Very Well Another What can I expect from this Hardware thread

[Bill Bisco]

Dear all,

Very well I will make a specific hardware thread for my potential future PC. I am given the offer to buy a PC with the following Items:

Intel Core i5 4670K 3.4GHz Socket LGA
Gigabyte GA-Z87X-UD4H Motherboard
Cooler Master HYPER T4 CPU COOLER
Thermaltake V3 Black Edition Case
Western Digital 1TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s Hard Drive
EVGA 600 Power Supply
XFX Double D HD 7870 GHz Edition 2GB 256-Bit GDDR5 PCI Express
G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 8GB RAM

Obviously this has the i5 4670K CPU which is a highly touted CPU which I've seen in other threads. However, I'm not as familiar with the motherboard or the XFX Double (I usually hear about NVIDIA).

I would like to play on maximum settings at full speed for the following games:

Super Mario Galaxy 2
MarioKart Wii
Twilight Princess Wii
Super Smash Bros Brawl

Any general feelings on how well this setup would run these games and what I might have to sacrifice in graphics to get these games in full speed?

Thanks,

Bill

[JMC47]

Twilight Princess (Wii) and probably the GC version won't run consistently full speed on anything right now at too high of internal resolution + EFB2Ram. If any computer could buck the trend and get full speed, it's that one.

Everything else should go full speed no problem at whatever settings you want to throw at the games.

[AnyOldName3]

I've had an XFX DD cooler, and can say it ran a little hotter than I'd like (80°C under load, which XFX said was safe, and other people said was too hot), but the card had a huge factory OC, and the fans weren't running at high speed. This is, of course, after I moved it out of a PC case which recirculated GPU exhaust and into an airy case. If you do decide to put it into a case with the thermal properties of a pizza oven, then it might shoot up to 99°, then drop to idle clocks and cry as it sits there wondering why you're being so cruel to it.

[Bill Bisco]

I've had an XFX DD cooler, and can say it ran a little hotter than I'd like (80°C under load, which XFX said was safe, and other people said was too hot), but the card had a huge factory OC, and the fans weren't running at high speed. This is, of course, after I moved it out of a PC case which recirculated GPU exhaust and into an airy case. If you do decide to put it into a case with the thermal properties of a pizza oven, then it might shoot up to 99°, then drop to idle clocks and cry as it sits there wondering why you're being so cruel to it.

Is there another gpu you'd more quickly recommend? How would I safely know my heat limits?

[AnyOldName3]

The Gigabyte Windforce cooler is probably the best (or second best) GPU air cooler, then there's the top-end EVGA one which is basically as good, then you have a variety of dual-fan coolers from a variety of manufacturers such as the MSI TwinFrozr, and the XFX DD. You probably won't need to care too much about coolers as long as you're not manually overclocking, as all decent manufacturers include a cooler which should be safe for the card at the clocks they sell it at.

Don't be afraid of the DD, as it's not a bad cooler, it was just paired with a really hot chip and had it's thermostat set higher than ideal. It would have been absolutely fine and able to hold impressively low temperatures all things considered had I manually forced the fans to go faster, and hadn't kept it melting in an awful case for 9 months.

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By the way, my brother currently has my old DD cooled card in his computer, and that's in a pretty similar Thermaltake case, and it runs at perfectly fine temperatures, at least according to its definition of fine.



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[Bill Bisco]

Alright, I have another offer to buy a different PC with the following items. I'm curious of your opinions on how this one will compare to the first one I posted. The one below is $260 cheaper than the first one.

Intel I5 3570K 3.8Ghz Turbo Boost Quad Core
Rock Solid Gigabyte or Asrock Ivy Bridge Supprting Motherboard
8GB of memory. DDR3 1600Mhz. Team Vulcan
MSI or EVGA or Gigabyte Geforce GTX 660 Ti 2GB GDDR5 Graphic Card
1TB Seagate 7200RPM Hard Drive $95
500W Cooler Master or Corsair or Thermaltake Coolmax SLI Crossfire and 80 Certified Power Supply
DVD Burner
9900 Zalman Max 135 mm Copper CPU cooler
Zalman Z12 Gaming Case
2 of 120mm Case Fan