Cable tidying could be neater with a few changes, but otherwise well done. I don't like the position of that hard drive since there's no fan pushing or pulling air through it, but that's just me being picky (I have an Antec P280 which comes with no front fans in the first place and it's perfectly fine).

Now it's time to sit back and enjoy the games.

 

Thanks! Already installed Company of Heroes 2 and Rome 2; Witcher 2 and 3 are following suit. Only have to make sure now I don't forget writing with that thing around, heh.

As to HWVS.de ... there's not much I can do now but wait. I'll see what happens once they get my charges.

 

Semi-hijacking the thread (is it hijacking when you have permission?) because I've got a similar problem/request-for-help. Long story short: I was already planning to get a new PC come later this year, but last week, my current PC started to occasionally overheat. That, plus some other random hangs - the ones that freeze everything and create incredibly jarring noises - have convinced me it's time to get a new rig. Gaming, naturally.

I checked Eilyfe's build against my local prices, and best I can tell, that comes to about 1025-1075 euros, which is a slight bit above my budget. I can probably salvage part of what I have. I've got a small, serviceable SSD - power on time is somewhere in the 8500-8600 hours region, and I'm a 'leave computer on day-and-night' kind of scrub (or used to be before I started getting occasional errors). That one's probably going to come along. I'm less certain about the HDD - it's a 1TB Samsung that's as old as the rest of my rig. (4y8m).CrystalDiskInfo tells me there's a caution regarding its health, based on 'Current Pending Sector Count' at 44. Like any good idiot, I've no clue what that actually means.

Anyway, on to the builds I've got my eye on. I stole one from a local tech site's best buy guide (Tweakers, for those that speak Dutch), and a friend of a friend came up with another. Spoilered, because long.

Build 1:

Spoiler

• CPU: Intel Core i5-4460 Boxed
• Motherboard: ASRock Fatal1ty B85 Killer
• RAM: Kingston HyperX Fury red HX318C10FR/8 (8gb)
• GPU: MSI GeForce GTX 970 GAMING 4G
• Case: NZXT S340
• PSU: Seasonic S12G 450W

It also includes a 250GB Crucial SSD and a 2TB Seagate HDD for storage, but the first one isn't relevant, and I'm not even close to filling up the 1GB one I have atm, so if I need a HDD, it's a 1TB version. Costs are about €810 w/o a HDD, 860 with. Also, no extra fan included - they claim it's not particularly needed, though if you want one for noise levels (and I'm inclined to get one for that reason), they recommend the be quiet! Pure Rock one for €35, making it a total of €845/895.

Build 2:

Spoiler

• CPU: Intel Core i5 4690 / 3.5 Ghz
• Motherboard: MSI H97 PC Mate
• RAM: Crucial Ballistix Sport (8GB)
• GPU: MSI GTX 960 GAMING 100 Million Edition (2gb)
• Case: Corsair Carbide Series 100R Window
• PSU: Sea Sonic S12II-620 Bronze
• Fan: Thermalright True Spirit 120M Rev.A

Costs: €760, w/o HDD, 810 with. Friend claims that the difference between the 960 and 970 is essentially the difference between a lower-tier Formula 1 car and a top-tier one - both are still fucking good (or fast, to extend the comparison). I don't generally play the newest of the newest games either.

My budget is essentially €900, meaning I'm pretty much at it with build #1, and there's slight room in build #2. Please help me, Dark Lord Potterers (Potterees?), you are my only hope.

 

If you're going to be doing a fair amount of gaming, I'd say build 1. The main bottleneck for games is the graphics card, not the processor, so it's better to spend extra money on graphics cards than the processor.

If, on the other hand, you're like me and mainly play 10 year old games/strategy games with no great graphical content then I'd say go for the build with the better processor.

 

Ideally you take those as templates to customise it to your exact needs and then either build it yourself or have someone else build it for you. If you were forced to choose among those two, Build #1 is the better option. A GTX 970 has 50% better performance than a 960 whereas the CPU difference is, at worst, around 13%.

 

There is a simple rule to building a gaming pc: If your cpu costs more than your GPU your doing it wrong.

You always get more bang for your buck with a video card, so it's best to spend your money there.

 

I've had my WCd 690 for ages and can't seem to find a reason to upgrade it.

Getting a 4k monitor will necessitate it though. Are there any cards that can handle 60 fps at 4k yet (ultra, obv)? Titanx?

 

Depends on the game. Across the board though? Nope, you're gonna have to wait for the next generation (or maybe even the one after that) to get that. Well, or go with SLI/Crossfire, but that brings along all of the well known problems multi GPU has. As a side note, there's no real reason for a normal consumer to get a TitanX, since the 980Ti is only 5% or so slower and much cheaper. For professional users it's also not really good anymore, like the other Titans were, since it's double precision is quite bad. Honestly, it's a card for no one since the 980Ti came out.

@Oment
Can you list some games you want to play (and some you play regularly)? Preferably with resolution, quality and desired FPS.

 

I'm fine waiting. I've no issue with 1080 while waiting, and if I upgrade, I want it to be significant.

 

The Titan X isn't really the best card for 4K. The 980 Ti in it's reference form is slightly slower than the Titan X but when the card has a custom cooler it actually performs better than the Titan X in most scenarios. However there isn't a single card that can handle most games at 4k on Ultra settings. If you don't want to turn down your settings you would have to buy more than one GPU or go down to a lower resolution. This sin't necessarily a bad thing as there are some resolutions that make gaming incredible.

I recently built my own PC (I finished it today actually) and while I wanted to game and work at 4K I didn't have the money for multiple high end GPUs so I lowered the resolution to 3440x1440. The result of this is a high pixel density without scaling issues and the kind productivity and screen real estate you'd get from using a 4k monitor.

Oment - Build 1 is better for gaming. The slightly worse CPU doesn't matter and the better GPU will give you better FPS.

 

Posted about this in TOMD, but here's more detail.

Current PC, built in December 2009 for £718.55:

Yes, that's the first generation of i5. The only area where I skimped was the graphics card, where I went for the low range option as I don't do too much in the way of graphics intensive gaming.

Of that build, I'm keeping the case, the PSU, and the RAM, to create my new PC:

The SSD and Windows 10 should dramatically increase boot time. I've gone for lower-mid range graphics rather than entry-level this time. While my gaming tastes are still low on the graphical intensity, I've bought a full HD monitor to go with this PC and want to be able to run Civ5 and EUIV on 1080p. I've gone for a relatively high end processor so that hopefully I'll be able to play Netflix/IRC on a second monitor while gaming. We'll see how that works out though.

I was really in two minds about the processor, because the new Broadwell generation chipsets are superior to the Haswell generation. However, even though Broadwell was officially released in June 2015, no one is stocking them yet, and when I made an enquiry about their availability, the reply I got was that there's still no ETA on when Intel might be shipping them. So, since I kinda need to upgrade nowish, I bit the bullet and went for the Haswell.

New peripherals, in addition to the crazily cheap HD monitor, include an HD webcam with a mic, and a Spanish language keyboard. The compromise on the monitor is a VGA not HDMI connection. VGA is an analogue rather than digital signal. However, I anticipate that I won't be able to notice any difference. I doubt the signal will deteriorate measurably in the 1 metre of cable.

 

The problem with using vga cables for a digital signal was always the conversion process that took place would noticeably reduce picture quality. Given that it's been more then a decade since that problem was a thing it is possible that the conversion process in screens/graphic cards has improved enough so that it's no longer a problem.

tl;dr vga cabling might be an issue depending on how good the analogue-digital converter is.

 

The monitor arrived today and I've tested it on my old computer, no problems with the image even though it's VGA.

 

Degradation is always an issue, but short distances show little, if any, signal loss.

The reason why Broadwell is so hard to find is because Intel isn't pushing it to be sold - Skylake is almost here (within next few months, definitely before end of the year) and that is an improvement (however slight) over Broadwell.

Also, assuming you enable hardware acceleration in Netflix, you can dump that load onto the GPU instead. Probably not a good idea given the CPU/GPU balance you've chosen, but it's something to think about.

Lastly, could you take pictures of the power supply? No brand or model name raises several flags about its quality. 80 plus (not '80+') certification is no guarantee of quality.

 

Obviously the PSU has a brand name and model, I just don't consider it so important. Brand name loyalty is often just a way to extract extra money from people who don't look at the exact specs/read reviews. RAM in particular is a perfect example of people paying a shitload of extra money for branded components with identical performance to the generics.

But if you're interested, the full name is:

Chieftec A-135 Series 750W Modular 80plus Certified PSU with 14cm Fan

Been working for three years without a hitch. Happy with the noise levels and the cooling. Cost me £60.64 in 2009. Not high end but not scrap either.

Re: Broadwell, I get why Intel would want to push Skylake more, given how soon it's coming, but it's annoying because I generally prefer to buy "tick" generations than "tock" generations. As tick is the die-shrink, they tend to be more heat and energy efficient than the new micro-architecture tock.

 

Well, with PSUs it's a little different. If you take a look at many cheap models, they advertise 500W or 750W but can't actually offer that much at all, and fail sooner due to lower quality capacitors. Of course, you still don't need to buy high-end, just not the cheapest you can find.

Skylake NDA just lifted for the high-end models. It's very...disappointing, just like it has pretty much always been the past few years. You don't even get 10% more performance, although the power consumption did drop.

Also, do you plan to overclock? You probably know that the K-CPUs and Z-chipsets are just for overclocking, and if you don't plan on doing that get a non-K CPU and a H97 or even B85 chipset board (depending on what features you want on it). Oh and why the Win10 purchase (or did I read that wrong)? You can upgrade your 7 license for free, and thus save quite a bit that you can invest elsewhere. Be aware though, apart from the automatic updates and "spy functions" you can't turn off in Win10, there are also reports about newer and older games not working on it at the moment. Even though it's released, it's still pretty much in beta it seems.

The GPU should do fine with Civ5 (don't know about EU4), getting you about 50 or so FPS at 1080p (at least according to some benchmarks I found). If you're willing to lower some settings, you shouldn't have a problem getting 60FPS in both titles I imagine.

 

Agreed, but this is nothing that can't be solved by reading reviews for your components before you buy.

I don't plan to overclock, no. However, the 4690K was only £10 more expensive than the alternative I was looking at (the 4590), so I thought why the hell not.

Windows 10 purchase was because I tend to reinstall Windows semi-regularly, and the free upgrade to Win 10 only lasts for a year. If after that year I wanted to reinstall Windows I would have to use my Win 7 disc, and the free upgrade to 10 would no longer be available, so I'd be stuck with Win 7.

 

Well, you really have to look how much more CPU+Motherboard together are. In the end, most people would prefer to get a more powerful GPU, but since you don't really need that you might as well go for a better CPU, since upgrading a GPU later is cheaper than a new CPU+Motherboard. Really depends if you want to have some more money left over for something else.

That's actually a misconception. Once you upgrade your license from 7 to 10, you can use it forever (though depending on your country the license can be bound to your hardware). If you want to make a clean install with Win10, you can just grab the tool with which you can create an installation medium and use that. You can find more information about the process further down on this page for example.

 

So most of the parts arrived, with the exception of the SSD which is coming next week. Since I had all the parts I needed, I decided to change out the system and just keep running from my current hard drives until the SSD arrives and I complete the switch over.

The result has been kinda weird. The system's boot time has increased significantly, from around 30 seconds to 2 minutes. Further, I can't detect 5G wifi anymore, just 2G.

This is extremely strange.

The boot time may have something to do with the old OS not coping well with suddenly running on an entirely different system. Or it may have something to do with the motherboard SATA connectors I used. The mobo has 4 SATA connectors numbered 1-4, and I had to use 2 and 4 because of cord management issues.

Hopefully if the boot time is due to either of these, the SSD and fresh OS install will fix the problem.

I have no idea what could possibly up with the wifi though. I've checked the drivers for my wifi adapter and they're fine. It's not my network either, because it stopped detecting the neighbour's 5G too. I can only guess that I damaged the card somehow when I put it in, though it seems to be a weirdly specific damage. Either that or the PCI splot I put it in has some kind of problem that means it can't handle 5G wifi.