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Thread: New gaming PC

  1. #1
    Nec Pluribus Impar Member SwordsMaster's Avatar
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    Default New gaming PC

    Hello all,

    Advice needed on new gaming rig:

    I have not had a gaming PC now in about 4 years - life has been too busy. However, now I am back to a point where I'm able to dedicate it some time and some dollars.

    Most of the games in the past 18months have been a nightmare to play on my 5yo laptop - forget about Witcher 3, Andromeda, even RTW2 struggled. I would like to play them and get some kind of enjoyment out of doing so. Shooters aren't really my favourite kind of game, so lightning fast multiplayer isn't a requirement. I do intend to do some movie-watching on the same machine/screen.
    I don't even own a screen at this point.

    My budget tops out at aprox 1500$, and I do have the skills to assemble a tower. This doesn't need to include peripherals (mouse, keyboard, speakers, etc) but it would be perfect if it included a 30in screen. Probably asking for too much :)

    If it helps, I live in Dallas, so UK/EU deliveries are not the best.

    Comments appreciated, opinions welcome.

    Thanks
    Managing perceptions goes hand in hand with managing expectations - Masamune

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  2. #2
    The very model of a modern Moderator Xiahou's Avatar
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    Default Re: New gaming PC

    Just a month or two ago, a guy in my office sent me the specs of his new gaming PC. I would feel comfortable endorsing what he picked out without any hesitation. He has serious nerd cred, is a hardcore gamer and spent hours researching his build.

    The build:

    CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 1700
    GPU: Nvidia GTX 1080
    SSD: Toshiba OCZ RD400 NVMe PCIe M.2 256GB
    HDD: Seagate ST2000DM009-2G4100 2TB
    RAM: Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4 3200 C16 2x8GB
    MBD: Asrock X370 Gaming K4
    I'll probably be looking to my next PC build around February, but I doubt I'll have that kind of cash to throw at it.
    I usually spend time trying to find the price/performance sweet-spot and leave room for future upgrades rather than mind-melting performance- but the reason for this is purely financial.

    Anyhow, hope this serves as a good starting point.
    Last edited by Xiahou; 06-01-2017 at 02:45.
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    Iron Fist Senior Member Husar's Avatar
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    Default Re: New gaming PC

    It is a good starting point, although it really bugs me that AMD has no card to compete with the GTX 1080. There were some benchmarks that seemed to show that the AMD Ryzen CPUs don't always work very well with NVidia cards and you may get more performance out of them with AMD cards. The RX 580 would however make the system slower than the GTX 1080 even if the latter can't take full advantage of the CPU. The only help I guess would be either some NVidia driver optimizations for Ryzen (might have happened, I didn't follow the story) or waiting for the AMD Vega, which is at least two month away from now. That's if you're not limited by the GPU performance anyway.

    Other than that, Xiahou's suggestion seems solid.

    And regarding the screen, do you have any wishes? Resolution? I've personally switched to a 27" LG MU67 and I think it is great.
    The 160 dpi really improve the way text is displayed and FreeSync makes the picture feel very smooth above 40 fps. Of course with an NVidia card you'd want to go for G-Sync, which tends to extend to lower frequencies like 30 fps but also makes the monitors about 100 bucks more expensive. (Although if the maximum frequency of the monitor is double or more the minimum FreeSync frequency, it can also work below the threshold by showing the same picture twice etc.).

    Er, well, that's the basics, monitors can be complicated.

    edit: Oh yeah, just read about it again, if you want to wait for Vega, this can be really hard. Not only is the launch at least two months away, but AMD cards also get bought by these crypto currency miner people/nerds because they're especially useful for that sort of thing. So it could be 4-6 months until they're actually available at a decent price if the miners jump onto them right away again.
    I find it rather sad how the market works at the moment, I want to support AMD due to the monopoly behavior of Intel and NVidia, but it's not exactly easy like this.
    Last edited by Husar; 06-01-2017 at 14:45.


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    Nec Pluribus Impar Member SwordsMaster's Avatar
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    Default Re: New gaming PC

    Thanks for the thoughts gents,

    Brand doesn't really concern me. I'm probably looking at a late july-early august timeframe so a 6month wait is not ideal... Monitor-wise - I'd like something in the 30-32' size with a resolution that will be enojable with a high-end graphics card. Since I don't really do online gaming I'm not too concerned with microsecond response times, although, obviously i'll take the best i can.

    Ideally the whole package will land at under 1500$ but i'm pretty flexible within that.

    Is 16Gb RAM enough at this point?
    Are 8 Cores necessary? I had been thinking of something similar to the i7 7700/7820, but then I haven't really been following things much - any thoughts?
    Managing perceptions goes hand in hand with managing expectations - Masamune

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    Iron Fist Senior Member Husar's Avatar
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    Default Re: New gaming PC

    Quote Originally Posted by SwordsMaster View Post
    Brand doesn't really concern me. I'm probably looking at a late july-early august timeframe so a 6month wait is not ideal... Monitor-wise - I'd like something in the 30-32' size with a resolution that will be enojable with a high-end graphics card. Since I don't really do online gaming I'm not too concerned with microsecond response times, although, obviously i'll take the best i can.
    Brand concerns me insofar that I don't like to pay money to people who are ripping me off with their monopoly, I've been an Nvidia ccustomer for a very long time, but what they do with G-Sync and mandatory signups for automatic driver updates etc. is just not my cup of tea.

    The G-Sync and FreeSync do not improve any response times, they just synchronize the monitor refresh rate to that of the GPU, which not only eliminates screen tearing, but also makes the scene look smoother in general. I got FreeSync with my monitor and didn't look for it at the time and when I tried it I thought it's really nice. You basically get it for free with AMD anyway, just with NVidia it costs extra because they don't support the free standard and have their proprietary one only. Of course some people swear on 120 Hz or higher monitors. I can see the merit in that as well to some extent but personally chose a higher resolution instead.

    Quote Originally Posted by SwordsMaster View Post
    Is 16Gb RAM enough at this point?
    Are 8 Cores necessary? I had been thinking of something similar to the i7 7700/7820, but then I haven't really been following things much - any thoughts?
    I think 16GB should be okay, RAM is very expensive at the moment and IIRC also expected to rise even further this year. And by expensive I mean 2-3 times as much per GB than last year. If you get 2x8 GB and somehow games require 32GB in 2 years, which I find a bit doubtful, you could still buy more then.
    As for the CPU, yes, 8 cores seem to be the new sweet spot. You can easily find benchmarks that show the 7700K as the best and fastest gaming CPU, but there are some caveats to that:

    1. More and more games actually make use of more than four cores, I heard in BF1 loading times are faster with up to eight cores. Ashes of the Singularity is faster on four but actually automatically disables some effects below five or six cores to improve performance. So in this case you actually need more than four for the full experience one could say.

    2. In many benchmarks where the 7700K beats the AMD octa core CPUs, the 7700K is at 99% usage level while the octa cores sit at 60% or so and are a few percent slower. This means the octa cores have a lot more performance to offer that current games just don't always use while the 7700K is absolutely maxed out. Octa cores are more future proof and Intel plans to increase core numbers now as well, thanks to their quasi-Monopoly they just didn't have to until now.

    3. Due to the Intel reign of the past few years, many current games are only really optimized for Intel CPUs, which may well cost the AMDs a few percentage points here and there. With the now-competitive AMD CPUs selling well, future games will likely be more optimized for them as well. As I said earlier, the NVidia driver seems to run badly with them as well and most benchmarks are done using NVidia GPUs to avoid running into a GPU limit with current AMD cards.

    4. CPU benchmarks are mostly done with rather low resolutions and settings, if you go for higher resolutions and settings, your GPU will be your primary FPS limit in most cases and whether the 7700K could theoretically give you slightly higher framerates in current games becomes an academical exercise since your GPU cannot provide them anyway.

    5. A lot of people who switched from Intel to AMD Ryzen claim their minimum FPS increased, so their framerate stays higher and doesn't result in annoying dips as often as with Intel.


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    Nec Pluribus Impar Member SwordsMaster's Avatar
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    Default Re: New gaming PC

    Thanks Husar! That was very well thought out and helpful. I'm curious, why is the price of RAM going up? ISn't traditionally the trend for memory cost to go down, and do so quite quickly?
    Managing perceptions goes hand in hand with managing expectations - Masamune

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    Senior Member Senior Member Yeti Sports 1.5 Champion, Snowboard Slalom Champion, Monkey Jump Champion, Mosquito Kill Champion Csargo's Avatar
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    Default Re: New gaming PC

    http://www.pcworld.com/article/31629...ng-better.html

    The price increases began around mid-2016, as Newegg Business noted in a blog post in August. PCPartPicker's memory price trend page indeed shows the cost of all types of RAM surging upward since May or so. The reason at the time was that the big money was in producing DRAM for mobile devices, followed by servers, and then finally desktops.
    Quote Originally Posted by Sooh View Post
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    Iron Fist Senior Member Husar's Avatar
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    Default Re: New gaming PC

    What Csargo linked. Production and IIRC raw material shortages make the prices of RAM go up at the moment.

    As for the cores thing, of course the 1700 is not the fastest Ryzen octa core, but I think it is mostly sufficient and unlike Intel, AMD allows overclocking on all Ryzens, not just the most expensive ones (though not all mainboard chipsets allow for it).

    http://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages...review,18.html
    Check out these benchmarks where they use full details. In FullHD the Intels provide a relatively big advantage, but only if one actually needs the additional FPS, almost all CPUs provide enough for a 60 Hz monitor. If you're into competitive CSGO gaming you may want >200fps anyway because people say the responses improve etc., but for me personally that was never a concern. My monitor provides 60 fps max and as long as the CPU can provide that (actually 40 since I usually find it's good enough with FreeSync in the games I play, 120 fps 4k is a few years away at least unless you get a beast of a computer for way more than your budget ), it is sufficient for gaming purposes for now. The 1700 does that and probably has some resources left for the future.
    In the 1440p benchmarks you can see that all the good CPUs still net more than 60fps but now they're all the same more or less because the GPU is the limiting factor already. For a 30" monitor I would never go below 1440p anyway unless you like pixel graphics everywhere.

    And just today I read that Rise of the Tomb Raider got a patch that improves the performance on Ryzen by up to 30%. The 30% seem to apply mostly to smaller Ryzens though while the bigger ones getting a bit less, although even here, many factors can apply again:
    https://www.overclock3d.net/reviews/...rmance_ryzen/2

    One thing I forgot to mention is that the RAM also affects the performance of Ryzen CPUs quite a bit, so I suppose Xiahou's guy carefully selected the 3200MHz RAM for optimal price/performance ratio and compatibility.
    Last edited by Husar; 06-02-2017 at 17:41.


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    Nec Pluribus Impar Member SwordsMaster's Avatar
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    Default Re: New gaming PC

    Thanks for the additional feedback, lads.

    Ugh, unfortunately, after i put together that configuration, throw in a decent tower, screen and 600W power unit I'm coming in over 2 grand from newegg. So, any plan B items you reckon might shave off a few hundred without being too much of a letdown?
    Managing perceptions goes hand in hand with managing expectations - Masamune

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    Iron Fist Senior Member Husar's Avatar
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    Default Re: New gaming PC

    Hmm, yes, the items Xiahou listed are just shy of 1.5k by themselves. You can make some concessions to get the whole thing without the monitor to less than 1.5k. That's taking 2400MHz RAM in one of their Mobo+CPU+RAM packages, downsizing from the expensive NVMe SSD to a normal consumer model (the NVMe is about three times as fast, but in normal operation the difference does not seem to matter a lot as normal SSDs are really fast already) and taking only a 1TB HDD instead of 2TB. What I did here is close to my own configuration apart from the CPU and GPU.
    The case is very famous and I use it myself, the Crucial SSDs are decent, cheap but come without a lot of bells and whistles. I've got the MX200 which is a bit better than the MX 300 I think, but the difference in standard use shouldn't be that huge assuming you don't plan to copy huge amounts of files or use the thing as a workstation for taxing tasks.

    Of course if you want to add a monitor as well and stay below 1.5k, you will either have to downsize the CPU, the GPU or both, which could be a more considerable performance impact.

    Actually scratch that, go with the 1600X, it has two cores less but clocks at 4GHz max, just like the big 1800X. The 6 cores and 12 threads should be fine for quite a while as well and the higher clocks should give a bit more performance per core. And with a different mainboard in the comboyou save about 120$ compared to the 1700. I can't vouch for the quality of the mainboard or anything of course, but I would think they (Newegg) do at least suggest combos that work together and have no incompatibilities.

    Now finding a good monitor for 200 bucks would be the hard part, or you'd have to downsize to a GTX 1070 to make more financial room or wait for the new AMD Vegas and see how they affect prices (and remember that they support FreeSync, which is basically free on the monitor).

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    Nec Pluribus Impar Member SwordsMaster's Avatar
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    Default Re: New gaming PC

    That's fantastic Husar, thanks!

    Is that a power supply or a fan at 500W?

    How much cooling do you need for that rig?
    Managing perceptions goes hand in hand with managing expectations - Masamune

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    Iron Fist Senior Member Husar's Avatar
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    Default Re: New gaming PC

    Quote Originally Posted by SwordsMaster View Post
    That's fantastic Husar, thanks!

    Is that a power supply or a fan at 500W?

    How much cooling do you need for that rig?
    The 500W thing is the power supply. I didn't research it in detail as I said, but I think BeQuiet is a good (German) brand. 65$ for the version with Cable Management seems decent, although going 10-20$ higher might result in a slightly better one, would have to look that up. I wanted to get one with all the bells and whistles but then the store didn't have it so I chose the one they recommended. Now I cannot change the fan speed using the controls on the tower since it's a crappy switch that sends back some energy to the power supply which makes my computer restart.... Obviously the store clerk recommended a power supply that doesn't have all the precautionary security switches the one I originally chose would have had... Then again this switch is the only really bad thing about the Fractal Design R5 (ok, the dust cover underneath was a bit loose for me but that can be fixed and doesn't seem to be a common complaint) and I just leave it in the middle position now, letting the two fans that came with it blow air in at 7 Volts. It's really quiet in Windows and only the GPU and CPU coolers become loud under certain loads. I also added some Be Quiet Silent Wings 2 140mm for 22bucks each at the bottom and rear. Bottom blows to the GPU and rear transfers air out of the case.

    I'm using the Intel Boxed Cooler, which is alright, but can be a bit loud/may have developed some clackering issues, recently bought a BeQuiet Pure Rock to replace it but didn't find the time or will to do so yet. The AMd stock cooler and the two fans that come with the case should be good for a start, that sort of thing can just be added or replaced later on if required. Do note that the Silent Wings 2 cannot be easily installed in the front of the case because the long screws required in the front do not pass through their rubber or plastic fixings. I think there are plenty of other quiet case fans that should fit though.

    I'm probably writing too much again, but note that I replaced the 2TB HDD with a 1TB one from WD. Bought a Hitachi myself since they came out ahead in some server failure statistics, but the first one had some issues of course and the store replaced it. So I guess that can happen with any brand... I find I could use a lot more space by now as mine is constantly full, but much like fans, storage can still be added with relative ease later. For now the idea was to get you below the 1500$ without choosing terrible components.

    It could be good to check some of the components I chose in detail as I said, to find out about possible quirks and so on, I may do that in a few days, but right now I should be working.


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    Nec Pluribus Impar Member SwordsMaster's Avatar
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    Default Re: New gaming PC

    So, looked around some... What are your thoughts on this one?
    https://www.costco.com/CyberpowerPC-...100333319.html
    Managing perceptions goes hand in hand with managing expectations - Masamune

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    Iron Fist Senior Member Husar's Avatar
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    Default Re: New gaming PC

    Quote Originally Posted by SwordsMaster View Post
    So, looked around some... What are your thoughts on this one?
    https://www.costco.com/CyberpowerPC-...100333319.html
    A steep price for what is basically still just four cores and there is no monitor included. The NVMe is a bit overkill for a gaming PC as well and just increases the price IMO.
    The best part is:

    "Ultra Enhanced Packaging"



    Keep in mind that consoles have 8 cores and both AMD and Intel are soon going to offer 6-8 cores in the more mainstream areas and up to 16/18 for enthusiasts/professionals. The i7 is really fast now, but there are also games now that don't start if the CPU does not have four cores or at least four threads. Some CPUs can still be good in 5 years, but one with four cores, I'm not so sure. For the next two years that's probably a good machine, but still quite expensive.


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    Senior Member Senior Member Yeti Sports 1.5 Champion, Snowboard Slalom Champion, Monkey Jump Champion, Mosquito Kill Champion Csargo's Avatar
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    Default Re: New gaming PC

    I just want know what the ultra enhanced packaging is.
    Quote Originally Posted by Sooh View Post
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    Nec Pluribus Impar Member SwordsMaster's Avatar
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    Default Re: New gaming PC

    We may never know what enhanced packaging is.

    Any changes/further thoughts? Next week is likely the week I will finally have some time to dedicate to this. Any price drops on good gear to match the Steam sale? :)
    Managing perceptions goes hand in hand with managing expectations - Masamune

    Pie is merely the power of the state intruding into the private lives of the working class. - Beirut

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  17. #17
    Iron Fist Senior Member Husar's Avatar
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    Default Re: New gaming PC

    I think I've explained most of my thoughts on the matter by now. Not sure what to say other than I hope you find something you can be happy with.


    "Topic is tired and needs a nap." - Tosa Inu

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