya.. guild wars at max settings and 30 fps is pretty regular now... And it looks good..

However i still think my 560 is super loud..

also i have been running with the side off my case lately.. it seems to cool down the card and make it quieter.. if its cool i will keep doing it.. i bought some can o air so its all good..

I actually am quite happy at the moment.. well worth it.. However if your telling me my potential bottleneck is my cpu.. then just please recommend anything that will fit a socket am3+ thats better.. i give no shits i will go buy it right now...

so ya thanks for all your help and cpu suggest away..