Any PC Gurus on here wanna offer some advice?

[Razzie.P]

I'm about to build my first PC in approx 12 years, and I'm a bit overwhelmed. I wanna build a nice gaming PC, looking at somewhere around 1500 bucks. I've been googling the crap out of parts, builds, etc etc, but still seem unsure. Anyone here have any links or nice parts lists/builds that'll take a bit of the groundwork out of it?

 

Of the links I've found, this one seems to be the move convenient. Any of these good stuff? Crap? Overpriced?

 

http://elitegamingcomputers.com/top-gaming-computers/

 

 

Thanks for any help!

[Nebulon]

I've been out of the loop for a while now, so I can't tell you what the best video card for the dollar is today.

 

What I can say is this:

- the audio circuitry that comes with any modern PC today is more than good enough. No need for a dedicated audio card.

- unless you want to make a spectacle of your machine, don't bother with any of the fancy lights and glowy stuff.

- Get a backlit keyboard (no need to buy the top-end one though). Just one that's reasonably-priced with good key-action.

- Use cheap-ass audio cables (don't bother with the over-priced monster cables).

- Buy 'generic' if you can (case, power supply, RAM, etc...). <-- give it a bit of extra RAM.

- Pretty much any modern brand of hard drive will do.

 

Other more cutting-edge users on this forum will likely be able to tell you what motherboard and video card to get.

[Amstari]

Check out the Hardware Buying Guides on the PC Gamer website.

 

Spend a bit extra on the power supply, the cheap ones don't last long.

[Keatah]

I just did a shuttle PC not too long ago. Might run you a $100 more, but you get a quality case in a smaller form factor. Love it!

[cimerians]

I researched the crap out of it some years ago and I end up using these guys (click the custom builder link)

 

http://www.ecollegepc.com/

 

They have good pricing and carry the best parts IMO. I use them as reference and also do sample builds.

[leods]

Wait for the new graphics cards comming out. Nvidia is days aways from the next announcement. The new cards are going to go from 28nm to 14nm manufacturing. Also in your price range you'll be getting GDDR5x that has improved bandwidth.

 

the two websites/youtube channels I recommend are:

 

http://www.gamersnexus.net/

 

http://www.pcper.com/

 

For a build guide PC per made recently a build guide that should be all you need, its posted on ther youtube channel.

 

So for now keep reading and learning and wat to see what the next nvidia announcement is going to be.

[Flojomojo]

I agree with all the above advice, and your budget should be fine for something good. You can always wait for the next generation, but you still have to jump in sometime. Whatever you make will be old-gen in a year or less no matter what, but PC builds last longer than they did 12 years ago. Also plug and play works a zillion times better with the newer versions of Windows.

 

I like this page, which I don't think was mentioned yet.

https://pcpartpicker.com

 

(Or you could just do what I did, which get a store bought PC and put a better video card in it. Depending what you want to play, you might not need to be on the bleeding edge)

[Clint Thompson]

Sound advise from Leods. What kind of display do you have or want or is that figured into your $1500 build price? Everyone has their own preferences but I wouldn't cheap out on the power supply but you don't need anything ridiculous. I've had and use Corsair series of power supplies and have never had an issue. If you've got $1,500 for your entire build less the monitor, I feel like a solid 4790k setup on an MSI board, G.Skill Memory, GTX 980 Ti (again, they're about to release a new card so this may turn out to be a great option regardless) and an SSD for your core build is the best price/performance for gaming.

 

You'll be VR Ready, 4K capable and very happy.

Edited May 6, 2016 by Clint Thompson

[leods]

I'll talk about my personal experience as a gamer who does most of his gaming on PC.

 

You'll mostly get the best for your money if you stick to a mid range machine. You can get yourself a 980ti and a 4k monitor, but you will find that some games either don't support 4k properly, or don't scale very well with your high end graphics card. Also if the game has some processor bottleneck it might be very hard to push the game at max setting independently from your graphics. So it's all hit or miss. But most of the time the developers target the mid range (GTX 960 and GTX 970 for Nvidia and R9 380 and r9 390 for AMD).

 

Also, you can get a really nice 144 hz monitor to have smooth framerates to improve your experience, just to find out the game you want to play doesn#t allow for framerates over 60.

 

 

If you are going for VR I guess you could look into higher end stuff, because VR is a power hog, but again, they're generally targeting the GTX 970, and it's still a bit unclear how much you gain from having a better card. It's all dependend on implementation, and will vary from game to game.

 

As for Power supoply: get something 80 plus certified from a reputable brand. A generic power supply could cost you your entire system, and a very decent power supply with no unnecessary extras will not cost that much anyway. EVGA and Corsair seem to be the most used right now for price/performance/relyability.

 

Case: You can buy whatever you want. You can theoretically make your PC in a shoe box, or just plug everything together on your kitchen table and it will work. That said, a good case will make the build much easier, and it will be much better to upgrade later, as you have good room to work. I also love to have an air filter for the intake, keeping dust out of the system. A case that's cheap and good, but has no optical drive bay is the Fractal Design define S. But then there are tons of different options out there for all price ranges. But if you really want to spend 1500 dollars on the PC it makes little sense to skimp on the case, specially cause for higher end systems the airflow in the case will actually make a difference in performance. For mid range or entry level stuff it's mostly not an issue anyway cause the parts don't generate that much heat to begin with.

 

For processor right now you should go intel. I could give you a longer explanation, but the fact is, an i5 6600k will outperform anything AMD does for gaming. AMD can be a good choice for video rendering and some other applications, but for gaming intel is just traight better. As Clint said, the 4790k is also awesome. The decision between a 4790k, a 6700k, a 6600k, or even something like a xeon 1231 v3 is all a matter of what price you can find the different components.

 

So this is the gist of PC gaming. If you have gun looking for all this crap and learning about it all it's just awesome and a ton of fun. If you just want something up and running it can be a nightmare. I could take a look at vendors. There are companies that sell everything put together and running, and sometimes the premium you pay isn't that much at all.

[leods]

as I said, GTX 1080 announced, and it's a beast. I'd wait for the 1070, but if you're looking to spend 1500 dollars the 1080 is your card. When you can get your hands on one.

[Nebulon]

I suppose I should clarify on the power supply. When I say "generic" I don't mean the cheapest one on the shelf. The power supply should be decent (just don't get ripped off).

 

As for cases -- well, I'm a bit of a cheap bastard in that department. However, if modern machines really do get cooling benefits from a good case, then I'm all for it.

 

Similar to what Flojomojo and Leods mentioned, a mid-range machine generally yields the best performance for the price. Over the decades of speccing machines, customers typically got the best value for money with the machine that was one notch down from the top-end model (I'm talking consumer models here; workstations are in a different class/price-range entirely). Thankfully, people keep giving me 'old' workstations and I keep finding data for them to slam though their CPUs.

[Clint Thompson]

as I said, GTX 1080 announced, and it's a beast. I'd wait for the 1070, but if you're looking to spend 1500 dollars the 1080 is your card. When you can get your hands on one.

 

That card is insane! I'm really shocked it came so soon and for the price, it's incredible! This can only mean great news for the 980 Ti as well, though they haven't exactly been notorious for slashing prices in half, it should drop quite a bit once the Pascals are released.

[leods]

 

That card is insane! I'm really shocked it came so soon and for the price, it's incredible! This can only mean great news for the 980 Ti as well, though they haven't exactly been notorious for slashing prices in half, it should drop quite a bit once the Pascals are released.

the 980ti is already out of production. Prices won't drop that much, because a bunch of people will buy a second to do SLI. And for 600 dollars this 1080 beast? That's a no brainer. I knew this was comming, and I knew this was going to be a big jum because of the infor that was already out, I just never expected the price to be this low.

 

This is good news. If the trend goes down the ranks I might get the 1060. But it depends on what games that interest me are out there. I'm still really fine with my GTX 750ti. If I can hold another year and a half I might be able to get something with HBM (high badwidth memory, that will replace GDDR)

[leods]

OK, so going further:

 

""What kind of display do you have or want or is that figured into your $1500 build price?

 

What kind of display do you have or want or is that figured into your $1500 build price?

 

This question is fundamental for the choice of components, and probably the most underrated question in PC gaming. My personal view is 1080p is where your bang for the buck is. It saves you money overall, offers a good experience and full compatibility. It's very rare to have anything nowadays that doesn't fully support 1080p, but not rare at all to see games or applications that are not optimal at higher resolutions or ultra wide screen monitors. And truth be told, a 1500 PC for playing at 1080p is actually stupid overkill. You get framerates so high even at ultra you might start experiencing coil whine. For 1080p the GTX 970 is an absolute beast of a graphics card. It is still VR ready, and from what I said it's actually what VR is targetting right now. As someone already said, in a couple years anything you buy will be old anyway. It doesn't mean it won't play games, it just won't play max settings and all that stuff.

 

I am a strongly believer people exagerate on PC hardware. they don't realyze even a 800 dollars PC will be twice as powerful as a console, if not more. But a lot of people who know exactly what they are doing do go for high end hardware, so it's a taste thing.

 

There are so many choices it actually does get overwhelming. 1080p at 144hz? 1440p at 60? or 1440 at 144? maybe 4k 60? MAybe 1080p 60fps? I do recommend adaptive sync. It's a bit expensive, but it is a very nice technology that is much more important than pushing high framerates or resolutions.

 

Again. If you enjoy learning all this, just keep studying. PC per and Gamer's Nexus are seriously awesome sites. They do go much beyond what most sites or youtubers do. In depth coverage that goes beyond listing some framerates that actually mean nothing.

 

If you want I can link to you, but both have building guides with complete part lists and how to build videos. BTW, I forgot to say, the builds you linked all make perfect sense ar their price ranges. The question really is what kind of gaming you'll be doing. Unfortunately there is no single option that is perfect for everything.

[Flojomojo]

as I said, GTX 1080 announced, and it's a beast. I'd wait for the 1070, but if you're looking to spend 1500 dollars the 1080 is your card. When you can get your hands on one.

Why is 1070 better than 1080? This is why I'm burned out on specs and benchmarks.

 

Then again, the Atari 2600 is better than the 5200 or 7800, but for different reasons.

[leods]

Why is 1070 better than 1080? This is why I'm burned out on specs and benchmarks.

 

Then again, the Atari 2600 is better than the 5200 or 7800, but for different reasons.

 

1080 will cost 600 buck, 1070 will cost 380. even the 1070 will be an absolute beast of a card, so I'd go with that. I'm guessing the 1070 will perform simmilarly to a 980ti. For that price I say it's pretty decent value.

 

If the price target is 1500 dollars, or you want high performance for some reason, yeah, sure. 1080. It's a quite insane card for the price. I personally wound have no use for that.

[Flojomojo]

I guess I don't follow this stuff closely enough to remember that. My card is a somenumber-ti card, which was a fraction of the price but most of the performance, minus something I didn't care about (VRAM or cache or something). I'm a console gamer at heart, I'm happy with good-enough performance on the few semi-modern games I play.

 

I'm glad that no one has to chase annual expensive upgrades just to have fun. Feels like it's been that way for a while, too.