PC Building Guide and Discussion #11 (everything is expensive...)

[SeidoN]

I'm still waiting for Acer's and Asus's insane 144Hz HDR monitors in Q1 2018. G-Sync, 144Hz and HDR. Goddamn.

Oh and they are 4K as well.

I too am awaiting my lottery win

 

[Commander Clueless]

I'm in the market for a monitor and am really torn between IPS and TN. I keep changing my mind. On one hand I wouldn't mind the beautiful picture of an IPS but on the other hand I kind of want to make the jump to 144hz. (currently at 60hz right now) I guess my ultimate question would be, is a TN monitor at 144hz that much smoother (not picture quality) than an IPS at 75hz both with Freesync. An IPS at 144hz is just not in my budget.

144Hz can definitely provide a noticeably smoother picture if you have the video card to push higher frame rates. If you play mostly modern AAA title games, this will be very difficult.


With FreeSync you have to remember that your refresh rate will dynamically change to match your frame rate. Therefore, unless you are actually putting out 144 frames per second, your actual refresh rate will be lower. This comes at the trade off of eliminating tearing (a great trade off in my books).


I would personally lean towards the 75Hz IPS monitor. 144Hz is great (used to own one) but I would trade it for the picture quality any day (currently run a 100Hz G-Sync IPS monitor). I've always found 60+ to be great on smoothness and anything above the 90-100 mark to be much less noticeable...but that is again a personal thing.

Unfortunately, I doubt this helps you much. It's very much one of those "personal preference" things.


Bit of a side note, but you may also want to check the IPS monitor's response time. 5ms or above can cause some ghosting issues. TN's all tend to be lightning quick.

 

[aleshemsky83]

I feel embarrassed to say this but my brother gave me his 1080.

I was always using scrub lower end parts that generally did not perform that much better than a ps4 and now I'm in the upper echelon. Im an aristocrat. I'm playing Forza Horizon 3 at 4k 60.

By the way just to put my two cents in, I much prefer graphics and resolution over high framerates, as long as its stable and doesn't stutter and fluctuate badly. I feel like theres so many comments that say the opposite that its actually controversial to say you prefer better visuals over framerate.

Now theres obviously exceptions like I said. I just got through with Just Cause 3 on PS4 and holy cow the framerate is an abomination. Cannot believe it was allowed to be released in that state. If it was any publisher other than Square Enix that wouldn't have been allowed on the store. Constant 15 fps at all times almost.

 

[guinness]

The new Intel 8550U mobile chip sound rather impressive, same 15 W TDP as the 7500U, but they put a quad core with HT in there (4C/8T), which gives roughly 50% in multi-threaded benchmarks according to notebookcheck.net. Slightly more L3 cache as well.

First time in a while that Intel really delivers, and now I'm jealous.

 

[aleshemsky83]

The new Intel 8550U mobile chip sound rather impressive, same 15 W TDP as the 7500U, but they put a quad core with HT in there (4C/8T), which gives roughly 50% in multi-threaded benchmarks according to notebookcheck.net. Slightly more L3 cache as well.

First time in a while that Intel really delivers, and now I'm jealous.

Yeah those CPUs are gonna be a big gamechanger.

 

[Kestrel]

I feel embarrassed to say this but my brother gave me his 1080.

I was always using scrub lower end parts that generally did not perform that much better than a ps4 and now I'm in the upper echelon. Im an aristocrat. I'm playing Forza Horizon 3 at 4k 60.

By the way just to put my two cents in, I much prefer graphics and resolution over high framerates, as long as its stable and doesn't stutter and fluctuate badly. I feel like theres so many comments that say the opposite that its actually controversial to say you prefer better visuals over framerate.

Now theres obviously exceptions like I said. I just got through with Just Cause 3 on PS4 and holy cow the framerate is an abomination. Cannot believe it was allowed to be released in that state. If it was any publisher other than Square Enix that wouldn't have been allowed on the store. Constant 15 fps at all times almost.

I'm actually from the same camp you are. In the end, it's all about how you perceive the video performance, and not about how anyone else perceives it. I generally say the same thing when people ask me for help with audio stuff - it doesn't matter if I turn my snooty nose up at your speaker choice, it's all about what's pleasing to you.

Also, no need to be embarrassed for getting a high end part! I won't buy a video card from that echelon of performance ever again, but there was a time where I bought the highest GPU available on the market, and it was a real thrill to have it. Enjoy it - and if you've always had to cobble together a computer from available used or lower end parts, I'd say you deserve it.

 

[Commander Clueless]

I feel embarrassed to say this but my brother gave me his 1080.

I was always using scrub lower end parts that generally did not perform that much better than a ps4 and now I'm in the upper echelon. Im an aristocrat. I'm playing Forza Horizon 3 at 4k 60.

By the way just to put my two cents in, I much prefer graphics and resolution over high framerates, as long as its stable and doesn't stutter and fluctuate badly. I feel like theres so many comments that say the opposite that its actually controversial to say you prefer better visuals over framerate.

Now theres obviously exceptions like I said. I just got through with Just Cause 3 on PS4 and holy cow the framerate is an abomination. Cannot believe it was allowed to be released in that state. If it was any publisher other than Square Enix that wouldn't have been allowed on the store. Constant 15 fps at all times almost.

Welcome fellow 1080 user. It's glorious, no?


Once I hit around 60 FPS, then I too prefer graphical fidelity over frame rate. However, until I hit that mark, I'd rather sacrifice graphics.

It's definitely a personal preference thing which you prioritize. I find 30FPS can give me motion sickness far easier than higher frame rates.

 

[Nuckles]

I'm going to throw this in here in case any of you are considering getting a budget 1440p IPS monitor

Lenovo L24q 23.8" 1440p 60hz 4ms IPS monitor

(USA) $150 USD w/ free shipping: http://www3.lenovo.com/us/en/access...-8-QHD-MonitorHDMI+DP/p/65D2GCC3US#65D2GCC3US

(CANADA) $200 CAD w/ free shipping: http://www3.lenovo.com/ca/en/corpep.../L24q-20-23-8-QHD-MonitorHDMI+DP/p/65D2GCC3US

Notes
- not VESA mountable
- no built-in speakers
- no DVI
- some people have problems with it forgetting brightness/color settings every time you turn it off, but others have reported that the problem goes away after a week to a month
- the thin stand makes it wobbly
- doesn't tilt much

Looks like a good sale for a budget 1440p IPS monitor. Normal price is $200 USD/$270 CAD.

 

[SniperHF]

Seems like a good price. I paid about that for my 2560x1080 monitor about a year ago.

 

[Leafs at Knight]

Decided to go ahead and build my own PC; ordered all the parts yesterday after helping my little brother build his (and bought him a CPU). Pretty happy. Got a GTX 1060, and an AMD Ryzen 3 1200 4-core.

 

[ohcomeonref]

several video games bench better under the 4690k than the Ryzen 1600. it basically trades blows. absolutely not worth buying a new motherboard and CPU (and potentially RAM)

even factoring on Ryzens superior production capabilities, I wouldnt be paying out

hell im still on a 2500k and I dont see the 1600x as ENOUGH of an upgrade to justify the £400ish id have to drop on the cpu+mobo+ram

I forgot about my comment here so this is late (lol) but can I get a link to something that says they would "trade blows"? Everything I found showed the 1600/1600x cleanly beating the 4690k across the board.

 

[Kestrel]

I forgot about my comment here so this is late (lol) but can I get a link to something that says they would "trade blows"? Everything I found showed the 1600/1600x cleanly beating the 4690k across the board.

This is just the first one I grabbed, so there may be a number of tests, in particular newer tests as BIOS releases have matured, or that are more extensive, but this one seems to show them trading blows:



If I were buying a system now, I certainly wouldn't choose the 4690k over Ryzen, but if I already had a 4690k, I wouldn't ditch it for a Ryzen system either, at least not for a 1600X, not for gaming. I still have fantasies about ditching my 6700k for a Threadripper system for encoding... but that's not going to happen.

 

[SniperHF]

I forgot about my comment here so this is late (lol) but can I get a link to something that says they would "trade blows"? Everything I found showed the 1600/1600x cleanly beating the 4690k across the board.

It's kinda difficult to find a head to head matchup between parts 3 generations removed. Frankly the big review sites have gotten lazy at including older common CPUs in reviews.

If you're looking at those generic benchmark compilation sites, I wouldn't put much stock into them.

The 1600x vs 4690k comes down to the same old question. More slower cores (1600x) vs fewer faster ones (4690k). In gaming, the latter generally wins. This is less true now than it was 3 years ago.

But even in a situation where the 1600x is fast enough to beat the 4690k in games, it's not fast enough to be worth upgrading. In the vast majority of situations the slowest part in your system will be the graphics card.


Now if you need to encode video 6 hours a day, the 1600x is a serious upgrade.

 

[SeidoN]

Here's one video that suggests it's close. I can't get YT tags to work on my phone sorry

https://youtu.be/-Efg5DojzeI

 

[SeidoN]

Here's one video that suggests it's close. I can't get YT tags to work on my phone sorry

https://youtu.be/-Efg5DojzeI

Intel appears favoured in games that prefer fewer but faster cores as sniper said

If I were buying a system now, I certainly wouldn't choose the 4690k over Ryzen, but if I already had a 4690k, I wouldn't ditch it for a Ryzen system either, at least not for a 1600X, not for gaming. .

Bingo. Not worth a system revamp unless you are an active video producer. Even then... Meh

 

[Kestrel]

And... just a couple of weeks after getting my sister a 4GB rx 580 at what was the lowest price around - Amazon now has an 8GB rx 580 for less

 

[aleshemsky83]

Intel is still very much on top especially with their new laptop cpus. But Ryzen is still a gamechanger for budget desktop cpus.

 

[Commander Clueless]

These 8th Generation Intel chips are bringing back the itch to upgrade.

Somebody smack me.

 

[Kestrel]

 

[Commander Clueless]

I said smack, not annihilate!

 

[Kestrel]

I said smack, not annihilate!

 

[Commander Clueless]

Better.

 

[Kestrel]

I aim to please

 

[Devourers]

So for the longest time I was running on a PC held together by string cheese Basically I originally had a z77 motherboard with 3770k and the motheboard died. People were holding those z77 boards for ransom brand new and for used it wasn't much better. Most times people wanted to package like a 3570k + mobo + ram when I only needed a z77 mobo. So I wound up stripping a dell that had the same socket and using it for a while, but the dell motherboard 1) Did not support SLI (cringe cause I have 2x 680 FTW+ 4gb models) and 2) Only supported the putrid dell ram which came with it.

I start getting memory leaks out the ass and I'm thinking it was firefox but then eventually the entire system shit the bed and it was the ram. I was in between jobs at the time but I simply could not go without a working PC until my first pay so I went and bought new parts.

7700k
Asus Z270E Strix Gaming
Corsair Vengeance 2x8 CL14 2400mhz ram

Replaced those three first and then since I had moved my PC's SSD into my laptop a while back (which made it really awesome to use again) I ran out a couple days ago and got a Samsung Evo 960 M.2, my first M.2 SSD.

The migration from HDD to SSD was pretty seamless using the Samsung software. Man it feels good to be on mostly current-gen hardware again.

Getting to the point though I was considering Ryzen but when I compared the prices, the fact that I mostly game, the amount of options for motherboard, etc. I just couldn't bring myself to do it. 7700k is still king for gaming. Had my rig not died I'd have waited for 8700k and z370, I'm kind of disappointed by that but oh well. If anyone is still looking at z270 boards though this one is frigging awesome. The onboard wifi is the best I've had in a long time. Very satisfied.

Next steps:

Replace Rosewill case with Phanteks Enthoo Pro
Replace 2x GTX 680 with 1080Ti

After that I should be set for a long time. I've done multiple builds for people in that Phanteks Enthoo Pro and the case is simply put a god-tier product for the price. There is no other case in that price range or even slightly above I would even remotely consider after using it.

 

[Leafs at Knight]

Got my first pc built, and it s up and running. It would've been a flawless build except for my putting the little led, power switch, etc cords in backwards, and it didn't turn on at first so I thought it was the CPU, do I had to take the heatsink off and everything but it was on right. Turns out my power supply cord wasn't all the way into the box.. Oh well. Any just have programs. I downloaded MSI after burner and another one that automatically detects drivers. Should I be adjusting anything - overclocking or any of that stuff?