A while back I sold my shit and hit the road. After a few years, I've settled back down again and need a battlestation. But I have no idea where the state of the art is these days, what stuff is in the sweet spot for price/performance and what the meme-tech is.
I used to like AMD/ATI stuff but that was years ago and I don't know how things have changed.
If you're building a PC today, what are the must haves and must avoids?
I'll dual boot between win7 (I guess) and linux, maybe an unused win10 partition as future insurance.
AMD is slow as fuck with releasing current tech, so for the time being - unless you're willing to wait until 2017 for new AMD stuff to appear on the market - Intel/NV is the way to go, and the prices fully reflect this, so you can't cut corners here unfortunately.
Single cards are still far away to be able to decently run games in 4K, so a single WQHD (2560x1440) screen is the way to go if you don't want to run SLI.
As for CPUs, anything below an i7 won't last you more than a year, 16 GB of RAM might last a little longer. Forget Windows 7. The current gen of Intel processors have new instruction sets that are only supported on Win10. That doesn't mean you won't be able to run an earlier version of Windows on them, but you may or may not see problems arise if you do that.
Everything really depends on whether you intend to get a rig for "gaming" and if yes, single or multiple monitors. So what are your plans?
Ryder Reed
>Everything really depends on whether you intend to get a rig for "gaming" and if yes, single or multiple monitors. So what are your plans?
I'll do serious work on it too but it's definitely going to support gaming.
Also definitely multiple monitors but maybe just two. Possibly I could go for two widescreen and a portrait monitor of some sort.
I'm not fussed about resolution too much but bigger is better I suppose and no real reason to stick with 1080p.
Grayson Cox
And what would that "serious work" be?
Jaxon Adams
>And what would that "serious work" be? Software development. I telecommute. Currently off a laptop but that will change.
Xavier Peterson
As said
Intel/Nvidia are at the best if money's no issue for you. If this is the case, then go for the regular culprits, i5k, 1080 (or Titan if you really want), 16+GB RAM, M2 SSD + 900gb/1tb SATA SSD's and the works.
If price/performance is what you're looking for, then Intel/AMD is probably going to be your thing. Despite what people say, the RX480 does well for its price. Just make sure you get one that's decently cooled and you ought to be well on your way.
Cameron Campbell
>Single cards are still far away to be able to decently run games in 4K
My 1080 runs all my games in 4k just fine, I've been playing GTA5 all week in 4k with max settings with a stock MSI 1080 Armor with no overclocking and it maintains 50-60fps easily.
Not sure why this meme still exists.
Jaxson Jackson
>GTA5 >50 FPS = decent Get the fuck outta here!
Jacob Lee
>MSI 1080 Armor
>Has the exact same card Mah nigga
Caleb Kelly
More than 60fps on a 60hz monitor is more or less pointless. 60fps average is a decent frame rate for a single player game.
Of course GTA5 is one of the most demanding games on the market today, especially when you max out everything, so most other games run a lot higher than that.
I have 592 steam games now and about 2 others are as demanding as GTA5.
>Hurrrrrr not 4k ready.
If you say so...
Brandon Green
>More than 60fps on a 60hz monitor is more or less pointless.
Thank you, captain obvious. We were talking about less than 60 FPS on a 60 FPS monitor, something you can NOT call "state of the art". What about 144 Hz monitors? They are out there you know, and people prefer them in competitive multiplayer games, and there a GTX1080 just craps out even on 1080p...
>only steam sells games, and every game in existence is available on steam Again, get the fuck outta here....
Jeremiah Gonzalez
>If this is the case, then go for the regular culprits Thanks, I've just been out of the game for long enough that I don't know what the regular culprits are any more. I used to follow this shit like sports but now I don't know shit.
Where is it at with mobos? Anything got interesting in the last couple of years?
Matthew Williams
>mobos? MSI got decent, ASUS went downhill. Gigabyte got their shit straight with the VRM and ASRock mobos got the most features for the price... mATX boards despite their size, nowadays have more features than ATX. There's a new player in budget performance parts, HyperX, which is now a separate brand from Kingston.
Buy your video card from MSI, a Samsung or HyperX SSD (either SATA or M.2), HyperX or Corsair RAM (G.Skill for meme value), Seagate or Toshiba HDD, a power supply from either Seasonic, FSP or EVGA (and stay the hell away from Corsair), get a Corsair, Phanteks, Thermaltake or NZXT (meme) case.
Also liquid cooling your shit is the new standard, so any case that doesn't support at the very least 240mm radiators is automatically deemed to be utter crap. A Corsair GTX h100i is currently the best performing closed loop liquid cooling solution you can get for your CPU (at 240mm size).
Andrew Rivera
But what about on 180hz monitors, or 200hz, or 220hz or 240hz, or more?
I own old CRTs which in lower resolution support huge refresh rates. What cards are even 1080p ready at these frame rates when you consider all cases?
What about if I create a mod that's just a million physics enabled dicks bouncing around the screen and each has a trillion polygons and it runs shit, does that mean literally no card is 1080p capable because theres one gay game out there that it can't run at 1080p
Obviously we take sensible limits on what we mean when we say something is 1080p ready or 4k ready. To do otherwise is to be completely autistic.
This is me playing the other night at 50-60fps in the middle of the city on GTAV with max settings in 4k
>only steam sells games, and every game in existence is available on steam
Literally never said that, reading comprehension FTW.
Jacob Clark
>Also liquid cooling your shit is the new standard The new standard for Cred Forums or something regular gamers really do? I remember when the Xbox360 was supposed to be water cooled... I tried water cooling back in the day but after burning out a few CPUs, I gave up on it. I'm not sure I want to go that far down the rabbit hole again unless it's gotten way easier to do.
Ayden Howard
At this point I don't even know what the hell you're talking about. It's not my reading comprehension, it's your inability to write cohesively. EA doesn't sell on Steam. Ubisoft doesn't sell on steam. They both have more demanding games than GTA V.
And don't fucking tell me your screenshot is with max settings, those road textures are medium at best.
Something regular PEOPLE do. It's really not an option at this point to air cool your CPU unless you're poor, or dislike the pump noise, in which case you'd buy something like the Noctua NH-D15, and run it on really low RPM to have a silent PC.
>unless it's gotten way easier to do There are a fuckton of closed loop solutions. You don't have to do anything just screw it in place, everything is preassembled for you.
Caleb Sanchez
>It's really not an option at this point to air cool your CPU unless you're poor, or dislike the pump noise
Really? Stop spreading bullshit. Goddamn what a bunch of shitty advice you are giving him.
Air cooling is superior to water cooling in literally every way (price, performance, noise) except for extreme overclocking.
Michael Mitchell
Yea, right. Let me guess, you're the faggot with the magic 1080.
Dual (240, 280mm) liquid coolers have been giving heatsinks a run for their money for like a year now. I can count on a single hand how many heatsinks are actually able to compete with these newer liquid coolers. One of them is the NH-D15, which I already mentioned for fairness sake, so get the fuck out of here, nobody is giving bad advice anyone. I won't tell you again...
GET THE FUCK OUT!
Josiah Baker
u are so fucking annoying amd autistic
Isaiah Harris
What in the fuck are you on about? You're getting basic facts WRONG which are easily disputable.
Both of which I own, both of which run fine in 4k maxed out, both of which are sold on steam and are AAA games representative of the upper end of performance in PC gaming right now.
Yes the shots of GTA5 are maxed out, I literally maxed out the settings in the graphics menu in order to take those screenshots, you're trying to bend reality to fit your incorrect preconceptions.
I never said that ALL games are on steam I said that I have a very large steam library and my card can run 99.9% of those games in 4k maxed out with good frame rates, which by any reasonable standard means that the 1080 is just fine for 4k gaming.
You're reaching to find some edge case where some games doesn't run quite at exactly 120fps or some other extreme ideal and then use those edge cases to infer that gaming at 4k is impossible when the overwhelming number of cases it's absolutely fine. This is the kind of autistic behaviour that makes rational conversation difficult.
Whatever standard you have I can also find edge cases which does not satisfy so why bother going down that road? I dunno if its jealousy of what hardware other people have or what, but it's pretty pathetic.
Noah Wilson
>Ubisoft do sell on steam How does your rig handle AssCreed Unity?
Jose Phillips
Or Just Cause 3, for that matter.
Charles Hughes
No idea, not tried yet, I don't like Assassins Creed and never got on with the Just Cause games.
Given what I've heard about Assassins Creed and its lack of optimization for the PC it probably wont run in 4k at max settings but rather run at 4k with some of the high end effects turned off.
But then that's true of something much older like Ark on the PC which runs like total and utter shit while looking completely rubbish. Again these are edge cases and don't represent the vast majority of games (even modern ones) on the market.
I'll refer back to my post >which by any reasonable standard
Yes, there's edge cases. There's edge cases for everything which is why I said reasonable.
Chase Sullivan
>Again these are edge cases and don't represent...
I'm not the user you were politely debating with, I'm OP.
Jonathan Phillips
Well if you're considering 4k then keep in mind that you're always going to have games which are badly optimized on the market and don't run things maxed out even at low resolutions like 1080p so it doesn't make a good reason to avoid going for something that looks amazing.
If you do consider 4k then check out some benchmarks of games you actually play, that's all that really matters.
Adam James
>Well if you're considering 4k then keep in mind that you're always going to have games which are badly optimized on the market
Is there a reason why i5s are preferred over i7s? Is it just price vs performance?
Sebastian Brown
theres no good games anymore at least none that need a powerful computer. just buy something cheap and if you need a good computer get a tablet.
Austin Foster
>theres no good games anymore at least none that need a powerful computer. just buy something cheap and if you need a good computer get a tablet. Thanks for your input.
I'll just play Just Cause 3 on my i5 2GBRAM Asus now. Should run fine.
