new PC

[Miwiw]

For my new pc I first wanted a i7 as well but decided to get i5 instead. It is fast and good enough and price-wise cheap. For games graphic cards are more important anyway. 

What Senni__Ti mentions, I got a R9 290X (3gb) as well, its a nice graphic card. I'm really satisfied. Had a Radeon 9750 before that which was broken.
469€ for graphic card is quite expensive.

[Vibe]

This is a more "cheapo" build from scan, with some of the advice taken. I actually used one of the "custom" prebuilt PCs on scan page http://3xs.scan.co.uk/custom - but switched a few parts around.

    LN52598 120GB Samsung 840 EVO SATA III Basic Slim 7mm 3-core MEX Controller Read 540MB/s Write 410MB/s 256MB Cache 94K IOPS
    LN42410 1TB Seagate ST1000DM003 Barracuda 7200.14 SATA 6Gb/s 7200rpm 64MB Cache 8ms NCQ OEM
    LN46437 3 Year Warranty - 1st Year Onsite, 2nd & 3rd Year Return to Base (Parts & Labour)
    LN52187 3XS Asus Z87-K Motherboard * Integration ONLY *
    LN48087 3XS Custom Gamer 20
    LN48272 3XS Estimated Build - 10 Days
    LN54116 3XS Only CX600M Semi-Modular Bronze PSU
    LN55297 2 x 3XS Only Veng Pro Colour Clip - GOLD
    LN55295 2 x 3XS Only Veng Pro DDR3 4GB 2133Mhz C11 Module (No Colour)
    LN53822 4GB XFX Radeon R9 290 Boost Edition, 5000MHz GDDR5, GPU 947MHz, Boost 1000MHz, 2560 Streams, DPort/DVI/HDMI
    LN32753 Build/Config/OC/Test
    LN53981 Corsair Graphite Series 230T Compact Mid Tower Solid Side LED Gaming Case Black on Black with RED LED
    LN54558 Intel 4770K - 3XS Grade 4
    LN50975 Samsung SH-224DB/BEBE 24x DVD±R, 8x DVD±DL, DVD+RW x8/-RW x6, x12 RAM Dual Layer SATA BLACK OEM
    LN48522 SCAN 3XS 5.25" Brand and Card reader Aluminum Front Panel
    LN45708 Scan 3XS System - 3 Year Warranty (Mainland UK) - 1st Year Onsite, 2nd & 3rd Year Return to Base (Parts & Labour)
    LN55098 System

Some notes:
- I really don't need 3TBs of hard drive - switched it with a 1TB 7200 rpm disk
- SSD 120gb from 240gb, but Samsung now
- Switched GTX780 for Radeon r9 290, seems quite a bit cheaper but not that worse performance wise
- 8gb of RAM instead of 16gb
- stock (air) coolers

However I'm not sure about how international buying from scan works, as you can see warranty is only for Mainland UK :/


Now the new build from the page/shop I'm using (taking your advice and trying to cut some cost + above notes)

24540   Motherboard MSI Z87-G43 LGA1150 ATX   109.64€
26284   Intel Core i7 4770K BOX processor, Haswell   321.10€
31948   KINGSTON HyperX Predator 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 2400 CL11; XMP   88.00€
27488   Graphics card SAPPHIRE TRI-X R9 290 4GB DDR5 OC   429.06€
27390   Hard drive WD Black 1TB SATA3 3,5'' 64MB WD1003FZEX   78.05€
24728   DVD/RW Samsung SATA SH-224DB/BEBE bulk   16.60€
7429   Housing LC ATX midi PRO917B Titus X   70.66€
27654   PSU ANTEC High Current Gamer M 620W HCG-620M 80Bronze modular   103.34€
25264   SSD Samsung 840 EVO 120GB 2,5'' SATA3 TLC MZ-7TE120BW   80.81€

This comes at about 1300€

A note, I saved the most money by reducing ram and switching mobos MSI Z87-GD65 -> MSI Z87-G43. I've read that the latter is sufficient enough. Any thoughts?

[Molly]

I am using a Radeon HD6870 and it's a fine card, still manages to display 90% of the current games with max details but...

...I'll switch to Nvidia with my next card simply for one single reason: PhysX.
Support, performance, pricing seems very comparable and similar between the two manufacturers, so why not go for the PhysX features?
Well, there is Mantle from ATi now but I guess Nvidia will come up with something similar in the near future.

[cmp]

If you really want to use that PC for 5 years or more, NVIDIA might be the better choice. AMD tends to drop driver support for older cards faster, and their OpenGL (which has been gaining popularity lately and could be relevant in a year or two) support is trash.

[Kafein]

Nvidia has really better software also. And PhysX is easily worth 50 bucks . I've also heard SLI configurations tend to have fewer issues than CF.

I'd get 16Gb of RAM but most people don't seem to agree.

If you have a decent sound system or good headphones you should seriously consider buying a discrete sound card.

120Gb of SSD is a little bit thin if you want more than OS, utilities and documents on it. 240 lets you put a few games in, and that of course improves load times a lot. I have the Samsung 840 PRO 240Gb and it's neat. More space also means you can have more over-provisionning, increasing the lifespan and performance of the SSD.

Air coolers are inefficient and LOUD. Intel stock air coolers are the incarnation of the Devil. Really. You will have to change that eventually, and much sooner than 5 years from now.

[Vibe]

The initial 16gb RAM I had was planned for "the future", but you can always easily add more RAM, so I went with 8gb. If there's ever gonna be a need for more, I'll get more.

[Leshma]

Building for future is kinda pointless at this time. If you want to build for future, this isn't the right time because new Intel CPUs are coming in 2 months (confirmed), there's a chance of Maxwell high end 28nm parts will be released in September, DDR4 motherboards are coming at the end of the year...

Also, Steam machines are coming H2 2014. From what I've seen, everyone is trying to build a console counterpart. Big ass cases, power hungry parts, building your own PC isn't so popular these days. Yesterday I saw a video from PAX where Gigabyte demonstrated new Brix gaming with i5 4200H CPU and soldered 760GTX with 6 GB GDDR5 RAM, all packed in a tiny box.

Seriously think about 500 gb SSD and drop HDD completely. Since I got cured of hamster/hoarder syndrome, 500 gb of space is even more than I need.

And forget AMD. Besides poor SteamOS future, you won't have nVidia goodies in Watch Dogs and later in Witcher 3.

[Molly]

I don't think there is any support for 16GB ram on any OS - honestly don't know about Linux - but if you get 16GB, you can use 8GB ram as a RamDisk. Even install whole games on it for a great performance boost.
I've read an article, I think it was at Tom's Hardware, where they tested the performance gain from installing a game on a RamDisk and it 20% and more fps (iirc) and the loading times were split in half.
But I guess that's just a gimmick.

[Vibe]

FPS I highly doubt it, reading speed from drives improves loading times and texture loading in games, but doesn't really improve FPS.

[Prpavi]

you still don't need (yet) 16gb ram for gaming same as you don't need 4gb in your gpu unless youre running eyefinity setup.

[Kafein]

I don't think there is any support for 16GB ram on any OS

There is support, technically up to 2^64 bytes of RAM on 64b systems, which is I believe more than the total amount of RAM that has ever been produced. If these OS were not created by idiots that is. Given that modern Windows versions were not created by idiots, the issue will come down to how many sticks of RAM your mobo can fit.

The problem of how useful/useless large amounts of memory arises because few games are made to use such amounts of RAM, hence why in many games you could theoritically make use of all your RAM all the time with techniques such as dynamic view distances, but you don't because the developpers looked at hardware surveys and didn't bother adding goodies for the 0.5% playing with more than 8Gb RAM.

RAM disks are more trouble than they are worth in my opinion, unless you leave your PC on all the time, or make it start at scheduled times and fill the RAM disk with what you want automatically.

[Molly]

I had the free version of the ATi RamDisk tool running and it was completely fine:

It basically mounts the portion of RAM you defined before as a harddrive, usable just any other drive. I had my Steam installation running on it for a few weeks w/o a hitch.
Whenever you turn off your pc, the tool dumps the stuff on your ramdisk into a container which gets mounted with the starting OS.

No trouble whatsoever. 

[Senni__Ti]

Now the new build from the page/shop I'm using (taking your advice and trying to cut some cost + above notes)

24540   Motherboard MSI Z87-G43 LGA1150 ATX   109.64€
26284   Intel Core i7 4770K BOX processor, Haswell   321.10€
31948   KINGSTON HyperX Predator 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 2400 CL11; XMP   88.00€
27488   Graphics card SAPPHIRE TRI-X R9 290 4GB DDR5 OC   429.06€
27390   Hard drive WD Black 1TB SATA3 3,5'' 64MB WD1003FZEX   78.05€
24728   DVD/RW Samsung SATA SH-224DB/BEBE bulk   16.60€
7429   Housing LC ATX midi PRO917B Titus X   70.66€
27654   PSU ANTEC High Current Gamer M 620W HCG-620M 80Bronze modular   103.34€
25264   SSD Samsung 840 EVO 120GB 2,5'' SATA3 TLC MZ-7TE120BW   80.81€

This comes at about 1300€

A note, I saved the most money by reducing ram and switching mobos MSI Z87-GD65 -> MSI Z87-G43. I've read that the latter is sufficient enough. Any thoughts?

Everything seems ok.
You're right, the difference gaming wise between the g-65 and g-43 is negligible.
I do have a couple of concerns, the case and CPU cooling. With that OCed RAM, GPU and CPU; it's going to get toasty. Firstly, you'll need better than intel stock cooling (it'll hit 80C+ easily, really sucks), the Zalman CNPS10X Performa is pretty cheap and has really nice performance (it is chunky though).

Case wise, it doesn't really matter as most cases will tick all the needed boxes. You will probably need to buy some extra fans though, as they don't usually come with enough to get a decent air flow. (Corsair/Antec/Fractal/Silverstone are few decent brands to mention)

PSU, full modular isn't needed, save some money and get a hybrid or standard (you can hide most the cables in most cases). Antec is fine though.

And as others have pointed out, going AMD can mean lack of driver support (5 years should be ok though). And you'll be missing out on advanced physx (everyone can use basic), shadowplay (recording using chip on GPU) etc.

Counter argument could be; with the consoles running amd setups, might mean better optimisations for amd cards with ports . (And they'll be holding back game how demanding games can be, so I wouldn't worry about not being able to run games on high in 5 years with your setup w/ 290(X)/780)

Honestly it's up to you, I personally have grown up with AMD and switched a couple years ago, first with my laptop and then with a new desktop (I have since changed the laptops GPU to AMD :p). While physx is nice, it isn't worth forking out in the region of 100 euros.

It's also worth mentioning the deals you get with the GPUs, e.g. free games. Sometimes you can offset the cost by selling the bundled games .

Also I wouldn't suggest getting a huge SSD quite yet, their reliability and resilience still isn't something I'd recommend pushing . My friend finds his 120GB SSD is fine for windows + a couple of games.
Honestly most games will runs smoothly off a normal HDD with your setup.

[cmp]

There is support, technically up to 2^64 bytes of RAM on 64b systems, which is I believe more than the total amount of RAM that has ever been produced. If these OS were not created by idiots that is.

It's quite the opposite: only an idiot would use the full 64 bit address space, since it leads to more page table levels and more complex TLB. Most (if not all) current x64 CPUs use a 48 bit address space.

Firstly, you'll need better than intel stock cooling (it'll hit 80C+ easily, really sucks)

What's wrong with hitting 80C? That's well below the CPU's thermal limit.

Counter argument could be; with the consoles running amd setups, might mean better optimisations for amd cards with ports .

Would be nice if it was like that, but consoles use different APIs. You can count on ports being shitty, no matter what graphics card you have.

[Senni__Ti]

Heh wondered as much.

Pretty sure the lifetime of the chip is reduced consistently hitting 80C? (thermal limit is 105C right?)
(pretty sure my chip started approaching 90C+ when I started putting some strain on it, though I didn't replace the thermal paste on the stock CPU cooler).

When decent air coolers are pretty cheap, just seems like a risk that isn't worth taking. CNPSX10 + Artic MX4 for ~30 pounds and you get a huge temperature reduction (I sit below the mid 50s [every core] even in arma).