Advice for Rip Van Winkle please (full rig)

Hi all,

Just checked and i have not been on here since May 2011, i still game every now and then on my Novatech brick (currently terrified on ShaleBridge cradle) for old times sake.
Last time i was here i asked for some advice on a one stop gaming rig, no monitor, no peripherals, just a rig preferably quite low db's when running, nothing garish in the case design and capable of running at a good pace what ever is out there at the moment. Budget tween my son & myself would be about 1.5K (£), i am that far off the tech curve now that all i know is that i'd like a ssd for fast boot times and to be at a decent bang/buck ratio without killing our finances for bleeding edge tech. Anyone fancy a crack at a bit of advice? Cheers!

 

Can you hand me a webpage of a local store ? ... So i can build you a setup

 

Thank you very much!

http://www.ebuyer.com/store/Computer/cat/Gaming-PC

 

SSDs are cheaper these days, most people have multiple ones now. My gaming rig has three SSDs, and no HDDs inside anymore, so I guess you will have an easy time getting one for yourselves.

Will your rig be just for gaming, or will you be doing anything else, like rendering / truely working with it? Also, is noise a topic for you, e.g. do you want to make a quiet rig, or don't you care how loud it gets because you turn up your home theatre to blow you away anyway (that's what I do hehe)?

 

Option 1#... With a X99 platform, really future-proof like it was 1366

http://i.imgur.com/MYzE2Vl.jpg

Option 2# With a Z97 platform ... cheaper, similar performance. But the new "midrange" (Z100) chipset of Intel is arround the corner. If you prefer a more economical solution I would wait to see how well perform the new i7 series

http://i.imgur.com/yMD8oFJ.jpg

 

Thanks guys, The room for the rig is going to be undergoing a renovation so a frame cranking beastie, quiet (but not needed to be silent) and understated running on air would be the way forward i think. Its highest stress would be for gaming, no rendering or video work. I have a couple tb storage HDD but we also seem to fill up the onboard HDD's quite quickly. I hadn't though much about multipe ssd's as i didn't think there was much beyond an OS boot and maybe the most demanding games on there?

As i say i am totally open to ideas/suggestions. thanks lexer98, i will have a look and start the learning again!

Current panel displays at a max of 1920x1600(?) and i'll probably upgrade the speaker z680 5.1 but downgrade to 2.1 but higher quality maybe.

 

£500 quid for a graphics card? AAAAAGGGGGHHHHHHH! Wow, The game has changed a bit! Seriously though, thanks for taking the time out to help, much appreciated.

 

Well yeah, it's one of the best Graphics card currently on the market so it's gonna cost quite alot .

In my country it's like 850-899 Euro's so if you would like a cheaper one and have ALOT of fast either way you could always go for a normal GTX 970-980 Nvidia card or heck even a AMD card if you're interested in those branches.

Nvidia branch:

The GTX 980ti u're looking at now is 507pond.

The GTX 980 (which is still fast and really good for gaming for a good budget) is currently priced at:

http://www.ebuyer.com/663844-msi-gt...vi-i-hdmi-displayport-pci-e-gtx-980-gaming-4g

389.99pond even with a reducing of 71.59quid!

and lastly the GTX 970:

http://www.ebuyer.com/663848-msi-gt...r-v-4gb-gddr5-dual-dvi-hdmi-gtx-970-gaming-4g

274.98pond with a reducing of 14.33pond

I would say go for the 980 if the 980Ti is a bit expensive, because they all are great cards for gaming.

- -

Now the AMD branch, I'm not sure if you are familiar with it or have heard the news recently but they have come out with rebrands (3xx series) and a completely new card called the R9 Fury X.

The R9 Fury X currently is at a way higher price point than the GTX 980ti:

http://www.ebuyer.com/716001-msi-r9...-displayport-pci-e-graphics-card-r9-fury-x-4g

but I'll tell you this, the GTX 980ti is currently faster than the R9 Fury/Fury X so I would personally advise you to grab a GTX 980ti while you still can if you are willing to spend that kind of money.

The 3xx-series are rebrands and are good aswell but the fact that they are just a bit overtuned makes me not wanting to advise it because they are just rebrands of the 290X - 290 . . Etc.

If you are interested though, here is the AMD 390X:

http://www.ebuyer.com/714725-msi-ra...vi-d-hdmi-displayport-pci-e-r9-390x-gaming-8g

347.99 pond , this might seem like a 'Oh, nice price for this card' but believe me you'll gain more out of a GTX 980 than the rebrands, and I might seem like a fanboy or something, but believe me it's way better to have new cards than just a rebrand.

Just wanted to share this knowledge with you.

Goodluck on your build!

 

Well as you opt for gaming mainly, I guess you'll be fine with the 'mainstream' platform, being Z97, or anything following up with Skylake in August / September. No need to go for the Haswell-E, since you probably won't see differences in performance anyway, and won't make much use of two additional cores. Also, Haswell-E is more expensive. Just to mention it, I wouldn't advice to go with an AMD CPU... I just don't feel they're that good because of lacking single core performance which yet (dx11) is the thing that counts.

A good bet on air cooling would be the Noctua coolers, but they can be a bit pricey (either the NH-D14 or NH-D15). There are alternatives, but as I've gone for watercooling I'm not that up to date with air stuff. You might want to think about getting yourself an AIO solution though, they have greatly improved, are free of maintenance, and rather simple to mount on the CPU and case these days.

Speaking of the case, do you have one left, or are you planning on getting one? Just be sure that the case fits the length of the graphics card, these days there are still cases that don't fit the top tier GPUs (and I'm still not sure why...). You could think about getting yourself a case with sound dampening, I've just recently moved from the Coolermaster Elite 430 to the Fractal Design R4 (there's a new revision, R5), and I can't believe how much lower the noise is with the same components in there.

 

For 1920x1200 a GTX970 or GTX980 is enough if you don't have plans to upgrade your monitor ...

 

Gents, Thank you very much for all your input. i will take the ideas you have proposed and go and speak to my son and we'll see what we come up with. The last from Lexer98 shows how far behind in knowledge i am, upgrade the monitor, why? I'll find out soon enough, i'm off to look at cases (an easy start)!

 

Well, After 8 hours of checking stuff out (thanks again to all who contributes suggestions) i have compiled my list for a build so far. I went to OCuk as their site is good for fast load and spec sheets, prices will be from elsewhere as will the final purchase but for the moment i am looking at the following. I have kept an eye of keeping noise low for the components.

Corsair Obsidian 650D case £110
BeQuiet Pure Power L8 700W '80 Plus Bronze' - With 120mm Silent Wing £73.00
ASRock Fatal1ty Z97X Killer Intel Z97 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £107
TeamGroup Xtreem LV 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 PC3-21300C11 2666MHz £130
Noctua NH-D14 Dual Radiator CPU Cooler £65.99
Samsung 850 EVO Series M.2 250GB SATA 6Gbps Solid State Drive£97
Western Digital Caviar Red 3TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache £95
Samsung SH-224FB/BEBE 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black £10 each, we’ll have 2 in case one craters).
That's £700

I am looking for advice on the following two choices, no surprise its Processor & gfx! I am interested in your combo of two from the four and why? Its a variance from lowest to highest of £240. Money is not the issue but my engineering brain won't let me go from £1,180 to £1,420 a 20% hike in price unless i am going to see a 20% hike in performance. Please feel free to shred my choices and throw in others or make suggestions on any of it, glaring imbalances/bottlenecks etc. bear in mind 50% of the cash for this is coming from my 20 year old son so i won't spend his money casually, thanks agian for any help given guys & Gals.

Intel Core i5-4690K 3.50GHz (Devil's Canyon) Socket LGA1150 Processor £199
or
Intel Core i7-4790K 4.00GHz (Devil's Canyon) Socket LGA1150 Processor£299

GTX970 £280
GTX980 £420

 

This personal preference, but instead of a Asrock get a ASUS board, much better bios and component quality, the rest of the build is really good.

About your question, i will get the i7 4790k because a lot of games nowadays are taking advantage of the 8 thread. So is more future proof
And the GPU ..... Mmmm the GTX970 is not that far of the 980 and with a minimal overclock can catch his performance.

 

Once again lexer98, thank you very much for your suggestions, i am going to take your advice on the processor & GFX but on the mobo i am going to stick with the Asrock, it has excellent reviews and i don't fancy paying for extras on the Asus board that i won't use. I am gobsmacked at the variety of I7 cpu's and was wondering what ther o/c potential is on these, should i jusy buy a lesser varient and O/c it 5% or so or is it worth paying for the higher frequency retail, i was looking at this one thru Amazon Uk-

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Intel-Core-...sim_147_4?ie=UTF8&refRID=11M4JE2TC59SKRA09Y5Q

I am off to have a more detailed read on the mobo as i'd like a simple o/c without hours of messing about and stress testing (been there done that). Also going to find wireless solution to hook to the house hub.

Also surprised that Amazon have such a range of retailers for components, at the moment i am sourcing the components through Scan,Amazon Uk & OCuk for the memory and its looking like this

Corsair Obsidian 650D case £120
BeQuiet Pure Power L8 700W '80 Plus Bronze/120mm Silent Wing £71.00
ASRock Z97X Killer Intel Z97 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £103
TeamGroup Xtreem LV 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 PC3-21300C11 2666MHz £130
Intel Core i7 i7-4790K CPU (Quad Core 4GHz, Socket H3 LGA-1150) £258
Noctua NH-D14 Dual Radiator CPU Cooler £61.95
Samsung 850 EVO Series M.2 250GB SATA 6Gbps Solid State Drive £97
Western Digital Caviar Red 3TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache £95
Samsung SH-224FB/BEBE 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter 2 of £20
MSI GeForce GTX 970 Gaming Edition 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Expres £267

£1,222.95 + delivery

It seems like a HUGE amount of bang for the buck!

'Then i found a review that mildly slated the ASRock', i'll keep it on the list but go open minded again!

 

How many years have you been asleep? We have flying cars now and virtual reality headsets.

 

The thing i don't like about Asrock is that some boards have a VRM desing with cheapo components ... But that Z97X is not that bad, seems they improve that aspect.
If you can get a 4770k cheaper go for it ... its the same crap

 

Aye we had Zeppelins back then as well and i didn't know the game had changed so much? Back in my day i'd have been pumping her not bloody VR?

 

Well i kept an open mind and had another run at it tonight and i think i am pretty much settled on the spec which now includes the Asus Maximus mobo, i'll have a crack at building this with my son, see if can avoid plugging it in arse about face!

Incredible amout of choice out there and where did BFG go?

Thermaltake Core V51 Mid-Tower Case £69

BeQuiet Pure Power L8 700W '80 Plus Bronze' - With 120mm Silent Wing £71.00

Asus Z97 Maximus VII Ranger ATX Motherboard £130

Corsair Vengeance Pro Red 2400mhz DDR3 16GB (2x8GB) £86.99

Intel Core i7 i7-4790K CPU (Quad Core 4GHz, Socket H3 LGA-1150) £258

Noctua NH-D14 Dual Radiator CPU Cooler £60

Crucial BX100 250GB SSD SATA 6Gbps 7mm Solid State Drive £67

Seagate Barracuda 2TB Internal Hard Drive £55

Samsung SH-224FB/BEBE 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter 2 of £20

MSI GeForce GTX 970 Gaming Edition 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Expres £267

£1,083.99 + delivery

 

Get a WD or a Hitachi instead of that Seagate, the failure rate is a bit high in that model IMO .... The rest is pretty good !

http://www.extremetech.com/computin...clear-winners-and-losers-but-is-the-data-good
http://www.kitguru.net/components/h...iability-report-praises-drives-by-hgst-again/

 

Just a suggestion on your HDDs, I have noticed at first you took the WD Red (actually for continual running time, so for actual use). I've got one of them too and while they are excellent drives, mind you I'm not sure you'd profit from taking the red over a green. I personally wouldn't recommend going with a Seagate drive, I've read and heard about their failure rates.

In my humble opinion, you might want to rethink that HDD choice, probably option for a different line of WD. Would you be doing anything that gets seriously slowed down by a WD green drive? The rest of it looks like a reliable gaming build for now.