PC Building, Upgrading, and Parts Picking: Everything is pretty fast now (except AMD)

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > PC Building, Upgrading, and Parts Picking: Everything is pretty fast now (except AMD)

Elliptical Dick: Oct 11, 2008; I made the bald man cry
into the turtle stew

So, in the previous thread I posted this build: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/3arT8

That was vetted, approved and all that. But I have had a significant budget upgrade. I've gone from approx 1000 bucks to about 1600. In the previous thread I had asked for a build that could comfortably run civ5. At this point I might broaden my scope a bit with more higher end games and possibly photo editing. Could I just do with picking a nicer GPU and a larger SSD or do I need to redo the entire build? Do I even need to spend that money? Thanks for your input.

# ¿ Apr 9, 2014 10:54

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 12:06

Elliptical Dick: Oct 11, 2008; I made the bald man cry
into the turtle stew

dreesemonkey posted:

If you don't have an IPS monitor it would be a good time to do that. If you do that and go 1440p you'll need a more powerful GPU as well. That will probably take you real close to your $1600 budget.

If you have a 1080p monitor that you like now, there isn't a whole lot to realistically improve. Maybe bump up the SSD, but otherwise you should have more than enough power.

My monitor is 1080p but not IPS. It's not ideal but I haven't had reason to upgrade it yet. Perhaps now would be the time. I'm assuming I should stay away from 1440p under a certain screen size?

# ¿ Apr 9, 2014 14:07

Elliptical Dick: Oct 11, 2008; I made the bald man cry
into the turtle stew

Ignoarints posted:

Video card is an easy one for games. You can probably spend half of your new budget on this without wasting money. 770 or 280x, etc

The rest is more up to you. Do you want to overclock? This will have a bearing on video editing, but so would hyperthreading. Overclocking say a 4670k would require a z87 motherboard, or you could go i7-4770 non-k* for hyperthreading. An overclocked 4670k would be better for some games over an i7-4770 non k. At the very least you could up it to a 4670 non k if the price difference isn't much.

Perhaps with your new video card choice you can justify a cheap 1440p, like a qnix.

*or xeon 1230/1240 v3 variant, although jury is still out on cheaper motherboards

Edit: I'd like to add what I'd personally do even though I wasn't going to originally because its pretty much at odds with the first build, but maybe it would interest you.

- Double the motherboard budget for a z87 w/ wireless, SLI, good power management (~+$80 or maybe a little more) (Dropping wireless adapter -$36)
- $60-$70 cooler depending on what fits in that case
- Price match Microcenter on the 4570 to get a 4670k for the same price (ie. staples.com)
- Up it to 650W or so, like a Capstone, or whatever is on sale and good. Probably +$15
- Replace video card with 2x GTX 760's +$300

This should come out to around $420-$440 more depending on motherboard. Now, however, you will have some serious GPU power that will on a lot of games will not utilize fully at 1080p (at least, definitely not fps-wise). I'd pocket the rest to pick up a 1440p qnix or equivalent as soon as possible. I'd overclock everything fully (and I would delid)

This is just what I'd do personally if I wanted matx based on the original build . As I said in the original post, simply going 770/280x will be more than enough for a lot of people. This is simply the most cost effective manner I can imagine to using the new budget, while keeping as much the same format as possible. What I posted first is probably more applicable.

Thanks a bunch for your thoughts. I'll probably end up upgrading the video card and maybe buy a nicer monitor. Overclocking is not a thing I'm looking at because I don't think it will benefit me much. Also since this would be the first computer I'd be building I'm not sure I should go straight for overly complicated setups. The SLI mobo + doubling up on the GPU sounds good too though, because I'm seriously considering dropping my console for gaming as I'm hearing nothing but poo poo about this generation's machines.

# ¿ Apr 10, 2014 06:25

Elliptical Dick: Oct 11, 2008; I made the bald man cry
into the turtle stew

Wanting to put this to the thread for the last time before pulling the trigger on this build. Any glaring oversights or obvious improvements I have failed to incorporate? Thanks.

CPU: Intel Core i5-4570 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor (Boxed) (�167.04 @ Europe)
Motherboard: ASRock B85 M-GL microATX LGA1150 Motherboard (�50 @ Europe)
Memory: Crucial Ballistix Sport XT 2 x 4 GB RAM (� 57.15 @ Europe). I could not find an equivalent on pc part picker with the exact same specs so included the Dutch link
Storage: Samsung 840 EVO 250GB 2.5" Solid State Disk (�123 @ Europe)
Storage: WD Blue 1 TB 5400 RPM Hard drive (�45.91 @ Europe)
Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 760 2GB TWIN Video Card (�189 @ Europe)
Case: Fractal Design R4 ATX Mid Tower (�83.95 @ Europe)
Power Supply: SeaSonic 520W 80+ Bronze Power Supply (�47 @ Europe)

e: just realised that RAM actually has sticky out fins. Imagine any 2 x 4 GB, 1.5V or less, DDR3-1600 RAM in its place. Also I think I may have hosed up the choice for the case.

Elliptical Dick fucked around with this message at 15:36 on May 12, 2014

# ¿ May 12, 2014 15:12

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > PC Building, Upgrading, and Parts Picking: Everything is pretty fast now (except AMD)