1. DLP Flash Christmas Competition + Writing Marathon 2024!

    Competition topic: Magical New Year!

    Marathon goal? Crank out words!

    Check the marathon thread or competition thread for details.

    Dismiss Notice
  2. Hi there, Guest

    Only registered users can really experience what DLP has to offer. Many forums are only accessible if you have an account. Why don't you register?
    Dismiss Notice
  3. Introducing for your Perusing Pleasure

    New Thread Thursday
    +
    Shit Post Sunday

    READ ME
    Dismiss Notice

Putting together a new PC

Discussion in 'Tech Support' started by Torric, Feb 22, 2015.

  1. Torric

    Torric Third Year

    Joined:
    Mar 26, 2012
    Messages:
    83
    So yeah, I decided I needed a PC upgrade so I scrounged some moneys together. Problem is the last time I looked at anything PC related was like 5 years ago, and I don't know what's good and what's not.

    Thing is though, I still have membership at a place called PlayTech where I get discounts. I've got $2600 to blow through, what kind of rig can I put together with the parts available here at http://www.playtech.co.nz/afawcs0139233/CATID=1/Computer-Hardware.html ?

    Thanks in advance for whoever decides to take the time to do this for me.
     
  2. potterheadcharles

    potterheadcharles Third Year

    Joined:
    Aug 30, 2014
    Messages:
    103
    You could build a very nice PC in that budget but it would be better if you tell us what exactly are your requirements? Light stuff or something intense, i.e. a heavy gaming rig or something?
     
  3. Download

    Download Auror ~ Prestige ~ DLP Supporter

    Joined:
    Aug 6, 2014
    Messages:
    640
    Location:
    Adelaide, Australia
    High Score:
    1918
    Like phc said, what do you want to do with your computer?

    2.6k is a shit tonne of money for a computer, even if the prices are slightly inflated because you live on an island in the middle of nowhere. I built my computer in January and only spent AUS$1700 (which is still a lot, but eh)

    I've got an i5-4690 (3.5GHz), 16gb of RAM, 4gb Nvidia 970, 240gb SSD, 1TB HDD, new keyboard, case, PSU, wireless card, and a 24" screen. This runs Metro: 2033 which is probably the most graphically demanding game out there on the market at full graphics and great framerate.

    I would recommend you use Partpicker to choose your parts. I tells you the compatibility between them, prices them up, and sources out the cheapest suppliers for you.
     
  4. Jpzh2d

    Jpzh2d Disappeared

    Joined:
    May 11, 2014
    Messages:
    117
    Location:
    The Nethersphere
    Currently there are two kinds of (intel) PCs you can get. you can get a Z97 chipset CPU or a X99 chipset CPU and depending on what you pick you will have to buy the rest of your parts with the CPU in mind.

    Z97 chipset CPUs are the non-extreme ones (e.g intel i7 4790K). These are the most common and are cheaper than X99 chipset cpus. These CPUs work with DDR3 ram and LGA 1150 socket motherboards. This is the best for gaming and medium intensity work such as video editing and some 3D rendering. The parts compatible with this CPU chipset are also cheaper.

    With a Z97 CPU you could get a large amount of RAM (16gb or 32gb if needed). The motherboards for this CPU can be expensieve but you could get a decent one like the Asus Sabertooth Mark 2 for around £130.

    X99 CPUs are much newer. They have only been around for a couple of months. X99 CPUs and all the parts are much more expensieve the Z97 parts but this chipset has advanatges. The first is that DDR4 RAM is supported this means you could have higher clock speeds, larger amounts of ram per stick. DDR4 RAM is much better than DDR3 RAM however there is a tradeoff with DDR4 RAM being much more epensieve. Motherboards with the X99 chipset have also upgraded for USB 2.0 to USB 3.0 which means you have higher data transfer speeds. These motherboards also have more SATA 3 ports.

    With the X99 chipset you could get CPUs with more cores and more PCI-E lanes which means you can SLI GPUs more efficiently. If you are going to do extremely intensieve 3D rendering (with millions of tris and quads) or video editing or something similarly CPU and RAM hungry I'd suggest the X99 chipset but if you are going to be only gaming I'd say use the Z97 chipset parts as the performance you gain isn't much compared to the price difference.

    No matter what you do I'd suggest getting a Western Digital hard drive. If you are going to be running with an SSD as well asa HDD then I'd say buy a WD Green hard drive but if you are only running a HDD use a WD Black hard drive. If you are getting an SSD I'd suggest either the Samsung EVO 840 or 850 because they have something called rapid mode which can triple read and write speeds but increases the potential for data loss, or you can get an intel SSD.

    For GPU go for an nVidia GTX 9xx series as they are better performers, runner quieter with lower temps and power consumption. I'd suggest the GTX 970 instead of a 980 just because there is only a couple of frames difference between them at 1080p. If you are interested in rendering but don't want to buy a Quadro I'd also suggest a GTX 970 as it has a better price per CUDA core.

    Sorry if this has been extremely un organised but I didn't relly take the time to organise my thoughts. Also a lot of this information is probably useless ot you as I don't actually know what you want to do with your computer.

    EDIT: So I just made a PC with a Z97 Chipset that I believe would be good. As the website doesn't have a share option if you PM me your email address I'll send you the page.
     
    Last edited: Feb 22, 2015
  5. Download

    Download Auror ~ Prestige ~ DLP Supporter

    Joined:
    Aug 6, 2014
    Messages:
    640
    Location:
    Adelaide, Australia
    High Score:
    1918
    Well said. But to add to that I would suggest not getting the K version of whatever CPU you choose unless you actually want to do some overclocking. There is absolutely no performance difference between the two unless you want t overclock your CPU.
     
  6. Sacro

    Sacro Groundskeeper

    Joined:
    Dec 18, 2010
    Messages:
    300
    Location:
    Germany
    You should wait a little longer, since AMD will release new GPU's soon (rumors say sometime in Q2 2015). Only get the 970 if you're fine with only being able to use 3.5 of its 4GB VRAM effectively (details on that here). Also, if you don't plan on overclocking, you don't really need a Z97 board, but can go with a H97 one instead, since the only advantage that the Z97 chipset has over the H97 one is being able to overclock. Just because you can throw a lot of money at the build, doesn't necessarily mean that you should, since you can spend anything that's left over for a better monitor, or a mechanical keyboard or something along those lines.

    You should only go with a X99 config if you really plan to do some heavy video editing and the like, since the additional cores won't really help for games (because games won't be optimized for such a high number of cores), and the performance gain of DDR4 over DDR3 is pretty much on paper only and won't be noticeable. I'd also recommend that you avoid the Samsung 840 evo SSDs, since they still haven't figured out a way to get rid of decreased performance on old files. An alternatice would be a crucial MX100 (but only get a 250+GB version).

    In any case, real recommendations can only be made once you tell us what you actually want to use the PC for. Oh and that shop that you linked doesn't really have a great variaty of products, so if you can order online or get it from some other store that would be preferable.
     
  7. Jpzh2d

    Jpzh2d Disappeared

    Joined:
    May 11, 2014
    Messages:
    117
    Location:
    The Nethersphere
    The Samsung EVO 850 has fixed this problem. The Crucial MX100 is good but it hasn't got the best read/write speeds.
     
  8. Sacro

    Sacro Groundskeeper

    Joined:
    Dec 18, 2010
    Messages:
    300
    Location:
    Germany
    Which is why I only mentioned staying away from the 840. Also, the 850 is more expensive.
    It's just as good as a 840/850 in reading and is just slower in writing (and even that vanishes once you get the 512GB or 1TB model), but then again you don't want to write to your SSD constantly, since that shortens it's lifespan.
     
  9. Jpzh2d

    Jpzh2d Disappeared

    Joined:
    May 11, 2014
    Messages:
    117
    Location:
    The Nethersphere
    True. However with Rapid mode enabled on the 850 its read and write speeds increase a lot. It would help a lot if the OP saidwhat he wanted to do
     
  10. Torric

    Torric Third Year

    Joined:
    Mar 26, 2012
    Messages:
    83
    Sorry, I probably should have clarified.

    I'm just out to make a beastly gaming rig, and that's pretty much it. The idea is that I wanted a PC that would last me at least the next 3 years in terms of being able to play any and every game at the highest graphics settings without going below 60 fps.
     
  11. Feoffic

    Feoffic Alchemist DLP Supporter

    Joined:
    Jul 14, 2006
    Messages:
    2,260
    You don't need 2.6K to build a good gaming rig, or one that can handle Witcher 3, which is kind of the benchmark for gaming PC's for the next year and change.

    What's your current rig like? Depending on the bits, you may just need to upgrade your GPU, RAM, and add an SSD.
     
  12. kaleironfist

    kaleironfist Third Year

    Joined:
    Mar 7, 2008
    Messages:
    80
    Location:
    Australia
    No and no. Real world benchmarks show little difference between high speed DDR3 and even higher speed DDR4 as RAM speed is very rarely the bottleneck (and higher speeds sacrifice latency to get there). X99 is not the first chipset to trade USB2.0 for some USB3.0 - we've had Intel PCH USB3.0 since Z77 at least and Flex I/O allows for mix and matching I/O.

    Western Digital and Seagate aren't the only hard drive manufacturers still around. HGST and Toshiba still exist, even if HGST is owned by Western Digital. At the price range OP declared, an SSD is a must if only because of the IOPS. That also means a secondary (or even tertiary) drive for storage purposes.

    R9 290X is about as good as a GTX 970 (better at higher resolution), uses about 60-70W more power, non-reference coolers get to about 40dbA (vs about 30dbA for the 970) but has much better double precision floating point. That said, Playtech is basically out of stock of anything AMD so it's a moot point.

    If motherboard features aren't absolutely required, OP could go down as low as a B85 board. Pretty barebones but you save a little more money that can be put into something else.

    Yes and no. The additional cores do help a little as you'll have background processes and they won't have to be processed on the other cores that are being used by games. The biggest expected advantage is when DirectX 12/Mantle games come out in full force (which realistically won't happen for 3-5 years). There are already benchmarks on Anandtech showing the gains on a 'modest' (emulated) system. It's not exactly real world as it's primarily a stress test to show how bad DirectX 11 can be, but the improvement is phenomenal. It's questionable to buy a six or eight or even higher core processor now to take advantage of something 3+ years down the line, but it's something to think about.

    1. You don't buy an SSD for the speed, you buy it for the IOPS.
    2. RAPID uses your RAM, which means it isn't actually 'increasing' the speed at all. It also means that unexpected power loss causes data loss. If the data is critical at all, you don't use RAPID.
    3. If you cared about speed, you'd get rid of the SATA 6Gb/s bottleneck and go PCIe SSDs (whether standard or M.2 form factor).

    No, the issue was with TLC NAND in the first place, it is unlikely that another TLC NAND drive will have fixed the issue. Firmware can't fix this issue, only delay/hide it. I fully expect the 850 EVO to have the same issues down the line, just a lot later than the 840/840 EVO due to the fact that the 840 EVO uses 19nm vs the stacked 40nm the 850 EVO uses.

    At a resolution of 1920x1080 or lower, 970 is your best bet, possibly even in SLI. Once you go up though, the inability to quickly access the last half gig of VRAM causes some severe issues with smoothness of frame delivery that the R9 290X and the GTX 980 don't have. Then there's the fact that AMD is intending to release within the next few months (Q2 or somewhere between April and June) and it's a bit hard to recommend anything unless you absolutely need it right now.
     
  13. Hachi

    Hachi Death Eater

    Joined:
    Sep 5, 2010
    Messages:
    927
    Location:
    In the Zone

    To be more accurate, what we usually see when looking at an SSD's characteristics are seq. read/write speeds.

    It's a bit of a misleading stat, as what truly matters is random read/write speeds. Ergo, IOPS.

    IOPS is what makes your programs load visibly faster than on a HDD for example.
     
    Last edited: Feb 23, 2015
  14. Download

    Download Auror ~ Prestige ~ DLP Supporter

    Joined:
    Aug 6, 2014
    Messages:
    640
    Location:
    Adelaide, Australia
    High Score:
    1918
    But they also have ridiculous read/write speeds over HDDs.
     
  15. Torric

    Torric Third Year

    Joined:
    Mar 26, 2012
    Messages:
    83
    Humm, I'm just looking to get a new PC with the best parts available right now. I mean yeah, I could wait a few more months, but the rig I'm using right now is getting sent off to a friend whose PC pretty much gave up on him.

    But yeah, the idea is that I pretty much want everything. SSDs, top end graphics card etc.

    I'm good to blow up to $2,600 on this, but I have no idea where to start which is why I'm asking for a list. I'm even getting someone to put it together for me because I haven't touched the inside of a PC in like 6 years and fear it will spontaneously combust.
     
  16. Download

    Download Auror ~ Prestige ~ DLP Supporter

    Joined:
    Aug 6, 2014
    Messages:
    640
    Location:
    Adelaide, Australia
    High Score:
    1918
    Alright, I'll draw up a build for that. Give me a few minutes

    ---------- Post automerged at 16:43 ---------- Previous post was at 16:42 ----------

    Fucking Hell, NZ prices are easily 40% higher than Australian prices.

    At that much, I would seriously suggest ordering everything but the case (they're heavy) from Australia. It might cost you a bit ($100-150) but it will be far cheaper than the NZ price markup.
     
  17. Feoffic

    Feoffic Alchemist DLP Supporter

    Joined:
    Jul 14, 2006
    Messages:
    2,260
    Well, then just go with Logical Increments. It leaves a lot to be desired, but it does provide a general starting list based on budget.
     
  18. Torric

    Torric Third Year

    Joined:
    Mar 26, 2012
    Messages:
    83
    Yeah, I would but unfortunately I'm both impatient and I'd probably die without having a PC on hand 24/7. I was also prepared for the prices that NZ parts were so I'm fine with it. Thanks for doing this Download.
     
  19. Download

    Download Auror ~ Prestige ~ DLP Supporter

    Joined:
    Aug 6, 2014
    Messages:
    640
    Location:
    Adelaide, Australia
    High Score:
    1918
    Here you go: http://i.imgur.com/Yd0euoS.png

    $2238 all up.

    Aussie prices, add $100 for shipping, chose your case and monitor NZ-side (though you could probably order the monitor with the rest of your stuff. Some people are picky about monitors.)

    In terms of future upgrades (not that you will need it for a long time) I would get a second GTX980 followed by another 4x4gb set of RAM so you end up with 8gb video memory and 32gb RAM.
     
  20. Sacro

    Sacro Groundskeeper

    Joined:
    Dec 18, 2010
    Messages:
    300
    Location:
    Germany
    I personally wouldn't agree to make a X99 build if it's just for gaming. Going with a normal Z97/H97 build and an i5 (or i7 or xeon) would still be enough, allowing to get an SLI/Crossfire setup right of the bat and still having some left over cash for a monitor/keyboard/etc. The extra money spend on the CPU is essentially wasted, since it could've been used for another GPU, which would bring more performance in games (not to mention that once DX12 hits (or if you go with AMD and therefore have mantle), the CPU will be even less important than it is now).

    It seems that you don't understand how SLI/Crossfire works. You don't get the double amout of VRAM. If you add another 980 you still only have four, since everything in the VRAM of the first card needs to be mirrored in the VRAM of the second.