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"I Need a New PC!" 2014 Part 1. 1080p and 60FPS is so last-gen and your 2500K is fine

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udiie

Member
Anyone have any recommendations for LGA1155 mitx board? I have an i5 3450 so I won't be overclocking at all. I'm looking to move from my massive ATX board down to a mini itx and I was wondering if anyone had any pointers I should be aware of. Already bought my case, Cubitek mini cube.
 

kennah

Member
Anyone have any recommendations for LGA1155 mitx board? I have an i5 3450 so I won't be overclocking at all. I'm looking to move from my massive ATX board down to a mini itx and I was wondering if anyone had any pointers I should be aware of. Already bought my case, Cubitek mini cube.
You'll be limited in what you can find. Any of the z77 boards are good. If you are looking to doing massive overclocks then the Asus is your only choice. What cooler and cpu are you using?
 

udiie

Member
You'll be limited in what you can find. Any of the z77 boards are good. If you are looking to doing massive overclocks then the Asus is your only choice. What cooler and cpu are you using?
I'm not doing overclocking lol
I5 3450 with a stock cooler
Just wondering if there's any board which is exceptionally good
 

Granadier

Is currently on Stage 1: Denial regarding the service game future
My guess would be lower price point than say a 4770k i7 or an FX-9590 and still allowing some OC breathing room. Single Core performance will still suffer a bit comparably, but if I were on a tight budget I'd consider the 9370. Though, I don't know how hot the thing will run to begin with.

I could be wrong, but I think for that budget an i5-4670k would be better.
To each their own though.

Edit: Holy moly! 9370 power draw is 220w compared to 84w on the 4670k. Ouch.
 

Water

Member
Yet another total noob question here.

I'm getting an Intel NUC mainly for emulation, stuff from GoG, some less intensive indie stuff on Steam. I'd like to try out some HTPC stuff like XMBC but I'm not counting on that being a primary use. I typically just stream media - I don't have a hard drive full of movies or TV shows.

My question is - how large of an SSD should I get to hold my OS and a great selection of ROMs, emus and a front end? I am totally new to emulation.
If your ROMs are arcade and old console stuff, you can cram an endless amount of them on a small drive. PS2/Wii/... games can take anything between 0.5GB and 4GB. PC games can take multiple gigs per game even if they don't ask much from the hardware and even if they are old. Taking a quick look at my GoG hoard, Deponia is 3.6GB despite being an indie adventure game. 10-year old AAA games can easily take 5GB or more. Some newer PC games, many of which a NUC can still run, will take 15+ GB.

I wouldn't go less than 250GB for the SSD if you want to avoid plugging in an external drive and also want to avoid a constant install/uninstall shuffle.
 

TheD

The Detective
My guess would be lower price point than say a 4770k i7 or an FX-9590 and still allowing some OC breathing room. Single Core performance will still suffer a bit comparably, but if I were on a tight budget I'd consider the 9370. Though, I don't know how hot the thing will run to begin with.

It has very little overclocking headroom at all and based off this http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/62166-amd-fx-9590-review-piledriver-5ghz-18.html a Corsair H80 (one model higher than what GetemMa bought) could not displace the heat at idle with just the downclocking disabled!
 
If your ROMs are arcade and old console stuff, you can cram an endless amount of them on a small drive. PS2/Wii/... games can take anything between 0.5GB and 4GB. PC games can take multiple gigs per game even if they don't ask much from the hardware and even if they are old. Taking a quick look at my GoG hoard, Deponia is 3.6GB despite being an indie adventure game. 10-year old AAA games can easily take 5GB or more. Some newer PC games, many of which a NUC can still run, will take 15+ GB.

I wouldn't go less than 250GB for the SSD if you want to avoid plugging in an external drive and also want to avoid a constant install/uninstall shuffle.
Thanks. 120 seems pretty economical as I'm trying to do this cheap, but if I really get into it I'll want some space. Apparently the Dolphin emu works pretty well on the NUC so I could see myself needing the room.
 
I could be wrong, but I think for that budget an i5-4670k would be better.
To each their own though.
I would suspect if he is going to do anything other than that like video editing or something the FX "might" perform better for that kind of thing, but I really don't know. A quick search on google suggests that the 9370 is simply an overclocked 8350 ($200 and less at some places).

Still, just for the peace of mind, yeah, I'd probably go with that 4670k.

It has very little overclocking headroom at all and based off this http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/62166-amd-fx-9590-review-piledriver-5ghz-18.html a Corsair H80 (one model higher than what GetemMa bought) could not displace the heat at idle with just the downclocking disabled!

damn.

Edit: Holy moly! 9370 power draw is 220w compared to 84w on the 4670k. Ouch.

zoinks.That's GTX Titan levels.
 

Granadier

Is currently on Stage 1: Denial regarding the service game future

DarkFlow

Banned
If there's any good from this, I hope that AMD is getting some of this cash. They're hurting bad as a company. I suspect they'll get bought out by someone like ARM holdings or IBM. Maybe even merge with an FPGA company as they're getting big.
If you're talking about the Bitcoin markup, AMD is not seeing a dime over MSRP. The retailers are the ones seeing all the profit.
 

teh_pwn

"Saturated fat causes heart disease as much as Brawndo is what plants crave."
If you're talking about the Bitcoin markup, AMD is not seeing a dime over MSRP. The retailers are the ones seeing all the profit.

Well, RIP AMD then.

Introducing the Nvidia Titan 365.
2000 shaders? $59/month . Need more? We here you. 2250 sharers for just $129/month because fuck you that's why.
 

AJLma

Member
AMD is probably still selling a ton more cards than they would have otherwise. I doubt the bitcoin bubble is hurting them at all.
 

CheesecakeRecipe

Stormy Grey
What's the advantage of getting an i7 over an i3 for gaming?

i7's not so much for gaming as it is for multimedia type stuff that would benefit from its higher end features, working with video rendering and the like. i5 is a much better deal for the gamer. Quad core over dual core benefits for one.
 

Pachimari

Member
The read speeds are almost the same, so you shouldn't notice much of a difference in loading software. The bigger problem is simple lack of space. It's a good idea to keep a minimum of about 20% free space on the 840 Evo, and if you do that, the 120GB disk will have less than 100GB usable space. That's not much with a modern day OS and PC games. If you fill the disk up, it slows down.

The 250GB model is something like 50-90% faster on writes; that's going to be quite noticeable on tasks that involve writing to disk. The 250GB also costs slightly less per GB than the 120GB model. You wouldn't be wrong to buy the 120GB, but I think the 250GB is just a better deal if you can afford it.
Thanks, that explained a lot and I'm probably gonna go with 250GB then. :)
 

kharma45

Member
Just ordered a new build and the parts are already filtering in.

Gigabyte GA - AMD 990FX Motherboard
AMD FX-9370 8 Core CPU@4.4 GHz w/ 8MB L3 Cache
Corsair Hydro Series H60 Liquid CPU Cooling System
AMD Radeon R9 290 w/ 4GB
16 GB RAM [8 GB x2] DDR3 - 1866
120 GB Samsung 840 EVO Solid State Drive
2 TB Western Digital 7200 RPM w/ 64 MB Cache
850 Watt - 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified PSU
2 120mm Silent Fans (Push/Pull Air Flow setup)

I have erection right now and I won't apologize for it.

If you can cancel I'd get rid of the 9370 and swap to Intel.

I'm looking at getting a new GPU myself. Unfortunately, it's a bad time to go to AMD. They have great cards, but because of the litecoin/bitcoin/dogecoin miners, their cost has skyrocketed above the point where I feel their performance value is.

For the cost, it's better to go with Nvidia right now. I'm personally looking towards their 780 and 780 ti's. The 780 ti's are generally around $700 which is around where 290x's are lately, but the 780 ti's outperform the 290x's even with Mantle enabled in BF4. If the AMD cards were at their original MSRP (~$500 ish) then it would definitely be a different story.

Bad for the USA, in the UK (and I believe Australia where he's based) prices are normal-ish.

Hey guys, I tried googling but I couldn't find much info on the tri-x 290 vs the 290x from Nvidia.

I'm basically looking for the best value high performance card. So basically this generations equivalent of the 6970 or closest. Doesn't have to be ati....

780 Ti from Nvidia?

The AMD R9 290 is better than the 290X value for money wise.

I'd like to thank kharma54, because that build was great. I finally bought the rest of the parts. I never built my own rig before so this was my first, and it worked perfectly on my first try. I need a new keyboard because the one I'm using right now has a broken spacebar. I'm "ctrl+v"ing every space. I'll post some pics later, though I don't have much cable management, it runs cool and no problems so far.

Glad to hear it all went well. Looking forward to some pictures!

My guess would be lower price point than say a 4770k i7 or an FX-9590 and still allowing some OC breathing room. Single Core performance will still suffer a bit comparably, but if I were on a tight budget I'd consider the 9370. Though, I don't know how hot the thing will run to begin with.

There is little to no OC breathing room. It's just the 8350 maxed to the balls. There's no reason to consider a 9370. Runs hot, consumes as much power as the sun and still performs worse than an i5 in most tasks.

I could be wrong, but I think for that budget an i5-4670k would be better.
To each their own though.

Edit: Holy moly! 9370 power draw is 220w compared to 84w on the 4670k. Ouch.

An i5 is a much better choice.

What's the advantage of getting an i7 over an i3 for gaming?

For online multi you'll benefit but in SP games there isn't a huge difference. Big advantage though is there is the K models of the i7 that can overclock.

If you're just gaming an i5 4670K is the sweet spot.
 
If you can cancel I'd get rid of the 9370 and swap to Intel.

There is little to no OC breathing room. It's just the 8350 maxed to the balls. There's no reason to consider a 9370. Runs hot, consumes as much power as the sun and still performs worse than an i5 in most tasks.

An i5 is a much better choice.

This is the best advice, the FX9370 is just an all around bad CPU imo. It runs hot, devours power, and it still suffers from Piledrivers low IPC. An i5 with a decent OC will run substantially cooler and use less power, and probably perform on par in most situations. Even if that weren't enough an i7 with a decent OC would beat it in just about all situations. There's also not considering that a 990FX motherboard lacks a good number of features compared to comperable ZZ77 or newer motherboards.
 
So I'm about to bite on the Excellent build, but something struck me: what about a network card for getting online? Do these need to be bought separately these days?
 

kharma45

Member
So I'm about to bite on the Excellent build, but something struck me: what about a network card for getting online? Do these need to be bought separately these days?

Yes. Or if you're not near your router to use ethernet powerline adapters can be used , although if you've a house with poor wiring WiFi might be the only option.
 

kennah

Member
I think he means Ethernet. The motherboard will have an Ethernet port. A separate card isn't needed unless your board doesn't have wifi (and you want wifi)
 

harSon

Banned
Think I'm going to finally bite the bullet and build a gaming PC. I want something that's going to play the latest and greatest, but also something that has a decent footprint. I also value size (I'm looking at a BitFenix Prodigy) as well as noise. Are these characteristics feasible, and for around $1,000?

The electricity costs in San Jose are ridiculous, and my current computer (hand me down from my dad's job), that's more of a server/workstation than a desktop, currently costs upwards of $40ish a month if I were to leave it on more times than not. I'd like to bring that down considerably.

What type of components would I be looking at to achieve this?
 

kennah

Member
Think I'm going to finally bite the bullet and build a gaming PC. I want something that's going to play the latest and greatest, but also something that has a decent footprint. I also value size (I'm looking at a BitFenix Prodigy) as well as noise. Are these characteristics feasible, and for around $1,000?

The electricity costs in San Jose are ridiculous, and my current computer (hand me down from my dad's job), that's more of a server/workstation than a desktop, currently costs upwards of $40ish a month if I were to leave it on more times than not. I'd like to bring that down considerably.

What type of components would I be looking at to achieve this?
What are the specs of your current computer? Powe consumption ha seen going down but it might not make the difference you are hoping for.

Also the prodigy is kind of big as far as SFF computers go so you might want to look at some comparision shots to make sure it's as small as you want it to ve
 

harSon

Banned
What are the specs of your current computer? Powe consumption ha seen going down but it might not make the difference you are hoping for.

Also the prodigy is kind of big as far as SFF computers go so you might want to look at some comparision shots to make sure it's as small as you want it to ve

It has an Intel Xeon E5405 2.0GHz CPU, 4gb of Ram and a NVidia GeForce GTX 275. This is the computer: http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/q...a/12849_na.pdf

The computer is massive, and as I said, more of a workstation than a home PC, so I'm sure the Prodigy is fine :p
 
780 Ti from Nvidia?

The AMD R9 290 is better than the 290X value for money wise.

He said best value, the 780ti is not that. For best value the two cards are 770 4gb for 380 and the 780 for 500. Both are just fine. The 780ti at 700 bucks does not have a good cost per performance ratio. The R9 290 would be in here, but only at MSRP(400). The R9 290x at 500 would be equivalent, if not superior, to the 780.
 

kennah

Member
Hmm. Looks like your system draw right now is around 350/400w. So you wouldn't be seeing that much of an improvement in your electricity bill.

And if you're good with the size. Then check out the SFF builds in the OP :p
 

LiquidMetal14

hide your water-based mammals
img_20140210_1207430jump.jpg


img_20140210_121030w4uoa.jpg

Will run 3d Mark 13 in a minute.
 

harSon

Banned
Hmm. Looks like your system draw right now is around 350/400w. So you wouldn't be seeing that much of an improvement in your electricity bill.

And if you're good with the size. Then check out the SFF builds in the OP :p

Even when idle or running less demanding applications? Because right now it draws roughly 250 watts when idle.
 

kharma45

Member
He said best value, the 780ti is not that. For best value the two cards are 770 4gb for 380 and the 780 for 500. Both are just fine. The 780ti at 700 bucks does not have a good cost per performance ratio. The R9 290 would be in here, but only at MSRP(400). The R9 290x at 500 would be equivalent, if not superior, to the 780.

I didn't say it did. I was trying to find out what nvidia card he was looking at.
 

-COOLIO-

The Everyman
I could be wrong, but I think for that budget an i5-4670k would be better.
To each their own though.

Edit: Holy moly! 9370 power draw is 220w compared to 84w on the 4670k. Ouch.
i couldnt do amd procs because i like to consider myself environmentally conscious. i also want to pick up a plat psu for the same reason. power draw is the main reason id be reluctant to sli too, id feel like an environmental asshole.
 

140.85

Cognitive Dissonance, Distilled
GAF are these temps normal cores 0 and 1 are always 5-10 higher? I haven't overclocked and my heatsink is a hyper 212 EVO. I moved my cpu and video card to an R4 from my old R3 and swapped my motherboard to a Asus P8 Z77-V Pro. I have reset the EVO four times and the temps are always similar to these and these are probably the best yet. I looked at the EVO to when I removed it to make sure the thermal paste was covering the CPU good too. These temps are better then my old R3 which hovered at ~40 idle with the hype 212+ that was on it.

SqckNts.png

I have the same cooler and that looks about right to me.

Is lower than 35-40C really what people aim for?
 

Pachimari

Member
I received my Fracture R4 case today and woooooow is this a big one - and I thought my old one were big! But it looks beautiful and I like there's a lot of room inside. I also got the WD 1TB HDD I had ordered.

I should receive the optical drive, heatsink and power supply on Wednesday as well. And on that very same day I'm gonna buy the CPU og motherboard, if I get my Mac Mini sold tomorrow.

So here's how it looks so far:

Have RECEIVED:
Case
Fractal R4 (796 DKK = $144)

Storage
WD Blue WD10EZEX 1TB (400 DKK = $73)

Have BOUGHT:
Optical Drive
SATA DVD Burner (148 DKK = $27)

Power Supply
Sea Sonic G Series 550 (714 DKK = $129)

Heatsink - [BOUGHT]
Corsair H60 (488 DKK = $90)


-------------------------


Will buy this on WEDNESDAY:
Motherboard
GIGABYTE GA-Z87X-UD3H (1.146 DKK = $208)

SSD
Samsung 840 EVO 250GB (1.128 DKK = $206)

Network card
TP-LINK TL-WDN4800 (259 DKK = $47)

Will buy in MARCH
CPU
i5 4670K 4C/4T (1.630 DKK = $296)

RAM
Crucial Ballistix Tactical (16GB) (1.098 DKK = $201)

TBD
Video Card
GTX 780 3GB (3.387 DKK = $619)

Other stuff to get
- Windows 7 64-bit (700 DKK = $128)
- Sennheiser 363D (1.784 DKK = $327)
- IR receiver.
- Webcam.
- Controller for Big Picture mode in Steam.
- 32" Samsung HDTV (for monitor).
- 5.1 speakers.
- Oculus Rift.

One question though. If I'm gonna run HD movies through Plex on this computer connected to my AV receiver with HDMI, won't I need a sound card or is there really no need for that?
 
Anyone else just lurk here dreaming of the day you'll post your specs and get the fatherly nod of approval from kharama, mkenyon and co? :)

Hurry up Maxwell and Occulus... I'm waiting...
 
Just bought the Asus GTX 760 DCUII OC, literally one day before Newegg drops the MSI Twin Frozr IV 760 to the same price. :'(

Other than that though, I am loving the card. BF4 completely maxed 1080p 4XMSAA 60+fps, same with ACIV and Metal Gear: Rising. It's powerful, quiet, runs cool 29C/59C (idle/load) and OC'd quite well. I bought this card as an upgrade after I sold my Visiontek HD 6970 wi/ aftermarket cooling for 215 on Ebay.

I figured, that I should really wait till Maxwell at least to drop the big bucks, so why not spend 40 on a graphics upgrade and get ACIV for free anyways. This SHOULD hold me out will at least Maxwell and I am hoping I can actually make it to the next AMD refresh/Maxwell price drop before my 1080p performance dies.
 

kennah

Member
Anyone else just lurk here dreaming of the day you'll post your specs and get the fatherly nod of approval from kharama, mkenyon and co? :)

Hurry up Maxwell and Occulus... I'm waiting...

I need a hand-me-down computer part from Kharma for my computer to be complete.
 
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