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"I need a New PC!" 2013 Part 2. Haswell = #IntelnoTIM, but free online. READ THE OP.

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SargerusBR

I love Pokken!
i'm not buying in the US since my country's import taxes are obnoxious, but here all three are basically in the same price, with the BOOST being a little more expensive.
 

Kraftwerk

Member
So I won this PC from Alienware. It was from some giveaway I entered a while ago. Wanted to know if I should sell and get something better with that money. I say that since I was going to build a gaming rig as a christmas gift to myself. I mainly play World of Warcraft.

These are the specs;

Intel® Core™ i7-4820K Processor (10M Cache, up to 3.90 GHz)
8GB Quad Channel DDR3 at 1600MHz
AMD Radeon™ HD 8870 with 2GB GDDR5


Its the Alienware Aurora R4.
 
So I won this PC from Alienware. It was from some giveaway I entered a while ago. Wanted to know if I should sell and get something better with that money. I say that since I was going to build a gaming rig as a christmas gift to myself. I mainly play World of Warcraft.

These are the specs;

Intel® Core™ i7-4820K Processor (10M Cache, up to 3.90 GHz)
8GB Quad Channel DDR3 at 1600MHz
AMD Radeon™ HD 8870 with 2GB GDDR5


Its the Alienware Aurora R4.
Aside from the amount of RAM, that seems like a really high end rig. It's a bit much for WoW, even with their new graphics updates.
 

Hazaro

relies on auto-aim
Guys need to buy a new VGA at the end of this month, which one is the better:

GTX 650ti 2gb, GTX 650ti BOOST 1gb or HD7790 1gb?
650Ti 2GB then overclock it.
So I won this PC from Alienware. It was from some giveaway I entered a while ago. Wanted to know if I should sell and get something better with that money. I say that since I was going to build a gaming rig as a christmas gift to myself. I mainly play World of Warcraft.

These are the specs;

Intel® Core™ i7-4820K Processor (10M Cache, up to 3.90 GHz)
8GB Quad Channel DDR3 at 1600MHz
AMD Radeon™ HD 8870 with 2GB GDDR5


Its the Alienware Aurora R4.
Hmm
Chipset Architecture
Intel® X79 Express Chipset w/ Unlocked BIOS for Overclocking, CPU Socket 2011
875W PSU
I'd just say keep using it then unless you can get a high street price for it, no way to know until you know how much you can get out of selling it + fees + hassle.

That's a great specced system and completely overkill if you just play WoW.
I tightened the CM Hyper 212 Plus a bit more and I'm getting like 8C better temps on the machine I just built. I'm always nervous to tighten the cooler too much because there's no way to know how much extra pressure your adding with each turn of the screw driver. The Cores of the i7 3770K now max out at 65, 71, 71, 65 after 15 minutes of Prime95 @ 4.4 Ghz 1.25V.
I've put over 80lbs of force on my cpu, don't sweat it. The 212 doesn't even let you tighten it that much.

If you had washers to allow you to go further then maybe you could have a concern.
 
Really really good price.

I actually just ordered it for another build I'm doing for a friend.

So far for that build I have (this is subtracting the rebates):
Sapphire Vapor-X 7970 Ghz - $220
MSI-Z77A-G45 - $60
G.SKILL Ares Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3 2133 - $54
Corsair 200R - $25

The guy I'm building this for should be picking up a i7 3770K from Microcenter for $265 next week.

Total so far is that's $624. All I need is CPU Cooler, HDD and Power supply. I may be able to get this build around $800 including OS. Around $700 for just hardware.
Pretty great build for the price. Amazing what you can get for <$1000 now.

Glad too to hear it was a good price. I'm hoping the performance gains from having them in crossfire well help me stave off the upgrade bug for a while longer.

Most of the worst Crossfire issues have been addressed with new firmware, correct?
 

kharma45

Member
Pretty great build for the price. Amazing what you can get for <$1000 now.

Glad too to hear it was a good price. I'm hoping the performance gains from having them in crossfire well help me stave off the upgrade bug for a while longer.

Most of the worst Crossfire issues have been addressed with new firmware, correct?

On a single monitor it's a lot better now.

So I won this PC from Alienware. It was from some giveaway I entered a while ago. Wanted to know if I should sell and get something better with that money. I say that since I was going to build a gaming rig as a christmas gift to myself. I mainly play World of Warcraft.

These are the specs;

Intel® Core™ i7-4820K Processor (10M Cache, up to 3.90 GHz)
8GB Quad Channel DDR3 at 1600MHz
AMD Radeon™ HD 8870 with 2GB GDDR5


Its the Alienware Aurora R4.

Keep it and enjoy it.

@kharma45
sorry to keep bothering you

if you saw my last reply, what's your thoughts bout the prices of the parts i put in that reply?

I didn't see it, will go look now.
 

ezekial45

Banned
So Newegg has the Sapphire Vapor-X 7970 GHz. For $240 - $20 rebate ($220 final.)

Put in an order for one for now, may change my mind later. I've got one already, but for this price I feel like I would get significant performance boost and lengthen the ownership of my current card over spending double or more for 290x or 780 to.

Am I crazy? Should I not bother with SLI for now? Looking for input on whether to keep it I suppose.

NOOOOOOOOOOO, I can't believe I missed out on this. After a year or so, I'm finally in the position to buy my equipment for my new rig, and I definitely could use something like this. That's affordable too.

Is there another card that I can get that's good and is for a good price?
 

kharma45

Member

Kaveri is an entry level solution really, it'll not be in your sights.

Yes the Z87W is probably your best bet if you want 16GB of RAM but as I said previously there is absolutely no need for so much RAM if you're just gaming, you're throwing away good money that could be spent elsewhere.

Out of those motherboards you've linked I'd get the ASUS Z87-A. GPU is your call, either that Sapphire 7850 or the EVGA ACX 760.

760 is the better buy over a 600 series card unless you can find a good deal on a 670/680.
 

rinker

Member
Anything on my list here that stands out as overpriced or a bad combination? Most of the parts were inspired by mkenyon's small form factor guide. Though some of the choices I made were based on aesthetics.

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/23psI

Main use is gaming, and there is no deadline. Hoping to hang on to this list and pick up individual pieces as they go on sale.
 
Kaveri is an entry level solution really, it'll not be in your sights.

Yes the Z87W is probably your best bet if you want 16GB of RAM but as I said previously there is absolutely no need for so much RAM if you're just gaming, you're throwing away good money that could be spent elsewhere.

Out of those motherboards you've linked I'd get the ASUS Z87-A. GPU is your call, either that Sapphire 7850 or the EVGA ACX 760.

760 is the better buy over a 600 series card unless you can find a good deal on a 670/680.

i'll check the prices again and give you what else i can find in the price limit of your 3 sets you suggested

as for the RAM, i used to have this in NEW condition:
http://www.gskill.com/en/product/f3-12800cl9d-8gbxl

bought it for $45 and sold it before 8 months after my friend convinced me with the 16GB, now the same ram i had is sold for $70+ !!!! i think i'll kill my friend T_T
back then the HDD prices were high, and RAM is cheap, now i think the opposite is applying

as for the point of wasting money buying 16GB instead of 8GB, do you think the same is applied if i wanted to take core I7-5770K instead of I5-4670K?

as for the GPU, i think 760 is the best option if my budget going well, but if i went for AMD 7850 / R9 270X, how much the difference in performance between these 3 cards for 720p/1080p gaming ?

as for EVGA GeForce GTX 760 w/ EVGA ACX Cooling VS. N760 TF 4GD5/OC (GeForce GTX 760 GAMING), the difference in the price locally is about $51 more for MSI, should i go with it or stick with EVGA 2GB ?

hoping to find salvation in black friday :(

thanks again
 

TheBear

Member
hey guys as i mentioned earlier I ended up buying a 7970, and whilst I got a decent boost I am nowhere near 60fps on high settings. I did a graph thing while running BF4, and apparently the CPU is up the shit.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/sfnqv63p5q...Win32-0001.png

I have a Gigabyte MA790Gp Motherboard. Would an AMD 8320 CPU fix my frame rate issues? Are there better CPU's to choose from? Is the motherboard itself causing issues also? What's the benefit of replacing it? Also I was going to chuck in another 4GB of ram.

Thanks guys
 

Owari

Member
Ugh. Has anyone here had any luck gaming at above 1080p? I was looking at the Seiki 55" UHDTV but it seems HDMI 1.4 is incapable of delivering above 30fps.. which is kind of a deal breaker. Now I'm looking at 1440p as a (hopefully cheaper) alternative. Probably won't need more than one card to drive it, etc.

All of this to upgrade/replace my HD 5970 which is a great card but it's showing it's age a bunch recently. (Need to OC just to get decent FR at 1080p) ugh, what a mess.
 
Ugh. Has anyone here had any luck gaming at above 1080p? I was looking at the Seiki 55" UHDTV but it seems HDMI 1.4 is incapable of delivering above 30fps.. which is kind of a deal breaker. Now I'm looking at 1440p as a (hopefully cheaper) alternative. Probably won't need more than one card to drive it, etc.

All of this to upgrade/replace my HD 5970 which is a great card but it's showing it's age a bunch recently. (Need to OC just to get decent FR at 1080p) ugh, what a mess.

I think 1440p is probably the better option. There's a lack of 4k monitors still, and the standards haven't been worked out. I think the 4k monitors can only do 30hz right now, but I might be wrong on that. It's also going to be hard to maintain 60fps that most gamers would like. I still think it will be another 2-3 years until 4k is more mainstream, doable for most people.
 
Ugh. Has anyone here had any luck gaming at above 1080p? I was looking at the Seiki 55" UHDTV but it seems HDMI 1.4 is incapable of delivering above 30fps.. which is kind of a deal breaker. Now I'm looking at 1440p as a (hopefully cheaper) alternative. Probably won't need more than one card to drive it, etc.

All of this to upgrade/replace my HD 5970 which is a great card but it's showing it's age a bunch recently. (Need to OC just to get decent FR at 1080p) ugh, what a mess.

What?
 

Azulsky

Member
Ugh. Has anyone here had any luck gaming at above 1080p? I was looking at the Seiki 55" UHDTV but it seems HDMI 1.4 is incapable of delivering above 30fps.. which is kind of a deal breaker. Now I'm looking at 1440p as a (hopefully cheaper) alternative. Probably won't need more than one card to drive it, etc.

All of this to upgrade/replace my HD 5970 which is a great card but it's showing it's age a bunch recently. (Need to OC just to get decent FR at 1080p) ugh, what a mess.

I use a Dell U3014, which is 1600p.

Im not really a fan of losing any more pixel density. If this Asus 4k 39" pans out I might get it as a TV
 

nbthedude

Member
Ok, guys, I need some help.

I'm putting together a PC for a buddy.

Got it all put together and it boots fine w/o a harddrive into the BIOS.

So then I plug in the harddrive I was going to give him, a Seagate Baracuda 7200 1TB. And it doesn't recognize anything. Which is weird because I just had it plugged up to my system and it worked fine.

So I thought maybe the harddrive just finally kicked the bucket. So I ran up to the store and got a WD Blue 1TB. I got it home, plugged it up and it literally started smoking. I quickly pulled the powersupply and took the harddrive back to exchange it.

Thankfully I turned on the PC and none of the other parts seem to be damaged but what the fuck is going on?

Any ideas or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

i5 3570k
Asrock Extreme Pro 3 z77
Rosewill Hive Modular Gaming Powersupply 750W
Sapphire Radeon 7970
8GB Kingston DDR3 1600MHZ
Lian-Li 200 ATX Case
 

ss_lemonade

Member
Anyone with a vg248qe get more visible dithering when using the lightboost hack? 0 blur looks so nice but at the same time, I feel like its hurting image quality
 

longdi

Banned
heads up for those looking at amd r9 290/x cards.
it seems that 290 from powercolor and xfx can be bios flashed to 290x.
powercolor having more success rate
xfx comes with free bf4.

it is 6950 to 6970 early days again.
 

Owari

Member
I think 1440p is probably the better option. There's a lack of 4k monitors still, and the standards haven't been worked out. I think the 4k monitors can only do 30hz right now, but I might be wrong on that. It's also going to be hard to maintain 60fps that most gamers would like. I still think it will be another 2-3 years until 4k is more mainstream, doable for most people.

Yeah .. it seems like a much better option overall. Some 4k screens can do 60fps .. but I'm not exactly trying to spend thousands of dollars for this project xD

That being said, a single 7970 or 780 should do the trick at 1440p, correct? Maybe I won't have to swap out the AMD FX 4100 after all..
 
Ugh. Has anyone here had any luck gaming at above 1080p? I was looking at the Seiki 55" UHDTV but it seems HDMI 1.4 is incapable of delivering above 30fps.. which is kind of a deal breaker. Now I'm looking at 1440p as a (hopefully cheaper) alternative. Probably won't need more than one card to drive it, etc.

All of this to upgrade/replace my HD 5970 which is a great card but it's showing it's age a bunch recently. (Need to OC just to get decent FR at 1080p) ugh, what a mess.

Yeah .. it seems like a much better option overall. Some 4k screens can do 60fps .. but I'm not exactly trying to spend thousands of dollars for this project xD

That being said, a single 7970 or 780 should do the trick at 1440p, correct? Maybe I won't have to swap out the AMD FX 4100 after all..

Here's a benchmark comparison between the 7970 ghz edition and the 780. http://anandtech.com/bench/product/827?vs=768

There are 1440p results. You can decide if one card looks better than the other. At this point, I'd get a 290 or 290x custom cooler card if you are going AMD for cards, unless you can still find a 7970 for a great price. What's your budget for cards?
 
So guys, is Windows 8.1 worth it over 7 yet? For gaming of course.

I'm a believer, no problems at all. There was an issue with mouse latency, but that was just patched on tuesday. I know BF4 saw significant improvements in fps, not sure if Windows 7 has caught up to 8.1 yet with a patch or not. If you are one of those people that must have that silly old fashioned start menu, get classic shell for free or stardocks start8 for $5. Now that 8.1 has the option to boot to desktop, I see the Metro start screen even less.
 

SapientWolf

Trucker Sexologist
Anyone with a vg248qe get more visible dithering when using the lightboost hack? 0 blur looks so nice but at the same time, I feel like its hurting image quality
I don't know about dithering, but it takes a huge dump on color accuracy, which was already iffy to begin with. Everything has a blue tint. Viewing angles might be worse too. Still worth it though.
 

Owari

Member
Here's a benchmark comparison between the 7970 ghz edition and the 780. http://anandtech.com/bench/product/827?vs=768

There are 1440p results. You can decide if one card looks better than the other. At this point, I'd get a 290 or 290x custom cooler card if you are going AMD for cards, unless you can still find a 7970 for a great price. What's your budget for cards?

Now that 4k is off the table I'm looking at 2 1440p monitors and a card to drive it, my budget is roughly 1k. I really, really don't want to get last years high end card. (Did that with the 5970 which was fine at first, but as the years crept on it really started to shit out on me. For this reason I am also leaning toward Nvidia, but AMD isn't a total deal breaker if there's a good enough value. I do have a AMD 4100, I dunno if that matters as far as AMD/AMD .. it probably doesn't. Also hope that CPU can handle 2 monitors at 1440p.

Now that 8.1 has the option to boot to desktop, I see the Metro start screen even less.

Agreed, I like 8.1 and I use Metro more than I thought I would (Netflix, etc.) but now that the boot to desktop option is there the OS optimizations really make it a solid choice.
 

golem

Member
fine.
So I thought maybe the harddrive just finally kicked the bucket. So I ran up to the store and got a WD Blue 1TB. I got it home, plugged it up and it literally started smoking. I quickly pulled the powersupply and took the harddrive back to exchange it.

Your power supply might be bad
 
Now that 4k is off the table I'm looking at 2 1440p monitors and a card to drive it, my budget is roughly 1k. I really, really don't want to get last years high end card. (Did that with the 5970 which was fine at first, but as the years crept on it really started to shit out on me. For this reason I am also leaning toward Nvidia, but AMD isn't a total deal breaker if there's a good enough value. I do have a AMD 4100, I dunno if that matters as far as AMD/AMD .. it probably doesn't. Also hope that CPU can handle 2 monitors at 1440p.



Agreed, I like 8.1 and I use Metro more than I thought I would (Netflix, etc.) but now that the boot to desktop option is there the OS optimizations really make it a solid choice.

I think it comes down between the 780ti and the 290x for you then. I'm getting the 780ti myself when the EVGA Classified ACX version comes out.

I have been using the Netflix Windows 8 app since it does super hd or whatever netflix calls it. The regular browser version doesn't.
 

ss_lemonade

Member
I don't know about dithering, but it takes a huge dump on color accuracy, which was already iffy to begin with. Everything has a blue tint. Viewing angles might be worse too. Still worth it though.
I tried to take some pictures with my phone:

Normal:
normaljdui5.jpg

With Lightboost:

The pictures may be a little off but the dithering should be visible enough. I'll probably just try adjusting some settings in the nvidia CP and see if I can hide those
 

TheCloud

Banned
About to bite the bullet on this build and just thought I'd seek last minute input.

My intention is to build a Xen Hypervisor rig to serve up a few Linux VMs and a Win7 VM.

I chose a processor and motherboard that supports Vt-d for VGA passthrough to the Windows VM.

I want to be able to play Civ5, Starcraft 2, and Diablo 3 at 1080p 60fps.

The Linux VMs will need graphics support. I need to run a light window manager on top of Arch with a Virtual Box install running an always-on virtualized web server (Ubuntu Server for this). The Intel Graphics will drive.

Ambitious? Maybe.

i7 4770 (non-K for vt-d support)
GIGABYTE GA-Q87M-D2H LGA 1150 Q87 mATX
CORSAIR DOMINATOR 16GB (4 x 4GB) DDR3 1600
GIGABYTE R9 280X 3GB 384-bit GDDR5
CORSAIR RM Series RM650 650W
SAMSUNG 840 EVO 2.5" 120GB (x2)
Corsair Obsidian Series 350D mATX
BenQ GW2255 Black 21.5" 6ms
Rosewill Mechanical Keyboard - STRIKER RK-6000

Total damage is about $1600

Any objections?
 
About to bite the bullet on this build and just thought I'd seek last minute input.

My intention is to build a Xen Hypervisor rig to serve up a few Linux VMs and a Win7 VM.

I chose a processor and motherboard that supports Vt-d for VGA passthrough to the Windows VM.

I want to be able to play Civ5, Starcraft 2, and Diablo 3 at 1080p 60fps.

The Linux VMs will need graphics support. I need to run a light window manager on top of Arch with a Virtual Box install running an always-on virtualized web server (Ubuntu Server for this). The Intel Graphics will drive.

Ambitious? Maybe.

i7 4770 (non-K for vt-d support)
GIGABYTE GA-Q87M-D2H LGA 1150 Q87 mATX
CORSAIR DOMINATOR 16GB (4 x 4GB) DDR3 1600
GIGABYTE R9 280X 3GB 384-bit GDDR5
CORSAIR RM Series RM650 650W
SAMSUNG 840 EVO 2.5" 120GB (x2)
Corsair Obsidian Series 350D mATX
BenQ GW2255 Black 21.5" 6ms
Rosewill Mechanical Keyboard - STRIKER RK-6000

Total damage is about $1600

Any objections?

Will you be running the games on the host OS or the Windows 7 VM? I've heard that games don't run as well on VM's as they do natively on a physical machine. I have VM's myself, but I haven't tried gaming on them. Assuming you are running the games on the host OS, everything looks great for running VMs. You have good taste in cases too :)
 

Anton668

Member
so, I got my 212 evo ordered from amazon and while I was there I grabbed some bling to go in my case[yeah, im that guy, sry :) ]
orig delivery date was tues, now all of a sudden its monday! hooray for amazon prime twoone day shipping!
now its time to play the silicon lottery!
 

TheCloud

Banned
Will you be running the games on the host OS or the Windows 7 VM? I've heard that games don't run as well on VM's as they do natively on a physical machine. I have VM's myself, but I haven't tried gaming on them. Assuming you are running the games on the host OS, everything looks great for running VMs. You have good taste in cases too :)

Games will run on the Windows VM. The host OS is Linux and all containers are running on a type 1 hypervisor, in this case Xen ESXi.

What makes this possible is the VT-D technology of the cpu and motherboard, allowing me to dedicate hardware, such as the VGA, to the Windows VM. Performance will be about the same as running on metal, possibly a small drop.
 
Hello PCGAF,

I'm starting to think i should get a new PC, a full new setup actually, new desk, new monitor, new everything.

I'm in no hurry at all, so i want to buy, at first, stuff i could already use, since i can't afford everything right now. So i was thinking of getting 2 monitors at first. Would getting 2 Asus VG248QE right now be a great choice? Then wait and see if g-sync module is really worth it, price wise and whatnot, later on when i get a new card/ new PC.

Any info on how the module install process will look like, i mean, it shouldn't be really hard, unless there is soldering to be done, and even then, my soldering ain't that bad.

TL:DR should i buy Asus VG248QE now, or wait for more info on the g-sync version of the monitor?
 

Durante

Member
Any objections?
Unless you need 100% 3D performance on Linux (for what?), I'd say it would be a better idea to use Windows as the host OS and do whatever you need to do in Linux in a VM. OpenGL virtualization works pretty damn well these days, and this way you don't get any problems with game performance.

Hello PCGAF,

I'm starting to think i should get a new PC, a full new setup actually, new desk, new monitor, new everything.

I'm in no hurry at all, so i want to buy, at first, stuff i could already use, since i can't afford everything right now. So i was thinking of getting 2 monitors at first. Would getting 2 Asus VG248QE right now be a great choice? Then wait and see if g-sync module is really worth it, price wise and whatnot, later on when i get a new card/ new PC.

Any info on how the module install process will look like, i mean, it shouldn't be really hard, unless there is soldering to be done, and even then, my soldering ain't that bad.

TL:DR should i buy Asus VG248QE now, or wait for more info on the g-sync version of the monitor?
I think AndyB said there wouldn't be any soldering involved. But if you are not in a hurry it would probably not hurt to wait a few weeks.
 
I finally bought my first part for my gaming PC, got a "SAPPHIRE Vapor-X 100351VXSR Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition 3GB" for $239 of Newegg just now. I couldn't imagine a HD7970 being any cheaper on black Friday. I just hope it's a decent enough card, my plan is to not OC and try to keep everything as cool as possible in my PC.
 

kharma45

Member
I finally bought my first part for my gaming PC, got a "SAPPHIRE Vapor-X 100351VXSR Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition 3GB" for $239 of Newegg just now. I couldn't imagine a HD7970 being any cheaper on black Friday. I just hope it's a decent enough card, my plan is to not OC and try to keep everything as cool as possible in my PC.

you'll be able to OC and still keep it cool. It's a good cooler.
 
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