smittywits

My 980Ti was getting 65-80FPS at 1080p on Ultra in Witcher 3 with Hairworks, which is comparable to a 1070. A friend of mine with a 1070 sees about the same. By dropping settings I was able to easily break 100 FPS with mostly Medium and a few High settings and no Hairworks. I moved from a 1080p panel to a BenQ GW2765(1440p 60Hz) and I manage 60+ FPS in Witcher 3 with high-ultra settings and no more Hairworks. I drop into the mid-high 50s frequently. I don't have any good information regarding curved panel usage, but hopefully that should give you some information on what to expect FPS wise from your card. _____________ Gsync is a variable refresh rate technology that causes your monitor to adaptively display frames according to how many FPS you are actively getting. If you have a 120Hz Gsync Panel and are using Gsync, but only getting 90FPS in your game, your panel will update 90 times per second. This is to eliminate screen tearing and create a MUCH smoother gameplay appearance without the performance hit from Vsync. AMD's FreeSync works similarly. EDIT: It's a lot more effective at lower frame rates than those in my example, especially to eyes trained for 60 or more FPS.

@MoHS I have two friends with 1060s, and they won't push 1080p@144FPS without dropping a lot of settings. They both play on Ultra and hold around 60fps fine, so I don't know if dropping to Medium would be enough headroom. My guess is no. My 980Ti was getting 65-80FPS at 1080p on Ultra in Witcher 3 with Hairworks, which is comparable to a 1070. A friend of mine with a 1070 sees about the same. By dropping settings I was able to easily break 100 FPS with mostly Medium and a few High settings and no Hairworks. Another friend of mine uses a 1080 and he likes playing at 144Hz and manages it just fine on High/Ultra for just about everything. As the market stands right now, I wouldn't recommend buying any of the above new. They are simply not worth the price. Wait for the next series of GPUs to launch or try to get a used/refurbished deal somewhere.

I know there are some newer platforms that support it, such as a Gigabyte MW70-3S0 for E5 2600 V3 and V4 chips from early '14, but I don't know of anything from the generation you're looking for. Sadly, I think you're out of luck for anything older than that.

I'm moving to the x99 Titanium board here soon. A friend of mine bought one a while ago but then decided on the 21X "laptop" instead so he's just giving the motherboard to me. IF I swapped processors I'd go the way of a 6900K for the extra cores, though Intel has x299 releasing soon. If Ryzen actually shows up with a good fight for Intel's chips then I'd suggest going that route. You likely won't see any noticeable changes in performance in your games by moving to Kaby Lake, though speaking as an enthusiast it would be very satisfying to see 5.0GHz on a chip. I'd just say to stick with what you have unless you actually WANT to transition over for some reason. Ryzen and x299 are on the horizon and the 5930k is no slouch. I'd wait it out for both Intel and AMD to show their hands before moving to a new platform.

I'd go with the 212 still, might not look as pretty but the fan is bigger and thus has a pretty significant CFM advantage.

Any mechanic part going full bore all the time will wear out faster than one running in a normal use case.. Doesn't matter if it's a case fan, hard drive, or the engine of a car. The job that case fans do is keep your other components cool. They should be configured to keep your components as cool as you are comfortable with. I'm okay with my CPU sitting in the 40's C at idle in exchange for less noise while consuming media without headphones and sleeping. You might want your components to stay cooler than that because the noise doesn't bother you, and that's up to you to decide. The important part is that your components don't get too hot(80C+) during load use; aside from that your user experience should be what you want it to be.

There aren't really any ideal idle temps, it's the load temps that matter. My CPU idles at around 40-42C and my GPU idles around 30C. My AIO for the CPU has the pump and rad fans going at 30% at idle and my GPU fans turn off completely at idle. Once my CPU breaks 45C then the two HF140 fans I have at the bottom of my case as intakes start spinning up. Those and the radiator fans slowly increase in speed up to about 60% until 70C, then they sharply increase as temps go up from there, maxing out at 80C. My GPU fans rarely break 60% and the GPU rarely hits over 60C unless I'm artificially stressing it with unrealistic workloads. Gaming @ 1440p, rendering, and rarely some compute workloads using CUDA are all things I use my GPU for. I believe my fan curve for the GPU is also set to max at 80C, but I've never even come close to needing that. Most of the other parts in my case run around 40C(SSD HDD), and my motherboard temp indicator generally reads a bit under 40C. My preference is silence when idle and kick up fans as necessary to keep temperatures within reasonable bounds.. My home workstation is located mere feet from my head when I sleep, and it's on 24/7.

I'm waiting on the 1080Ti myself, though I'll likely just get one with an aftermarket air cooler rather than a hybrid. It's pretty likely that EVGA will release a hybrid card, but it will be a while after the 1080Ti reference cards are released. Waiting for the 1080Ti is one thing but THAT much of a wait I don't personally think is worth it. If you have your heart set on a hybrid, then just go with the 1080. The extra performance based on what we "know" from leaks would be more than margin of error but not significant enough to warrant waiting imo. I haven't looked into the new predator monitor yet so I don't have any input there.

Just recently had an R9 280X stop working for no apparent reason. The latest driver update for it bricked it for some reason. Had to pull a GTX 680 from another computer and remove/reinstall an older version of the AMD drivers. It now works just fine once more. The 280X responded exactly how your RX460 is responding: fans spin up, no monitor signal, etc. The secondary option of the port on the monitor being faulty is possible too, but even damaged ports will generally cause the screen to flicker or have noticeably different effects.. If the port is completely broken though, it could cause the same effect. Is there another display you can test the card on, or a way you can test the DVI port on your monitor?

I ran my 5930k @ 4.444GHz for months on a 212 evo. Temps never broke 78C under heavy loads, just recently upgraded to an AIO. 212 is fine for your situation.

I went with a black because I wanted the warranty. Of course, at the time a 4tb black was nearly $300USD, and the blues didn't come in 4tb versions... so there were other factors. I'd get the Blue given the choice today.

You're very welcome. My experience with it has been overall positive, but curse that pump noise to hell haha. It should definitely be an improvement over your custom built one that's always going full bore. Keep in mind that mine is also the 240EX version, not the 120EX. Same pump but smaller rad means you'll get less cooling performance than I'm getting.

Just upgraded my rig to the Captain 240 EX White, and honestly there isn't much benefit over the 212 Evo I was using before. It's a bit less noisy under load, but at idle there's pump noise now so it's hit and miss. This experience is on a heavily OC'd 5930k though, and my load temps while rendering hit up the low 70s C. Artificial stress testing pushes me up to mid though, with a spike or two into the high 70s. All in all it's pretty average as AIOs go, but it looks really awesome imo. That's the main reason I bought it, as there aren't really any AIO blocks that appeal to me and I didn't want to drop hundreds of dollars on a custom loop. I probably will at some point in the future, but for now the AIO solution is working great. tl;dr quieter under load, louder at idle, temps improved by about 5C over 212 Evo(for Captain 240EX model).

I'm running a Zotac AMP! Extreme 980Ti. It's never had problems with temps or noise. The two 140mm intakes at the bottom probably lower the temps a bit but I rarely see the GPU break over 45C on a really conservative fan curve.

The curve for the two intake 140s at the bottom is set to turn on at 45C at 30%, reach 80% at 75C, and max out at 80C. The rad intake fans and rear exhaust fan are always at 30% below 45C and slowly increase as temps rise, hitting the same 80% at 75C and 100% at 80C. I'm running a Zotac AMP! Extreme 980Ti. It's never had problems with temps or noise. The two 140mm intakes at the bottom probably lower the temps a bit but I rarely see the GPU break over 45C on a really conservative fan curve.