most 680 cards are still up in the mid $400 range...

Finally building a new system. Got in on the retail edge i7 4770k for $99 deal. Going mini itx route with corsair h55, Asus h87i plus, 16gb ddr3 patriot venom, 240gb evo ssd, 500gb WD Scorpio black, corsair rm650 overkill but was on sale, probably slap in my old gt240 or use the onboard video.

Deciding on either the coolermaster elite 130 or the fractal node 304. Opinions on case anyone? I chose these as I'd want to use a full size atx PSU.

I was going to use the Node 304 until I decided it was just easier to make a mATX build with the Zalman T2 (which is a fairly small case as it is).

I'm just used to sff design so I'm following the same route. I ordered both of the cases but I think I've decided to go with the node 304. Got an awesome deal for $77 after tax.

http://www.hardcoreware.net/wordpres...w1-620x413.jpg

Gigabyte Z87X-UD4H Review - The Haswell Overclocker's Dream

so i ended up grabbing the intel 530 240gb ssd. fresh installed windows. but my boot up seems to be taking forever(40 seconds).when i had my 60gb crucial it would take like ~10 seconds for windows to boot. anyone have any ideas what could be making windows boot slower

http://www.hardcoreware.net/wordpres...ew-620x413.jpg

EVGA Z87 FTW Review - F*** The World, Just Overclock

hey guys I just got rid of my gtx ti 660 SLI setup with a single R9 290, and I'm actually getting worse performance in all the benchmarks I've done so far. I thought this card would be faster ?

I only have one game on my PC Rome Total War 2 which doesn't even support SLI so I can't judge gaming performance difference, but the two tests I did the Unigine Heaven 4 benchmark and 3Dmark 11 specifically the score is a few hundred less than the SLI setup. This is with all proper drivers updated, etc, no other negating factors so what's the deal ??

I also think I had abnormally high SLI performance though, so maybe that's messing with my expectations, because I saw the leader boards for score results on the 3dMark website, and it shows my score as ranked second for a 660 ti SLI setup, no idea why or how since I don't OC anything on my PC, just put it on that automatic turbo setting for a mild clock, first guy on the board had OC'd his CPU to beyond 5ghz..
and I'm looking at some of the top 3dmark scores for 290's and top score is like 15'000, while mine is 9400... and my SLI score diff between me and the top guy was only a few hundred, so this one is in the thousands


btw if anyone wants these two 660 ti's for a good price, pm me

http://i190.photobucket.com/albums/z...ps553c6556.jpg

make sure you replicated the benchmark with the exact same settings.

i could be wrong but I dont think 660ti SLI will lose out to 290 by much

^ thanks yea benchmark has the preset settings so everything is the way it should be, I don't know what the deal is... doesn't make sense to me right now, from everything I've seen, I know obviously it's not gonna be twice the performance of my sli setup but this card is supposed to be noticeably faster though


EDIT: wow, did I get duped or something ? I just re-installed Battlefield 4 and ran the China level, and the performance with the 290 is actually about 10-20 frames worse...... even funnier is I thought BF for was tailor made for AMD cards with that Mantle thing ?

I switched to this card just so I could be able to play these 2 games, Rome Total War 2 (since it doesn't support SLI) and Witcher 3 which is coming out soon.... dammit, looks like I'm gonna need to crossfire another 290 to be able to run Witcher maxed out at 60fps

Damn the card i ordered is back ordered and not sure if they will get it or not...

Time to shop for another one.. suggestions?

http://img.hardcoreware.net/wordpres...eri-review.jpg

AMD "Kaveri" A10 7850K Review - The Haswell Killer?

I can't even control the fan speeds using AMD's Enable Overdrive feature within Catalyst, so no matter what temperature point or what fan speed I put in the Catalyst program it never goes above 47% even when I have max fan speed set at 100%...This obviously allows the card to fry up to 90c's which is fcked...
I've had to download the PowerColor utility and manually set the temperature/fan speed percentage settings in order to get the fans of this card to do what I want it to do... in this case, I have it set up so the temp stays between 60c-70c during full load
And forgot to mention I have to do that every single damn time I start the PC, i have to go into the fan settings tab and click apply otherwise it doesn't work

this is my first move to AMD from years of Nvidia and so far I'm not impressed, these are basic functions that don't work here ffs... I gotta ask is this type of shit normal for AMD ??

^^
Maybe is driver issues!!

Make sure you fully get rid of your nvidia drivers.
Sometimes uninstalling driver wont clear out all of the stuff.

Have to delete them yourselves or use a driver cleaner.

I reinstalled my whole windows 7 and put it back onto my Intel SSD which is noticeably faster than my Samsung SSD... So clean windows install, but I did a bit of digging on the guru 3d forums and I now downloaded the latest beta drivers released today I think, and now its looking great, I'm actually able to beat my old 660 gtx ti SLI setup in 3dmark11 benchmarks, score on Firestrike is 10,099 and Fire strike extreme is 5058....
And I also downloaded 3d gurus MSI afterburner utility which seems to properly and automatically adjust the cards settings... So I think I've fixed it using other tools aside from Catalyst which doesn't work for whatever reason.. holy shit hearing this cards fan for the first time set at 100% fckin loud
Posted via RS Mobile

Also keep in mind that 290 needs to stay cool to run at full speed. It will begin capping performance pretty quick once it approaches 90C. If it is getting really hot easily, you won't reach full speed.

Intel 240GB mSATA drives for the cheapest I've seen them

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=221345168917&ssPageName=ADME:L:OC:CA:3160#ht_404wt_896
$175 USD, free shipping in USA. I bought one.

Looking to ship my computer and monitors down south, does anyone have any suggestions as the best way to ship it? I've never shipped a computer before and I'm scared things might break while in shipment.

Should I just take it apart and ship it individually and then put it back together?

Take your CPU cooler if its large and video card off. The rest should be OK.

i would take the heavy stuff out like cpu coolor and video card and hard drives. Hard drives it would be better if you carry it yourself and make backups of important data before shipping.

^ what those chaps said. Power supply should be fine to leave in so long as it's securely mounted.

2 new Kaveri overclocking articles:

http://www.hardcoreware.net/wordpres...rclock-igp.jpg

AMD Kaveri A10 7850K Overclocked at 4.7 Ghz Benchmarks

AMD Kaveri A10 7850K Overclocked - IGP Gaming & OpenCL Performance

The day before getting my internet upgraded to 30 Mbps from 7 Mbps feels like the day before christmas :awwyeah:

Never thought I would ever get this speed again out here

Can someone recommend me a set of computer speakers?

My current ancient Logitech 5.1 setup died, and I'm looking for a new set. My budget is $100-150, unsure whether I should go for a cheap 5.1 set, or a more expensive 2.1.

TIA

more expensive 2.1