[Mason Nevitt]

You should see decent performance overall. I am not completely sure, but the 6850 should be able to play skyrim at high, which is adequate. I find anything lower makes youur draw distance ridiculously small. you cannot see bushes until they are almost on top of you in most cases.

I would think, that at lower res, your draw distance would be further. I am usually bass ackwards with this stuff anyways. I have changed my mind so many times on this build, I am just starting to get tired. I have nailed it down to these few things, I was mainly concerned about bottle necking. Not that I fully understand what that is exactly anyway.

I's sure I will be happy with the visuals, in general, what ever they are. I don't want lag, nor do I want bushes to appear right in front of me. If that is indeed the case. I may opt for a new TV before it's over.

Thank you for your input. I appreciate it very much.

[Lisha Boo]

I would think, that at lower res, your draw distance would be further. I am usually bass ackwards with this stuff anyways. I have changed my mind so many times on this build, I am just starting to get tired. I have nailed it down to these few things, I was mainly concerned about bottle necking. Not that I fully understand what that is exactly anyway.

I's sure I will be happy with the visuals, in general, what ever they are. I don't want lag, nor do I want bushes to appear right in front of me. If that is indeed the case. I may opt for a new TV before it's over.

Thank you for your input. I appreciate it very much.

Just to help you out a bit: bottlenecking is a compatability issue which limits the amount of power than can be used, usually because of a slower part.

The textures do not change much, if at all during changings of settings, at least in skyrim anyhow because of the fact that it is just loading a picture. Other things that need to be rendered and animated however, require much more power because they have more complex scripts. These things usually are in less abundance, do not appear until closer than usual, or do not appear at all at lower settings. This is why the draw distances are shorter. The graphics card only then has to wory about 50 items instead of 500.

[Leilene Nessel]

Alright, just got my CM Hyper 212+ cooler for my CPU and I had a quick question about thermal paste application. First of all, I'd like to use IC Diamond instead of the provided thermal paste unless there's a compelling reason to use the stock stuff. Secondly, I was wondering what the best application method is with this kind of heatsink (direct contact heat pipes)? I know that IC Diamond is meant to be applied as a dot and then spread by the pressure of the heatsink and that worked well when I used it on my laptop GPU and CPU and with the stock heatsink on my desktop. Should I apply the paste differently with this cooler (pre-spread or anything like that)?

[sara OMAR]

Alright, just got my CM Hyper 212+ cooler for my CPU and I had a quick question about thermal paste application. First of all, I'd like to use IC Diamond instead of the provided thermal paste unless there's a compelling reason to use the stock stuff. Secondly, I was wondering what the best application method is with this kind of heatsink (direct contact heat pipes)? I know that IC Diamond is meant to be applied as a dot and then spread by the pressure of the heatsink and that worked well when I used it on my laptop GPU and CPU and with the stock heatsink on my desktop. Should I apply the paste differently with this cooler (pre-spread or anything like that)?

I don't think either matters to be honest. The pressure of the plate on the CPU will spread it out, but I prefer to make sure that I've done it well myself.
I have the same CPU and I used the stock paste, but I'm sure that won't matter. I'd have thought it'd be better to use a 'better' brand of paste. I put a pea sized dot on the CPU and spread it with a small peice of card.

Pre-warning though, the heatsink was a bastard to screw to the Motherboard, but that's partially down to my use of Scissors in place of a screwdriver.

[Latisha Fry]

I don't think either matters to be honest. The pressure of the plate on the CPU will spread it out, but I prefer to make sure that I've done it well myself.
I have the same CPU and I used the stock paste, but I'm sure that won't matter. I'd have thought it'd be better to use a 'better' brand of paste. I put a pea sized dot on the CPU and spread it with a small peice of card.

Spreading it yourself increases the chances of bubbles and putting too much thermal paste on, which is why the dot or line methods are recommended.

Not to be confused with tinting the heatsink, which is a method of making sure all microgaps on the heatsink are filled.

[Sharra Llenos]

Just went from 46 GB left to 67 GB left on my HDD. I didn't touch it, can I assume that Windows just deleted a bunch of restore points?

[Miranda Taylor]

Just went from 46 GB left to 67 GB left on my HDD. I didn't touch it, can I assume that Windows just deleted a bunch of restore points?

That or you'd had a lot in the Recycle Bin for 30 days. I think that's how long it waits before emptying.

[Kelly John]

Just went from 46 GB left to 67 GB left on my HDD. I didn't touch it, can I assume that Windows just deleted a bunch of restore points?

That's the most likely. When hard drives fall below 20% free space, Windows will purge system restore points (this is due to Windows's built-in defragger needing a minimum of 15% free space, so system restore yields at 20% in hopes of fighting off anything causing an issue for the defragger).

Other most likely possibility is something causing some temporary files to go away.

That or you'd had a lot in the Recycle Bin for 30 days. I think that's how long it waits before emptying.

I'd hate if the trash/recycle bin (depending on OS) auto-emptied. Thankfully it doesn't unless you have third-party tools installed that are set to do it automatically on a schedule.

[rheanna bruining]

[snip]

Judging by your other posts, you know more about PCs than I do. Sorry. Somebody help Arathorn!

That's the most likely. When hard drives fall below 20% free space, Windows will purge system restore points (this is due to Windows's built-in defragger needing a minimum of 15% free space, so system restore yields at 20% in hopes of fighting off anything causing an issue for the defragger).

Which reminds me.

My system restore points vanish randomly. I have more than enough space on my 2TB HDD, and yet all I have on my restore list is one measly restore point. (And yes, I did check the "show more restore points" box, or whatever it's labelled). Any explanation for this?

[Jordyn Youngman]

Judging by your other posts, you know more about PCs than I do. Sorry. Somebody help Arathorn!

Haha thanks, I guess I'm not too uneducated, but DEFRON has been putting me to shame.

[gemma king]

Strange. They work for me.

I tried really hard to try and hear where the noise was coming from and I found that it was most likely my PSU. So I swapped it around so that the fan wasn't facing the case interior. But the noise remains.

This might make sense since what I've done is upgrade everything in my PC except the PSU and Hard Drive and Graphics card, which I updated last year. It might be a little out of date or it's depth considering the new CPU/motherboard/RAM are a lot more powerful than the last.

Is there anyway I can check the PSU health to see if this is the problem?

Here is my Dxdiag in case you want/need to see it.

If it sounds like it's coming from the PSU, it could be a capacitor whine or the fan in the PSU grinding slightly (grind something at a very high speed and it'll sound like a prolonged beep). Either of those would explain why moving the PSU didn't change anything.

If possible, even if only momentarily, replace the PSU entirely and see if the sound goes away.

Other than that, I'd spot any fan near the PSU as a potential culprit. Cut power to that fan and see if it stops. Finally, since the GPU has a fan, try removing the dedicated GPU and using on-board graphics and see if that stops it. Lastly, just make sure there's loose wires that may be bumping into something.

[Hot]

Alright, just got my CM Hyper 212+ cooler for my CPU and I had a quick question about thermal paste application. First of all, I'd like to use IC Diamond instead of the provided thermal paste unless there's a compelling reason to use the stock stuff. Secondly, I was wondering what the best application method is with this kind of heatsink (direct contact heat pipes)? I know that IC Diamond is meant to be applied as a dot and then spread by the pressure of the heatsink and that worked well when I used it on my laptop GPU and CPU and with the stock heatsink on my desktop. Should I apply the paste differently with this cooler (pre-spread or anything like that)?

IC Diamond is fine to use if that's what you want to use. The stock paste that comes with this cooler is actually pretty good too though. We're talking about maybe a 1 degree difference if applied properly...

This cooler is different than most being a direct heatpipe contact type. As you probably immediately saw, the surface is not a smooth one like other traditional ones, so yes...application of thermal paste is done differently here for optimal results. I have used this cooler on a few occasions for builds I have recently done for people. I followed this guideline by ap42 to apply it:
http://www.overclock.net/t/632591/cooler-master-hyper-212-plus-club/1050#post_12295518

A good FAQ writeup:
http://www.overclock.net/t/632591/cooler-master-hyper-212-plus-club/1220#post_12487558

I don't think either matters to be honest. The pressure of the plate on the CPU will spread it out, but I prefer to make sure that I've done it well myself.
I have the same CPU and I used the stock paste, but I'm sure that won't matter. I'd have thought it'd be better to use a 'better' brand of paste. I put a pea sized dot on the CPU and spread it with a small peice of card.

Pre-warning though, the heatsink was a bastard to screw to the Motherboard, but that's partially down to my use of Scissors in place of a screwdriver.

The dot and spread method is not ideal for this cooler. The surface of this cooler is not smooth at all due to the gaps between the heatpipes and thermal block. You may have a lot of gaps and bubbles between the interface of the two. If your temps are bad, highly suggest you re-apply based on the links I gave above.

[WYatt REed]

How do I remove the border surrounding my windows (notably Firefox, and possibly only Firefox) after exiting a fullscreen game? Every time I exit a game I get a colored border and have to re-maximize the window to remove it and return to true fullscreen windows. It only seems to happen with aero themes (Windows 7). Using a non-aero theme is not a solution

It's surprisingly difficult to google this problem.

EDIT: scratch the Aero thing. I don't think the custom theme I'm using is Aero. I chose Windows 7 Basic then used my own desktop pic. All the Aero themes have a glass look to them; Windows 7 Basic is solid. I admittedly don't know much about Aero or Windows 7 themes.

Alright, just got my CM Hyper 212+ cooler for my CPU and I had a quick question about thermal paste application. First of all, I'd like to use IC Diamond instead of the provided thermal paste unless there's a compelling reason to use the stock stuff. Secondly, I was wondering what the best application method is with this kind of heatsink (direct contact heat pipes)? I know that IC Diamond is meant to be applied as a dot and then spread by the pressure of the heatsink and that worked well when I used it on my laptop GPU and CPU and with the stock heatsink on my desktop. Should I apply the paste differently with this cooler (pre-spread or anything like that)?

Should have gone with the Hyper 212 EVO which eliminates the gaps between the 212+ heatpipes. You can see the heatpipe difference here: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Hyper-212-TX3-EVO-Coolers,13540.html I have an EVO myself and I think I applied the paste properly (was my first time). CPU runs fairly cool. At idle right now just web browsing the four cores are 29-30 celcius. The test will be this summer when it gets significantly warmer in here.

[Max Van Morrison]

Perhaps someone who knows a bit more about download speeds can help me out here. For some reason, all day today, my download speed has gone down the toilet. I am not even getting 1 Mbit/s download speed. I am running on AT&T DSL as that is the only carrier avaliable in this area. I am supposed to be geting upwards of 4Mbits/s, but today, I have tried everything. I checked all of the devices on my network, and none of them are on or using a large amount of connection. I have disabled anything that could be using any internet connection, even including any suspicious processes. Nothing is working. I have reset my modem and still to no avail. What could be going on here? I have eliminated any options that I know could be the problem and nothing is working.

[Claire Vaux]

It could be a problem with your ISP. Which seems most likely, considering the company, from what I hear.

[Laura Hicks]

Perhaps someone who knows a bit more about download speeds can help me out here. For some reason, all day today, my download speed has gone down the toilet. I am not even getting 1 Mbit/s download speed. I am running on AT&T DSL as that is the only carrier avaliable in this area. I am supposed to be geting upwards of 4Mbits/s, but today, I have tried everything. I checked all of the devices on my network, and none of them are on or using a large amount of connection. I have disabled anything that could be using any internet connection, even including any suspicious processes. Nothing is working. I have reset my modem and still to no avail. What could be going on here? I have eliminated any options that I know could be the problem and nothing is working.

Because you're using DSL. DSL usually has a very high density of customers per node/substation. The more people on the same node as you, the slower your speeds will be, as you are sharing from the same pool of bandwidth (DSL companies will say they have dedicated lines, but that's a half-truth. What they mean is from the node to each house each line is dedicated, but leaving the node to the outer web is all pooled bandwidth). There's probably some people on your node who started increasing their bandwidth usage, negatively impacting yours.

This is also roughly true for cable lines too, but much less of a problem. You have to go to dedicated lines (T1 and the like) to have it not happen to you.

[Roberto Gaeta]

Because you're using DSL. DSL usually has a very high density of customers per node/substation. The more people on the same node as you, the slower your speeds will be, as you are sharing from the same pool of bandwidth (DSL companies will say they have dedicated lines, but that's a half-truth. What they mean is from the node to each house each line is dedicated, but leaving the node to the outer web is all pooled bandwidth). There's probably some people on your node who started increasing their bandwidth usage, negatively impacting yours.

This is also roughly true for cable lines too, but much less of a problem. You have to go to dedicated lines (T1 and the like) to have it not happen to you.

Does this mean that I can figure out who the hell is using utorrent and give them a swift kick in the wahoo and shut it off somehow? I am now going up and down my neighborhood in search of this menace...

[Yvonne]

IC Diamond is fine to use if that's what you want to use. The stock paste that comes with this cooler is actually pretty good too though. We're talking about maybe a 1 degree difference if applied properly...

This cooler is different than most being a direct heatpipe contact type. As you probably immediately saw, the surface is not a smooth one like other traditional ones, so yes...application of thermal paste is done differently here for optimal results. I have used this cooler on a few occasions for builds I have recently done for people. I followed this guideline by ap42 to apply it:
http://www.overclock.net/t/632591/cooler-master-hyper-212-plus-club/1050#post_12295518

A good FAQ writeup:
http://www.overclock.net/t/632591/cooler-master-hyper-212-plus-club/1220#post_12487558

Thanks for the help, I'll probably just use the stock paste (since IC Diamond is viscous enough that it's difficult to do anything other than a dot) and follow those instructions.

Should have gone with the Hyper 212 EVO which eliminates the gaps between the 212+ heatpipes. You can see the heatpipe difference here: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Hyper-212-TX3-EVO-Coolers,13540.html I have an EVO myself and I think I applied the paste properly (was my first time). CPU runs fairly cool. At idle right now just web browsing the four cores are 29-30 celcius. The test will be this summer when it gets significantly warmer in here.

Plus cost me about half as much as an EVO would, so I'd say the savings were worth a little extra work.

[TRIsha FEnnesse]

hey can anyone tell me if this is a good deal for 900 dollars?

i5 2500k CPU
8GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600 RAM
500 TB HDD
GTX 550 TI EVGA, 2GB version
700 Watt Power Supply
Windows 7 Home Premium
DvD burner
Mobo is to be determined

with this case http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811133094

[Frank Firefly]

This thread gets a lot of these posts. I think the people who'd have an informed opinion about a build are just tired of answering...

I did notice something peculiar.

500 TB HDD

Did you mean a .5 TB HDD? What model and brand is it? The HDD can be a significant bottleneck in your system if you pick the wrong one.

Also:

Mobo is to be determined

You really should have this determined before you consider other things. It's the base upon which everything else has to go. It's also one of the most expensive pieces of hardware, next to the GPU and CPU.

I don't know much about building PCs, so I can't help you more than that.

[Chrissie Pillinger]

Are we engaging in different conversations? I think we are... Who called you stupid?

please quote where I said anyone directly called me stupid rofl.

Both of you, stop it now. I am not afraid to get tig on you two.

The rig looks decent to me, but the 550ti is no good. it is weaker than the 470.
Go for the 560ti by asus. it costs less and has better cooling than evga.

It is not that we are too good to answer your question, but we tend to lose some posts in the wave. you just got a stroke of bad luck.

Oof, you are just escalating problems. A build for 900 dollars like that has plenty of headroom for a decent board. He came for advice, not an argument. Stop it.

[Jessie Butterfield]

i use fan cooling and i know my pc is coolish
but is watercooling a goodidea? or is it a bad one?

[Stephani Silva]

Both of you, stop it now. I am not afraid to get tig on you two.

The rig looks decent to me, but the 550ti is no good. it is weaker than the 470.
Go for the 560ti by asus. it costs less and has better cooling than evga.

It is not that we are too good to answer your question, but we tend to lose some posts in the wave. you just got a stroke of bad luck.

Oof, you are just escalating problems. A build for 900 dollars like that has plenty of headroom for a decent board. He came for advice, not an argument. Stop it.

thank you for the educated *deleted* response. it's appreciated..and you're exactly right, the build leaves a lot of headroom for the mobo. obviously i'd get one that fits all the parts i have, so that's not really a big deal/hard decision. i'll get whatever i need to.

[Juan Suarez]

i use fan cooling and i know my pc is coolish
but is watercooling a goodidea? or is it a bad one?

No reason to do water cooling unless you have serious ambient temperature problems (like being in a stuffy attic during summer) or are doing some serious overclocking.

[Clea Jamerson]

No reason to do water cooling unless you have serious ambient temperature problems (like being in a stuffy attic during summer) or are doing some serious overclocking.

okay then also can you reccomend something to check the temp inside my pc externally?