PC build help?

I second the Gskill ram Lavasnake mentioned. BTW is this build for PA or ? Does anyone know how much GPU power PA will use? For the most part RTS games were more heavy on CPU/RAM. Im currently on Intel quad core 2.67@3.8 on air 8 gigs of ram and Asus 660GTX 2gigmem.

I'm on an AMD Phenom II X6 @2.8 GHz, Radeon 7850 2 GB and 8 GB of RAM

I can run on uber settings at about 20-30 fps (it gets a bit more every patch too)

The system I slapped together above would destroy PA, with no problems and much juice to spare.

nixtempestas Im hoping we wont need to upgrade =() I want to keep this PC for a bit

Modern computers are starting to outstrip what game developers can utilize so even mid range stuff will be functional for a long time.

That's good as long as my pc can play pa well then no upgrade for awhile here!

What country are you in OP? It would be help to pick parts available to you.

Yes I was a little confused as where you're from OP, as you linked two sets of prices in Euro and Pounds, I can give you plenty of links to U.K websites instead of just babbling off US orientated sites for components and parts. A GTX 770 is going to be very awesome though if you can afford it, if you can, get the 4GB version, will save you a lot of hassle later on.

Sorry if that confused you. I'm in Sweden where most people buy from komplett.se but i didn't specify because i don't have a problem translating prices / vendors myself and budget isn't set in stone. All i'm curious about is what builds are good for running PA on linux

I found system76 and zareason the other day and they seem good, i might use one of their builds as blueprints for my own. But so far i haven't decided on much else than the gtx 770 4gb so i'm happy for all suggestions. Thanks again everyone.

edit: To elaborate a bit more then... I also remember how TA was a bit more cpu heavy than other games at that time. And i've heard something, but can't recall exactly the details, on that PA was going to be structured in a different way with part of the calculation being done server side and thus making the game more gpu heavy than it's predecessors. Trying to figure out the specifics of this, as well as if there are any common mistakes i should avoid while trying to build a gaming rig for linux, is the main reasons i posted. It could also be about the smaller details like what mouse or headset works with linux and what doesn't. But as i'm new to the subject, this is my first proper build, i didn't wanna narrow it down too much to see if there's anything i missed.

This is how far i've come at the moment. As usual, any help and all opinions are welcome!

Some parts i can buy here i couldn't find on pcpartpicker, so the gpu is a gainward phantom, the hd isn't a caviar, just a black one and some other minor details.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i5-4670K 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor (£174.89 @ Ebuyer)
Motherboard: Asus Z87-A ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (£105.44 @ Scan.co.uk)
Memory: Kingston HyperX 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£121.25 @ CCL Computers)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£61.20 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 770 4GB Video Card
Case: Fractal Design Define R4 (Black Pearl) ATX Mid Tower Case (£77.00 @ Amazon UK)
Power Supply: Fractal Design Integra R2 750W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply (£61.70 @ Dabs)
Total: £601.48
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-11-20 08:10 GMT+0000)

Buy SSD, trust me it's worth it especially on Linux.

Also I don't see any massive CPU cooler in your list, so it's looks like you're not some super-fan of overclocking. If you're Linux user you probably like to test things and in this case you might be interested to have hardware visualization support in your PC.

Intel CPUs with "K" suffix don't support VT-d (hardware virtualization) and currently I'm really sad that I'm bought i7 2600K. For 99% of purposes include gaming I never need to overclock my CPU at all, it's pretty powerful even with default clocks.

But PCIe passthrough it's quite interesting function even if you don't want to run Windows. With proper hardware you can pass your discrete graphics to VM and leave integrated Intel HD for host OS.

There's no way i can ignore advice from you

We'll see how much time i have to dig around today, i'll probably update the build tomorrow... So many decisions.

SSD it's "must have" option these days while you can use HDD for everything what's not require fast I/O.

For VT-d it's really depends if you're Linux enthusiast or not. If not you can easily ignore it because normal user will never really need hardware visualization. For enthusiast it's just really cool feature because you can play with your VMs how you like. E.g make snapshots at any time and then restore state in minutes. Still hardware virtualization require proper motherboard too and sometimes you'll need to spend some time to make it works.

It sounds nice and i'll definitely take it into account. I'm not that deep into linux yet but hope to progress.

Unless you're looking to go for a SLI setup, that PSU is way oversized for your needs.

exactly wtf

personally I like to save on cases, PSUs and ssds (by not getting one) because all three of these things are overrated.

I would say look for the things that are an advantage for PA in particular.

And that's RAM and VRAM

New day new build. I haven't mentioned before that i am building this with my SO and for various reasons we're gonna go for i7 instead, although that might not be necessary for PA or this build. This is also where the 16gb ram comes from, the machine will be used for more things than PA.

As previously mentioned, don't look too hard on the vendors or prices, i'm in Scandinavia with a few different options. The gtx is a gainward phantom and the HDD was a slightly cheaper version that wasn't on the list, same manufacturer, but that's about it. We're doing one final probe about what memory we really need but if things look good this might be it. Thanks for all input folks.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i7-4770 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor (£220.00 @ Amazon UK)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler (£23.98 @ Scan.co.uk)
Motherboard: Asus Z87-A ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (£105.44 @ Scan.co.uk)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LP 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£117.69 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Samsung 840 EVO 120GB 2.5" Solid State Disk (£69.99 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Western Digital AV-GP 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£75.74 @ CCL Computers)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 770 4GB Video Card (£320.48 @ Scan.co.uk)
Case: Fractal Design Define R4 (Black Pearl) ATX Mid Tower Case (£76.99 @ Amazon UK)
Power Supply: Fractal Design Integra R2 500W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply (£50.81 @ Dabs)
Total: £1061.12
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-11-22 07:28 GMT+0000)

All of the above hardware looks like it will be reasonably well supported under modern Linux distros.

i7-4770 is a solid processor, though you are paying a big performance premium. Take a look at - http://ark.intel.com/compare/75047,75122
It may or may not help with PA as I've read a couple of dev posts claiming the game is CPU bound. I'd consider putting the $100AUD difference in my back pocket. Unless you and/or your SO are heavy computer users (researchers, developers, etc) it's probably a waste.

Ditch the additional CPU cooler. Stock coolers work just fine unless you are trying to get something a bit quieter during less demanding usage but I guarantee you the GPU fan will outdo the CPU fan while gaming.

Motherboard is overkill. Z87 chipset is mostly for unlocked CPUs (ie, those with a K on the end) and tri-GPU builds. Use a H87 board. I'd go for a H87M option with Asus. ASRock boards are pretty much the same thing with cheaper components, I've not experienced a significant amount of failures over a fairly large install base. Yes expansion options are nice but to pull a probably surprisingly accurate figure out of my rear end 75% of those options will go unused and a well kitted micro ATX board will do most people.

Memory is probably spot on.

The upgrade from the 840 EVO to the 840 Pro gets a bit extra speed out of the drive. It's still not a bad option but I'd personally drop the CPU cooler and use the savings to get the PRO. If you are a heavy computer user 256GB SSD is a lot nicer than 120/128GB.

Ditch the internal storage drive. Get yourself a basic 2 bay NAS from QNAP or Synology, plug 2x2GB HDDs into it, set it up with mirrored RAID, plug it into your router. Presto - all your documents/media on the one network location so all computers/phones/tablets/weather stations/etc... in the house can access it with ease and if one of the disks dies you don't lose everything (use cloud integration or backup on an external drive for even more security).

You could drop the GTX 770 to a GTX 760 to save some dosh. I'm running a GTX 560 with PA @ 1920x1080 well enough - ~30-45FPS in current build. Also does HL2/NS2/TF2/Dota2 well enough. I'd strongly recommend sticking with nvidia graphics. As much as they are a bunch of uncooperative arsehats (or because of?), their closed source driver is the most reliable way to game on Linux.

PSU seems about adequate. Nvidia recommend a 600W with the GTX 770 and if you plan to kit out a full size ATX motherboard I'd agree but a rough power calculation suggests 500W will work.

I'm not entirely sure how important this is or if i'm nitpicking... But you say reasonably, care to elaborate a bit?

In the interest of not spending all day solving your problem I haven't checked a couple of things like exactly what driver the the onboard network/audio uses and what kernel version support for that was introduced or if there's some wierd unusual issue for that exact motherboard. Thus I can't give a definitive answer that it will 100% work.

If I was a gambling man I'd put beer money on that exact build working though.