Mini ATX build steam machine sub 500

levitronix

Intel Core i7-3770 .. i have this already from other pc
2 x 4gb ram samsung .. i have this already from other pc
ASRock B75M-ITX .. motherboard
Seagate 1TB 7200RPM .. hard drive
MSI Radeon R9 270 .. gpu
Corsair 250D .. case
Corsair 450W .. psu
Windows 8 (OEM) (64-bit) ..os

comes to around 540 euro my target was sub 500 euro to complete with a ps4 or xbox1

Im wondering how will this setup will stack up and whats the longevity of the system, imput really appricated ??

Bear in mind its a small form factor build for the 250D case and will be left in the living room

moonlighting

I built a similar system recently. I would recommend a ssd drive (cheap 120gb) and a water cooling h90.

levitronix

ssd probably will be used at the later time,

will a water cooler really be needed ? do think I ll have cooling problems ?

Serephucus

I'd personally sell the 3770 and pick up a G3258 instead. You'd gain at least €80 or so doing that, which could make a lot of difference in the GPU department.

An SSD would certainly be nice alright, and no, watercooling it totally not necessary (though obviously nice to have).

moonlighting

with a gaming pc you have 2 choices for cpu cooling 1. a large heatsink (link evo212) or watercooling (h90 self contained unit). dont even consider stock intel heatsink (pure s***e). you dont have room for evo212 so go for the h90.

Genghiz Cohen

moonlighting wrote: »

with a gaming pc you have 2 choices for cpu cooling 1. a large heatsink (link evo212) or watercooling (h90 self contained unit). dont even consider stock intel heatsink (pure s***e). you dont have room for evo212 so go for the h90.

People need to stop saying this.
The stock cooler is fine, not great but fine.
Noctua do low profile coolers. though that case looks like it would have space for a 212 EVO.

anonyanony

levitronix wrote: »

Intel Core i7-3770 .. i have this already from other pc
2 x 4gb ram samsung .. i have this already from other pc
ASRock B75M-ITX .. motherboard
Seagate 1TB 7200RPM .. hard drive
MSI Radeon R9 270 .. gpu
Corsair 250D .. case
Corsair 450W .. psu
Windows 8 (OEM) (64-bit) ..os

comes to around 540 euro my target was sub 500 euro to complete with a ps4 or xbox1

Im wondering how will this setup will stack up and whats the longevity of the system, imput really appricated ??

Bear in mind its a small form factor build for the 250D case and will be left in the living room

250D is quite big for matx it's near a small atx case, also remove windows 8 and get a better gpu, use windows 10 for now.

anonyanony

Genghiz Cohen wrote: »

People need to stop saying this.
The stock cooler is fine, not great but fine.
Noctua do low profile coolers. though that case looks like it would have space for a 212 EVO.

Ivy ran hot under any OC, he would need a good cooler to OC.

Genghiz Cohen

anonyanony wrote: »

Ivy ran hot under any OC, he would need a good cooler to OC.

He's not OCing anything on that board CPU combo.

anonyanony

Genghiz Cohen wrote: »

He's not OCing anything on that board CPU combo.

Your right never checked it as I just assumed anyone buying a Intel machine and self build would not be stupid enough to get an non overclockable chip.

But OP a r270 is not going to be good enough. Move money from an expensive case and windows license into the GPU.

TerrorFirmer

moonlighting wrote: »

with a gaming pc you have 2 choices for cpu cooling 1. a large heatsink (link evo212) or watercooling (h90 self contained unit). dont even consider stock intel heatsink (pure s***e). you dont have room for evo212 so go for the h90.

I use the intel stock cooler 80% of the time for my builds and it's decent. I'm using it in my build right now. Even for very mild overclocking it can be OK. You don't really need a 3rd party cooler unless you're going to be overclocking with any level of permanency/level. He's got an i7 non-k so there is zero reason I can see that the stock cooler won't be perfectly fine.

Notwithstanding that, advising someone to go for an expensive water cooler on a €500 euro PC is simply a dreadful waste of money.

Genghiz Cohen

levitronix wrote: »

Intel Core i7-3770 .. i have this already from other pc
2 x 4gb ram samsung .. i have this already from other pc
ASRock B75M-ITX .. motherboard
Seagate 1TB 7200RPM .. hard drive
MSI Radeon R9 270 .. gpu
Corsair 250D .. case
Corsair 450W .. psu
Windows 8 (OEM) (64-bit) ..os

comes to around 540 euro my target was sub 500 euro to complete with a ps4 or xbox1

Im wondering how will this setup will stack up and whats the longevity of the system, imput really appricated ??

Bear in mind its a small form factor build for the 250D case and will be left in the living room

Not sure where you got all those parts for €540.

Here's a rough build on a newer CPU socket.
[PCPartPicker part list](http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/Mvmyyc) / [Price breakdown by merchant](http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/Mvmyyc/by_merchant/)

Type|Item|Price
:----|:----|:----
**CPU** | [Intel Core i3-4150 3.5GHz Dual-Core Processor](http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/part/intel-cpu-bx80646i34150) | £85.19 @ Aria PC
**Motherboard** | [MSI H81I Mini ITX LGA1150 Motherboard](http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/part/msi-motherboard-h81i) | £46.75 @ Amazon UK
**Storage** | [Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive](http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/part/seagate-internal-hard-drive-st1000dm003) | £35.94 @ Aria PC
**Video Card** | [Gigabyte GeForce GTX 760 2GB WINDFORCE Video Card](http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/part/gigabyte-video-card-gvn760wf2oc2gd) | £149.71 @ Scan.co.uk
**Case** | [Cooler Master Elite 130 Mini ITX Tower Case](http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/part/cooler-master-case-rc130kkn1) | £37.20 @ Aria PC
**Power Supply** | [Corsair CX 430W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply](http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/part/corsair-power-supply-cx430m) | £38.30 @ Amazon UK
| | **Total**
| Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available | £393.09
| Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-12-15 13:09 GMT+0000 |

The CPU/GPU balance might be a bit GPU sided though.

anonyanony

Genghiz Cohen wrote: »

Not sure where you got all those parts for €540.

Here's a rough build on a newer CPU socket.
[PCPartPicker part list](http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/Mvmyyc) / [Price breakdown by merchant](http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/Mvmyyc/by_merchant/)

Type|Item|Price
:----|:----|:----
**CPU** | [Intel Core i3-4150 3.5GHz Dual-Core Processor](http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/part/intel-cpu-bx80646i34150) | £85.19 @ Aria PC
**Motherboard** | [MSI H81I Mini ITX LGA1150 Motherboard](http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/part/msi-motherboard-h81i) | £46.75 @ Amazon UK
**Storage** | [Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive](http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/part/seagate-internal-hard-drive-st1000dm003) | £35.94 @ Aria PC
**Video Card** | [Gigabyte GeForce GTX 760 2GB WINDFORCE Video Card](http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/part/gigabyte-video-card-gvn760wf2oc2gd) | £149.71 @ Scan.co.uk
**Case** | [Cooler Master Elite 130 Mini ITX Tower Case](http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/part/cooler-master-case-rc130kkn1) | £37.20 @ Aria PC
**Power Supply** | [Corsair CX 430W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply](http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/part/corsair-power-supply-cx430m) | £38.30 @ Amazon UK
| | **Total**
| Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available | £393.09
| Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-12-15 13:09 GMT+0000 |

The CPU/GPU balance might be a bit GPU sided though.

he already has the cpu, so remove that and boost the gpu, 760 is still to underpowered, 770 is pushing it for min nowadays, he should be trying to get a r290 or gtx970 first work the rest around it.

Genghiz Cohen

anonyanony wrote: »

he already has the cpu, so remove that and boost the gpu, 760 is still to underpowered, 770 is pushing it for min nowadays, he should be trying to get a r290 or gtx970 first work the rest around it.

Ah yeah, he has the text forced to black so it's hard to read on the Evil theme.

Genghiz Cohen

Round 2!

[PCPartPicker part list](http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/dXd4GX) / [Price breakdown by merchant](http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/dXd4GX/by_merchant/)

Type|Item|Price
:----|:----|:----
**Motherboard** | ASRock H61MV-ITX Mini ITX LGA1155 Motherboard | £46.50 @ Amazon UK
**Storage** | Crucial M500 240GB 2.5" Solid State Drive | £74.99 @ Amazon UK
**Storage** | Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive | £35.94 @ Aria PC
**Video Card** | MSI Radeon R9 280X 3GB TWIN FROZR Video Card | £177.94 @ Scan.co.uk
**Case** | Cooler Master Elite 130 Mini ITX Tower Case | £37.20 @ Aria PC
**Power Supply** | Corsair CX 500W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply | £44.99 @ Scan.co.uk
| | **Total**
| Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available | £417.56

anonyanony

Genghiz Cohen wrote: »

Round 2!

[PCPartPicker part list](http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/dXd4GX) / [Price breakdown by merchant](http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/dXd4GX/by_merchant/)

Type|Item|Price
:----|:----|:----
**Motherboard** | ASRock H61MV-ITX Mini ITX LGA1155 Motherboard | £46.50 @ Amazon UK
**Storage** | Crucial M500 240GB 2.5" Solid State Drive | £74.99 @ Amazon UK
**Storage** | Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive | £35.94 @ Aria PC
**Video Card** | MSI Radeon R9 280X 3GB TWIN FROZR Video Card | £177.94 @ Scan.co.uk
**Case** | Cooler Master Elite 130 Mini ITX Tower Case | £37.20 @ Aria PC
**Power Supply** | Corsair CX 500W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply | £44.99 @ Scan.co.uk
| | **Total**
| Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available | £417.56

I have a gtx680 about the same power as the 280x it's starting to get taxed, I would remove the ssd they are great but won't help with gaming and get a gtx970, but even then for 20 pounds more then the r280x you can get a r290.

I am not a fan of amd but they also have new cards early in the new year if you wanted to wait OP.

Genghiz Cohen

anonyanony wrote: »

I have a gtx680 about the same power as the 280x it's starting to get taxed

Not at Console level of quality it's not.

TerrorFirmer

It's getting out of hand lately, whatever the reason.

Poster: Hi, I have €500 euro to spend, what do you recommend?

Some of the replies I've seen lately include

1) You need an 800w psu ideally
2) GTX750Ti is a HTPC card, not suitable for gaming
3) (today) You need a €100 water cooler
4) i3 can't handle new games

And when did 1080P ultra settings become the baseline for virtually every single budget? In what world is the GTX760/R9 280x not able to cut it? It plays games at 1080p ultra settings really.

Unless your definition of 'getting taxed' is not being able to play games at 1080p ultra at high FPS, total overkill of a statement.

I know we're meant to be the PC Master Gaming Race and all that, but lately it's gotten ridiculous what some people are coming out with.

anonyanony

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

It's getting out of hand lately, whatever the reason.

Poster: Hi, I have €500 euro to spend, what do you recommend?

Some of the replies I've seen lately include

1) You need an 800w psu ideally
2) GTX750Ti is a HTPC card, not suitable for gaming
3) (today) You need a €100 water cooler
4) i3 can't handle new games

And when did 1080P ultra settings become the baseline for virtually every single budget? In what world is the GTX760/R9 280x not able to cut it? It plays games at 1080p ultra settings really.

Unless your definition of 'getting taxed' is not being able to play games at 1080p ultra at high FPS, total overkill of a statement.

I know we're meant to be the PC Master Gaming Race and all that, but lately it's gotten ridiculous what some people are coming out with.

Play any of the new games this year, ac unity, watchdogs, shadow of mordor all could not be maxed on gtx680, the gtx970 is great value and a huge jump over previous cards now the gtx960 might be good but buying a 760 will not get you far at all.

Like I would get a good gpu over a fancy case or ssd, the ssd can be added later if wanted.


If you are going to play at 1600x900 at sub 30fps you might as well get a ps4 for the exclusives

Serephucus

Sell that 3770. It's not helping matters, and is tying up a lot of funds.

G3258, any cheap air cooler (212 Evo ideally so it's not a hairdryer), Whatever H81 ITX board you like, GTX 750 Ti (or better if money available), 350W PSU, 1TB HDD*.

If there's no decent upgrade for the GPU with the money saved, so with a 256GB SSD instead. Not a lot more. Also get EVGA card so can upgrade 3 months later for not a lot.

Job done.

No offence Anon. but your advice is a lot of what's misleading. There's some nuggets of truth in there, but overall I think you're just confusing the issue a bit.

anonyanony

Serephucus wrote: »

Sell that 3770. It's not helping matters, and is tying up a lot of funds.

G3258, any cheap air cooler (212 Evo ideally so it's not a hairdryer), Whatever H81 ITX board you like, GTX 750 Ti (or better if money available), 350W PSU, 1TB HDD*.

If there's no decent upgrade for the GPU with the money saved, so with a 256GB SSD instead. Not a lot more. Also get EVGA card so can upgrade 3 months later for not a lot.

Job done.

No offence Anon. but your advice is a lot of what's misleading. There's some nuggets of truth in there, but overall I think you're just confusing the issue a bit.

Yes with that 750ti you can play AC Unity at way worse quality then the ps4, a 750ti is not good enough to play modern games at even the same quality as the ps4.

They guy wanted to get one of the most expensive matx cases and cheap out on the gpu, this is counter productive to playing games and only there to impress your friends. With his budget he could get a r290 and the rest needed to get the system working. But if looks beside the tv that is all that matters go get the 750ti enjoy you 900p low 30fps gaming.

levitronix

anonyanony wrote: »

I have a gtx680 about the same power as the 280x it's starting to get taxed, I would remove the ssd they are great but won't help with gaming and get a gtx970, but even then for 20 pounds more then the r280x you can get a r290.

I am not a fan of amd but they also have new cards early in the new year if you wanted to wait OP.

I might try move some money around for a better GPU, other poster recommend selling the i7 3770 for haswell, that will be a waste of time and money, even though i can get a staff price for i7 4970 for about 140euro.

Serephucus

Why would selling the 3770 be a waste of money? No game out there uses eight threads. At most, four, usually two. You could easily sell that chip for €180-200. A G3258 will perform almost as well as a high-end i5 once overclocked, and costs €60. That's €140 that you could put into a better GPU. That's your 970, right there.

It doesn't matter if you can get a 4790 for €140. It's still a stupid amount of money to spend on a processor for a €500 build.

anonyanony

Serephucus wrote: »

Why would selling the 3770 be a waste of money? No game out there uses eight threads. At most, four, usually two. You could easily sell that chip for €180-200. A G3258 will perform almost as well as a high-end i5 once overclocked, and costs €60. That's €140 that you could put into a better GPU. That's your 970, right there.

It doesn't matter if you can get a 4790 for €140. It's still a stupid amount of money to spend on a processor for a €500 build.

Have you played a recent game they are all multi threaded and 4 core is pretty much min, selling the old cpu won't get him much money no where near €200 and it's a waste to sell it to by a far inferior chip.

Serephucus

Alright, I've tried to be nice.

You have no idea what you're talking about. As an example of "modern games" you picked one of the most poorly optimised, bug-ridden games of recent history and nothing else.

The 750 Ti isn't meant to be a high-end card, it's meant to be a very efficient one, and it is. I threw it in because I know it's the one I usually end up picking for €500 builds. Obviously OP's situation is different having a CPU already, and if he can, clearly he should get a better card.

Games don't use 4 cores. A couple of them do, but most of them are still on two. Sure, they'll use bits from the others, and some even have artificial limitations to stop them launching (Far Cry 4, I think) when dual cores are detected, but if you actually look at the benchmark comparisons, you'll see it does great:

http://techreport.com/review/26735/overclocking-intel-pentium-g3258-anniversary-edition-processor/3

That's an overclocked G3258 beating a stock 2500K in Crysis 3, and trailing right behind a 4790K at 4.7. This is replicated across many other games.

anonyanony

Serephucus wrote: »

Alright, I've tried to be nice.

You have no idea what you're talking about. As an example of "modern games" you picked one of the most poorly optimised, bug-ridden games of recent history and nothing else.

The 750 Ti isn't meant to be a high-end card, it's meant to be a very efficient one, and it is. I threw it in because I know it's the one I usually end up picking for €500 builds. Obviously OP's situation is different having a CPU already, and if he can, clearly he should get a better card.

Games don't use 4 cores. A couple of them do, but most of them are still on two. Sure, they'll use bits from the others, and some even have artificial limitations to stop them launching (Far Cry 4, I think) when dual cores are detected, but if you actually look at the benchmark comparisons, you'll see it does great:

http://techreport.com/review/26735/overclocking-intel-pentium-g3258-anniversary-edition-processor/3

That's an overclocked G3258 beating a stock 2500K in Crysis 3, and trailing right behind a 4790K at 4.7. This is replicated across many other games.

Every game this year has been optimised for multi thread from wolfienstien to south park. If he sold his 3770 he would get 100-140 euro the cost to get g3258 means he would be throwing away a good cpu for a budget one that is worse. Using an overclocked cpu vs a stock older cpu then he has is stupid.

Genghiz Cohen

Serephucus wrote: »

That's an overclocked G3258 beating a stock 2500K in Crysis 3, and trailing right behind a 4790K at 4.7. This is replicated across many other games.

Thanks a lot!
Now I need to OC my 2500k!

TerrorFirmer

anonyanony wrote: »

Play any of the new games this year, ac unity, watchdogs, shadow of mordor all could not be maxed on gtx680, the gtx970 is great value and a huge jump over previous cards now the gtx960 might be good but buying a 760 will not get you far at all.

Like I would get a good gpu over a fancy case or ssd, the ssd can be added later if wanted.


If you are going to play at 1600x900 at sub 30fps you might as well get a ps4 for the exclusives

AC Unity is just an example of a badly optimised game. It runs like ****e on good cards even. You can't use one game as justification for setting a €350 euro GPU a some sort of 'minimum' baseline. There will always be incredibly badly optimized games out there (like DayZ as well).

I'm playing Shadow of Mordor right now at very high settings at 1080p on a 750Ti and it runs perfectly. (with a €50 G3220 actually). A GTX680 can run Shadow of Mordor at 1440P ultra effortlessly, so whatever you're doing, I actually don't know. Unless you have that stupid HD texture pack installed which requires 6GB Vram and will maul your framerate for a gain the human eye can barely detect.

I've also played Watchdogs on it, runs fine as well at 1080P.

Advanced Warfare also runs on it at 1080p very high fine.

Saying that it's a 900fps card at <30fps is entirely misrepresentative. Just like saying that a R9 280X can't cut it at 1080p, which is also totally untrue.

Grand if the person had a budget of 1K but I'm getting tired of some of the rubbish that gets thrown around here the past while when people have budgets of 4 and 5 hundred.

I would also sell the 3770 if it was me as well and switch to socket 1150. Money can be far better used elsewhere. I'm getting GTX970 Sli and I'm going to bench them with a G3258 after Christmas. There will be a difference in FPS versus the i7 but the G3258 comes within 10-15% of the i7 in the majority of games. Most games are GPU bottlenecked.

So worst case, you might get 150fps with the i7 and GTX970 Sli, and 100fps with the G3258 and a GTX970 Sli. Some games, the FPS is actually more like 150fps vs 130 or 140fps. As with your Assassins Creed Unity example, there will always be exceptions, always has and always will. But the fact remains that for the vast majority of games, the GPU is the most important factor.

1) G3258 is probably the best price to performance ratio CPU since the Pentium 2160/2180 CPU's years ago.

2) GTX750Ti is a solid 1080p performer

3) R9 280X and GTX770 are rock solid 1080P performers

4) If we all used a poorly optimised buggy games as our baseline for what is and isn't good value, we'd all be splashing out 3K on our setups.

Genghiz Cohen

anonyanony wrote: »

If he sold his 3770 he would get 100-140 euro the cost to get g3258 means he would be throwing away a good cpu for a budget one that is worse.

Yeah, that's the point. He has a massively expensive CPU that he won't use and could put it's monetary value to better use.

Genghiz Cohen

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

3) R9 280X and GTX770 are rock solid 1080P performers

I'd nearly go as far as to say they are solid 1440p performers.

TerrorFirmer

Not to mention you would get a lot more than 100 for a 3770. You'd get about 200 for it.

Lu Tze

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

Not to mention you would get a lot more than 100 for a 3770. You'd get about 200 for it.

The are still priced well above 200 when I see them in adverts. Would snap his hand of for 100

anonyanony

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

AC Unity is just an example of a badly optimised game. It runs like ****e on good cards even. You can't use one game as justification for setting a €350 euro GPU a some sort of 'minimum' baseline. There will always be incredibly badly optimized games out there (like DayZ as well).

I'm playing Shadow of Mordor right now at very high settings at 1080p on a 750Ti and it runs perfectly. (with a €50 G3220 actually). A GTX680 can run Shadow of Mordor at 1440P ultra effortlessly, so whatever you're doing, I actually don't know. Unless you have that stupid HD texture pack installed which requires 6GB Vram and will maul your framerate for a gain the human eye can barely detect.

I've also played Watchdogs on it, runs fine as well at 1080P.

Advanced Warfare also runs on it at 1080p very high fine. 7

Saying that it's a 900fps card at <30fps is entirely misrepresentative. Just like saying that a R9 280X can't cut it at 1080p, which is also totally untrue.

Grand if the person had a budget of 1K but I'm getting tired of some of the rubbish that gets thrown around here the past while when people have budgets of 4 and 5 hundred.

I would also sell the 3770 if it was me as well and switch to socket 1150. Money can be far better used elsewhere. I'm getting GTX970 Sli and I'm going to bench them with a G3258 after Christmas. There will be a difference in FPS versus the i7 but the G3258 comes within 10-15% of the i7 in the majority of games. Most games are GPU bottlenecked.

So worst case, you might get 150fps with the i7 and GTX970 Sli, and 100fps with the G3258 and a GTX970 Sli. Some games, the FPS is actually more like 150fps vs 130 or 140fps. As with your Assassins Creed Unity example, there will always be exceptions, always has and always will. But the fact remains that for the vast majority of games, the GPU is the most important factor.

1) G3258 is probably the best price to performance ratio CPU since the Pentium 2160/2180 CPU's years ago.

2) GTX750Ti is a solid 1080p performer

3) R9 280X and GTX770 are rock solid 1080P performers

4) If we all used a poorly optimised buggy games as our baseline for what is and isn't good value, we'd all be splashing out 3K on our setups.

You hit a solid 60fps at 1080p on those games with a 750ti with high settings, if so post a screen shot, I don't think the 50 euro you get from going down to a dual core is worth it when more game all from this year have been multi threaded

TerrorFirmer

anonyanony wrote: »

You hit a solid 60fps at 1080p on those games with a 750ti with high settings, if so post a screen shot, I don't think the 50 euro you get from going down to a dual core is worth it when more game all from this year have been multi threaded

I never said I was maintaining a solid 60fps, I said it runs at 1080p very high perfectly - which it does. It averages about 50fps (the important part), highs of upwards of 90 and minimum of about 35-40.

That to me is fairly solid 1080P performance for the price.



Here we have a benchmark showing Shadow of Mordor at 1080P on a GTX670 - 54fps on ultra settings with 'High' Textures (the Ultra textures are stupidly resource draining even on high end cards and look almost identical to high).

Yet you're saying a GTX680, a much faster card, is unable to cope with Shadow of Mordor at 1080p maxed? Going by those results, it should easily average 60fps+ at ultra settings at 1080p (which I did point out earlier)

In Crysis 3 the G3258 overclocked is also beating AMD's 8350 8 core CPU.

More cores does not equal better. As I have always said, this argument has been used against dual cores since 2007. A good i3 or an OC'd G3258 is enough to run any graphics card really, still in 2014.

And seriously, South Park as an example of multi-threaded? South Park runs fine on low end Core 2 Duo's from 2006-2007.

anonyanony

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

I never said I was maintaining a solid 60fps, I said it runs at 1080p very high perfectly - which it does. It averages about 50fps (the important part), highs of upwards of 90 and minimum of about 35-40.

That to me is fairly solid 1080P performance for the price.



Here we have a benchmark showing Shadow of Mordor at 1080P on a GTX670 - 54fps on ultra settings with 'High' Textures (the Ultra textures are stupidly resource draining even on high end cards and look almost identical to high).

Yet you're saying a GTX680, a much faster card, is unable to cope with Shadow of Mordor at 1080p maxed? Going by those results, it should easily average 60fps+ at ultra settings at 1080p (which I did point out earlier)

There was not a huge difference in power between the 680 and 670, low dips to 35 is not good enough but I would play on mid to get a solid 60. I think our levels of acceptable gameplay are just different.

TerrorFirmer

anonyanony wrote: »

There was not a huge difference in power between the 680 and 670, low dips to 35 is not good enough but I would play on mid to get a solid 60. I think our levels of acceptable gameplay are just different.

We're talking about the 750Ti here. 50fps avg at 1080 v.high on a 2014 title is excellent performance for a €130 card.

You said that the GTX680/R9 280X class cards 'wouldn't get you very far' - 1080P ultra 50-60fps is pretty damn good performance to me.

Everyone entitled to an opinion and I respect that usually but when people come on saying things like "An R9 280X can't really handle 1080P" is when I take issue with it.

We'd all love to have i7's with GTX980's but there is a little thing called 'value for money' and 'price to performance' which is critically important when the majority of people who come here have budgets of 400-600.

If you can somehow squeeze 1K performance into a €500 build by all means show us how. Otherwise, telling someone they should get a €350 euro card on a €500 budget is mindless.

anonyanony

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

We're talking about the 750Ti here. 50fps avg at 1080 v.high on a 2014 title is excellent performance for a €130 card.

You said that the GTX680/R9 280X class cards 'wouldn't get you very far' - 1080P ultra 50-60fps is pretty damn good performance to me.

Everyone entitled to an opinion and I respect that usually but when people come on saying things like "An R9 280X can't really handle 1080P" is when I take issue with it.

We'd all love to have i7's with GTX980's but there is a little thing called 'value for money' and 'price to performance' which is critically important when the majority of people who come here have budgets of 400-600.

If you can somehow squeeze 1K performance into a €500 build by all means show us how. Otherwise, telling someone they should get a €350 euro card on a €500 budget is mindless.

A r290 costs 20 pounds more then the r280x, getting a 280x not is a bad choice cost wise and a r290 is way more powerfull then the 280x.

anonyanony

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

If you can somehow squeeze 1K performance into a €500 build by all means show us how. Otherwise, telling someone they should get a €350 euro card on a €500 budget is mindless.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-H61M-USB3H Micro ATX LGA1155 Motherboard (£28.79 @ More Computers)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£39.99 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: Zotac GeForce GTX 970 4GB Video Card (£255.59 @ Aria PC)
Case: Fractal Design Core 1000 USB 3.0 MicroATX Mid Tower Case (£29.35 @ Ebuyer)
Power Supply: Corsair CX 500W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply (£44.99 @ Scan.co.uk)
Total: £398.71
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-12-15 18:14 GMT+0000

here €500 euro for that he needs with a gtx970 it's €60 euro cheaper if he gets a r290.

Serephucus

Stop quoting full posts when the original is directly above. All it does is make everyone scroll a lot.

Tomo.Murphy

Sure isn't Unity locked at 900p and 30fps on the consoles anyway? Poorly optimised game all around IMO (or was it cinematic, I forgot...)

I've been thinking about the 750 ti for when I get around to building my first computer. Seems like a pretty good card for the price. Obviously I'd like a 780 or better, but I got too much of a shock when I added one of those to the cart and checked the total, ha.

levitronix

Cheers for all the inputs, but because this will be sitting in the living room im keen on a nice case, and I cant find a nice one cheap to bring cost down.

How would using a EVGA hadron air case, that will save a few euro being integrated with a power supply
Could spend a little extra on a graphics card then could stretch to a gtx 760 or 770

Im also limited on the motherboards since im looking for min itx

anonyanony

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

Motherboard: ASRock H61MV-ITX Mini ITX LGA1155 Motherboard (£46.50 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£39.99 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: PowerColor Radeon R9 290 4GB PCS+ Video Card (£199.99 @ Amazon UK)
Case: Corsair 250D Mini ITX Tower Case (£62.99 @ Amazon UK)
Power Supply: Corsair CX 500W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply (£44.99 @ Scan.co.uk)
Total: £394.46
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-12-15 21:35 GMT+0000


All for €500 with the ricer 250d case, the r290 is way better then a gtx770. I wouldn't cheap out on the psu too much the ones that come with the cases can end up costing you more in the long run

levitronix

anonyanony wrote: »

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

Motherboard: ASRock H61MV-ITX Mini ITX LGA1155 Motherboard (£46.50 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£39.99 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: PowerColor Radeon R9 290 4GB PCS+ Video Card (£199.99 @ Amazon UK)
Case: Corsair 250D Mini ITX Tower Case (£62.99 @ Amazon UK)
Power Supply: Corsair CX 500W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply (£44.99 @ Scan.co.uk)
Total: £394.46
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-12-15 21:35 GMT+0000


All for €500 with the ricer 250d case, the r290 is way better then a gtx770. I wouldn't cheap out on the psu too much the ones that come with the cases can end up costing you more in the long run

something like this looks a like runner

anonyanony

levitronix wrote: »

something like this looks a like runner

Just make sure the mb can run ivy without a bios update first, some needs a update to run ivy, there is others for about €10 more if it doesn't. I was just doing a quick price guide.

Serephucus

Just sayin'.

anonyanony

Serephucus wrote: »

Just sayin'.

As the video said it bottles it in multi threaded games ie crysis , it's not worth it for what he will make selling his cpu secondhand, the fact that this year alone all AAA games release where multi thread optimised it's stupid to trade down for little gain in money when he can get a r290 at his budget anyway.

If he was buying a cpu then yes it's an option but I myself would probably go an AMD chip as the cheap option as I think all games will be mutli threaded from now on as consoles have 6 cores to use.

Slutmonkey57b

I have no idea why anyone would give someone a build at *any* price point that does not involve an SSD in 2014.

If someone told me they had €200 to spend I'd still tell them to get an SSD. Mine died recently and I've wanted to throw the PC through a window every day since.

A 970 or R290 at that price point is moronic. The PC is going in a living room so it's hooked up to a TV, yes? That means nothing above 1080p and 60hz. r270/x or r280 is plenty good enough for that.

In terms of nice looking mATX cases, the Aerocool Dead Silence are good lookers, come in a range of funky colours and got a good review from bit-tech who are good at picking apart cases.

anonyanony

Slutmonkey57b wrote: »

I have no idea why anyone would give someone a build at *any* price point that does not involve an SSD in 2014.

If someone told me they had €200 to spend I'd still tell them to get an SSD. Mine died recently and I've wanted to throw the PC through a window every day since.

A 970 or R290 at that price point is moronic. The PC is going in a living room so it's hooked up to a TV, yes? That means nothing above 1080p and 60hz. r270/x or r280 is plenty good enough for that.

In terms of nice looking mATX cases, the Aerocool Dead Silence are good lookers, come in a range of funky colours and got a good review from bit-tech who are good at picking apart cases.

Cause an ssd won't improve game performance and as he has it connected to the tv he won't be doing much more then loading games and a snappy response from windows and programs launching is not important, my main desktop yes a ssd is great but it does not help game performance.

Try getting a stable 1080/60 on a r270 in modern games it won't happen r280x can on mid for now but won't for much longer and a r290 is €30 more and way more powerful I see no reason not to go up to it.

His budget is €500 without a cpu and ram you would be looking at that kinda gpu as if you counted them it would be a €800 system.

Slutmonkey57b

You're telling us that an ssd offers no performance benefit in games, then use "modern games" with ridiculous texture sizes and 50 gb install retirements as "proof" that an r280 isn't up to the job? Are you under the impression that textures and levels get loaded into memory by magical pixies?

Moving a steam library over to an ssd will be a massive boon to a low budget system. I know because I've done it.

anonyanony

Slutmonkey57b wrote: »

You're telling us that an ssd offers no performance benefit in games, then use "modern games" with ridiculous texture sizes and 50 gb install retirements as "proof" that an r280 isn't up to the job? Are you under the impression that textures and levels get loaded into memory by magical pixies?

Moving a steam library over to an ssd will be a massive boon to a low budget system. I know because I've done it.

Only makes a difference in a low vram system where the system has to swap in textures, the modern games push the 3gb vram limit of the r280 so the sdd might help that card, but a r280 and ssd will cost more and run worse then a r290.

He won't have a low budget system with the €500 if he spends it right, he will have an i7 and r290, now I love ssd's for work and my main desktop has two. Myself I would remove the ricer case for a plain one and get an ssd, but for games I would not compromise on the gpu.

TerrorFirmer

I have a G3258 and a GTX980 on the way, I'll post benchmarks when they arrive (prob after Christmas at this point).