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Hey guys I'm getting my sales bonus in February and looking to build/buy a gaming PC with about a 1500-1800 dollar budget. I haven't built a gaming PC in about 8 years so I'm out of the loop on all the new tech.
I know that I do want 4k capability and am mainly interested in the Total War series and Star Citizen. I know I should get at least a geforce 970 with an i7 and 16 gb a ram. I'm wondering if I should go all SS for hard drives. Also I have been researching 4k IPS monitors but have been struggling to make a decision.
Are the savings for building less than 200? If so I prefer to buy. Please give me a recommendation on brands,
What is your budget? 1500-1800
What is your monitor's native resolution? Need 4k IPS monitor.
What games do you intend to play on this computer? What settings? Star Citizen. Total War series. Hopefully max.
What do you intend to use the computer for besides gaming? Audio/Music Production. Graphics editing.
Do you intend to overclock? No
Do you intend to do SLI / Crossfire? Don't know
Do you need an operating system? Yes
Do you need a monitor or any other peripherals and is this part of your budget? 4k monitor separate from budget.
If you have any requirements or brand preferences, please specify. None
What country will you be buying your parts in? USA
If you have any retailer preferences, please specify. Amazon
You should only use SSD for stuff that has to be accessed quickly; 128GB or 256GB should be fine, maaaaaybe 512. Your budget is somewhat limited as you'd want two 970's/290's for sure, with a good case and strong airflow capability to go along with them, SSD's still cost money (even though if you compare SSD's now vs 3.5 years ago, you can get one with 4x the capacity that's 1.5x faster and still pocket a bit of money..)
Sure you don't want to OC? It makes a lot of difference, more difference than i5 to i7. If you're not OCing i guess the only option is the 4790k because of the inflated stock clock speeds on that sku only, but you do kinda need to buy a decent cooler for 4790k's because they're basically OC'd out of the box, compared to other CPU's, and the Intel stock cooler is kinda terrible.
The cheapest 4k IPS monitors will still run you about 700 dollars, with the 1k remaining budget (at most) its really not feasible to go with dual 970s or 290s
On January 11 2015 01:31 Cyro wrote: You should only use SSD for stuff that has to be accessed quickly; 128GB or 256GB should be fine, maaaaaybe 512. Your budget is somewhat limited as you'd want two 970's/290's for sure, with a good case and strong airflow capability to go along with them, SSD's still cost money (even though if you compare SSD's now vs 3.5 years ago, you can get one with 4x the capacity that's 1.5x faster and still pocket a bit of money..)
Sure you don't want to OC? It makes a lot of difference, more difference than i5 to i7. If you're not OCing i guess the only option is the 4790k because of the inflated stock clock speeds on that sku only, but you do kinda need to buy a decent cooler for 4790k's because they're basically OC'd out of the box, compared to other CPU's, and the Intel stock cooler is kinda terrible.
I am open to OC'ing if it frees up some budget for other things. As far as cooling would a Thermaltake case be enough out of the box or will I need more equipment?
On January 11 2015 01:39 Kupon3ss wrote: The cheapest 4k IPS monitors will still run you about 700 dollars, with the 1k remaining budget (at most) its really not feasible to go with dual 970s or 290s
I should have mentioned that my budget is without monitor.
On January 11 2015 01:31 Cyro wrote: You should only use SSD for stuff that has to be accessed quickly; 128GB or 256GB should be fine, maaaaaybe 512. Your budget is somewhat limited as you'd want two 970's/290's for sure, with a good case and strong airflow capability to go along with them, SSD's still cost money (even though if you compare SSD's now vs 3.5 years ago, you can get one with 4x the capacity that's 1.5x faster and still pocket a bit of money..)
Sure you don't want to OC? It makes a lot of difference, more difference than i5 to i7. If you're not OCing i guess the only option is the 4790k because of the inflated stock clock speeds on that sku only, but you do kinda need to buy a decent cooler for 4790k's because they're basically OC'd out of the box, compared to other CPU's, and the Intel stock cooler is kinda terrible.
I am open to OC'ing if it frees up some budget for other things. As far as cooling would a Thermaltake case be enough out of the box or will I need more equipment?
On January 11 2015 01:39 Kupon3ss wrote: The cheapest 4k IPS monitors will still run you about 700 dollars, with the 1k remaining budget (at most) its really not feasible to go with dual 970s or 290s
I should have mentioned that my budget is without monitor.
You should definitely OC with modern high end computer parts cooling wise a case may need an extra fan or two but will be mostly sufficient, you will also need a CPU cooler
That PSU is 700w rated, but the 12v rails are split 360w+312w.
I can't find good info/reviews so i guess the CPU and one pair of the 6+2's are on the 360w rail.. Which would mean with 225w allocated for GPU, there would be 135w for CPU before maxing it out. That's quite edgy (within 10-20% of limits and might even max it, assuming cpu at "stock" and gpu overclocked) and maybe even hittable, and would definitely not be enough for either overclocked CPU, more meaty CPU or more meaty GPU, so for that reason i would avoid it even if it's priced decently.
Other stuff looks pretty good, ~$90 for a z97 isn't a lot to allow for 2400mhz RAM etc and even some cpu tweaking, i could recommend the air 540 case because i liked it enough to buy one, but there is personal bias there :D
it's actually quite decent board that goes up to 2800 that's on sale in terms of PSU I considered it but the rails should be fine for a gold rated PSU and I doubt we're going to OC the CPU to quite that extent
the case and everything else is pretty much all personal taste, he mentioned thermalate so I just picked one of their mid towers that I liked
The 4790k runs at 4.2-4.4ghz at stock depending on how many cores loaded and has HT, it's very capable of drawing 135w. They can hit 200 at more pushed voltages, but even the "stock" like 4.4 often uses 1.2-1.25v
So is the Power supply enough? Also pcpartpicker gave me this notification: " Motherboard does not support 2-way SLI. The G.Skill Trident X Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-2400 Memory operating voltage of 1.65V exceeds the Intel Haswell Refresh CPU recommended maximum of 1.5V+5% (1.575V). This memory module may run at a reduced clock rate to meet the 1.5V voltage recommendation, or may require running at a voltage greater than the Intel recommended maximum. "
Hi, I just completed the "typical gamer" build, but when I boot, it immediately goes to "Reboot and select a boot device or Insert Boot Media in selected Boot Device and press a key" There's no option to punch a key to go to BIOS or setup.
One issue is I didn't have enough sata cables for all of the drives, so I just have the dvd and ssd plugged in with no hdd.
Ok, new issue. I managed to flash my motherboard via the internet, but when I go to change the boot order, it only shows the ssd. The dvd drive is firmly connected and has power (I can open the tray). (It's the Asrock h7 pro4 btw). I'm trying to boot the OS from disc.
On January 11 2015 06:31 Jerubaal wrote: Ok, new issue. I managed to flash my motherboard via the internet, but when I go to change the boot order, it only shows the ssd. The dvd drive is firmly connected and has power (I can open the tray). (It's the Asrock h7 pro4 btw). I'm trying to boot the OS from disc.
On January 11 2015 03:07 Cyro wrote: It's enough, but it would be better to get some other 750w or even 650w units
good catch on mobo, i assumed it would being an atx z97 but it only seems to have one of the x16 slots wired to the cpu
1.65v memory is fine
What would be the next best mobo? I don't want to skimp on this part because everything else depends on it.
Dunno, something that can split pci-e from CPU to x8/x8 in two pci-e slots (which should be easy to find, because it's a requirement for official sli certification), maybe z97 (i can't remember if you get it below z97, but z97 is required for RAM over 1600mhz.. which doesn't really matter i guess to you, if you don't want to OC CPU, because that's much more important than faster RAM)
I'm really curious to see variable refresh with sc2 and if it makes blizzard's rts/moba engine more playable, that video catches a lot of how weirdly it performs (but it's 10x worse when you are actually playing a replay/game, and not paused)
that 0:40 - 0:45 is exactly what i see all of the time, i played for 15 minutes yesterday but it was even worse than i remembered. I think in a best case scenario, Gsync could pretty much completely fix the problems with uneven motion and the huge crazy tearing that comes with so uneven frametimes, but it would not be able to change the variable input lag. Because the mouse itself is handled seperately, that would mostly show up as weird behavior when boxing things, selecting units, hopefully not during micro etc
Freesync should work great, monitor permitting, but i think it's important to note the difference in that nvidia went for dedicated hardware so that they could do specific things (like hold a copy of frame buffer in the monitor itself) while the freesync application of dynamic refresh is not as complete and doesn't have some functions. The 60hz freesync monitors would suffer a -lot- more than the 120-144hz ones as a result of that. I'm disappointed that AMD made a lot of promises, and fell short in at least 2-3 major ways.
I think this year i'd like to get a high end GPU, an adaptive refresh@~120hz+ screen and maybe even a mainstream Skylake CPU, which should be doable because i have money sitting around now and already great hardware to sell and buy improved versions
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If you guys are interested, from what seems to be a pretty decent source ("Silicon Lottery" on ocn, guy who is binning chips and testing with lighter loads like x264)~
Here are some ballpark figures for a stable 4790K at 1.3V
99% 4.5 95% 4.6 75% 4.7 25% 4.8 10% 4.9 2% 5.0
Little higher than i thought, but i believe it. Actually he's probably quoting the bios voltages (i just asked) in which case that's actually 1.32vcore, that fits my expectation more.
EPT
