|
When using this resource, please read the 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. |
On June 04 2014 21:12 Cabbett wrote:+ Show Spoiler +What is your current build?ASUS P5N-D Intel Core 2 Quad Q9450 @ 2.66Ghz 8GB DD2 RAM, 800Mhz Evga GTX 560Ti DS SC - LinkCorsair GS 600 PSU What is your monitor's native resolution?1920x1080 Why do you want to upgrade? What do you want to achieve with the upgrade?I want to finally be able to play my current games without my PC being brought to its knees constantly. I primarily play Diablo III, WoW, Skyrim, and hopefully FFXIV after this upgrade. On D3 if there's a ton of stuff on screen, my FPS goes down as low as 7, even with many CPU-bound settings turned down. Even WoW on occasion will dip below 30FPS. After this upgrade (damn near a brand new build but I'm keeping my GPU and PSU) I hope to be able to achieve 60FPS 95% of the time on the titles I listed, although I realize for FFXIV I will not able to max out and keep 60FPS. What is your budget?$800 CAD What country will you be buying your parts in?Canada If you have any brand or retailer preferences, please specify.Intel and NVIDIA; Memoryexpress for retailer (I will check for Pricebeats right before I buy). --- So here's what I've come up with so far (prices are from Memoryexpress): MOBO: Gigabyte GA-B85M-D3H, $90 CPU: Intel i5-4670, $245 RAM: G.Skill Sniper 2x4GB @ 1600mhz, $100 Case: Corsair Carbide 400R, $120 SSD: Samsung EVO 840 Series 120GB, $100 HDD: WD Blue 500GB, $60 Before taxes: $715 After taxes (5% + 8%): $807.95 I rounded up all prices to the nearest whole number, so actual price will probably be a few dollars less. At any rate, I'm pretty much at budget. So how does this build look? Will I be able to achieve what I want out of this build? Are the parts I chose the most optimal to get? Should I forego the HDD and stick with the one in my current build (it's from 2008, not sure what kind it is)
Crucial MX100 has very similar and in some cases, even better performance than the Samsung 840 EVO. The 256GB variant is available for $110 from Tiger Direct or Amazon:
http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=9083337
http://www.amazon.ca/dp/B00KFAGCWK
I think Newegg has the 500GB variant for $200 too. Though Memory Express may not have the Crucial MX100 yet since it's a very new release. In that case, Samsung 840 EVO would be the next best choice.
Corsair Carbide 500R is available for $115: http://www.ncix.com/detail/corsair-carbide-series-500r-mid-tower-c6-62757-1016.htm
The rest looks good, just needs to be pricematched.
|
United Kingdom20345 Posts
On June 04 2014 10:08 skyR wrote:Show nested quote +On June 04 2014 09:30 AcrossFiveJulys wrote:+ Show Spoiler +Hi all, I'm looking at building a hybrid medium-performance gaming machine and high-performance scientific computing machine. I plan to dual boot windows8 and ubuntu.
I'll use windows8 to play games like league of legends/starcraft 2 on high graphics settings with optimal FPS, and random future games (2+ years) on medium-ish graphics settings with optimal FPS.
I'll use ubuntu to work on side projects that will require some computationally intensive experiments that directly benefit from additional cores, RAM, and quick disk I/O. So I need a high-end processor, 16gb of RAM, and given the dual boot (and data storage for experiments) a nice SSD with comfortable capacity.
I don't plan on overclocking or doing SLI/Crossfire, and I don't plan on streaming.
Ideally, I want the case to be micro ATX because I may have to ship it around a few times/carry it onto a plane here and there.
I plan to buy a couple decent monitors for a dual setup as well to replace my current crappy ones.
Here is my current build (missing power supply)
CPU: Intel Core i7-4790 $299.99
Motherboard: MSI H81M-P33 $49.98
RAM: Crucial 16GB $139.99
Video Card: Gigabyte Radeon R7 260X $109.99 (after $20 rebate)
Storage: Crucial MX100 CT512MX100SSD1 2.5" 512GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) $244
Case: Silverstone PS08B (Black) $36.99
Wireless Network Adapter: Edimax EW-7612PIn $25.98
Total: $886.92
Some questions:
1) Is the graphics card I chose up for this? The one above seems like a good deal.
2) Do I even need the graphics card? I.e., what kind of performance can I expect from the processor-integrated graphics card?
3) I'm having trouble choosing a good power supply. I'd like one that
a) supports PCE-e x16 without an adapter, but I can't seem to figure out what power supply specs support this (does 2x 6+2 support that?)
b) fits into a micro-ATX case
c) is least 400W (makes sense for my build or no?)
d) is relatively quiet (but this is not essential)
4) Do I need additional cooling?
5) Any other thoughts on the build? Is everything compatible, etc? Yes, R7 260x can max out League of Legends and Starcraft II while being able to comfortably handle the majority of other games on reasonably high settings at 1080p. Integrated graphics would suffice for low settings but there'd be issues in some of the more graphical intensive games. I think you should look into getting an overclockable build. If you are 100% sure you don't want to overclock then you should at least get a board with four DIMM slots to be able to expand to 32GB of memory and maybe an additional PCIe slot as well. Also, Core i7 4790 requires a 9 series board. The 8 series boards require a BIOS update to support the new CPUs and you require a supported CPU (eg. Core i7 4770) to do the BIOS update. Rosewill Capstone 450w is pretty much the de-facto standard for most single GPU builds. Not sure what you mean by supporting PCIe x16 since that is a slot on the motherboard. If you are talking about the video card than yes, the Capstone 450w comes with two 6+2pin PCIe connectors so it will support the R7 260x (which only uses a single 6pin PCIe) and the vast majority of video cards without the need for a molex-to-PCIe adapter. Not all mATX cases have the same dimensions but the Capstone 450 should fit in most of them, if not all of them. No you do not need additional cooling.
I'd maybe even consider 4790k, because it's clocked 400mhz higher than 4790 at stock. Not releasing til ~25'th though and at that point it's probably worth putting a cheap cooler on it. I'm not even sure what boards support it.
|
Northern Ireland27478 Posts
Cheers for the response, performance issues I've had just tend to be crashes and slowdown after many hours of use, I'd assume due to the lack of RAM and hard disk space to use as VRAM, you guys know your shit and I don't so I may be totally off!
|
United Kingdom20345 Posts
^In that case it's probably related to programs running, and might be an issue on any hardware, check startup programs in msconfig and when system has been on for a while, do stuff like closing programs and looking at desktop + task manager or something to monitor CPU/RAM usage, and check where it's going etc. I sometimes run for weeks of uptime without issues but i still get lots of random RAM usage, from stuff like skype leaking to >2GB, and random programs using a ton of CPU for no reason seems to happen to a lot of people
|
Northern Ireland27478 Posts
I've disabled a whole bunch of them, for some reason actually the Windows installer was disabled in there as well. Just familiarising myself with some of the Windows functionality as well, long time Mac user. Chrome seems very, very memory intensive, much more than I would have thought.
Christ on relooking there is a metric fuckton of stuff I still haven't disabled, will get someone more computer literate round to see what can be shaved off. Cheers again.
|
On June 04 2014 23:46 skyR wrote:Show nested quote +On June 04 2014 21:12 Cabbett wrote:+ Show Spoiler +What is your current build?ASUS P5N-D Intel Core 2 Quad Q9450 @ 2.66Ghz 8GB DD2 RAM, 800Mhz Evga GTX 560Ti DS SC - LinkCorsair GS 600 PSU What is your monitor's native resolution?1920x1080 Why do you want to upgrade? What do you want to achieve with the upgrade?I want to finally be able to play my current games without my PC being brought to its knees constantly. I primarily play Diablo III, WoW, Skyrim, and hopefully FFXIV after this upgrade. On D3 if there's a ton of stuff on screen, my FPS goes down as low as 7, even with many CPU-bound settings turned down. Even WoW on occasion will dip below 30FPS. After this upgrade (damn near a brand new build but I'm keeping my GPU and PSU) I hope to be able to achieve 60FPS 95% of the time on the titles I listed, although I realize for FFXIV I will not able to max out and keep 60FPS. What is your budget?$800 CAD What country will you be buying your parts in?Canada If you have any brand or retailer preferences, please specify.Intel and NVIDIA; Memoryexpress for retailer (I will check for Pricebeats right before I buy). --- So here's what I've come up with so far (prices are from Memoryexpress): MOBO: Gigabyte GA-B85M-D3H, $90 CPU: Intel i5-4670, $245 RAM: G.Skill Sniper 2x4GB @ 1600mhz, $100 Case: Corsair Carbide 400R, $120 SSD: Samsung EVO 840 Series 120GB, $100 HDD: WD Blue 500GB, $60 Before taxes: $715 After taxes (5% + 8%): $807.95 I rounded up all prices to the nearest whole number, so actual price will probably be a few dollars less. At any rate, I'm pretty much at budget. So how does this build look? Will I be able to achieve what I want out of this build? Are the parts I chose the most optimal to get? Should I forego the HDD and stick with the one in my current build (it's from 2008, not sure what kind it is) Crucial MX100 has very similar and in some cases, even better performance than the Samsung 840 EVO. The 256GB variant is available for $110 from Tiger Direct or Amazon: http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=9083337http://www.amazon.ca/dp/B00KFAGCWKI think Newegg has the 500GB variant for $200 too. Though Memory Express may not have the Crucial MX100 yet since it's a very new release. In that case, Samsung 840 EVO would be the next best choice. Corsair Carbide 500R is available for $115: http://www.ncix.com/detail/corsair-carbide-series-500r-mid-tower-c6-62757-1016.htmThe rest looks good, just needs to be pricematched.
Thanks for the suggestions. I'm thinking I'll go for the Crucial MX100 from the online vendor. Pretty hard to beat that price/value combo. For the 500R it might depend on much the shipping fee knocks up the price; I'll keep buying in-store at Mem.Express an option.
Can't wait to put this build together! My current pre-built from 2008 has served me well but it's definitely time to upgrade lol.
|
Memory Express carries the 500R, you would price match it to ~$110.
|
United Kingdom20345 Posts
On June 05 2014 01:09 Wombat_NI wrote:
I've disabled a whole bunch of them, for some reason actually the Windows installer was disabled in there as well. Just familiarising myself with some of the Windows functionality as well, long time Mac user. Chrome seems very, very memory intensive, much more than I would have thought.
Christ on relooking there is a metric fuckton of stuff I still haven't disabled, will get someone more computer literate round to see what can be shaved off. Cheers again.
Services mostly don't have to be disabled. In msconfig < startup, i have enabled: Four intel things, skype, bittorrent sync, my mouse driver, my webcam driver and toastyx strobelight (which controls some monitor functions for lightboost-hacked monitors so i need it)
Only time i've come anywhere close to 8gb of RAM used was with two weeks uptime, stuff like skype using 2gb of RAM because i didn't take the 5 seconds to restart it, Planetside using like 3.5gb of RAM (that game uses three cpu threads heavily, forces me to use many low settings on my 770 because it's gpu intensive so i could even use more than a 780ti on 1080p144hz if i wanted to, or resolution scale further with the good supersampling support - and it also uses RAM etc in legitimate ways like this, it's amazing in terms of hardware usage and what it is) and some other stuff too like osu and multiple web browsers (i use firefox and chrome, still thinking of trying that waterfox 64-bit thing but i need to dedicate a little time to set it up to my liking) - so RAM usage typically shouldn't be a problem. If it is, you can get more - my friend uses a ton of RAM for random stuff and wants to go from 4gb on core 2 duo, to 32gb on 4770k, to 128gb on next build, so it's quite an individual choice, but 8gb is fine almost all of the time.
I'd be more worried for random stuff using like 1-5% CPU or even more, you can get dozens of programs like that which just eat resources. It's still good habit to restart often, every day or before/after a long usage session, if you're concerned for performance. You shouldn't feel too obligated to do it though with a pretty clean system, because it shouldn't be that much of a problem
|
|
|
Core 2300 is $50. No idea why the x3 series is necessary, seems extremely pointless besides adding clutter to confuse consumers.
|
Core 1000 had short comings which I think the 2300 fixes. $50 seems pretty reasonable for a case that comes with two (good?) case fans and all that room to work with. Otherwise yeah, the Core 1300 seems like a Core 1000 with a different front panel.
|
Lalalaland34510 Posts
After a couple hours discussing with Cyro (really it was all him with me just nodding and saying 'yes' or 'too expensive'), we came up with this:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/tj8vAub.png)
There are two or three last things that we need more opinions on because he is unfamiliar with them at the price range I am looking for. The items selected under these categories are simply placeholders, indicating the maximum price that I am looking at:
1) Mobo
2) PSU
3) Monitor - I am looking for a monitor of at least 20".
Any suggestions?
|
|
|
United Kingdom20345 Posts
Aha didn't see MX on pcpartspicker, just 840 evo and m500 at £10 apart.
Mobo was random selection, prices range from like £36-£80 from amazon/ocuk
monitor, random, no idea what to take for 1080p
psu, general price range, ~£30-50.
Case, not really sure, but AFAIK the Shinobi is a nice case and it's still in the lower price ranges.
Everything from ocuk/amazon, maybe going to everything from ocuk
|
This MX100 is the replacement for the M500. It's using 16nm lithography for the memory chips compared to 20nm on the older one, so that's where the savings that allow for the lower price are supposed to come from (because of more room for chips on one silicon waver).
|
I think it's safer to get a 9 series board to be guaranteed that Haswell-R is supported unless you are fine dealing with the hassle of borrowing a CPU or returning if the 8 series board you picked doesn't ship with a BIOS that supports Haswell-R.
|
Lalalaland34510 Posts
So now just looking for a mobo and PSU.
|
United Kingdom20345 Posts
On June 05 2014 11:22 skyR wrote:
I think it's safer to get a 9 series board to be guaranteed that Haswell-R is supported unless you are fine dealing with the hassle of borrowing a CPU or returning if the 8 series board you picked doesn't ship with a BIOS that supports Haswell-R.
Yea i noticed that after i took the pic
On June 05 2014 11:24 Firebolt145 wrote:
So now just looking for a mobo and PSU.
Mobo choice in ~£35-70ish bracket, a PSU significantly below golden green hx's £50 that is good and solid, case conformation and then whatever screen (Firebolt already has a 24" 1080p monitor that could be used as primary(?), with a cheaper secondary)
Mobo for recommendation probably here:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/productlist.php?groupid=701&catid=5&subid=2813
I'l leave most of the rest up to you guys if possible :0
|
Lalalaland34510 Posts
|
Lalalaland34510 Posts
So this is what I've got in my basket right now:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/Q2BWMEu.png)
Any obvious 'DID YOU CONSIDERED THIS?!!' would be appreciated, as well as sudden recommendations for mobo/PSU alternatives.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
