BMAPC Meg Needs a New Gaming Rig (:eek:)

[MYstIC G]

As you chaps may have guessed from the Water Cooling thread, I'm in new box territory at the moment.

My current rig Starbug (all my boxes are named after ships from Red Dwarf) has been in service far, far, far too long now (6 Years 5 Months 27 days according to WolframAlpha) and has served me exceptionally well. I had Mesh Computers put it together for me back then because I couldn't be bothered to do it myself.

In all its service time the only issue Starbug ever had was when I (stupidly) melted the Asus 8800GT graphics card (I had the Company of Heroes one, fnar!) though it was all my own fault. Be warned if you will keep gaming for another 8 hours during hot summers after having already taken the case sides off, you get what's coming to you!

So, I've been tinkering on PCPartPicker with various configurations, etc and have basically decided that I'm going to go nuts this time around. I'm going to hand pick the parts I want and put it all together myself with a view to water cooling the whole rig in the future.

Here's everything that I've marked up so far which I'm in the process of picking up / have picked up / is on a van here / will be on a van here / etc.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-4790K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor (£262.97 @ PC World Business)
Motherboard: Asus Z97-DELUXE(NFC&WLC) ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (£299.96 @ Scan.co.uk)
Memory: *G.Skill Trident X Series 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR3-2400 Memory (£264.75 @ Ebuyer)
Storage: Samsung 840 EVO 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£92.99 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Samsung 840 EVO 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£92.99 @ Amazon UK)
Case: NZXT Phantom 630 (White) ATX Full Tower Case (£89.59 @ Scan.co.uk)
Power Supply: SeaSonic X Series 1250W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply (£214.94 @ Scan.co.uk)
Optical Drive: *Pioneer BDR-S09XLT Blu-Ray/DVD/CD Writer (£56.50 @ Ebuyer)
Total: £1374.69
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
*Lowest price parts chosen from parametric criteria

NB: Those are just the current figures on PCPartPicker, I'll come back at some point and add up the actual damage and what I got from where, if people are interested.

So, why are you reading this? Well chums, I'd like to hear your opinions, obviously. Also there are some questions that I've not quite gotten my head around just yet.

1. Graphics, Graphics, Graphics, Graphics [Brand -v- Brand]
   This is the one that is keeping me up at night. Having looked into the technology I get the gut feeling that AMD have pulled it out of the bag for this generation with the 290x and Mantle.
   
   On the other hand I keep looking into water cooling and ASUS (I think I'm a bit brand loyal here btw) have these super sexy Poseidon graphics cards (ignore the Republic of Gamers bullshit) with cooling loops built right in which keep whispering in my ear. I'd love your thoughts on this chaps.
   
   
2. Graphics, Graphics, Graphics, Graphics [Single or Double]
   So the other one that keeps worming its way into my mind is that it now seems to me that multiple GPUs are a realistic option. There's massive appeal here for me now that AMD CrossFireX appears to let you run in what I think of as a "Just A Bunch of Cards" manner, i.e. that you don't have to buy identical pieces. Can you get serious GPU punching power by staying behind the curve and pairing cards? What do you chaps think about all this, would you run 2x matching NVidias designed to work in tandem, take the chance on high/low AMD combo (a beast flanked by far lesser minions) or would you just avoid all this shit completely?

Thoughts on postcards please chaps!

 

[ECA]

Do you really need that much ram? going over 8gb doesn't really give you any real world results.

You're basically paying 100% more for like 2-3% performance gains.

I'd get 2x8gb 2133 if you really want "more" but 2400 is absolutely not worth.

Would cost around £130-140 and give around 2% worse performance than the 2400.
You can even get 16gb 2400 for like £150.

 

[Ch3tan]

Are you going to run the SSD's in a raid config?

the EVO's are ok, but the 840 Pro's are the muts nuts. Check the link posted here SSD's for more info.

Also I agree with @ECA on ram, start at 16GB and expand if you need to later on.

 

[TdC]

my 2c chumbacon:

- don't need an i7
- don't need a K version
- don't need 32GB ram
- don't need that mega mobo

Sounds harsh but I will explain.

First: re gfx cards; Nvidia allows you to do the following these days: have a dedicated GPU for screen, and a lesser (if you so choose) for PhysX. That means sexy particle effects like any kind of flashy destruction and such can be taken care of by the card you designate for that. This means that if you have enough 8x PCIE paths you can reuse your old (Nvidia) GFX card if you want for dedicated processing.

Now, re kit: if you want to buy that stuff, sure it will make an awesome PC. I would do it differently (and did, actually). Here's why:
i7 - games don't need it. You will only need it for programming and/or running 87 VM's in your box while watching pr0n and playing games at the same time.
K version - only ever ever ever buy this if you're going to overclock.
32GB RAM - the rated speed of your choice is nice, but again: games don't need it. you will only need it for programming and/or running 87 VM's in your box while watching pr0n and playing games. Srsly.
the uber mobo - very nice kit. will you be using every thing it offers? mobo's are hella expensive, and -face it- usually not as good for things as a dedicated card.

What I'd do:
CPU: get the fastest -non K- i5 you can afford, or consider AMD. I went AMD and frankly they're fearsome beasts. Sure, Intel is better, but I saved about 150 euros and have a 4.5GHz 4 core / HT cpu now.
RAM: get 8GB and -only- buy more when your system tells you you need it. 16GB is ok, but *only* if you can get a cheap deal.
MOBO: get as basic a motherboard as you can which supports a) the CPU you want, b) the RAM (incl upgrades) you want and c) has the PCIE lanes you want.

Spend the money you save on:
a) the most efficient and stable PSU you can find (750W or so should do you) with enough 6/8 port molex. You will need this for running >1 GFX card and a hefty CPU.
b) a proper hardware RAID card and mirror your system disks. Dedicated hardware RAID cards will pee all over mobo builtins when it comes to true performance, robustness and reliability. Also: consider the PRO version of those SSD's rather than the EVO. I have a PRO and it's fast as fuck.
c) watercooling kit and/or the best possible case you can get. Silence is golden.

Also consider:
What I also bought recently is a fairly good 27" 5ms IPS panel with a billion colours. Sure, a T panel will always be faster, but I can see 16.7M colours and frankly that started to irk me. I set my panel to use as much of the colour space as I could and things like FC3 sunsets looked jaw-droppingly lush.

Hope this helps chum. Either way you'll have a sweet PC as an outcome

 

[ECA]

CPU - the K indicates its unlocked and you can OC, do you really need that? are you going to use it? If not, save some pennies.

Additionally - i7 is only important over i5 if you need the video encoding performance gains, in terms of gaming you gain NOTHING. ( not joking ). The performance difference in games is <1% and swings in the i5s favour in some benches.

 

[ECA]

Posting separately to keep my points concise - scrap the optical drive.
I got a BR on my current pc, but I have never used it.

You can install windows 8 using rufus ( free - google it ) + iso image.

 

[ECA]

Storage - SSDs are great, I don't know if you have a NAS, but if you're planning on OS seperate SSD + game SSD, then you can get a smaller OS SSD. 80gb is fine for that.

I have a 120gb ssd thats never been particularly full with a game ssd ( 240gb ) and then all my video torrents and stuff I stream from my NAS.

 

[TdC]

re the optical drive: ECA is right. I have one in my current rig that has been handed down through generations, literally and have used maybe 3 times in the past 2 years. I also have a pluggable USB one that I use perhaps once a year for school things. I have a stack of 100 R DVD's that I bought perhaps 5 years ago and have about 70 left. Things to consider

 

[ECA]

PSU - that kind of PSU is for running TRIPLE GPU SETUPS.

Your cpu drains <100w under load, your ssds around 2 each. gpus up to around 300 for the beefier ones. a 500W PSU is perfectly find for an SSD only modern CPU + single card system.

750-850 is good for a double gpu setup.

1200+ is for triple or quad.

 

[MYstIC G]

Cheers for the feedback chaps. I'll try and reply component by component rather than post by post to keep the thread cleaner:

1. Motherboard [Ordered]
   I'm pretty set on this (for better or worse). It's a solid board with admittedly some unnecessary toys but toys can be fun. I want the future PC where I can put my Nexus 5 on the charging dock and it logs me into Windows, etc.
   
2. SSD [Ordered]
   The intention is to raid them @Ch3tan as you've suggested. I can see how the Pro's are statistically better but frankly in raid the Pro's would be wasted IMHO.
3. RAM [Ordered]
   I run stupid stuff on my PC from time to time. I really want to start being able to properly mess around with virtualization which is completely stifled on my current rig. The other side of this is that the Samsung SSD's are able to use RAM as a cache if properly configured. I'm also doing a lot more stuff like pissing around with FreeBSD/Linux these days and compiling and want to start getting into things like Poudriere and CoreOS.
   
4. Processor
   AMD is just not happening, sorry @TdC. Noted on the Intel stuff and the possibly unnecessary K, I'll ponder that one. The logic here though is that my current rig has a quad core Q6600 which was the comparative nuclear bomb to kill an ant at the time. I think the fact that my machine has held up that long gives me pause to do anything other than hit at i7. Video encoding does occur as well, which ties into...
   
5. Optical [Ordered]
   This one is staying I'm afraid, I've got discs that I want rid of and this is an all in one. Don't get me wrong I don't live in my imagination where I'm going to be creating discs like AOL did in the 90s but they're not dead enough just yet. It's more a case of this hopefully being the last ever optical drive I have to buy.
   
6. Graphics
   PhysX hasn't been used well in anything other than Borderlands 2 was my understanding? This one is still where I have absolutely no idea which way to go. I'd feel much more set about AMD if I wasn't constantly picking up on the back and forth with NVidia (example).
   
7. Power
   Noted on the power levels @ECA. I'm considering a setup as I said where there is an absolute beast centre card and lower order ones for additional monitors. I've not picked this up yet and am pushing for a good price on it at the moment but it comes highly recommended as best I can tell and the selection was based on future proofing and product quality.

You will only need it for programming and/or running 87 VM's in your box while watching pr0n and playing games at the same time.

STOP WATCHING ME FFS

 

[ECA]

I would save all that money, and spunk it on the new 34" 21:9 LG.

Also I've gone multi GPU, if you want to power a single monitor it's great, but I've run into pains with multi monitor on both nvidea and amd platforms.
I would get a 780ti or a 290x ( or wait for the 880 series coming out later this year ), and use it to power that sick sick monitor. ( Make sure you get displayport output, because HDMI is limited to 50hz on that monitor if not ).

 

[BloodOmen]

I'd drop the CPU down to an I5 4670 (£160 ish)
Ram to 8gig (16gig only if you can find it on offer, you really don't need 32gb, no program alive will use that much ram unless you're into some hardcore rendering etc for a job)
graphics card i'd either get a GTX 770 or an AMD 280-290(x if you dont mind splurging a bit more dosh on it)

summit like

http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/2gYtK8

fill in the blanks

 

[caLLous]

I would save all that money, and spunk it on the new 34" 21:9 LG.

Goddamn I want to do this. My panties are seriously dripping after that review video. I'm still on the 2405FPW that he mentioned in the review but the LG looks spunktastic on so many levels. I don't think my 7970 Ghz Edition would be up to much for gaming though, it's an odd resolution to try to find benchmarks for (in that there are none) but it's about 25% more pixels (4953600) than 2560x1600 (4096000) and about half that of 4k (8294400)so I guess we can go from there.

 

[ECA]

Yeah, I'd much rather have the screen real estate on that, as well as the pixel count, vs a single 27" 4k screen. Plus as it's single monitor, you'll have an easier time running sli/crossfire for performance.

 

[Embattle]

Going to be a nice rig, personally if you don't want to wait for the next gen graphics card I'd go with a 780ti.

 

[old.Osy]

I have the Dual-X R9 280x 3GB variant.

I'm playing _any_ game on Ultra, with very good performance.

Raid for SSDs? For regular activities such as gaming or general OS dabbling, you will not perceive the performance increment. Unless it's raid 1, for data protection. SSDs are already fast enough.

As others said, 16 GB ram is more than enough. Most of us run 8 GB and we never peak it.

 

[Athan]

Here's what I've been looking at in order to complete my upgrade (already got a GTX 780Ti and other stuff, including the nice Dell U2414H monitor): https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/user/Athanasius/saved/knKcCJ

I umm'd and aaah'd over i5 versus i7 myself. The thing is whilst it's true in the past that no game has really made use of even 2 cores all that well, and certainly next to none of them have used 4 effectively... this appears to just be starting to change. Planetside 2 underwent heavy optimisation taking it from 85%/25%/5%/5% on my i5-760 to more like 60-70% across all 4. Perceived increase in the actual FPS and smoothness I got too.

Likewise the CryEngine is said to do multi-threading well, and one game I'm definitely going to be playing is Star Citizen. Landmark has also been hammering this i5-760 (but that could easily just be beta complete lack of optimisation).

Given the almost complete stall in single core/thread performance we've seen lately I think more and more game devs are going to be forced to work out how to do effective multi-threading for good performance (we'll ignore the whole console port thing...).

So, i7 it is. And the 'K'? I want the headroom for the future. It's unlikely I'll have any upgrade again for the next 3-5 years. That i5-760 I have currently that showed the difference in Planetside 2? Started out at 2.88GHz (stock is 2.80GHz, but I let the BIOS have a stab at it, and it decided to lower the multiplier but up the base clock), and I managed to up it to 3.20GHz by bumping the multiplier until it became unstable, then dropped it back down a notch. Basically I want the room for doing that with an i7-4790k too, even if initially I just leave it at the base 3.9/4.4GHz clocks.

For judging what PSU you need I've been using http://extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp which guesses at 497W for my current system (hence I bought 750W power supply with the new GPU, not trusting my 500W PSU would be enough) and a bit more after the rest of the upgrade. In theory it's also enough to run my old GTX 560 Ti 448 Core as a PhysX GPU if I want.

What others have said about RAM amounts is good, but if you know you're going to use it for VMs, editing, whatever, go for it. I'm still researching and pondering about higher speeds than 1866MHz versus CAS Latency and price.

I do wonder about that eye-wateringly priced motherboard though. It's still just the Z97 chipset so you're still only getting one true 16x PCI-E slot, or 2 at 8x, and the other one never more than 4x. I'm actually struggling to see what the extra ~£200 is getting you.

As for GPU, like I said I got a GTX 780 Ti (the nice Gigabyte Windforce, which is working well. Left clocks at stock, but it clocks up to 1176MHz stable if not under too much load, dropping to the 1085MHz boost clock if it is). I considered 2x GTX 770 instead, which would still have been more expensive, but in the end decided that I just didn't trust games to have stable SLI. The one upside of multiple GPUs on nVidia is if you want to do any sort of surround (multi monitor in a game setup). And of course there's the extra power usage and heat/noise.

On the other hand now is a great time to grab a second hand AMD 290 apparently, due to people getting out of the BitCoin business that they bought them to mine.

 

[ECA]

Athan - wut?

i5 are quad core. It's the i3s that are dual core.

i7 supports hyper threading which is different.

 

[MYstIC G]

Nice calculator @Athan will have to play with the power levels.

You're right about Hyper Threading @ECA but it's explained better here (old but makes the point) basically get a higher clock CPU if you can, which is where I'm pitching with Devils Canyon.

I would save all that money, and spunk it on the new 34" 21:9 LG.

It's probably an approach thing here tbh, I'm looking to build the graphics base in the box first because the screen tech is too fluid to me at the moment where as the cards will clock up and that's about it.

 

[BloodOmen]

I want to know when the newer cpus are coming out, i'm still on the fence about upgrading myself but I have this inkling feeling i'll upgrade then 2 months later new cpus will come out and previous ones will drop in price.

 

[Embattle]

Intel wise Broadwell is due out towards the end of this year, it is mainly a die shrink with Skylake to follow next year that'll come with new microarchitecture.

 

[old.user4556]

Nice rig, my only complaint is the case - looks gaudy and cheap.

Less is more in the case department for me, I currently have:

Fully kitted with Be Quiet! Silent Wings fans. Small, quiet and discrete but with very good cooling with 2 x 120mm fans at the front behind that grill.

 

[MYstIC G]

NZXT would probably hit you up with the H440 then @Big G


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=HdrgFCQmEcs

That probably would have been my first choice but since I'm thinking 5 1/2 bay watercooler in the future plus I'm not dropping discs just yet, its a non-starter unfortunately.

I think the reason I've gone for the Phantom is the internal engineering, the modular drive bays and rail mountings for fans (rather than fixed locations) are all neat design features and the behind motherboard SSD mounts are also sensible imho.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YO_rNhDIIyA&feature=player_embedded

Additionally it doesn't hurt that it does what I like in a case, which is hide the bays away so you don't have to stare at them unless you're using them. My existing Starbug rig is housed in a Cooler Master Mystique which I love because there is absolutely no plastic except for the power button, the curved front is smooth to the touch and just looks the bollocks from all angles. I don't think the Phantom will ever take its place properly but c'est la vie.

 

[Embattle]

You might have some routing issues with that case and the AUX 12v, in essence there might not be enough room to fit it behind the motherboard so you'll have to go round the motherboard area.

 

[MYstIC G]

You might have some routing issues with that case and the AUX 12v, in essence there might not be enough room to fit it behind the motherboard so you'll have to go round the motherboard area.

How so dude, I'm struggling to picture that in my head?

 

[Athan]

Athan - wut?

i5 are quad core. It's the i3s that are dual core.

i7 supports hyper threading which is different.

Yeeeeeeeeees. Now what bit of my post did you get confused over ? I said "no game has really made use of even 2 cores all that well". I'm quite aware that an i5 is 4 cores, no HT, given I said "Planetside 2 underwent heavy optimisation taking it from 85%/25%/5%/5% on my i5-760 to more like 60-70% across all 4".

My general point was:

1) In the past games haven't even used 2 cores well (and thus not utilised quad core fully).
2) But now that's changing, example of PS2 not using 4 cores well, but then changing to do so.
3) My feeling that in the future they'll use even more well, hence getting an i7 with the HT, which in its current version is damned close to doubling your available cores in practice.

 

[Embattle]

How so dude, I'm struggling to picture that in my head?

The ATX 12V is located on the top left of the motherboard and it tends to be the furthest distance away from the PSU, often you route this cable behind the motherboard panel and side of the case and even then it can require an extender cable to actually reach.

In the old days before large components you just plugged it directly over the front but it doesn't work very well with modern systems and goes against making a system look good via hiding the cables.

 

[MYstIC G]

The ATX 12V is located on the top left of the motherboard and it tends to be the furthest distance away from the PSU, often you route this cable behind the motherboard panel and side of the case and even then it can require an extender cable to actually reach.

In the old days before large components you just plugged it directly over the front but it doesn't work very well with modern systems and goes against making a system look good via hiding the cables.

Ah, so we're talking generally as supposed to specific issue with PSU or case choices then?

 

[Ch3tan]

Meg, spares going free from starbug?

 

[Embattle]

Ah, so we're talking generally as supposed to specific issue with PSU or case choices then?

Generally but with notice that there will be SSDs behind and the side panel appears to be flat which might make it a little bit more restricted.