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My dad wants to upgrade my computer for my birthday! (I wrote elsewhere about getting a laptop: this means I can go for a work laptop, peripherals AND a gaming desktop. thx)
What I need:
I'd like to run SC2 on medium settings without dipping below 60fps in big fights. 60fps in Grey goo lategame would be nice too, but I think its outside my budget lol. My current desktop has an ancient cpu and mobo, so I'd like to upgrade those two things.
(currently i hit 30-45 in big fights with medium settings, which I find jarring.)
I'd like to future proof a little, but also be respectful of my dad's money! Considering my current 30-50 fps, I don't want to spend $400 for a tiny improvement :p
I am also a software engineering student, and I'm not sure what hardware requirements I'll have in the future.
I'm not sure the budget, but I'd like to keep it reasonable since it isn't my own money. I was thinking of an i3 or i5 with some compatible mobo, but really have no idea.
I might be able to get the components as soon as tomorrow, so a fast reply would be appreciated, though in fact any advice at all would be generous!
edit: I'm not sure if I should be looking into a heatsink or extra fans/cooling. Also, I'm open minded but extremely cautious about overclocking.
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Components worth transferring from my old computer, all fairly new except psu/peripherals:
GPU GTX 960
RAM 8x1 GB DDR3 1600 (kingston hyperx black, can I get a second stick later for 16GB or do you need a 16GB pack?)
SSD 512 GB (Crucial MX100)
PSU 850W
+peripherals incl 120Hz monitor (for QuakeLive  )
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What is your budget?
not sure... my dad says he'll cover it, but I want to keep it low. I imagine $500 is a reasonable cap, but I'd like to make it close to $300 if I could. Not sure.
What is your monitor's native resolution?
1920x1080
What games do you intend to play on this computer? What settings?
Starcraft 2, medium, with 60fps minimum in battles
What do you intend to use the computer for besides gaming?
Software Engineering student, not sure what hardware requirements my future holds... could use tips here!
Do you intend to overclock?
no, scared to. Can't afford to replace a damaged component.
Do you intend to do SLI / Crossfire?
eventually
Do you need an operating system?
no
Do you need a monitor or any other peripherals and is this part of your budget?
no
If you have any requirements or brand preferences, please specify.
no
What country will you be buying your parts in?
Canada
If you have any retailer preferences, please specify.
Memory Express
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Thoughts on best bang for your buck case fans? I need as silent as sub-60$ budget buys. Nothing fancy on cooling demands--no OC chip or anything.
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United Kingdom20343 Posts
I'd like to run SC2 on medium settings without dipping below 60fps in big fights. 60fps in Grey goo lategame would be nice too, but I think its outside my budget lol. My current desktop has an ancient cpu and mobo, so I'd like to upgrade those two things.
(currently i hit 30-45 in big fights with medium settings, which I find jarring.)
It's very hard to say an amount of performance for sc2, because some fights have like 1/5 of the FPS of others. It's tied quite heavily to unit count (with 200 supply of zerglings giving a small fraction of the FPS of 200 supply of thors) but also based on some stuff like the amount of attacks a unit has, attack frequency, any splash damage, etc. Almost all graphics settings can be maxed with sc2 though for no real minimum FPS change, aside from physics/effects/reflections which lower FPS when CPU bound (basically all of the time)
Grey Goo won't run well no matter what you do. It has several major performance problems which make it the worst running game that i own; no hardware on the planet can change that
This is a benchmark on an overclocked Haswell CPU, highly CPU bound, in a 1v1 vs AI with no more than ~250 supply on the field, my big base and his small base.
![[image loading]](http://puu.sh/gqZqa.png)
Nothing you can do to make it run well with 400 supply and by 800 you should probably count in frames per minute :D ^LOTS of frames taking longer than 33ms (30fps) already.
As for your system: What CPU are you used to playing on? That tells a lot for what kind of performance upgrade you would see. You should ideally have two sticks of RAM, because RAM runs in dual channel since forever and when you only have one stick, you get half of the bandwidth. That might significantly affect SC2 but i have not personally tested it. I know for a fact that RAM speed does, though, through my own benches and a couple of other sources. If you do get less performance from having 1x stick of RAM instead of 2x, it's probably like 2-10% less FPS i'd imagine, so maybe not worth buying another 8GB of RAM that you don't intend to utilize if you already have a 1x8GB stick.
If you overclock properly there is no risk of randomly setting stuff on fire. Read the OP for that~ You might want to run a g3258 or a 4690k with an overclock, considering that. If not, maybe a stock i5. G3258's cost like $50-60 IIRC and with an OC, will run sc2 at higher FPS than any stock CPU, even at $300-5k pricepoints, but that's mostly because starcraft 2 see's no significant benefit (if any at all) from a third core, if you're running it alone without something demanding like live encoding video for sending a livestream.
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United Kingdom20343 Posts
On March 08 2015 10:23 Danglars wrote:
Thoughts on best bang for your buck case fans? I need as silent as sub-60$ budget buys. Nothing fancy on cooling demands--no OC chip or anything.
What case you got and what parts in it? The rough figure that matters for case airflow is just wattage under load (with my 980, 4770k and OC's, that's comfortably 400w or so for me) - power usage = heat output = how many and how high performance fans you need to keep case temperature at a reasonable delta over room temperature
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My current cpu is a core 2 quad q9550
Another factor regarding overclocking is that I can't take time to learn how to do it unless its fairly straightforward. Midterms! Big projects! It is something I'd like to learn to do one day though.
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I wonder if I shouldn't OC my current cpu for a few months until the summer, so if I make a mistake it'll be with my old hardware. The OP says OC is safe, but doesn't link to any guides. Where would I start?
Also, I assume if I went the OC route I'd need a more expensive mobo and some sort of cooling?
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So I got my parts and am currently on my new build. I got a 970, and the only thing that's weird is the fans on it have not come on yet. I played a dota game, and they didn't come on. Is this normal? As far as I can tell everything is working fine.
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many skews of the 970 have a 0 fan default profile in which the fans do not turn on until heat exceeds a certain amount
running dota2 on 1080 with vsync will often actually not lead to the fan turning on depending on your case's cooling
Turning vsync off or loading a more graphically intensive game should make the fan turn on
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Alright, cool. I'm not going to worry about it then.
Thanks, Kupon3ss.
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You can just try running something like furmark for a minute or two and see if they turn on.
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United Kingdom20343 Posts
furmark auto throttles unless your gpu is from 2009, but anything that loads GPU like unigine heaven 4.0 works fine. Games like SC2, WoW and probably Dota are so CPU limited that GPU often isn't stressed. For example on WoW i play at 4k resolution with 4x MSAA on a single 980 yet i'm still CPU bound standing in a city, during raid/pvp combat or even sometimes in garrison alone. If i was playing on 1080p instead, GPU load would be a quarter of that, like 20% load instead of 80%.
With recent nvidia GPU's but Maxwell stuff especially, they're extreeeeemely efficient when downclocking. Out of the box, most factory OC'd cards will use 1.225v. They're set to maybe ~1300-1400 boost frequency, but you can usually manual to 1525 or so.
If you compare that to 1200mhz @1.0v - which the cards will automatically do at moderate but not particularly challenging loads - then you're talking about using like 1.8x as much power for like 20% more performance. It's easy to get to the point where suddenly your 980 is using 120w at load instead of 250w because one game isn't GPU heavy enough to trigger boosting past that ~1200mhz@1v point. Pretty crazy how big the power differences can be, and i'm sad that Nvidia gives almost zero control over what the cards do for voltage unless you void your warranty and mess with bios flashing
the 165w tdp for 980 is legit, and ~225w tdp for Titan X will be totally legit too  but they can happily consume 1.5x that power with a little tweaking.
For the math, you can assume that power scales to the square of voltage and linearly with frequency. There are a few other effects like more power making the chip hotter which then increases resistance and further increases power draw (which can have a very significant effect, like if you're running at 90c instead of 50c, it can increase power by ~10-25%), but just ignoring everything aside from voltage and frequency scaling:
1200@1v = 100%
(1.25/1) *1.25 = 1.5625x
1550/1200 = 1.292x
1.5625*1.292 = 2.02x power
so 1200mhz to 1550mhz, yet doubled power consumption :D voltage vs frequency curve is a harsh mistress. It's the same with CPU's - i saw some data recently on OCN, voltage scaling was roughly linear up to ~3ghz for this particular Haswell CPU, and then it needed an approximately quadratically increasing amount of voltage per 100mhz. That's how you get a CPU @5ghz using like 5x as much power as at 3ghz lol
tl;dr maxwell doesn't use power if it's underclocked, something something aliens did it. Fan's don't need to be on (or don't need to be on fast, 600rpm can be fine) if power draw + heat output is very low. The 970/980 heatsinks are built to be hit with 200-300w heat loads, so when they're at 1200mhz @1.0 - 1.07v and 60% load, it's easily taken care of :D
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4690k with an overclock, considering that. If not, maybe a stock i5.
I like the sound of that. You mean the i5 4690k or else an i5 4690? If I go the i5 route, and keep the single stick of ram with plans to get a second stick in a year or two, w/o overclocking for the moment, what motherboard do I want to be looking at? I might want to try overclocking it one day to delay upgrading in the future, but going to shy away from OC for now. Too busy to learn how to do it right, but it would be good to have it as an option down the road.
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United Kingdom20343 Posts
@usedtocare the case is matx so a size too small, you need regular atx like the source 210 etc
i have not heard of the "mainstream" WD drives, but it's probably fine.
This RAM - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231666&nm_mc=AFC-C8Junction&cm_mmc=AFC-C8Junction-_-na-_-na-_-na&cm_sp=&AID=10446076&PID=3938566&SID= - is higher performance out of the box, but it's probably the same memory under the hood just with more aggressive stock voltage.
GPU's have coolers on them. Aside from that, the only thing you should be concerned with is alright airflow in case - 2-3 fans at a low RPM is good unless you're going for a very high power build.
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@HewTheTitan
4690k for OC, ~4570-4690 if stock. h81 (cheapest), b85, h97 (probably similar price). Not sure for specific boards. If you're overclocking you'd need a z97 board and a 4690k
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thx Cyro. Any recommendation as far as GPU goes? I can probably shell out around $200. Are there deals out there?
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United Kingdom20343 Posts
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I'd try to get a used GTX770 or 280x.
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United Kingdom20343 Posts
only if they're cheap enough, a 960 is maybe even slightly preferable to 770 (especially the strix 960) while a 280x isn't much faster than a 280. Somewhere around 10% IIRC, so if you're buying used it should be only be when it's cheap enough to make a $170 280 look bad.
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EPT
