Blog » Reinforcements have arrived

Posted by Roguey on Tuesday 27th October, 2015   ·   0 comments

Awhile back you may of read that I upgraded my PC from an 2600k to an 5820k. I looked seriously at the 6700k, but for me having 2 real extra cores was better (4x 4.2 vs 6x 3.6ghz). I dont know how things will go with gaming etc. but from past experience the extra cores tend to get used later on (and I do some encoding work from time to time). I also thought my 5820k will overclock (if need be), and ive reached 3.8ghz with 1.0v - I know thats not much of an overclock but I tend to want to keep the noise level low (1.0v is stock voltage). Higher voltages produce more heat and harder my AIO has to work to keep it cool, without louder fan noise. The H110i can get rid of it but ideally I want it to be very quiet. Im a bit of a silence freak to be honest, especially after my last build.

So for a long time ive been deciding what to do about the GPU - stick with a 680GTX (hold out for the Pascal) or get a card now. I thought long and hard and came to the conclusion that an 980Ti wont be bad next year just because of Pascal surely. I saw some posts by nvidia saying it was 10x faster, but I really cant see that. That would mean what we have now is been done badly. Like others I personally think Pascal will be around 30-40% at most. Some have said it be even longer until we see the big pascals. How long do you wait? there's always something better coming soon..

So in the end I went for a 980Ti. One of the big factors was the 6gb of ram - 2gb isnt enough any more. The 970 has that odd thing with 3.5gb VRAM, and the 980 was more money for only a little more.



You may of noticed that ive also added some extra ram, bringing the system to 64gb. I know this is seriously over-kill now, but later on I dont want to be searching for another set of memory. In the past I had a system where I only put half the amount of memory in to start with, but couldnt find the other half when it needed it. I cant see me changing the CPU/motherboard any time soon. 64Gb is the maximum of the 5820k.

In the end I went with a Zotac GeForce GTX 980 Ti AMP. This was pushed my budget but was into the 980Ti territory. I know there are more expensive 980Ti's out there, but this one was a little cheaper than the rest and this one had a 5 year warranty (should anything happen - like my old 670GTX);



After installing everything I noticed the 980Ti get a bit hot when gaming. So what I did was to install a fan directly under the 980Ti to keep it cool. This means the card is always cooled by a fan, helps the psu and pushes the air upwards to the exhaust fans. Being a 140mm fan, its very low pitched and barely audible - I rather this fan span than the GPU fans work harder (as they can get a little noisy).



I guess I could of spent more money on a AIO 9800Ti but for me the 9800Ti was already pushing 'it'. So far this systems ran very quiet and can run the latest games on high/ultra when needed.

For those inrested, I have added my 3Dmark scores below;

- Firestrike
- Firestrike (Ultra)

The 980Ti is around a x2.4 increase in 1080p and around x5-6 times in 4k. I dont have a 4k TV at the moment, but it could happen later on. At-least im open to the possibility later on, should a 4k TV turn up. Another option is that the 980Ti drops in price, allowing SLi - although im not sure a 760w PSU will be enough?



One thing im finding funny is that the PSU still isnt getting enough load to even spin-up the fan. Its like saying - is that all you got? Its a very quiet and efficient PSU.

thanks

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