New build, Germany

If you can do it get a 256-512GB SSD. My 128GB is constantly full.

 

Care to clarify or cite sources? I've had a Zotac card for almost a year now, and it's the best and coolest-running card I've ever owned. I don't know of anyone else who has issues with any, so I'd like to see some sort of article on this.

What do you have on your SSD? Is it just a boot drive or do you have games on it? Because I'm still surviving with around 5GB free on a 40GB SSD.

 

My OS...er...everything. Using the D drive for storage right now. The word "optimizing" is not in my vocabulary and I'm quite ignorant on the subject.

I figure Hutch being the artist that he is could use at least a 256GB SSD. For a PC slob such as myself throwing more GB at the problem works.

 

power supply unit. If its a prebuilt, it will only be specced to provide enough power for the stock CPU and peripherals. It won't be specced to power a GTX970 too.

 

Amazon may ship individual packages. That is because Amazon does ship from different warehouses with different articles on stock. You can select that everything is shipped at once, you only have to wait longer for them to ship due to internal, inefficient pingpong with your precious cargo. They'll do Credit and Debit card. I don't like Mindfactory that much, but at least they weren't bitching much when I needed to RMA something trough them.

Last time I had to research something in Australia I decided to keep my sanity and gave up. Server components are hard to come by in that part of the world...

 

Where are you ordering? I've never had a problem with the things you mention. And i'm even shipping sometimes to a DHL Packing Station...
Just use Mindfactory, Caseking, hardwareversand, or something. Put your build together on http://gh.de (see wishlists), find a shop that has everything you want and go.

I've put together such a list for you: http://geizhals.de/eu/?cat=WL-522163
Most of it can be ordered at Mindfactory, if you can find another GPU and another CPU cooler at Mindfactory directly you could get all your stuff from one distributor.


Also just recently my second Samsung 840 non-Pro passed away. Might not wanna use TLC SSDs.

 

(imported from here)
Actually hotter than the reference cooler. Not good.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/graphics/display/geforce-gtx-760-sli-msi-palit-zotac_5.html#sect0


Also, several reviews on Newegg for the zotac 970 say the card stopped working, had coil whine, poor support, etc.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814500362&cm_re=gtx_970-_-14-500-362-_-Product
I checked the MSI card and most of the bad reviews are just people bitching about the 3.5 gb thing. Same for ASUS and Gigabyte.

 

AMP edition cards are overclocked cards, of course it's going to run hotter than a normal edition. Being 5 degrees hotter isn't a cause of alarm in any way, shape or form, especially considering it's still below the 95C mark.

As for the other reviews, coil whine is a common issue in GPUs, and even then one of the supposed whiny cards came damaged in transit. My EVGA GTX560 whined pretty badly but I'm not going to go around saying EVGA are terrible just from that issue. My ZOTAC GTX780 runs even cooler than that 560 and has no issues with coil whine, just because a few reviews have anecdotal evidence (and despite that, the card still has a 4 star average, just like GB/MSI models) that a few cards have slight defects doesn't mean that the manufacturer is bad, and running 5C hotter than other cards doesn't mean in any way that they will "catch fire and explode".

There are no news articles on the issue that I can find so obviously the issues aren't as widespread as you want people to think. Every company makes dud cards once in a while, that doesn't suddenly mean they're all bad.


EDIT: Also turns out coil whine is a problem with all 970s, not just ZOTAC: http://wccftech.com/nvidia-gtx-970-coil-whine/

 

Eh, guess it should be fine then. I wouldn't buy one myself though, for the same reason I refuse to put an ASrock motherboard in anything but an extreme budget PC.
Mostly irrelevant but I find their coolers absolutely hideous too.

As for the OC, it's clocked barely 39 MHz higher. If it's hotter than a reference cooler then it's a pretty bad cooler, even the Palit clocked at nearly 80 MHz over stock manages to stay 6*C cooler than reference.

And yes, coil whine is an issue with all Maxwell cards. EVGA is the one having big problems with it though.

 

Of course that's a valid opinion, but how it looks doesn't really matter unless you've got a window in your case.

 

Or a hole, which I do :|
My new case will most likely have a window anyway.