Building a gaming system

[DarrinS]

So, my son wants to get into PC gaming and build his own system. Is $700 budget enough to build a respectable gaming system with an easy upgrade path? Also, I'd like to not have to worry about overclocking. Thanks

[baseline bum]

So, my son wants to get into PC gaming and build his own system. Is $700 budget enough to build a respectable gaming system with an easy upgrade path? Also, I'd like to not have to worry about overclocking. Thanks

What does he play? For an all around gaming system able to handle heavy duty games like Fallout 4, Witcher 3, Star Wars Battlefront, Battlefield 4, etc at 1080p I'd go with an i3-6100 and a GTX 960 4GB. If you're able to snag a Windows license from work, this would be a nice build with lots of room to upgrade:

PCPartPicker part list (http://pcpartpicker.com/p/tfCX8d) / Price breakdown by merchant (http://pcpartpicker.com/p/tfCX8d/by_merchant/)

CPU: Intel Core i3-6100 3.7GHz Dual-Core Processor (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/intel-cpu-bx80662i36100) ($125.98 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: ASRock Z170M Pro4S Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/asrock-motherboard-z170mpro4s) ($102.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: Mushkin Redline 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-2666 Memory (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/mushkin-memory-997192t) ($57.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/western-digital-internal-hard-drive-wd10ezex) ($51.99 @ Newegg)
Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 960 4GB Video Card (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/msi-video-card-gtx9604gd5ttitaniumoc) ($211.98 @ Newegg)
Case: NZXT S340 (Black/Blue) ATX Mid Tower Case (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/nzxt-case-cas340wbb1) ($64.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: XFX TS 550W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/xfx-power-supply-xfxts550w) ($51.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $667.90
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-11-20 12:41 EST-0500

That also comes with $45 in mail in rebates that I didn't include. But if you do include MIR, you could go up to an i5-6500 and after that $45 in rebates you'd be at $701.91.

PCPartPicker part list (http://pcpartpicker.com/p/WBYFjX) / Price breakdown by merchant (http://pcpartpicker.com/p/WBYFjX/by_merchant/)

CPU: Intel Core i5-6500 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/intel-cpu-bx80662i56500) ($204.99 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: ASRock Z170M Pro4S Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/asrock-motherboard-z170mpro4s) ($102.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: Mushkin Redline 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-2666 Memory (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/mushkin-memory-997192t) ($57.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/western-digital-internal-hard-drive-wd10ezex) ($51.99 @ Newegg)
Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 960 4GB Video Card (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/msi-video-card-gtx9604gd5ttitaniumoc) ($211.98 @ Newegg)
Case: NZXT S340 (Black/Blue) ATX Mid Tower Case (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/nzxt-case-cas340wbb1) ($64.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: XFX TS 550W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/xfx-power-supply-xfxts550w) ($51.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $746.91
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-11-20 12:46 EST-0500

I added the Z170 board and the overclocked RAM to give the option to add an unlocked cpu later on and because when cpu bound (which is going to happen in modern games with an i3) the RAM speed can make a real difference. See the review of the i3-6100 on Digital Foundry's youtube page to see what I mean. Also, going with an H series board you'll be stuck at DDR4-2133, but getting full speed out of your RAM on a Z series board is as simple as just selecting the XMP profile from the BIOS. I also put a power supply that is pretty overkill for an i3 + 960, but it's a high quality unit (Seasonic OEM) in case your son wants to add a higher power GPU and/or CPU later on, since you want upgradability.

The case is pretty nice, the NZXT S340. It's got great build quality, pc gamers love windows in their computers, and it's easy to do the cable work for a clean build. I was thinking of buying this case myself after checking it out firsthand at Altex, though I opted with a Phanteks Enthoo Pro instead because I love full towers. The S340's window does scratch really easily though, so make sure your son knows this if you end up getting it. Also, note the one I picked in those builds above has different colors from the one in this review, as the all black one was more expensive.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cNWOgbEXMI

Since you want an upgrade path Skylake is the only way to go. Intel isn't making any more chips on LGA 1150 while they'll be making Skylake, Kaby Lake, and Cannonlake on LGA 1151, so the earliest you'd see a new mainstream socket is late 2017, though I'd bet more on late 2018 since I doubt Intel would just want to punt Cannonlake like they just had to do with Broadwell.

[baseline bum]

That system should be pretty good for 60 fps at high in most games, and close to 60 fps on medium on the hardest to run games like Witcher 3 or Crysis 3.

[baseline bum]

Another option if you up your budget another $50 you could go with an EVGA B-Stock GTX 970 and turn that i5 rig from a midrange 1080p system to a borderline high end system for playing games at ultra and high at 60 fps at 1080p. EVGA's B-Stock cards are refurbs with one year warranties. I suspect a lot of them are perfectly fine cards traded in through their Step Up program which allows you to return your card to buy something higher end within 90 days for the difference in the two cards' prices. I bet they get a lot of people who buy a 970 and then think they should have gotten a 980 Ti and upgrade. Or people grab 960s and decide they want to upgrade to a 970. Their 970s sell out quick though, and most of the time they don't have any in stock.

http://www.evga.com/Products/Product.aspx?pn=04G-P4-2977-RX

If you go the 970 route I'd recommend adding a 140 mm intake fan in front of the S340 (it doesn't come with front fans) since the 970 can draw quite a bit more power than the 960.

[Cry Havoc]

So, my son wants to get into PC gaming and build his own system. Is $700 budget enough to build a respectable gaming system with an easy upgrade path? Also, I'd like to not have to worry about overclocking. Thanks

If you buy on black friday/cyber monday, you can probably get some really good deals. A couple years back I got $100 of a video card on Black Friday.

[baseline bum]

If you buy on black friday/cyber monday, you can probably get some really good deals. A couple years back I got $100 of a video card on Black Friday.

The card that really seems like it's going to get some nice price drops is the GTX 970. I have already seen them selling as low as $270 new this month. Last year you could get really high quality R9 290s for $200-$220, I mean the best ones like PowerColor PCS+ and Sapphire Tri-X, but there will be no deal that good this year since AMD cards were going on fire sale after the GTX 970 released at $330. Damn when the 970 released in late September 2014 the R9 290s were $400 cards, by early November it was easy to find them for $220-$250. Sadly there haven't been any gpu releases like the 970 in 2015 and there won't be until 2016 when Pascal and Arctic Islands launch.

The GTX 960 2GB will probably get big price drops too, but that card isn't at all worth buying. 2GB of vram is ridiculous in 2015, and Nvidia is actually discontinuing the 2GB models of the 960.

[Cry Havoc]

The card that really seems like it's going to get some nice price drops is the GTX 970. I have already seen them selling as low as $270 new this month. Last year you could get really high quality R9 290s for $200-$220, I mean the best ones like PowerColor PCS+ and Sapphire Tri-X, but there will be no deal that good this year since AMD cards were going on fire sale after the GTX 970 released at $330. Damn when the 970 released in late September 2014 the R9 290s were $400 cards, by early November it was easy to find them for $220-$250. Sadly there haven't been any gpu releases like the 970 in 2015 and there won't be until 2016 when Pascal and Arctic Islands launch.

The GTX 960 2GB will probably get big price drops too, but that card isn't at all worth buying. 2GB of vram is ridiculous in 2015, and Nvidia is actually discontinuing the 2GB models of the 960.

The 390 was on for $260 yesterday. I think it's the best deal in GPUs right now.

[baseline bum]

The R9 380 4GB has seem some great price drops too. Now that I think of it, that i5 build I posted for DarrinS would be better with a 380 4GB and actually cheaper too. Plus there is also a $20 rebate that isn't figured into the price below:

PCPartPicker part list (http://pcpartpicker.com/p/MhWqt6) / Price breakdown by merchant (http://pcpartpicker.com/p/MhWqt6/by_merchant/)

CPU: Intel Core i5-6500 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/intel-cpu-bx80662i56500) ($204.99 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: ASRock Z170M Pro4S Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/asrock-motherboard-z170mpro4s) ($102.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: Mushkin Redline 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-2666 Memory (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/mushkin-memory-997192t) ($57.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/western-digital-internal-hard-drive-wd10ezex) ($51.99 @ Newegg)
Video Card: XFX Radeon R9 380 4GB Double Dissipation Video Card (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/xfx-video-card-r9380p4255) ($189.99 @ Newegg)
Case: NZXT S340 (Black/Blue) ATX Mid Tower Case (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/nzxt-case-cas340wbb1) ($64.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: XFX TS 550W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/xfx-power-supply-xfxts550w) ($51.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $724.92
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-11-20 15:05 EST-0500

This to me about an optimal ~$700 build. The 380 is a little stronger than the 960 when combined with an i5 or better. I recommend the 960 for an i3 build though, as the DirectX11 overhead in AMD drivers is pretty bad and overwhelms an i3 to where the 960 performs a lot better. But that driver overhead in AMD cards usually isn't a problem with an i5 or better, and the AMD R9 380 usually outperforms the Nvidia GTX 960 then.

[baseline bum]

Nvidia is usually better if you want to play games at launch though. For instance, Dying Light, Witcher 3, and Fallout 4 ran horribly at launch on AMD cards and pretty well on Nvidia. So sometimes you have to wait for a game to be out for a month or two for AMD's drivers to catch up. But AMD's drivers tend to get really good over time. For instance, Far Cry 4 was actually an Nvidia sponsored game that ran so much better on Nvidia hardware the first couple of months it was out. Now AMD absolutely slaughters Nvidia on Far Cry 4 though. It happens in a lot of games, since AMD tend to have stronger hardware at a given price point than Nvidia.

[baseline bum]

The 390 was on for $260 yesterday. I think it's the best deal in GPUs right now.

Which 390 was it? If it's Asus or Gigabyte I'd pass, their AMD cards usually suck. If it was Sapphire, MSI, PowerColor, or XFX though, those are usually awesome cards. Strangely Gigabyte makes some of the best Nvidia cards, though Asus still sucks on Nvidia.

[Cry Havoc]

Nvidia is usually better if you want to play games at launch though. For instance, Dying Light, Witcher 3, and Fallout 4 ran horribly at launch on AMD cards and pretty well on Nvidia. So sometimes you have to wait for a game to be out for a month or two for AMD's drivers to catch up. But AMD's drivers tend to get really good over time. For instance, Far Cry 4 was actually an Nvidia sponsored game that ran so much better on Nvidia hardware the first couple of months it was out. Now AMD absolutely slaughters Nvidia on Far Cry 4 though. It happens in a lot of games, since AMD tend to have stronger hardware at a given price point than Nvidia.

I had Dying Light at launch, and I remember it running fairly terribly across all cards. Which was fixed pretty quickly in a patch. FO4 is running poorly across the spectrum as well.

AMD is likely going to be much better set up for DX12 with the current gen cards also. Worth thinking about.

[baseline bum]

I had Dying Light at launch, and I remember it running fairly terribly across all cards. Which was fixed pretty quickly in a patch. FO4 is running poorly across the spectrum as well.

AMD is likely going to be much better set up for DX12 with the current gen cards also. Worth thinking about.

Toms Hardware did a benchmark on Dying Light version 1.04 where the 960 outperformed the 290x. In Fallout 4 the 970 outperformed the Fury X at launch.

I think AMD is making a huge miscalculation throwing all their eggs in the DX12 basket. Their hardware should murder Nvidia's at most price points, but it doesn't because they have never fixed their DX11 drivers. Instead it's like they're hoping DX12 will make their shitty FX processors relevant, but all games coming out are DX11. The FX series loses to Intel at every price point other than ultra budget sub $80 where the Athlon 860k is much better than the Pentium G3258. It's sad their GPU division is making stupid moves to try to prop up their CPU division. Their DX11 drivers are so bad you can't even recommend AMD cards in budget builds. Look at the gimpy GTX 750 Ti beating an R9 280 in Call of Duty Advanced Warfare when paired with an i3-4130 at the 72 second mark.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQzLU4HWw2U

[baseline bum]

GTX 950 beating R9 380 in Fallout 4


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imcj_BxGqD4

[DarrinS]

Thanks for the tips. I don't yet know what kind of games he's going to get into. He's been playing a Wii and Wii-u for several years now.


i notice everything is at 1080p. Is that so you can use a tv instead of a monitor?

[Cry Havoc]

Toms Hardware did a benchmark on Dying Light version 1.04 where the 960 outperformed the 290x. In Fallout 4 the 970 outperformed the Fury X at launch.

I think AMD is making a huge miscalculation throwing all their eggs in the DX12 basket. Their hardware should murder Nvidia's at most price points, but it doesn't because they have never fixed their DX11 drivers. Instead it's like they're hoping DX12 will make their shitty FX processors relevant, but all games coming out are DX11. The FX series loses to Intel at every price point other than ultra budget sub $80 where the Athlon 860k is much better than the Pentium G3258. It's sad their GPU division is making stupid moves to try to prop up their CPU division. Their DX11 drivers are so bad you can't even recommend AMD cards in budget builds. Look at the gimpy GTX 750 Ti beating an R9 280 in Call of Duty Advanced Warfare when paired with an i3-4130 at the 72 second mark.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQzLU4HWw2U

I'm not sure where you're getting this information. As of now, Nvidia has the performance edge in some games.

In others, AMD leads. In fact, it's widely held that a 390 will be a superior card farther down the road, since the 970 only has 3.5 GB of VRAM.

And just like you, I can cite games where AMD does better than NVidia out of the gate:

http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphics-Cards/Middle-earth-Shadow-Mordor-Performance-Testing/Shadow-Mordor-2560x1440

Here is the 290x beating out the 980, 77fps to 75. The 970 meanwhile is at 66 fps.

http://www.techspot.com/review/1019-radeon-r9-390x-390-380/page3.html

In Battlefield, the 390 is clearly ahead of the 970. It even outscores the 970 in The Witcher 3 on this benchmark.

I don't understand your insinuation that they have all their eggs in Dx12. As of now, the 390 is considered to be *at worst* on par with the 970, and in many cases better, with more future proofing at a cheaper price point. The only clear advantage Nvidia has right now is ultra top end (980ti) and power consumption.

[Cry Havoc]

Also, fallout 4 is known to use a massive amount of tessellation, much of which appears to be unnoticeable. Reducing that frees up both Nvidia and AMD cards to higher framerates.

[Cry Havoc]

Thanks for the tips. I don't yet know what kind of games he's going to get into. He's been playing a Wii and Wii-u for several years now.


i notice everything is at 1080p. Is that so you can use a tv instead of a monitor?

Most monitors are still 1080p. You can absolutely use a TV instead, but I prefer a monitor for most gaming. Newer monitors coming out are 1440p or 4k, however video cards at present are really not capable of 4k gaming unless you reduce some visual effects or you spend $3000+ on a serious rig with multiple video cards.

[baseline bum]

I'm not sure where you're getting this information. As of now, Nvidia has the performance edge in some games.

In others, AMD leads. In fact, it's widely held that a 390 will be a superior card farther down the road, since the 970 only has 3.5 GB of VRAM.

And just like you, I can cite games where AMD does better than NVidia out of the gate:

http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphics-Cards/Middle-earth-Shadow-Mordor-Performance-Testing/Shadow-Mordor-2560x1440

Here is the 290x beating out the 980, 77fps to 75. The 970 meanwhile is at 66 fps.

http://www.techspot.com/review/1019-radeon-r9-390x-390-380/page3.html

In Battlefield, the 390 is clearly ahead of the 970. It even outscores the 970 in The Witcher 3 on this benchmark.

I don't understand your insinuation that they have all their eggs in Dx12. As of now, the 390 is considered to be *at worst* on par with the 970, and in many cases better, with more future proofing at a cheaper price point. The only clear advantage Nvidia has right now is ultra top end (980ti) and power consumption.

The 970 destroys the 390 in Fallout 4


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15wOp7_dD8E

Yes, they're putting their eggs in the DX12 basket since they still haven't, and won't, fix their cpu overhead problems in DX11.

[DarrinS]

Most monitors are still 1080p. You can absolutely use a TV instead, but I prefer a monitor for most gaming. Newer monitors coming out are 1440p or 4k, however video cards at present are really not capable of 4k gaming unless you reduce some visual effects or you spend $3000+ on a serious rig with multiple video cards.


Ant recommendation for a budget monitor? Say, $100 at most.

[baseline bum]

Ant recommendation for a budget monitor? Say, $100 at most.

I would look for whatever is on special on Thanksgiving/Black Friday/Cyber Monday at newegg, amazon, Best Buy, at that price point you can't really be choosy on a 1080p monitor. You can often find nice monitors on special in the $120 or so range, and I imagine you'll find some nice specials next week.

[DarrinS]

I would look for whatever is on special on Thanksgiving/Black Friday/Cyber Monday at newegg, amazon, Best Buy, at that price point you can't really be choosy on a 1080p monitor. You can often find nice monitors on special in the $120 or so range, and I imagine you'll find some nice specials next week.

I think I might go for the first build you listed. I may go for different ram brand, tho. Not familiar with mushkin


CPU: Intel Core i3-6100 3.7GHz Dual-Core Processor ($125.98 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: ASRock Z170M Pro4S Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($102.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: Mushkin Redline 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-2666 Memory ($57.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($51.99 @ Newegg)
Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 960 4GB Video Card ($211.98 @ Newegg)
Case: NZXT S340 (Black/Blue) ATX Mid Tower Case ($64.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: XFX TS 550W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($51.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $667.90
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-11-20 12:41 EST-0500

[baseline bum]

Thanks for the tips. I don't yet know what kind of games he's going to get into. He's been playing a Wii and Wii-u for several years now.


i notice everything is at 1080p. Is that so you can use a tv instead of a monitor?

1080p is the real bang for your buck sweetspot right now. The picture quality is enormously better than 720p and you can run it pretty well with midrange gpus in the ~$180 price range. When you drop below about $110 on gpus you start hitting enormous drops in performance per dollar saved, so might as well go 1080p instead of 720p since 720p doesn't save you much money. Conversely, 1440p in modern AAA games isn't reasonable without a $200 CPU (i5) and $300 GPU (GTX 970 or R9 390), not to mention your monitor is going to be way more expensive. 4k is completely unreasonable unless you want to spend $1300 just on graphics cards.

[Cry Havoc]

I think I might go for the first build you listed. I may go for different ram brand, tho. Not familiar with mushkin


CPU: Intel Core i3-6100 3.7GHz Dual-Core Processor ($125.98 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: ASRock Z170M Pro4S Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($102.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: Mushkin Redline 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-2666 Memory ($57.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($51.99 @ Newegg)
Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 960 4GB Video Card ($211.98 @ Newegg)
Case: NZXT S340 (Black/Blue) ATX Mid Tower Case ($64.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: XFX TS 550W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($51.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $667.90
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-11-20 12:41 EST-0500

That's not bad, just don't pull the trigger yet. You'll see a lot of prices drop drastically on Black Friday.

Additionally, I'd still recommend a 390 or even the new 280x over a 960. If you can afford to fork over a bit more for a better processor that would be great too, since a processor is more intensive to upgrade than a proc. Dual core could be limiting down the road for gaming.

[baseline bum]

I think I might go for the first build you listed. I may go for different ram brand, tho. Not familiar with mushkin


CPU: Intel Core i3-6100 3.7GHz Dual-Core Processor ($125.98 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: ASRock Z170M Pro4S Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($102.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: Mushkin Redline 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-2666 Memory ($57.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($51.99 @ Newegg)
Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 960 4GB Video Card ($211.98 @ Newegg)
Case: NZXT S340 (Black/Blue) ATX Mid Tower Case ($64.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: XFX TS 550W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($51.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $667.90
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-11-20 12:41 EST-0500

You definitely should consider DDR4-2666 or better, the RAM speed can really matter when cpu bound.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5ejBlynOV8

Probably the best brands for RAM are Corsair, G.Skill, Crucial, and Kingston. I usually use G.Skill as they have good prices and offer lifetime warranties. I used to use Mushkin a lot but it has been a while since I have built a system with their RAM.

You might wait for Black Friday and surrounding days for the GPU, I'd imagine you might see some deals on 4GB GTX 960s. On an i3 though an AMD GPU should be a no-go. In that Call of Duty video I posted above the GTX 750 Ti beating an R9 280 is a really horrible indictment of AMD's DX11 overhead in their drivers. A GTX 750 Ti is the lowest performing gpu out there that can really be considered a modern gaming card while the R9 280 was a really solid midrange card at the time. Here is how the 750 Ti and HD 7950 compare at 1080p when run with an i7, and the R9 280 is an HD 7950 with a significantly higher clockspeed that puts its performance more in between the GTX 760 and GTX 670.

https://tpucdn.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_750_Ti/images/perfrel_1920.gif

[baseline bum]

That's not bad, just don't pull the trigger yet. You'll see a lot of prices drop drastically on Black Friday.

Additionally, I'd still recommend a 390 or even the new 280x over a 960. If you can afford to fork over a bit more for a better processor that would be great too, since a processor is more intensive to upgrade than a proc. Dual core could be limiting down the road for gaming.

AMD doesn't make any sense with a lower end CPU. With an i5 or better I'd absolutely recommend a 380 over a 960, but not with an i3.

[DJR210]

Ant recommendation for a budget monitor? Say, $100 at most.

I think 100 is gonna push it, but to each their own.

This is the one I got from Best Buy for 179, it's cheaper now. Great budget IPS monitor.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/dell-23-widescreen-flat-panel-ips-led-hd-monitor-black/6814943.p?id=1218807855013&skuId=6814943&ref=06&loc=01&ci_src=14110944&ci_sku=6814943&extensionType=pla_multichannel:g&s_kwcid=PTC!pla!!!80887267279!g!!87087643159&kpid=6814943&k_clickid=a10a1515-633e-4a2c-bbed-6aae39ee939c&lsft=ref:212,loc:1&ksid=a10a1515-633e-4a2c-bbed-6aae39ee939c&ksprof_id=8&ksaffcode=pg32&ksdevice=c

[DarrinS]

I think 100 is gonna push it, but to each their own.

This is the one I got from Best Buy for 179, it's cheaper now. Great budget IPS monitor.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/dell-23-widescreen-flat-panel-ips-led-hd-monitor-black/6814943.p?id=1218807855013&skuId=6814943&ref=06&loc=01&ci_src=14110944&ci_sku=6814943&extensionType=pla_multichannel:g&s_kwcid=PTC!pla!!!80887267279!g!!87087643159&kpid=6814943&k_clickid=a10a1515-633e-4a2c-bbed-6aae39ee939c&lsft=ref:212,loc:1&ksid=a10a1515-633e-4a2c-bbed-6aae39ee939c&ksprof_id=8&ksaffcode=pg32&ksdevice=c


Thanks :tu

[baseline bum]

I think if you wait for Black Friday you're probably not going to get much in the way of deals when it comes to cpu and board on Skylake since it's so new. The places you're likely to find real deals will be on the video card, power supply, case, and possibly DDR4 RAM. If you would be willing to drop down to Haswell you'll probably find some great deals on cpu, board, and DDR3 RAM to where I'd imagine you could do an i5 build for the same budget. But it would have little in the way of upgradability since Intel effectively hasn't released a new cpu for LGA 1150 since Devil's Canyon in summer 2014. I know they technically released the i5-5675c and i7-5775c on Broadwell a few months ago, but the release was so limited it might as well have never happened, and the only way to really get them in the US is to overpay hugely for chips imported from Europe. And DDR3 is pretty much dead, I'd be surprised if it doesn't shoot way up in price by the end of 2016 as the supply of it falls off.

[DarrinS]

This video card any good?

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B013WQC9Z2?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=ox_sc_act_title_2&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER

[baseline bum]

This video card any good?

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B013WQC9Z2?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=ox_sc_act_title_2&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER

That's a very overpriced card, I wouldn't touch it, especially considering that's going to be a $185 card after tax while newegg doesn't charge sales tax shipping to Texas. You should be able to find a 4GB GTX 960 for a similar price on Thanksgiving/Black Friday/Cyber Monday at newegg / frys / amazon, or at least a 2GB GTX 960. We're nearing the end of the 2GB era in games, it's becoming more common to see games that get significant boosts in performance from having at least 3GB of vram. I mean if your son wants to play games like Team Fortess 2, League of Legends, Minecraft, DOTA 2, CS:GO then a 950 is more than enough to get great framerates at 1080p with graphics maxed. It's kind of funny, newegg has jacked up their prices for a couple of days so the savings can look really big on their sale starting tomorrow :lol (I'm on their mailing list since occasionally they'll send me badass coupons).

[ElNono]

Here's a 4GB GTX960 for $194.99, with a $20 rebate, which would come down to $174.99

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?sdtid=8284455&SID=920c9cde90b411e58b171ab79a4f2ece0001&AID=10440897&PID=1225267&nm_mc=AFC-C8Junction&cm_mmc=AFC-C8Junction-_-cables-_-na-_-na&Item=N82E16814127894&cm_sp=

Here's the rebate link (ends Nov 30):
https://msi.4myrebate.com/?oc=MSI-15902

EDIT: Also, if you're buying from NewEgg, try the codes 20now or 15now for 20% or 15% off (can only use one)

[ElNono]

FWIW, always check slickdeals.com for deals like this

[DarrinS]

Thanks guys :tu

[DarrinS]

Was on newegg and saw this. Seems like a good deal. CPU is a step up, but the video card is a step down.


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883227641&Tpk=83-227-641


But this deal also includes Windows license and free SSD.

[ElNono]

^ too many questions about a box like that, IMO. What kind of RAM does it have? What kind of motherboard and connectivity options? what's the 1TB drive like (5400 RPM, 7200 RPM, etc)...

Looks like good value, but I would tell you that if you're building this to play games and you want it to last you a bit longer, don't skimp out on the graphics card.

I built my own gaming PC a few months ago, and after reading a lot, the 4GB GTX 960 looked like the lowest you wanna go while having a bit of futureproof... really, the 970 was ideal, but too pricey for me at the time...

[DarrinS]

^ too many questions about a box like that, IMO. What kind of RAM does it have? What kind of motherboard and connectivity options? what's the 1TB drive like (5400 RPM, 7200 RPM, etc)...

Looks like good value, but I would tell you that if you're building this to play games and you want it to last you a bit longer, don't skimp out on the graphics card.

I built my own gaming PC a few months ago, and after reading a lot, the 4GB GTX 960 looked like the lowest you wanna go while having a bit of futureproof... really, the 970 was ideal, but too pricey for me at the time...


Yeah, I decided not to pull the trigger on that one.


I bought the i3 6100 system recommended by baseline bum (with a couple of changes). Total was $550, including monitor. And that includes the 4GB GTX 960.

[vander]

so is an i5-6600k a waste of money when only paired with a gtx960?

I have the 960 and mostly just want to upgrade to DDR4 and PCIE3 and am floundering on which processor to get.

[DarrinS]

Was on newegg and saw this. Seems like a good deal. CPU is a step up, but the video card is a step down.


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883227641&Tpk=83-227-641


But this deal also includes Windows license and free SSD.



The free SSD in this bundle is a shitty one, too

[ElNono]

Yeah, I decided not to pull the trigger on that one.

I bought the i3 6100 system recommended by baseline bum (with a couple of changes). Total was $550, including monitor. And that includes the 4GB GTX 960.

Nice. I was actually planning on getting that Skylake i3 processor for my build, but it wasn't available at the time.

[ElNono]

so is an i5-6600k a waste of money when only paired with a gtx960?

I have the 960 and mostly just want to upgrade to DDR4 and PCIE3 and am floundering on which processor to get.

Not really. Some games are more CPU bound and will take advantage of the 4 cores, regardless if they're pushing your video card to the limit or not.

The question is really if you need a 6600k... if you don't overclock, you could probably save $50 and get a i5-6500 instead. A little slower clock per core, but you're still comfortably over 3Ghz...

FWIW, PCIE3 is available on previous gen Z97 boards... but for DDR4 you do need the new gen mobos... although the biggest difference between DDR3 and DDR4 is noticeable in 2 or less core CPUs... when you hit 4 cores with a good sized cache, the difference is smaller...

[vander]

I could take or leave overclocking, but I do have a liquid cooler, so... lets say for Fallout 4, will I gain anything in from a mildly overclocked 6600k vs a 6500 or 6400?

[ElNono]

Frankly, I don't know Fallout 4 is a game that pushes many boundaries hardware-wise... I run it on a i5-4590 with a GTX 960 4G, and it looks great.

I'm gonna let baseline bum chime in on this...

[DarrinS]

Nice. I was actually planning on getting that Skylake i3 processor for my build, but it wasn't available at the time.

Lol, I forgot to buy a hard drive. I may hold out for a really good deal on a Samsung 850 Evo 500GB SSD.

Unless SSD not that crucial for gaming.

[DarrinS]

Meh, so point dropping in an expensive SSD into a budget build -- went ahead and got a cheap 1tb 7200 rpm internal hd.

[baseline bum]

Yeah, I decided not to pull the trigger on that one.


I bought the i3 6100 system recommended by baseline bum (with a couple of changes). Total was $550, including monitor. And that includes the 4GB GTX 960.

How the hell did you swing all that for $550? :lol

The i3-6100 combined with fast ram is a pretty damn impressive chip.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3G-7bfPG2dE

Obviously your framerates won't be that good as their's since they're using a $1000 Titan X for the gpu, but I think it's ideal for getting a strong but affordable cpu to get in on the Skylake platform with perhaps an eye to upgrade in 2017 or 2018.

[baseline bum]

Lol, I forgot to buy a hard drive. I may hold out for a really good deal on a Samsung 850 Evo 500GB SSD.

Unless SSD not that crucial for gaming.

Jump on it, it's $135 today at newegg with promo code EMCKKNN28, and it comes with a game code for Assassin's Creed Syndicate too.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147373

An SSD won't improve anything in gaming though other than load times though.

[baseline bum]

Frankly, I don't know Fallout 4 is a game that pushes many boundaries hardware-wise... I run it on a i5-4590 with a GTX 960 4G, and it looks great.

I'm gonna let baseline bum (http://www.spurstalk.com/forums/member.php?u=131" target) chime in on this...

Fallout 4 is pretty badly optimized, it actually can be a real bastard on one's cpu.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15wOp7_dD8E

[baseline bum]

I could take or leave overclocking, but I do have a liquid cooler, so... lets say for Fallout 4, will I gain anything in from a mildly overclocked 6600k vs a 6500 or 6400?

I'd stay away from the i5-6400 since it only boosts to 3.1 GHz on quadcore loads (which any recent game will be). It's fairly normal for games to pin every core of an i5 at 95% usage, so the clockspeed definitely matters. The i5-6600 would be a better choice since it goes to 3.6 GHz on quadcore loads. With the way games are now distributing load across 8 threads I'd really look at the i7-6700k or even the i7-5820k if you want to go high end though. 2013 and before it was really rare to see a game using all 8 threads of an i7 (threads 5-8 were mostly idle), but now with the consoles being effective octacores (really two quadcore cpus) most games can split load across the 8 threads. But it's a hell of a jump in price, and that's not even factoring in the cost of the Z170 platform. It's too bad Intel neutered their Xeon E3s in Skylake to use only server boards, as it was nice loophole in Sandy Bridge through Haswell to get a locked i7 for $60 less. But they did since you can do BCLCK overclocking on Z170 and it would kill i7-6700k sales.

I guess it depends on how often you upgrade your gpu though. 2016 should have some pretty significant improvements in performance with the shrink from 28 nm to 16 nm. To give an idea of what has happened with node shrinks, the GTX 580 at 40 nm gets destroyed by the GTX 680 at 28 nm. We're talking like a 30-40% difference in framerate from Fermi after the node shrink in Kepler. And the 680 was never a flagship card. The node shrink was such a big deal that Nvidia promoted their upper midrange card to the 80 series (GTX 680 was originally supposed to be called the GTX 670 Ti) and they invented a whole new series for their flagship: Titan. So really, the difference after node shrink in flagships was GTX 580 vs GTX Titan. They just invented a new $1000 price point and moved their upper midrange chip to the 580's flagship $500 price point, and they got away with it because the performance difference was night and day.

http://i.imgur.com/MCaPzBZ.png

So you may find when you buy a new $200 gpu in 2017 or 2018 that you're getting something more powerful than the GTX 980, so that's something to factor into your cpu choice since cpus are tending to be pretty long lived these days.

[DarrinS]

How the hell did you swing all that for $550? :lol

The i3-6100 combined with fast ram is a pretty damn impressive chip.


$19 case :lol

$90 monitor (50% off)

[ElNono]

Meh, so point dropping in an expensive SSD into a budget build -- went ahead and got a cheap 1tb 7200 rpm internal hd.

It's not crucial, but I'm a huge fan of SSDs just for windows... especially since you can get a 128GB one for under $50 these days... nothing like booting up in like 6 secs if your mobo supports UEFI and fast boot.

I ended up getting a 250GB SSD, but only 44GB are used right now by Windows, so you can definitely get away with a 128GB boot drive. I then added an extra 1TB harddrive for the games.

I might end up swapping the 1TB for a 3-4 TB HD later down the road.

[ElNono]

Fallout 4 is pretty badly optimized, it actually can be a real bastard on one's cpu.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15wOp7_dD8E

I play at 1920x1200... it's basically 1080p... I even multitask with the game running and not a single slowdown, tbh... that's what I get... but if you do over 1080p, it might need more power...

[DarrinS]

It's not crucial, but I'm a huge fan of SSDs just for windows... especially since you can get a 128GB one for under $50 these days... nothing like booting up in like 6 secs if your mobo supports UEFI and fast boot.

I ended up getting a 250GB SSD, but only 44GB are used right now by Windows, so you can definitely get away with a 128GB boot drive. I then added an extra 1TB harddrive for the games.

I might end up swapping the 1TB for a 3-4 TB HD later down the road.


Yeah, I'm a fan of SSD. Last few builds I've done were with small SSD for OS paired with large internal drive for data.

[baseline bum]

I play at 1920x1200... it's basically 1080p... I even multitask with the game running and not a single slowdown, tbh... that's what I get... but if you do over 1080p, it might need more power...

Are you playing in ultra though? The god rays and shadow distance settings have the potential to cause a lot of frame drops when maxed out. Most games ultra settings are straight gpu bound even at a low resolution like 1080p, but not FO4.

[ElNono]

I'm using the "Geforce optimized" values for this 960:

SSAO, FXAA, Ultra Shadow, Texture, Lighting... God Rays and Shadow distance are Medium and most of the rest are High...

[resistanze]

I run everything ultra on my ASUS GTX 970 and i5-4690k OC'd to 4.4Ghz. Never drops below 60fps.

[DJR210]

Fallout 4 is pretty badly optimized, it actually can be a real bastard on one's cpu.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15wOp7_dD8E
I agree. It's essentially the same graphics as non-modded Skyrim but runs way slower. I'm running Skyrim with 60+ mods and an ENB and run 60 FPS no problem. Can't see how I'm gonna run graphics mods on FO4 with my 680.

[DarrinS]

What version of Windows do you recommend for gaming? Windows 7, 8.1?

[ElNono]

What version of Windows do you recommend for gaming? Windows 7, 8.1?

Windows 7, 8.1 and 10 all work well, tbh... The thing with 7 is that it's showing it's age with hardware compatibility. For example, if you have an UEFI motherboard, I highly recommend installing Windows under UEFI, which boots a lot faster, but the Win 7 installer is really buggy with UEFI. Windows 8.1 is just an ugly UI experience for desktop, IMO.

What I did here is install Windows 8.1 in UEFI mode, then upgrade to Windows 10. Windows 10 is a lot closer to 7 in UI usability, has great support for newer hardware, and if you worry about privacy, just disable all the call home stuff (Cortana, Smart Screen, telemetry (http://winaero.com/blog/how-to-disable-telemetry-and-data-collection-in-windows-10/), etc).

[DarrinS]

Windows 7, 8.1 and 10 all work well, tbh... The thing with 7 is that it's showing it's age with hardware compatibility. For example, if you have an UEFI motherboard, I highly recommend installing Windows under UEFI, which boots a lot faster, but the Win 7 installer is really buggy with UEFI. Windows 8.1 is just an ugly UI experience for desktop, IMO.

What I did here is install Windows 8.1 in UEFI mode, then upgrade to Windows 10. Windows 10 is a lot closer to 7 in UI usability, has great support for newer hardware, and if you worry about privacy, just disable all the call home stuff (Cortana, Smart Screen, telemetry (http://winaero.com/blog/how-to-disable-telemetry-and-data-collection-in-windows-10/), etc).

Thanks. I have Windows 10 on two machines (with no issues), but I didn't know if there were any issues with a gaming pc.

[baseline bum]

Might as well just buy 10. It's still a little buggy being a new Windows, but it's eventually the os you want to have when DirectX 12 games roll out.

[Cry Havoc]

Right now I think I like 8.1 better than 10, however there are things that 10 does that will give it more legs into the future. It's an overall better OS with a slightly less thorough user experience at this point. I would probably go with 10, as I just upgraded my desktop to that.

[DJR210]

Right now I think I like 8.1 better than 10, however there are things that 10 does that will give it more legs into the future. It's an overall better OS with a slightly less thorough user experience at this point. I would probably go with 10, as I just upgraded my desktop to that.

Agreed. Tried to reinstall 8.1 and it kept timing out, fucking POS Microsoft.

[baseline bum]

Holy fuck newegg had the craziest deal I think I have ever seen today: an i5-4690k + EVGA Z97 Classified Board + 8 GB Kingston DDR3 RAM + Rainbow Six Siege gamecode for $285. The cpu itself is usually $230, that board is $300, the RAM is about $40, and the game is $60. The board's of course not worth $300, but it's one of the top Z97 boards out there.

[DJR210]

Holy fuck newegg had the craziest deal I think I have ever seen today: an i5-4690k + EVGA Z97 Classified Board + 8 GB Kingston DDR3 RAM + Rainbow Six Siege gamecode for $285. The cpu itself is usually $230, that board is $300, the RAM is about $40, and the game is $60. The board's of course not worth $300, but it's one of the top Z97 boards out there.

Damn. Dirt cheap deal.

[baseline bum]

Damn. Dirt cheap deal.

By the time I saw the email advertising it the shit sold out though, I bet it lasted less than 20 minutes. :lol

[baseline bum]

I ended up getting a 250GB SSD, but only 44GB are used right now by Windows, so you can definitely get away with a 128GB boot drive. I then added an extra 1TB harddrive for the games.


I don't get it, with all that free space on the SSD why not install the couple of games you might be playing at any given time on it too? I know as reformed console peasant you are used to long load times so a 7200 RPM HDD must feel superluminal in comparison, but installing to the SSD should cut maybe 40% off those load times.

[DJR210]

:lol reformed console peasant

[DJR210]

Holy fuck newegg had the craziest deal I think I have ever seen today: an i5-4690k + EVGA Z97 Classified Board + 8 GB Kingston DDR3 RAM + Rainbow Six Siege gamecode for $285. The cpu itself is usually $230, that board is $300, the RAM is about $40, and the game is $60. The board's of course not worth $300, but it's one of the top Z97 boards out there.

4790k, EVGA Z97, 8 GB ram, RS for 399.00.. Sold out.

[ElNono]

I don't get it, with all that free space on the SSD why not install the couple of games you might be playing at any given time on it too? I know as reformed console peasant you are used to long load times so a 7200 RPM HDD must feel superluminal in comparison, but installing to the SSD should cut maybe 40% off those load times.

:lol

Mostly because games don't really benefit that much from SSDs. A modern game "load" routine isn't really loading a ton of shit, it's precomputing light maps, preloading textures on the GPU, decompressing geometry, initializing physics, etc...

On the XLOL I also ran everything off the HDD too, because the difference with the DVD was obviously a lot.

If I find a game that's really hitting up the HDD a lot or takes forever to load, sure, I'll install it on the SSD...

Frankly, most games don't really last over a week these days, tbh... not worth the wear and tear on the SSD...

And I was a reformed PC master race peasant before being a reformed console peasant :lol

[baseline bum]

:lol

Mostly because games don't really benefit that much from SSDs. A modern game "load" routine isn't really loading a ton of shit, it's precomputing light maps, preloading textures on the GPU, decompressing geometry, initializing physics, etc...

On the XLOL I also ran everything off the HDD too, because the difference with the DVD was obviously a lot.

If I find a game that's really hitting up the HDD a lot or takes forever to load, sure, I'll install it on the SSD...

Frankly, most games don't really last over a week these days, tbh... not worth the wear and tear on the SSD...

And I was a reformed PC master race peasant before being a reformed console peasant :lol

GTA V loads a lot faster off my 850 EVO than my WD Black.

[DJR210]

GTA V loads a lot faster off my 850 EVO than my WD Black.

BF4 is a pretty good advantage too.

[ElNono]

GTA V loads a lot faster off my 850 EVO than my WD Black.

That's cool. I played it on the 360 back in the day, but I wanna get it on the PC to replay it when there's nothing to play in March or so...

[baseline bum]

That's cool. I played it on the 360 back in the day, but I wanna get it on the PC to replay it when there's nothing to play in March or so...

GTA V has probably the best pc port I have ever seen. The framerate is smooth as hell and the graphics are huge upgrades vs XBone and PS4 much less 360. It runs way better than Fallout 4 or Witcher 3 while also looking better too. It's the anti Arkham Knight (LOL Warner Brothers gave up on ever even supporting SLI in AK).

[ElNono]

GTA V has probably the best pc port I have ever seen. The framerate is smooth as hell and the graphics are huge upgrades vs XBone and PS4 much less 360. It runs way better than Fallout 4 or Witcher 3 while also looking better too. It's the anti Arkham Knight (LOL Warner Brothers gave up on ever even supporting SLI in AK).

I have to check it out. Witcher 3 so far the GOAT graphics since I went back to PC gaming...

[baseline bum]

I have to check it out. Witcher 3 so far the GOAT graphics since I went back to PC gaming...

I will say the lighting is probably better in Witcher 3, especially inside. But the open world looks better in GTA V imo.

[baseline bum]

Shit man, a $260 GTX 970 from MSI

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127833

[DJR210]

Shit man, a $260 GTX 970 from MSI

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127833

Fuck.. may have to eat my girls pussy when she gets home.. gon make her order me one. Comes w/ RS or AC Syndicate too

[Cry Havoc]

Shit man, a $260 GTX 970 from MSI

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127833

390s are going for $249 today. :tu Doubt it's still in stock though.

[baseline bum]

Fuck.. may have to eat my girls pussy when she gets home.. gon make her order me one. Comes w/ RS or AC Syndicate too

I would just sell that gamecode for maybe $30 and have that come out to a $230 GTX 970. :lol

[baseline bum]

Fuck.. may have to eat my girls pussy when she gets home.. gon make her order me one. Comes w/ RS or AC Syndicate too

Damn, that model has 6+2 phase power delivery too, so I bet you can get it to 1500 MHz where it'll start to challenge reference 980 performance.

http://www.ekwb.com/configurator/upload/pictures/msi970_rev1.3_43012.jpg

Pic of the pcb from the ekwb configurator.

http://www.ekwb.com/configurator/step1_complist

[baseline bum]

390s are going for $249 today. :tu Doubt it's still in stock though.

They have an XFX model for $260, but I think I'd pay the $10 extra for the PowerColor PCS+. The PCS+ was one of the best R9 290s on the market so if it's the same pcb and cooler and it should be a pretty awesome 390 also.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131672

[Cry Havoc]

They have an XFX model for $260, but I think I'd pay the $10 extra for the PowerColor PCS+. The PCS+ was one of the best R9 290s on the market so if it's the same pcb and cooler and it should be a pretty awesome 390 also.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131672

Yeah, that looks absolutely beast. I'm loving my 290x. Haven't tried Fallout 4 on it yet, though. :lol

[baseline bum]

Yeah, that looks absolutely beast. I'm loving my 290x. Haven't tried Fallout 4 on it yet, though. :lol

You pick anything up this holiday?

[Cry Havoc]

You pick anything up this holiday?

So far, just a vacuum and a couple of games. :lol SUUUUUUPER exciting, let me tell you.

I almost pulled the trigger on a 29" widescreen IPS panel for $175, but it's only 1080p so I figured I'd wait. Right now my setup is pretty fucking awesome, from the speakers to the peripherals, I don't really need a lot of stuff at the moment. Might pick up some camera equipment soon, getting into that more as a side business lately. :tu

Yourself?

[baseline bum]

So far, just a vacuum and a couple of games. :lol SUUUUUUPER exciting, let me tell you.

I almost pulled the trigger on a 29" widescreen IPS panel for $175, but it's only 1080p so I figured I'd wait. Right now my setup is pretty fucking awesome, from the speakers to the peripherals, I don't really need a lot of stuff at the moment. Might pick up some camera equipment soon, getting into that more as a side business lately. :tu

Yourself?

Part of me is tempted to grab that $260 970 to run in SLI ith my EVGA 970, but I'll probably exercise some restraint and wait for Pascal/Arctic Islands before doing any kind of gpu upgrade. Plus it would force me to buy a 1440p Gsync monitor since I'm on a 1080p 60 Hz one, so there goes the great deal part when getting raped on GSync prices. :lol

[baseline bum]

Fuck.. may have to eat my girls pussy when she gets home.. gon make her order me one. Comes w/ RS or AC Syndicate too

Shit man, it's $245.50 with promo code MBLNOV2715 if you order from their mobile page or with the newegg mobile app before 11PM CST today. Sell that piece of shit Syndicate code for $30 and it's $215.50.

[DarrinS]

Is it a huge deal not to have an optical drive? I'm assuming you can download titles?

[DarrinS]

By the way, rebates suck. Actually have to print out, attach bar code, and mail in. For $30? Meh.

[baseline bum]

Is it a huge deal not to have an optical drive? I'm assuming you can download titles?

No reason for an optical drive anymore. Nowadays game discs often just have a shortcut to steam. :lol

Plus you can just install Windows off a USB stick now.

[baseline bum]

By the way, rebates suck. Actually have to print out, attach bar code, and mail in. For $30? Meh.

Keeps you from returning the product for a refund.

[DarrinS]

No reason for an optical drive anymore. Nowadays game discs often just have a shortcut to steam. :lol

Plus you can just install Windows off a USB stick now.

Cheap ass case I bought doesn't even have a place for DVD drive. :lol

[DJR210]

Cheap ass case I bought doesn't even have a place for DVD drive. :lol

Shit, hardly need them anyway. I've never used mine for anything after the original Windows install.

[baseline bum]

Shit, hardly need them anyway. I've never used mine for anything after the original Windows install.

LOL, I have a bunch of DVD box sets, movies, and NBA DVDs but it's usually just easier to download them off pirate bay rather than transfer them one at a time to my hard drive through the slow ass DVD writer.

[DJR210]

Just started modding shit in NBA 2k16.. Updated Kawhi and a few others..

http://i304.photobucket.com/albums/nn188/DJR210/KawhiMod_zpsdwiztsak.png

Pretty simple to do in this game..

http://forums.nba-live.com/downloads.php?view=detail&df_id=8171

Download and install the files into your main directory, then copy the mod files you want to install into the modded folder. Done.

[Cry Havoc]

Just started modding shit in NBA 2k16.. Updated Kawhi and a few others..

http://i304.photobucket.com/albums/nn188/DJR210/KawhiMod_zpsdwiztsak.png

Pretty simple to do in this game..

http://forums.nba-live.com/downloads.php?view=detail&df_id=8171

Download and install the files into your main directory, then copy the mod files you want to install into the modded folder. Done.

Damn that looks sick. Jerseys are still meh, but they look a lot better than they have in the past.

I have 2k16 but haven't played it much yet. Is it good?

[DJR210]

Damn that looks sick. Jerseys are still meh, but they look a lot better than they have in the past.

I have 2k16 but haven't played it much yet. Is it good?

The jersey above is actually a mod, the creator fixed some small inaccuracies some of the sizing of the letters/numbers, and also created the new black alternate. The default Kawhi model looks like ass, the one above has the facial hair, wider cornrows, and the face shape is accurate.

As far as the game, the best gets better. More refined gameplay, more refined controls.. They spent a lot of time making the presentation more true to the TV broadcast as well.

[baseline bum]

Argh, Windows Update is so slow after reinstalling the OS (had to after upgrading my board). Windows Update has to be the shittiest piece of software I have seen since Arkham Knight tbh. I hope Ballmer gets AIDS.

[TDMVPDPOY]

Just started modding shit in NBA 2k16.. Updated Kawhi and a few others..

http://i304.photobucket.com/albums/nn188/DJR210/KawhiMod_zpsdwiztsak.png

Pretty simple to do in this game..

http://forums.nba-live.com/downloads.php?view=detail&df_id=8171

Download and install the files into your main directory, then copy the mod files you want to install into the modded folder. Done.

whats ur username on that site? i use to posts on that site about 10years ago when i was still gaming pc , only thing i hate about the skin patches; hard to find spurs players updates or the patches just dont bother with the spurs players in general...


oi baseline bum what ssd evo size u using?

if its for operating system + torrenting overnights = go for 250/480gb model? or just stick to a 120gb model and buy a large +4tb hdd

[DarrinS]

So, my son and I built the system today and installed Windows 10. I guess the next step is to create Steam account? He's only 11, so I'll have to set it up. I'm hoping there's nothing too explicit on that site.

[TDMVPDPOY]

So, my son and I built the system today and installed Windows 10. I guess the next step is to create Steam account? He's only 11, so I'll have to set it up. I'm hoping there's nothing too explicit on that site.

ask FkLA where the good shemale porn is

[baseline bum]

whats ur username on that site? i use to posts on that site about 10years ago when i was still gaming pc , only thing i hate about the skin patches; hard to find spurs players updates or the patches just dont bother with the spurs players in general...


oi baseline bum what ssd evo size u using?

if its for operating system + torrenting overnights = go for 250/480gb model? or just stick to a 120gb model and buy a large +4tb hdd

I use a 500 GB 850 EVO. Download torrents to the HDD, they're made for storing lots of data. SSD is more for quick access of OS files, games, starting programs quickly, etc.

[DarrinS]

ask FkLA where the good shemale porn is

I know you're just making a joke, but it's a major challenge to keep your kids away from Internet porn, unless you're Amish.

[ElNono]

Darrin, check these links:

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=5149-EOPC-9918

http://thecybersafetylady.com.au/2014/09/a-parents-guide-to-steam/

http://www.howtogeek.com/179559/how-to-enable-family-options-aka-parental-controls-in-your-steam-client/

[DarrinS]

Darrin, check these links:

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=5149-EOPC-9918

http://thecybersafetylady.com.au/2014/09/a-parents-guide-to-steam/

http://www.howtogeek.com/179559/how-to-enable-family-options-aka-parental-controls-in-your-steam-client/


Thanks man. :tu

[baseline bum]

I know you're just making a joke, but it's a major challenge to keep your kids away from Internet porn, unless you're Amish.

Just keep him off spurstalk and he'll be fine.

[Cry Havoc]

I know you're just making a joke, but it's a major challenge to keep your kids away from Internet porn, unless you're Amish.

I'm probably about 10 years away from that problem. I don't even want to know what porn is going to be like in 2025. Duncan will probably have declined to a 16 and 8 player by then.

[baseline bum]

I'm probably about 10 years away from that problem. I don't even want to know what porn is going to be like in 2025. Duncan will probably have declined to a 16 and 8 player by then.

It'll probably be chatrooms with Romanian sluts who will IM him models of their pussies to 3D print and bang while chatting as long as he gives them daddy's credit card number.

[Cry Havoc]

It'll probably be chatrooms with Romanian sluts who will IM him models of their pussies to 3D print and bang while chatting as long as he gives them daddy's credit card number.

Well... whatever makes him happy.

[DarrinS]

I'm probably about 10 years away from that problem. I don't even want to know what porn is going to be like in 2025. Duncan will probably have declined to a 16 and 8 player by then.

:lol

[TDMVPDPOY]

man looks like 4k system is the next thing for me...

the game titles for 2016 looks awesome on a 4k monitor system...


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2t5LW_D9nUo

[baseline bum]

man looks like 4k system is the next thing for me...

the game titles for 2016 looks awesome on a 4k monitor system...


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2t5LW_D9nUo

Why are people impressed by cutscenes? And if you want to play games in 4k, better build a system like in the first post of this thread tbh.

[baseline bum]

So, my son and I built the system today and installed Windows 10. I guess the next step is to create Steam account? He's only 11, so I'll have to set it up. I'm hoping there's nothing too explicit on that site.

How is the gaming performance on your son's system? I gotta say I'm pretty impressed by i3s, they're such awesome cpus for the money. A few months ago I decided I wanted to see how GTA V would play on an i3, so I disabled two cores of my Xeon and left hyperthreading on to simulate a 3.8 GHz Haswell i3. To my surprise, I was still getting mostly 60-75 fps in GTA V with it and my GTX 970 with occasional dips to around 55 fps with ultra settings at 1080p. I wasn't expecting that at all because GTA V is really demanding on the cpu. I'd imagine a 3.7 GHz Skylake i3-6100 with fast DDR4 ram is quite a bit better even. People sleep on i3s because they're dual cores, but that hyperthreading makes an enormous difference. When I went into the BIOS and turned off HT while leaving two cores off to simulate a 3.8 GHz Pentium the game became unplayable, lots of stuttering and drops into the ~25 fps range. But with the simulated i3 the game was smooth as hell.

[DMC]

Why are people impressed by cutscenes? And if you want to play games in 4k, better build a system like in the first post of this thread tbh.
This x 1000000

I fucking hate cut scenes. I was playing MK on a PS4 and the goddamn thing is a movie with some sporadic "fight" opportunities. Glad I didn't buy that shit.

I guess if a game has real footage scenes then the graphics are out of this world and the game must rock. It makes me wonder how I ever lived through Defender and Zaxxon.

[DJR210]

This x 1000000

I fucking hate cut scenes. I was playing MK on a PS4 and the goddamn thing is a movie with some sporadic "fight" opportunities.

:lol who would have thought the story mode included a story. The towers are where it's at, this year's story was crap.

[DMC]

:lol who would have thought the story mode included a story. The towers are where it's at, this year's story was crap.
It's not that it's a story, but that you do almost nothing the entire time. Also, you have to play the story to understand what the fuck they are talking about when you play other aspects. I skip the cut scenes now but I wanted to see each of them at least once.

[Cry Havoc]

This x 1000000

I fucking hate cut scenes. I was playing MK on a PS4 and the goddamn thing is a movie with some sporadic "fight" opportunities. Glad I didn't buy that shit.

I guess if a game has real footage scenes then the graphics are out of this world and the game must rock. It makes me wonder how I ever lived through Defender and Zaxxon.

In-engine cutscenes are fine, IMO.

[baseline bum]

The only time I liked cutscenes was in the NES days when you needed them to tell the story. I loved Half Life 1 for getting rid of that stupid shit and leaving you in control the whole time.

[DMC]

In-engine cutscenes are fine, IMO.
The way MK plays you have to have them if you want a story, but it doesn't have to be that way unless you are too fucking cheap to actually upgrade the play style of the game. Hell, Virtual Fighter play style is fine (haven't played since Sega days) and if they could mesh MK fights with scenes better it would make more sense. Somehow though you always end up on the left side of the screen before the fight starts so you know when it's about to start.

I never liked the "press this button now" game play (not sure the technical name of that style). I like to be in control of my character throughout. That was one of my issues with God of War (great game btw). I guess the free MK X is just MK with more gore and some cool stuff.

[DJR210]

In-engine cutscenes are fine, IMO.

I agree as long as they aren't super compressed into pieces of shit that hurt the eyes

[DJR210]

The way MK plays you have to have them if you want a story, but it doesn't have to be that way unless you are too fucking cheap to actually upgrade the play style of the game. Hell, Virtual Fighter play style is fine (haven't played since Sega days) and if they could mesh MK fights with scenes better it would make more sense. Somehow though you always end up on the left side of the screen before the fight starts so you know when it's about to start.

I never liked the "press this button now" game play (not sure the technical name of that style). I like to be in control of my character throughout. That was one of my issues with God of War (great game btw). I guess the free MK X is just MK with more gore and some cool stuff.

:lol what are you talking about with this "free MK X" and "pay to upgrade" shit? It's not a F2P fighter..

As far as story is concerned, they aren't gonna top last years tour through the first 3 games IMO.

[baseline bum]

I agree as long as they aren't super compressed into pieces of shit that hurt the eyes

Worst ones were Dragon Age Inquisition's cinematic 30 fps cutscenes when I'm easily running a locked 60 fps in actual gameplay. Though the load times were even worse (I played that shit before I had an SSD).

[DJR210]

Worst ones were Dragon Age Inquisition's cinematic 30 fps cutscenes when I'm easily running a locked 60 fps in actual gameplay. Though the load times were even worse (I played that shit before I had an SSD).

Speaking of MK, they are pretty shitty as well. Plus the way the fight transitions directly from the cutscene in story is jarring when the res bumps up to 1080p or whatever.

[baseline bum]

Speaking of MK, they are pretty shitty as well. Plus the way the fight transitions directly from the cutscene in story is jarring when the res bumps up to 1080p or whatever.

I'll probably pass on that one, the highpoint of the series was MKII.

[DJR210]

I'll probably pass on that one, the highpoint of the series was MKII.

It was, but 3 and Ultimate MK3 were still great games when I was younger, plus was fucking EPIC on PS1 as probably the first arcade perfect fighting game to come to console..

[DMC]

:lol what are you talking about with this "free MK X" and "pay to upgrade" shit? It's not a F2P fighter..

As far as story is concerned, they aren't gonna top last years tour through the first 3 games IMO.
I didn't suggest paying to upgrade. I was referring to the game designer when I said "too fucking cheap". I wouldn't give 10 fucking cents for every upgrade you could offer me on MK. It's basically the same as every other MK with a different backdrop.

The first two releases were epic. Now it's just all magic shit with almost no fighting.

[TDMVPDPOY]

It was, but 3 and Ultimate MK3 were still great games when I was younger, plus was fucking EPIC on PS1 as probably the first arcade perfect fighting game to come to console..

did u play MK4 in the arcades? i think they used the virtue fighter platform 360degrees fighting angle...instead of the 2d shit

[DJR210]

did u play MK4 in the arcades? i think they used the virtue fighter platform 360degrees fighting angle...instead of the 2d shit

Yeah... By that time MK was already dethroned by more interesting arcade fighters like Mace, KI, Marvel vs, etc. so. I didn't really play it until N64 got it.

[baseline bum]

Wow, AsRock put out a BIOS update to allow overclocking any Skylake cpu if you have one of the Z170 boards via the BCLK (which is now divorced from the other buses in the system with Skylake, so that BCLK overclocks aren't going to crash your system). Funny to see BCLK overclocking back, just like the old days with the Celeron 300A.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOg8qYIjl9U

[baseline bum]

So a 4.4 GHz i3-6100 with fast RAM is about on par with the i5-4690k at stock with standard DDR3-1600 RAM. so DarrinS, looks like you actually can overclock the hell out of that system. :lol


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbyGapxiGLQ

Holy shit, this kind of performance out of a $130 CPU is incredible.

[DMC]

did u play MK4 in the arcades? i think they used the virtue fighter platform 360degrees fighting angle...instead of the 2d shit

Virtua Fighter was the shit. The 3 axis movement in MK was no better than the 2 axis movement because you still fight the same way. You couldn't approach the guy from the side.

[DJR210]

Virtua Fighter was the shit. The 3 axis movement in MK was no better than the 2 axis movement because you still fight the same way. You couldn't approach the guy from the side.

Tekken was the much better game because the input requirements for sick chains weren't retarded like VF's

[TDMVPDPOY]

never got into VF or tekken, the speed was too slow for me...

[baseline bum]

I really like the xbox 360 controller.... I played with the DS4, it's really slick too... the touchpad area is pretty dope, but I suspect it's not really supported under windows.

The stock Xbox One controller feels cheap as shit, tbh...

Hey Hector, have you been using the DualShock 4 in Windows? I'm tempted to get one since my X360 wireless controller works like crap in wireless on Windows but I still have to have that big fucking dongle plugged in even to use it wired.

[ElNono]

Hey Hector, have you been using the DualShock 4 in Windows? I'm tempted to get one since my X360 wireless controller works like crap in wireless on Windows but I still have to have that big fucking dongle plugged in even to use it wired.

Not for Windows games. I have a special driver from Sony but only works wired and with the stuff we're working with :/

That said, I've heard there's some hacks out there to make it work, but IIRC Windows games use the button set from the Xbox controllers (A,B,X,Y)

I use an XBox 360 wireless controller with a Chinese knock off receiver and it works pretty great (Win10). If you want I can give you the link to Amazon for it. It was cheap.

[ElNono]

https://m.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/3f1bso/getting_windows_10_and_the_ds4_controller_to_work/

[baseline bum]

https://m.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/3f1bso/getting_windows_10_and_the_ds4_controller_to_work/

I don't want to screw around with it. I figured if it worked for a lazy Mexican tbh, the DualShock 4 would be easy for me to setup too.

[ElNono]

I don't want to screw around with it. I figured if it worked for a lazy Mexican tbh, the DualShock 4 would be easy for me to setup too.

Making chimichangas looks easier than setting that shit up, tbh

[baseline bum]

Making chimichangas looks easier than setting that shit up, tbh

No shit, they're in cooler next to the Dos XX and you just pull the wrapper off and throw them in the microwave.

[DarrinS]

My son likes using the GameCube controller. I bought a USB adapter for it and it works in Steam "big picture" mode, but doesn't work with one of the games I bought. Frustrating

[TDMVPDPOY]

did u clowns ever bought one of them controllers that had like a turbo function, say ur playing a fighting/shooter game, instead of tapping the button repeatedly, u just hold onto it....good times

[baseline bum]

did u clowns ever bought one of them controllers that had like a turbo function, say ur playing a fighting/shooter game, instead of tapping the button repeatedly, u just hold onto it....good times

No, but I had the Wii controller where you made the jerkoff motion to reload your rifle in COD tbh.

[TDMVPDPOY]

have any of you guys ever bought a portable external hdd 2.5 2tb, and rip it out of its enclosure use it as main hdd in a laptop?

im thinking of buying a seagate 2tb portable around 90bucks which is not soldiered at the back, instead of buying a ssd...

laptop will be use for torrenting overnight only....what u guys think?

[TDMVPDPOY]

isnt this overkill for a system?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXOaCkbt4lI

[~O~]

isnt this overkill for a system?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXOaCkbt4lI


That was just released from Linus...how did I not see this.

[TDMVPDPOY]

the clowns has 7 34inch acer ips screens, i checked the prices online they are like +1k each, thats already 1/3 of the budget...

[DJR210]

did u clowns ever bought one of them controllers that had like a turbo function, say ur playing a fighting/shooter game, instead of tapping the button repeatedly, u just hold onto it....good times

Hell yeah used to BEAST the cars in Street Fighter II and test your might in MK didn't stand a chance..

[baseline bum]

Damn DJR210, I just saw the Steam Hardware Survey for Dec 2015 and I wondered if the Pascal 70 series card will be as badass as the 980 Ti for $300-$350 like the 970 was versus the 780 Ti. Before you say that's nuts, look at the Steam Hardware Survey from Dec 2015: GTX 970 is on top of the list of cards used.

http://i.imgur.com/yIWeFkN.png

Now look at the same survey from December 2013 when it was $200 and less cards like the GTX 660 and GTX 560 Ti leading, not counting the crappy Intel igpus:

http://i.imgur.com/ceiMipL.png

So essentially Nvidia took the sweet spot from $150-$200 to $330 with the GTX 970, and made an enormous amount of money off it. Why wouldn't they do it again after they convinced people to almost double their gpu budget with the 970? Fucking everyone bought GTX 970s. If they're smart the next 70 series card might be pretty fucking competitive with the 980 Ti, especially considering the node shrink to 16 nm.

[TDMVPDPOY]

so the performance value for money card range 200-330 is gtx970?

[baseline bum]

so the performance value for money card range 200-330 is gtx970?

And the R9 390.

[TDMVPDPOY]

And the R9 390.

so which one r9 390 vs 970 if u had to pick one for future proof gamin say 1-2yrs

[baseline bum]

so which one r9 390 vs 970 if u had to pick one for future proof gamin say 1-2yrs

Either is probably good for 1-2 years. No such thing as future proof on video cards though, especially since the ones coming out in a few months will be way better.

[DJR210]

Damn DJR210 (http://www.spurstalk.com/forums/member.php?u=42671), I just saw the Steam Hardware Survey for Dec 2015 and I wondered if the Pascal 70 series card will be as badass as the 980 Ti for $300-$350 like the 970 was versus the 780 Ti. Before you say that's nuts, look at the Steam Hardware Survey from Dec 2015: GTX 970 is on top of the list of cards used.

http://i.imgur.com/yIWeFkN.png

Now look at the same survey from December 2013 when it was $200 and less cards like the GTX 660 and GTX 560 Ti leading, not counting the crappy Intel igpus:

http://i.imgur.com/ceiMipL.png

So essentially Nvidia took the sweet spot from $150-$200 to $330 with the GTX 970, and made an enormous amount of money off it. Why wouldn't they do it again after they convinced people to almost double their gpu budget with the 970? Fucking everyone bought GTX 970s. If they're smart the next 70 series card might be pretty fucking competitive with the 980 Ti, especially considering the node shrink to 16 nm.

Interesting.

:lol @ shitty ass Intel graphics mother fuckers playing DOTA, the cheap bastards

[DJR210]

so which one r9 390 vs 970 if u had to pick one for future proof gamin say 1-2yrs

Even if an AMD equivalent was able to produce a few more frames, I'm still going Nvidia because it's what I'm used to.. Not to mention I have a G-Sync monitor :lol

[baseline bum]

Interesting.

:lol @ shitty ass Intel graphics mother fuckers playing DOTA, the cheap bastards

Where the fuck are the last two generations of AMD cards on this list? :lmao

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/videocard/

[313]

Damn DJR210 (http://www.spurstalk.com/forums/member.php?u=42671), I just saw the Steam Hardware Survey for Dec 2015 and I wondered if the Pascal 70 series card will be as badass as the 980 Ti for $300-$350 like the 970 was versus the 780 Ti. Before you say that's nuts, look at the Steam Hardware Survey from Dec 2015: GTX 970 is on top of the list of cards used.

http://i.imgur.com/yIWeFkN.png

Now look at the same survey from December 2013 when it was $200 and less cards like the GTX 660 and GTX 560 Ti leading, not counting the crappy Intel igpus:

http://i.imgur.com/ceiMipL.png

So essentially Nvidia took the sweet spot from $150-$200 to $330 with the GTX 970, and made an enormous amount of money off it. Why wouldn't they do it again after they convinced people to almost double their gpu budget with the 970? Fucking everyone bought GTX 970s. If they're smart the next 70 series card might be pretty fucking competitive with the 980 Ti, especially considering the node shrink to 16 nm.760 master race still going strong I see

hopefully the sweet spot stays around 300 though, I plan on upgrading this year but don't want drop too much on a card

[TDMVPDPOY]

if ur budget is 1500 max

is a high end AMD system better then intel system? i know amd parts are dirt cheap....

i notice clowns prefer intel cpu over amd...

anyone built a high end amd system yet? fx8350

[baseline bum]

if ur budget is 1500 max

is a high end AMD system better then intel system? i know amd parts are dirt cheap....

i notice clowns prefer intel cpu over amd...

anyone built a high end amd system yet? fx8350

The FX-8350 is a piece of shit for gaming. It's like $30 cheaper than a locked i5, the locked i5 performs way better, and the FX-8350 ends up being more expensive because you need a $90 board to run one when an i5 runs fine on a $50-$70 board, and you need to spend at least $25 on a cpu cooler since the stock cooler can't handle it while the stock coolers are fine on i5s. If you overclock the shit out of the FX-8350 you can make it run games a little better than an i3 but it will almost never touch even the lowest i5s like the i5-4430, i5-4440, and i5-4460.

AMD makes good graphics cards but their cpus are dogshit.

[Cry Havoc]

if ur budget is 1500 max

is a high end AMD system better then intel system? i know amd parts are dirt cheap....

i notice clowns prefer intel cpu over amd...

anyone built a high end amd system yet? fx8350

IMO right now your best bet is to go with an Intel processor, which destroys AMD, and an AMD GPU, which should be better future proofed for DX12 and offers equal/better performance per dollar to Nvidia.

However, the top end card right now is the 980ti without any reservation. It's better than the Fury X. We'll see how DX12 changes things.

[DJR210]

IMO right now your best bet is to go with an Intel processor, which destroys AMD, and an AMD GPU, which should be better future proofed for DX12 and offers equal/better performance per dollar to Nvidia.

However, the top end card right now is the 980ti without any reservation. It's better than the Fury X. We'll see how DX12 changes things.

Nvidia innovation and support > Better price to performance ratio

[Cry Havoc]

Nvidia innovation and support > Better price to performance ratio

Not even going to get into it with you. Nvidia has had their own crop of terrible customer service lately. I have never had a problem with my AMD GPUs since my first card, and will continue to buy from them. Both NVidia cards I had blew themselves up.

[baseline bum]

I gotta say I was really impressed by that Polaris 10 card AMD showed at CES that uses half the power of a GTX 950 but was still playing Battlefront at the same settings, both locked 60 fps. I really think these 14/16 nm cards coming out in 2016 are going to be a big deal. As tempting as a 980 Ti looks to me right now, I'm just going to wait for Polaris and Pascal.

[Wild Cobra]

I gotta say I was really impressed by that Polaris 10 card AMD showed at CES that uses half the power of a GTX 950 but was still playing Battlefront at the same settings, both locked 60 fps. I really think these 14/16 nm cards coming out in 2016 are going to be a big deal. As tempting as a 980 Ti looks to me right now, I'm just going to wait for Polaris and Pascal.

My God.

I haven't kept up. Are they really doing 14 nm now? that is wild. I wonder what spectra and methodology is involved in the lithography process. I wonder just how much finer the planarization of CMP equipment has to be.

Sometimes I wish I was still an engineering tech doing that. When I left the semiconductor industry, they had 125 nm in production. They are almost 1/10 that now. Oh well, it's been 14 years now.

[baseline bum]

My God.

I haven't kept up. Are they really doing 14 nm now? that is wild. I wonder what spectra and methodology is involved in the lithography process. I wonder just how much finer the planarization of CMP equipment has to be.

Sometimes I wish I was still an engineering tech doing that. When I left the semiconductor industry, they had 125 nm in production. They are almost 1/10 that now. Oh well, it's been 14 years now.

Intel is actually already on their second generation of 14 nm CPUs, though their first (Broadwell) got delayed about a year and pretty much never launched on desktop (though it's used pretty heavily in mobile). Their second 14 nm generation Skylake chips are incredible though. Their desktop quadcores dropped from 84W to 65W and they all overclock like madmen on average, even on the stock cooler.

[RandomGuy]

The monitor is HD as in Full HD, e.g., 1080p? Does your monitor support 120 Hz or 144 Hz refresh rate, or is it 60 Hz? Because for a 1080p 60 Hz system, $1400 is an extremely high budget. Here is what I would consider a monstrously strong 1080p 60 Hz system for that kind of money: I think it would be a waste of money, though the CPU is really strong. It's a hexacore with hyperthreading that you'll probably be able to overclock to at least 4.2 GHz on the cooler I recommend.

PCPartPicker part list (http://pcpartpicker.com/p/WhhjrH) / Price breakdown by merchant (http://pcpartpicker.com/p/WhhjrH/by_merchant/)

CPU: Intel Core i7-5820K 3.3GHz 6-Core Processor (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/intel-cpu-bx80648i75820k) ($378.99 @ SuperBiiz)
CPU Cooler: NZXT Kraken X61 106.1 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/nzxt-cpu-cooler-rlkrx6101) ($114.99 @ B&H)
Motherboard: Asus X99-A ATX LGA2011-3 Motherboard (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/asus-motherboard-x99a) ($239.99 @ B&H)
Memory: Crucial Ballistix Sport 16GB (4 x 4GB) DDR4-2400 Memory (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/crucial-memory-bls4k4g4d240fsa) ($104.95 @ Adorama)
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 500GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/samsung-internal-hard-drive-mz75e500bam) ($159.98 @ OutletPC)
Video Card: MSI Radeon R9 390 8GB Video Card (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/msi-video-card-r9390gaming8g) ($329.98 @ SuperBiiz)
Power Supply: EVGA 750W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/evga-power-supply-220g20750xr) ($99.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $1428.87
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-09-17 16:52 EDT-0400

Assuming you have some old hard drives to use for data storage and that you can get a free case that can support a 360mm radiator in top for the CPU. You get an extremely strong CPU out of this as well as a really high end cooler. This is the best watercooler on the market unless you want to spend $200-$300 on the new ekwb all-in-one coolers coming out this month.

If you have a 120 Hz 1080p or a 60 Hz 1440p monitor, then definitely go higher end on the GPU, lower end on the CPU. Something like this would be much better for that use case, as it has much more graphical horsepower. I went a little over budget to fit in the cooler, which you'll want with a 4790k since it runs 4.2 GHz on all cores under load at stock speed. You can probably get it up to 4.4 GHz on all cores using a Hyper 212 EVO, but any higher and you're looking at liquid coolers most likely, and even the best coolers (like the one in the first build) probably won't get you any higher than 4.7 GHz.

PCPartPicker part list (http://pcpartpicker.com/p/3JjWQ7) / Price breakdown by merchant (http://pcpartpicker.com/p/3JjWQ7/by_merchant/)

CPU: Intel Core i7-4790K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/intel-cpu-bx80646i74790k) ($327.99 @ NCIX US)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/cooler-master-cpu-cooler-rr212e20pkr2) ($24.89 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: Asus Z97-E ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/asus-motherboard-z97e) ($92.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: Crucial Ballistix Sport 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/crucial-memory-bls2kit8g3d1609ds1s00) ($74.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 500GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/samsung-internal-hard-drive-mz75e500bam) ($159.98 @ OutletPC)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB Superclocked+ ACX 2.0+ Video Card (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/evga-video-card-06gp44995kr) ($669.99 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: Antec High Current Gamer 620W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/antec-power-supply-hcg620m) ($78.50 @ Amazon)
Total: $1429.32
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-09-17 17:31 EDT-0400

Still, I'd feel bad not suggesting a strong bang for your buck 1080p 60 Hz system: this would be a really strong 1080p 60fps system for way under budget. The CPU is a quadcore (no hyperthreading) that runs 3.5 GHz on all cores when under load. This is a really incredible CPU for $184. No overclocking though.

PCPartPicker part list (http://pcpartpicker.com/p/nHkw4D) / Price breakdown by merchant (http://pcpartpicker.com/p/nHkw4D/by_merchant/)

CPU: Intel Core i5-4590 3.3GHz Quad-Core Processor (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/intel-cpu-bx80646i54590) ($183.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-H97-D3H ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/gigabyte-motherboard-gah97d3h) ($91.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Memory: Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/crucial-memory-bls2k4g3d169ds1j) ($37.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 500GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/samsung-internal-hard-drive-mz75e500bam) ($159.98 @ OutletPC)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 970 4GB SSC ACX 2.0 Video Card (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/evga-video-card-04gp43975kr) ($319.99 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: Antec High Current Gamer 520W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/antec-power-supply-hcg520m) ($54.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $848.93
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-09-17 17:36 EDT-0400

For 1080p 60 Hz gaming I think the MSI R9 390 is the best GPU out there, though the GTX 970 trades blows with it and uses 100W less power. For 1440p 60 Hz or 1080p 120 Hz gaming there is nothing that touches the GTX 980 Ti. For 4k 60 Hz gaming you'd need two GTX 980 Ti, which is impossible on a $1400 budget.

I'm always leery to buy the really high end GPUs though. For instance, in November 2013 Nvidia released the GTX 780Ti at $700. In September 2014 Nvidia released the GTX 970 at $330 that trades blows with the 780 Ti when they moved to from the Kepler architecture (GTX 6xx/7xx series) to the Maxwell architecture (GTX 9xx series), which are both 28nm. In mid-to-late 2016 Nvidia should be releasing cards based on the Pascal architecture at 16nm, and such a large process shrink often means a lot more performance. Plus they're likely to be using HBM2 memory that they're likely to run at much lower clockspeeds while still having larger bandwidth, leaving more room for upping the core clock while staying within their power usage targets. So seeing what they were able to do with Maxwell without a process shrink and using the same GDDR5 video ram, you can imagine what Pascal could end up looking like next year. And you may feel like a real sucker spending out the ass on the highest end card right now.

I wouldn't even look at the 12GB Titan X. For $1000 it's a retarded card now that the GTX 980 Ti came out and is barely cut down from it with 6 GB of vram instead. Even 6GB is overkill for 4k, much less 1440p or 1080p. The Titan X makes absolutely no sense. With 12GB of vram you'd think you might run three or four of them in SLI to game on three 4k panels at once, but even 4 Titan X's wouldn't run that well. So the 12GB is pretty much useless, especially when Maxwell sucks for double precision computing and thus you wouldn't want it for scientific applications.

Finally getting ready to pull the trigger, now that Xmas is over, and I got a new, higher paying job. (Flood set family back quite a bit, having to replace cars, had to delay a bit)

Any updates?

[RandomGuy]

Shit... going to have to spend a few hours reading this thread to catch up. Solid gold in terms of information needed.

[baseline bum]

Finally getting ready to pull the trigger, now that Xmas is over, and I got a new, higher paying job. (Flood set family back quite a bit, having to replace cars, had to delay a bit)

Any updates?

Actually, there is a pretty big update. Right now you can overclock any Intel Skylake processor with a few different models of AsRock and MSI Z170 boards. There are official BIOS out to do oldschool BCLK overclocking like you used to need to do in the 90s and early 2000s before unlocked multipliers became a thing with Intel's K-series processors and AMD's FX. There are some downsides to it, namely AVX instructions won't execute with the BCLK raised from the stock 100 MHz, so BCLK overclocking isn't a good idea for for any kind of workstation use since AVX can be pretty important there. However games don't usually don't use AVX instructions, so that's not a concern at all for a straight gaming system. Another downside is you lose the ability to accurately measure your cpu's temperature. So you should absolutely never go above 1.3V vcore doing Skylake BCLK overclocking. Probably the biggest downside is you're going to have to really get your hands dirty in the BIOS doing BCLK overclocking. This type of old-school overclock is only viable on Skylake right now since they decoupled the PCIE clock from the CPU's base clock. On Haswell and before you couldn't go much higher than maybe 103 MHz - 105 MHz base clock since you could cause all sorts of errors with your GPU, but now that's been eliminated. But the memory clock is still tied to the CPU's base clock, so you have to be comfortable adjusting multipliers and timings in memory with Skylake base clock overclocking.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrfTcXQlsbs

If you're interested in a really crazy bang for you buck system, check this article:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2015-locked-intel-cpus-can-now-be-overclocked

Something like an i5-6500 with an AsRock Z170 Pro4S board, 2x8GB DDR4-2666, and a GTX 970 would make a really strong 1080p gaming rig. I think the 970 tends to be better in single player games with lots of AI and shit since Nvidia's DX11 drivers have a lot less overhead than AMD's. If you're into multiplayer games the AMD R9 390 is a lot better though due to being significantly stronger than the 970 on a hardware level. Basically 970 is better if you play games that really use the CPU (so single player open world games with lots of AI like Fallout 4, GTA V, Witcher 3), while the R9 390 kills for stuff like Battlefield and Star Wars Battlefront.

[baseline bum]

I really think Skylake is worth the premium now over Haswell, unless you're doing a Haswell-E build (eg, i7-5820k, i7-5930k, or i7-5960x). DDR4 is significantly faster than DDR3, it overclocks better, and memory speed really matters when you're cpu bound. If you want really simple overclocking though, buy a K-series chip (i5-6600k, i7-6700k, i7-5820k, i7-5930k, or i7-5960x) and overclock via the multiplier. Then you can just buy 2x8GB DDR4-2666 for Skylake and use the XMP profile or 4x4GB DDR4-2400 for Haswell-E and again use the XMP profile for the RAM (you want 2 sticks on Skylake since it's dual channel, four for Haswell-E since it's quad channel).

[baseline bum]

Also the i3-6100 is an incredibly powerful budget gaming CPU. Now that you can do BCLK overclocking with some AsRock and MSI Z170 boards it might be the best budget gaming CPU made since maybe the Celeron 300A.

[TDMVPDPOY]

u guys know inside the ssd case, the pcb is only like 1/3 the size of the case, and the storage flash chip is a size of a coin...

so u telling me they cant built a ssd with a pcb that fits that whole case and just fit as much storage flash chips onto it and put a price on it?

ive notice there is 2tb ssd out now...

[TDMVPDPOY]

Finally getting ready to pull the trigger, now that Xmas is over, and I got a new, higher paying job. (Flood set family back quite a bit, having to replace cars, had to delay a bit)

Any updates?

what monitor u have? no point investing in a high end gaming pc, and ur playing on some shit TN monitor 5ms 60mhz bullshit

[TDMVPDPOY]

I really think Skylake is worth the premium now over Haswell, unless you're doing a Haswell-E build (eg, i7-5820k, i7-5930k, or i7-5960x). DDR4 is significantly faster than DDR3, it overclocks better, and memory speed really matters when you're cpu bound. If you want really simple overclocking though, buy a K-series chip (i5-6600k, i7-6700k, i7-5820k, i7-5930k, or i7-5960x) and overclock via the multiplier. Then you can just buy 2x8GB DDR4-2666 for Skylake and use the XMP profile or 4x4GB DDR4-2400 for Haswell-E and again use the XMP profile for the RAM (you want 2 sticks on Skylake since it's dual channel, four for Haswell-E since it's quad channel).

the money u save by buying a lower kchip and overclocking it...u still need some decent cooling system....

[baseline bum]

the money u save by buying a lower kchip and overclocking it...u still need some decent cooling system....

You can actually use the stock cooler fine with the locked Skylake i5 and i3 when BLCK overclocking them. All the normal heat you generate stress testing the overclocks isn't there because of the AVX instructions being disabled when you do BCLK overclocking on Skylake.

[TDMVPDPOY]

baseline bum, @wildcobra, Cry Havoc

when it comes to gaming monitor and budget, u can only select one base on the limitations of ur video card

gsync monitor with 1440 or 4k monitor?

im looking for a good +27' 1440 monitor with gsync...any of u clowns using a 1440 monitor? or 4k?

[Cry Havoc]

baseline bum, @wildcobra, Cry Havoc

when it comes to gaming monitor and budget, u can only select one base on the limitations of ur video card

gsync monitor with 1440 or 4k monitor?

im looking for a good +27' 1440 monitor with gsync...any of u clowns using a 1440 monitor? or 4k?

Gsync is for nvidia. Freesync is with AMD.

I'd strongly perfer that considering most systems can't handle 4k atm. If you have a frame rate dropping, it'll look a lot smoother on a freesync monitor.

[baseline bum]

:lol 1440p, 4k, and gsync are three words you never associate with a budget system.

[RandomGuy]

what monitor u have? no point investing in a high end gaming pc, and ur playing on some shit TN monitor 5ms 60mhz bullshit

Not sure. Plunked down some good money on a monitor a year or so ago. Don't mind throwing that into the mix if needed.

Was trying to figure out how long I have had the current clunker and I am thinking it is close to 8 years or so. It was fast and overpowered when I bought it, so I didn't worry much about things, but it is running most new things/pages really really slowly.

First thing I am going to do with the new revamp I am buying is test it with a few hundred TNT blocks in Minecraft... just to impress the shit out of my kids.

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/v44br4n8sh0/hqdefault.jpg

[RandomGuy]

You can actually use the stock cooler fine with the locked Skylake i5 and i3 when BLCK overclocking them. All the normal heat you generate stress testing the overclocks isn't there because of the AVX instructions being disabled when you do BCLK overclocking on Skylake.

BCLK?

AVX?

Crap. More reading.

(heads off to google, and starts reading)

Thanks again for the help. If you think of any terms concepts I should probably know, point me in the right direction.

[baseline bum]

BCLK?

AVX?

Crap. More reading.

(heads off to google, and starts reading)

Thanks again for the help. If you think of any terms concepts I should probably know, point me in the right direction.

Intel killed off BCLK overclocking in locked Skylake cpus through microcode updates in BIOS updates. I don't know if you can still get the old BIOS or not that allowed this type of overclocking for locked Skylake chips, but it has been killed off in latest BIOS versions from the board manufactures. I'm tempted to believe it was Intel being really slimy and allowing this for a while to drum up sales of their locked processors, because the unlocked i7-6700k was in really short supply until this month. The price of the 6700k has been through the roof for a couple of months and is now just starting to come down now that Intel is beginning to supply new ones again. You definitely want a K or X suffix processor to overclock now, and it's probably worth it when you're starting to see games strongly CPU bound like Fallout 4.

[RandomGuy]

Something like an i5-6500 with an AsRock Z170 Pro4S board, 2x8GB DDR4-2666, and a GTX 970 would make a really strong 1080p gaming rig. I think the 970 tends to be better in single player games with lots of AI and shit since Nvidia's DX11 drivers have a lot less overhead than AMD's. If you're into multiplayer games the AMD R9 390 is a lot better though due to being significantly stronger than the 970 on a hardware level. Basically 970 is better if you play games that really use the CPU (so single player open world games with lots of AI like Fallout 4, GTA V, Witcher 3), while the R9 390 kills for stuff like Battlefield and Star Wars Battlefront.

Hmmm.

I tend to play single-player games mostly. MMPGs tend to have people who live the games and make casual players' lives miserable, so I generally avoid them.

Will probably run a LAN Minecraft/game server for the boys and me to fart around on.

[baseline bum]

First thing I am going to do with the new revamp I am buying is test it with a few hundred TNT blocks in Minecraft... just to impress the shit out of my kids.

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/v44br4n8sh0/hqdefault.jpg

LOL, I'm not sure there is a CPU on the market that can handle that. Minecraft is a pretty CPU bound Java game and I don't think the multithreading is that great, so I think you'd bring any CPU on the market to its knees by exploding a bunch of TNT in Minecraft. :lol

[baseline bum]

Gsync is for nvidia. Freesync is with AMD.

I'd strongly perfer that considering most systems can't handle 4k atm. If you have a frame rate dropping, it'll look a lot smoother on a freesync monitor.

Hey CH, did you get your free game yet?

https://www.amd4u.com/amdgamepromo/

[Cry Havoc]

Hey CH, did you get your free game yet?

https://www.amd4u.com/amdgamepromo/

Hmm? That looks like it's only valid if I've purchased an AMD product since Feb 15th of this year.

[baseline bum]

Hmm? That looks like it's only valid if I've purchased an AMD product since Feb 15th of this year.

D'oh. Oh well, you can still get your free game here (http://nosteam.ro)

[Cry Havoc]

D'oh. Oh well, you can still get your free game here (http://nosteam.ro)

:lol

[baseline bum]

:lol

Even works for Nvidia owners, great promotion

[baseline bum]

I'm surprised to see this: the i7-6700k is unquestionably the best gaming CPU. Even beating out the $1000 octacore i7-5960x when both are overclocked.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocwwaVGUFtk

What's surprising is games now run better on OC i7 vs OC i5, as shown below, so you'd think they'd do even better with the extra physical cores on an i7-5820k or i7-5960x, not to mention the better memory bandwidth and extra cache. But the 6700k is the king of the hill for straight gaming performance (though the 6600k looks like the best price to performance).


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhaB1dqYv_I

[RandomGuy]

Though getting a cheap case might not be the best idea, since you'll want something with good airflow to keep from cooking your GPU. This is what I use in my system and it's a fucking joy to build in and keeps things pretty cool:

cBhmn21ylkc

It's a pretty large case but awesome if you want to run a full ATX board, and I think it's way underpriced at $100. There isn't a case less than $200 I'd personally choose over the Enthoo Pro for a gaming build. The build quality is great, this is a solid motherfucker. It looks awesome. It's really easy to build in thanks to all the cable routing options, the velcro straps, and the inch and a half of room behind the motherboard tray for cable management. I can't imagine replacing this case in the next ten years unless I badly want a really small micro-ITX system or the motherboard standard changes so that I can't use it anymore.

Ok, pulling the trigger on this case. Review looked good, getting that and the motherboard now, another part or two next paycheck, and will get everything else Mid-April.
Motherboard: Asus X99-A ATX LGA2011-3 Motherboard ($239.99 @ B&H)

Heh, Wild Cobra might want to note that Kerbal Space Program will probably be the first game installed, but I am going to find some bitchin' FPS to mess with not long after I get the thing up and running.

[baseline bum]

Ok, pulling the trigger on this case. Review looked good, getting that and the motherboard now, another part or two next paycheck, and will get everything else Mid-April.
Motherboard: Asus X99-A ATX LGA2011-3 Motherboard ($239.99 @ B&H)

Heh, Wild Cobra might want to note that Kerbal Space Program will probably be the first game installed, but I am going to find some bitchin' FPS to mess with not long after I get the thing up and running.

You sure you want to go X99? I know I recommended it before, but that video I posted in the post above your's shows Z170 as being better for gaming. Though X99 will kick the shit out of Z170 if you're doing a lot of video editing. But a good Z170 board will be $100 less. I was really surprised to see the i7-6700k beating the i7-5820k in that video. Also KSP you want the best single core performance you can get based on WC's report about the game, and the best single core performance would come from i7-6700k + Z170 board.

[baseline bum]

Ok, pulling the trigger on this case. Review looked good, getting that and the motherboard now, another part or two next paycheck, and will get everything else Mid-April.
Motherboard: Asus X99-A ATX LGA2011-3 Motherboard ($239.99 @ B&H)

Heh, Wild Cobra might want to note that Kerbal Space Program will probably be the first game installed, but I am going to find some bitchin' FPS to mess with not long after I get the thing up and running.

This would be a crazy powerful core for a system. Expensive, but a cheaper than X99 while having a little better gaming performance.

PCPartPicker part list (http://pcpartpicker.com/p/HzvMhM) / Price breakdown by merchant (http://pcpartpicker.com/p/HzvMhM/by_merchant/)

CPU: Intel Core i7-6700K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/intel-cpu-bx80662i76700k) ($369.99 @ Newegg)
CPU Cooler: NZXT Kraken X61 106.1 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/nzxt-cpu-cooler-rlkrx6101) ($139.99 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: Asus Z170-A ATX LGA1151 Motherboard (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/asus-motherboard-z170a) ($142.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3000 Memory (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/gskill-memory-f43000c15d16gvrb) ($74.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $714.95
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-03-23 19:35 EDT-0400

[baseline bum]

If you already ordered the X99A + 5820k though, don't worry too much, it's a fucking monster of a cpu.

[TDMVPDPOY]

hey whats a good gaming mouse?
-wireless?
-non wireless?

mechanical keyboard?

[baseline bum]

hey whats a good gaming mouse?
-wireless?
-non wireless?

mechanical keyboard?

The Logitech G602 is an awesome wireless mouse. Great response, it's large and feels good in the hand, and even a crappy set of AA batteries lasts a couple of months in it even under heavy usage.

[Cry Havoc]

hey whats a good gaming mouse?
-wireless?
-non wireless?

mechanical keyboard?

You've got a few god tier options:

Razer Deathadder Chroma
Logitech G502 or 303
Mionix Naos 7200
Steelseries sensei
Corsair M45

[baseline bum]

You've got a few god tier options:

Razer Deathadder Chroma
Logitech G502 or 303
Mionix Naos 7200
Steelseries sensei
Corsair M45

I love the way the G502 feels, if I was going to get a wired gaming mouse that would be it.

[Cry Havoc]

I love the way the G502 feels, if I was going to get a wired gaming mouse that would be it.

I have decently large hands and the 502 is entirely too small for me, it smashes my ring/pinky finger into the mousemat and doesn't feel natural at all.

[baseline bum]

I have decently large hands and the 502 is entirely too small for me, it smashes my ring/pinky finger into the mousemat and doesn't feel natural at all.

Aren't you one of those claw grip weirdos tbh?

[RandomGuy]

If you already ordered the X99A + 5820k though, don't worry too much, it's a fucking monster of a cpu.

Already got the motherboard, will get the CPU and most of the rest of it with the next paycheck. Not too worried about completely optimizing for one game or another, just want a killer system in general.

KSP and minecraft (space mod of course) will be the first things that I play, but that will just be until I get caught up on the games that have come out in the last few years that I have missed out on, because our old computer is... old.

[baseline bum]

Already got the motherboard, will get the CPU and most of the rest of it with the next paycheck. Not too worried about completely optimizing for one game or another, just want a killer system in general.

KSP and minecraft (space mod of course) will be the first things that I play, but that will just be until I get caught up on the games that have come out in the last few years that I have missed out on, because our old computer is... old.

On the plus side, X-series chips last forever. Games are just now starting to scale out to more cores these last couple of years. Definitely get a 4 stick RAM kit then to take advantage of quad channel memory.

[Wild Cobra]

Heh, Wild Cobra might want to note that Kerbal Space Program will probably be the first game installed, but I am going to find some bitchin' FPS to mess with not long after I get the thing up and running.

All the 2011-3 processors lacks the single thread speeds that mine has. It will operate 200+ part craft is KSP slower than my system, with my puny i7-4790, because the physics engine only operates in one core at a time.

You can pay $3,600 for the Xeon E5-2698 v3, and it will still play KSP slower than my system. Single Thread Rating of 1957, vs. my 2291.

No idea how much you plan to spend on a CPU, but the i7-5820K is around $350 and about 30% faster than mine, but about 20% slower in single thread operation. That $3,600 Xeon is twice as fast as mine, but still slower in single thread.

I personally think the 1150 socket is the way to go with the i7-4790K, unless you plan to spend a hell of a lot of money on a CPU. The K version is only about 12% faster than mine, but can be overclocked and is currently the fastest CPU on the market for single thread.

[RandomGuy]

All the 2011-3 processors lacks the single thread speeds that mine has. It will operate 200+ part craft is KSP slower than my system, with my puny i7-4790, because the physics engine only operates in one core at a time.

You can pay $3,600 for the Xeon E5-2698 v3, and it will still play KSP slower than my system. Single Thread Rating of 1957, vs. my 2291.

No idea how much you plan to spend on a CPU, but the i7-5820K is around $350 and about 30% faster than mine, but about 20% slower in single thread operation. That $3,600 Xeon is twice as fast as mine, but still slower in single thread.

I personally think the 1150 socket is the way to go with the i7-4790K, unless you plan to spend a hell of a lot of money on a CPU. The K version is only about 12% faster than mine, but can be overclocked and is currently the fastest CPU on the market for single thread.

I will be getting the system that baseline bum recommended.
http://www.spurstalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=238548&page=13&p=8192329#post8192329

I recognize someone who knows their shit when I see it. Even if he might be wrong about one aspect or another, his odds of being more right than I could ever possibly be on my own without spending a huge amount of time reading is pretty close to approaching 1:1

The hexacore will be useful down the road as more programmers learn how to use it, from what I understand. I think baseline has a very good point about that.

Who knows... maybe I will throw some moeny at KSP and lobby for them to use more than one core... :D Then where will your single core processor be, huh?

(take that as very gentle ribbing. I am not at all serious about that, hard to get across stuff like that in dead text)

[baseline bum]

All the 2011-3 processors lacks the single thread speeds that mine has. It will operate 200+ part craft is KSP slower than my system, with my puny i7-4790, because the physics engine only operates in one core at a time.

They're both Haswell cpus and RG is overclocking his system I believe, so he should have more single core performance as long as he's at 4.0 GHz or higher (the dual core turbo of a 4790). No way I would recommend a 5820k to be run at stock.

[Wild Cobra]

I will be getting the system that baseline bum recommended.
http://www.spurstalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=238548&page=13&p=8192329#post8192329

I recognize someone who knows their shit when I see it. Even if he might be wrong about one aspect or another, his odds of being more right than I could ever possibly be on my own without spending a huge amount of time reading is pretty close to approaching 1:1

The hexacore will be useful down the road as more programmers learn how to use it, from what I understand. I think baseline has a very good point about that.

Who knows... maybe I will throw some moeny at KSP and lobby for them to use more than one core... :D Then where will your single core processor be, huh?

(take that as very gentle ribbing. I am not at all serious about that, hard to get across stuff like that in dead text)

The DDR4 memory is going to be better than a system with lesser memory, and yes, six/twelve cores will be a huge improvement for applications that make use of multi core.

If I continue to like the game, and they make it multicore friendly, I will consider the 2011 for my next computer. As it stands, I believe my only system asset that the upcoming V1.1 of the game will utilize is my 32 GB of memory. Right now, the game is still 32 bit, so it starts having problems on large builds past 2,000 parts. V 1.1 is suppose to be a 64 bit application rather than 32 bit.

[Wild Cobra]

They're both Haswell cpus and RG is overclocking his system I believe, so he should have more single core performance as long as he's at 4.0 GHz or higher (the dual core turbo of a 4790). No way I would recommend a 5820k to be run at stock.

Yep.

Why run at stock, when it can be overclocked a little, so easily.

I see my Dell XPS 8700 lasting a good long time as it is. Unless they make a better CPU the the i7-4790K for the socket, the only upgrades I am considering is more HD's and a better graphics card. I don't see the point of spending over $300 for the "K" version of my CPU, unless I already have a buyer for my current CPU.

[baseline bum]

Yep.

Why run at stock, when it can be overclocked a little, so easily.

I see my Dell XPS 8700 lasting a good long time as it is. Unless they make a better CPU the the i7-4790K for the socket, the only upgrades I am considering is more HD's and a better graphics card. I don't see the point of spending over $300 for the "K" version of my CPU, unless I already have a buyer for my current CPU.

Yeah, no point in upgrading when a 4790 is already an extremely strong cpu.

[baseline bum]

I will be getting the system that baseline bum recommended.
http://www.spurstalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=238548&page=13&p=8192329#post8192329

I recognize someone who knows their shit when I see it. Even if he might be wrong about one aspect or another, his odds of being more right than I could ever possibly be on my own without spending a huge amount of time reading is pretty close to approaching 1:1

The hexacore will be useful down the road as more programmers learn how to use it, from what I understand. I think baseline has a very good point about that.

Who knows... maybe I will throw some moeny at KSP and lobby for them to use more than one core... :D Then where will your single core processor be, huh?

(take that as very gentle ribbing. I am not at all serious about that, hard to get across stuff like that in dead text)

I do have to caution one thing: it's starting to look like the new 14 nm and 16 nm gpus might be releasing at the end of May. And while I think the R9 390 is the best gpu out there right now in the ~$300 price range, in two months AMD might have something that beats it pretty soundly for $300-$400 in Polaris 11, and Nvidia with GP104. These kind of shrinks have corresponded to pretty serious gains in performance in the past. For instance, Nvidia's shrink from 40 nm to 28 nm in the Kepler series gave about a 50% performance increase at launch between the GTX 780 and the GTX 580 when you compare big die to big die in each generation, and GTX 780 was the most cut down version of the big die for Kepler (28 nm) while GTX 580 was the full die for Fermi (40 nm). If you compare full die to full die (GTX 780 Ti vs GTX 580) you're looking at about an 80% difference. Whether it's worth waiting two months (or longer if the leaks are BS) is another question though. If you're only playing KSP and Minecraft you can probably just pop in your old GPU as long as it's PCIE. But then who wants to build a badass system and not be able to show it off when it's new?

Games I highly recommend getting are:
1. Bioshock Infinite -- A first person game set in an alternate history of the early 1900s involving racism, religious cults, and a strange interpretation of a field of science (I don't want to give away any more details)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_lLSOkZRgc

2. The Witcher 3 -- An outstanding 3rd person action RPG with killer lighting effects to really show off the power of that R9 390. Either this game or Arma III are probably the best looking games on PC, though Arma III runs like crap because of very poor cpu optimization.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpevTNRK-_M

3. Fallout New Vegas -- This won't stress your computer at all since it's a game from 2010 using 2008 level graphics, but the only modern game with a better storyline I have played is Bioshock Infinite. They really nail the setting of Las Vegas and the surrounding desert. All the DLC in this game are must have too, with the exception of Dead Money, which I hated. But the Old World Blues, Honest Hearts, and Lonesome Road DLC are all outstanding.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ea8JtJlZ3Vc

[baseline bum]

4. Dying Light -- You're basically in a zombie B-movie, with cheezy music and cool film grain effects in this really well laid out city named Harran. This game is almost as addicting as Minecraft.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsZ6dB4oSjw

[baseline bum]

Of those four games I listed Witcher 3 is by far the most impressive graphically, it will push any gpu short of say a Fury X or 980 Ti to its limits even at 1080p. You'll have to use a mix of high and ultra settings to get a mostly 60 fps experience. Dying Light is also pretty nice graphically but should be no sweat whatsoever for a 5820k and an R9 390, you should get 60 fps locked with everything turned up all the way. Bioshock Infinite is three years old and while very impressive graphically, it's also really well optimized and your 5820k + 390 would laugh at it. Then Fallout New Vegas is not at all hard to run graphically. Even the integrated graphics on consumer level i5 and i7 can run it well (though note the enthusiast i7 like you'll need to get with an X99 board don't have integrated graphics, as those chips are targeted at high end gaming with the assumption you're buying a separate gpu).

[baseline bum]

Crap, how could I forget Skyrim among must plays?


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bH1GUi8rNQk

It's easily the best RPG I have ever played. Even better, you can use fan made mods to make it among the best looking games out there even though it's five years old. DJR210 can probably point you in the right direction for modding Skyrim.

[DJR210]

Skyrim is a masterpiece IMO.. It's far from perfect, shit has a ton of game breaking glitches that have ruined my characters several times, but the overall product with all the modding options puts it in my top 3 PC games for sure.

[Cry Havoc]

Aren't you one of those claw grip weirdos tbh?

Hybrid. I used to use a DA for years which is more of a palm, but I use an m65 now which is sort of both.

[baseline bum]

Skyrim is a masterpiece IMO.. It's far from perfect, shit has a ton of game breaking glitches that have ruined my characters several times, but the overall product with all the modding options puts it in my top 3 PC games for sure.

I haven't played much Skyrim on PC since I must have played 250+ hours of it on XBox 360, but don't they have fan made mods that fix the stability? Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas are horribly buggy and stutter badly without the unofficial patches, but they're pretty clean once patched. I had one game-breaking bug in New Vegas but thankfully you can just press ~ to access the developers console to either start an event or bypass it (the bug I had was the president not walking out to give a speech in New Vegas).

[DJR210]

I haven't played much Skyrim on PC since I must have played 250+ hours of it on XBox 360, but don't they have fan made mods that fix the stability? Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas are horribly buggy and stutter badly without the unofficial patches, but they're pretty clean once patched. I had one game-breaking bug in New Vegas but thankfully you can just press ~ to access the developers console to either start an event or bypass it (the bug I had was the president not walking out to give a speech in New Vegas).

Yeah the have several fan patches that fix a ton of shit.. I never used it em, I just keep a ton of recent save files because you can usually avoid the glitch after you look it up.

[DJR210]

You've got a few god tier options:

Razer Deathadder Chroma
Logitech G502 or 303
Mionix Naos 7200
Steelseries sensei
Corsair M45

:lol terrible. will be broken or fucking up in a year

[baseline bum]

Yeah the have several fan patches that fix a ton of shit.. I never used it em, I just keep a ton of recent save files because you can usually avoid the glitch after you look it up.

Damn, Fallout 4 is the only Bethesda game I have been able to play without fan made mods, and even then I have to do some hacks like play borderless window. If I play true fullscreen the game has horrible microstutter. I guess the vsync isn't done properly, lots of jumping around between 59 and 61 fps. While borderless window gives me a silky smooth 60 fps. The previous two Fallouts have horrible microstutter too supposedly traced to a single API call that is fixed in the unofficial patches by using a better timer.

[DJR210]

hey whats a good gaming mouse?
-wireless?
-non wireless?

mechanical keyboard?

According to the shit I've read, mouse sensor snobs typically agree that the Logitech G502 has the best sensor available. As for wireless, I use the Logitech G700s, and it crushes any of the stigmas people had against wireless mice. Plus, it has 11 extra buttons to map to.

If I'm buying a keyboard today, I'd probably go with a Corsair K series RGB model.

[baseline bum]

:lol terrible. will be broken or fucking up in a year

Razer shit is so fucking expensive I have never even considered it. That and how crappy it looks, it makes me think Alienware for peripherals. I'll spend money on the gpu and cpu, but no way I'm dropping $100 on a mouse. Though I did drop $40 on my G602, which pissed me off; the cheaper wireless mice all have an offset sensor on the left side that makes FPS impossible using them, since moving left/right with a palm grip registers as diagonal.

[baseline bum]

According to the shit I've read, mouse sensor snobs typically agree that the Logitech G502 has the best sensor available. As for wireless, I use the Logitech G700s, and it crushes any of the stigmas people had against wireless mice. Plus, it has 11 extra buttons to map to.

If I'm buying a keyboard today, I'd probably go with a Corsair K series RGB model.

I thought the competitive gamer snobs all loved the G402. I have never tried the G700s, and didn't consider it since Best Buy didn't carry it, but wireless is a must for me. I can't buy a mouse online, I returned like 3 different ones to Walmart and Best Buy a few months ago before finally giving in to having to spend extra on a gaming mouse (the G602). At least they had it on sale for $40 instead of $60 when I got it though. I fucking hate the extra buttons on gamer mice, I wish I could pull them all out.

[DJR210]

Razer shit is so fucking expensive I have never even considered it. That and how crappy it looks, it makes me think Alienware for peripherals. I'll spend money on the gpu and cpu, but no way I'm dropping $100 on a mouse. Though I did drop $40 on my G602, which pissed me off; the cheaper wireless mice all have an offset sensor on the left side that makes FPS impossible using them, since moving left/right with a palm grip registers as diagonal.

They spend so much on their fucking packaging they had to cut on QA.. I started off as a big fan of Razer, they seemed to have some good ideas for gamers.. But 4/5 of the Razer products I have bought have either broke altogether or fuck up in some way. Their customer service is trash too, Logitech will replace your peripheral no questions asked because they back their products.

-Razer Death Adder Mouse - Sensor fucked up after a year of normal use

-2 Razer Xbox Controllers - both fucked up in less than month.. one stopped turning on completely, the other controllers sticks deadzone was fucked in 3 weeks rendering it useless for first person shooters

-Razer Black Widow Ultimate - I still use this, but every so often it has a seizure and starts inputting hundreds of keystrokes until I disconnect the shit. Razer wouldn't help without the receipt whereas Logitech would have, probably not even asking you to send back the fucked up keyboard

[baseline bum]

RandomGuy man, if you seriously just play Minecraft and Kerbal Space Program with such a killer gaming system. :lmao

It'd be like buying a Macbook Pro for Facebook or a Xeon E5-2699v3 for granny to check her email.

[DJR210]

I thought the competitive gamer snobs all loved the G402. I have never tried the G700s, and didn't consider it since Best Buy didn't carry it, but wireless is a must for me. I can't buy a mouse online, I returned like 3 different ones to Walmart and Best Buy a few months ago before finally giving in to having to spend extra on a gaming mouse (the G602). At least they had it on sale for $40 instead of $60 when I got it though. I fucking hate the extra buttons on gamer mice, I wish I could pull them all out.

Nah, I've seen this topic come up many times on some of the gaming forums and I've seen a ton of people agree you cant go wrong with the G502 Proteus.. The FPS sensor snobs expected the sensor to suck because it was made by Logitech, but they all loved it after it came out.

As for wireless mice, you would love the G700s.. Great mouse IMO.. I just don't like the cheesy designs on it, I wish it was flat black. The extra button placement on this mouse is perfect too IMO.. so many games I play are so much more convenient with all the extra mappings.. Arma 3 would be near impossible without this mouse tbh

[baseline bum]

Nah, I've seen this topic come up many times on some of the gaming forums and I've seen a ton of people agree you cant go wrong with the G502 Proteus.. The FPS sensor snobs expected the sensor to suck because it was made by Logitech, but they all loved it after it came out.

As for wireless mice, you would love the G700s.. Great mouse IMO.. I just don't like the cheesy designs on it, I wish it was flat black. The extra button placement on this mouse is perfect too IMO.. so many games I play are so much more convenient with all the extra mappings.. Arma 3 would be near impossible without this mouse tbh

Speaking of Arma III, I hope DX12 fixes that shit. Man that game is beautiful but without gsync it's painful to play at 40-50 fps.

[Cry Havoc]

:lol terrible. will be broken or fucking up in a year

I still have my Razer DA from 2008. The only reason I replaced it is because I used it so much that the grip is getting grimy from almost a decade of use.

[Cry Havoc]

Razer shit is so fucking expensive I have never even considered it. That and how crappy it looks, it makes me think Alienware for peripherals. I'll spend money on the gpu and cpu, but no way I'm dropping $100 on a mouse. Though I did drop $40 on my G602, which pissed me off; the cheaper wireless mice all have an offset sensor on the left side that makes FPS impossible using them, since moving left/right with a palm grip registers as diagonal.

You can get a DA on sale for ~45-50.

[DJR210]

Speaking of Arma III, I hope DX12 fixes that shit. Man that game is beautiful but without gsync it's painful to play at 40-50 fps.

Yeah.. the game is ahead of it's time.. the scope is just too much for current tech

[baseline bum]

Yeah.. the game is ahead of it's time.. the scope is just too much for current tech

I think it's just shitty multithreading.

[baseline bum]

Arma III puts no stress whatsoever on my 970

[DJR210]

Nah it's CPU bound.. so much physics on such a big map with that amount of players.. I used to play small 8 man servers just to get solid 60 FPS

[baseline bum]

Nah it's CPU bound.. so much physics on such a big map with that amount of players.. I used to play small 8 man servers just to get solid 60 FPS

I was talking about single player man, shit runs horrible at default ultra settings with the draw distance way up.

[DJR210]

I was talking about single player man, shit runs horrible at default ultra settings with the draw distance way up.

:lol single player

[baseline bum]

:lol single player

:cry No MP with games looted from the seas tbh :cry

[Wild Cobra]

RandomGuy man, if you seriously just play Minecraft and Kerbal Space Program with such a killer gaming system. :lmao

It'd be like buying a Macbook Pro for Facebook or a Xeon E5-2699v3 for granny to check her email.

LOL...

Kind if true. KSP operates in more than one core, but as it will only use about 20% of the game outside of one core. If you have an eight core logical like my i7, it will max out at about 15% CPU for the game. It will fully utilize one core (12.5%), and spread another 2.5% among the other cores.

I hope with that system build, you plan to play something graphic intensive, else you are wasting money. KSP will do some nice 3d camera angle movements around the crafts you build, but it doesn't come close to taxing my puny GeForce GT 720. I will likely add a GeForce GTX 960 w/4GB shortly, but that's so I can multitask as well as my laptop does with dual monitor and bluray at 1080P. My laptop has the 950m, but the extra 2 GB for the few extra dollar I thing is the best value for my system, over the 950.

My laptop also cost me $1,050 new. It's the MSI Leopard pro 486. 1 TB HD, i7-4720HQ, came with 8 GB, I upgraded to 16 GB. It is flawless playing bluray. Better than any of my other bluray playing devises.

LOL...

Amazon has a new one for $1,609.29. Right after I bought it last year, the price shot up to $1,199...

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/81bu0V2LL6L._SL1500_.jpg (http://www.amazon.com/MSI-GP70-Leopard-Pro-486-17-3-Inch/dp/B00TI6TAWG)

link in image.

[TDMVPDPOY]

ok i made up my mind, going to go purchase the g602...now just need to find a fkn shop thats open today on a p ublic holiday good friday :(

[RandomGuy]

RandomGuy man, if you seriously just play Minecraft and Kerbal Space Program with such a killer gaming system. :lmao

It'd be like buying a Macbook Pro for Facebook or a Xeon E5-2699v3 for granny to check her email.

Nah, the whole purpose of the game is to play the freakin' awesome games I have seen come out in the last few years that I have been itching to try. Those MC and KSP are the old standbys I settled for because that was what I could play. They will be the first ones I play though, because I already own them, and the kids will be begging me to let them try MC on my new toy. If I don't let them try one or two games, I will never hear the end of it.

http://i2.wp.com/www.fowllanguagecomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/2013-08-12-MURFVLIN.jpg?fit=600%2C749

[DJR210]

:cry No MP with games looted from the seas tbh :cry

That is very true.. some games just weren't meant to be salvaged from the sea tbh

[baseline bum]

That is very true.. some games just weren't meant to be salvaged from the sea tbh

I don't like MP anyways except in sports or fighting games.

[RandomGuy]

4. Dying Light -- You're basically in a zombie B-movie, with cheezy music and cool film grain effects in this really well laid out city named Harran. This game is almost as addicting as Minecraft.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsZ6dB4oSjw

Aw man... this is the kind of stuff I am talking about. Thanks.

Got the MB yesterday. The kids went bonkers over the case. Will get the remainder of the system in two weeks. Odd to me that case didn't come with power supply. Have to remember that *minor* detail when I get the rest of the parts.

[baseline bum]

Aw man... this is the kind of stuff I am talking about. Thanks.

Got the MB yesterday. The kids went bonkers over the case. Will get the remainder of the system in two weeks. Odd to me that case didn't come with power supply. Have to remember that *minor* detail when I get the rest of the parts.

Ah man, you never want the power supply that comes with a case nowadays when gpus are so power hungry. The only company I have ever known that used to put good power supplies in their cases was Antec, but now their cases are crap (power supplies are still good though). If you go with the psu I recommended you get a 10 year warranty, plus it's modular so you're not going to have a billion cables to deal with. Here is a review of it, EVGA G2 750W, from JohnnyGURU:

http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews&op=Story6&reid=380

This psu is absolute top of the line for a single card system.

Not all EVGA power supplies are good though. For instance, the EVGA G1 750W is a piece of crap. The EVGA GS units are pretty good, but not as good as the G2. They're all made by different companies and then EVGA slaps their name on it. For instance, the EVGA G2 are made by Super Flower, who makes extremely high quality units. The EVGA GS are made by Seasonic, which is another great company to buy from. EVGA G1 is made by FSP, and they're pretty average. If you decide to go with a different psu, post it here first, because the R9 390 and i7-5820k are both some components that draw a lot of power. The R9 390 is a 275W gpu, an the i7-5820k is a 130W cpu at stock speeds. I'm betting the cpu is more like a 180W processor when heavily overclocked, and the R9 390 probably 300-325W when OC. Not that they'll be drawing that load the whole time, I'm talking about what each would use at 100% load. But you don't want to buy a Corsair CX power supply for instance with such a heavy duty system. Those things are rated at how much power they can output at 30 Celsius when good psus are rated at 40C or 50C.

Lots of computer power supplies will lie about the power the deliver. Low end psus will say they're 500W, and then you see most of that power they're rated for is along the +3.3V and +5V rail, which are pretty useless since your cpu, gpu, board are all powered by the +12V rail(s). It's not uncommon to see crap advertised at 500W that can only deliver a 200W peak load on the +12V rail, and by peak load I mean what it could output for a second before burning up. You want to buy a PSU made by either Super Flower or Seasonic, those guys always rate their power supplies in terms of continuous power that can be delivered.

[baseline bum]

Aw man... this is the kind of stuff I am talking about. Thanks.


Cry Havoc and DJR210 can both vouch for how amazing a game Dying Light is. Also this game is supposed to eventually come out on the Occulus Rift, and this looks like it would be unreal in VR. The GPU I recommended, the R9 390, is in the recommended spec for the Occulus Rift (they recommend an R9 290 or a GTX 970, and the R9 390 is about 10-15% stronger than the R9 290), and the i7-5820k is way better than the minimum recommended cpu (i5-4590).

Next Tuesday or Wednesday Nvidia is expected to announce their new gpus though at GTC 2016. I wouldn't expect it to be a full launch (it sounds like they might not be in stores until May), and if they do an actual launch it might only be for their professional cards, but it'll still be worth seeing what they have. Last year they kind of came out with the GTX 980 Ti out of nowhere to rain on AMD's parade when AMD was about to launch the Fury X. AMD was going to launch the Fury X at $850 to compete with the $1000 Nvidia Titan X and right before the rumored Fury X launch Nvidia released the GTX 980 Ti at $650 as a barely cut down Titan X. So AMD had to cut the Fury X's price to $650. :lol

But AMD could pull the same kind of thing to upstage Nvidia this year. AMD's starting to build up on sponsored games, so I wonder if that's an indication developers are expecting the new AMD cards to be better than the Nvidia ones this upcoming generation. AMD is the only one to actually show off a next generation card in action, which they did with Polaris 11 in January at the Consumer Electronics Show.

[TDMVPDPOY]

lol u seen the new specs of the pascal nvidia 1080 cards?

[baseline bum]

lol u seen the new specs of the pascal nvidia 1080 cards?

Nah man, hopefully we'll know something next week. Then again, Jen-Hsun Huang may just talk about fucking cars at GTC like he did at CES. :pctoss

[TDMVPDPOY]

Nah man, hopefully we'll know something next week. Then again, Jen-Hsun Huang may just talk about fucking cars at GTC like he did at CES. :pctoss


NVIDIA 16nm Pascal Powered GeForce GTX 1080 Launching in May – Uses Full GP104 GPU With 2x Perf Per Watt and 8 GB Memory

The report mentions that NVIDIA’s GP104 will be utilized by a graphics card called the GeForce GTX 1080. Know we don’t know whether NVIDIA will be aiming for a 1000 series naming scheme or skipping it for something far more simpler but the name could change at any point since the launch is still a few months away. The GeForce GTX 1080 will be the fastest consumer offering for a while and while NVIDIA will also have the GTX 1070 in the same time frame, the latter will fall below the 1080 performance since it will be using a cut down configuration.

There are some significant details in the mentioned report which state that NVIDIA’s GP104 based Pascal cards will feature up to 8 GB GDDR5 memory. This brings the memory capacity to the same amount as AMD’s current Radeon R9 390 series graphics cards which are hit among the public for their great price to performance value. The report says that GDDR5 is the memory standard to be used on the GP104 series cards and there remains a possibility where AIBs can start shipping higher performance GDDR5X chips based cards later on since Micron is expected to start mass production in Summer of 2016.

Other details that are mentioned the GeForce GTX 1080 will be shipping on 27th May which is just a few days before Computex.

http://wccftech.com/nvidia-pascal-geforce-gtx-1080-gp104-gpu/

[baseline bum]

2x performance per watt would be amazing, assuming the GP104 chips are meant to be used in ~150W cards. I'm not sure I believe that though, that would be insane.

[RandomGuy]

The monitor is HD as in Full HD, e.g., 1080p? Does your monitor support 120 Hz or 144 Hz refresh rate, or is it 60 Hz? Because for a 1080p 60 Hz system, $1400 is an extremely high budget. Here is what I would consider a monstrously strong 1080p 60 Hz system for that kind of money: I think it would be a waste of money, though the CPU is really strong. It's a hexacore with hyperthreading that you'll probably be able to overclock to at least 4.2 GHz on the cooler I recommend.

PCPartPicker part list (http://pcpartpicker.com/p/WhhjrH) / Price breakdown by merchant (http://pcpartpicker.com/p/WhhjrH/by_merchant/)

CPU: Intel Core i7-5820K 3.3GHz 6-Core Processor (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/intel-cpu-bx80648i75820k) ($378.99 @ SuperBiiz)
CPU Cooler: NZXT Kraken X61 106.1 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/nzxt-cpu-cooler-rlkrx6101) ($114.99 @ B&H)
Motherboard: Asus X99-A ATX LGA2011-3 Motherboard (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/asus-motherboard-x99a) ($239.99 @ B&H)
Memory: Crucial Ballistix Sport 16GB (4 x 4GB) DDR4-2400 Memory (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/crucial-memory-bls4k4g4d240fsa) ($104.95 @ Adorama)
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 500GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/samsung-internal-hard-drive-mz75e500bam) ($159.98 @ OutletPC)
Video Card: MSI Radeon R9 390 8GB Video Card (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/msi-video-card-r9390gaming8g) ($329.98 @ SuperBiiz)
Power Supply: EVGA 750W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/evga-power-supply-220g20750xr) ($99.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $1428.87
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-09-17 16:52 EDT-0400

Assuming you have some old hard drives to use for data storage and that you can get a free case that can support a 360mm radiator in top for the CPU. You get an extremely strong CPU out of this as well as a really high end cooler. This is the best watercooler on the market unless you want to spend $200-$300 on the new ekwb all-in-one coolers coming out this month.

If you have a 120 Hz 1080p or a 60 Hz 1440p monitor, then definitely go higher end on the GPU, lower end on the CPU. Something like this would be much better for that use case, as it has much more graphical horsepower. I went a little over budget to fit in the cooler, which you'll want with a 4790k since it runs 4.2 GHz on all cores under load at stock speed. You can probably get it up to 4.4 GHz on all cores using a Hyper 212 EVO, but any higher and you're looking at liquid coolers most likely, and even the best coolers (like the one in the first build) probably won't get you any higher than 4.7 GHz.

PCPartPicker part list (http://pcpartpicker.com/p/3JjWQ7) / Price breakdown by merchant (http://pcpartpicker.com/p/3JjWQ7/by_merchant/)

CPU: Intel Core i7-4790K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/intel-cpu-bx80646i74790k) ($327.99 @ NCIX US)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/cooler-master-cpu-cooler-rr212e20pkr2) ($24.89 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: Asus Z97-E ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/asus-motherboard-z97e) ($92.98 @ Newegg) [CHECK]
Memory: Crucial Ballistix Sport 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/crucial-memory-bls2kit8g3d1609ds1s00) ($74.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 500GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/samsung-internal-hard-drive-mz75e500bam) ($159.98 @ OutletPC)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB Superclocked+ ACX 2.0+ Video Card (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/evga-video-card-06gp44995kr) ($669.99 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: Antec High Current Gamer 620W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply (http://pcpartpicker.com/part/antec-power-supply-hcg620m) ($78.50 @ Amazon)
Total: $1429.32
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-09-17 17:31 EDT-0400


[derp--re-read and answered my own question] NM.

[RandomGuy]

So what about the base operating system and other configuration tweaks?

I would prefer windows, as I will still need to do the occasional excel/word file.

The MB came with a CD, which I thought rather odd. Haven't had a chance to look at it yet. Now that I am edging closer to the build, I am going to need to start researching a bit about standards and so forth. From what I remember of my old building days, and it looks like it hasn't changed much, MB's and so forth require a bit of tweaking of bios, and getting all the connectors squared away, which I am going to be very ignorant of.

I imagine youtube has a host of stuff like this, both from manufacturers as well as fanatics. Any favs that would be a good place to start?

[TDMVPDPOY]

So what about the base operating system and other configuration tweaks?

I would prefer windows, as I will still need to do the occasional excel/word file.

The MB came with a CD, which I thought rather odd. Haven't had a chance to look at it yet. Now that I am edging closer to the build, I am going to need to start researching a bit about standards and so forth. From what I remember of my old building days, and it looks like it hasn't changed much, MB's and so forth require a bit of tweaking of bios, and getting all the connectors squared away, which I am going to be very ignorant of.

I imagine youtube has a host of stuff like this, both from manufacturers as well as fanatics. Any favs that would be a good place to start?

the CD that comes with the motherboard, are just drivers man...but you still need to update new drivers for ur hardware

win10 should be good now, dunno about being unstable, only reason it could be unstable or bsod is due to incompatible driver updates, that will always be sorted out after every patch available anyway...

[RandomGuy]

the CD that comes with the motherboard, are just drivers man...but you still need to update new drivers for ur hardware

win10 should be good now, dunno about being unstable, only reason it could be unstable or bsod is due to incompatible driver updates, that will always be sorted out after every patch available anyway...

Kinda what I thought. Seems wierd to me that a MB would require drivers, but hey, my computer buildings days are about 18 years behind me. WTF do I know... heh.

[baseline bum]

So what about the base operating system and other configuration tweaks?

I would prefer windows, as I will still need to do the occasional excel/word file.

The MB came with a CD, which I thought rather odd. Haven't had a chance to look at it yet. Now that I am edging closer to the build, I am going to need to start researching a bit about standards and so forth. From what I remember of my old building days, and it looks like it hasn't changed much, MB's and so forth require a bit of tweaking of bios, and getting all the connectors squared away, which I am going to be very ignorant of.

I imagine youtube has a host of stuff like this, both from manufacturers as well as fanatics. Any favs that would be a good place to start?

I'll make my answer in a few separate posts and tag your name in them.

(1) Windows is an absolute must, there is no other good operating system for gaming. I'd definitely go with Windows 10. If you want a cheapest way to get it without going to the gray market (like Reddit Software Swap or G2A.com), you can buy an OEM copy of Windows 7 Professional for a refurbished PC from amazon for about $50. Then you can upgrade it to Windows 10 Professional for free as long as you do it before July 25th or so. Here is the deal I'm talking about:

http://www.amazon.com/Windows-Professional-Builder-Refurbished-Installation/dp/B00LG242A0

You'll find Windows keys for $20-$30 on a Reddit, G2A, and lots of other gray market sites like that, but the key and the license are two different things. If you're not going to buy the license then you might as well just pirate, which is very easy since Microsoft publishes SHA1 checksums for all their isos so you can actually know whether the one you got off piratebay is legit or not (anything extra injected into the iso will change the SHA1 checksum).

[baseline bum]

RandomGuy

(2) The drivers on your motherboard are useless, always download the newest ones from Asus' website. The only exception is the ethernet driver, which you might need to install from the dvd if Windows doesn't come with a suitable driver already installed. This will almost certainly be the case for a Windows 7 install, but if you buy a Windows 10 flash I'd imagine you'd have working network drivers already.

[baseline bum]

RandomGuy

(3) Check Carey Holzman's youtube channel to see how to build these systems in a lot of detail.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5OMp1BcjHo

In this video he is using a stock cooler, which you won't since processors for X-series boards don't come with them, but the rest should be mostly similar. Don't use the power supply he uses here though. He is using an 84W i7-4790 and a 145W GTX 980, neither overclocked, so he's fine with a Corsair CX750M even though they're not very good power supplies. Your system will use quite a bit more power than that.

Here is a video showing how to build in the exact case you got, and they also show installation of a watercooler. However, you won't have to install a backplate for the cooler, as X-series boards have them preinstalled by default (Z-series do not).


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCN4-bvee-Y

I don't like pcpartpicker's videos as much since they edit things down to save time.

Here is a video showing installation of the NZXT Kraken x61, which is the water cooler I'd recommend for that case and cpu.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBU-KhVoO2g

[baseline bum]

RandomGuy

Actually, that video above showed the Kraken x60, but they're similar.