My (possibly disastrous) attempt to build a PC

well i can agree with the "nVidia is somewhat better" thing I personally thing they do a good job of balancing the inner components so that none of the potential is wasted.

it's often you see and AMD card with dram too fast for the GPU, so it just runs at lower than the speed it can. stuff like that.

I just think it's a sad state of things because we need the concurrence to keep the quality flowing.

heck I often recommend AMD just for that reason

never has a joke-picture been more accurate.

Alright, home stretch...I hope. (yes, I still haven't f...rigging done this. Being lazy and kinda busy is not a good combination). After finally informing myself at least a little bit outside of this thread and having another look at the build hostile linked a while ago (thanks again for that) decided that I could maybe spend a litte more than 1k euros and go for something like this.
Most of the parts in there are still random "many people used that so i guess it doesn't suck" picks, but I'm working on changing that.
I'm mostly wondering whether the cpu a bit of an overkill compared to the other parts and the i5-4690k might be a wiser choice (I saw that one used in a majority of builds within my budget so I just assumed that it must be pretty good). Also I'm not sure if I even want to overclock at some point and will surely not do it right from the start, so getting the 'k' version might not even be necessary. So...uh well still not really sure about most parts. I'm leaning towards the radeon r9 290x (if I can afford the x :S) since I really don't want to run into that memory issue of the gtx 970. However, the gtx 970 seems to perform better outside of that and someone said that it's pretty unlikely to actually be affected by that memory problem wile using a 1080p monitor. I guess I'll just flip a coin or something :|

The gtx has many other perks. Can consider getting it for that alone.

dude that build looks



just cooler way underpowered. H50-60 at the very least. http://www.amazon.com/Corsair-Hydro...9?ie=UTF8&qid=1431200163&sr=8-9&keywords=h100

After doing a bit more research, the GTX 970 problem does not seem to be as serious as I thought.
SO i revert my earlier statement. Go for the GTX970 or GTX980 if you have the money.

The GTX 970 is still a good graphics card, but it really has 3.5GB of VRAM. Not 4Gb like it says.
90% of the people probably will not notice the difference.

1080p gaming does not tend to use more then 3GB of VRAM unless you really push the graphic settings or depending on the max settings for the game. Like Shadow of Mordor HD Texture pack. So if you stick to 1080p you should not really have a problem.

You can watch this video for an explanation:

Skip to 16:30 if you want the explanation.

But basically its that earlier reports of the GTX 970 slowing down are because some testers forced the card to use that last 512MB of slow RAM. Under normal conditions, the card will limit itself to 3.5GB of the VRAM. And be very playable.

Watch this video to see the GTX 980, 970, R9 290, & R9 290X being compared head to head:


NVIDIA Generally gets higher FPS and uses less power then the AMD equivalent cards.
The advantage AMD usually has is pricing. But you pay for it with slightly higher electricity bills.

As for the GPU, here is a comparison between the 4690K and the 4790K:
(4670K is almost identical to the 4690K, only difference is the 4690K they used a better method of applying thermal paste between the heat spreader (metal top) and the CPU die for slightly better temps and slightly better performance.)




Getting the K version is not really necessary unless you plan to Overclock.
If you do not plan to overclock, you do not need an additional heatsink, Intel already provides one in the CPU box. Unless the box is labeled OEM. OEM usually means its just the CPU, no heatsink included.

I would compose another build, but it is Mother's day and I have to go to a family gathering. I'll throw something together when I get back.

A good aftermarket cooler costs only like 30-40€ and is one of the best quality-of-life upgrades you can make. The Intel stock cooler tends to get really loud when your CPU is under load.

Alright! If I were you, I'd ditch the i7 and go for the i5, you shouldn't really need the extra physics performance, the i5 is sill a beast at calculations. Contrary to what @tatsujb said, that cooler is not at all underpowered. In fact, the H60/50 is pretty close to it's cooling potential, even with the stock fans on the coolers. (I own the 212+ and an H55 (exact same thing as the H60/50, but with different fans and mounting brackets) and I'd call them equals.) The H55 does look sleeker, if you care My other bother is the CX PSU. I'm going to try my best to convince you to get any other one by Corsair since those things kind of suck. The HX, RM or AX are a better choice for sure (but maybe I have bad luck with the CX series).

By the way, about the vRAM issue with the 970, Planetside 2 at 1080p and maxed out settings only uses about 1.5-2GB of RAM and I use 99% of my GTX 780's processing power, so I don't think the slowdown will be an issue. However, the card you have is pretty solid (I like XFX, good customer service). If you really would prefer GeForce, you could pick up a 700 series card for a pretty amazing price right now--just look for a new, unused one.

I managed to get my i7 to 90C on the stock heatsink once, without overclocking it

While I agree in theory, in practice it really depends on the person. Some people don't mind the noise, some people don't notice the noise as much or tune it out, other people play with headphones. But yes, if the PC being quiet is a concern, that Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo is a good choice without going liquid cooled. Especially nice when paired with an ASUS Strix series graphics card which do not turn on unless they go past a certain temperature. i.e. heavy gaming.

As for an updated build, here ya go: http://de.pcpartpicker.com/p/tvTN7P
If you do not like how loud the stock CPU heatsink is, feel free to buy the Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo and install it after you are done. Just make sure your PC case is big enough to fit it.

I still think the 4690K i5 is a good choice, compared to the 4790k.
But again, decide that for yourself. The difference between a 4690 and a 4690K price wise is about 20 Euros, so its nice to have the overclocking capability if you ever want to experiment in the future. If you know you will never overclock, go with the 4690 and save yourself 20 Euros.

I also threw in one 120mm case fan because the K280 case comes with an intake fan in the front, but you should put a second one in the back for exhaust.

I think you have to be a hardware-torturing sadist to wanna use intel's heatsinks but that's just me.

(intel realized that which is why 3rd 4th and 5th gen cpus are almost all OEM)

When I see these I can't help imagining a clever kerbal-styled description info for them.

Just realized that Motherboard I picked supports Crossfire (Dual AMD graphics cards)
Not SLI (Dual NVIDIA Graphics cards)
So here is a motherboard that can do SLI:
http://de.pcpartpicker.com/p/48RMxr

Of course if you don't care about SLI and only plan to have 1 graphics card at any time inside, you can disregard this and stick with the PC Mate motherboard.

Or if you don't plan to overclock, here is the 4690 with the bare minimum motherboard to bring it in at just under 1000 Euro. But the motherboard lacks a USB 3.0 Header so you would not be able to hook up the front USB 3.0 port on the K280 case. This motherboard does have USB 3.0, but on the back.
http://de.pcpartpicker.com/p/CpxknQ

And you can probably pick up a copy of Windows 8 from Amazon, I just put in that other place because I could not add an Amazon one instead. Just make sure its 64 bit so it can use all 8GB of RAM. 32 bit can only use 4GB.

or like wait till win 10 comes out. if I gather right 10 will be a free OS. (or just free upgrade but even from cracked OS)

It's still a non-activated version. Basically they give you free access to it but not a free copy. (I got excited When I thought otherwise)

@websterx01

anything but buying windows. please, dear god. everytime someone does that I feel like I'm gonna puke. They should be paying us to use their damn system it's such a pain!

Meh why should software be free?! Microsoft windows isn't so bad. I use Linux, however it's very limiting compared to windows due to the total lack of content in comparison.

if you want a gaming pc you should buy an oem copy of Windows to go on it.

Actually, Windows 10 is sort of free.
Right now the Beta is completely free for people to use. but it has a built in keylogger. To report back data. And while pretty stable, is still slightly prone to crash and have compatability issues with hardware/software.

Windows 10 upgrade will be 100% free for one year from release to people with activated copies of windows 7, 8, & 8.1. But not for Enterprise users.

If your copy of windows 7/8/8.1 is not legitimate, you can still do a bunch of things. But basically MS wants people with non-legitimate copies to upgrade because Win10 is slightly more restrictive while not activated. So they have more control over what people can do. Giving them an incentive to go legit. While right now you can basically do anything you like with Windows 7/8 non legit copies by comparison.

The free upgrade to non-legit copies is aimed more at the Asia market that pirates a staggering amount of Windows OS according to MS data.

At least that is as far as I understand. So not 100% free.

It's a free upgrade, it isn't free. Microsoft always let people try out beta for nothing.

If you want legit windows you still need to buy a licence, it's just nice to know once 10 is out you don't need to buy again.

I don't get why people object to paying for the operating system so much though. That's one of the reasons that there isn't a levy on 3rd party software on Windows, which is a large factor in why the platform is so successful.

I'm fed up of the anti Microsoft kool aid, if they do something anti consumer then by all means boycott them, however a company wanting to make a profit isn't unreasonable and a lot of Microsoft stuff is actually decent.

really depends on what games you wanna play. for 1/3rd of games linux will be enough and this number's rising.

and why do you need a paid for version of windows when all you want is just the damn proprietary libraries the industry was buckled into developing for?

you could always do wine which is free. or use a passthrough emulation https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=162768 and use a windows on that that you never have to activate.

they don't. they don't ever make the smallest blasted effort.

there's only the sales team left. all they are doing is repackaging a product. nothing new. It's exasperating considering all that's wrong with it.

why are the security flaws never looked into? why is it not redesigned from the ground up? why are bluescreens and randomness not an issue to anyone?

Better grab your reasonably priced non-gaming bucket then, because that's what I intend to do, sorry.

Also will probably go with the i5-4690k and gtx970 combo then, it really doesn't look like that memory issue a huge deal at the moment.

ok that's enough of the "non-gaming" bullsh** i can't stand it anymore.

List me you WHOLE GAMING LIBRARY.

now!

go!

every game you own and plan to play on this new pc.