JaSSon

thats weird... I have never had any driver problems with my 7970m on the latest AMD drivers. I even used the BETA ones for a while and had no real issues other then MASSIVE amounts of heat.

Hence all the suggestions to buy that part at MC. I like AMD, but for the same or similar money go Intel. Your build is fine. You'd enjoy it. But I'll offer 2 suggestions. Buy the EVGA B2 series PSU. Really nice piece. I'd also check out the Cooler Master Quickfire keyboard. Cherry MX mechanical switches at a good price. I'm not a Razer fan.

Interesting suggestions all. I am interested to know if it is worth spending the extra money to go all Intel and Nvidia. My only reason for going all AMD was the price and most of the time I see regular performance of an AMD chip/GPU just slightly behind an Intel one and I am not trying to max out frames or anything (~60 fps is fine with me) but i have a tiny little desktop that I made for under $300 that I use for a Minecraft Server with an FX-4300 that came out of the box 3.7 GHz but I overclocked it to 4.4 GHz on the stock cooler and the thing has never failed or freaked out once. I was very impressed at how AMD chips can be overclocked, how well do Intel chips these days handle overclocking? OC on liquid cooled systems? I'm just curious.

The most important item in a gaming rig is the GPU. So go big there. Don't spend an extra hundred on an i7 at the expense of the GPU. As far as Intel vs AMD, see my builds above. It's literally a few dollars difference between the 8000 series FX and the unlocked i5. The 4690k is the superior CPU of the two. It's faster and uses less power, and being a K-series cpu it has an unlocked multiplier. That means easy overclocking. AMD vs nVidia is a bit different. nVidia's high end GPU crushes AMD's 290x, but it costs $200+ more. The current sweet spot on price/performance is the R9 290. It's as fast as nVidia's ~$350 GTX 970 for $100 less.

Edit: don't cheap out on a case either. It's what you'll be building in and looking at. The 550D is a solid choice. Excellent cable management built in and plenty of fan slots. I've got its small brother 350D, and it's the nicest case I've ever owned.

Dose driver issues, doe....

 

Honestly, I'll never own another Radeon card...at least until something happens with their drivers. Nothing but nightmares with them. Much happier with my 2x780Ti setup than I was with my 2x290x setup.

Their drivers have been pretty good for awhile. Meanwhile, I've have nothing BUT driver crashes out of my nvidia powered notebook.

The R9 Radeon cards are REALLY nice for the money. And for the money OP listed, he could be in a 4GB R9 290. And by 4GB, i mean 4GB. Not 3.5GB+ 512MB. At 1080p the 290 and the GTX970 trade blows. At 1440p and higher the R9 290 begins to leave the 970 in its dust.

My specs: i5 2500k, 8GB DDR3-1600, PCS+ R9 290, 120GB Corsair Force 3 SSD, 750W Thermaltake Toughpower Gold rated power supply, Corsair 350D case. I'm in the process of putting together a custom liquid cooler loop so I can OC that 2500k. My system runs Elite: Dangerous at Ultimate settings at 1440P at an average of over 100fps. At ultra settings at 1080p I frequently see over 200fps.

OP, buy your CPU and MoBo at Microcenter. They have really good bundle prices. Also keep an eye on http://www.reddit.com/r/buildapcsales and http://www.reddit.com/r/hardwareswap Those are great resources.

Edit: Here's an AMD FX build..

Here's a Devil's Canyon K-series i5 based build. Keep an eye on those reddit links and pick the CPU/mobo up at microcenter for combo savings. Both the "8 core" AMD FX and the Intel i5 are great CPUs, but the i5 is the superior chip, and at a small price difference. Also 8GB of RAM is plenty, but if you need to you can easily add more later as your budget allows. The Powercolor PCS+ R9 290 I put in these builds is the same GPU I have. It's cool, it's quiet, and it's powerful. The EVGA 750B2 power supply in this build is top-of-the-line. It's made by SuperFlower for EVGA. Really excellent power supply at a great price.

And here is a LEGIT windows 8.1 for $20.

Edit: Regarding the i5 vs i7 debate... Hogwash. You're better off putting the price difference towards a more powerful GPU or larger SSD. The i5's are SOLID CPUs.

BMW N54 335i.

Stock engine, stock turbos with a FMIC, tune, DPs, meth/e85 will net you 400-450whp.

Stock frame upgraded turbos can get you to ~550whp.

Stock engine with big single upgrade cars have dynoed between 700-800whp.

Fly in, meet him in person, witness the signing, fly back.

This. Take a trip to Cali. It's effing cold here, and not cold in Cali.

From a legal standpoint thanks to the Magnuson-Moss warranty act, the manufacture has to PROVE that a modification caused the fault before they can deny or void warranty.

 

But I have personally been told by Audi "Take us to Court then"... so YMMV

BMW can and will be a real dick about it. Apparently the regional warranty guru (don't know the guy's official title) is a real stickler company man. He bleeds Bavarian blue. If the car gets flagged as modified, expect future warranty service to be denied. The trick is to take the car to a good Service Adviser at a good dealership.

If you're going to modify a $100k msrp M5, you should do so with the knowledge that factory repair parts and labor are going to be very expensive, and that you may not have a warranty to fall back on. That's the reality of the situation, Magnuson-Moss or not.

Jordan please keep us updated. If my math is correct, they are seeing approximately 120 HP and 120 TQ increases over stock. That would work with me. But does it affect warranty?

Absolutely. Even Dinan performance parts (which are sold at some BMW dealers) void the factory warranty. Dinan does provide their own supplemental warranty, but I don't know if AMS does that.

Kelly BMW flagged my car as modified because they suspected it was modified (and at the time it genuinely was not), and because of that I've had to jump through hoop after hoop to have work performed on the car.

Here's an article on this car:

http://noriyaro.com/2015/01/quad-turbo-at-nikko-caroline-racings-2jz-silvia/

 

Apparently he runs around 42lbs of boost!

 

I love the rear-mounted radiator. I always wanted to do that, but I've never been able to come up with a good reason.

I win, it's a radiator on top of the engine bay.

So what happened to cause it?

I suspect the root cause was the dipstick between the seat and the steering wheel.

nah,

 

when you're going out with a butterface, you can brag to all your buddies about how great she is in bed, or how good she looks naked---but it doesn't mean shit. the only thing everybody sees is her ugly-ass face. sometimes you don't mind banging the ugly chick who is a monster in the sack.

 

i'd rather have both.

Depends, how are Butterface's tits? I bet I'd notice those.

She mentioned that is what I would get by signing up...$200. What really interests me is that due to me being a premier member to Sam's Club, I only need to pay $20 to switch.

I went through the Sam's Club sales pitch too. And I walked away laughing. They tell you ~$45 to start the spheal, then by the end of their pitch it's $100/month for just TV service, which is nuts. There's tons of other costs that they don't mention up front. Passed, cut the cable, and have no trouble streaming what I want to watch.

If the BMS oil t-stat didn't help you, then you need additional radiators. Upgrade your OEM oil cooler and look into adding the BMW PPK radiators. The OEM oil cooler is quite small, but engineered solutions are expensive. There are DIY solutions, do some googling. Also being in so cal there's no reason for you to go 50/50 on anti freeze. Try 70/30 or even 80/20 Distilled water to BMW Blue antifreeze. I'm not aware of a lower temp coolant system thermostat for our motors. Also make sure you're running an upgraded FMIC, and maybe even meth injection or you'll be pulling timing like crazy.

Edit: The oil filter housing is liquid cooled, so the temps of one fluid have a direct impact on the other. Bringing your oil temps down will help with coolant temps.

Any issues with the 335 or M3 series engine wise? I'm leery of BMW for some reason....

The N54/N55 engines can be maintenance whores. Wastegate rattle/failure (N54), oil housing gasket failures (mixing oil and coolant or just straight leaking), HPFP/injector failure (4000+PSI and they fail? no shit.), valve cover gasket, $500 water pump failures, carbon buildup, some higher milage N54s have encountered leaking valve seals.

All that said, it's the ONLY car in this thread that will lay the smack down and still net 30+mpg. You can easily find an N54 335i x-drive sedan in your price range.

can we get some pics or a better explanation of this? Joe how is your heat diverter working these days?

http://i.imgur.com/Ql2zp7kl.jpg There's a hose from the dryer to the bin, and the fan is aimed out into the hall to help circulation.

Here are some good builds across a variety of budgets to start with:http://www.reddit.com/r/PCMasterRace/wiki/builds

Edit: A Radeon R9 270 doesn't have enough ass behind it to run modern games at 1080p on high/ultra.

I steam ALL my TV now, so I require a HTPC. I am thinking about replacing it with something like this running Linux.

Edit: Same issue with HPTC, 4 year old i5-650 based PC so I would think that horse power shouldn't be a huge issue.