Let's make a gaming PC - The Bear and Badger

[Deleted User]

You've already been added. Will be on later.

vicinity_of_pie

Add me too, please. Downloading it now.

origin name is same as here.

Lord_Griff

So I have a desktop which I haven't used in a few years. The wife wanted me to get rid of it but I said it is a good computer so let me start it up and see if I can solve the crash issue and maybe we can find a use for it.

Spec is Intel quad core something or other, running at 3GHz, 8 Gig Ram and a GTX280 card.

From memory I thought it was a bit of a beast (playing HL2, Arma 2 etc) but whilst looking for a new PC it appears to be a piece of shit now.

Just wondering what to do with it? Any ideas?....

And don't say "shove it up your arse".

hunk

Actually, cpu (corei5/i7?)and ram are still decent.
The gpu is getting on a bit but you'll still be able to game on it on low settings.
If you upgrade the gpu, you'll be able to run modern titles at high settings.

All in all not that bad?

Lord_Griff

i5.

The whole thing feels a bit rickety though. It is a horrible case with hardly any fans for cooling. If you add in another 32Gb-56Gb of Ram, some Titan cards, an SSD do you think you would have to put in an i7 processor? And then I suppose a snazzy motherboard (which I think is an existing problem with this old PC (needs a BIOS update maybe but I have no fucking clue).

All roads point to shelling out for a new comp...

[Deleted User]

Or you could stick this in it.

Lord_Griff

Well, I clearly have no idea.

hunk

If the case is old and/or ugly, you could always buy a new one.
Your motherboard sounds salvageable. If it can handle 3 Titans inserted into it, why not?

Wait, that last sentence sounds wrong for some reason....

Lord_Griff

You calling my motherboard a whore?

hunk

Maybe.....
It depends on whether she can handle multiple Titans.

Lord_Griff

Her nickname's... erm... Zeus...?...

Lord_Griff

The Chillblast Fusion Battlebox: http://www.chillblast.com/pconf.php?productid=19217 Retails at £3,600 (inc VAT).

Yet all the components (like for like) on DABS come to £2,400 (inc VAT).

Is the price disparity due to margin and build cost?

How easy is it to plug all this shit in and for it to work?

GooberTheHat

I doubt it's easy, but worth doing yourself for the sake of £1200.

Bollockoff

32 GB of Ram? Really?

Lord_Griff

It is the level of doubt that concerns me.

Also, trawling through review sites I can't rally tell what the best processor is, or graphics cards. Strangely the most expensive doesn't necessarily equal the best. For instance you can get two Titan Black cards and stick them together (SLI) but there performance is constrained by the processor you choose.

With things like that going on, makes me want to defer to a pro' who builds these things, but don't want to get up-sold a load of shit I don't want etc.

Also told that there is no point in future proofing. "You don't need 64GB of RAM" etc, but surely it will come in useful at some point?

Lord_Griff

Exactly Bollockoff.

Surely 32 or 64Gb will eventually be useful right?

But I have no idea what the limiting factors are on memory usage. Surely more=better?

GooberTheHat

but at the point it becomes useful it will probably be much cheaper to purchase, due to the next superfastmega ram being available, so your ram will be cheap as chips.

beano

Exactly but your 32gib will still be usable although superseded by something smaller and faster.

Blue Swirl

640k ought to be enough for anybody.

[Deleted User]

I reckon at least 16 Gb for 4k gaming. At least.

GooberTheHat

I'm looking to build my own PC, but as I haven't touched the insides of a PC since I was about 15, I'm looking for some advice. How do the components below look? Have I missed anything out? Are they compatible, and if not, is there a site I can go to to check? I don't need a monitor, keyboard, mouse, optical drive or software. Cheers.

It comes in at approx £700
Gfx Card
EVGA GeForce GTX 760 SC ACX 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card

Hard drive
Seagate SSHD 7200RPM 3.5" 2TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST2000DX001) SSHD Hybrid Drive

CPU
AMD Piledriver FX-6 Six Core 6300 Black Edition 3.50GHz (Socket AM3+) Processor

Motherboard
Gigabyte 970A-UD3P AMD 970 (Socket AM3+) DDR3 Motherboard

RAM
Kingston HyperX Fury Red 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-14900C10 1866MHz Dual Channel Kit

PSU
Silverstone Strider Plus 500W Modular '80 Plus Bronze' Power supply

Cooling
Cooler Master Hyper 412S CPU Cooler

Case
NZXT LeXa S Windowed Midi Tower Case

three1ne

Just came here for the same reason Goober, I imagine you have sorted a PC now.

I can't find the site I have used before but this looks ok http://choosemypc.net/uk

vicinity_of_pie

three1ne wrote:

Just came here for the same reason Goober, I imagine you have sorted a PC now. I can't find the site I have used before but this looks ok http://choosemypc.net/uk

Couple of things i'd recommend here with those parts.

1) Spend a bit more for the i5 4670k or 4690k, you'll get a better cpu for not a lot more and it will have an unlocked multiplier allowing you to overclock it up to 4.6ghz in the future if you need to.

2) Did you mean to get 2x2gb GPUs? If so, you'd be better off with a 3 or 4 GB card now which would likely see better performance and last longer as GPU memory becomes more important.

edit: To clarify, 2 x 2GB gpu doesn't mean 4GB memory for games as the textures are repeated for each card. Spending the extra amount on a single card will always net better results.

3) This is very minor but you may be able to get an updated motherboard, the z97 boards have a couple of things the z87 boards don't have but are often similar in price. The most important thing is it has what you want at a price you can afford.

[Deleted User]

How difficult is it to upgrade a processor? Do I need to buy a new motherboard as well?

vicinity_of_pie

Liveinadive wrote:

How difficult is it to upgrade a processor? Do I need to buy a new motherboard as well?

Depends what your motherboard supports and how far you want to upgrade. The answer is most likely yes, but motherboards can be had for <£60 depending on what features you need. You may also need to upgrade your memory if for example your current motherboard uses DDR2 as most motherboards these days support DDR3 only. (DDR4 is just out but ridiculously expensive and only used on top end motherboards with top end CPUs).

three1ne

Ah sorry VoP, I didnt actually mean to post a specification with that. Just meant to be a link to the site in general.

Although I am wishing to upgrade so may be you can shed some light here.

My system now is

Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit SP1
Intel Core i5 750 @ 2.67GHz 44 °C
Lynnfield 45nm Technology
12.0GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 532MHz (7-7-7-20)
ASUSTeK Computer INC. P7P55D LE (LGA1156) 43 °C

W2261 (1920x1080@60Hz)
1024MB ATI AMD Radeon HD 5700 Series (ATI) 43 °C
465GB Western Digital WDC WD5000AAKS-00V1A0 ATA Device (SATA) 33 °C
931GB Western Digital WDC WD10EZEX-00KUWA0 ATA Device (SATA) 31 °C
931GB SAMSUNG HD103SJ ATA Device (SATA) 30 °C

TSSTcorp CDDVDW SH-S223L ATA Device

AMD High Definition Audio Device

550w PSU

I've had this system for about 4 years I think. It's becoming a little slow for Premiere/After Effects work.
I'm looking to spend about 600ish. Obviously I have a monitor, psu, OS already. I think everything else needs an upgrade. I asssume RAM has advanced a enough in 4 years for it to also need to be upgraded.

Through that website, for 600ish, the budget is still in the i5 range. Faster clock speed but, and I really don't know a great deal about clock speeds, but I am assuming it wouldnt be a clossal difference to what I have now. A new GPU would make some difference too I know but if I am going to spend 600ish I want a noticable difference.

Also considering a small SSD for the OS... ?

Any advice?

[Deleted User]

@pie
Ah yeah I forgot about ram. I have Ddr2.

vicinity_of_pie

@three1ne
I'll link you to the kind of thing i'd be looking at for that budget atm. I'll use scan because that's where I generally buy from and it's very easy to select compatible parts. Obviously you might find these parts (or similar) for cheaper elsewhere.

1150 (haswell) z97 Motherboard - you can spend less or more depending on what features you want, or get a different brand if you prefer, but in general you want a z87 or z97 haswell to support the latest i3/i5/i7s.

i5 4690k - this is basically the top end i5 currently and it's the best for gaming because it's not much more than the other i5s and generally performs as well as the haswell i7s in gaming. The k means the multiplier is unlocked and it's easy to overclock, though you'll probably not need to do that if you don't want to as the stock is powerful enough for just about any game.

8GB DDR3 1866 Ram - That RAM you have seems very slow for DDR3, it should work but you'd probably be better upgrading to faster RAM, 8GB is generally enough and any more isn't really used currently, most games don't support 64bit (more than 3.5GB) yet and the ones that do don't really benefit from more than 8GB. You could spend more or get a higher speed or different brand but corsair are generally rated quite highly.

AMD 280x GPU - You can go nVidea if you prefer but AMD is cheaper in general for performance and nVidea cards generally have less RAM at this pricepoint. Some people say AMD have more driver problems but since you were already with them you'll probably be familar with them anyway. I have a 3GB 7950 and have no problems at all. You might be able to save money by going for a slightly older card such as the 7970 (which this 280x is basically a rebrand of with slightly better performance and more features). The GPU is probably the most important thing so i'd say look at reviews/benchmarks for this particular card and then go for one that is close to the performance of this one at a price you're happy with. i.e. if there is a much better card for a similar price go for that one, or if an older card comes close to performance on this one but for a lot less go for that.

All these parts come in at £562.54 delivered from scan. You can probably save a bit here and there depending on where you buy from or selecting slightly different (make sure they're compatible!) parts.

I may have forgotten some things so if you have any questions just ask!

[Deleted User]

Quick couple of questions for you lovely helpful people.

What is the best processer money can buy before the pounds to performance ratio starts to be not worth it?
I have an AMD processor at the moment. Assuming I will have to change the motherboard and RAM should I switch to Intel?

This will be for work rather than gaming so I'm looking at a beast processer for rendering purposes.

vicinity_of_pie

Liveinadive wrote:

Quick couple of questions for you lovely helpful people. What is the best processer money can buy before the pounds to performance ratio starts to be not worth it? I have an AMD processor at the moment. Assuming I will have to change the motherboard and RAM should I switch to Intel? This will be for work rather than gaming so I'm looking at a beast processer for rendering purposes.

Yeah, switch to an intel haswell board, AMD aren't even close to Intels CPUs these days. The i5 i've listed above would be best pounds to performance ratio IMO, but if you need hyperthreading for rendering purposes another £70ish quid would get you the i7 4790k.

If money was no object the i7 5960x would be the type of thing that would be amazing for CPU heavy tasks! That thing is crazy.

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