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When using this resource, please read FragKrag's opening post. The Tech Support forum regulars have helped create countless of desktop systems without any compensation. The least you can do is provide all of the information required for them to help you properly. |
Hey,
My old laptop died, and now I'm looking to build my first computer that can support gaming. The games I'll be playing range from HotS -> Mass Effect 3 -> Skyrim online, to give you an idea of what I need.
This is a list of components I've put together so far
Budget: ~$900
CPU: Intel i5 3570k
Motherboard: ASUS P8Z77-V LGA1155
RAM: Corsair 8GB DDR3
GPU: ASUS GeForce GTX 660
PSU: Cooler Master 625W 12V
Case: Antec Three Hundred Two
HDD: Western Digital Caviar Black 500GB
Other:
-Is my dedicated GPU compatible with (can replace) the integrated GPU in the motherboard?
-Are any other components I've listed incompatible?
-I don't plan on overclocking (although might consider it later). Is there anything I should know about that, that I missed?
Thanks for helping a first-timer out. Sorry if anything I've posted sounds stupid. Any suggestions/comments/concerns/flames are welcome.
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On March 12 2013 11:30 Daitro wrote:Hey guys, I'm looking for some advice on upgrading my PC. I'm mostly aiming to play Starcraft II HotS on Ultra graphics and Arma 3 on relatively high graphics, both seamlessly. Currently when playing Arma 3 alpha (obviously not optimized yet) my fps floats around 20, and during long games of SC2 I experience a lot of stuttering/fps drops. Specs: + Show Spoiler +CPU: I7 920 @ 2.67
GPU: EVGA GT 550 TI 1GB
Motherboard: Gigabyte EX58-UD34
RAM: Corsair 6GB DDR3
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate
All stock cooling, 2 800 rpm fans inside. Temps: + Show Spoiler +GPU:
Idle: 43C~
Arma 3: 70C~
SC2: 68C~
CPU
Idle: 50C~
Arma: 60C~
SC2: 58C~ I'm interested to know which parts I would benefit the most from upgrading/any good recommendations. For a budget I'll say around £400. I haven't overclocked anything on this system. And thanks for all the info in the OP!
So you have a heavily CPU capped game in SC2, and a heavily GPU capped game in Arma III. You may have to prioritize, but if you're serious about Arma III I'd recommend getting a quality cooler to overclock your 920 (the gains to 3570k may not be worth the £185). I'm not sure the NH-D14 fits in your case, because I don't know what it is, but it might be a good option -- plus, Noctua usually provides new brackets when new sockets come out, so if you decide to go Haswell later you can reuse the same cooling solution. With the quality cooler, you should be able to get at or near 4.0 ghz, which should run SC2 at a reasonable level.
I'd spend more on the video card because a 550 really just won't play Arma III... at all. It's getting 12 FPS on benches, which is unplayable. You need at least a 7850 to get 30 FPS average, and a 660/7870 to get 30 FPS minimum. I'd probably go for one of those, and then save some money for a Haswell upgrade soon, which should give you enough per-clock increases to make it worth your while.
EDIT: @PHBalls
Yes, that GPU is fine compatability-wise.
I'd recommend against a Cooler Master PSU. Do you plan on ever SLI'ing that 660? If not, I'd go for a better quality 400-450W PSU.
If you don't plan on overclocking right away, that mobo is a little overkill. If you like Asus, the P8Z77-LK is $55 cheaper on Newegg right now after rebate and should give you the support that you need. If you can articulate a good reason why you'd want the more expensive board, go for it, but given the questions that you asked I don't think that you need such an expensive option.
CPU, RAM, Case, and HDD are all good choices, but for $900 I'd try to also fit in a 120GB SSD, especially since you'll be playing Skyrim. The load time differences are massive off the faster disk.
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United Kingdom20274 Posts
You have Three choices - You can buy a beastly graphics card or new motherboard+RAM+CPU - or you could, if possible (and im not 100% sure), overclock your current CPU by about 40% AND get a new GPU. The results would be worse than getting a 3570k, but still good - if you CAN do this, its probably your best choice.
For about £400 you can get a 3570k, good board, good RAM and your choice of heatsink, pretty easily, if you wanted hyperthreading you could go i7 but there's no performance gain i5 to i7 in almost all games - its just about a 20% performance gain in heavily multithreaded applications.
It could buy pretty much any graphics card - you can get a good one for under that price - but if you do, you cant replace the CPU due to budget.
What PSU do you have?
If you could download CPU-Z and check your CPU stepping (it should say either c0 or d0) it would be very helpful for determining the viability of the third option, and also if anybody could help me with researching that motherboards overclocking capabilities it would be great, im not really sure what to look for - im just idiot who overspends on motherboard and asks questions later, my knowledge is not the best in that area.
In sc2 past the very early game or not on maxed settings you will be CPU bound, you maybe are in Arma as well - 550ti is not the best graphics card, but it should be adequate, especially for non-maxed settings on many games - whereas many games (sc2, gw2 among the worst of them) come to a halt based on CPU performance - a 3570k @5ghz 4-way-sli-titan system with 2400mhz cl8 RAM would be expected to have minimum FPS well below 60 in 1v1 - and team games a lot worse at times.
Edit: With above response, im pretty sure #3 is strongly the best option - aftermarket cooler, check if your CPU is c0 or d0 (d0 is a lot better for overclocking) and overclock - the 920 is a great overclocker - there was a series of CPU's, the 920, 930, 940, 950, 960 - they are all basically the same, but each one starts 133mhz faster than the others - ALL OF THEM can OC to around the same levels, so on the 920 this means 2.67 to 3.6-4.2ghz which is insane gains.
A 3570k @4.5ghz would outperform a 920 @4ghz by about 35% or a little more in applications not heavily multithreaded, such as sc2 - but replacing the GPU is of far greater importance here.
You can get a decent cooler - I have a d0 950, a friend has one of the 920-960 (im not sure which) and we both have 3.8ghz within reasonable temps on something not nearly as powerful as the nh-d14, i personally have an Xigmatek Dark Knight which gives max temps around 80c with ht on at 3.8 - friend is a bit cooler, he needs a little less vcore though. - but anyway, you can get a decent enough cooler pretty cheap, you can get a 30-60% overclock on the 920, probably something around the middle of that - and get big gains, and then buy a GPU with your leftover money.
Need to know PSU though (just in case) and more info on the motherboard and the CPU (c0 or d0 as you can read in CPU-Z) would make things easier.
Personally, i'd go for the CPU overclock - get a good cooler, NH-D14 if you have clearance for it (case, RAM - it wont fit in some cases and you need RAM that does not have big heat spreaders sticking up) and spend the rest of the money buying a good GPU - whatever you are comfortable with - and then upgrade CPU, motherboard, RAM either with haswell (releases in the first days of june) or with the next big generation in a couple years.
Performance gains, haswell over a 920 @4ghz? You are talking something like 50% - but maybe more. We dont know yet, they could be really good or hardly an improvement over ivy bridge.
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Hey guys,
I've been checking out this thread for a while since I've decided to build my own PC. The kind of games I'm going to be playing are HotS, Skyrim, Arma 3, Dark Souls 2, that kind of thing. I'm just wondering if someone could answer a few questions about my build as I'm very new to this.
What I've got so far:
CPU: i5 3750k
RAM: Corsair 8GB DDR3
Case: Antec Three Hundred Two Tower Case
PSU: Corsair Builder 430W
Disk: Western Digital Caviar Black 500GB
Budget: £700
- I'm considering overclocking sometime in the future (new to it), what motherboard would be a good choice?
- I'm aiming to play HotS on maxed settings and to play Arma 3 with medium-high settings, what's a good GPU to get? My current thought is the GTX 660.
- Is the PSU sufficient?
- Is everything I've listed compatible?
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United Kingdom20274 Posts
^-Something decent with good power delivery, manual voltage control, llc (load line calibration) etc, i cant give you an exact model so not very helpful i guess. Avoid Asrock.
-The best one you can get, it wont help for HOTS (sc2 is heavily cpu limited, mostly on one thread/core - past early game your FPS will not be decided by GPU as long as you have a decent one) but its important for a lot of other games. 660 is nice - maybe there's slight gains to be made from one of AMD's offerings in terms of price : performance, but there wont be anything insane. Its hard to say without a ton of price info on different markets.
-Yes
-Yes
Hm, i thought i could be a little more helpful when i started writing post. Its something, i guess
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On March 11 2013 04:36 Shikyo wrote:Show nested quote +On March 11 2013 04:18 llIH wrote:On March 11 2013 02:44 Myrmidon wrote:On March 11 2013 02:15 llIH wrote:On March 10 2013 11:37 Cyro wrote:On March 10 2013 06:11 llIH wrote:
I have another question.
The 3570K is the "best" cpu for sc2. (Some people in this thread said it some way like that) 1920x1080
1) what is the best laptop cpu for sc2?
2) What is the best desktop gpu for sc2
3) What is the best laptop gpu for sc2? With desktop CPU's, the 3570k costs only a couple hundred dollars - there is no superior option, so it makes a lot of sense to buy it. Its the ceiling where performance stops increasing - or arguably single threaded performance is literally the best of all intel CPU's, because you dont have to worry about hyperthreading or extra cores generating heat so you can overclock further. With laptop CPU's, the best CPU would just be the highest clocked ivy bridge quad core, but the price range differences are massive, and while you can build an ideal desktop that will outperform everything mid to lategame for something like $700 with literally no improvements possible for increasing sc2 framerate, having the "best" laptop i would not be suprised if it cost something like 3k. Best desktop GPU would be Geforce Titan followed by (in my opinion) gtx680 before hd7970, gtx670 - but you can max the game on a much weaker GPU, something like a hd 7770 or an (old) gtx460 - buying a good GPU just means you have 250fps instead of 100-150fps early game, because CPU pins you down anyway. What I meant was. Is there a laptop equivalent to the 3570K that is best suited to sc2? Same with gpu for desktop and laptop. (Already know 3570K is for desktop cpu) It's not that the i5-3570K is special or optimized for SC2 or anything like that. It's just the cheapest unlocked-multiplier (you can overclock it more than just some small arbitrary limitation) processor using Intel's Iatest processor architecture. Meaning, it's the same design as the other stuff, but you can run it at a higher clock speed to get higher performance. Unless you overclock it, it's just like any other current Intel Core i5, except that this one runs from 3.4-3.8 GHz. Actually, so does the i5-3570, and the i5-3550 isn't far behind, same for the i5-3470, and so on... i7-3770K is very slightly better from having 8MB instead of 6MB L3 cache and then possibly being able to overclock a little more on average. The hyperthreading is useless here. The difference is small enough to be within testing error for most game benchmarks. There's no unlocked-multiplier latest-gen laptop CPU except the i7-3940XM (and i7-3920XM), but you may be limited overclocking that by the laptop's cooling, voltage regulation (power delivery) hardware, and laptop's BIOS. It's also more like $1000 for just the chip. I don't know if Cyro forgot about this or just considers it out of contention based on price and feasibility. If you have some $3000 brick, you might be able to get performance like a desktop i5-3570K—at least to levels most people overclock to, not the enthusiast or subzero or whatever levels. On March 11 2013 02:31 Cyro wrote:On March 11 2013 01:40 Ropid wrote:On March 10 2013 22:40 wallyng106 wrote:
thanks for the reply.
I was thinking of getting 650w just because of the possibility of re-using it in the future. Is that something worth considering? But I'll look into the 450-500w products as well.
For cooling if I went with a CoolerMaster TPC 812 CPU that should give me cooler temperatures and the clearance for the RAM. Interesting about the overclocking though. Basically, that CM cooler is a bit of a dud with its flashy technology. The simple Hyper 212 Evo has the same performance. If you want something stronger and are worried about RAM clearance, Thermalright makes big coolers where the heatpipes bend to the side to make room for the fan (maybe?) not ending up over the first RAM slot (like this: + Show Spoiler +), and they end up being much cheaper, I think. Honestly i really think there's two ways to go with overclocking ivy bridge, firstly the 212 evo sweet spot 4.4ghz or whatever type, and secondly just going for a notable performance gain over that, some CPU's hit a wall around 4.6ghz, others dont. Unlike other cpu's, you WILL be temperature limited with an ivy bridge CPU unless you a crazy person with a lot of knowledge (delidding) so i dont see much point on compromising on cooling. The NH-D14 is not good enough - why would any of these other single tower-single-fan heatsinks be? These in-between suggestions like higher-end air cooling may be mostly to hit the 4.4-4.7 GHz range without a really obnoxious level of noise under load. Anyway, ~4.4 GHz is probably enough for most people asking here. So 4.4 Ghz would be easy to manage on a i5 3570K? Not fancy mb and cooling required? As long as it's something like Xigmatek Gaia or equivalent and Asrock Z77 Pro3 or equivalent it should be quite simple. Ivy bridge's really easy to overclock up until like 4.5Ghz, after that it starts getting really hot and there's no significant gains from better air coolers. Macho is the most cost-effective cooler by far if you want something a little better and it's silent. I'd call it the perfect air cooler.
I need help to find a motherboard that would work to overclock to 4.4 Ghz on i5 3570K but to be as cheap as possible. Thisis a budget sc2 pc. As I said earlier, low settings at 1920x1080 resolution.
I have to buy from this webpage. Komplett.no.
I made a link with all 1155 socket motherboards. Could someone with knowledge go to the link and find a mobo for me thatwould work and would be able to get 4.4ghz but as cheap as possible? I would really appreciate it. I just cant find one I am sure that would work..
http://www.komplett.no/k/kl.aspx?bn=10492&mfr=&filter=A03202.K312115.
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There's no guarantee of 4.4 GHz no matter what the motherboard is.
I would say MSI Z77A-G43, though that is missing some features, it's probably well enough. If you're lucky you could possibly get it on one of the cheaper options, maybe. Given the price difference I would consider the Z77A-G45 instead or maybe the Asus P8Z77-M.
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Hey Guys, I used this thread to build a comp a while back and now I've come into some funds and would like to start another build, we can ignore budget constraints and just consider these things:
I want the build to run games on ultra for a few years, and be able to stream while running said games.
I currently have 1 HD7950. If it would be worth buying another to crossfire that'd be great, otherwise I'm open to other suggestions.
I would really like to build it into a large Shinobi 2, It seems like a great case in terms of design and wire management and it's incredibly sexy.
I don't need any hard/disk drives.
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No matter how much you spend, you can't buy technology that hasn't been developed or released yet. That's the main driving factor behind performance improvements.
If you've got a HD 7950 (what else?), there haven't been new CPU and GPU lines on the high end released since then, unless your HD 7950 is an early model before Ivy Bridge release (Core i3 / i5 / i7 and related ix-3xxx)—but even then, Ivy Bridge is a very marginal upgrade over Sandy Bridge.
There's not really any way around upgrading regularly if you want to keep up. It's also much cheaper this way.
For graphics cards you can somewhat load up now, but it's really throwing money at a nonexistent problem. Getting multiple graphics cards means putting up with poor support here and there, getting updates / drivers, messing around with scaling that's never 2x in fps and much worse than that in actual user-perceivable performance because of uneven frame delivery, and extra power consumption / heat / noise. It's not really a clean upgrade but some steps forward at the expense of others back.
If money's really no concern, just get some number of GTX Titans if you want what's best now.
edit: with respect to running games, keep in mind the monitor has a finite refresh rate. It doesn't help for the system to be able to render more frames past a certain point, past what the monitor can show.
Do you have a monitor larger than 1920x1080 or something at 120+ Hz?
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Nope, I have 1 u2312hm (1920x1080) and a 1600x900 hp monitor.
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United Kingdom20274 Posts
A decent 1920x1080 monitor @120+hz is a good investment, as is a 2560x1440@60hz, its personal which one you would prefer
You didnt answer what CPU and motherboard you have, what's your situation with overclocking?
The bitrates you could stream at could also influence both monitor and hardware reccomendations (IF you have stable >2.5mbits up, i would take 1920x1080 if you want to stream at 1920x1080 so its native, but with a 2560x1440 monitor i would probably half height and width to 1280x720 and make a killer stream at that resolution - its not really important though, only minor quality differences)
Perfect build right now would be 3770k overclocked as far as possible with a single gtx titan, 3770k pushes your stream setting ceiling higher (which is useful if you can go to like 4mbit up) but 3570k is its equal in terms of performance in most games, again, overclocked if possible.
Titan just because single GPU is better than sli/crossfire especially when dealing with streaming and because people with money like to tell GPU limited games to go f*** themselves
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Long time no see CBRT,
I'm looking for some advice in replacing my current video card. It's an HD 4850 and runs what I use it for at an acceptable level. But if I replace it with something better, I can give the old card to someone else I know that's running AM3 integrated GFX.
I'm looking to buy it used. Where? I don't know. Craigslist is an option and I welcome sites/groups more dedicated to computer things from which I can shop from.
Is it possible to find an HD 5850 for under $100? 5770? 460? Again, I'm looking for used, hoping to find older-gen cards for a discount. Other card suggestions are welcomed, as is any other info I might be able to read up on.
My specs (afaicr):
Phenom x2 555 3.2 ghz
G.Skill 8gb ram
Sapphire HD 4850
Coolermaster Hyper 212
Coolermaster cm690
Corsair PSU... 650w? 550w?
Monitor Resolution: 1680x1050. It's not huge, but I wouldn't mind if the card was solid at the 19**x12** range.
THANK YOU CBRT
posting from teamliquid phone app woot
I will answer questions left unanswered if I have not covered my bases already.
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United Kingdom20274 Posts
Anything solid at 1680x1050 will be great at 1920x1080 too, you are only talking 30% greater resolution. Its not like comparing 1280x720 to 1920x1080 - where the gap is going from 100% to 225%
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On March 12 2013 11:51 PHBalls wrote:
Hey,
My old laptop died, and now I'm looking to build my first computer that can support gaming. The games I'll be playing range from HotS -> Mass Effect 3 -> Skyrim online, to give you an idea of what I need.
This is a list of components I've put together so far
Budget: ~$900
CPU: Intel i5 3570k
Motherboard: ASUS P8Z77-V LGA1155
RAM: Corsair 8GB DDR3
GPU: ASUS GeForce GTX 660
PSU: Cooler Master 625W 12V
Case: Antec Three Hundred Two
HDD: Western Digital Caviar Black 500GB
Other:
-Is my dedicated GPU compatible with (can replace) the integrated GPU in the motherboard?
-Are any other components I've listed incompatible?
-I don't plan on overclocking (although might consider it later). Is there anything I should know about that, that I missed?
Thanks for helping a first-timer out. Sorry if anything I've posted sounds stupid. Any suggestions/comments/concerns/flames are welcome.
The PSU and Case are questionable but depend on the price just like the rest of the components.
Taking off the stock heatsink and replacing it with an aftermarket cooler is a pain so you might want to buy a cpu cooler right away.
I assume you already have Windows and dont need to buy it and that you dont need a dvd drive.
Everything is compatible but its also important to get the pricings right.(unless you dont care about money)
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So I don't know where else to post this, but my laptop recently got the blue screen and i've had it for a bit, so i wanted to get a new laptop. It doesn't need to be top of line or anything as all i pretty much do on it is surf the internet and basic windows stuff. Nothing fancy.
I don't really have a budget but I just wanted to buy a nice reliable brand of laptop.
What brand do you think is the most reliable, and if you have any specific models in mind please let me know? Thanks!
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I actually just saw this labtop at my school store that caught my eye. i'm just curious what kind of performance and value I can get out of it for Starcraft 2.
ASUS N53Jq-A1
1.73GHz Intel i7-740QM Quad-Core
4GB (2x2GB) RAM
500GB 7200rpm Hard Drive
SuperMulti DVD Burner
nVIDIA GeForce GT 425M 1GB GPU
15.6" LED Backlit Widescreen Display
Integrated Camera and Microphone
Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi
Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit)
6.4 lb
Price of $600.
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On March 14 2013 00:23 Phoobie wrote:
I actually just saw this labtop at my school store that caught my eye. i'm just curious what kind of performance and value I can get out of it for Starcraft 2.
ASUS N53Jq-A1
1.73GHz Intel i7-740QM Quad-Core
4GB (2x2GB) RAM
500GB 7200rpm Hard Drive
SuperMulti DVD Burner
nVIDIA GeForce GT 425M 1GB GPU
15.6" LED Backlit Widescreen Display
Integrated Camera and Microphone
Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi
Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit)
6.4 lb
Price of $600.
That laptop is using hardware that's at least 3 years old. You can find similar prices on current-gen laptops that will enjoy a significant performance advantage.
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United Kingdom20274 Posts
^Pretty bad.
Compared to a desktop, on GPU side you are talking like a quarter of the power of a 7770 and CPU side, something around 35-40% of the single threaded performance of an i5 3570 - that would be a typical sc2 build and would cost maybe 1.5x as much to max the game on 3x the framerates that that laptop could handle on low - If you could build desktop, thats probably advised
Laptop, the price range is a little low, but you can get a much better system for a little more. Its >2, maybe 4 years old.
Ivy bridge has a performance advantage of at least 25% or so over Nehalem at the same clock speed, so at 45% faster clock speed (2.5ghz) math says 80% performance lead in total (1*1.45*1.25). Ivy bridge is also much more efficient, less power usage (longer battery etc) + less heat OR just flat out a ton more performance at the same power usage and heat levels
The i7 QM has four cores, 8 threads which is useful for some things - but its not at all useful for sc2 which relies heavily on a single core - a ton of weak ones are just wasted resources/money/potential
Laptop i7 QM's (Quad core, Mobile) are generally good or atleast ok now - but the 740 is the second worst performing i7 qm in existance using first gen core architecture, more power usage, more heat. You have a CPU running at 1.73ghz competing against something running at much higher clock speeds with a large (>~25%) performance per clock advantage
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Hey Teamliquid!
I'm looking to buy a new computer in the near future. But before i get into the details of what i need, here's a few things to know about me. I'm a 22 years old canadian who have pretty much zero knowledge about computer tech (or computers in general). I do not use one for work or almost any other real life matters, so my only use is basically for entertainment (video games, internet, e-mails, etc.)
That said, I trust that someone will be able to help me out so let me explain what i'm looking for.
What is your budget? : The price is not an issue. I'm willing to pay whatever is needed to get a decent computer. That said, i don't really want to overpay for stuff i won't be using.
What is your resolution? : I wasn't sure but my monitor should be 1920 x 1080
What are you using it for? : As i said, mostly gaming. I don't intend to stream anything either so as long as i can watch youtube, play SC2 on high graphics and send a few e-mails, iwill be happy.
What is your upgrade cycle? : Pretty damn long (basically until the PC dies). So i don't know exactly how long but obviously 2+ years.
When do you plan on building it? : Well, i don't plan to build it myself to be honest but i'd like to have it working as soon as possible.
Do you plan on overclocking? : I have no idea what this means so i guess not...
Do you need an Operating System? : yes (should i care if it's windows 7 or 8?)
Do you plan to add a second GPU for SLI or Crossfire? : no?
Where are you buying your parts from? : I plan to go to a local store to purchase/assemble the computer for me. My idea was to get a list of pieces and components beforehand.
If i forgot to put important informations, i'll try to edit what i can as soon as possible. I'm just a dude who wants to buy a new computer but doesn't really know where to start, so all the help i can get would be appreciated, but please keep in mind that i'm a tech newbie. Thanks in advance! 
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It's mostly personal preference with W7 vs 8, but 7 will generally have a greater variety of application / driver support. Since you aren't doing much with your PC, it will come down to a matter of preference.
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EPT![[image loading]](http://benchmarkreviews.com/images/reviews/cooling/hr-02/thermalright_macho_hr02_bottom_34.jpg)
