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PC hardware suggestions/reccomendations

W

Wolfie

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 2, 2006
Messages
501
Looking to bump my PPD on a taco bell budget-

I currently have a WinXP box (Windows Media 2005)
The box's current function is media PC/blu-ray player.
It is a E7600, with 2GB of ram and a Raideon 3450 card,

If I bought a GTX460 card and dropped into the media pc-
how loud is the video card's fan?
Which maker of the GTX460 is the better one to buy?

How much powersupply would I need? (current is a Thermal take W070 which is a 430W ps, says it is rated for 29A of 12v power)

My main computer is a Q6600 box with dual GTS250 cards in it, running 7, still struggling with the dual GPU setup for folding, it errors and nothing folds, even though I am running two GPU3 clients and they are configured to different machine ID's.
 
The GTX 460 is a fairly quiet card. As long as you have good airflow in the case so that the card doesn't have to speed the fan up too much you won't get much noise out of it. Your PSU should be fine pushing a 460.

Are you running the latest drivers for your gpus? If so, make sure you have -gpu 0 for one and -gpu 1 for the other in the command lines. I'd also use -forcegpu nvidia_g80 in each command line.
 
I think you would be fine with the 460, just grab a deal and you will be set!
 
To get an idea of the 460's noise, you should definately check out the reviews that Kyle and his crew have done on the main hardocp page. There are also many different customized versions you can buy that are different from the reference design. There was one brand that I believe even had a flip out fan that would make things much easier to clean and dust.

If you are looking for a brand, I was a huge eVGA fan back when I still used to use nVidia based GPU's. They have a lifetime warranty that can't be beat, so long as you remember to register within 30 days. However there will be a bunch of other brands that you'll find selling on newegg and at Microcenter that will be much cheaper.
 
if you jump into the irc channel you can get some good help on getting two video cards to go (thats how i got my two folding at the same time)

but ya a 460 would be a nice performance boost......and you can explain its purpose for making the video look better ;)
 
Kendrak said:
I think you would be fine with the 460, just grab a deal and you will be set!
Click to expand...

^^^This, i've got an Asus 460 with the modified cooler on it - i could barely hear the card at idle - under folding load the temps only got upto the mid 50's so even in a small case you should be good.
 
thanks all,

Seriously looking at the eVGA 460 for $170 at newegg.

the "Media PC" is a Lucite case with two 120MM fans blowing across the motherboard.

another option I had not though about is-
Will Nvidia GPU's mix in an SLI configuration, (say a GTS250, and a GTX460.)
 
lehmann said:
evga has the EE version which stands for external exhaust. no hot air in the case. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130565 they also have faster but more expensive versions of this.
Click to expand...

Zero82z said:
The EE cooler performs worse than the stock cooler. It's better to go with a different-branded card that uses a better heatsink, and simply improve your case airflow to take care of the heat.
Click to expand...

wow, and here I was looking at these as my top choices-
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130562
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127510
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814500169
 
Wolfie said:
wow, and here I was looking at these as my top choices-
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130562
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127510
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814500169
Click to expand...
That EVGA card uses the reference cooler, so it would be a good choice. It's actually the card I have, and I can tell you that it runs pretty cool (though I took off the heatsink and removed the plastic shroud, so that probably helped with temperatures). As for the other two, they're the 1GB models so they are more expensive. The 768MB model usually costs a decent amount less and will perform only marginally worse at folding, so I suggest you go with one of those. Here are some other models to look at:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125334
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121390
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127512

My preference would be the MSI or Gigabyte models. The Gigabyte appears to have a better cooler, but the MSI card comes in at $10 cheaper after the mail-in rebate.
 
well it looks like the shopping bug has hit me, I want a machine that can do BigAdv,

now where to sell or dump my old hardware? (I thought there used to be a Horde trading area)

I have 3 GTS250 cards that work,
two are MSI N250GTS TwinFrozr 1G OC
the third is ASUS ENGTS250 GeForce GTS 250 1GB card (I questioning this cards stability) (it works, and does not produce bad folding packets but when installed the machine blue screens randomly)


I have a 4th ASUS GTS250 suffering from blown mosfets, just have not gotten around to working on fixing it yet.
 
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