Personal computing discussed
Moderators: renee, mac_h8r1, Nemesis
nimajneb5000 wrote:Well the problem is that you dont know what kind of CPU he has and what kind of power draw it has.
JustAnEngineer wrote:The difference is power consumption between the Radeon HD4670 and the HD4770 is less than 20 watts when fully loaded. If your power supply were going to spontaneously explode with the HD4770, it's quite likely to do the same with the HD4670. Since we're talking about putting only 50-60% of the rated load on the power supply, it should work fine. The cooler on the XFX Radeon HD4770 that you selected exhausts heat outside the case, reducing the chance that you'll need to add another cooling fan to your case. All the Radeon HD4670 cards except the HIS IceQ model exhaust their heat inside the case, warming up all of your other components, as well.
The difference in gaming performance between the two graphics cards is substantial. The only reason to choose the Radeon HD4670 over the HD4770 would be to spend $130 (or $160 for HIS) vs. spending $220 for a pair of cards. That may be a good reason.
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/gami ... 2849%5D=on
StuG wrote:Unless you are trying to overclock or want a cooler running video card. Modern cards with Nvidia and AMD chips feature drivers that can auto adjust fan speeds already according to the temperature. Today's fans on the video cards are not very pleasant when spinning at 100%.How do you adjust the speed of the fan on the graphics card? Is there a program?
There are many programs that will do what your asking. Many times the Graphics Drivers will allow you to do this natively. On an ATI card, this would be called the Catalyst Control Center, than you would navigate to whats called "ATI Overdrive" and manually move the fan speed there. Another option you have is MSI Afterburner (for those of you who don't know, this is based of riva-tuner but is fully compatible w/ ATI now), this program has a great read-out and is very user friendly for changing fan speeds, clock speeds, etc. Also, you can have Afterburner change the fan speed depending on what the current temp is. That is very useful for low-maintenance builds. Another program would be Riva-Tuner.
StuG wrote:Nitpick: actually the sensors and software won't give you the complete picture. Notice how various reviews actually stick one of those IR thermometers? Now that's hardcore.How do you check the temperature of the Rig and Card? Thermometer?
The things mentioned above will also to Temps for you. All of them will, and will be more accurate than an external Thermometer (it has built in sensors). If your worried about heat the 4770 has a dual-slot cooler. That will help keep it nice and cool, as the hot air isn't pumped back into the case but is pumped out of it. Way more efficient.
StuG wrote:You can also study the required readings and get a pretty good idea already before buying, but the main thing is still the 12V amps.How do you calculate the power consumption of the computer?
There are some power-supply calculator's floating around the internet that you could use, but really I would not recommend them. You can go to your local home-depot and pick up a watt-meter for about $6, or one off newegg called a kill-a-watt. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 20a%20watt These will show you what the draw is from the wall, which is IMO the important thing, though if you wanted to figure out what the actual draw was, you would use the efficiency rating of your PSU and than factor that into the electricity being drawn from the wall.
StuG wrote:To avoid pushing the system to the point of frying? Do it slow, don't go crazy and shoot for 100% overclock in one shot. You can start by larger jumps and then see if the system fails. Most components can withstand just a bit of pushing without the magic blue smoke. So you can immediately shutdown, reset the CMOS, and try again with a lower setting. The key is patience, systematic approach, and lots of testing. If you are not ready to put in the work, then stay away from overclocking (I would argue that even at stock you still need to test the system thoroughly, but that's just me).What is the best way to push a computer to the point of frying itself? And how would I avoid this?
There are many programs for this. CPU wise we are looking at OCCP, Prime95, Intel Burn-Test, Hyper-Pi, and Linx. Any of those will push your CPU to a heavy load/heat/power consumption point. I would recommend them in that order, though Prime95 is probably the easiest to use. As for graphics, you could download ATI-Tool, which has a rendering stress test that does a pretty good job presuming you don't have a stupidly powerful graphics card. For testing memory/overall stability use memtest, and fill it out to use your appropriate amount of ram. I need to mention that all of these can be found through a quick google search and are free! Presumably to test the system under stress you would run all these tests at once, and you are pretty much assured a good figure of how stable it is.
Avoiding damage to your computer is simple. Keep it dust free, and good ventilation. Most systems, including yours, should be fine with the cooling they came with. If these stress tests don't raise your CPU temp above 60C, or your GPU above 85C, you are good to go. To monitor temps of all hardware at once you can use a program called Hardware-Monitor. Its not as exact with readings and utility features, but it gives a good overall display of your temps all at once on the same page.