New PC being planned

T-wolf

Hey folks,

After a bit of saving, and a bit of research, it's time to go replace my trusty 8-year old rig with something newer.

Anyway - have a read, comments welcome, the budget is pretty absolute I'm afraid (Unless I want a divorce )
I do have to factor in the price of a copy of Win10 retail - existing keys I have for Win7 are Enterprise edition from an old job (they are legit) and thus no free upgrade.

1. What is your budget? €1600 to €1700 maximum.

2. What will be the main purpose of the computer? Gaming - Star citizen/Elite/Eve Online/Hawken. Usual general use after that.

3. Do you need a copy of Windows? Yes - Existing key is win7 enterprise from old job, want Win10 Retail to allow transfer to new hardware in future.

4. Can you use any parts from an old computer? Probably not - old PC is being sold as-is. If I can, theres a 500Gb HDD and DVD-rw drive I'll swipe out of it.

5. Do you need a monitor? No

5b. If no, what resolution is your current monitor and do you plan to upgrade in the near future? 2x 19" 1280*1024 monitors on DVI at present - will eventually upgrade.

6. Do you need any of extra peripherals? No - all external stuff can transfer from the existing PC.

7. Are you willing to try overclocking? Yes.

8. How can you pay? Bank Transfer or Paypal, preferred.

9. When are you purchasing? In next 30 days.

10. If you need help building it, where are you based? Nope - this part I'm looking forward to

Case: CoolerMaster Storm Stryker White full tower case http://gaming.coolermaster.com/en/products/cases/stryker/
PSU: Corsair HX750i, 750w, full modular PSU
M/Board: MSI Z97 Gaming 5, LGA1150
CPU: Intel Core i5 4690K Boxed
Graphics: MSI GeForce GTX 970 Gaming 100ME
RAM: 16GB, tend to Prefer Crucial, but going for 4x 4Gb sticks if possible
SSD: Samsung 850 Evo 250GB
Cooling: Corsair H110i Closed-cycle cooler.

Comments welcome, and thanks for them in advance

Digital Solitude

I'd get a Xeon 1231v3 instead of the i5 for hyperthreading.

How much is that board you're after?

Only need a 500w PSU from a good brand like BeQuiet or Corsair.

You can get a W7 licence for €20 from reddit and upgrade to 10 for free

*edit* If you actually want to OC keep the i5, but there's no real need

T-wolf

Digital Solitude wrote: »

How much is that board you're after?

Only need a 500w PSU from a good brand like BeQuiet or Corsair.

You can get a W7 licence for €20 from reddit and upgrade to 10 for free

The m/board is about €160.00
PSU I'm being careful with - I tend to end up adding on stuff, and as well, estimated power draw of the spec is about 350W, which is close enough to the 50% most-efficient point for the PSU.

the W7 license i'll have to look into - I'm avoiding an OEM key like the plague, since they will be hardware-locked in W10.

Digital Solitude

No need in that, a motherboard half the price will do the same job, unless you're planning to SLI. Which most don't recommend

The efficiency goal for most PSUs tends to be up at 80 or 90% I believe, though I'm not very well versed in them, I believe that is how they work.

They're retail keys, I'll post one up as soon as I get my stupid grub updated properly

wotzgoingon

Digital Solitude wrote: »

as soon as I get my stupid grub updated properly

Digital what are you dual booting?

Digital Solitude

wotzgoingon wrote: »

Digital what are you dual booting?

Play on Linux and Windows 7. Can't boot into both at the same time since W8.1 erased my grub, which I complained about earlier :pac:

You can hardly shed some light on the PSU thing wotz?

wotzgoingon

Yea there is no need for a 750 Watt PSU. A 500 or 600 or even 550 would do.

The larger wattage PSU are for Crossfire or SLI as some people even SLI 3 or 4 cards (Yes 2 way is the most popular)

wotzgoingon

About the efficiency of the PSU just get a 500W 80 Plus Gold or a 80 Plus Platinum they are more efficient than the other 80 plus rating ones but more expensive.

saneman

Guys, would I right to recommend an additional 250GB SSD just for games? Star Citizen alone (in it's current state) is ~28Gb and modern releases can easily be 30-40Gb if not more.

Digital Solitude

It does take a good while to fill up a 250gb now. I had a 60gb Skyrim on mine, with about 40 other games

Up to OP, he's well inside his budget

Mi1o

Just get Samsung 850 Evo 250GB M.2 instead of SATA.
http://www.samsung.com/us/computer/memory-storage/MZ-N5E250BW

Digital Solitude

Mi1o wrote: »

Just get Samsung 850 Evo 250GB M.2 instead of SATA.
http://www.samsung.com/us/computer/memory-storage/MZ-N5E250BW

I thought you were the guy who was trying to convince everyone that NVMe cards were better value than sata a few weeks back for a second :pac:

The m.2 drives are a lot cheaper than I thought! :eek:

Mi1o

It's about 5 euros more for M.2 so why not, MSI Gaming 5 has a M.2 10Gb/s port but Samsung 850 Evo 250GB M.2 is only 6Gb/s i think will be no difference on performace, it's just up to buyer what he like, but i will go for new standart and try M.2

T-wolf

Thanks guys.

Probably should have added that keeping things quiet is also important - 80% of the gaming happens when the better half is in bed next door.
And the budget might by €1700 max, but I'm hoping to beat that down

@Wotzgoingon - noted. I picked the HX750i based on reviews of its output voltage stability, and the fact it doesn't turn on the fans until its under load or hits a certain temp. Reviews were v good, but I did think it was overpowered in terms of watts, and the Corsair Link stuff seems like window dressing. I'll have a look at the Be Quiet units during the day

@Digital - I'm not sure on going cheaper on the m/board. I like the features of the Gaming 5, and my experience is you do get what you pay for with a decent m/board. Plus the MSI Boards (I've used Asus mostly up to now) are good for use with SteamOS, which will be useful in the future I suspect.

@saneman+Mi1o - I don't think at the moment it's worth an SSD for the games. Yes, you pay for it in loading times, but it is a possible future upgrade. Experience with SSD's from work so far has been mixed. - as in great while they work, but they have a disconcerting habit of failing without warning as well. In fairness, I can wait an extra few secs while things load up.

Thanks for the advice on the Win7 ket off Reddit - will take a look.

Xenoronin

Intel would be the way to go for an SSD if you are worrying about failure without warning. There was a big read/write ssd test that TechReport did that showed the Intel went into read only mode, before bricking itself on reboot, allowing some amount of recovery time as long as you don't restart the machine. Samsung (while tripling, or even quadrupling the read/write of the intel) did just die without warning (other than the large amount of reallocated sectors).

Honestly though, it's actually hard to lose everything these days with access to onedrive, dropbox, google photos/docs and all the rest. I wouldn't worry so much about random drive failures. They are as stable these days as a regular HDD, or even better.

Digital Solitude

SSD is definitely worth it.

You could look into a fanless PSU but they're probably big money too.

Is that case sound insulated? If not, I'd go for a Nanoxia or mid-end Corsair

Serephucus

PSU wattage:
The most efficient point for a PSU does tend to be around the 50% range, but you shouldn't base your buying decisions on this. With any good PSU (Gold, or higher, Bronze tends to vary a little more, but not much) the difference between 50 and 80% load is about 3% efficiency, and you'll spend more on a higher wattage PSU than you'll save on ESB with that. If you're making room for future SLI, then yeah, go with the 750W.

i5 vs. Xeon:
Up to OP really here. Hyperthreading will probably help when DX12 games come along, but they're at least six months away. Depends how long he'll keep the machine for without upgrading bits. Overclocking is a nice thing to have though for later on in the machine's life.

RAM:
Why 4x4GB? This is harder on the memory controller and limits future expansion. It's also more expensive than 2x8.

SSD/Storage:
Maybe you've had bad luck (maybe I've had good luck), but in general I've found SSDs to be more reliable than HDDs. I have about seven or eight SSDs personally for - at longest - six years or so, and only one has failed. I've had about 10-15 HDDs for about the same length, and five have failed so far. Intel SSDs are definitely the most reliable, but you pay for it. Crucial drives are probably my favourite at the moment.

As for storage generally, make sure to include a backup.

T-wolf

Hmm,

Good point on the efficiency argument with the PSU. No point spending more than you'll save.
Stable power and noise are the two biggest considerations here (the case will accept all but a monster power supply I think). Should have time to have a browse of the Be Quiet supplies in a bit

CPU - I picked Core i5 because, well, it fit the budget. Core i7 requires a more expensive socket-2011 m/board. Wasn't aware you could get Xeon's for socket-1150. But don't Xeon's need ECC ram?
The current PC is already overclocked (Core 2 Quad Q6700, with a Koolance liquid cooling system) so I've no problem with overclocking.

RAM, 4x4GB was based on experience. My current rig started with 2x1Gb, and I added 2x 2Gb about a year later. This caused issues with the RAM timings and bus speed even with the DIMMs being the same speed and timing settings (it had to be dropped from 1333Mhz to 800Mhz to stay stable).
Ever since, I've kept the DIMMs the same type, filled the slots, and not had timing issues. 2x 8Gb is possible, but if I was to upgrade to 32Gb, I'd probably end up replacing the 2x 8Gb anyway with a new set of 4x 8gb.

SSD - I was looking at the Crucial, but I've heard first hand the Samsungs are generally better. I'll admit, experience at work has made me cautious of SSD's failing. But there is no question - one will be in the PC.
I'm not going M2 as the selected M/board (MSI Gaming 5) only has a 2x PCIe interface, for 5Gb/sec. SATA beats this, you really need a 4x PCIe interface to make the most out of an M2 I think.

Backup - Thats in hand Synology DS-414 works a treat for that

Case - I'm going full tower, as when things get swapped in and out, the case should be able to take it. I looked at two cases, (Corsair Graphite 760T and the Cooler Master Stryker) both virtually the same, both can mount the liquid cooler. Cooler Master was cheaper, and I just liked it better.

tuxy

T-wolf wrote: »

CPU - I picked Core i5 because, well, it fit the budget. Core i7 requires a more expensive socket-2011 m/board. Wasn't aware you could get Xeon's for socket-1150. But don't Xeon's need ECC ram?
The current PC is already overclocked (Core 2 Quad Q6700, with a Koolance liquid cooling system) so I've no problem with overclocking.

You can get quad core i7s for 1150 you only need 2011 for CPUs that have more than 4 cores.
The Xeon 1231v3 is the same as a 1150 socket i7 but with out the integrated graphics so works out as better value when using a dedicated graphics card.
It does not require ecc ram.

Personally I'd go with an overclockable i5 as this will give you a minimum of 20% performance boost over a stock cpu.
An i7 will only give you extra performance if the application supports hyperthreading.

Mi1o

T-wolf wrote: »

SSD - I was looking at the Crucial, but I've heard first hand the Samsungs are generally better. I'll admit, experience at work has made me cautious of SSD's failing. But there is no question - one will be in the PC.
I'm not going M2 as the selected M/board (MSI Gaming 5) only has a 2x PCIe interface, for 5Gb/sec. SATA beats this, you really need a 4x PCIe interface to make the most out of an M2 I think.
.

MSI Z97 Gaming 5 has a 10Gb/sec M.2 port

T-wolf

Mi1o wrote: »

MSI Z97 Gaming 5 has a 10Gb/sec M.2 port

10Gb/s M2 drive is well beyond the budget for this build I'm afraid.

But good to know for next year

tuxy

T-wolf wrote: »

10Gb/s M2 drive is well beyond the budget for this build I'm afraid.

But good to know for next year

I don't know anything about m.2 but isn't this about the same price as a sata ssd?

http://www.hardwareversand.de/M.2/235374/Samsung+SSD+850+EVO+M.2+Basic+250+GB+%28MZ-N5E250BW%29.article

Out of stock though

Edit: never mind even though it fits a m.2 slot it's only the same speed as sata

T-wolf

As it turns out, the Samsung 850 Evo is the SSD I'm going for anyway.. ☺

justsomebloke

Seriously cut the budget by €140 and buy yourself at least one decent monitor.