Page 2 of Opinions on new PC build

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RE: Opinions on new PC build

Chris Gould (Elite) posted this on Tuesday, 18th November 2014, 06:06

I've done some further investigation and it looks like I can get an nVidia GTX 970 for £250. They appear to use far less power than the 290X while featuring better overall performance. Would you agree with that?

If so, I can mitigate the slightly higher cost of the GPU with the savings I'll make on the PSU, as the 550W I originally chose should be fine. All of the PSU calculators I've tried have said I'll need a sub-400W PSU with the nVidia card and a supra-500W PSU with the ATI card. They are power-hungry beasts!







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RE: Opinions on new PC build

Gareth Williams (Elite) posted this on Tuesday, 18th November 2014, 14:20

A 970 would indeed be the ideal choice. The power to performance ratio is phenomenal! However, if the one you have your eye on has a reference "blower" cooler, then be prepared for an annoying high pitched whine when it reaches full load. If it is custom cooled then it will be perfect!

As for motherboards, the one you picked out does look very good. My own board is a Gigabyte and it's working like a charm. Did you pick that one for the onboard audio, or are you still planning on using your old sound card? If it's the latter, you could save yourself £30 by opting for the stripped down Gigabyte board:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/gigabyte-ga-z97p-d3-intel-z97-s1150-ddr3-pcie-30-%28x16%29-2-way-crossfirex-hdmi-atx

It has less fancy features and only one PCI-E 3.0 16x slot compared to two on the one you picked (which is fine because you'll only be running 1 card anyway). In terms of performance, I doubt you'd really notice any difference.

With the savings you could get the MSI GTX 970 ;)

EDIT:

Also, I forgot to mention about the CPU. Will you be overclocking it at all? Because if not, you could save a little money by getting the non-K 4960 i5. It is the exact same CPU, but without the unlocked multiplier which is used for overclocking.

Or you could even opt for a 4590 to save a little more cash. You would only lose a tiny bit of performance.



This item was edited on Tuesday, 18th November 2014, 15:59

RE: Opinions on new PC build

Chris Gould (Elite) posted this on Tuesday, 18th November 2014, 16:56

I went for that board because I have a Gigabyte that's served me well for almost 8 years, plus I wanted something with decent on-board audio so I could ditch the Audigy 2, but with at least one legacy PCI slot just in case... I also wanted to future proof a bit with the M.2 and SATA Express stuff, although I'll probably never use it (plus the board I'm looking at appears to support eSATA, which will come in handy for the dock I plan on getting). I might have a look at that board when I get home.

The CPU may be over-clocked, but I haven't decided yet. There's only a £6 difference between the standard and the K, so I thought I'd just go for it. My brother-in-law has his 4670 up to 4GHz+, so it might be worth a go. Should still be okay even with the 550W PSU with the nVidia card.

I'm looking at the Palit 970, which is over-clocked and runs very cool/quiet. It has a high OC than the MSI.

http://www.ebuyer.com/665231-palit-gtx-970-jetstream-4gb-gddr5-dual-link-dvi-i-mini-hdmi-three-mini-displayport-pci-e-ne5x970h14g2-2041j

I'm coming in at under £800 now that I don't need to get a beefy PSU for the 290X, but if I could shave a few quid on the mobo that would be a bonus. Will have to compare the features on the site.

I love the way I've jumped from a 760 to a 970 (by way of AMD) in about a day!







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RE: Opinions on new PC build

Gareth Williams (Elite) posted this on Wednesday, 19th November 2014, 02:55

The Palit 970 looks great! It will be an epic addition to your rig, you won't be disappointed!

One other thing to note, if you do intend to overclock the CPU, you'll need a better cooler than the stock one (assuming you were planning on using the stock cooler).



RE: Opinions on new PC build

Chris Gould (Elite) posted this on Wednesday, 19th November 2014, 10:14

Yeah, I'll be using stock for now and getting an aftermarket cooler later when I need to OC.

I'm still going back and forth on the MSI and Palit cards. The later is faster out of the box, but the former has more OC headroom and is a better all-round card (apparently it easily OCs to higher speeds than the Palit and has faster out of the box scores even with the slightly lower clocks). The MSI is listed cheaper than the Palit on all of the comparison sites, but when I visited Amazon it was actually £20 more! I can get it from Scan for a couple of quid more than the Palit though, so I may well end up going for it.

As you say though, either will be a great addition and should last me for a few years at lease. With the 970s you also get a voucher offering a choice between Far Cry 4, Assassin's Creed Unity and The Crew. I'll be getting FC4.

*Edit* Damn, that MSI card has sold out at my first and second choice retailers already. Come on pay day!







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This item was edited on Wednesday, 19th November 2014, 16:46

RE: Opinions on new PC build

Gareth Williams (Elite) posted this on Wednesday, 19th November 2014, 17:03

A lot of sites like Overclockers and Scan have done black friday/cyber monday discounts in recent years, so it might be worth holding off on your purchase until then.

Quote:
Chris Gould says...
"I love the way I've jumped from a 760 to a 970 (by way of AMD) in about a day!"

At this rate, you'll be eyeing a Titan Z by the end of the week ;)



RE: Opinions on new PC build

Chris Gould (Elite) posted this on Thursday, 20th November 2014, 23:24

Please talk me out of buying an i7. I don't need it for gaming, right?







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RE: Opinions on new PC build

Gareth Williams (Elite) posted this on Friday, 21st November 2014, 03:04

There is almost no benefit to buying an i7 for gaming. Barely any games take advantage of the extra cores.

i7s are better for heavily multi-threaded tasks like encoding, rendering, CAD etc. For gaming, an i5 will be plenty powerful enough.



RE: Opinions on new PC build

Chris Gould (Elite) posted this on Friday, 21st November 2014, 11:45

Yeah, that was my thought. I suppose Hyperthreading could become more useful as time goes by, but at the moment only a handful of games support it and by the time more do I'll be able to get a cheaper, more powerful i7. I do the odd bit of encoding, but it'll still be considerably faster than my Core 2 Duo. Right, mind made up, sticking with the i5. Cheers!

On the plus side I've learned a fair bit about the latest PC hardware over the last few days. I haven't looked into it in years and it's amazing how much it's changed during that time. Completely alien from the time I was cranking out a dozen PCs a day.







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RE: Opinions on new PC build

Chris Gould (Elite) posted this on Saturday, 22nd November 2014, 14:38

I've finally ordered! I had a few component decisions forced on me by lack of availability and my own impatience! Here's what I finally settled on:

MB: Gigabyte Z97X Gaming 3
CPU: Core i5-4690K @ 3.5GHz
GPU: MSI GTX 970 Gaming O/C 4GB
HDD: Crucial MX100 512GB
RAM: 8GB G.Skill Ripjaws X DDR3 @ 1866MHz (2x 4GB)
PSU: XFX TS 550W

I have to wait until Monday for the GPU, but everything else should be here tomorrow via Prime. I originally went for 1600MHz RAM, but Amazon couldn't fulfil so I opted for the slightly faster 1866MHz. The timings are bit looser at 9-10-9-28, but it's still rated as CAS9 and it was cheaper for some reason.

I really hope Amazon delivers tomorrow as I can't wait to get building!







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