EPTComputer Build, Upgrade & Buying Resource Thread - Page 586
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micronesia
United States24718 Posts
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Cyro
United Kingdom20318 Posts
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HURM
Canada20 Posts
A friend of mine is planning on doing a build at the end of the month and I haven't really followed much component wise since my build 3 years ago. Any help would be appreciated! What is your budget? For just the tower components 500 - 600 Canadian dollars. What is your monitor's native resolution? Will be a 1080 p monitor. What games do you intend to play on this computer? What settings? Most games are not GPU heavy (Dota 2, Hearthstone...) but would like to be able to be able to play new AAAs on mid-high settings. What do you intend to use the computer for besides gaming? pRon? Gaming mostly, will watch some movies and have windows office on it I'm sure. Do you intend to overclock? We have the power. Do you intend to do SLI / Crossfire? Nope Do you need an operating system? Not as part of the listed price but Windows will be the operating system. Do you need a monitor or any other peripherals and is this part of your budget? Not as part of the listed budget. If you have any requirements or brand preferences, please specify. Nothing in particular. 4 core CPU. Only ever worked with Intel but AMD is fine as well. What country will you be buying your parts in? Canada If you have any retailer preferences, please specify. NCIX would be preferred since we can pick up in stores quite easily/ no shipping costs. The only other thing to mention is if the budget is a little too restricting we could make some initial recessions such as no solid state to begin with and then upgrade to an SSD in coming months. Or vice versa to an HDD depending on price points. Thanks for any help/ suggestions! | ||
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paddyz
Ireland628 Posts
My GPU just broke (Its a gtx 560ti, device manager said it was a code 43 error. I keep getting horizontal white lines accross my screen. I tried unintsalling the drivers, installing new drivers, re-seating the card and using Guru3d program to remove other display driver files. At this point ive given up on the card.) so I am looking for a replacement. I know the new generation of cards are supposed to come out this year (rumored for the end of the year I believe) and that should be a big upgrade, but I don't know what prices they will be or how much of an impact they have on the prices of existing cards. So I am hesitant to pay a lot for a card now. I want to be able to play in 1920 x 1080 resolution. I will mostly play League of Legends, Legacy of the Void (doesn't have to be max settings) , Fallout 4 (doesn't have to be super high settings) and Darksouls 3 (when it comes out). I don't really play to play much more than that for awhile and I don't care if I can't get max settings out of new games so long as I can play SC2 and LOL smoothly. For now I am only using 1 monitor but I might switch to using 2. I have no intention to use 2 GPUs at once. My current specs: PSU: Corsair CX750M (bought recently because 650 broke, everything else was bought in may 2012) Processor: i5-3450 Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-B75M-3DH RAM: 8GB DDR3 (2X4GB) Case: CIT Vanttage Black Gaming case. I assume I have given all relevant information (sorry if I gave to much or there are spelling errors, it is hard to see). I play A LOT. I wouldn't be shocked if my GPU overheated. The wire to one of my fans (on the cases door) is disconnected from the fan so maybe I should look into getting a fan, or getting it fixed. The extent of my fan prowess is turning on msi afterburner..but I generally forget to. I play almost every day, and often for periods of 10+ hours with very few, if any, breaks. I like what I have read about the GTX970 but ~€300 is really pushing my price range comfort zone. At the moment I am torn between upgrading to either the GTX970 (or something a little worse) or else buying something with similar capacity to my old 560ti (as in just be able to play LOL, SC2 and hopefully Dark souls 3 (at least as minimum settings....its ok if it can't play fallout 4) and then buy a new better GPU after the new generation has come out and I have more money. If I could find a GTX 970 for €250 or less I wouldn't hesitate to get it, but €300+ for a card that is about to be well surpassed seems silly to me (And it might be stupid of me to be concerned by this but I don't know how much of the leap in price is due to being able to play at higher resolutions...which I probably wouldn't make use of, I don't try to tweak settings in the GPU drivers either.). That is why I would be happy to buy a cheap card that could run the games I play at least until I get a new card when they are better/cheaper, but the cheap card would have to be able to comfortably play the games I listed earlier for at least a year, and be as cheap as possible without being stupidly loud. The price range below the 970 seems to make more sense for me but seemingly they are much worse from a price vs performance standpoint and I have no clue how efficient they are for their price for the ones like 960, 950, 750 and their ADM equivalents. Thank you for any help/clarity or recommendations. | ||
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Cyro
United Kingdom20318 Posts
970's are already surpassed a lot by the high end, which is about 1.6 - 1.7x faster (980ti) The next gen midrange cards could plausibly have current gen flagship performance while the next gen flagships are way faster, though it's impossible to say for sure - anyone speaking with more confidence is probably pulling info out of their ass. At 300 euro you'd probably be looking at one of those midrange cards next gen, which may or may not be available and reasonably priced within 6 months. 950 and 960 are similar in performance and price, about 20% difference IIRC. 970's are way faster and more expensive (~~1.7x better) so there's a big gap in the lineup. r9 370-380's approximately compete with 950-960. There's not much special when it comes to playing at higher resolutions. For ability to raise resolution, it's usually more like "This GPU gives me so much FPS that i wouldn't mind a 1.6x FPS hit to run at the higher resolution". A 970 can be there or not there, depending on the game - it has a bit of a reputation for being more "high end" than it actually is from a logical or engineering point of view, so won't have much longevity at high settings and resolution (newer GPU's and more taxing games will continue to expose relative weakness) | ||
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xeo1
United States429 Posts
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Cyro
United Kingdom20318 Posts
2% load at 4000mhz is 10% load at 800mhz, but your load % is abnormal. You can check what's eating CPU in task manager and/or resource monitor. I'm tabbed out of a game ATM and firefox is using 0.5% CPU (half a percent), battle.net client is using 0.3%, discord is using 0.09% etc. The best way to see exact values is with the CPU tab in Resource Monitor sorted by CPU or Average CPU load - the Average section might take a little while to even out if you're getting spiky loads. Also, Flash Player doesn't count as light browsing. That thing can cause monstrous CPU load for no reason | ||
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xeo1
United States429 Posts
After doing some updates, this is what it looks like: ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/AT6zbLJ.png) | ||
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Cyro
United Kingdom20318 Posts
I'm not sure why cmd.exe would be high | ||
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Cyro
United Kingdom20318 Posts
I will not comment on dates, I will not comment on schedules. We do not release dates prior to launch, at most we give quarter granularity. Giving the date out will stall demand. We have a business to run. While you might think that it will make your life easier to not have to guess, the reality is that we have a business to run and the minute you let the date out, sales stall. For everything. The cost impact of announcing the launch date is always bigger and drives these decisions. I've never really thought of it on that level, but it can explain GPU's randomly showing up in the online shops at 4am - and why no source with any level of reputation can really say if notable GPU's are releasing within 2 or within 10 months. It's in AMD and Nvidia's best interests to not only be as vague as possible, but create false and conflicting information. | ||
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Mr. Wiggles
Canada5894 Posts
What is your budget? ~$2000 CAD (There's flex room here if needed, and less is fine  ) I'm not sure how the current fall of the Canadian Dollar has affected prices, so I might have to raise this a little.What is your monitor's native resolution? Currently 1920x1080, but I'd like to be able to scale up to higher resolutions. What games do you intend to play on this computer? What settings? DotA 2, Total War games, Paradox strategy games, various AAAs, fighters, Kerbal space program, a bit of everything, really. I'd like to play on High-Ultra settings, where reasonable. What do you intend to use the computer for besides gaming? Software development, So, text editing, building software, testing software. Compiling large projects, either partial or full builds. Running VMs on occasion. I do some work with AI, so this involves lots of simulation, training, long running processes. Basically, lots of memory/cpu hungry threaded tasks. Do you intend to overclock? If the benefits outweigh any potential drawbacks, yes. Do you intend to do SLI / Crossfire? Is this worth it? Are the performance benefits actually widely supported and cost efficient? Do you need an operating system? No, I'll probably end up dual booting Windows and Linux (Probably Fedora). I'd like to run Linux by itself, but I'm not sure if the support's there enough yet from most game developers. I'll probably just use Windows for games that don't have native support. Linux is free, and I can still get a Windows license through DreamSpark or whatever it's called now. Do you need a monitor or any other peripherals and is this part of your budget? I'll need one monitor. This doesn't necessarily need to come out of my budget, but any savings on the build could be put towards a monitor. This doesn't have to be 1920x1080. I'd probably be using this as my main monitor. If you have any requirements or brand preferences, please specify. I think I'd prefer nvidia for GPU brand. As far as I'm aware, the nvidia proprietary driver has the best performance under Linux currently and for the foreseeable future. What country will you be buying your parts in? Canada. If you have any retailer preferences, please specify. I'd prefer to buy locally where possible. Probably http://www.memoryexpress.com/ local store. If there's a part not available locally, I'd consider it. I just don't like dealing with returning parts by mail if there's a defect, and shipping is slow. Memory Express price matches pretty much any vendor that ships from within Canada, so any parts you find I can probably buy at the same cost locally. I also have two cats and a dog, so anything you could suggest to eliminate dust/hair problems would be good, especially if it could affect temperature regulation or air-flow. Any tips? Any help or build suggestions are very much appreciated. Thanks! | ||
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Mr. Wiggles
Canada5894 Posts
http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/p/bKPkhM Like I said, I don't really have any experience with builds, so I'm not sure what I should be looking for in general when picking something like a mobo, cooler, or case for example. This is maybe a little more expensive than I was aiming for originally, but I think the difference is mostly accounted for by the currency changes. | ||
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bluegarfield
Singapore1128 Posts
On February 20 2016 02:03 Mr. Wiggles wrote: So, would something like this seem reasonable based on my reqs in the post above? http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/p/bKPkhM Like I said, I don't really have any experience with builds, so I'm not sure what I should be looking for in general when picking something like a mobo, cooler, or case for example. This is maybe a little more expensive than I was aiming for originally, but I think the difference is mostly accounted for by the currency changes. Given heavy load on the work side (VM, simulation, etc) you may want to consider switching to i7-5820K and X99 motherboard for even more cores. This will of course increase the budget by quite a bit, so consider dropping from 980Ti to 970 instead. At 1080p gaming, a GTX970 is good enough. Knowing that you are planning to play beyond 1080p, but I feel performance/price value is never good at the top end, especially when next gen GPU (pascal) is coming out in about 6mths. I think that money is more well spent on the i7-5820K and save cost by buying GTX970 and be satisfy with 1080p gaming, for now. When Pascal cards come out, you can consider selling your GTX970 and upgrade. Also, I will probably pick this psu over the one you have, just because I am paranoid when overclocking. Not that the one you pick is bad, but this one is just better http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/part/evga-power-supply-220gs0650v1. Actually, seem like EVGA NEX is rated quite low, so probably avoid it if you want to overclock. Still safe to use if zero overclock though general ideas regarding picking components: - motherboard: look at chipset (Z170, H170, X99 etc) for overclocking capability. Then connectors that you might need (number of USB3.0 or USB3.1, USB-C, thunderbolt, intel/killer lan port, wifi, m.2, etc), then SLI capability if you plan to buy 2 GPU. For overclocking, there is this information regarding VRM that you need to pay attention to, but I am not well-versed in that. Just google the board to find if it has > 4 true power phase. - cooler: thermal performance, noise, ease of mounting and price. For cheap good air cooler, look for CM Hyper 212, Cryorig H7. More expensive and higher end one, Noctua NH-D14, NH-D15 or Thermalright silver arrow sb-e. I have only tried CM Hyper 212 and Noctua NH-D15 cooler, the Noctua cooler is 10times easier to mount, definitely has better performance, but also a lot more expensive T_T. No idea about AIO watercooler, but they are much more expensive compare to air cooler. Also, better check if the cooler size fit into the case. - case: look for something with good air flow, enough drive bay and fan mounting for your need, cable management and aesthetic may be? Some case are easier to work with than other, but should not affect decision much edit:oosp, missed other question. | ||
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Cyro
United Kingdom20318 Posts
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NonY
8751 Posts
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Cyro
United Kingdom20318 Posts
On February 22 2016 02:30 NonY wrote: Man I wish it was so simple to say "let's OC the 2500k to 4.6" Mine has never been stable above stock and it can't run big army battles in sc2 without lagging at stock. Wasted money on getting better cooling, planning to OC it, but giving it more voltage hasn't even helped. Is there some way to know if upgrading ram actually would help for sc2? Mine is on the low end (1333) and it looks like I can get 2x4 2133 for $50. Ram performance does help for sc2, but less than CPU performance (CPU core OC would probably make 2-3x as much difference). What motherboard do you have? 2500k's/6600k's on the CPU side are generally very easy to OC to at least 4.2ghz or so, sometimes higher, needing little if anything other than vcore changed - many people get ~4.6ghz doing that. With issues like you describe, i would suspect motherboard/bios everything slows down with large unit counts, but not nearly as much if you have faster stuff. | ||
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Azerbaijan
United States660 Posts
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/ydDPMp I haven't built a pc for a long time and I was mostly just picking parts with good reviews. I typically play CS GO or eve online with 2 clients running (one on each monitor) but every now and then I'll play whatever AAA game seems neat at the moment. I tend to do other things on the monitor isn't being used for gaming; things like watching streams or general web browsing or sometimes writing code. I'm unsure if the I7 is necessary and I am also unsure if I need the 2 cards if one can handle both monitors. If one card is enough I'd be happy to play less and possibly add the second one later. Anyway, I'd appreciate any feedback. Thanks in advance. | ||
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Cyro
United Kingdom20318 Posts
On February 22 2016 10:09 Azerbaijan wrote: Can I get some thoughts on this? http://pcpartpicker.com/p/ydDPMp I haven't built a pc for a long time and I was mostly just picking parts with good reviews. I typically play CS GO or eve online with 2 clients running (one on each monitor) but every now and then I'll play whatever AAA game seems neat at the moment. I tend to do other things on the monitor isn't being used for gaming; things like watching streams or general web browsing or sometimes writing code. I'm unsure if the I7 is necessary and I am also unsure if I need the 2 cards if one can handle both monitors. If one card is enough I'd be happy to play less and possibly add the second one later. Anyway, I'd appreciate any feedback. Thanks in advance. Get a 6600k and ~3000c15 / 3200c16 RAM (or similar) - the RAM shouldn't cost much more than what you already selected (edit: http://pcpartpicker.com/part/gskill-memory-f43000c15d16gvrb @ $12 more) If you want that much GPU power, then a single 980ti is a better option than two 970's - a little bit less FPS, but a lot of positives to having only one GPU instead of two, especially with the way that multi-GPU rendering is done today. A single 970 is generally fine for most people for stuff like that today, as long as you're aware that it's not quite as much of a flagship card as its name would imply and next-gen GPU's will destroy it - you can likely just sell the 970 (at a loss, it costs $$ to "rent" a graphics card for a period of time) and buy whatever meets your fancy from the next gen if you want a big performance boost. EVE isn't that taxing, especially if you have a couple settings off - the asteroid belt lighting effect caused a massive increase in GPU load last time i played Since you've listed 2 monitors, are your current ones not usable (or do you already have those ones?) Buying new, there's potential to go for a 120hz+ screen or larger resolution if you wanted it (pretty useful for EVE, less so for other games IMO). Either of those would make a stronger GPU more useful as you can translate power into resolution or FPS that directly benefits you, rather than it being wasted past a lower threshold on a lower end monitor. | ||
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LiLSighKoh
United States588 Posts
Budget is around ~$800-$900 What is your monitor's native resolution? Native resolution is 1600 x 900 What games do you intend to play on this computer? What settings? Intend on playing games such as SC2, CSGO, Black Desert Online, and various newer games. Settings would I would like to play on High. What do you intend to use the computer for besides gaming? Netflix, basic internet uses, most likely Microsoft Office products as well. Do you intend to overclock? No Do you intend to do SLI / Crossfire? No Do you need an operating system? Windows 10 Do you need a monitor or any other peripherals and is this part of your budget? None. 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. None. If I can fit a SSD with my budget that would be great, if not I would be willing to spend more to fit it in there. | ||
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Azerbaijan
United States660 Posts
On February 22 2016 10:31 Cyro wrote: Sorry to those above not recieving replies^~ there are not a lot of people that post here regularly any more (that may have something to do with the tech forum being buried at the bottom of the website a while back) and it's often a lot of work to give a solid reply more than throwing parts together with 15 seconds to look at each one and saying "this should work" Get a 6600k and ~3000c15 / 3200c16 RAM (or similar) - the RAM shouldn't cost much more than what you already selected (edit: http://pcpartpicker.com/part/gskill-memory-f43000c15d16gvrb @ $12 more) If you want that much GPU power, then a single 980ti is a better option than two 970's - a little bit less FPS, but a lot of positives to having only one GPU instead of two, especially with the way that multi-GPU rendering is done today. A single 970 is generally fine for most people for stuff like that today, as long as you're aware that it's not quite as much of a flagship card as its name would imply and next-gen GPU's will destroy it - you can likely just sell the 970 (at a loss, it costs $$ to "rent" a graphics card for a period of time) and buy whatever meets your fancy from the next gen if you want a big performance boost. EVE isn't that taxing, especially if you have a couple settings off - the asteroid belt lighting effect caused a massive increase in GPU load last time i played Since you've listed 2 monitors, are your current ones not usable (or do you already have those ones?) Buying new, there's potential to go for a 120hz+ screen or larger resolution if you wanted it (pretty useful for EVE, less so for other games IMO). Either of those would make a stronger GPU more useful as you can translate power into resolution or FPS that directly benefits you, rather than it being wasted past a lower threshold on a lower end monitor. Thanks for the quick response. Ill switch to the 980ti, that makes a lot of sense especially considering most of the reviews of the 970 complain about how hard it is to fit. I'd probably have some problems with two of them in a microATX case. As for the monitors, I have a similar one now that got damaged somehow and I have a few spots of not dead, but confused (i guess, I don't really know whats wrong) pixels so I'm looking to pick up two new ones. I might consider 120hz monitors but I'm not really into the higher resolutions yet. My question then would be is the 980ti overkill for two 1080 monitors 120hz or otherwise? Also yes the asteroid lighting effects are still ridiculous. | ||
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