Yyg, Cid and Mal's Gaming PC Construction Thread (open discussion)

[Yygdrasil]

Re: Yyg, Cid and Mal's Gaming PC Construction Thread (open discussion)

I'm not retarded. I know what they are. I'm just asking for a suggested setup.

[Malacite]

Re: Yyg, Cid and Mal's Gaming PC Construction Thread (open discussion)

I'm flexible enough to stretch the extra $100 towards the SSD. Boot up time has always been a plague to me... and keeping my minimal number of games (FFXI and XIV basically) loaded on it would be ideal as long as they fit with the OS.

I also may or may not be able to salvage my current power source out of my own rig... sell off my 2 current graphics cards for a few bucks and scale back to a single monitor. Lets call my budget 1200 for the purposes of maximizing. Provided my intention is to keep the 120gig SSD, what would you suggest I replace in the above setup to make it better?

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Also: I'm not including Windows OS in my calculations because... I uhh... know a guy.

Ygg, if those are the only 2 games you plan to load, + your OS, 80 GB is probably enough - it depends on the price difference between an 80 and a 120. Like I said, Windows 7 is only 16 or 20 GB depending on if you have 32 or 64-bit, and then factor in how much space you need for XI, XIV + updates. I guess 80 might be cutting it close actually, since XI is pushing around what, 30 now? and ARR will likely be around the same so yeah nevermind.


Also, RAID is nice but I personally prefer just having a single drive that's partitioned into a "main" drive and a back-up drive - it's worked just fine for me so far.

[cidbahamut]

Re: Yyg, Cid and Mal's Gaming PC Construction Thread (open discussion)

Also, RAID is nice but I personally prefer just having a single drive that's partitioned into a "main" drive and a back-up drive - it's worked just fine for me so far.

And what do you do when that single drive dies? That's right, you lose everything. It's fine if that's your preference, but it sounds to me like you don't understand the point of a RAID.

[Armando]

Re: Yyg, Cid and Mal's Gaming PC Construction Thread (open discussion)

And what do you do when that single drive dies? That's right, you lose everything. It's fine if that's your preference, but it sounds to me like you don't understand the point of a RAID.

I don't see the point of using RAID 1 for backup purposes. Duplicating EVERYTHING is very wasteful. My System folder on Windows 7 is 17.5 GB alone, and there's no need to back it up. Same thing for programs and Steam games - you can just redownload all of that. Your AppData folder (where your application settings live) on the other hand is relatively small and can't be replaced. Better to have a separate drive for backing up only what you need - as a bonus you can keep it separate from your computer in case it gets stolen. It also won't be sucking up power constantly.

You do a RAID 0 to improve read speed, but you get no extra space out of it, no improvement to write speed, the speed boost won't be as high as an SSD's and it consumes more power/makes more noise.

Either option is worse than 2 HDDs or 1 SSD + 1 HDD.

[cidbahamut]

Re: Yyg, Cid and Mal's Gaming PC Construction Thread (open discussion)

I don't see the point of using RAID 1 for backup purposes. Duplicating EVERYTHING is very wasteful.

In an enterprise environment, sure. For personal use I find mirroring drives to be pretty damn handy. I recently had one of my media hard drives die. Luckily for me I had it mirrored so all my data remained intact. If it had been one a lone hard drive I would have been digging through backups that were several months old rather than popping in a new drive and moving on. I do however just have the one SSD for the OS and installed programs.

As I said, in an enterprise environment it makes more sense to use RAIDs that rely on the parity bit so you don't lose as much storage capacity, but that requires a minimum of 3 or 4 drives iirc and frankly I've run into enough headaches in my day of RAID controllers not recovery drives properly that I'd rather just have a full clone of the drive ready to keep soldiering on after its mate has died. Maybe you guys are storing a metric fuckton of media so it's more of a concern for you, but I'm pretty happy with my 500GB of storage space that has an exact duplicate waiting in the wings.

[Armando]

Re: Yyg, Cid and Mal's Gaming PC Construction Thread (open discussion)

I know it can be handy not to have any downtime if a disk dies, but that doesn't happen enough to justify the use of RAID for me. It mostly comes down to how much you value space VS how lazy you want to be backing up. Since Yyg was discussing getting the most bang for his buck though, it didn't make a lot of sense to me to go with the RAID.

[Malacite]

Re: Yyg, Cid and Mal's Gaming PC Construction Thread (open discussion)

Never had an HDD fail on me so... eh? I'm not saying you're wrong, just that I've personally never really had a need for it. I'm pretty sure all my AppData could fit onto a flash drive if I really needed it.


Losing all your media files though - movies, pictures etc - that sucks.

[DakAttack]

Re: Yyg, Cid and Mal's Gaming PC Construction Thread (open discussion)

This thread made me lol.

The next Intel chip is around the corner. With Haswell you can achieve clocks of around 5Ghz, stable. This is win/win, because if you spring for the new hardware you'll be future-proof for quite some time, but if you're interested in saving some money it's not hard to find a good deal on current generation i5s and i7s. And, economically, i5s are the best choice for gaming. Of course, i7s do have a larger cache, but you're also paying a lot for Hyper Threading, which isn't something developers are programming for. It's a waste.

Additionally, I would recommend a Gold Certified power supply. They're a little bit more expensive, but you're not letting so much power go as heat, which saves you money and keeps your PC cool.

[Armando]

Re: Yyg, Cid and Mal's Gaming PC Construction Thread (open discussion)

And, economically, i5s are the best choice for gaming. Of course, i7s do have a larger cache, but you're also paying a lot for Hyper Threading, which isn't something developers are programming for. It's a waste.

Thanks. Last time I built a box was quite some time ago, when Core 2 Quad was where it's at. Was wondering about that myself.

[Malacite]

Re: Yyg, Cid and Mal's Gaming PC Construction Thread (open discussion)

This thread made me lol.

The next Intel chip is around the corner. With Haswell you can achieve clocks of around 5Ghz, stable. This is win/win, because if you spring for the new hardware you'll be future-proof for quite some time, but if you're interested in saving some money it's not hard to find a good deal on current generation i5s and i7s. And, economically, i5s are the best choice for gaming. Of course, i7s do have a larger cache, but you're also paying a lot for Hyper Threading, which isn't something developers are programming for. It's a waste.

Additionally, I would recommend a Gold Certified power supply. They're a little bit more expensive, but you're not letting so much power go as heat, which saves you money and keeps your PC cool.

Thanks for the head's up - Is the Haswell the new 4000-series from Intel that's coming in Q3 or somethign different entirely? I just don't want to screw myself here by getting a processor that can take gaming but not streaming as well simultaneously. As far as power supplies go, I'm rather partial to coolmaster - haven't had a problem with them, ever.

Now if only SSDs would come down just a notch and along with that precious GTX 670... oh man I'm glad I decided to wait 1 more year. I've been bitching and griping about my PC for ages now but forcing myself to wait because I figured some really new stuff is likely due out soon - I was right ^^ (based that on the projections for the GTX 700-series and the new game consoles due out).

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Thanks. Last time I built a box was quite some time ago, when Core 2 Quad was where it's at. Was wondering about that myself.

Yeah that's what's powering mine - best $1500 I ever spent really, and that was a prefab HP at Futureshop... this time around I actually have an idea of what I'm doing.

[Nandito]

Re: Yyg, Cid and Mal's Gaming PC Construction Thread (open discussion)

I'm trying to wonder if it's worth the jump to the 780 from my 670. Apparently it's said SLIing 670 would be my better bet, but I'd still be stuck with 2GB on a 1440p resolution. Plus, this particular card overclocks like crap. (Though I'm gonna give it another go at it. Maybe I did something wrong.)

[Yygdrasil]

Re: Yyg, Cid and Mal's Gaming PC Construction Thread (open discussion)

ok then. Today's project is to take the components I has chosen yesterday and tweak my selections based on your recommendations. Looks like I'm going for a 650-670 card, dropping it down to 750 watts for power supply (gold perhaps?) and settling for an i5 over i7 for purposes of cost+need/vanity+longevity. In the next 2 years or so I can swap out the Processor if I feel the need. As long as my mobo is still compatible, I'll be perfectly satisfied with that option.

Time to work.

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God I love combo deals that include things I was already going to buy. Thank you for predicting my needs, Newegg. This is why I'm leaving Tiger Direct for you.

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http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.1291166

[Jarre]

Re: Yyg, Cid and Mal's Gaming PC Construction Thread (open discussion)

I was looking for a new Laptop for work which could also play FFXIV if I wanted to. Was looking at this one from Novatech in the UK. The Novatech Elite N1535

[Yygdrasil]

Re: Yyg, Cid and Mal's Gaming PC Construction Thread (open discussion)

Case $180
COOLER MASTER HAF X RC-942-KKN1 Black Steel/ Plastic ATX Full Tower Computer Case - Newegg.com

HDD $100
Seagate Barracuda STBD2000101 2TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Retail - Newegg.com

SSD $100
SAMSUNG 840 Series MZ-7TD120BW 2.5" 120GB SATA III Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) - Newegg.com

Graphics Card $245
EVGA SuperClocked 03G-P4-2666-KR GeForce GTX 660 3GB 192-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card - Newegg.com

Power Supply $160
COOLER MASTER Silent Pro Gold Series RS800-80GAD3-US 800W ATX 12V v2.3 / EPS 12V v2.92 SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS GOLD Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply - Newegg.com

Memory $70 (optional additional 8 gigs)
CORSAIR XMS 8GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model CMX8GX3M1A1600C11 - Newegg.com

Processor/Motherboard/Ram Bundle $383
Newegg.com - Computer Parts, PC Components, Laptop Computers, LED LCD TV, Digital Cameras and more!


$70 in Mail in Rebates (after I ensure that everything works perfectly and I don't need to do return exchanges)
$170 in instant savings from discounts, deals and bundles
Free Shipping

Total Cost: $1,200 and change ($1,130 after rebates)

[cidbahamut]

Re: Yyg, Cid and Mal's Gaming PC Construction Thread (open discussion)

I fully approve of your choice of case. It has served me remarkably well.