We have many members running socket 775 systems as their main rigs. Lately there have been lots of discussion concerning their viability as gaming rigs for modern Direct-X 11 games.

I did a quick 3dmark 11 run (Preset: Performance) using a socket 775 system with two Geforce GTX 580 in SLI and the performance numbers look good. The total score is not great as the CPU isnt that fast when it comes to the physics tests but the GPU score is where it should be. Both the CPU and GPUs are overclocked but the CPU is using its default voltage and the GPUs only 1.075V so there is plenty of performance left to squeeze out.

I think when it comes to games that do not use more than 4 cores a system like this should be able to keep up decently for another couple of years.

Asus P8Z77-V, 3770k, 16g ram, hd7850. Blah blah blah. Runs games fine. It's massive and has no character. I'd buy a hot laptop if I didn't use it for audio.

I've upgraded my main rig so often over the last couple of years, that it's not actually the same pc any more, although the parts I cannibalised are now in my other main PC at the shop.
CPU FX 8320 (was Phenom 965)
Mobo Gigabyte 970A-UD3P
16Gb Kingston RAM
GPU MSI GTX 970 Gamer 4G (was Sapphire 7950 3Gb)
Corsair 100i water cooling
Sentey 850 W PSU
Case NZXT Phantom
Various HDD's
Corsair gaming keyboard and mouse
LG led 23" monitor
Cambridge Soundworks 5.1 speakers/sub from a PC World sale in 2001
The plan is to upgrade to a 250Gb SSD and the case to an Ultra tower Phantom 820 and then my life will be complete, almost.

All this talk of 775 systems I decided to post mine. Even though this thread is post your "Current" computer, this one is my "Secondary" computer, I use it for browsing and chatting and web browsing while gaming full screen games on my big i7 machine.

Antec 300 Mid-Tower Chassis
Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P v1.6 motherboard
2 x Kingston Hyper-X DDR2-1066 ram sticks

Right now, 2 x 160GB Western Digital Blue hard drives: 7200 rpm, 16MB Buffer Sata-II, raid-0 on the onboard Intel RAID chipset. I did have 3 of these but fried one on accident, bought a 250 GB and will be migrating it over to 3 x 250's soon for more space.

You can kind of see it in the larger version of the second picture below the water pump on the bottom, but Patriot 60GB Sata-III SSD Primary storage for OS / Apps.
2 x EVGA GTX 260 SuperClocked cards, in SLI using HyperSLI community hack/patch to enable SLI on non-SLI platforms. Currently both clocked at 700 Mhz Core & 2670 Mhz Ram. They can do more, held back by air cooling.

Silverstone Strider ST-1000 80+ power supply down bottom, 1000 watts.
Custom water loop currently for CPU only, pump is strong enough I can expand it later and water cool both of the video cards. I do plan to do that, some day.

And Intel LGA-771 LC5408 quad core in 775 board, HarperTown core with 12MB cache @ 3.75 Ghz

The piccies.

Larger: http://www.outfoxed.net/775-water/DSC05308.JPG

Different view, showing my top fill port for the water, and the two hard drives.

Larger: http://www.outfoxed.net/775-water/DSC05311.JPG

The tubing for the water system is zip-tied over there so when I close the side panel the side panel fan fits right in there perfectly and covers both cards.
I mounted the two hard drives up there to keep the front area unobstructed so the gpu's get most of the airflow from the front fans.

My 'current' PC's been humming along with an i5 760 and a Geforce GTX 470 for ~4 years, which is my longest stretch without an upgrade since I got back into gaming circa 2000. I’m still happy enough with the i5, but the GTX 470 has started to struggle with 1080P, and runs noisy and hot when pushed to the limit. So I’ve replaced it with a Geforce GTX 960, the 4GB model. This is marketed as an enthusiast card for 1080P gaming, which suits me, but what sold it was the low power consumption and noise output.

I’m loving on it so far – awesome performance and completely silent. The real test will be GTA V, which I’m not embarrassed to admit was the main driver behind the upgrade. I have it pre-loaded and ready to rock for tonight… after I get the kids to bed.

Badmojo,u should get a new case,one with cable management capabilities,there are cheap options from zalman or antec,that way u can increase air flow and reduce temp for components.

Nahkri wrote:

Badmojo,u should get a new case,one with cable management capabilities,there are cheap options from zalman or antec,that way u can increase air flow and reduce temp for components.

I see nothing at all wrong with his, everything is fine. side-panel fan takes care of video card, front fans take care of hard drives, just like my antec cases.

After i started using a case with cable management capabilities and modular psu,i wouldn't go back to regular cases or psu.
Not only u get rid of all the exces power cables u don't use,but routing the rest of the cables behind the motherboard tray and hard drive,optical drives cage,u improve air flow,make it easier to work inside the case couse u don't get all those cables in the way and tbh it looks better and cleaner when u open the case.

Cable management you say? 😁

This is my main PC:
Core i5 3330 @ 3.4 GHz
Radeon R9 290 4GB
16GB DDR3 1333
Asus P8P67LE
Asus Xonar DX
Kingston V+200 60GB SSD
WD Caviar Blue 640GB HDD
Unknown ATX bigtower case

Nahkri wrote:

Badmojo,u should get a new case,one with cable management capabilities,there are cheap options from zalman or antec,that way u can increase air flow and reduce temp for components.

Ha, you shoulda seen my cable management before I put this card in! Shocking! I’m happy enough with it now though and am quite attached to that heavy monolith of a case. It has front and rear fans and I don’t overclock, so it does the job.

Well my "No. 2 current PC" the P4-3.6... personally I like to think cable management is *showing* the cables, not hiding them...

The whole side

sorry for the crap cell phone shots but there it is.

tincup wrote:

Well my "No. 2 current PC" the P4-3.6... personally I like to think cable management is *showing* the cables, not hiding them...

A mean green machine, love it. The HDD bay layout is interesting, is it a big job to get the drives in / out?

badmojo wrote:

tincup wrote:

Well my "No. 2 current PC" the P4-3.6... personally I like to think cable management is *showing* the cables, not hiding them...

A mean green machine, love it. The HDD bay layout is interesting, is it a big job to get the drives in / out?

Not at all. It's a Lian Li case with a side facing slotted drive cage that you just slip the drives in and out of. Instead of screwing drives into the cage you mount Lian rubber bushered thumb screws onto the drives and they slide into the cage slots. The cables are front facing [in my layout] so hook up is easy.

I was lucky to pickup two empty Velocity Micro branded Lian Li cases with a few dinks very inexpensively from an online seller a while back. I can't find the design in any of Lian's catalogs or archives but they are clearly made by them, or whoever makes them for Lian; same material, fittings, detailing and workmanship, and the same quality control sticker on the interior. The other case is full atx mid-sized case. I'll try to post more pics. I like working with clear anodized/bare metal cases and parts when possible.

badmojo wrote:

My 'current' PC's been humming along with an i5 760 and a Geforce GTX 470 for ~4 years, which is my longest stretch without an upgrade since I got back into gaming circa 2000. I’m still happy enough with the i5, but the GTX 470 has started to struggle with 1080P, and runs noisy and hot when pushed to the limit. So I’ve replaced it with a Geforce GTX 960, the 4GB model. This is marketed as an enthusiast card for 1080P gaming, which suits me, but what sold it was the low power consumption and noise output.

I’m loving on it so far – awesome performance and completely silent. The real test will be GTA V, which I’m not embarrassed to admit was the main driver behind the upgrade. I have it pre-loaded and ready to rock for tonight… after I get the kids to bed.

You won't be disappointed with that card mate.
I recently upgraded to the 970 MSI and it's incredible, especially on GTA V which like you, I also preloaded and it's my first time with GTA.

Splinter wrote:

You won't be disappointed with that card mate.
I recently upgraded to the 970 MSI and it's incredible, especially on GTA V which like you, I also preloaded and it's my first time with GTA.

I've been tempted about some of the new 4GB 960's but I can't find any performance data online from big review sites vs other cards, so I won't bother for now.

Also working on getting GTA-V installed today and try it on my jacked up 470's. Probably won't run well but it's all I have at the moment.. so trying it anyway.

good god this game is insanely huge, 61 GB?!?!?!?! 😲

kithylin wrote:

I've been tempted about some of the new 4GB 960's but I can't find any performance data online from big review sites vs other ca […]
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Splinter wrote:

You won't be disappointed with that card mate.
I recently upgraded to the 970 MSI and it's incredible, especially on GTA V which like you, I also preloaded and it's my first time with GTA.

I've been tempted about some of the new 4GB 960's but I can't find any performance data online from big review sites vs other cards, so I won't bother for now.

Also working on getting GTA-V installed today and try it on my jacked up 470's. Probably won't run well but it's all I have at the moment.. so trying it anyway.

good god this game is insanely huge, 61 GB?!?!?!?! 😲

I will buy GTA-5 but after the Watch Dogs fiasco im letting you all test it first... I think it will run great with your GTX 470 SLI as long as you use settings that dosnt use more video memory than your cards have.

Skyscraper wrote:

I will buy GTA-5 but after the Watch Dogs fiasco im letting you all test it first... I think it will run great with your GTX 470 SLI as long as you use settings that dosnt use more video memory than your cards have.

If it even has options for that. Watchdogs even with everything set on bare minimal settings maxes out the video ram on my 470's and runs 15-20 FPS outdoors. These console ports to PC are usually rather poorly optimized for PC, so we'll see how it works when I get it running. Which in watchdogs it's so unplayable that I'm driving around and one moment I'm driving in the middle of a road, game pauses a few seconds then unfreezes and I'm on the other side of the road into a wall and smashed up. So... one game I can't even play at all on any settings sadly. And it's one I kinda wanted to play the most. 😢

Well, I set it DX-11 mode and a lot of options to high/highest and so far it's running 70-90 FPS.. but it's just the first indoor scene, we'll see what outside is like in a bit. Also it's not scaling properly out of the box.. going to have to set a SLI Profile to get it to scale properly with the 2nd card. It does use two cards out of the box though, so this is fantastic.

Good lord what did I walk into? Does almost nobody here care about cable management?

I will post pics of my current system when I get my ga-990fxa-ud7.

But here now here are the specs.
asrock 990fx extreme 3 🤣
fx 8310 @ 4.4ghz (heatkiller cpu 3)
two r9 290x in cf (stock cooling)
gt 220gt
8gb ddr3 1866mhz 9-10-9-24
two 1tb WD hdd and a 500gb WD hdd
64gb ssd
360mm rad and d5 pump
bitfenix shinobi xl case
8 delta efb's (I have a fan controller)

frisky dingo wrote:

Good lord what did I walk into? Does almost nobody here care about cable management?

Cable manegen... Cable maneam... It dosnt ring a bell, what did you call it again?

Here is a up to date pic showing the system in my signature, A screenshot showing the Cinebench score can be seen in the 4th post in this thread.

Here is the systems twin brother which only gets used when I tinker with the main system, Dual X5650@4400.


As you can see everyting is in perfect order with perfect cable mess.

Cable management? What? Not familiar with that phrase. 🤣