Finally building a new gaming beast - need some advice

[Kafein]

To be honest I doubt if there is a point in buying cpu that uses Hyper Threading if you are a gamer, unless you do some rendering and some more proffesional stuff you really won't benefit that much from it. I don't know if you have a SSD drive, but it sure is worth to consider buying one.
I believe that i5 4460 or 4590 will perform pretty much same like xeon E31230V3, but you will save some cash. Also getting motherbord with z87/97 chipset if you your are planning to buy locked cpu is a waste of money. another few more euros in your pocket if you buy mobo with h97/87 cheapset. Or even something cheaper. it's not like more expensive motherboards will give performance boost, cheaper ones just lack few features that you won't ever use.

I agree with not going with a Z mobo, however SLI can be a very important, cost-effective feature further down the line. You are probably going to keep that mobo and cpu for more than 5 years, so those things are kind of worth it.

I don't really see the point of Hyper-Threading either however the K suffix is really worth the price. Dat sweet OC.

Also you didn't really elaborate.

[Molly]

(click to show/hide)

visitors can't see pics , please register or login

visitors can't see pics , please register or login

visitors can't see pics , please register or login

If you check those screens... they have the E3 2 times in each. At stock speed and at OC speed with 3.7GHz.
They pointed out that it's a really cool headed cpu which can easily take the clock with stock cooling. That's why I thought the Z87 was actually mandatory but I should probably take another look.
The 16GB I took more as an option than an actual purchase. I do use a Ultra II SSD (120GB) for my OS now - oh that sweet booting speed was worth the €60 up front - but I am still playing with the idea to use 6GB ram as persistent ram disk... maybe... and I would profit from real HT, I guess, since I am using Linux running on VMware for uni. Shouldn't that profit from the HT quite a lot?

And according to those benchmarks, and I've seen several of those from different sources, the E3 performs easily with the higher i7s with the price of an i5. Can't see anything wrong with that and integrated GPU is rather pointless from a gamers POV, isn't it?

But please, keep the posts coming. I am not into the whole hardware deal too much and I am thankful for any advice from people who know this shit better than me...

Edit: I am using a r9 270x right now which is xfire capable. Which chipset is that? h87 or z87? Or something completely different?

[Andswaru]

I can honestly say listen to Dahli... I own a i7-2600k one of the best i7 ever made (in my humble opinion) and its totally wasted for games... its never at more than 60% or so except when RTW2 goes retarded and insists it can only run on a single thread.

Save money go i5.

Intel Core i5-4670K @ 3.40GHz has a nice power to $ ratio.

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i5-4670K+%40+3.40GHz&id=1921

Also buy a water cooled case and be nice too your electric costs.. they will sink more than you'd expect.

Edit:

http://www.amazon.de/Ankermann-PC-Cestrum-Festplatte-Betriebssystem-4260219657396/dp/B0088H44Q8/ref=sr_1_8?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1416850953&sr=1-8&keywords=ankermann+gaming+pc

Can also recommend any prebuilt from Ankermann, had a computer from them once and have friends who have them also, cheap for what you get, nice and tidy inside and EXTREMELY good customer service.

[Vibe]

I can honestly say listen to Dahli... I own a i7-2600k one of the best i7 ever made (in my humble opinion) and its totally wasted for games... its never at more than 60% or so except when RTW2 goes retarded and insists it can only run on a single thread.

Go try Arma 3 multiplayer, it will melt your machine (although that's partially the hosting server's fault)

[Molly]

I'm pretty settled on the E3 tbh...

[Tore]

You would probarbly want to get 980/970 with 8GB vram (if its out yet) if you are planning to run AAA console ports. Games like Shadow of Mordor and Assassins Creed Unity has ridiculous VRAM usage.

[Andswaru]

Go try Arma 3 multiplayer, it will melt your machine (although that's partially the hosting server's fault)

Normally bottlenecks in my gpu then sadly... fucking arma 3. I love and hate that game in equal measure.

[Vibe]

Normally bottlenecks in my gpu then sadly... fucking arma 3. I love and hate that game in equal measure.

Haha, as we all.

[Patoson]

Regarding the cooling in the posts in the first page, I agree with Kafein: I got a Corsair H60 a long time ago. It's really easy to install and temperatures are so much better than air-cooling and it doesn't make any noise, and the water isn't going to go outside. 

[722_]

Also buy a water cooled case and be nice too your electric costs.. they will sink more than you'd expect.

This true? maybe I need to look into this!

[Smoothrich]

Posting to recommend the i5 4670k. Got it with a cheap z97 and a hyper 212 evo heatsink fan and I can overclock it all day if necessary at low temps but it handles just about every game at stock speeds perfectly.

I'm still using a 7950 that I flashed with a basically 7970 bios that removed any boost mode voltage griefing and keeps it at a stable temp with much higher clock speeds. Starting to bottleneck games now cuz its old but its such a great value and you can buy these things cheap if necessary from all the unreliable bitcoin farmers on ebay. If I ever upgrade it'd probably be to another AMD card in this range like an r9 280x or something if they get cheap cuz it is so much more efficient than comparable ~200 USD NVIDIA cards, unless the newest generation of them are matching up. Runs most things on ultra and has 3gb of RAM which is a new standard for ultra textures in PC games. Dial down AA and crap at high resolutions cuz its just a waste of juice in many games.

Advice to any PC builder: SSDs are dirt cheap now, I got a 256 GB one for windows and my main games. Biggest performance increase easily with instant boot ups and typically long as hell load times in say Total War games being completely removed.

Getting more than 8 GB of ram for gaming is a waste too. I've read benchmarks that show 16 GBs of ram actually giving worse FPS for no reason in things like the newest Batman game.

~500 watt PSU is fine for a single GPU, never had any issues.

Also I bought a cheap pack of 5 cooler master fans and a 30 dollar touch screen fan controller for a small computer tower, runs real cool and quiet and setting up good ventilation and airflow is important.

AMD makes good GPUs that last I checked honestly dominate NVIDIA benchmarks for value, with 300 dollar NVIDIA cards being worse than 200 dollar AMD ones. Just shop around for good deals open box and crap and make sure the GPU manufacturer is reliable with RMA's and stuff.

lmao @ people saying you need 8 GB vram and shit looking down. Too many PC gamers are indulgently wasteful of money on hardware that is simply not needed. Much cheaper to get good deals on medium-tier cards (that all blow PS4 out of the water mind you) and upgrade every couple years or something instead. My 7950 runs all the console ports ultra textures no issue.

[lombardsoup]

lmao @ people saying you need 8 GB vram and shit looking down. Too many PC gamers are indulgently wasteful of money on hardware that is simply not needed. Much cheaper to get good deals on medium-tier cards (that all blow PS4 out of the water mind you) and upgrade every couple years or something instead. My 7950 runs all the console ports ultra textures no issue.

2GB-4GB is perfectly fine for modern games unless you're using some crazy 4K/5K resolution in which case an 8GB framebuffer would actually be warranted.

[Kafein]

lmao @ people saying you need 8 GB vram and shit looking down. Too many PC gamers are indulgently wasteful of money on hardware that is simply not needed. Much cheaper to get good deals on medium-tier cards (that all blow PS4 out of the water mind you) and upgrade every couple years or something instead. My 7950 runs all the console ports ultra textures no issue.

That only matters if all the good heavy games are console ports. I think that's going to change in the near future, first and foremost with Star Citizen. More importantly, I feel there's a general sentiment with independent studios to say "fuck it" and go PC exclusive considering console hardware is just completely outdated nowadays.

[lombardsoup]

That only matters if all the good heavy games are console ports. I think that's going to change in the near future, first and foremost with Star Citizen. More importantly, I feel there's a general sentiment with independent studios to say "fuck it" and go PC exclusive considering console hardware is just completely outdated nowadays.

So much for PC gaming being dead 

If anything is on the chopping block its consoles, which have to be sold at a loss to begin with.

[Tore]

lmao @ people saying you need 8 GB vram and shit looking down. Too many PC gamers are indulgently wasteful of money on hardware that is simply not needed. Much cheaper to get good deals on medium-tier cards (that all blow PS4 out of the water mind you) and upgrade every couple years or something instead. My 7950 runs all the console ports ultra textures no issue.

But crappy console ports use 4+ VRAM easly, look at how shit ACU for example runs, even on modern hardware, just saying.

thanks consoles