Power struggle: the real differences between Playstation 4 and Xbox One performance

[Cry Havoc]

RT I'd never build an SLI system, Nvidia's SLI scaling sucks lately. Crossfire has way better scaling right now.

TBH, I think a single card is the way to go right now unless you HAVE to game at 4k. xfire and SLI are just not stable enough. I have xfire but I do get occasional frame rate weirdness, even playing league of legends.

Be interesting to see how my dual 6950s stack up against the monster 290x that's on it's way.

[baseline bum]

TBH, I think a single card is the way to go right now unless you HAVE to game at 4k. xfire and SLI are just not stable enough. I have xfire but I do get occasional frame rate weirdness, even playing league of legends.

Be interesting to see how my dual 6950s stack up against the monster 290x that's on it's way.

I'm pretty sure a single 290x will destory crossfire 6950 even if you were getting 100% scaling. Look how bad it wrecks a 6970:

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1061?vs=1059

[Cry Havoc]

I'm pretty sure a single 290x will destory crossfire 6950 even if you were getting 100% scaling. Look how bad it wrecks a 6970:

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1061?vs=1059

Oh, I'm aware. I wouldn't have dropped the cash if I had thought there wasn't going to be a huge jump. I'm just excited to see how much of a gulf there is between the two.

[hater]

good .

now you got me hooked on this . What about this???

CPU: Intel Core i5-4690K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor ($199.99 @ Micro Center)
Motherboard: ASRock Z97M Pro4 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($90.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: Crucial Ballistix Sport 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($94.99 @ Adorama)
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($97.95 @ OutletPC)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($47.99 @ Best Buy)
Video Card: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 970 4GB Video Card ($298.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Corsair Air 240 MicroATX Mid Tower Case ($77.99 @ Micro Center)
Power Supply: Antec High Current Gamer 620W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($61.98 @ Newegg)
Total: $970.86
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-07-17 18:20 EDT-0400

[baseline bum]

These are solid builds, you might actually not need the extra case fans, but for $16, it won't hurt.

The only thing I would change is the hard drive for an internal 500GB SSD (Samsung 850 EVO is going for $164 on Amazon right now). Then add a x TB HD or an external USB harddrive both for backup and large data libraries (music, videos, etc).

The S340 doesn't come with any front case fans. Just a back and a top exhaust. I wouldn't remove either in a system with the power supply bottom mounted.

[baseline bum]

good .

now you got me hooked on this . What about this???

CPU: Intel Core i5-4690K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor ($199.99 @ Micro Center)
Motherboard: ASRock Z97M Pro4 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($90.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: Crucial Ballistix Sport 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($94.99 @ Adorama)
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($97.95 @ OutletPC)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($47.99 @ Best Buy)
Video Card: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 970 4GB Video Card ($298.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Corsair Air 240 MicroATX Mid Tower Case ($77.99 @ Micro Center)
Power Supply: Antec High Current Gamer 620W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($61.98 @ Newegg)
Total: $970.86
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-07-17 18:20 EDT-0400

Don't get that 970, it's loud and it's hot, and overclocks like crap. If you want to use that case, get this 970, which usually overclocks really well and should fit pretty easily:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814127832

If you're overclocking your CPU the bundled stock cooler has to be replaced. Most of the time I'd recommend a Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO cooler, but that case doesn't have the clearance for it. I'm not a big fan of 120mm closed loop liquid coolers, but those would be your best bets to cool it, like this video shows. A 240mm rad might get in the way of your GPU and you don't want to go to the shorter 970s since the GPU is by far the most important part of a gaming PC.



That case doesn't look like it would actually be too bad to build in for something so small.

EDIT: I forgot to mention those Microcenter CPU prices are store only. I don't know where you're at, but the only two in Texas are in Dallas and Houston. All San Antonio has is ty overpriced Altex.

If you do have a Microcenter nearby they often offer $40 off on combo deals with CPU+board.

[baseline bum]

Also don't get that AsRock board. Board doesn't matter a whole lot for locked CPUs, but for overclocking an i5 or i7 get something nicer. I have heard bad things about the AsRock Z97m. For an overclocking board I'd stick to Gigabyte or Asus. It's too bad Abit went under because they were the best overclocking boards years ago.

[ElNono]

The S340 doesn't come with any front case fans. Just a back and a top exhaust. I wouldn't remove either in a system with the power supply bottom mounted.

I never put front fans, never had temp problems, tbh... then again, I don't overclock...

[ElNono]

good .

now you got me hooked on this . What about this???

CPU: Intel Core i5-4690K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor ($199.99 @ Micro Center)
Motherboard: ASRock Z97M Pro4 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($90.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: Crucial Ballistix Sport 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($94.99 @ Adorama)
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($97.95 @ OutletPC)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($47.99 @ Best Buy)
Video Card: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 970 4GB Video Card ($298.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Corsair Air 240 MicroATX Mid Tower Case ($77.99 @ Micro Center)
Power Supply: Antec High Current Gamer 620W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($61.98 @ Newegg)
Total: $970.86
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-07-17 18:20 EDT-0400

I dig that case

[baseline bum]

I never put front fans, never had temp problems, tbh... then again, I don't overclock...

You don't live in Texas bro.

[baseline bum]

I dig that case

It looks much better designed than the Air 540, the full ATX equivalent.

[ElNono]

You don't live in Texas bro.

true. We're scheduled to have our first 100+ degrees day of the year tomorrow.

[baseline bum]

I wish the ing Corsair Air 540 had better options for mounting 3.5" drives. I need a case that can handle a lot because I have a ton of stored in my system. Lots of Spurs games, rentals from nosteam, Mic e Wild's entire body of work, and one drive for Linux. With all that empty space there should be tons of room for 3.5" mechanical drives, but they only have two mechanical mounts in front and then four SSD mounts? Who the uses four SSDs?

[ElNono]

I wish the ing Corsair Air 540 had better options for mounting 3.5" drives. I need a case that can handle a lot because I have a ton of stored in my system. Lots of Spurs games, rentals from nosteam, Mic e Wild's entire body of work, and one drive for Linux. With all that empty space there should be tons of room for 3.5" mechanical drives, but they only have two mechanical mounts in front and then four SSD mounts? Who the uses four SSDs?

You should really look into a NAS for storage if you have a ton of . Something like this:

http://www.amazon.com/Synology-DiskS...dp/B00FWURI8K?

With a couple of 4TB drives and then you can decouple big storage and protection from your box, IMO

[baseline bum]

You should really look into a NAS for storage if you have a ton of . Something like this:

http://www.amazon.com/Synology-DiskS...dp/B00FWURI8K?

With a couple of 4TB drives and then you can decouple big storage and protection from your box, IMO

Not a bad idea. I have an extra board and CPU, I'd need a case and some RAM. You have any suggestions for free media server software I could use with say a Roku or Chromecast?

Is PLEX pretty much the best there is?

[ElNono]

Not a bad idea. I have an extra board and CPU, I'd need a case and some RAM. You have any suggestions for free media server software I could use with say a Roku or Chromecast?

Is PLEX pretty much the best there is?

Since you've already dabbled in Unix, FreeNAS is probably the way to go:

http://www.freenas.org/

Fully open source, built atop FreeBSD and ZFS... from what I've read it's fully featured. It includes a Plex Media server plugin, so you should be all set for streaming.

[baseline bum]

Since you've already dabbled in Unix, FreeNAS is probably the way to go:

http://www.freenas.org/

Fully open source, built atop FreeBSD and ZFS... from what I've read it's fully featured. It includes a Plex Media server plugin, so you should be all set for streaming.

Thanks, I'll check it out. I wonder if I can just run it from a command line since I'd be running it headless, so no reason to bother loading into X11.

[ElNono]

Thanks, I'll check it out. I wonder if I can just run it from a command line since I'd be running it headless, so no reason to bother loading into X11.

That's a web interface... it's designed to run headless and you can connect and configure it from anywhere.

[ElNono]

If you wanna toy with it for a bit, install it on a Virtualbox instance...

[ElNono]

If you don't even want to put a VGA card on it, you can enable the serial console and that should allow it to boot. Instructions here:
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php...rial-how.7487/

[baseline bum]

If you don't even want to put a VGA card on it, you can enable the serial console and that should allow it to boot. Instructions here:
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php...rial-how.7487/

Thanks man, that sounds like a great idea to run a PLEX server off FreeNAS and pull my storage away from heat produced by my GPU and CPU in my gaming system. 4 Western Digital Reds in RAID-5 sounds like a good way to go.

[ElNono]

Thanks man, that sounds like a great idea to run a PLEX server off FreeNAS and pull my storage away from heat produced by my GPU and CPU in my gaming system. 4 Western Digital Reds in RAID-5 sounds like a good way to go.

You don't want to do Raid 5 with less than 5 drives, unless your data is not that important. FreeNAS will give you different options based on how much reliability, performance and storage you want to use, but basically the options are:

Raid 10: Mirror and Stripped, good reliability, good performance, least amount of storage
Raid Z2: Basically a Raid 6. You can still lose up to two drives at the same time and your data will be ok. You gain some extra space vs Raid 10, but you lose a bit of performance.
Raid Z1: Basically a Raid 5. You lose more than one drive at the same time and you're toast. On the flipside, you get a bit more storage than Z2, and better performance.
Raid 0: Just stripped, no redundancy.

Raid Z2 is probably a good balance. Plus storage is generally cheap and you can always add more drives to the array.

EDIT: Forgot to add that the performance penalty on Z1/Z2 is mostly on write. Reading should be about the same, but slower than stripped options, obviously.

[baseline bum]

You don't want to do Raid 5 with less than 5 drives, unless your data is not that important. FreeNAS will give you different options based on how much reliability, performance and storage you want to use, but basically the options are:

Raid 10: Mirror and Stripped, good reliability, good performance, least amount of storage
Raid Z2: Basically a Raid 6. You can still lose up to two drives at the same time and your data will be ok. You gain some extra space vs Raid 10, but you lose a bit of performance.
Raid Z1: Basically a Raid 5. You lose more than one drive at the same time and you're toast. On the flipside, you get a bit more storage than Z2, and better performance.
Raid 0: Just stripped, no redundancy.

Raid Z2 is probably a good balance. Plus storage is generally cheap and you can always add more drives to the array.

EDIT: Forgot to add that the performance penalty on Z1/Z2 is mostly on write. Reading should be about the same, but slower than stripped options, obviously.

You consider RAID-5 dangerous with 4 drives? I figure if more than one dies at once it's probably something catastrophic that kills the whole system.

[ElNono]

You consider RAID-5 dangerous with 4 drives? I figure if more than one dies at once it's probably something catastrophic that kills the whole system.

That's the wrong question

The real question is how much you value that data and only you can answer that question.

But, more succinctly, the typical mistake with Raid 5s is:
- Disk goes bad
- "Oh, let me shop for a new disk"
- Week goes by
- Finally order disk, another 3-5 days to arrive
- 2nd drive goes bad in the interim

This happens more often than you think.

The solution: have a spare. If the system allows you to configure a "hot spare", even better, the Raid will failover to the spare automatically and a sudden 2nd drive failure won't likely hurt you (unless it happens during rebuild).
I think FreeNAS let's you configure spares, but it doesn't do "hot spare". So basically when a drive fails, you just go ahead and manually replace the bad with the spare from the GUI.

Basically, the critical part is to minimize the time the array is degraded. This is especially crucial in Raid 5 setups, whereas it's more forgiving on Raid 6.

[baseline bum]

That's the wrong question

The real question is how much you value that data and only you can answer that question.

But, more succinctly, the typical mistake with Raid 5s is:
- Disk goes bad
- "Oh, let me shop for a new disk"
- Week goes by
- Finally order disk, another 3-5 days to arrive
- 2nd drive goes bad in the interim

This happens more often than you think.

The solution: have a spare. If the system allows you to configure a "hot spare", even better, the Raid will failover to the spare automatically and a sudden 2nd drive failure won't likely hurt you (unless it happens during rebuild).
I think FreeNAS let's you configure spares, but it doesn't do "hot spare". So basically when a drive fails, you just go ahead and manually replace the bad with the spare from the GUI.

Basically, the critical part is to minimize the time the array is degraded. This is especially crucial in Raid 5 setups, whereas it's more forgiving on Raid 6.

If I'm running that kind of array I'm replacing as soon as the SMART data looks bad on one. Still, maybe I'll just buy bigger drives and do 2 in RAID-1 and as I add a couple more later on I can change it to RAID-10.