"I Need a New PC!" 2015 Part 1. Read the OP and RISE ABOVE FORGED PRECISION SCIENCE

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All of my want.

LL


LL


LL


Courtesy of 090517 @ Overclock.net.

Absolutely gorgeous.

Not really a fan of the "case" (if you can even call it that) but everything else... OMG.
 
We have different definitions of gorgeous.


But that's okay. PCs are awesome, whatever they look like. At least they're not consoles amirite lmao

I love buying a new video card after a few years and immediately all my games are upgraded to "remastered" editions

I'm with you. The great thing about PC building, though, is you can make it your own, and make it whatever looks appealing to you. To me this just looks gaudy and impractical.

Robocop, on the other hand...

LL

LL


More: http://www.overclock.net/t/1426275/build-log-robocop-finished

I aspire to this man's level of greatness (and income).
 
I'm a big fan of Dell's IPS monitors. The P2314H and U2412M seem to be in your price range and as an owner of the former, I love it. They have the additional side benefit of being able to OC to 74hz when connected via DisplayPort which is small but welcomed.

If you're willing to forego IPS's superior colours, take a look at the BenQ's in the same bracket.

So you own the P2314H? I looked at a few review vids for the ASUS MX239H and for gaming a few people mention ghosting issues. How's the P2314H when in a fast or FPS game? Does this monitor connect via DVI, with no HDMI option?
 
Stopped PC Gaming years ago, but now seems like a good time to get back into it.

Completely changed my build countless times in the last few weeks; but the amount of information is pretty overwhelming. Would love some expert-gaf advice.

Budget: ~£2200 in UK
Main Use: Gaming on Ultra at 1080p 60FPS and some 4K at Med/High ~40FPS (if possible)
Monitor Resolution: 4K TV
When will you build?: Hopefully start the build in the next few months
Will you be overclocking?: Definitely Maybe

Here's what I have so far:
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-5820K 3.3GHz 6-Core Processor (£305.94 @ Aria PC)
CPU Cooler: Corsair H110i GT 113.0 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler (£99.98 @ Aria PC)
Motherboard: Asus X99-DELUXE ATX LGA2011-3 Motherboard (£259.73 @ Amazon UK)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (4 x 4GB) DDR4-2400 Memory (£160.00 @ Scan.co.uk)
Storage: Samsung 850 Pro Series 512GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£232.55 @ More Computers)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX Titan X 12GB Video Card (£879.00 @ Dabs)
Case: Corsair Air 540 ATX Mid Tower Case (£115.72 @ Dabs)
Power Supply: Corsair RM 1000W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply (£125.99 @ CCL Computers)
Other: NZXT LED C​able (£10.99)
Total: £2189.90
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-03-23 21:39 GMT+0000

Help me Gaf.
 
I'm with you. The great thing about PC building, though, is you can make it your own, and make it whatever looks appealing to you. To me this just looks gaudy and impractical.

Robocop, on the other hand...

LL

LL


More: http://www.overclock.net/t/1426275/build-log-robocop-finished

I aspire to this man's level of greatness (and income).
Everything he does is fantastic. My only claim to fame is that he PM'd me before starting RoboCop saying he was inspired by my build log. I'm glad he took my idea and turned it to 11 with better execution.

His Parvum Titanfall is without a doubt my favorite build I've ever seen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVUmlFljBvs
Stopped PC Gaming years ago, but now seems like a good time to get back into it.

Completely changed my build countless times in the last few weeks; but the amount of information is pretty overwhelming. Would love some expert-gaf advice.

Budget: ~£2200 in UK
Main Use: Gaming on Ultra at 1080p 60FPS and some 4K at Med/High ~40FPS (if possible)
Monitor Resolution: 4K TV
When will you build?: Hopefully start the build in the next few months
Will you be overclocking?: Definitely Maybe

Here's what I have so far:
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-5820K 3.3GHz 6-Core Processor (£305.94 @ Aria PC)
CPU Cooler: Corsair H110i GT 113.0 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler (£99.98 @ Aria PC)
Motherboard: Asus X99-DELUXE ATX LGA2011-3 Motherboard (£259.73 @ Amazon UK)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (4 x 4GB) DDR4-2400 Memory (£160.00 @ Scan.co.uk)
Storage: Samsung 850 Pro Series 512GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£232.55 @ More Computers)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX Titan X 12GB Video Card (£879.00 @ Dabs)
Case: Corsair Air 540 ATX Mid Tower Case (£115.72 @ Dabs)
Power Supply: Corsair RM 1000W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply (£125.99 @ CCL Computers)
Other: NZXT LED C​able (£10.99)
Total: £2189.90
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-03-23 21:39 GMT+0000

Help me Gaf.
What I'd suggest is really dependent upon whether you see yourself going into SLI land or not. I'll give you two options, one is a more streamlined version of what you picked out with enough room for SLI in the future.

The second is great build with a smaller footprint and some added goodies that will be an amazing single card system.

Option 1:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-5820K 3.3GHz 6-Core Processor (£305.94 @ Aria PC)
CPU Cooler: Corsair H100i 77.0 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler (£79.99 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: Asus X99-A ATX LGA2011-3 Motherboard (£192.33 @ Amazon UK)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (4 x 4GB) DDR4-2400 Memory (£160.00 @ Scan.co.uk)
Storage: Crucial MX200 500GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£162.49 @ CCL Computers)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX Titan X 12GB Video Card (£879.00 @ Dabs)
Case: Corsair Air 540 ATX Mid Tower Case (£115.72 @ Dabs)
Power Supply: Cooler Master V1000 1000W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply (£124.98 @ Scan.co.uk)
Other: NZXT LED C​able (£10.99)
Total: £2031.44
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-03-23 21:53 GMT+0000

Option 2:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-4790K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor (£267.54 @ Aria PC)
CPU Cooler: Corsair H100i 77.0 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler (£90.11 @ Aria PC)
Motherboard: Asus Z97M-PLUS Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (£99.99 @ Amazon UK)
Memory: Crucial 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£97.69 @ More Computers)
Storage: Crucial MX200 500GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£162.49 @ CCL Computers)
Video Card: Gainward GeForce GTX 980 4GB Phantom Video Card (£422.06 @ Amazon UK)
Case: Phanteks Enthoo EVOLV MicroATX Mini Tower Case (£89.17 @ Scan.co.uk)
Power Supply: EVGA 750W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply (£90.11 @ Amazon UK)
Sound Card: Asus Xonar DGX 24-bit 96 KHz Sound Card (£26.39 @ Aria PC)
Monitor: Asus ROG SWIFT PG278Q 144Hz 27.0" Monitor (£571.14 @ Aria PC)
Mouse: Corsair Sabre Wired Optical Mouse (£48.95 @ Amazon UK)
Headphones: Beyerdynamic DT 990 Pro 250 Headphones (£116.24 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £2081.88
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-03-23 22:05 GMT+0000

Dropping the Titan for a 980 gives you a 1440p G-Sync monitor capable of 144Hz or 120Hz with Ultra Low Motion Blur (ULMB), better sound, amazing cans, and a great mouse. There's an IPS G-Sync Monitor coming out within a week or two as well.

When the GTX 1080 inevitably comes out, it will be a $500 version of the GTX Titan X with like 2-5% less performance and 6GB VRAM. The Titan is something that most people shouldn't have.
 
I have a really weird problem and I don't know how to fix it not sure if this is an appropriate place to ask. All my time working in IT i've never seen anything like it.

Basically my hard drive is filling itself up. Every day I get on and a little more space is gone. The only thing I could think of is system restore creating new files so I went in and shrank the reserved section for system restore down to about 5GB and reclaimed a ton of space.

A few weeks later and I'm down to a few GB again. My documents, downloads, etc folders are all empty. Virus scan with avast turns up nothing. CCleaner has restored a few GB but that's it I'm still missing about 75GB that has gone seemingly nowhere. My steam games install to a secondary HDD with a much larger capacity so that's not the issue. Clearing browser caches, history, etc frees up a few MB at most I'm honestly at a loss.
 
Stopped PC Gaming years ago, but now seems like a good time to get back into it.

Completely changed my build countless times in the last few weeks; but the amount of information is pretty overwhelming. Would love some expert-gaf advice.

Budget: ~£2200 in UK
Main Use: Gaming on Ultra at 1080p 60FPS and some 4K at Med/High ~40FPS (if possible)
Monitor Resolution: 4K TV
When will you build?: Hopefully start the build in the next few months
Will you be overclocking?: Definitely Maybe

Here's what I have so far:
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-5820K 3.3GHz 6-Core Processor (£305.94 @ Aria PC)
CPU Cooler: Corsair H110i GT 113.0 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler (£99.98 @ Aria PC)
Motherboard: Asus X99-DELUXE ATX LGA2011-3 Motherboard (£259.73 @ Amazon UK)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (4 x 4GB) DDR4-2400 Memory (£160.00 @ Scan.co.uk)
Storage: Samsung 850 Pro Series 512GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£232.55 @ More Computers)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX Titan X 12GB Video Card (£879.00 @ Dabs)
Case: Corsair Air 540 ATX Mid Tower Case (£115.72 @ Dabs)
Power Supply: Corsair RM 1000W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply (£125.99 @ CCL Computers)
Other: NZXT LED C​able (£10.99)
Total: £2189.90
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-03-23 21:39 GMT+0000

Help me Gaf.

Pretty good rig, that is if you are looking to SLI.
 
Gah, now I'm unsure of monitor choice...

First was going with the ASUS MX239H since I have co-workers tell me it's what they use, but seeing a few vids about ghosting issues suggest it isn't optimal for fast or FPS gaming...

Was also suggested some other ASUS monitors, but they're fairly similar to this, at least from what I can tell. One had no IPS, like the ASUS VN247H-P.

Then another suggestion for the Dell P2314H, but I can't seem to find videos that show how it operates while gaming. Also lacks HDMI ports which would help with streaming...

And after browsing around, I stumbled on the BenQ RL2460HT, really low lag and optimized to prevent motion blur, and has HDMI ports ideal for lag-free streaming, but no IPS screen for best color...


So far I think the BenQ offers most of what I'm looking for, sacrificing color quality with no IPS.

Any additional opinions would help, had one vouching for the Dell P2314H being higher quality than the ASUS MX239H.
 
So you own the P2314H? I looked at a few review vids for the ASUS MX239H and for gaming a few people mention ghosting issues. How's the P2314H when in a fast or FPS game? Does this monitor connect via DVI, with no HDMI option?

Yeah, I own the P2314H. There's no HDMI option for it, just VGA, DVI-D and DisplayPort. I use DisplayPort for the increase in refresh rate, as I mentioned earlier. I can't exactly compare it to lower response time TN panels because I don't have any at home but I've never felt noticeably slow response with it. It's rated at 8ms and I honestly don't feel anything when playing CS:GO or DOTA. It's the same with ghosting - I just don't perceive any of it. I just really dig the monitor as a whole package. I think the panel itself looks great, it's pretty well built, good warranty, etc.

To a better trained eye, I'm sure the P2314H isn't the best option for gaming, but I've had no problems with it in about 8 months of gaming on it and I love using it. If fast responsiveness and you are a perfectionist when it comes to getting a monitor purely for gaming, then yeah, there are probably better alternatives, and I can't pretend otherwise. Just think it's a quality monitor for the price. :>
 
I have a really weird problem and I don't know how to fix it not sure if this is an appropriate place to ask. All my time working in IT i've never seen anything like it.

Basically my hard drive is filling itself up. Every day I get on and a little more space is gone. The only thing I could think of is system restore creating new files so I went in and shrank the reserved section for system restore down to about 5GB and reclaimed a ton of space.

A few weeks later and I'm down to a few GB again. My documents, downloads, etc folders are all empty. Virus scan with avast turns up nothing. CCleaner has restored a few GB but that's it I'm still missing about 75GB that has gone seemingly nowhere. My steam games install to a secondary HDD with a much larger capacity so that's not the issue. Clearing browser caches, history, etc frees up a few MB at most I'm honestly at a loss.
Have you taken a gander through your C: drive to see what folder is taking up all the space? Just start right clicking on folders and looking at properties.
 
I have a really weird problem and I don't know how to fix it not sure if this is an appropriate place to ask. All my time working in IT i've never seen anything like it.

Basically my hard drive is filling itself up. Every day I get on and a little more space is gone. The only thing I could think of is system restore creating new files so I went in and shrank the reserved section for system restore down to about 5GB and reclaimed a ton of space.

A few weeks later and I'm down to a few GB again. My documents, downloads, etc folders are all empty. Virus scan with avast turns up nothing. CCleaner has restored a few GB but that's it I'm still missing about 75GB that has gone seemingly nowhere. My steam games install to a secondary HDD with a much larger capacity so that's not the issue. Clearing browser caches, history, etc frees up a few MB at most I'm honestly at a loss.

Have you taken a gander through your C: drive to see what folder is taking up all the space? Just start right clicking on folders and looking at properties.
Try WinDirStat.
 
So what non-usb headsets are popular these days? I've gone through about 4 or 5 pairs of steelseries 5h v2's over the years. Time for something new £40-80 budget.
 
Stopped PC Gaming years ago, but now seems like a good time to get back into it.

Completely changed my build countless times in the last few weeks; but the amount of information is pretty overwhelming. Would love some expert-gaf advice.

Budget: ~£2200 in UK
Main Use: Gaming on Ultra at 1080p 60FPS and some 4K at Med/High ~40FPS (if possible)
Monitor Resolution: 4K TV
When will you build?: Hopefully start the build in the next few months
Will you be overclocking?: Definitely Maybe

Here's what I have so far:
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-5820K 3.3GHz 6-Core Processor (£305.94 @ Aria PC)
CPU Cooler: Corsair H110i GT 113.0 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler (£99.98 @ Aria PC)
Motherboard: Asus X99-DELUXE ATX LGA2011-3 Motherboard (£259.73 @ Amazon UK)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (4 x 4GB) DDR4-2400 Memory (£160.00 @ Scan.co.uk)
Storage: Samsung 850 Pro Series 512GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£232.55 @ More Computers)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX Titan X 12GB Video Card (£879.00 @ Dabs)
Case: Corsair Air 540 ATX Mid Tower Case (£115.72 @ Dabs)
Power Supply: Corsair RM 1000W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply (£125.99 @ CCL Computers)
Other: NZXT LED C​able (£10.99)
Total: £2189.90
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-03-23 21:39 GMT+0000

Help me Gaf.
If I were in your shoes I'd consider waiting to see if a 6Gb+ 980Ti drops in the next little while and put 2 of those in a config something like this:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-5820K 3.3GHz 6-Core Processor (£305.94 @ Aria PC)
CPU Cooler: Corsair H110i GT 113.0 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler (£99.98 @ Aria PC)
Motherboard: Asus X99-DELUXE ATX LGA2011-3 Motherboard (£259.73 @ Amazon UK)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (4 x 4GB) DDR4-2400 Memory (£160.00 @ Scan.co.uk)
Storage: Samsung 850 Pro Series 512GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£232.55 @ More Computers)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 980 4GB Superclocked ACX 2.0 Video Card (2-Way SLI) (£457.16 @ Aria PC)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 980 4GB Superclocked ACX 2.0 Video Card (2-Way SLI) (£457.16 @ Aria PC)
Case: Corsair Air 540 ATX Mid Tower Case (£115.72 @ Dabs)
Power Supply: EVGA 850W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply (£99.99 @ Amazon UK)
Other: NZXT LED C​able (£10.99)
Total: £2199.22
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

SLI is really the best option for gaming at 4k, but I'm not at all sure 4Gb is going to cut it.

Edit: Depending on price and benchmarks crossfire 390X is of course an option also.
 
Alright GAF, I’m ready to make my first PC. Wanted to get some opinions before I start ordering things.


As per OP, here’s some BACKGROUND:

Budget: ~$1300 (US), ~$200 for Monitor

Main Use: Multi-genre gaming; not playing just high-graphic games. Never played things like Battlefield on high settings with 60 FPS, but if this can do it I wouldn’t mind giving it a spin. Gonna do occasional Photoshop and Illustrator, and Stream console game video into the PC for Twitch via my Elgato HD60. *IF* it can handle streaming a PC game on Twitch that would be cool, but if this can’t handle it then I’ll have to worry about that later.

Monitor Resolution: I’ve never played high-graphic games at 1080p, so I’ll more likely start with this, I think the monitor I’m looking at can do it, it’s listed in the parts.

When will you build?: I’d ideally like to order the parts in the next day or two. Once the parts come in, PC should be put together in a week.

Will you be overclocking?: No, I have friends that will help me make the computer since I’ve never done it before, so don’t have any desire to mess with parts since I couldn’t fix it myself. The last 4 years I’ve used an all-in-one for gaming and this new PC will be much stronger than what I’m used to already.

QUESTIONS:

The two graphics cards I’ve listed, I don’t know the difference between them?
Would the parts I have fit into the Corsair Air 240 case?
Do I need to get anything for static protection?
Does thermal paste come with the heatsink/fan?
Could I dual monitor in the future with this part set?
Are the ribs on the top of RAM just for show?
If I’m recording footage from my console, could I just save the video directly to an external drive through the computer so it doesn’t take up the space of my SSD?

Thanks.

Here, I took the liberty of putting your build into PCPartPicker and adjusting it a bit for best cost.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-4690K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor ($227.99 @ SuperBiiz)
CPU Cooler: Corsair H105 73.0 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler ($99.99 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z97MX-Gaming 5 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($118.75 @ Directron)
Memory: G.Skill Sniper Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-2400 Memory ($104.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Crucial BX100 500GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($179.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Toshiba 3TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($97.74 @ Amazon)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 970 4GB SSC ACX 2.0 Video Card ($329.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Corsair Air 240 MicroATX Mid Tower Case ($74.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: EVGA 750W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($59.99 @ NCIX US)
Total: $1294.42
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-03-23 18:17 EDT-0400

Now, on to your questions:

1. The 2974 model is the Superclocked edition, while the 3975 model is the SuperSC model, which is newer, faster, and has better features like a semi-fanless mode and an improved cooler.
2. The build I listed for you takes that into account, I changed some of your parts for alternative ones that do fit, like the motherboard and cooler.
3. While building the PC? You could get an anti-static wristband and an anti-static mat for putting PC parts on while you and your friends assemble it, but as long as you take the necessary precautions to periodically ground yourself, you can avoid the extra cost.
4. Yes. IIRC in the case of the Corsair H105 cooler I am recommending, it is pre-applied to the base of the pump and you do not have to apply it yourself.
5. Yep. The GTX 970 is capable of triple monitors, I believe.
6. Most of the time, yes. Only RAM that is being overclocked and running at higher voltages (up to 1.65V) would possibly have a need for metal heatspreaders, even then it's kind of iffy, usually if the case has enough airflow it's fine. The G.Skill RAM that I am recommending you does have an moderately large metal heatspreader, but because the Air 240 case doesn't really fit a tower style air cooler that you wanted and we usually recommend, you'll have to go with water cooler instead (that's what the Air 240 is really meant for) and in that case, there's no need to choose RAM with lower height and smaller heatspreader.
7. That will probably depend on the Elgato HD60's abilities and software, which I don't have any experience with. I think it would work, but if you want to capture high quality footage, going with a internal hard drive or USB 3.0 external drive would work best so you wouldn't get bottlenecked by a slow hard drive connection. The build I recommended does have a decent 2TB or 3TB hard drive for storage in the budget, though.

You didn't list a price for Windows 7, does that mean you already own a copy you're going to use?

Okay, so here's my current build: It now has the MSI motherboard (the ASRock motherboard is actually more expensive before MIR) and the case is currently a Thermaltake V21 (or possibly a Thermaltake S1 if I get to read through more reviews).

No video card since GTX 960 is still somewhat backordered in Canada, so I'll wait until it gets a formal release up here. No more networking card either.

I'm still waffling about the PSU though.

PCPartPicker part list

Well, now that you don't need to buy the Gigabyte wifi card, you could spend more on a more reliable power supply. In order from least expensive to most expensive:

EVGA 600B 600 watt power supply for $54 after $10 rebate
- the cheapest model I'd recommend.
XFX TS series 550 watt power supply for $60 after $10 rebate - slightly lower capacity than the one above, but much better quality considering that XFX power supplies are actually rebranded Seasonic designs.
XFX TS series 650 watt power supply for $80 after $20 rebate - plenty of power for just about any single graphics card you want want to upgrade to in the future, barring power-hungry monsters like the R9 295X2.

I'm getting into capturing and editing game footage as a hobby. Just looking to do it on a small YouTube channel in my free time but I do care about having a good quality about it. I already have both a Elgato HD and Elgato HD60 from capturing some test footage before, but I really would like to take the next step. Here is my current computer setup:

Alienware M14xR1
  • Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit Service Pack 1
  • 2nd Generation Intel Core i7
  • 2670QM CPU @ 2.20GHz
  • 1600x900 display 14.1”
  • 8GB DDR3 1330 Mhz
  • 500GB
  • Nvidia GeForce GT 555M
  • Realtek ALC665 High-Definition
  • DVD+/-RW 8x SATA

Is this setup good enough to get the job done? I am somewhat interested in Mac, but I'm not sure where in the Mac line I should be looking for this. Any help would be appreciated.

How did the test footage come out? If it was fine, then I don't see a need for a better computer, unless you wanted to play games on higher settings. Hard to recommend a Mac as I'm certain you could spend much less and get a much stronger PC for gaming.
 
If I were in your shoes I'd consider waiting to see if a 6Gb+ 980Ti drops in the next little while and put 2 of those in a config something like this:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-5820K 3.3GHz 6-Core Processor (£305.94 @ Aria PC)
CPU Cooler: Corsair H110i GT 113.0 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler (£99.98 @ Aria PC)
Motherboard: Asus X99-DELUXE ATX LGA2011-3 Motherboard (£259.73 @ Amazon UK)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (4 x 4GB) DDR4-2400 Memory (£160.00 @ Scan.co.uk)
Storage: Samsung 850 Pro Series 512GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£232.55 @ More Computers)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 980 4GB Superclocked ACX 2.0 Video Card (2-Way SLI) (£457.16 @ Aria PC)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 980 4GB Superclocked ACX 2.0 Video Card (2-Way SLI) (£457.16 @ Aria PC)
Case: Corsair Air 540 ATX Mid Tower Case (£115.72 @ Dabs)
Power Supply: EVGA 850W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply (£99.99 @ Amazon UK)
Other: NZXT LED C​able (£10.99)
Total: £2199.22
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

SLI is really the best option for gaming at 4k, but I'm not at all sure 4Gb is going to cut it.

Edit: Depending on price and benchmarks crossfire 390X is of course an option also.

Thanks everyone!

When do you foresee the 980Ti being announced/released? And how is SLI support in modern games? All good?
 
Thanks everyone!

When do you foresee the 980Ti being announced/released? And how is SLI support in modern games? All good?
No 980 Ti. It'll be the 1080 and 1080 Ti.

Essentially, this will perfectly mirror the 680/Titan/780 releases.

The 780 was a slightly cut down Titan (less compute performance) with nearly identical gaming performance. The 1080 will be that same card. It'll be out anywhere from 6 months to a year from now, best guess.

The 680 and 980 are the same segment of chip. The 680 was the full mid-range Kepler chip. The 980 is the full mid-range Maxwell chip.

The Titan/780 were the high end Kepler chip (GK110), and the Titan X/1080 are the high end Maxwell chip (GM200).
 
Has anyone done a Corsair air 540 build with a dual bay reservoir? I want one but i'd love to use my XSPC Dual bay res without any real modifications ( i don't have the tools for that).
 
Has anyone done a Corsair air 540 build with a dual bay reservoir? I want one but i'd love to use my XSPC Dual bay res without any real modifications ( i don't have the tools for that).
I haven't, but as someone who has used two of their Dual Bay Reservoirs as well as done a 540 build with water, I would not recommend it.

Just get an inexpensive tube res. Trust me, it's an upgrade anyway. It drastically reduces the noise from the pump. It's well worth the slightly more complicated plumbing, but you can get the Air 540 super clean.

(excuse the shit pic, I didn't have the time to get it all right as I was setting it up for a LAN)


I put the res on the back side, and just routed using the cable grommets for the tubing.
 
I haven't, but as someone who has used two of their Dual Bay Reservoirs as well as done a 540 build with water, I would not recommend it.

Just get an inexpensive tube res. Trust me, it's an upgrade anyway. It drastically reduces the noise from the pump. It's well worth the slightly more complicated plumbing, but you can get the Air 540 super clean.

(excuse the shit pic, I didn't have the time to get it all right as I was setting it up for a LAN)



I put the res on the back side, and just routed using the cable grommets for the tubing.

The upgrade will probably be done whenever i have enough money for the new R9 390X and a water block (Student life :/). I'm fine with a tube res, it just seems that i need much more stuff to actually hold that thing in place.
So far i found 2 pictures on the net with a dual bay res in a corsair air 540, but one did some case modifications and the other did not show the back.
 
Nah, it should come with whatever mounting system you need. Only other thing I'd advise is to pick up some like rubber cushing or a pad to decouple the mounting bracket from the chassis and absorb vibrations.

I actually used the existing mesh on the back panel to mount it, and then just used lots of rubber grommets for the nuts/bolts as well as a pad for the res bracket. I'll take a pic when I get home.

I'll just say, I know what you mean. I was pretty dubious of tube reservoirs, and used the bay res exclusively on a number of builds because of the simplicity of it. Once you use a tube res though, it is simple enough.
 
Well, now that you don't need to buy the Gigabyte wifi card, you could spend more on a more reliable power supply. In order from least expensive to most expensive:

EVGA 600B 600 watt power supply for $54 after $10 rebate
- the cheapest model I'd recommend.
XFX TS series 550 watt power supply for $60 after $10 rebate - slightly lower capacity than the one above, but much better quality considering that XFX power supplies are actually rebranded Seasonic designs.
XFX TS series 650 watt power supply for $80 after $20 rebate - plenty of power for just about any single graphics card you want want to upgrade to in the future, barring power-hungry monsters like the R9 295X2.

Thanks, I'll consider those ones too.

Strangely enough, we designed switch-mode power supplies back in undergrad and it's shocking to see power efficiencies as low as 80%.
 
I just wanted to say thank you. I've been running out of space on the server at work, and I couldnt figure out why for the life of me. This just saved me $300 on upgrading the SSD, which I was ready to buy this week. I was absolutely certain it was a new program that was just creating a ton of temp files that I had to cleanup daily through CCleaner.

Fucking WSUS folder was hogging 30GB. Because I was downloading all the updates in every language. For all 8 workstations and the server. Yep.
 
No 980 Ti. It'll be the 1080 and 1080 Ti.

Essentially, this will perfectly mirror the 680/Titan/780 releases.

The 780 was a slightly cut down Titan (less compute performance) with nearly identical gaming performance. The 1080 will be that same card. It'll be out anywhere from 6 months to a year from now, best guess.

The 680 and 980 are the same segment of chip. The 680 was the full mid-range Kepler chip. The 980 is the full mid-range Maxwell chip.

The Titan/780 were the high end Kepler chip (GK110), and the Titan X/1080 are the high end Maxwell chip (GM200).
Whoops...could still be worth waiting on 390X impressions though.
 
How did the test footage come out? If it was fine, then I don't see a need for a better computer, unless you wanted to play games on higher settings. Hard to recommend a Mac as I'm certain you could spend much less and get a much stronger PC for gaming.

Let me clarify. I'm not gaming on the PC. I am gaming on a console and recording on the computer. The footage came out ok but rendering took forever. Was hoping that was just my computer. I've also heard good things about Macs editing capabilities. Not sure if that is Apple fanboys or if that is true. Just trying to keep my options open and get a quality setup without overdoing it.
 
I just wanted to say thank you. I've been running out of space on the server at work, and I couldnt figure out why for the life of me. This just saved me $300 on upgrading the SSD, which I was ready to buy this week. I was absolutely certain it was a new program that was just creating a ton of temp files that I had to cleanup daily through CCleaner.

Fucking WSUS folder was hogging 30GB. Because I was downloading all the updates in every language. For all 8 workstations and the server. Yep.

No problem, glad you got it sorted!
 
Let me clarify. I'm not gaming on the PC. I am gaming on a console and recording on the computer. The footage came out ok but rendering took forever. Was hoping that was just my computer. I've also heard good things about Macs editing capabilities. Not sure if that is Apple fanboys or if that is true. Just trying to keep my options open and get a quality setup without overdoing it.
The ones that would be faster than a PC are the Mac Pros which would be significantly more money than a comparably powered PC.

People are most likely just talking about the editing programs themselves possibly being easier to use. The OS does not make rendering speed faster despite worse hardware
Whoops...could still be worth waiting on 390X impressions though.
Yeah, the 390X will likely be the card to get for 4K.

But, 1440P@144Hz > 4K@60Hz.
 
Let me clarify. I'm not gaming on the PC. I am gaming on a console and recording on the computer. The footage came out ok but rendering took forever. Was hoping that was just my computer. I've also heard good things about Macs editing capabilities. Not sure if that is Apple fanboys or if that is true. Just trying to keep my options open and get a quality setup without overdoing it.

Depends on the software and the main advantage that the Mac Pro has is...

Disk speed.

Since CPUs are SO FUCKING FAST these days, this often gets overlooked as the rendering bottleneck. You'll have an i7 cranking through the footage at 60% utilization because the disk can't feed the video fast enough to the chip.

The Mac Pro uses PCI Express SSDs that run twice as fast as SATA.
 
Got my stuff!

CoAt8UJ.jpg


Final damage:

CPU: Intel Core i7-4790K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor - $279.99
CPU Cooler: NZXT Kraken X61 106.1 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler - $139.99
Motherboard: Asus MAXIMUS VII HERO ATX LGA1150 Motherboard - $169.99
Memory: Corsair Vengeance Pro 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-2400 Memory - $154.99
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 500GB 2.5" Solid State Drive - $189.99
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive - $49.99
Video Card: Asus GeForce GTX 980 4GB STRIX Video Card - $554.99
Case: Corsair 760T White ATX Full Tower Case - $139.99
Power Supply: EVGA 850W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply - $114.99
Optical Drive: ASUS 24x Internal DVD±RW SATA Writer - $29.99
Wireless: Asus PCE-AC68 802.11a/b/g/n/ac PCI-Express x1 Wi-Fi Adapter - $94.99
Total: $1919.89

All bought locally, no wait for shipping necessary!

Thanks to the guys who offered input, I took all of it into consideration alongside my own research, and I feel I made the right picks here for what I want, and decided to stick with a GTX 980 for the time being. Was going to get a lower priced Motherboard, but found out I could get the Asus Maximum I was originally looking at for $169 instead of $209, I thought there was no reason not to at that price.
 
You guys with your tiny pc cases make me jealous ;__;

I love everything about my rig except for the case. I cheaped out and bought some random giant one.
 
Depends on the software and the main advantage that the Mac Pro has is...

Disk speed.

Since CPUs are SO FUCKING FAST these days, this often gets overlooked as the rendering bottleneck. You'll have an i7 cranking through the footage at 60% utilization because the disk can't feed the video fast enough to the chip.

The Mac Pro uses PCI Express SSDs that run twice as fast as SATA.

In that case, would an X99 PC with an M.2 SSD like the XP941 suffice? Pricey, but if it's speed he needs..
 
In that case, would an X99 PC with an M.2 SSD like the XP941 suffice? Pricey, but if it's speed he needs..

Yeah probably, depends on what the software he uses is. Some stuff favours CPU, some stuff favours GPU.

Everything could use lots of cores, fast Ram and Fast drive though, so it'd be a good start then whatever the best GPU to plug in to the budget.
 
Yeah probably, depends on what the software he uses is. Some stuff favours CPU, some stuff favours GPU.

Everything could use lots of cores, fast Ram and Fast drive though, so it'd be a good start then whatever the best GPU to plug in to the budget.
I've messed around in Vegas 12. Is there a reasonably priced build you could show me? Ideally, I'd like to capture on the laptop I have move it to the new computer edit/render and store on an external. So this build doesn't need a lot of storage.
 
I have a really weird problem and I don't know how to fix it not sure if this is an appropriate place to ask. All my time working in IT i've never seen anything like it.

Basically my hard drive is filling itself up. Every day I get on and a little more space is gone. The only thing I could think of is system restore creating new files so I went in and shrank the reserved section for system restore down to about 5GB and reclaimed a ton of space.

A few weeks later and I'm down to a few GB again. My documents, downloads, etc folders are all empty. Virus scan with avast turns up nothing. CCleaner has restored a few GB but that's it I'm still missing about 75GB that has gone seemingly nowhere. My steam games install to a secondary HDD with a much larger capacity so that's not the issue. Clearing browser caches, history, etc frees up a few MB at most I'm honestly at a loss.

I noticed that you are using Avast. I have a similar problem. After searching online I found out that Avast was changing the space allowed for system restore to use.

I had originally set it to something like 5% or 10% but found that it had been changed to 50% which will obviously use a ton of space. I have to constantly check it now. I'm hoping it gets fixed soon. I've used Avast for years and it's great but this is pretty annoying.
 
Here, I took the liberty of putting your build into PCPartPicker and adjusting it a bit for best cost.

-snip-

Now, on to your questions:

-snip-

You didn't list a price for Windows 7, does that mean you already own a copy you're going to use?

Thank you very much for this! Reading and checking out your info right now.

And yes, I already own a copy Windows 7.
 
I've messed around in Vegas 12. Is there a reasonably priced build you could show me? Ideally, I'd like to capture on the laptop I have move it to the new computer edit/render and store on an external. So this build doesn't need a lot of storage.

Depends on what you mean by reasonably priced. What's your budget? What kind of preference would you have for a PC? Do you want it compact? Sound absorbing?

Here's a starting build to work from.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-5820K 3.3GHz 6-Core Processor ($372.95 @ SuperBiiz)
CPU Cooler: Phanteks PH-TC14PE 78.1 CFM CPU Cooler ($59.99 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: MSI X99S SLI Plus ATX LGA2011-3 Motherboard ($187.86 @ Newegg)
Memory: A-Data XPG Z1 16GB (4 x 4GB) DDR4-2800 Memory ($179.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Samsung XP941 Series 512GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive ($472.98 @ Newegg)
Video Card: PowerColor Radeon R9 290 4GB PCS+ Video Card ($263.98 @ Newegg)
Case: Corsair 400R ATX Mid Tower Case ($79.99 @ NCIX US)
Power Supply: EVGA 750W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($59.99 @ NCIX US)
Total: $1677.73
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-03-23 22:00 EDT-0400

As for the graphics card, we've had talk in this thread about Sony Vegas before and it appears that AMD graphics cards are preferred. Anandtech now has Vegas 13 as part of their GPU review benchmarks, and $250~300 AMD cards even beat the latest Nvidia Titan X, so there isn't much else to say there.
 
Finally pushed the button. It's been like 4 years since I have built a computer so the price point definitely was a hard pull even though I allotted the money to it.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-4790K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor (£258.70 @ Amazon UK)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler (£25.31 @ Aria PC)
Motherboard: Asus MAXIMUS VII HERO ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (£166.47 @ Dabs)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance Pro 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-2133 Memory (£123.79 @ Scan.co.uk)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£42.97 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 970 4GB FTW+ ACX 2.0+ Video Card (£316.99 @ Novatech)
Case: Rosewill THOR V2 ATX Full Tower Case
Power Supply: SeaSonic M12II 850W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply (£105.17 @ Amazon UK)
Optical Drive: Asus DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS DVD/CD Writer
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8.1 (OEM) (64-bit) (£74.34 @ Aria PC)
Total: £1113.74

I paid about $1500 on Newegg now I am excited for it to arrive.
 
Depends on what you mean by reasonably priced. What's your budget? What kind of preference would you have for a PC? Do you want it compact? Sound absorbing?

Here's a starting build to work from.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-5820K 3.3GHz 6-Core Processor ($372.95 @ SuperBiiz)
CPU Cooler: Phanteks PH-TC14PE 78.1 CFM CPU Cooler ($59.99 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: MSI X99S SLI Plus ATX LGA2011-3 Motherboard ($187.86 @ Newegg)
Memory: A-Data XPG Z1 16GB (4 x 4GB) DDR4-2800 Memory ($179.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Samsung XP941 Series 512GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive ($472.98 @ Newegg)
Video Card: PowerColor Radeon R9 290 4GB PCS+ Video Card ($263.98 @ Newegg)
Case: Corsair 400R ATX Mid Tower Case ($79.99 @ NCIX US)
Power Supply: EVGA 750W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($59.99 @ NCIX US)
Total: $1677.73
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-03-23 22:00 EDT-0400

As for the graphics card, we've had talk in this thread about Sony Vegas before and it appears that AMD graphics cards are preferred. Anandtech now has Vegas 13 as part of their GPU review benchmarks, and $250~300 AMD cards even beat the latest Nvidia Titan X, so there isn't much else to say there.

That sounds like a good launching point. How much difference would taking my current laptop's 8gb of RAM to something like this make to rending time?

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0076W9Q5A/?tag=neogaf0e-20
 
That sounds like a good launching point. How much difference would taking my current laptop's 8gb of RAM to something like this make to rending time?

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0076W9Q5A/?tag=neogaf0e-20

Not a lot, I'd say. Vegas is more dependent on processor and graphics chipset for rendering power. The official PC requirements for Vegas don't even list any kind of RAM speed, it seems that they only care about the amount of RAM. I can't find any Vegas benchmarks that test RAM speed.

Anandtech has RAM speed benchmarks for video encoding with x264 purely with the CPU, and the difference is only ~5% from the slowest to the fastest result, and the difference is measured in just seconds.

That said, going from 1333MHz to 1600MHz is a tiny difference, you'd probably have to jump up to something much faster like 2400MHz to see a difference, so I can't recommend the replacement RAM as an upgrade.
 
Dell XPS 8700

Hey folks,
By no means am I an expert at custom PCs. I'm looking to purchase the above PC, Dell 8700 with I7 and 2tb. People are telling me customizing will save me money and make it more reliable. I'm looking to make it a pseudo gaming machine (counter strike) and for Lightroom and photoshop. My budget is about $850 canadian. Any help?
 
Cool, looking forward to the pictures.

Rear panel of the case:


Side shot:


So I pretty much used the mounting hardware that came with the pump top, and then just screwed in the tube res to the pump top with a Male-Male G 1/4" adapter. There's rubber grommets in between each bolt/nut and whatever they are contacting. There's also a foam pad in between the pump top bracket and the rear case mesh.

Out of ~15 different pump/res configurations I've done, this one has actually been the most quiet.

Yeah, it's above the PSU, but whatever. I've done enough systems to where you have a pretty damn good feeling which one is going to leak and where.
 
Have you taken a gander through your C: drive to see what folder is taking up all the space? Just start right clicking on folders and looking at properties.

That's part of the problem even if I unhide all the folders select everything and inspect the size there's about ~50GB unaccounted for. There's no partition there either that could be doing it.
 
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