General Gaming Article

General Gaming Article

Build It: How to Build a Kick-Ass Ivy Bridge Gaming PC, Step by Step

Posted: 06 Jul 2012 12:37 PM PDT

Note: This build-it originally ran in the July issue of Maximum PC--some pricing info may have changed.

THE MISSION Intel's Ivy Bridge CPUs (and the corresponding Z77 Panther Point chipset) finally dropped in late April, and Ivy Bridge brings more than just the expected thermal and power improvements over Sandy Bridge. You can read an in-depth report on Ivy Bridge if you're interested, but for our purposes, it's enough to know that the Ivy Bridge Core i7-3770K is the successor to the Sandy Bridge Core i7-2600K. It has a slightly faster clock speed than the 2600K, but it requires less power and delivers more performance per clock than its predecessor.

It doesn't make sense to upgrade from a Sandy Bridge to an Ivy Bridge processor or motherboard, but if you're building a new PC, Ivy Bridge is the way to go.

This month's project, then, is simple: Build a new gaming PC with an Ivy Bridge motherboard and CPU. I'll also be using Nvidia's GTX 680 GPU and Western Digital's new 1TB VelociRaptor, just for kicks.

CHOOSING THE HARDWARE

THIS IS A MACHINE built from the CPU out. The CPU, of course, is Intel's new Core i7-3770K, the successor to the 2600K. The 3770K is a quad-core 3.5GHz CPU with Hyper-Threading and 8MB of L3 cache, not to mention Intel's new HD 4000 integrated graphics (which we won't be using). And with a TDP of just 77W, it's a power sipper.

The 3770K gets a brand-new motherboard to go with it. Asus's P8Z77-V Pro gives the perfect mix of price and performance—it supports up to 32GB of RAM and it has two x16 PCIe 3.0 slots, two native Intel USB 3.0 ports as well as some Asmedia ones, and both native Intel and Asmedia 6Gb/s SATA ports. It also includes a Wi-Fi/Bluetooth dongle, which is cute and potentially useful.

Because of the CPU's low TDP, Xigmatek's Gaia cooler will be sufficient even with a moderate overclock. It can cool an overclocked Core-i7 3960X; it can handle this.

The PSU is a bit overkill, but it gives me breathing room if I want to add a second GPU later.

Nvidia's GTX 680 is the new 900-pound gorilla; it's faster than AMD's Radeon HD 7970 in most benchmarks and it's just $500. It also consumes less power than the 7970 during use.
With RAM so cheap, it's tempting to get 16GB, but 8GB is plenty for a gaming machine, so I'll stick with that for now.

Western Digital's latest VelociRaptor is 1TB of 10,000rpm mechanical storage. It's not as speedy as an SSD, but it averages 160MB/s read and writes with random-access times that are twice as fast as a standard mechanical drive. I normally prefer an SSD/HDD combo, but this is my chance to get out of my comfort zone a little bit and see what the VelociRaptor can do.

I'm also stepping out of my comfort zone with the case. Enermax's Fulmo is a mid‑tower with plenty of stock air cooling, striking blue LED fans, and a look that's reminiscent of Cooler Master's 690 II Advanced, but with a far more interesting interior. 

INGREDIANTS PART URL PRICE
Case Enermax Fulmo Advance www.enermaxusa.com $99
PSU Thermaltake Toughpower Grand 850W www.thermaltakeusa.com $190
Mobo Asus P8Z77-V Pro www.asus.com $225
CPU Intel Core i7-3770K www.intel.com $315
Cooler Xigmatek Gaia www.xigmatek.com $30
GPU Nvidia GTX 680 www.nvidia.com $500
RAM 8GB Corsair Vengeance www.corsair.com $50
Optical Drive Samsung SH-222AB CD/DVD burner www.samsung.com $20
Hard Drive 1TB WD VelociRaptor www.wdc.com $320
OS Windows 7 Professional 64-bit (OEM) www.microsoft.com $139
Total     $1,888

We tested both boards with a 3.3GHz Core i7-3960X, 16GB of DDR3/1600, a 150GB Western Digital Raptor, a GeForce GTX 580, and 64-bit Windows 7 Professional SP1. Performance scores for the SATA 6Gb/s and USB 3.0 were attained using CrystalDiskMark 3 run against an OCZ Enyo USB 3.0 drive and an OWC Mercury Extreme Pro SSD.

 1.COOL IT, MAN

INSTALL the CPU, RAM, and cooler onto the motherboard before installing the mobo into the case, because the Xigmatek Gaia's rubber fan mounts are friggin' annoying. The i7-3770K is a standard LGA1155 CPU, so you'll just need to open the lift arm, align the CPU into the socket, place it down gently, and re-secure it by closing the socket gate and lift arm. The Gaia uses a backplate with four tall mounting posts that poke through the motherboard to surround the socket; secure it to the motherboard with the knurled nuts.

Apply a smallish dot of thermal paste to the center of the CPU heat spreader, then slide the Gaia heatsink down the posts to rest on the CPU and secure with the mounting nuts. Secure the fan to the RAM side of the heatsink using the rubber mounting posts and plug the fan into the CPU_FAN header. Install the RAM into the two blue RAM slots.

2.STAND BY, FAN CONTROL

THE FULMO includes front-panel fan speed and LED control, but in order for it to work the three controllable fans (two 12cm front panel fans and one 18cm side intake fan) have to be wired to specific controller boards inside the case, and I learned from experience that it's easier to do this before any of the parts are in the case.

    There are two 2-pin leads from the top of the case: The shorter one goes to the first connector in the LED control panel at the center-right of the motherboard tray, and the other goes to the fan‑speed control at the lower right of the mobo tray. Plug the 2-pin leads from the front fans into the LED control panel and the 3-pin leads to the lower two 3-pin connectors on the speed‑control panel. Each panel will have an extra connector; those are for the 18cm fan on the side panel.


3.THE MOTHER OF ALL BOARDS 

NOW THAT THE FANS are configured and the CPU, RAM, and cooler are mounted to the motherboard, it's time to place the motherboard into the case. Make sure all nine ATX motherboard standoffs are installed, and then place the I/O shield into its opening. Mount the motherboard into the case, making sure all nine mounting holes are used. Connect the HD_Audio, USB 2.0, USB 3.0, and front-panel connectors to the motherboard. 

4.GIMME POWER 

CABLE ROUTING IS my least favorite part of the Enermax Fulmo case, so it's best to be scientific about it. Install the PSU into the bottom of the case (with the fan pointing down), then connect only the cables you'll need: two 6-pin PCIe cables, one 4-pin Molex strand, and one strand of SATA power connectors. Route all but the 24-pin motherboard power cable through the grommeted hole right next to the PSU, and run the 24-pin through the non-grommeted hole on the far side of the fan controller. Bring the 8-pin ATX power cable through the hole at the top left of the mobo tray and connect it to the mobo; then bring the 24-pin cable through the mobo tray next to its connector and plug that in, too.

5.GETTING GRAPHIC

ANOTHER JOY of the Fulmo: It uses plastic PCIe slot retention brackets that are absolutely useless if you have a dual-slot card like the GTX 680—or indeed most modern videocards. Install the GPU into the top 16x PCIe slot and secure it using two screws, then shake your fists at the gods of plastic PCIe retention clips. Bring the two 6-pin PCIe power cables through a hole in the mobo tray and connect them to the GPU.

6.DRIVE IN

THE FULMO has two standard 3.5-inch hard drive mounts and several odd ones. I mounted the VelociRaptor into one of the standards using the screws provided for that purpose, but if you have more than two drives (or you want to use a 2.5-inch drive), you get to mount them vertically on flip-down mounting panels. You can see one flipped down in the foreground, and one in the upright position in the background. Connect SATA power and data to the drive, then install the optical drive in the topmost 5.25-inch slot and connect power and data to that drive, as well (not pictured).

7.BEHIND THE SCENES

BEFORE YOU TURN on the machine, don't forget to connect a 4-pin Molex power connector to the fan‑speed controller and to the 4-pin connector coming from the case's front panel. If you've been careful, you'll now have a fine, somewhat cleanly wired gaming machine, but don't be surprised if the area behind the motherboard tray looks a little chaotic. The Fulmo isn't the best case for cable management, but it's workable. Now replace the left side panel.

Plug the right-side panel fan into the LED and fan‑speed control panels, then put the right-side panel on, connect the PSU's power cable, and turn on your new Ivy Bridge machine!

1. These fold-down panels can accommodate several 3.5-inch and 2.5-inch hard drives mounted vertically.

2. Both 12cm front intake fans and the 18cm side-panel fan (not shown) have speed and light controls in the case's top panel.

3. This PSU-securing strap seems more decorative than functional, but why take chances?

THE IVY BRIDGE DIFFERENCE

IVY BRIDGE dOESN'T overclock as easily as Sandy Bridge or Sandy Bridge-E, but I was still able to get to an easy 4.2GHz by boosting the CPU's Turbo ratio in the BIOS, and I could have pushed it further if I had more time. Regardless, Intel's not joking about Ivy Bridge's prowess: This machine, with an Ivy Bridge i7-3770K at 4.2GHz, performed slightly better than our June 2012 Build It, which featured a Sandy Bridge-E i7-3820 at 4.4GHz. Clock for clock, Ivy Bridge wins.
We used the exact same GPU in both the Ivy Bridge box and the Sandy Bridge-E machine, and they performed the same in gaming benchmarks. No shock there.

BENCHMARKS ZERO POINT
Vegas Pro (sec) 3049 2,418 $99
Lightroom 2.6 (sec) 356 258 $190
ProShow 4 (sec) 1,112 887 $225
MainConcept 1.6 (sec) 2,113 1,698 $315
stalker: CoP (fps) 42.0 62.6 $30
Far Cry 2 (fps) Nvidia GTX 680 151.3 $500
Optical Drive Samsung SH-222AB CD/DVD burner www.samsung.com $20
Hard Drive 1TB WD VelociRaptor www.wdc.com $320
OS Windows 7 Professional 64-bit (OEM) www.microsoft.com $139
Total     $1,888

Our current desktop test bed consists of a quad-core 2.66GHz Core i7-920 overclocked to 3.5GHz, 6GB of Corsair DDR3/1333 overclocked to 1,750MHz, on a Gigabyte X58 motherboard. We are running an ATI Radeon HD 5970 graphics card, a 160GB Intel X25-M SSD, and 64-bit Windows 7 Ultimate.

To my surprise, the lack of an SSD didn't hurt me in the benchmarks, except perhaps in Sony Vegas Pro 9, where my machine lagged slightly behind last month's build. Windows doesn't load quite as fast, nor do game levels, but despite its lack of an SSD, this month's rig feels very fast. Granted, the VelociRaptor is a $300 mechanical 1TB drive, and the fastest we've ever experienced.

If you're building a gaming PC from scratch today, Ivy Bridge—specifically the Core i7-3770K—is the way to go, unless you think you'll want to upgrade to a six-core CPU down the line. But for $1,888 with a top-of-the-line graphics card, this Ivy Bridge machine is tough to beat on either price or performance.

 

Dell's Looking For A Few Good Cosmonauts To Test The Ubuntu-Powered "Sputnik" XPS 13

Posted: 06 Jul 2012 10:56 AM PDT

Back in May, Canonical announced that shipments of PCs with Ubuntu Linux pre-installed were expected to crack 5 percent of the overall PC market this year. Part of that figure comes from the company's collaboration with Dell on "Sputnik," a project that slaps a developer-friendly, Dell XPS 13-optimized version of Ubuntu on -- you guessed it -- a Dell XPS 13 Ultrabook, complete with all the driver kinks worked out. That project isn't quite ready for the mainstream yet, but Dell recently rolled out a sign-up sheet for developers who want to get in on Linux-licious Sputnik beta testing.

The details about Dell's Sputnik Beta Cosmonaut program are actually pretty sparse; the company's only saying that it "A limited number of applicants will be selected to receive a discounted, beta version solution." There's no exact word on how much the laptop will cost or how many are available.

Some things are certain, however. The Dell XPS 13 notebooks involved in Sputnik run a developer-friendly version of Ubuntu 12.04 LTS -- aka Precise Pangolin -- that's fairly bare-bones. Canonical and Dell hope to eventually include environment specific repositories so that, say, a Ruby developer can quickly nab an appropriate set of tools and utilities, while Android devs can snag a second prepackaged kit. You can read a lot more about Sputnik on the lead developer's blog.

Interested in being a guinea pig? Hit that Cosmonaut link above and register with Dell to get your shot at pre-launching Sputnik.

Via The Register

File Sharers Easily Skirt European EffortsTo Blockade Pirate Bay

Posted: 06 Jul 2012 10:29 AM PDT

Oh, those silly governments. Internet censorship won't withstand the onslaught of web-savvy geeks! Nevertheless, the British and Dutch governments recently ordered ISPs to bar users from accessing The Pirate Bay whatsoever. Despite claims from anti-piracy groups that the blockade is being effective, new reports show that simply isn't true, and one website even explains how you can bypass the ban using only a web browser.

Yesterday, ExtremeTech studied data from XS4All, one of the largest ISPs in Europe. The graph below shows BitTorrent usage on the company's network, with the red line indicating the date that Dutch service providers were forced to blockade The Pirate Bay. As you can see, BitTorrent usage hasn't gone down, and if anything, it's gone up slightly. That coincides with data from the University of Amsterdam, whose research found the Pirate Bay blockade to be utterly useless, ExtremeTech reports.

That's not surprising; anything you can find on the Pirate Bay can be found on dozens of other torrent sites, and as surely as haters are gonna hate, pirates are going to pirate -- if there aren't other affordable, easily accessed digital options available, that is.

Accessing the Pirate Bay is incredibly simple even with the ban in place. TorrentFreak notes that would-be Pirates can simply boot up the Opera browser and activate Turbo mode. Turbo mode streams traffic through the Opera servers, compressing the data before dishing it up in-browser. It's made for users with low-speed connections, but since Opera's servers aren't behind the blockade, they pass on full TPB access quickly, easily and sans VPN trickery or DNS tweaks.

No matter what you think of file sharing -- and I'm more of Netflix/Hulu/Spotify guy, myself -- it's been proven time and time again that criminalizing users and censoring BitTorrent-type download services simply doesn't work. Napster originally popped up more than a dozen years ago, after all, and we're still having these discussions today.

NZXT's "Hue" LED Controller Offers Custom Case Lighting with Minimum Fuss

Posted: 06 Jul 2012 10:05 AM PDT

Not everything in life is clear-cut. Take LED lighting in your PC for instance; some people love the look of colorful bulbs, while the same effect makes others want to claw their eyes out with a molex tool. If you fall into the former camp, NZXT's new "Hue" LED controller might just be up your alley. It's a premade lighting solution that seems flexible enough to satisfy DIYers who want custom rave club-like effects without worrying about inverters and grounding wires.

The controller itself slips into a 5.25-inch drive bay and sports three controls, which let you manually tweak the RGB color settings, brightness and pulse speed of the unit's LED lights. Fading, flashing, color changing -- it's all there. The lighting itself comes in the form of a 2 meter-long sleeve with 24 LEDs peppered throughout; it's nice and bendy, so you're able to snake the lights through your rig any way you see fit.

NZXT's $33 Hue controller uses a SATA connection and is already available; you can find more information on NZXT's website.

Via Engadget

Intel Isn't Ready to Scrap Sandy Bridge, Preps Two New Core i3 Chips for Q3

Posted: 06 Jul 2012 07:15 AM PDT

From desktops and all-in-one systems to notebooks and Ultraportable/ultrathin laptops, Intel's Ivy Bridge platform is leaving its mark everywhere you look. Is it time to say 'So long!' to Sandy Bridge? Not quite. Intel isn't gung-ho to send its Sandy Bridge platform to that CPU pie in the sky, and instead is planning to launch at least two new mobile chips based on last generation's architecture.

One of those chips is the Core i3 2308M, a 2.1GHz dual-core part with a 650MHz Intel HD 3000 graphics core (1,100MHz Turbo), according to Fudzilla. It has 3MB of L3 cache, support for DDR3-1333 memory, Hyperthreading, VT-x virtualization, and a 35W TDP.

The other chip is the Core i3 2365M, which is essentially a Core i3 2310M part without Intel Small Business Advantage (SBA). It boasts most of the same features, but is clocked at 1.4GHz with a GPU that runs at 350MHz (1000MHz Turbo).  It has a 17W TDP.

No word on how much these CPUs will cost, but both should be available starting in September.

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Solid State Drives to Become Mainstream in 3-5 Years

Posted: 06 Jul 2012 06:49 AM PDT

If you ever want to experience true elation, try swapping out a fragmented hard disk drive (HDD) that's bogging down performance from an otherwise well equipped PC for a performance oriented solid state drive (SSD). The difference can be night and day, depending on how slow your HDD is. It's also a costly upgrade that usually results in downgraded storage capacity, hence why HDDs are still the popular storage medium of choice. But for how long?

Digitimes Research reckons we'll all be using SSDs in 3-5 years in place of HDDs. Everyone from enthusiasts to mainstream users will have made the leap, not necessarily through DIY upgrades, but via new systems.

"Growth in total storage capacity for HDDs has been decreasing, while demand for SSDs has kept increasing due to fast growing use of smartphones, tablet PCs, and ultrathin notebooks," Digitimes Research notes.

With regards to cost, Digitimes points out the fact that the average price of SSDs has been sliced in half in the first half of 2012, while prices of HDDs have gone up since Thailand was hit with flooding back in October 2011. There's still a significant divide in pricing between the two storage mediums -- SSDs average $0.80/gigabyte and HDDs average $0.09/gigabyte -- but within five years, we could be looking at a totally different landscape.

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Microsoft Reveals Windows Server 2012 Prices

Posted: 06 Jul 2012 06:19 AM PDT

Microsoft's upcoming Windows 8 operating system is receiving the lion's share of attention lately, but lest anyone forget, the Redmond outfit also builds server software, both for the home consumer and business clients. Windows Server 2012 is geared towards the latter, and according to Microsoft, one of the benefits is a "dramatically simplified licensing experience" with just three versions to choose from, plus an edition for OEM vendors.

Here's how it breaks down:

  • Datacenter: Processor + CAL licensing model, $4,809
  • Standard: Processor + CAL licensing model, $882
  • Essentials: Server licensing model (25 user account limit), $425
  • Foundation: Server licensing model (25 user account limit), OEM only (price not disclosed)

Choosing an appropriate edition comes down to the size of an organization and requirements for virtualization and cloud computing. For example, the Datacenter edition offers unlimited virtual instances, the Standard edition allows two virtual editions, and both the Essentials and Foundation editions ship with no virtual rights.

More details can be found on Microsoft's Server and Cloud Platform website.

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Amazon Collecting Patents as Part of Smartphone Strategy

Posted: 06 Jul 2012 06:02 AM PDT

At a time when Apple has been successful in suing competing products right off of store shelves for allegedly copying the look and feel of the iPhone, Amazon fully understands what's at stake as it looks to enter the smartphone market. Oh, haven't you heard? Amazon is indeed looking to make a run at the iPhone with a mobile phone of its own, just as soon as it collects enough patents to fend off Apple's aggressive legal strategy.

According to a Bloomberg report, Foxconn International Holdings Ltd. is collaborating with Amazon on the upcoming smartphone, though details are hard to come by since plans at this early stage are supposed to be kept private. The only sure thing is that it will be based on Google's Android platform.

Amazon knows a thing or two about building and marketing mobile devices. The company's Kindle Fire is the world's second best selling tablet behind the iPad, though smartphones represent an entirely different ball game. It's not just the iPhone that Amazon will be competing against, but scores of low-priced Android devices, like HTC's Droid Incredible 2, which can be found for free on a two-year contract over at Wirefly.

Still, Amazon believes it has a shot in the smartphone market, so long as it secures enough patents. Towards that end, the company recently hired Matt Gordon, former senior director at Intellectual Ventures Management LLC, according to Bloomberg. Gordon will oversea Amazon's patent acquisitions and help make sure the company is on solid footing to fend off infringement lawsuits.

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July Patch Tuesday Expected to Include Fix for XML Zero-Day Flaw

Posted: 06 Jul 2012 12:27 AM PDT

Microsoft today issued an advance notification of this month's "Patch Tuesday" security updates for Windows and other software developed by it. According to its security bulletin advance notification for July 2012, Microsoft will deliver three "critical" and twice as many "important" security updates next Tuesday. Hit the jump for more.

The coming security updates will address a number of vulnerabilities across Windows, Office, Internet Explorer 9, Microsoft Developer Tools and Microsoft Server Software. A fix for the XML zero-day flaw (CVE-2012-1889) that Microsoft disclosed last month is widely expected to be among the updates scheduled for next week. Wolfgang Kandek, CTO of security firm Qualys, expects Bulletin 1 to address this flaw--a temporary fix was issued last month.

"If Microsoft doesn't patch this bug it's going to cause some heartburn for IT security teams," feels Andrew Storm, nCircle's Director of Security Operations. "We've already seen reliable reports that the exploit for this bug has been included in several popular attack tool kits."

According to Microsoft, this vulnerability in Microsoft XML Core Services could allow remote code execution if an Internet Explorer user visits a specially-crafted malicious website. "An attacker would have no way to force users to visit such a website," reads Microsoft's security advisory on the bug. "Instead, an attacker would have to convince users to visit the website, typically by getting them to click a link in an email message or Instant Messenger message that takes them to the attacker's website. The vulnerability affects all supported releases of Microsoft Windows, and all supported editions of Microsoft Office 2003 and Microsoft Office 2007."

Microsoft Reportedly Ending Support for Desktop Gadgets in Windows 8

Posted: 06 Jul 2012 12:12 AM PDT

Last October, the writing seemed to be on the wall for Windows desktop gadgets when Microsoft brought the curtain down on Windows Live Gallery in order to "focus on the exciting possibilities of the newest version of Windows." But even though Microsoft no longer supports the development and uploading of these HTML-based desktop widgets, they are supported in both Windows 8 Consumer and Release Preview builds. Does this mean Microsoft has decided to keep them alive?

Well, according to Chinese site Win8china, there is no trace of desktop gadgets in the latest internal build of Windows 8. While this is still an unconfirmed rumor, there is every chance of it being true, especially considering the fact that the appeal of these desktop widgets, first introduced in Vista, has always been very limited. Now with Metro-style apps perfectly capable of providing similar functionality using only HTML5 and CSS3, there really isn't a strong case for keeping gadgets alive.
Posted by Shri Krishna

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