THE KING IN RED

Back in November I installed a 980 TI from MSI in my main machine, (you can read more about that here) a beast of a video card that has dominated the high end market until the release of the new flagship models from NVIDIA, the 1070 and 1080. Which, is sadly how things have gone for a while now. NVIDIA has been ruling the roost for a while now. With their flagship cards delivering premium performance at an increasing premium cost. Which leaves AMD in a difficult position, how do you kill the king?

Best Not Miss Indeed...
Especially after the controversial release of the Fury X. I still maintain that they released a perfectly capable card in the Fury, had they released it ahead of the 980 TI it would've been a serious coup, but alas. They were releasing a card meant to crush the 980, they succeeded. They even managed to rival the TI, but the TI had already been released. A water cooler wasn't going to change that. Second chances don't come often, but that's what AMD was looking at this time around. The tough question, how do you gain market share against NVIDIA? How do you ensure you don't miss?

In this case, I think AMD learned a valuable lesson: hit them where they aren't looking. NVIDIA as the institution in graphics cards has gotten to a point of predictability. They release the new 80 and 70 cards. Wait a while for people to blow their loads on the new hotness, then they flesh out the lineup. Which is great for the high end enthusiasts, but how many of you reading this are on a 4k screen? Or even a 1440p? Do you even GSync?

No, if Steam is to be believed, most gamers are rocking 1080p or lower screens. And it makes sense, you can pick up a good 1080p screen for $100-200. But once you start going for those enthusiast level screens, you're talking easily $600+ and honestly you don't need a 1080 to play CSGO or Darkest Dungeon. And hell, you don't need it to play League of Legends or World of Warcraft either. Which is where I really come in. The games I tend to play aren't really that taxing, I mean do I really need the beefiest video card to keep things going? Even when ten boxing I found I wasn't really pushing the TI to it's limit. The only time that happened was when I literally put it under stress test conditions. So, it felt like I had an expensive car that I was only using to check the mail.

If I'm being honest with myself, I felt like something more in the 970 area was more like what I needed. So, when I heard about the RX 480 I was intrigued. So, today the NDA has been lifted and the card has officially been put up for sale (and promptly sold out). Reviewers have had their say, so let's see how the thing stacks up:

RX 480 STATS
36 Compute Units
2304 Stream Processors
Clock Speeds (Boost/Base) 1266 MHz/1120 MHz
Memory Clock 2000 MHz
Peak Performance Up to 5.8 TFLOPS
Memory Size 4 GB ($199) /8 GB ($239) GDDR5
Memory Bandwidth 256 bit
TDP 150W


OVERCLOCKS
I've taken the overclocked values from several YouTubers as well as my own findings here, 
JayZ Two Cents 1360
Mine 1345
Awesomesauce Network 1325
OC3D 1320

Currently there isn't much to do with the voltage, the stock cooler on these is quite frankly cheap. But, for someone like me, I would rather get these cheap reference boards and attach full cover water blocks from EK anyways. Which are apparently coming soon.

In the overclocks listed above, I found a lot in the 1320 range from people who said they weren't willing to push the fans to max or tinker too much with the software. So, I imagine we'll see something approaching 1400 MHz on water, which is really not bad at all for a sub $300 card. Additionally, these things simply sip from the wall, TTL on the OC3D channel mentioned a power draw of 280 watts using this card with an X99 rig.

If nothing else, this points to a new trend in computers I think we can all get behind. You don't have to dump a couple hundred on a 1200w beast of a PSU. You can save some cash, get something that's not only smaller, but of better quality/efficiency. More than anything, the release of the 480 has me struggling to come up with a compelling reason to recommend anything but this card for most people, if someone's got the cash for a bigger/better card they don't need my advice, they know what they need/want. But, someone who wants to spend a few hundred bucks building their first gaming rig? Someone looking to replace their old one, who's still running a 1080p or dare I say a 720p screen? Why not give them the card that's going to make them feel like their machine is crushing their games at a respectable price?

For those of us rocking the high end gear, the 480 may not look like much, but to the majority of PC gamers, this is a serious card indeed.

THE SPARTAN

Winter is coming, and with it comes the special pricing of computer parts. Add in the anticipation of impending releases for new games like Fallout 4 and there's bound to be some interest in building a new PC this holiday season. I've personally spoken to several people who've expressed interest in having a new rig built for their gaming needs, so I've put together what I consider a no nonsense, bang for the buck system I call the Spartan...

RATIONALE
I designed the Spartan as a sort of no nonsense gaming rig, as the name implies there's few frills here. There's not even a side panel window to show off your internals. I started with a budget of $1000, I figure this is roughly what most people will expect to pay for a gaming system. I've provided both an i5 and i7 variant of this build, which gives some more price range options and end user options.

The i5 build is basically as standard as it gets, 8GB of RAM and a 4690 will give you dead solid gaming performance. I expect this to be the variant the vast majority of gamers will want. The i7 variant gives you hyperthreading and 16GB of ram, this version is more of a niche, with the virtual cores and extra ram you have a machine that's going to be fantastic for streaming and video editing, as well as dual-boxing. Additionally, with new games like Fallout 4 leveleraging the additional power potential of hyperthreading this could also have some additional benefits in more games in the future, for now though most games don't care about hyperthreading so this is sort of a niche enthusiast market.

Just remember with the i7 build, you're paying an extra $100 for the more powerful processor and extra ram so you'll have to ask yourself if it's worth it. With that said, let's address the elephant in the room...

NO SKYLAKE
I know what you're probably thinking, it's almost 2016 and you're still suggesting an 1150 build for a gaming rig? Didn't you just build a Skylake PC yourself? WTF is wrong with you? Well, hold on fake person I made up to prove a point.

Skylake is nice, I'm actually pleased with the overclock I managed on mine. However, the performance gains of this generation over the last aren't significant enough in my opinion to warrant the price jump, especially at the i7 range. And even more so for the unlocked processors (which I'm sure I'll be talking about in a later post). Additionally, the move to Skylake ends up costing a premium for things like the motherboard. There's only a $5 difference between the 4690 and the 6600 for example, but then you pay an additional $30 for a compatible motherboard.

As I said before, winter is coming -  and with it come Cyber Monday deals, lots of people are going to be upgrading to Skylake. And if the launch is any indication, we could be seeing shortages in those processors and premiums for the ones that are available. With the 4690 and 4790s however we have the exact opposite, there are plenty on the warehouse shelves. And we're likely to see some good prices for the older gear this holiday season as a result of the new hotness and an interest in making room for it. So yeah, I fully expect the price of the parts listed below to actually go down in the coming weeks I don't know that I could say the same for a comparable Skylake build. Now, with that out of the way I do have to admit, compromises were made with this build...


COMPROMISES
Let's be honest, there aren't a lot of upgrade options for a build like this. However, I also don't feel that there really needs to be at this price point. And ultimately the compromises I've made here have paid off in terms of price to performance. By going with a locked CPU we only save $5 versus the unlocked variant for the i5, for the 4790 however it's a savings of $30 sticking with the locked CPU. By avoiding the overclocking we also save $20 on the motherboard, and since staying with a single video card we save an additional $30 on the power supply. That leads to some significant room for more powerful components in the rest of the system such as the video card, by going with the 390 we have 8GB of video buffer and a card that's more than capable of pushing 1080p or 1440p. Additionally, if you choose to give Linux a try you'll find that driver support for the 300 series is far and away better than the green team. But without wasting anymore time, let's have a look at the builds themselves...

PARTS LIST I5
CPU: Intel Core i5-4690 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor | $213.99 @ SuperBiiz
Motherboard: ASRock H81 Pro BTC ATX LGA1150 Motherboard | $58.99 @ SuperBiiz
Memory: Mushkin ECO2 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory | $35.99 @ Newegg
Video Card: PowerColor Radeon R9 390 8GB PCS+ Video Card  | $279.99 @ Newegg
Storage: Sandisk SSD PLUS 120GB 2.4" Solid State Drive | $44.99 @ Amazon
Storage: Hitachi Deskstar 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive | $43.00 @ Amazon 
Case: Corsair 200R ATX Mid Tower Case | 56.66 @ Amazon
PSU: EVGA SuperNOVA NEX 750W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply  | $49.99 @ Newegg

Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts.
Total before mail-in rebates: $833.60
Total after mail-in rebates: $783.60

Generated by [PCPartPicker](http://pcpartpicker.com) 2015-11-12 11:11, prices subject to change.  

PARTS LIST I7
CPU: Intel Core i7-4790 3.6GHz Quad-Core Processor | $292.99 @ SuperBiiz
Motherboard: ASRock H81 Pro BTC ATX LGA1150 Motherboard | $58.99 @ SuperBiiz
Memory: Team Elite Plus 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory | $68.99 @ Newegg
Video Card: MSI Radeon R9 390X 8GB Video Card | $379.99 @ Newegg
Storage: Sandisk SSD PLUS 120GB 2.4" Solid State Drive | $44.99 @ Amazon
Storage: Hitachi Deskstar 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive | $43.00 @ Amazon 
Case: Corsair 200R ATX Mid Tower Case | 56.66 @ Amazon
PSU: EVGA SuperNOVA NEX 750W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply  | $49.99 @ Newegg

Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts.
Total before mail-in rebates: $945.60
Total after mail-in rebates: $895.60

Generated by [PCPartPicker](http://pcpartpicker.com) 2015-11-12 12:09, prices subject to change. 

UPGRADES & ADDITIONS
The Spartan is intended as a no bullshit gaming rig, I'm going to go against the words of Samuel L. Jackson on this one, if you're reading this your more likely to go with the I5 build. And with that assumption in mind, what options do you really have in terms of upgrades? Not much, you could add more storage of course, or upgrade the RAM. But you probably don't need it really. However, we did come in under the 1k mark by a significant margin with this one, so what else could we do with the remaining cash?

If you already have a top notch monitor, mouse, keyboard, headset, etc. I'd say upgrade the video card. For another $100 you could get a 390x. Or if you're willing to double down on the video card you could actually fit a 980 TI in this system, which would bring the total price up to $1100. At that point you'll have an absolute beast of a machine.

If however you're on an old 1080p screen and would rather go with the build as written and get a good monitor you have a few options. First, there's the Korean monitors on eBay. The X-STAR DP2710 LED 27" 2560x1440 (Samsung PLS) will give you eye candy at $200. At that price, you can pick up a Windows key online and be right at $1k with the I5 build. Of course, if you have all the bases covered and just need a box to plug into, you can always use the left over cash on G2A.com or the Steam Winter sale to load up on games, after all winter is coming. Game on...

K

REV2

Back in June I built a new computer, at the time I was interested in getting myself to a point where I could play some video games and get online with something more powerful than an old phone. My original intent was to upgrade that machine, or build a new one and put the "old machine" in a secondary role. Since then circumstances conspired to put me in possession of the parts I needed to build a solid Skylake machine and today, I happily unveil the fruits of that labor, I give you REV2...

PARTS LIST & RATIONALE
This build was a bit of a surprise, I originally didn't expect to build a Skylake machine. I moved some parts from the old machine to this one, the old machine will be going to a buddy of mine who's made the decision that it's about time he moved from a laptop to a desktop. So for the time being I'll be keeping most of my operational software on a single SSD for now, with the old reliable Seagate doing mass storage duty. Later, I plan to add a pair of M.2 drives for even faster access to both the OS and games. The Corsair parts really lend themselves to the color scheme and they also are surprisingly quiet, my experience with Corsair prior to this has really been with their ram exclusively, and I've always found their gear rock solid, if pricey.

I will be adding a second 980 TI down the line, and I'll be doing some custom sleeving on the PSU cables. I'm almost certainly going to be switching the LED strip as well. The NZXT strip is easy to install, and clean enough. But the LEDs themselves are pretty far apart. They work, but it gives a somewhat inconsistent light inside the case. The H440 is the big brother to the S340 that I fell in love with over the summer. I still prefer the sleek, clean look of the S340 in general. But the extra room and sound dampening are welcome in the H440.

CPU: Intel Core i7-6700K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor
CPU Cooler: Corsair H110i GTX 104.7 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler
Motherboard: MSI Z170A GAMING M7 ATX LGA1151 Motherboard 
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-2666 Memory
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 500GB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive
Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB Video Card 
Case: NZXT H440 (Black/Red) ATX Mid Tower Case
PSU: EVGA 850W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply 
OS: Microsoft Windows 10 Professional OEM (64-bit) / Linux Arch Dual Boot 
AIO Fans: Corsair Air Series SP140 Quiet Edition 49.5 CFM 140mm Fan (2)
Case Fans: Corsair Air Series AF120 Quiet Edition 39.9 CFM 120mm Fan (4)
Headphones: Superlux HD668B Headphones
Monitor: AMH A409U UHD 40" 3840X2160 16:9 4K LED Monitor 60Hz 
Keyboard: Logitech G15 *
Mouse: Logitech G5 *
Speakers: Creative 2.1 *


Keyboard, Mouse, and Speakers are quite old at this point. They "work" but only just. Some keys on the keyboard stick, the LEDs recently died. The mouse is still functional, but considering my new screen it really has become noticeably lacking. I should have a SteelSeries mouse on the way from MSI shortly, failing that I'll probably pick up a Myonix Castor. For the Keyboard, I'm not sure honestly. But almost certainly something using Cherry MX switches. As for the speakers, that's going to be a project for another day entirely...

But enough talk, how does it look?

The 980 TI does an admirable job at 4k, this screen has definitely won me over.

Those green LEDs on the Power, Reset, and Post Code readout are the only real flaw with the M7 board from MSI.

Looking at it now, I think I'll go with cable sleeving to match the Corsair AIO, really slick and it's grown on me.

The lighting on the rear IO is a nice touch NZXT.

But how does it perform?

OVERCLOCKING & TUNING
Using the Heaven Benchmark settings from the GPU Benchmark thread on Tek Syndicate I came up with the following results after Overclocking. For the first result I used the overclocking dial in the MSI Command Center app to crank it up. I managed to get through the Benchmark with these settings, but then had some artifact and crashing issues when I fired up Civ V at 4k.

I imagine with a custom water loop I could pull a bit better than this, not going to complain though.

I decided to load the BIOS and do a simple OC the old fashioned way, I turned on XMP and dialed the Core to 4.6. That's when I noticed that the OC dial actually alters the Base Clock, etc as well. Which explains the instability issues. I then ran the system using the overclock I'd put together for the GPU in Afterburner and got the results below. Frankly, I'm very impressed. Considering I didn't dick around with the Boost clock or anything, those numbers are perfectly acceptable to me.

More stable results after lowering the Core Clock.

The following morning I decided to tinker a little more, and I've now found my final overclock results. Here's how she looks at present with the Benchmark and GPU-Z...

These are the settings I'll be using until I have a second card installed.

CONCLUSION

So far every single part has performed above and beyond expectations, there have been some minor issues with regards to the memory. However that's apparently par for the course with the z170 chipset and was fixed with a BIOS update. I also had some odd issues with positioning fans with the AIO, and that's not utterly surprising either. Aside from nitpicking a few additional items that just haven't made it into the system yet, I'd call it finished. It went together very smoothly.

Interestingly, my wife has expressed interest in getting her own machine built too. So, looks like I've got at least one project lined up for the new year. So stay tuned for more...

K

MY GAMING HEADSET

Odds are if you're reading this you use your PC to play games, so sooner or later you're going to need the ability to communicate through voice chat which leads us to the question how do you get a good sounding headset without eating into the graphics card budget...

The video I've provided above is from Tek Syndicate, where they discuss at length why "Gaming" branded headsets are crap. But more importantly they give you options for building your own for under $50 with audio quality far and beyond what you can get from a so called "Gaming" headset. If you want to learn more about what went into my own headset solution, or you're just looking for more options (including more expensive options) then definitely check out the video above and other videos in their headset series.

Adding 3rd party pads is HIGHLY recommended ...

MY AUDIO SETUP
First, at the time when I built my PC a few things came to- gether quite nicely. First, I got a motherboard with a nice onboard audio chip, the MSI Z97-G45 Gaming Motherboard was on sale for $100 (also not everything with the gaming branding sucks). Normally it's around $140 and it's built with an "isolated" audio chip, which supposedly reduces (not eliminates) interference from other electronic devices in your machine. Additionally, it has the amp necessary to power a decent headphone.

I decided to give the onboard audio a listen before invest- ing in a DAC, something I recommend to anyone who cares about the audio on their system. For me, the onboard has actually been quite good for normal use without the addition of a DAC. Of note here, if you're going with the onboard audio you're definitely going to want to plug directly into the motherboard, do not plug into the front I/O, srsly don't do that.

For the headset I went with the Superlux HD668B, I actually have my computer on a small table to the right of my desk. I use both of the packaged cords to reach the motherboard on my machine, passing behind the monitor, etc. This gives me plenty of slack to reach my head and move around comfortably. I added a set of velour ear pads for a few bucks, the pads that come with the Superlux are fine, but they do cause my ears to sweat pretty quickly. So, for most gaming sessions they get uncomfortable before long.

For the Mic I went with the Zalman ZM-Mic, I added an extension cord I picked up from eBay for about $2 including shipping making the mic and headphone cords roughly the same length. It all works, and works well together. Much better than the exponentially more expensive Sennheiser headset I replaced (it was great, but it DID eventually die after years of abuse).

SRS VALUE
The Sennheiser headset I was using previously cost $180, they were a gift or I'd never have gotten them. I'd never have spent that much on a headset myself. So how much did I spend on the new headset?

Superlux HD668b $32 on Massdrop
Zalman ZM-Mic $7 on Amazon (Sale)
Replacement Ear Pads $5 on Amazon
Extension Cord $2 on eBay

Total: $46

Having said that, these are quite literally the best headphones I've ever owned. The sound quality and the sheer volume they are capable of reaching is fantastic. Mostly I listen to metal and rock, so these are perfect for that. However, the lows aren't bad either for some hip hop (definitely put these things through their paces with some Death Grips and Mastodon) when I'm not gaming. If you're looking for a headset replacement, or just a good pair of headphones the Superlux is a solid choice. I would recommend looking for them on Massdrop (they'll show up for sale sooner or later I'm sure) otherwise, I'd recommend looking for a pair used on eBay.

At the time of this writing I was able to find them in the box for $36 with shipping. I understand the hesitance in buying used headphones, however they're not too hard to clean with some cotton swabs and alcohol. Additionally, if you're replacing the pads anyway, buying used makes a lot more sense and saves you some cash.

If you have a different solution you used, or if you have thoughts in general on the subject feel free to reply below.

K

SPECTRE

After an extended absence I'm back, I've only been up and running for little more than a week but already I've got plenty to report. First, let's cover the reason for my absence and my subsequent return...

MY COMPUTER DIED
The last time I built myself a new computer was somewhere between 2006-2008, that computer died about 2 years ago during a late night storm. I replaced it last year with a rig I picked up from Craigslist, that PC died a couple of months ago. So, I resolved to build myself a new machine. Actually, I'd been planning to build a new PC for some time but it just never happened, after the most recent failure though it was most definitely time.

My plan is to build two machines, one high powered computer that will do the bulk of the heavy lifting for gaming, video editing, etc. And the other a much more modest machine that will be doing some light gaming, streaming, and video transcoding. I started with the second rig, as serious mistakes here would be easier to handle in general. I also just wasn't sure about the case I'd chosen and really wanted to come to grips with the internal dimensions before I committed to a large video card, etc. I decided against colored lights, I wanted to showcase the clean interior and color matched parts. So, basic white LEDs did the trick. I'll be making a more in depth post about this and the other computers in my ongoing "Ghostwheel" project. For now, here's some shots of the finished product, I call it SPECTRE.

And here's a look at my current desktop, I blatantly stole this from Logan at Tek Syndicate. Who in turn blatantly stole it from Paul Chadeisson. You can find more of Paul's work on his DeviantArt page (there's more than just furry tentacle beasts on DeviantArt, who knew).

Currently I'm running my machine on a modest Overclock, I'm running 4.6GHz stable on air. You might think that with only 8 gigs of ram and the 270 I'd be at a disadvantage for gaming, but so far everything has run quite smoothly. I play at 1080p, currently on an ACER monitor that I'm looking to upgrade later this year. With my current configuration the computer is also incredibly quiet, I'm using NZXTs CAM software to control the 4 be quiet! branded fans, these ramp up depending on the load on the system. The Noctua fan I've added to the CPU cooler is a hold over from the Craigslist computer, it of course is controlled by the motherboard. Game on...

K