Re: Buying a desktop computer


  • FoxDev

    @RaceProUK said in Buying a desktop computer:

    All this talk of new PCs: I'm probably overdue a desktop upgrade. Good thing is I have a GeForce GTX970, so I don't need a new GPU. I think the bottleneck now is the CPU: an old 8-core AMD sliver of silicon.

    But that's for another thread.

    well if that ain't an excuse to window shop i don't know what is.

    https://pcpartpicker.com/list/rfWYtJ


  • FoxDev

    @accalia Bookmarked for future reference ;)


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    http://pcpartpicker.com/user/pydsigner/saved/qXGRBm

    Window shopping becomes less fun when you glance at the pricetag...



  • Y u no 5820k or 6800k? They should overclock pretty well (my 5820k has been pretty happy at 4GHz), and I've seen them surprisingly close in game benchmarks to their quad-core counterparts, with the added advantage of 50% more cores.



  • @pydsigner it's even less fun when it's all places that don't deliver here, for half of my local overtaxed price


  • Garbage Person

    These days I just tell people without particularly odd requirements to buy Dell XPS rigs. The price is on par for DIY and you don't have to play warranty grabass.

    I still DIY because I do have odd needs.


  • :belt_onion:

    @Weng said in Re: Buying a desktop computer:

    These days I just tell people without particularly odd requirements to buy Dell XPS rigs. The price is on par for DIY and you don't have to play warranty grabass.

    I still DIY because I do have odd needs.

    I still DIY because the problem with Dell (or all of the big OEMs, for that matter) is that there is very little detailed information available and there's no way of knowing what you're going to get.

    It isn't a matter of "odd needs" -- if you need anything other than exactly whatever they decide to give you, you're fucked.

    I recently bought a Dell for my wife, with the intention of putting in an SSD to boot from and using the 1TB spinner for all her files.

    Surprise!

    Although the motherboard had 4 SATA connectors, with 2 open after connecting the hard drive and DVD drive, the power supply had no additional cables. Just one power line that was spit into a Y at the end and supplying power to both the hard drive and DVD drive.

    OK, that's weird, but, I don't think she ever uses the DVD drive so I''l just disconnect it and connect that power to the SSD.

    Sorry. Wrong answer.

    The power cable, hard drive and DVD drive, all had some sort of weird non-standard power connector that is completely different from the eleventy gazillion standard SATA drives in the world.

    :wtf: is wrong with these people.



  • @accalia
    I've been using the default Intel cooler and that is more than sufficient. I only really hear the fans on my rig if I've been something like Crysis 3 or when the machine is starting up.

    Also don't bother getting a gaming motherboard. I think the only real difference between that and another board with the same chipset is that it has a better colour scheme.

    @El_Heffe said in Re: Buying a desktop computer:

    I still DIY because the problem with Dell (or all of the big OEMs, for that matter) is that there is very little detailed information available and there's no way of knowing what you're going to get.
    It isn't a matter of "odd needs" -- if you need anything other than exactly whatever they decide to give you, you're fucked.

    I've had similar experiences. Dells are really fussy about ram, if it doesn't match exactly they won't boot. The PSUs look standard but they aren't.

    If you buy from say a larger enthusiast PC shop that offers custom builds. All you really doing is paying them to put the same kit together and then you still don't know what they are putting in.


  • FoxDev

    @lucas1 said in Re: Buying a desktop computer:

    @accalia
    I've been using the default Intel cooler and that is more than sufficient. I only really hear the fans on my rig if I've been something like Crysis 3 or when the machine is starting up.

    if you're not going to overclock or you're not interested in ultra low noise PCs the stock cooler is sufficient.

    why did you feel the need to mention me to say that though? The 7700K doesn't come with a stock cooler, so of course i added one to the build. In fact none on intels overclockable CPUs come with stock coolers, if you buy an unlocked intel chip you need a custom cooler.


  • area_can

    I'm sitting here with a stock i5, and I don't really get the point of dropping a few hundred bucks extra for OCing. I guess it makes sense if you do CPU heavy stuff, but for gaming is it really better than spending that money on a nicer GPU?

    🙆


  • Java Dev

    @lucas1 My computer doesn't have a gaming motherboard and still managed to come with a nice colour scheme on the connectors and heatsinks.

    0_1491687619402_p6x58de.jpg

    It's even 3-way SLI certified! Although my case doesn't support running three graphics cards making that point moot. I did run a couple HD5870s in Crossfire, which made it a very noisy computer. I have since then learnt to not buy cards with stock coolers.


  • Garbage Person

    @El_Heffe said in Re: Buying a desktop computer:

    @Weng said in Re: Buying a desktop computer:

    These days I just tell people without particularly odd requirements to buy Dell XPS rigs. The price is on par for DIY and you don't have to play warranty grabass.

    I still DIY because I do have odd needs.

    I still DIY because the problem with Dell (or all of the big OEMs, for that matter) is that there is very little detailed information available and there's no way of knowing what you're going to get.

    It isn't a matter of "odd needs" -- if you need anything other than exactly whatever they decide to give you, you're fucked.

    I recently bought a Dell for my wife, with the intention of putting in an SSD to boot from and using the 1TB spinner for all her files.

    Surprise!

    Although the motherboard had 4 SATA connectors, with 2 open after connecting the hard drive and DVD drive, the power supply had no additional cables. Just one power line that was spit into a Y at the end and supplying power to both the hard drive and DVD drive.

    OK, that's weird, but, I don't think she ever uses the DVD drive so I''l just disconnect it and connect that power to the SSD.

    Sorry. Wrong answer.

    The power cable, hard drive and DVD drive, all had some sort of weird non-standard power connector that is completely different from the eleventy gazillion standard SATA drives in the world.

    :wtf: is wrong with these people.

    Hence my "XPS rigs" qualifier. Because the gamer market is rather fussy about being able to upgrade, everything is more or less vanilla (or at least vanilla-compatible).



  • @accalia said in Re: Buying a desktop computer:

    why did you feel the need to mention me to say that though? The 7700K doesn't come with a stock cooler, so of course i added one to the build. In fact none on intels overclockable CPUs come with stock coolers, if you buy an unlocked intel chip you need a custom cooler.

    Because I assumed that they did come with a cooler. My mistake.



  • @Atazhaia Mine is a similar colour scheme. Whenever I've looked at SLI / CrossFire it never seemed worth it tbh.


  • Java Dev

    @lucas1 I think multi-GPU had its place for a bit. The reason I had it was because it was a cheaper upgrade path. (Got one 5870 at start, got the second when they were selling them cheap as the next gen had arrived.) Nowadays GPUs are so powerful, though, that you'd need to be up on extreme (above 4K) resolutions or very into VR for it to be viable. And anything more than 2-way is pretty much dead, meaning the gaming edge of enthusiast platforms is gone too, at least until games gets better at threading.

    But the trend seems to favor the single GPU as of now. The majority of gaming happens at 1080p or 1440p which doesn't even require the most powerful GPU anymore for max details. Apple also admitted they were wrong with going for multi-GPU in the professional segment and are going back to the single GPU/flexible option from the looks of it.



  • @Atazhaia I looked at a mulitple gpu when I upgraded to the first PCI-E cards. A second card and the better PSU needed pushes the cost near to what a newer mid-range card that would perform. It ends up swings and roundabouts.

    The newest Titan card can render most of the latest games at 4K at "Ultra" or there abouts. Most of the performance issues I have with games is that they simply haven't be optimised on the PC. Dishourned 2 looks a bit better than the first game but the newer engine is much slower on the same hardware (Dishourned 1 worked fine on my old 512mb GPU because even though it was an Unreal 3 engine game it looked more like a Unreal 2.5 engine game and the art style makes up for the looks).


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