"I Need a New PC!" 2014 Part 2. Read OP, your 2500K will run Witcher 3. MX100s! 970!

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So I am planning to construct a build around the i7-5930k and possibly the 880GTX. I kind of want to go balls to the wall. Do you think the added premium in price for this processor and the motherboard and DDR4 RAM is worth the cost if it will primarily be used for heavy gaming? I don't do any intensive video editing or 3D rendering or anything like that.

I would put my budget around $2000-$2250 not including monitors or peripherals. Does anyone want to either help me plan a build or try to talk me off this ledge? lol

I can't be the only one who read that as 8800GTX and thought I'd gone back in time 8 years, right?
 
Nope won't be of any use for gaming. By the time I see hex cores becoming useful, there will be quad cores that outclass them. DDR4 another gimmick as of right now, there is plenty of bandwidth in dual channel 1866 CL10 that nothing is taking advantage of.

Go for a 4790K rig with dual 880's.

Do we know the estimated cost of the 880s yet?

If I do the 4790k rig I might use some of the extra money on a new monitor.
 
Nope won't be of any use for gaming. By the time I see hex cores becoming useful, there will be quad cores that outclass them. DDR4 another gimmick as of right now, there is plenty of bandwidth in dual channel 1866 CL10 that nothing is taking advantage of.

Go for a 4790K rig with dual 880's.

Watchdogs tell us completly opposite - real next gen games like TW3 and Batman might see huge benefits from having 6/12 cores instead of 4/8 which we don't know yet as they haven't been benchmarked yet.

At least if you plan to stay at 60+ fps - but I don't think anyone who is willing to spend 2k usd on pc parts is going to be happy with console like quality.
 
Need help, my son wants to get a new PC for playing games primarily and also some school work using word etc.

I'm wanting to keep the price under £399. He wants to be able to play games such as Day Z and minecraft, likely more when he discovers steams store!

Can someone please recommend either a pre-built machine that can run games at decent quality with good constant FPS or a custom built machine that can do the same. Don't require a monitor that would be bought separately.

Thanks in advance to anyone who can help, I have no clue about buying PC's so that's why I ask
 
Watchdogs tell us completly opposite - real next gen games like TW3 and Batman might see huge benefits from having 6/12 cores instead of 4/8 which we don't know yet as they haven't been benchmarked yet.

At least if you plan to stay at 60+ fps - but I don't think anyone who is willing to spend 2k usd on pc parts is going to be happy with console like quality.

Theres lots of guesses being made, so we will just have to see. I cant say that Watch_Dogs is a good example considering that game stutters on my PC on a GTX 780 at 720p... And it isnt because of my CPU which sits around 50-60%.

I think if i really wanted a hexcore machine, just get a 3930k and an X79 board with DDR3, with all that money saved you can again put it towards a better GPU setup. The Sandy Bridge-E chips overclock really well too.
 
At least if you plan to stay at 60+ fps - but I don't think anyone who is willing to spend 2k usd on pc parts is going to be happy with console like quality.

I am happy with consoles. I pretty much buy everything, I like gadgets and I often like the exclusives on the consoles. But I naturally want my PC to blow that shit out of the water.

And if anyone is curious, my current build is i5-3570K, GTX 680 2GB, 8GB DDR3 2133. So it isn't a POS by any means, but it is starting to feel dated. My plan for this guy is to build an arcade cab and use this computer as the guts and play SFIV and other fighting and arcade games on.
 
Games have historically been VERY slow to adopt multi-core optimization. I imagine a reason is developing multiple optimization paths is a challenge and when >4 cores is so rare, it's unlikely they are going to invest the resources.

I wouldn't bank on a 6-core CPU providing that much benefit for gaming in the coming years.
 
Need help, my son wants to get a new PC for playing games primarily and also some school work using word etc.

I'm wanting to keep the price under £399. He wants to be able to play games such as Day Z and minecraft, likely more when he discovers steams store!

Can someone please recommend either a pre-built machine that can run games at decent quality with good constant FPS or a custom built machine that can do the same. Don't require a monitor that would be bought separately.

Thanks in advance to anyone who can help, I have no clue about buying PC's so that's why I ask

Something like this
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Pentium G3258 3.2GHz Dual-Core Processor (£45.99 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: ASRock H81M-ITX Mini ITX LGA1150 Motherboard (£51.70 @ Amazon UK)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£59.98 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£39.98 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: XFX Radeon R9 270X 2GB Double Dissipation Video Card (£132.47 @ CCL Computers)
Case: Cooler Master Elite 130 Mini ITX Tower Case (£37.82 @ CCL Computers)
Power Supply: XFX ProSeries 450W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply (£40.50 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £408.44
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-08-22 16:33 BST+0100

You can overclock the Pentium G3258 on the board ive picked.
 
Something like this
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Pentium G3258 3.2GHz Dual-Core Processor (£45.99 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: ASRock H81M-ITX Mini ITX LGA1150 Motherboard (£51.70 @ Amazon UK)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£59.98 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£39.98 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: XFX Radeon R9 270X 2GB Double Dissipation Video Card (£132.47 @ CCL Computers)
Case: Cooler Master Elite 130 Mini ITX Tower Case (£37.82 @ CCL Computers)
Power Supply: XFX ProSeries 450W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply (£40.50 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £408.44
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-08-22 16:33 BST+0100

You can overclock the Pentium G3258 on the board ive picked.


Would this need to be built by myself? Also what kind of performance on taxing games such as Arma 3 give him?
 
Would this need to be built by myself? Also what kind of performance on taxing games such as Arma 3 give him?

Yeah you would have to put it togethor, but its no more than slotting things into the right places. Theres some guides in the OP so you can familiarise yourself. You will get all the cables necessary to complete the build with just the parts ive listed.

I think Arma 3 is quite a heavy game, heres a graph showing how it performs with Very High 1080p settings
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-r9-280x-r9-270x-r7-260x,3635-8.html

Ideally if you can overclock the Pentium G3258 to something like 4Ghz, it would help too. But this is very good value for £400, not going to get a prebuilt to do anything close.

Its not too shabby, and other games like minecraft will have no issues whatsoever. Are there any other games that you have in mind?

You will also need a copy of Windows, you can check out the reddit softwareswap group to get a copy (serial key) for a fiver. You can download the Win 8 ISO legally from MS.
 
At the moment he's interested in playing Day Z, BF4, borderlands 2, rust, cs:go and other less heavy games than Arma.

Considering this option for x-mas or selling my MacBook Pro and getting a desktop iMac with 12gb of RAM and 3.0ghz quad core for my work and then installing parallels on it to play some PC games so that we don't need two stations
 
(1) Is http://pcpartpicker.com/ down for anyone else?
(2) I had XP on my old build and I just added an SSD with WIndows 7 to it. How to I run programs that had originally been installed into the old HDD?
Reinstall them
At the moment he's interested in playing Day Z, BF4, borderlands 2, rust, cs:go and other less heavy games than Arma.

Considering this option for x-mas or selling my MacBook Pro and getting a desktop iMac with 12gb of RAM and 3.0ghz quad core for my work and then installing parallels on it to play some PC games so that we don't need two stations
the build posted would perform better than the imac
 
At the moment he's interested in playing Day Z, BF4, borderlands 2, rust, cs:go and other less heavy games than Arma.

Considering this option for x-mas or selling my MacBook Pro and getting a desktop iMac with 12gb of RAM and 3.0ghz quad core for my work and then installing parallels on it to play some PC games so that we don't need two stations

The iMac wont be very good at playing games either, may get away with Rust, CS, and Day Z at best. Mac has piss poor drivers when trying to run Windows too and will run very close to its thermal limits with any moderate loads. The iMac runs a laptop GPU, ~GTX 750M and is priced silly. For £1500 id expect a GTX 780 and i7 4690k.

You know you could build a way better desktop and run OSX on it too. That way you really have the best of both. Google for hackintosh. Insanelymac forum is a good place to read.
 
At the moment he's interested in playing Day Z, BF4, borderlands 2, rust, cs:go and other less heavy games than Arma.

Considering this option for x-mas or selling my MacBook Pro and getting a desktop iMac with 12gb of RAM and 3.0ghz quad core for my work and then installing parallels on it to play some PC games so that we don't need two stations

You really won't be able to run those games on an iMac very well, the 400£ build will actually do better on them because the iMac is using a laptop GPU, and not a very good one either. For 800-1000£ you'll be able to build a rig that handles both games and work like a beast, so you and your son could both use that and you probably won't even have to sell your Macbook Pro (depending on how much you were expecting to get for it).

Alternatively, the suggested 400£ build will at least run all the games your son will want to play, and max out a few of them too, so you could just stick with that. You do need to overclock the processor, but don't be intimidated by this as its easier than its made out to be. You might want to consider a better cooler than the one that's included {such as a CoolerMaster Hyper 212 Evo) if you care about sound and have money to spare.
 
Any of you guys know of a good external drive thats 2tb or larger, 7200 rpm, AND is USB3 powered? (No power cord) I'm debating on which Xbox One bundle to snag (I know slightly off topic) and it seems the required installs for disc based games really eat up the drive space. I can't seem to find a drive thats 7200 rpm USB powered and is 2tb+. I only have so many power outlets lol.
 
Any of you guys know of a good external drive thats 2tb or larger, 7200 rpm, AND is USB3 powered? (No power cord) I'm debating on which Xbox One bundle to snag (I know slightly off topic) and it seems the required installs for disc based games really eat up the drive space. I can't seem to find a drive thats 7200 rpm USB powered and is 2tb+. I only have so many power outlets lol.

I have the Samsung D3 Station 2TB USB3 to store spare movies and games and it works perfectly. It uses a Seagate drive, which is a very reliable brand. However, it does have a power cord. I don't know if larger drives exist without a power cord.

Also, if you don't have a Gaming PC yet, I strongly, strongly encourage you to reconsider buying an Xbone over a PC. Unless you have a lot of friends that play there, the PC does everything a console does better, and a lot more too.
 
I have the Samsung D3 Station 2TB USB3 to store spare movies and games and it works perfectly. It uses a Seagate drive, which is a very reliable brand. However, it does have a power cord. I don't know if larger drives exist without a power cord.

Also, if you don't have a Gaming PC yet, I strongly, strongly encourage you to reconsider buying an Xbone over a PC. Unless you have a lot of friends that play there, the PC does everything a console does better, and a lot more too.

Oh yeah I have a gaming pc (with SSD hence the desire to find at least a 7200 rpm drive) this would just be for exclusives (halo etc.) I'm really short on power outlets though so I was trying to find a USB3 drive that doesn't have a power cord but is fast and larger than 1tb.
 
Any of you guys know of a good external drive thats 2tb or larger, 7200 rpm, AND is USB3 powered? (No power cord) I'm debating on which Xbox One bundle to snag (I know slightly off topic) and it seems the required installs for disc based games really eat up the drive space. I can't seem to find a drive thats 7200 rpm USB powered and is 2tb+. I only have so many power outlets lol.
Buy a 7200 RPM drive that you like, and put it in an enclosure. That's all external drives are.
 
Quick question, I have GTX 570 and 2500K. I want to upgrade the Video card (Nvidia). Which card is the best bang for the buck? Don't want to buy something that my PC will have a bottleneck with. At the same time something with significant jump in power vs. the 570.
 
Quick question, I have GTX 570 and 2500K. I want to upgrade the Video card (Nvidia). Which card is the best bang for the buck? Don't want to buy something that my PC will have a bottleneck with. At the same time something with significant jump in power vs. the 570.
Budget?
 
Quick question, I have GTX 570 and 2500K. I want to upgrade the Video card (Nvidia). Which card is the best bang for the buck? Don't want to buy something that my PC will have a bottleneck with. At the same time something with significant jump in power vs. the 570.

How much do you want to spend? You can put anything you want in there. New high end Nvidia cards are apparently close to launch so might be worth waiting if you want to spend 770/780 money.
 
Quick question, I have GTX 570 and 2500K. I want to upgrade the Video card (Nvidia). Which card is the best bang for the buck? Don't want to buy something that my PC will have a bottleneck with. At the same time something with significant jump in power vs. the 570.

Kind of a bad spot for nVidia at the moment. 770 is like $320 but the 780 is like $430 (on sale). I'd say wait for the 800 series and hope they have something in your budget range.

I'm in almost exactly the same situation DeVeAn. I'm doing what The Llama is suggesting and waiting for the 800 series. Thinking 870 or 880 if I can swing it.
 
Oh yeah I have a gaming pc (with SSD hence the desire to find at least a 7200 rpm drive) this would just be for exclusives (halo etc.) I'm really short on power outlets though so I was trying to find a USB3 drive that doesn't have a power cord but is fast and larger than 1tb.

As mkenyon says, you could just buy a drive and an enclosure. However, this drive is cheaper than a 2TB internal drive, and it is USB powered, so it seems that this is the best pick. Although I couldn't find any specs on RPM on the website, this site say it is 7200RPM, which is also stated in user reviews.
 
Games have historically been VERY slow to adopt multi-core optimization. I imagine a reason is developing multiple optimization paths is a challenge and when >4 cores is so rare, it's unlikely they are going to invest the resources.

I wouldn't bank on a 6-core CPU providing that much benefit for gaming in the coming years.

Don't Mantle and DX12 suggest otherwise? Correct me if I'm wrong but the slow adoption of cores was more API related than anything, right?
 
Don't Mantle and DX12 suggest otherwise? Correct me if I'm wrong but the slow adoption of cores was more API related than anything, right?

Partly, and also because high-end games don't "need" 6 cores and above.
That will change, modern engine will be able to keep a 6 high IPC cores busy.
 
Don't Mantle and DX12 suggest otherwise? Correct me if I'm wrong but the slow adoption of cores was more API related than anything, right?

Partly, and also because high-end games don't "need" 6 cores and above.
That will change, modern engine will be able to keep a 6 high IPC cores busy.

Honestly I don't know enough about the engines to say that. All I know is the adoption of the higher cores for gaming has been super slow. When I was buying my core2duo, quad cores were out but showed almost no performance improvements for the life of my CPU despite the claim of many that 4 core support would be coming. The 4 core adoption rate has seem just as slow.

Is there even a single modern game that take advantage of >4 cores? I'd like to see some benchmarks. Until that happens, I don't see any value in paying a premium (assuming it will be more expensive) for non-adopted technology just to try and future proof. Put that extra money where you know it will be of value - like the GPU.
 
Don't Mantle and DX12 suggest otherwise? Correct me if I'm wrong but the slow adoption of cores was more API related than anything, right?
This is true to an extent, but keep in mind that when DX12 launches it's not like all of a sudden all of the games will be DX12. That'll still take awhile for adoption. So we're definitely a few years out.
Is there even a single modern game that take advantage of >4 cores? I'd like to see some benchmarks. Until that happens, I don't see any value in paying a premium (assuming it will be more expensive) for non-adopted technology just to try and future proof. Put that extra money where you know it will be of value - like the GPU.
Civilization V is fully n-threaded and will make any processor cry in pain.

civv-lgv-nr.gif
 
Any advice fellas?

I've been thinking of joining Team SLI, but I have a few questions that hopefully don't cause a problem:

I have a 6gb 780 with the ACX cooler, does anyone have experience with these in SLI?

I've heard that the top card tends significantly differ in temperature, since it sucks up all of the heat from the bottom card.

How about instead buying a reference card and putting that one on top and the ACX card on the bottom? Has anyone tried this set up?

Also, how would combining a 3gb card work with my 6gb card?

I have a Mid sized Define R4 with the stock front and back fans.

The obvious advice would be to wait for the 880s, but I really want to try and get a deal on a second 780 once the 880s release and prices drop, especially during the black friday/cyber Monday deals.
 
Is there even a single modern game that take advantage of >4 cores? I'd like to see some benchmarks. Until that happens, I don't see any value in paying a premium (assuming it will be more expensive) for non-adopted technology just to try and future proof. Put that extra money where you know it will be of value - like the GPU.

This review has some good benchmarks. I think that the Pentium Anniversary offers the best comparison, because it is a Haswell based Dual Core with clock speeds similar to an i5. It shows that in most games like Battlefield 4, Tomb Raider, etc. a Titan isn't bottlenecked by this CPU. But in Arma and Metro:LL it is limited. I guess we can say that even Quad cores arent widely taken advantage of, so a hexacore i7 is probably overkill for a long time...
 
This is true to an extent, but keep in mind that when DX12 launches it's not like all of a sudden all of the games will be DX12. That'll still take awhile for adoption. So we're definitely a few years out.

Civilization V is fully n-threaded and will make any processor cry in pain.

civv-lgv-nr.gif

This review has some good benchmarks. I think that the Pentium Anniversary offers the best comparison, because it is a Haswell based Dual Core with clock speeds similar to an i5. It shows that in most games like Battlefield 4, Tomb Raider, etc. a Titan isn't bottlenecked by this CPU. But in Arma and Metro:LL it is limited. I guess we can say that even Quad cores arent widely taken advantage of, so a hexacore i7 is probably overkill for a long time...

Good to know. I think it's safe to say that not every game is going to benefit from the additional cores. It will be a toss up how many will moving down the line. I just hope people don't blanket statement - "Buy the 6 core because that's the future". I know inevitably people will but I see the money better spent elsewhere for now.
 
Any advice fellas?

I've been thinking of joining Team SLI, but I have a few questions that hopefully don't cause a problem:

I have a 6gb 780 with the ACX cooler, does anyone have experience with these in SLI?

I've heard that the top card tends significantly differ in temperature, since it sucks up all of the heat from the bottom card.

How about instead buying a reference card and putting that one on top and the ACX card on the bottom? Has anyone tried this set up?

Also, how would combining a 3gb card work with my 6gb card?

I have a Mid sized Define R4 with the stock front and back fans.

The obvious advice would be to wait for the 880s, but I really want to try and get a deal on a second 780 once the 880s release and prices drop, especially during the black friday/cyber Monday deals.

SLI can work with ACX style coolers, but the cooling in your case needs to be on point. All of that air from two cards is dumped inside raising the temp of your other components.

You could buy a reference card and set it up like you said...personally it would bother me. I need them to be the same style, but it would work.

If you combine two different RAM amounts the 6GB card becomes limited by the first. In this case the 6GB card would only have 3GB usable VRAM.

Why are you wanting to go SLI? Have you ever done a multi GPU setup before? What is your PSU wattage?
 
+1 to Smokey's post. The Define isn't the greatest of cases for SLI due to the highly restricted front and rather cramped bottom 120mm mount.

It can be done, but things are definitely going to get toasty, even with a proper fan upgrade. What I'd do is give it a shot after replacing the fans with high static pressure replacements, such as the CoolerMaster Jetflo, Cougar Vortex, Arctic Cooling F12s, Noctuas, or Noiseblocker eLoops.

If you aren't happy with temps and/or noise, then think about swapping out the case. The fans would carry over to whatever you buy.

I'd prioritize 120mm versions, with two front intake, one bottom intake, and then swapping the current fans on the case to both exhaust.

With the right airflow, you really wouldn't need a reference card.
 
Is there much difference between a Gigabyte GA-Z97-D3H Motherboard and a Gigabyte Z97X-UD3H Motherboard ? I'm building a computer that I want to last quite a while but I'm not doing anything crazy with it. I dunno if it's worth spending $40 on the better motherboard.
The UD3H can support two graphics cards, whereas the D3H only supports one. Other than that, it's mostly a difference of material quality, power deliver quality, and connectivity. This theoretically means cooler performance and a longer life.
 
The Hyper 212-Evo may just be the most awkward and stress-inducing thing I've ever had to install in a PC, but the resulting 30c drop in CPU temperature makes it worth three hours of hair-pulling (One hour of which was due to the old stock-fan refusing to come out on one corner, had to eventually pretty much destroy the offending screw-end with a pair of pliers to get it out).
 
Your Current Specs: Just an old laptop
Budget: £1000 UK and i need monitor, OS
Main Use: Rate 1-5. 5 being Highest: Light Gaming, Gaming - 5, Emulation (PS2/Wii) - 1, Video Editing - 1, Streaming games in HD - 2, 3D/Model work (and what program) - 1, General Usage (Word, Web, 1080p playback) - 3.
Monitor Resolution: Need a monitor too
List SPECIFIC games or applications that you MUST be able to run well: UDK
Looking to reuse any parts?: List make and model (e.g. Corsair 520HX, 640GB SATA HDD, Antec 900)
When will you build?: My student loan comes in on 15th september so will be shortly after this.
Will you be overclocking?: No

I will be using it for Gaming and Programming.
 
SLI can work with ACX style coolers, but the cooling in your case needs to be on point. All of that air from two cards is dumped inside raising the temp of your other components.

You could buy a reference card and set it up like you said...personally it would bother me. I need them to be the same style, but it would work.

If you combine two different RAM amounts the 6GB card becomes limited by the first. In this case the 6GB card would only have 3GB usable VRAM.

Why are you wanting to go SLI? Have you ever done a multi GPU setup before? What is your PSU wattage?

Nope, never. This was actually my first build, so i'm not very familiar with the ideal temperatures or the best airflow. I'm hoping this setup will run future releases at 1440p/60fps and perhaps 4k/60fps for current games. I might buy the Asus 4k monitor.

As for the PSU, 750W, Gold certified. Would a PSU with higher wattage be necessary?

+1 to Smokey's post. The Define isn't the greatest of cases for SLI due to the highly restricted front and rather cramped bottom 120mm mount.

It can be done, but things are definitely going to get toasty, even with a proper fan upgrade. What I'd do is give it a shot after replacing the fans with high static pressure replacements, such as the CoolerMaster Jetflo, Cougar Vortex, Arctic Cooling F12s, Noctuas, or Noiseblocker eLoops.

If you aren't happy with temps and/or noise, then think about swapping out the case. The fans would carry over to whatever you buy.

I'd prioritize 120mm versions, with two front intake, one bottom intake, and then swapping the current fans on the case to both exhaust.

With the right airflow, you really wouldn't need a reference card.

As long as the performance is up to par, the aesthetic of having a different style card wouldn't really bother me, but if its not too complicated to set up my case with proper airflow to SLI ACX cards, then that'd be ideal.
 
I recently made a post about some upgrades I am considering.

From my 2600K to 4790K is the issue I'm having. I know for games there probably won't be much of a difference between the two. My question is will the new Broadwell CPU's be worth the wait? Is there going to be a 4790k equivalent?
 
I recently made a post about some upgrades I am considering.

From my 2600K to 4790K is the issue I'm having. I know for games there probably won't be much of a difference between the two. My question is will the new Broadwell CPU's be worth the wait? Is there going to be a 4790k equivalent?
Impossible to answer with enough information to base purchasing decisions on.
 
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