My first computer build has been a real journey. I need advice before I go further. Here's the full story (pull up a chair if you want):
I currently am completing school and do graphic design work part time from home. The laptop issued by my company was running too slowly. My old Macbook Pro crapped out a year ago so I figured it was time to get my own computer and this time I would be adventurous and build it! I contemplated the idea in college because on of my roommates worked at intel and was getting his masters in computer science. He gave me a general run down of how to do it. He also told me about this site.
So it began. I wanted to build a budget machine that I could upgrade later, but one that would have the capacity to play most games at a high level. I didn't want a SUPER fast processor, just one that would be fast enough to not make a difference when it came to gaming. I had enough money saved up from selling old crap on eBay to buy about $800 worth of components. This is what I got:
AMD FX-8320 3.5 GHz 16MB cache processor
ASRock 970 Extreme 4 Mobo
Corsair Vengeance 4GB Memory x 4
Cooler Master HAF 912 Case
Cooler Master Elite 460w PSU
MSI Geforce GTX 550 ti Graphics Card
Western Digital Caviar Black 7200 rpm 500GB HD
I followed the build instructions that NewEgg puts on youtube. I was extremely careful and precise putting it together, following all the steps, de-staticizing myself on a large metal object, testing it outside the case before I installed it, etc. To my surprise everything worked! But I did upgrade the power supply to a thermaltake 650 watt that I bought at best buy that day. I installed windows 32 bit (oops) I thought x86 was faster than x64. The next day I reinstalled windows 64.
The games I had already bought on steam ran way better than ever before. Games like Modern Warfare 2 and Battle Field Bad Company 2. There were a couple drawbacks to the msi gtx 650 ti - no sli support. As well, newer games like Far Cry 3 ran with extremely low framerates. I would have to upgrade, and I may as well do it sooner than later so I can return my old graphics card.
I went to bestbuy and purchased (with the intent to return) two GTX 660 Ti's. One did a great job, but two wasn't that impressive. I posted something on the forum about this, and was told to overclock because my CPU was a bottleneck. I did and it improved things. However this was disappointing because I thought the CPU I bought was top of the line because I looked at its benchmark here: http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html but come to find out that's because it has 8 cores, and it's not relevant to gaming, and an intel quad core cpu would be faster.
I was also told that the GTX 660 ti had low memory bandwidth. I checked out the stats on gpureview.com and saw that it had a 192 memory bus and the HD Radeon 7950 had a 384 bit bus. I decided to order one. It came yesterday. I installed it pronto and took out the EVGA Geforce 210 I had in there just to run basic stuff in lieu of a gaming processor.
That's where hell began. Modern Warfare 2 was extremely slow, slower than even the GTX 650 ti. Far Cry 3 couldn't be played above medium. Something was wrong. I tried installing and reinstalling the drivers with the amd catalyst uninstall and reinstall programs to no avail. I decided to return it and just go back to best buy and buy a GTX 660 ti made by EVGA.
I used the AMD catalyst uninstall to remove the video card drivers and installed the nVidia card. Something evil happened though. Whenever I turned my sound on I heard weird interference noises. Whenever I moved the mouse the interference became worse. There was no sound. If I cranked the volume ALL THE WAY up and played a sound on the computer a weird distorted noise would come out. Clearly something was wrong with the onboard sound. I installed, reinstalled, the realtek hd audio, i enabled, disabled, re enabled it from bios, cleared my CMOS by pressing the CMOS button, removing the battery and using the CMOS jumper. TO no avail. I decided it must be something wrong with windows. I flashed my bios, and formatted my hard drive and reinstalled windows. Surely this would fix it....
NOPE. Still broken. I have no idea what went wrong. Did I break something physically when I installed the new GTX 660 ti? Everything works but the sound. I just get this awful interference noise. I figure the mobo is broken or the CPU. I have an RMA in to NewEgg to return this beast (the mobo). I'm planning on getting a new mobo and a better CPU for gaming: an i5-3570k.
Here are my questions: What do you think broke? Is it still fixable? Would getting a new CPU and mobo fix this issue? Is that a good CPU for gaming? Are there other things I should upgrade while I can? I want to know what went wrong so I can avoid it in the future. The end.
I currently am completing school and do graphic design work part time from home. The laptop issued by my company was running too slowly. My old Macbook Pro crapped out a year ago so I figured it was time to get my own computer and this time I would be adventurous and build it! I contemplated the idea in college because on of my roommates worked at intel and was getting his masters in computer science. He gave me a general run down of how to do it. He also told me about this site.
So it began. I wanted to build a budget machine that I could upgrade later, but one that would have the capacity to play most games at a high level. I didn't want a SUPER fast processor, just one that would be fast enough to not make a difference when it came to gaming. I had enough money saved up from selling old crap on eBay to buy about $800 worth of components. This is what I got:
AMD FX-8320 3.5 GHz 16MB cache processor
ASRock 970 Extreme 4 Mobo
Corsair Vengeance 4GB Memory x 4
Cooler Master HAF 912 Case
Cooler Master Elite 460w PSU
MSI Geforce GTX 550 ti Graphics Card
Western Digital Caviar Black 7200 rpm 500GB HD
I followed the build instructions that NewEgg puts on youtube. I was extremely careful and precise putting it together, following all the steps, de-staticizing myself on a large metal object, testing it outside the case before I installed it, etc. To my surprise everything worked! But I did upgrade the power supply to a thermaltake 650 watt that I bought at best buy that day. I installed windows 32 bit (oops) I thought x86 was faster than x64. The next day I reinstalled windows 64.
The games I had already bought on steam ran way better than ever before. Games like Modern Warfare 2 and Battle Field Bad Company 2. There were a couple drawbacks to the msi gtx 650 ti - no sli support. As well, newer games like Far Cry 3 ran with extremely low framerates. I would have to upgrade, and I may as well do it sooner than later so I can return my old graphics card.
I went to bestbuy and purchased (with the intent to return) two GTX 660 Ti's. One did a great job, but two wasn't that impressive. I posted something on the forum about this, and was told to overclock because my CPU was a bottleneck. I did and it improved things. However this was disappointing because I thought the CPU I bought was top of the line because I looked at its benchmark here: http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html but come to find out that's because it has 8 cores, and it's not relevant to gaming, and an intel quad core cpu would be faster.
I was also told that the GTX 660 ti had low memory bandwidth. I checked out the stats on gpureview.com and saw that it had a 192 memory bus and the HD Radeon 7950 had a 384 bit bus. I decided to order one. It came yesterday. I installed it pronto and took out the EVGA Geforce 210 I had in there just to run basic stuff in lieu of a gaming processor.
That's where hell began. Modern Warfare 2 was extremely slow, slower than even the GTX 650 ti. Far Cry 3 couldn't be played above medium. Something was wrong. I tried installing and reinstalling the drivers with the amd catalyst uninstall and reinstall programs to no avail. I decided to return it and just go back to best buy and buy a GTX 660 ti made by EVGA.
I used the AMD catalyst uninstall to remove the video card drivers and installed the nVidia card. Something evil happened though. Whenever I turned my sound on I heard weird interference noises. Whenever I moved the mouse the interference became worse. There was no sound. If I cranked the volume ALL THE WAY up and played a sound on the computer a weird distorted noise would come out. Clearly something was wrong with the onboard sound. I installed, reinstalled, the realtek hd audio, i enabled, disabled, re enabled it from bios, cleared my CMOS by pressing the CMOS button, removing the battery and using the CMOS jumper. TO no avail. I decided it must be something wrong with windows. I flashed my bios, and formatted my hard drive and reinstalled windows. Surely this would fix it....
NOPE. Still broken. I have no idea what went wrong. Did I break something physically when I installed the new GTX 660 ti? Everything works but the sound. I just get this awful interference noise. I figure the mobo is broken or the CPU. I have an RMA in to NewEgg to return this beast (the mobo). I'm planning on getting a new mobo and a better CPU for gaming: an i5-3570k.
Here are my questions: What do you think broke? Is it still fixable? Would getting a new CPU and mobo fix this issue? Is that a good CPU for gaming? Are there other things I should upgrade while I can? I want to know what went wrong so I can avoid it in the future. The end.