Lotus

Anything 1.35v is basically a factory overclocked stick. 1.2v is the standard operating voltage. Same thing with 1.5v versus 1.65v in DDR3 sticks.
 
The 1.2v stick is NOT a low voltage module, but rather the standard voltage.

If your friends play on a console, get that. Otherwise, get the GPU. There's more potential, and not just in graphics quality but in games too.

If your friends play on a console, get that. Otherwise, get the GPU. There's more potential, and not just in graphics quality but in games too.

If your friends play on a console, get that. Otherwise, get the GPU. There's more potential, and not just in graphics quality but in games too.

In a perfect clean room environment without a spec of contamination and with pure H20, and with absolutely no traces of anything on the components, yes it would work.
 
In the real world? No. The moment the water touches anything even as minor as the random particles in the air it picks up ions and becomes conductive. This may not happen in an instant but it WILL happen.

There's your problem. You're at max VRam usage. The last 0.5 GB of VRAM might as well not exist, and you're running into VRAM issues. Basically the GTX 970 has segmented VRAM. The first 3.5 GB is fine and normal, but the last 0.5 GB, due to disabled architecture to keep the price down, can only be accessed at about the same speed as regular system memory. This was a scandal with the card because you get stuttering and performance drops once you hit 3.5GB VRAM usage despite the box saying 4GB. Hell, NVidia didn't even disclose the disabled ROPs and Cache in the original release so no one knew until they ran into the issue you're having.

If it does what you need it to do, you should be fine. The only reason to spend money would be if a need isn't being met. It's not like you can return it and get your money back after two years.

Honestly for 1080p, I'd swap CPUs before getting a new GPU. Your GTX 960 is already getting bottlenecked by that CPU.
 
With regards to RX 480 performance, I can easily see it beating the GTX 980 in a few months. AMD's launch drivers aren't great, and their reference cards usually suck too. Plus, the benchmarked games were all DX11, not DX12 which the RX 480 excels at (except Hitman where the RX 480 stomped NVidia cards, but that's not a fair benchmark).

Honestly for 1080p, I'd swap CPUs before getting a new GPU. Your GTX 960 is already getting bottlenecked by that CPU.
 
With regards to RX 480 performance, I can easily see it beating the GTX 980 in a few months. AMD's launch drivers aren't great, and their reference cards usually suck too. Plus, the benchmarked games were all DX11, not DX12 which the RX 480 excels at (except Hitman where the RX 480 stomped NVidia cards, but that's not a fair benchmark).

I wouldn't ever buy from a grey market. Kinguin doesn't sell anything. They only facilitate grey market deals between two other parties, frequently with very shady individuals.

Honestly I would think it's no good. IIRC, capictors are basically plates of metal held a constant but very small distance apart with a high resistant material in between them. They're cylinders because it's easier to just have the two plates wrap around each other in a spiral. A dent would likely alter the distance between the two plates, therefore drastically change it's function. My guess would be that it's gone bad.

That doesn't work. Anything digital (HDMI/Displayport) to analog (VGA) will require an active converter. Dual-link DVI-I can carry analog signals, which is why DVI to VGA exists, but that only works if the DVI is already carrying those analog signals. What you're trying to do here doesn't work.

A little bit of knowledge can be a dangerous thing. Speeds other than 2133 require a Z170 chipset because it requires overclocking of the memory bus. A b150 board won't do it. Period. What you posted specifically said as much, that the 2400 MHz memory will be downclocked to 2133 to make it work. This B150 board will run the memory at 2133 MHz. It's the limitation of the chipset. There's no getting around it.

Anything under 80°C is fine for 24/7 usage, anything under 85°C is fine if it doesn't stay that hot 24/7.

Motherboards have no performance features. Just a featureset. In terms of compatability, you need to get the right socket/chipset, and make sure your motherboard has sufficient power delivery for the CPU you plan on using. On Intel, power delivery is a non-issue since all high TDP chips are on a separate socket and all of those boards have beefy power delivery. On AMD, you have to pay attention. After that, it's just featureset. H110 chipset boards only have 2 DIMMs, do not support overclocking, and don't support multi-GPU. There are other things like less SATA3 ports, but they still have enough for an SSD/HDD so it's no problem. H170 has 4 DIMMs, and a few other stuff that doesn't really matter, and Z170 supports overclocking of K series CPUs as well as overclocking of memory (all other chipsets only run at 2133).
 
Basically, once you know the featureset you're going to end up using, any board that has that featureset will be identical in your usage, so you can then choose based upon price, looks, and brand.

Motherboards have no performance features. Just a featureset. In terms of compatability, you need to get the right socket/chipset, and make sure your motherboard has sufficient power delivery for the CPU you plan on using. On Intel, power delivery is a non-issue since all high TDP chips are on a separate socket and all of those boards have beefy power delivery. On AMD, you have to pay attention. After that, it's just featureset. H110 chipset boards only have 2 DIMMs, do not support overclocking, and don't support multi-GPU. There are other things like less SATA3 ports, but they still have enough for an SSD/HDD so it's no problem. H170 has 4 DIMMs, and a few other stuff that doesn't really matter, and Z170 supports overclocking of K series CPUs as well as overclocking of memory (all other chipsets only run at 2133).
 
Basically, once you know the featureset you're going to end up using, any board that has that featureset will be identical in your usage, so you can then choose based upon price, looks, and brand.

This is what I'd do:
 
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant
CPU: Intel Core i5-4690K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor  ($223.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: ASRock Z97 PRO4 ATX LGA1150 Motherboard  ($74.99 @ Micro Center)
Total: $298.98
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-05-31 01:29 EDT-0400
 
You already have a cooler, so overclock away. Also, 4x2GB is not a great solution, but I guess we can work with it. When/if you replace it, it would be wise to go for the faster 2133 DR3 stuff available.

Honestly, with most people at 1080p, this card is clearly the winner. Sure the GTX 1070 can do 1440p, but it's over $100 more expensive than the 480, and the 480 still looks to be maxing out games in 1080p. I can't wait for benchmarks.

Honestly, with most people at 1080p, this card is clearly the winner. Sure the GTX 1070 can do 1440p, but it's over $100 more expensive than the 480, and the 480 still looks to be maxing out games in 1080p. I can't wait for benchmarks.

Honestly, with most people at 1080p, this card is clearly the winner. Sure the GTX 1070 can do 1440p, but it's over $100 more expensive than the 480, and the 480 still looks to be maxing out games in 1080p. I can't wait for benchmarks.

If that's all you're doing, just get the RX 480. The 1080 is overkill and you won't see any benefit from it until you hit 1440p or 4k.

Never? That probability is zero. Not close to zero, but actually and truly zero. For an arbitrary yet not infinite length of time? Yes, that's possible. It won't be zero, but it'll be damn close.

Never? That probability is zero. Not close to zero, but actually and truly zero. For an arbitrary yet not infinite length of time? Yes, that's possible. It won't be zero, but it'll be damn close.

I'm not impressed. It's faster than the 980ti by around 20%, It's also around 20% more expensive than the 980ti ($700 vs $570). It still doesn't have hardware support for async compute. I get that it's going to be the fastest card, but $700 for a reference card is insane. NVidia really did manage to hype this card up a lot, and there certainly are many people expecting it to actually cost $600 at launch (it wont). Overall, I think it's just a standard progression. No big news, no big changes, just the same old architecture with more cuda cores thrown in thanks to the die shrink. It's a disappointment in my opinion, and I don't see the card having much longevity thanks to DX12.

What's the monitor? Spending $700 (or whatever it's going to cost) is a crapload for a GPU in that build. It's not very balanced, and if you're just going for standard 1080p, you don't need the horsepower.