n0face wrote:

I don't think the 4tb drive is going to be big enough so what's the most cost effective way to get loads of space (thinking maybe 12tb) in and can I get the computer to treat it as one install drive?

This guy has a bunch of random SSDs and I think he mentioned combining them into one drive using one of these things. Not sure how that works, still watching. (Edit: think it might be in part three)





Seems like a decent build, can definitely appreciate the aim for silence. Personally I would go for a Ryzen 2400G for that build, as the integrated graphics will be much better for basic gaming than what you get with Intel chips. He does talk about how the quicksync video encoding that you get with the Intel iGPU is supposed to make encoding/compressing videos using Handbrake much quicker, but I can't find very much useful information on how that compares in speed/file size/resulting video quality compared to a Ryzen standard CPU encode. I've happily encoding blu rays with my 8-core Ryzen for ages now anyway. Also I have issues with Intel as they are doing some very shitty stuff with hardware DRM for 4K blu ray playback that absolutely not be encouraged or supported, very much down with that sort of thing.

Also for an inexpensive very quiet fan replacement option, I definitely can highly recommend the Fractal X2 GP-14 fans. I have seen them for as cheap as 7 or 8 quid. Be sure to get the X2 variant, with X2 in the product name, as those have the improved bearings.

When I can keep stuff on another computer somewhere else then wait hours for it to download. I don't want to wait I want everything now.

Monkey Island 2 spanned 12 of those bad boys, bought from a car boot with a photo copied dial a pirate. There's never enough space.

Amazingly, DDR4 prices have fallen almost back to where they were a few years ago, for example you can get some 16GB (2x8GB) 3000MHz kits for around £90 right now. Not too distant from what I paid back at the beginning of 2016 which was £84...

So might be a good time to build a PC right now. There will be some new sexy 7nm processors out this year, so perhaps it might be prudent to wait a few months if you can hold off, but otherwise it's a pretty decent time to take the plunge.

cockbeard wrote:

Blue Swirl wrote:

Just crazy how far things have come. At school I had a floppy disk in my bag, and that seemed like infinite storage at the time. 144mb!

I think you missed a decimal point that seems hugely optimistic

Just proves my point!

Thoughts?

i7 9700k @ 3.6GHZ w/boost up to 4.9

16GB DDR4

GeForce RTX 2080 Ti 11GB

Future proof for a while? Will be getting a 4k monitor.

I'd prob be doing that after as that is the limit of my budget including keyboard and monitor which I need.

Can keep laptop, which is now showing age a bit, as chill machine for films and shit.

Will get it ordered soon after 'the chat' with the missus.

I'd be upping to 32gb like a month or two after so its no major biggie to begin with tbh. Will defo be upping to future proof though.

Going to be a nice build DS, but an alteration I would perhaps recommend would be to go for a Ryzen CPU over Intel. Mainly because if you are sticking with 60-100Hz monitors (which you very probably are if you're going to 4K), then you really won't see a difference in game FPS with any of the 6-core and up CPUs currently available. Where Intel's faster single core speeds come into play are titles which are more graphically minimal and/or well optimised to run at FPS ranges in the hundreds, and more FPS = you being more competitive.

At a 4K resolution even the beast that is the 2080ti will be the bottleneck to performance, and a lower clocked high-core Ryzen will probably be just as good as a 5GHz Intel.

Consider that a 9700K is about £370, and is 8 cores and 8 threads. A Ryzen 2700x is around £290, and is 8 cores and 16 threads with multithreading. The relative Cinebench scores are 1513 and 1804, that benchmark isn't representative of overall performance, but it is a good indicator of maximum performance where software is able to make full use of the available cores. In a CPU limited gaming workload (like with a 2080ti running on a 1080p monitor) the 9700K will certainly be a little bit ahead, but as I've said if you are planning on a 4K monitor then CPU is less of an issue.

Another thing is the motherboard cost, the boards needed for the 9700K and to overclock it seem to average about £40-50 more than AMD boards. There are cheap and expensive boards for either category though, and it's important to choose one with good VRM quality and features. If you want some help picking a really solid one out let me know, many manufacturers are a bit misleading about number of VRM phases and such.

And one more consideration is the lack of an included cooler with Intel 'K' chips, meaning an additional purchase, probably at least £30 for something adequate and quiet, more if you want to manually overclock it and push it to the max. All 2000-series Ryzen CPUs come with a cooler, apparently very decent ones, certainly in terms of acoustics compared to shitty Intel stock coolers. The 2700x for example comes with a particular beefy stock cooler, which is basically fine for standard usage, not going to be quite as quiet as a nice Noctua cooler or something, but if you are planning on mostly gaming on headphones then you probably won't care either way.

So that's a rough total of a £150 saving going with a 16 thread AMD CPU compared to an 8 thread Intel. Worth thinking about if there are other things in the system that could be upgraded a tier. Like storage for example, don't know what you have or plan to put in there but at that power of PC you should be going for an NVME boot drive like a Samsung 970 Evo. For around £100 can get an additional 1TB of solid state storage for games, important for loading times, and even a bit of performance in many games now.

Or you could put the money towards an even higher quality monitor, or peripherals even. A really nice keyboard and mouse, or even a souped up gamepad is well worth spending some quids on IMO, just adds to the experience. Better headphones are another option, maybe even a nicer chair. All stuff worth thinking about.

There is another gen of Ryzen CPUs coming out shortly, all will be compatible with currently available motherboards (three generations of CPU - socket compatibility is frickin outstanding btw), and the reckons are that they should be about as good as the best Intel can offer, only cheaper with more cores and less security issues (see Spectre). A smart choice might actually be to go for either the 6 core 12 thread 2600 or 2600x which will be just as good for 4K gameplay, and also get a good motherboard with plenty of VRM, and when the new gen is released you could jump up to a 12 core or even possibly a 16 core if you're mad. The 3000 series 8 cores anyway are going to be substantially faster, they are based on a 7nm process and should clock higher with more IPC.

My setup is a 144Hz 1080p monitor with a Ryzen 2700X, and I'm really really happy with it. 144 FPS is no problem in most games where it really matters, like driving games or Overwatch and other fast paced things. BF5 is the biggest test for it, and I think I average around 100 most of the time, if I had a faster Intel chip I could see performance more like 120-130FPS. But tbh I struggle to discern much difference once it goes beyond 90 FPS, so the subjective improvement would be minimal. And then I do a lot of things with video encoding, 3D modelling stuff and mad multitasking where I do actually make use of all the available cores. If you plan on streaming your gameplay then going for more cores is highly recommended, even the 12 cores of a 2600 will be more useful than the just 8 of the 9700K.

Dark Soldier wrote:

To be honest 4k is more.going to be for film and such as I don't see 4k as something I absolutely require currently. 1080 has been fine and will be for a long while. I'll have a look into my options, currently sweet talking the missus.

VR porn.

I’d agree with Gurt on the monitor thing. I bought this over a year ago and really don’t care for 4K when I can have bloody good looking 1440p at up to 165Hz. It’s probably been bettered since but it’s a great screen.

https://www.scan.co.uk/products/27-asus-pg279q-rog-swift-165hz-nvidia-g-sync-2k-ips-monitor-2560x1440-4ms-10001-dp-hdmi-2x-usb-30-bl?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIurWdk9Ov4QIV1eN3Ch2wOAnjEAQYASABEgKER_D_BwE

Nice! I’ve got those cans, solid choice.

Good man DS. I shall destroy you at TF2, mechanical keyboard or no.

Cheers lads!

I get BFV, Anthem (lol), Metro Exodus and Just Cause 4 with it. Giving BFV code to my cuz cos he's mad into the series and can't afford it, and selling Anthem code for £15 to gullible gimp at work.

Gonna rinse Metro, Sekiro (bye bye PS4 version), Hitman 2 and Civ 6. Mainly buy it for Cyberpunk and Blands 3 when they drop, plus seeing Sekiro at sub 60fps made me cry.

The keyboard is a cheaper one as I'm not yet a m&k guy so went for a less progamer ting. Already got a sweet mouse.

Genuinely hyped for Friday morning, pure masterrace. All next week off work too god damn.