Sherdog PC Build/Buy Thread, v5: Stop Thinking of Your Router as a Peripheral

[xcvbn]

Madmick- why the glaring lack of ddr4 in your builds over $1k and $2k? Honestly curious as to why you've omitted the new tech

 

[xcvbn]

You guys that keep track of all this crap are really hardcore. I haven't built a tower for some years and now that I'm looking to build a new machine I'm finding that I'm completely out of touch. Is it possible to build a decent gaming/media tower these days for around $3K?

Buy 3 1440p 144hz monitors and build around those

Or buy 1 32"+ 4k monitor and build around that

The display is where it's at right now. You could also opt to wait for more 1440p+ 120hz+ monitors with IPS panels

 

[bdreason]

I know this sounds crazy, but my 6 year old (soon to be 7) nephew wants a PC for his birthday or christmas. He has a PS4 and iPad, but he's a pretty advanced gamer, and has just recently started asking for a PC.


Anyways, I was wondering what the best way to go about it would be? Should I just build/buy him a low-end rig, or maybe just a laptop/surface? He loves to play Garry's Mod at my house, but I'm not building him a $1,000 rig for that.

 

[Gref]

Madmick- why the glaring lack of ddr4 in your builds over $1k and $2k? Honestly curious as to why you've omitted the new tech

Outside of productivity and synthetic benchmarks you won't see a huge increase in performance for gaming. That's my theory anyways.

 

[Cygnus A]

I know this sounds crazy, but my 6 year old (soon to be 7) nephew wants a PC for his birthday or christmas. He has a PS4 and iPad, but he's a pretty advanced gamer, and has just recently started asking for a PC.

Anyways, I was wondering what the best way to go about it would be? Should I just build/buy him a low-end rig, or maybe just a laptop/surface? He loves to play Garry's Mod at my house, but I'm not building him a $1,000 rig for that.

You can build a budget one for him for 300-400$ easy. Some people also recommend buying a cheap office PC and throwing in a low end GPU. He won't be playing on ultra settings but kids don't seem to care. Just make sure it can run minecraft

Parents willing to chip in? In the long run PC gaming is far less expensive than consoles when you start adding in the cost of games.

 

[Phalanx]

This ^. Building it yourself will bring the cost down. And if anything goes wrong with it, the chances of you diagnosing the problem yourself, and fixing it, also eliminates a lot of problems, all frustrating, time consuming and expensive.

If you're looking for a place to start, check out PCPartPicker. They've put together multiple builds ranging in budget to help you get an idea of what you should be looking at for your respective budget.

 

[Concrete]

Ask him what he wants to play first. It's probably Minecraft.

 

[Blayt7hh]

Madmick- why the glaring lack of ddr4 in your builds over $1k and $2k? Honestly curious as to why you've omitted the new tech

Because so far they have shown completely negligible effects in gaming. It's a huge price hike for a DDR4 processor, mobo and the ram itself. Basically, until it gets better results and the price of the package comes down it's flat out not worth it.

 

[Madmick]

Madmick- why the glaring lack of ddr4 in your builds over $1k and $2k? Honestly curious as to why you've omitted the new tech

Because it would be a pointless premium. I only introduced a single build on the last page. The other was a pre-build. The reason I didn't include DDR4 with my custom build was because it was an i7-4790 build which is compatible with the LGA 1150 socket whose motherboards won't yield the benefits of DDR4 memory. Right now, only some of the newest premium LGA 2011-v3 boards support DDR4 RAM bandwidth, so unless you're building with one of the 6+ core Haswell-E processors (i7-5820k, i7-5930K, i7-5960X) then there is no point in getting DDR4 RAM. Otherwise, we're waiting on LGA 1151 and Skylake which will ONLY work with DDR4 RAM.

But yes, if I was building a $2K+ unit for myself today, I would build a liquid overclocker's unit centered around the i7-5820K (the best value among extreme processing performers) with 16GB of DDR4-2400 RAM and crank up the core clock until it was outperforming the i7-4790 per thread at turbo frequency. I avoid multi-GPU setups if possible, but in this price range, the value of GTX 970's in SLI or R9 390's in Crossfire wins by miles.

 

[xcvbn]

Yeah..I didn't intend to come off harsh or overly critical there fellas. I was under the impression DDR-4 was the shiznit, like the leap from 60hz to 120hz+. It does make sense to wait for processors which are optimized for the new memory standard as well.

Unrelated- Was the latest offering from AMD with the new High Bandwidth Memory lackluster?

 

[Madmick]

Unrelated- Was the latest offering from AMD with the new High Bandwidth Memory lackluster?

Yes, but as usual, they correct that by deflating the price. So the Fury X is actually positioned to compete with the 980 Ti (not the Titan or Titan Black) @~$650 starting and the R9 390 is competing with the GTX 970 @~$330 starting.

At those price points they are viable purchases.

 

[Cygnus A]

I am really on the fence here. It appears the Fury X scales better in crossfire than the 980 ti. I am planning to go with a 34" Ultrawide with Free/G-sync (3440x1440), so a second card may or may not be necessary.

The Fury X overclock potential is questionable, pending a voltage unlock which may or may not happen.

The 980 ti overclocks like a beast going from 1000mhz base to 1400-1500mhz consistently.

G-sync is going to run about $200 more than the equivalent Freesync monitor.

1st world problems.

 

[CPA]

I am really on the fence here. It appears the Fury X scales better in crossfire than the 980 ti. I am planning to go with a 34" Ultrawide with Free/G-sync (3440x1440), so a second card may or may not be necessary.

The Fury X overclock potential is questionable, pending a voltage unlock which may or may not happen.

The 980 ti overclocks like a beast going from 1000mhz base to 1400-1500mhz consistently.

G-sync is going to run about $200 more than the equivalent Freesync monitor.

1st world problems.

STOP DOING THE THINGS I WANT TO DO.

Says the guy who rebuilt his system half a year ago. LOL

 

[Cygnus A]

STOP DOING THE THINGS I WANT TO DO.

Says the guy who rebuilt his system half a year ago. LOL

Upgrades are an endless cycle for me. I seem to alternate between CPU/Mobo and GPU upgrades each year. But this time around, it is the full thing. I have already upgraded everything except GPU and monitor. Now I am just playing the waiting game for the right monitor to come out. Acer/Asus have what I want, if they would just go ahead and realease them already.

 

[jefferz]

So what does everyone use for a mouse? I need a new one, my scroll wheel is shot.

 

[bdreason]

This ^. Building it yourself will bring the cost down. And if anything goes wrong with it, the chances of you diagnosing the problem yourself, and fixing it, also eliminates a lot of problems, all frustrating, time consuming and expensive.

If you're looking for a place to start, check out PCPartPicker. They've put together multiple builds ranging in budget to help you get an idea of what you should be looking at for your respective budget.

I think the plan is to buy myself a GTX 970 and use my old GTX 570 for his PC.

Anyone wanna build me a cheap PC based around a GTX 570? I wonder if the 570 will fit on one of those Micro Mobos?

 

[GhostZ06]

I am really on the fence here. It appears the Fury X scales better in crossfire than the 980 ti. I am planning to go with a 34" Ultrawide with Free/G-sync (3440x1440), so a second card may or may not be necessary.

The Fury X overclock potential is questionable, pending a voltage unlock which may or may not happen.

The 980 ti overclocks like a beast going from 1000mhz base to 1400-1500mhz consistently.

G-sync is going to run about $200 more than the equivalent Freesync monitor.

1st world problems.

i bet the fury X will be really damn good once Dx12 drops. What a lot of people say, i think it will be a beast.

 

[Cygnus A]

i bet the fury X will be really damn good once Dx12 drops. What a lot of people say, i think it will be a beast.

But games have to start incorporating DX12 into the engines, right? So we are looking at 1-2 years before that even becomes a reality, and then Fury X is old news anyways.

 

[Madmick]

But games have to start incorporating DX12 into the engines, right? So we are looking at 1-2 years before that even becomes a reality, and then Fury X is old news anyways.

Precisely.

 

[jefferz]

I ended up ordering a couple different mice to try. I ordered the Tt eSports Level 10 M, Mionix Naos 7000, and a RAT 7.