Help 1st time PC builder

[thebigJ_A]

I mentioned it in the comments to the monitor article - what about the Dell Ultrasharp U2311H (I think there's a newer model, U2312-something), it should be around $200 in the US. It's an excellent IPS panel, you will love it - the colours, viewing angle, contrast etc.


http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012...comment-920663

That's my comment, read the others underneath it so you get an idea of how great it is :)

The U2311 I can only find online for like $350-400, again from weird no-name sellers. There's an E2311, a P2312, and an (out-of-stock) ST2321 on Newegg, all for about $200. Are any of these the same thing?

There are just so many monitors, and every company has there own model number codes, so it's impossible for someone like me to know what the differences are. :/

How about this one? It's got a lot of positive reviews: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16824236079

[gimperial]

That's a TN panel.

http://www.ebay.com/ctg/Dell-UltraSh...d=p3286.c0.m14

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_no...2312hm&x=0&y=0

The U2312HM is basically the replacement for the U2311H. Looks like it's just over $200, less if you go for used.

[Odeon]

I can't help much with monitor replacement suggestions. I finally upgraded my old 20" Dell CRT (max res of 2048 x 1536, it weighed at least 50 lbs and took up a cubic kilometer of desk space), which I got on the cheap from a friend before LCDs were the norm, with a 19" square LCD (1600 x 1200 max res) that was already slowly dying, which I got for free from a co-worker. Then just this year I finally actually bought a new widescreen 21.5" LCD (1920 x 1080 max res) for $105 with California sales tax and shipping from NewEgg. It's a HannSpree HF225 and while it's a great replacement for the old one, it doesn't compare to what you could get for $200.

Right now, with my 1440x900, I've been able to max everything I've thrown at it, and games look great. I'm a bit nervous that, in getting a better monitor, I'll end up losing visual fidelity due to having to lower settings.

I can tell you that if you find yourself wishing for better frame rates at max quality, you can always set the game to run in a lower resolution. It typically doesn't mess up the look of the game too much in my experience, especially if you keep the same aspect ratio as your monitor, but then I've never been able to afford hardware that lets me run at max quality in anything but the lowest resolution options. And I hate playing games in very low resolutions, so I tend to lower the quality a bit and up the resolution. If your new monitor has a 1920 x 1080 (or 1920 x 1200) max resolution, you'll have every resolution option between that and 1024 x 768 (or a similarly low resolution) for most games.

[thebigJ_A]

That's a TN panel.

http://www.ebay.com/ctg/Dell-UltraSh...d=p3286.c0.m14

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_no...2312hm&x=0&y=0

The U2312HM is basically the replacement for the U2311H. Looks like it's just over $200, less if you go for used.

Well, I put it a bid for the ebay one, we'll see how it goes.

How can I tell whether something's a TN or not? Most of the monitors I've checked don't list it.

[thebigJ_A]

So, I went with an AOC I2353PH: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...00_i00_details


It's an IPS, it's new, and it's cheap, but there was a generally positive (too technical for me) review on AnandTech. Here's hoping. Besides, it can hardly be worse than my old monitor.

Oh, I also got a second, identical, 560 ti (I found a couple hundred bucks I'd misplaced and figured, why not?) to SLI. Do I need to download Nvidia drivers for that separately, or will it work since I've already got them for the first? Is there anything in particular I ought to do/know about SLI?

Oh, and should I reset the first card's overclock first? Or will they both get set to what the 1st one is at?

[Mohorovicic]

Oh, I also got a second, identical, 560 ti (I found a couple hundred bucks I'd misplaced and figured, why not?)

Because you just wasted a hundred bucks?

[thebigJ_A]

Care to elaborate, or was that just a troll?

[thebigJ_A]

For some reason the second GPU runs hotter by like ten degrees. It get's up to the low 80s under load, though I haven't run Furmark for more than a few minutes yet. The fan on the second GPU doesn't go as fast either. It maxes out at ~3300 rpm as opposed to 3550. I am a bit nervous it gets so hot, but I can't imagine any way to make it cooler. I've got a fan in every single slot of the HAF 912 case, including a 140mm blowing directly onto the GPUs.

Also, as the benchmark goes on, an odd buzzing sound starts to build up. That's why I haven't run it for very long, as I'm afraid of that noise. I assume it's the gpu, since it stops the instant I exit furmark

[gimperial]

The bottom one always gets hotter.

I think what Mohorovicic meant was that it's always better to get a single better GPU, especially with the newgen AMD 7000 and Nvidia 600 series out this month.

As long as your hottest GPU is below 85 which it seems to be, you shouldn't have anything to worry about it.

I'm not sure about Nvidia, but when I had 2 cards in crossfire, you had to turn Crossfire on in the ATI control panel, it could be turned on and off. The overclocks were set separately for each card. In the future though I'm going to stick to single cards.

[thebigJ_A]

I didn't have hundreds of extra dollars at the time to get an uber-card. Since I had one brand new card, i wouldn't just toss it when i could SLI it. Far easier to spend a couple hundred once, then a couple hundred more a few months later, no? It is for me, anyway, I'm a poor man.


I haven't heard the buzz in any games yet but I'm still apprehensive about it.

[Odeon]

I'm in the same poor gamer boat you are and upgraded to a GTS 250 (yes, I'm THAT poor) about two years ago with the intention of adding a second one down the road. But the more I've read about the hassles and headaches of SLI - things like the second card being hotter than the first, greater power requirements (my PSU is an Antec 480W), driver problems, and most importantly, lack of support by most games - I've decided to stick with single-card installations too. Yes, it's cheaper to add a second mid-level card than to pony up for one of the latest and greatest, but the problems associated with both SLI and Crossfire are far greater than the potential benefits. An integrated dual-GPU card like a 4870x2 would probably be a lot more useful than two 4870's in Crossfire, probably requires less power, and definitely gives fewer driver and game support headaches, but then you're back up to top-of-the-line costs again anyway.

Buzzing from a video card is usually a fairly bad sign. Are you sure that it's coming directly from the second card and not somewhere else? If so, is it a grating kind of buzzing sound like one of those game show ring-in buzzers or something else? Having never tried SLI myself, I'm not sure if Furmark makes use of the second card natively or if it has to be enabled in both the NVIDIA Control Panel and the Furmark software itself. But it's possible that the second card is being used through the Control Panel but not by Furmark, causing some kind of compatibility-like issue that results in the buzz.