I am usually pretty good about building/upgrading my pc but it has been a while since I have upgraded and I have some questions. Since I have access to this community I was hoping perhaps some here might have direct experience with my concerns. I currently own a AMD FX-8320(OC'd to a bazillion GHZ,) with a Corsair H100i as the cooler. Pair it with an ssd, oodles of ram, a master motherboard(I have a tendency to only by the best motherboards; sabertooths, ROG, etc,) 2 x EVGA nvidia 650ti's in SLI configuration, and it is fine as long as games have multi-core cpu support, but with some that do not, especially a game like Supreme Commander Forged Alliance, it essentially crawls to a halt. I am keenly aware that Supreme Commander pushes cpus more than just about any game on the market, and there may not be a cpu that can handle that game, but in general, I suspect I might get better performance with an intel chip - in fact, I am sure I will get much better single core performance. SO, I am considering an i3-6320: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117621 or an i5-6600k: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117561 I know that I can OC the i5, but frankly I do not care that much. My question is; does anyone have any first hand experience with these chips? Or perhaps even a contrast between the two? I am leaning towards the i3, but it is tough to tell. Also, feel free to add any useful general suggestions, I am always eager to hear new insight.
I do not have first-hand experience with either of those CPUs (FX-4350 here) but I would probably go for the i5. http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i5-6600K-vs-Intel-Core-i3-6320 The i3 has a slightly higher clock speed, but that honestly makes no difference, since the actual power will vary greatly. From the benchmarks I'm seeing, the i5 should be able to perform better than the i3 in most (if not all) situations. Just for reference (since you didn't mention it), an i7 is overkill 90% of the time for a gaming PC. The i5 line tends to falls right on the perfect mix needed for gaming performance and budget. Intel is light years ahead of AMD in single-thread performance, which, as you noted, makes a BIG difference for a lot of games. You can also check out this thread on the KSP forums (KSP is also a Single-thread Unity game, and can be very very demanding on the CPU. As such, their Computer Building thread has tons of excellent advice and comparisions): http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com...megathread-all-questions-acceptable/&page=156 You may need to scroll back a pages to find similar advice to what you're looking for, but I know I've seen similar questions pretty often in there.
I think the i5-6600k with a motherboard that can auto OC is the answer(purely because I like to buy sweet, pricey motherboards.) From what I can discern from online forums, the i5-6600k seems to have an edge over the i3. I am sure part of that is subjective interpretation and posturing, but for whatever reason, according to benchmarks the i5 is better in every way(and I am aware that going solely off of benchmarks is an unwise thing to do.) Thanks for your input Jones, very much appreciated.
I5 6600k is the right choice , the i3 can be a bottleneck in some scenarios, and the cheapest z170 you can buy , spending on mobos is useelss . spend on a spectacular card like the gtx 1070 instead .
Yeah, I hear you. My spending lavishly on Motherboards is my own particular quirk. I was thinking of this motherboard: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813132715 Was thinking this video card: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814487243 And then there are other extraneous upgrades I am going to do; replace my ten fans, swap out the water cooling for an evo 212, faster ram, etc.
Hi, As someone who still fairly regularly plays FA with friends over a LAN connection, I have some thoughts on how it uses CPU Cores. As well as general multi-threading performance in a variety of titles. ---> Just wanted to insert this about SC:FA - the game has had a bug, known as the sim-speed slow-down bug, since launch. Basically, the game fails to tidy up after its self when units are killed, so they still take CPU cycles. This doesn't so much over-whelm a decent CPU, as create some form of bottle-neck where NO work is getting done. Set yourself up an 8-player skirmish on a large map with 7 AI's - or indeed just an 8-AI free for all battle. The game will run great, steadily using more ram and CPU as time goes on. However, you will eventually start to notice a slight slow-down, and the game will eventually become unplayable - assuming the AI's last that long. When this slow-down finally occurs, you'll notice your CPU load will be lower than when the game was running well. Basically, the most powerful CPU in the world, because it'd not be even close to fully utilised, would slow down in this game eventually. Newer CPU's helped to a degree, but it was these CPU's that really highlighted the underlying issue. An older Q6600 Core2Quad for example - a CPU I bought back in the day just for Supreme Commander and Forged Alliance - could get pushed hard. A newer 2500k - which was my next upgrade - never really broke a sweat with this game. I'd imagine newer CPU's would be the same. Note: FA is surprisingly graphically demanding late-game when you have a huge base. My twin 680's - FA has SLI support - used to max out, which seems silly. Even my 1070 gets worked harder than you'd expect by the old DX9 engine. I recently built a small system for a friend based around the i3 6120 CPU, paired with a GTX 950 and pair of SSD's in RAID0 - a mix of second-hand and new parts were used, and a fresh install of Windows 10 Home 64bit finished it off. This machine actually performed far better than I imagined, the CPU is surprisingly strong and the improved scheduler in W10 really seems to like Hyperthreading, allowing this CPU to appear to punch above where its dual-core roots would suggest. My friend came from and older AMD Tri-Core CPU, decent, but even with the same build of W10 it was very prone to maxing out a single core in many titles - FA included. Comparing this to some of the other PC's of a similar generation, namely a Q6600 and Q8200 system - both Core 2 Quads - also used on the LAN, saw the same characteristics. However, my somewhat newer i7 2600k and the aforementioned i3 6120 show a much much more even CPU load over all cores when playing FA. The older CPU's seemed to benefit from using the "Core Maximiser" tool, if you're familiar with it, but there was still an abnormal load on ONE core. Note: we run FA quite heavily modded. Now, regarding CPU load on individual cores, GPU make and model is rather relevant here. As between us we have a large variety of kit to test on - plus I have more kit than all the others combined, and I assembled every bit of kit myself lol - we've been able to make some interesting comparisons. We've observed that nVidia's "Multi-threaded Optimisation" driver profile option can actually make a huge difference in certain titles for certain newer CPU's and GPU's. This setting allows the Direct X thread - often the heaviest thread - spread over multiple cores, even in old DX9 titles such as FA. We've been led to believe that DX12 is the holy grail when it comes to graphics API multi-threading, however, NV have been doing something similar in drivers for quite some years now. It's not perfect, but when two systems with a similar CPU but different GPU's can show hugely difference CPU load characteristics in a given title, then it proves it certainly helps in many titles that are reliant on one CPU core. Please note: we've used several older AMD and NV GPU's, from NV 200 series through to the latest Pascal, but do not have any of the newer AMD cards - I suspect they do something similar in drivers for non DX12 titles? As I'm prone to rambling, I'll mention my recent PC upgrade dilemma, and the choices I made...just so you understand my thinking... My main gaming PC for a long time had been a fully custom water-cooled and overclocked 2500k with two GTX 680's, using a pair of fast SSD's in RAID0 and an older mechanical drive for storage. Once upon a time very much cutting-edge and, with its full custom external water loop, a build I'm still quite proud of. Having a pair of GTX 680's and only running at 1920x1200 meant the graphically the system continued to be able to play demanding titles pretty much maxed out. Even games that scaled poorly were getting like a 50% boost minimum over one GPU. However, as time went on, titles started becoming a bit bloaty in regards to vRam requirements - my 680's are only the 2gb models - and SLI support inconsistent. I recall buying ARK on the promise of imminent DX12 support and with it the ability to use both my GPU's reliably - of course, well over a year later that's not materialised...guess they used those funds to make the DLC. Gits. Anyway, my gaming PC was beginning to show it's age. So, I was starting to spec up its replacement. I settled on a 6700k, 16gb DDR4 3200, two GTX 1080's, an M.2 512mb 960 Pro, a pair of Samsung EVO 850 500gb in RAID0, all on an ASUS Hero motherboard. I'd then be adding the various bits for water-cooling it, after the initial testing on air as well as, ultimately, a new 1440p monitor. As you can imagine, this was quite a price tag, but PC's are my thing, so that's the cost of it. As always, I try to do my due diligence and make sure I'm actually getting good value for my money. While the system I spec'd up would doubtless be great, there was a degree of doubt over the level of the performance increase I'd get from the CPU. Intels recent IPC increases have been somewhat underwhelming. Add to that my 2500k, as you'd imagine, was nicely overclocked at 4.6ghz - it'd do 5ghz, but I wanted it to last, temps were fine but I'd set myself a limit of 1.4v under load. Doing lots of research online, and speaking to people who'd actually spend their own money on similar Sandy Bridge to Skylake upgrades, the general gist of things was that yes, of course the 6700k is better, but it's not that much better. People were seeing minimum frame rates getting a healthy lift with a given GPU vs. the older Sandy Bridge systems, but only a minimal lift to max and, surprisingly considering the minimum increase, average fps. As the bulk of my spend was going to be on the CPU, and the supporting hardware - so, Motherboard, RAM, new drives etc. etc. this made me re-evaluate. Now, as a fully water-cooled system, just popping out a GPU and replacing it with the new one really isn't that straight-forward. However, I had another Sandy B. system - the one I used to take for our LAN games. A good, but more modest and mostly second-hand build consisting of: 2600k @ 4.4ghz, GTX 680, 8gb DDR3 1600 and two SSD's in RAID0. A nice little machine. My thought was, as it's simply air-cooled (CPU uses an AIO which is effectively air-cooled in this regard) it's be easy to pop a new GPU in this rig. So, that's basically what I did. I snagged myself the cheapest GTX 1070 I could find, a pair of 500gb Samsung EVO 850 SSD's and turned this second PC into my new main gamer. The old water-cooled rig was left basically as-is, and is what I currently use as my Empyrion Server. Comparing my budget build to others who have much newer CPU's and a 1070, sees very little difference in the FPS and overall gaming experience we see in numerous titles. Synthetic benchmarks just reinforce this perception with very similar scores - indeed, I was regularly beating those with newer CPU's due to my 2600k's overclock to 4.4ghz. Nice. One thing I will add, I've always been an i5 > i7 in terms of values - so pure quad core vs. quad + HT. However, in several newer titles I'm seeing HT really come into its own, allowing for even better CPU load balance over all cores. You also get an extra 2mb of cache on the i7's too, which may be the bulk of the improvement I don't know. Regardless, the i7's appear to be coming into their own, though the £80+ price premium if buying new would still hurt, as that's money towards more ram, a better GPU etc. So, my advice for your upgrade Fracalite, yes I got here eventually lol.... Well, the i3 is a surprisingly good CPU, if you can overclock it all the better, though it might not impress considering your current CPU and it's OC. However, I'd advise going for a true quad core i5 over any i3 as they really are a different class. Additionally, if your budget will stretch to it, don't simply dismiss the i7's as an over-priced option, titles really do seem to be benefiting from HT now, certainly from my own 2500k vs. 2600k comparisons - the former being clocked higher remember. If on more of a budget, something like a second-hand 2600k as I have might be a bit of a bargain. I am literally over £2,000 better off than I would have been vs. my full 6700k upgrade, yet I'm perfectly happy, can max any title at my 1920x1200 resolution (1440p soon...maybe lol) and the 2600k is coping admirably. I LIKE value for money. I will do my full upgrade one day, but I'd like to see a better IPC increase over Sandy B. before I do. Note: I'm well aware that it's not all about the IPC, there are some interesting technologies on the chipset offered by the newer tech, such as M.2, PCI-E 3.0, wider CPU > PCI bus etc. etc. However, they're still not quite enough to swing it for me. The key is really just to do your research, speak / forum chat to others who've been their and spend their own money. I admit, part of me initially heavily resisted the whole "Sandy B. to Skylake NOT that huge an increase" line I was reading time and time again because I wanted a reason to do the full build lol. However, I'm genuinely happy with my more modest purchase. Best of luck with whatever you decide. Scoob.
Sorry, took me so long to type that I missed a few posts: Auto-OC motherboard. No. The auto-settings for overclocking on motherboards work, but they invariably hugely over-volt the CPU. This leads to more heat and more stress on VRM's etc, let alone the CPU as the extra heat increases resistance. Now, the CPU may well be 100% fine for the entire lifetime - i.e. how long you need it to run at these speeds. But, personally, I like to give my CPU's the minimum vCore needed to reach a given Mhz target & remain stable. My old Q6600, which ran at 3.6ghz on air from like day two of my ownership - quite a high clock for a Q6600 on air back in the day - was retired and set back to stock years ago, and is still my main work horse PC for general internet stuff, and it's my main file server to boot. The 6600k is indeed an excellent choice, the $ saved could be well spent on other hardware. Personally, if I had to buy today, I would select the 6700k, but that's me. Motherboard-wise, I never go super high-end (exception being the Gigabyte boards, bought second-hand, in my current gamer) as I have no use for half the extras they put on them. I generally look for the board that offers the improved power delivery over the basic board, and go for that. So, in todays tech that would be the ASUS Hero for example. GPU-wise, nice choice, your US pricing is a lot better than UK that's for sure. However, I've been very pleased by my much cheaper (it was like 60% of the cost) GTX 1070. It also came with a very impressive aftermarket cooler, so the thing is silent. Coming from full customer water cooling as I do, I hope you appreciate how significant me saying that is. FYI: I have the Palit Gamerock GTX 1070, the only downside is it's quite large, so not for SFF cases methinks. Scoob.
well if you can live with a entry level z170 , its gona save you bucks why go for the founders edition ? it runs hot and at lower clocks , u can get gigabyte xtreme gaming or any of the premium cards for 670$ or so as for ram , ud need ddr4 anyways for a skylake setup
Why not save up and buy a beast of a CPU, you only live once enjoy it the most you can if gaming is your thing you spend most time on...... Get an intel @ 3.6ghtz or 3ghtz. Get 3000mhtz RAM or faster. Game on.
Scoob, you are awesome. "So, my advice for your upgrade Fracalite, yes I got here eventually lol...." I have it mentioned on my profile to call me Pete, and you are free to call me that. I filled out my profile name as "Fractalite" because I have used it for so long, I was a little on auto-pilot when signing up on these forums. Also, Krenios, piddlefoot, and any other reading this, feel free to refer to me by my name. With regards to "As I'm prone to rambling" and "sorry, took me so long to type that I missed a few posts: Never apologize for these things. I love how much you write. I am very fortunate to be a gifted writer, and with that comes both an interest and a responsibility in reading and making sure people keep writing me things when I find someone who has the ability. YOU qualify as such, so NEVER STOP WRITING. EVER. "As someone who still fairly regularly plays FA with friends over a LAN connection" and "Note: we run FA quite heavily modded." Many years ago I had the dubious distinction of being quite talented with Starcraft Broodwars. I dominated first my college's small ladder, and later went on to wreck havoc whenever someone was foolish enough to challenge me either in ladder play or just randomly, "hey, you like Starcraft, wanna play sometime?" There were several Broodwar "official" ladders, one of which I massacred. I hope you can forgive my conceit here; needless to say, when SC2 was announced, my toes got all sorts of twitchy in excitement. That precipitated in a multi-year heartbreaking disillusionment when, once the momentum/inertia of the Broodwar days had spent itself, I realized SC2 for the terrible game that it was and the outright fraudulent attempt by Blizzard on a number of fronts; Diablo 3 is just insulting. This saw me cast about for something.... ANYTHING as a strategy game replacement. There are a lot of titles out there, and for a while I was at a loss; while I was entertained by many games, not many are actually very well made strategy games; the only other title that had ever made an impression on me was Homeworld: Cataclysm, and even that gem of a game needed a few things to truly be up to my lofty standards. It was then that I randomly stumbled upon Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance. It was like a dream come true. FINALLY a worthy strategy game, THE strategy game! After a few weeks/months of delirium, I then found my way to the FAF community and the maps and mods therein(Forged allaince is the only game that I have ever enjoyed watching online - Gyle casts on youtube were/are pretty fun.... even with him being a Tory and all...) This was a few years ago, and ultimately lead to a second heartbreak when I realized my awesome new PC could not run it, but then would peter out(yuck yuck yuck) after a bit; if you play the game with an 8320 you can watch the sim speed slowly sag until things are unplayable, and then IF you can kill off the computers under those conditions, it sllooooowwwwlllyyyy gets better and then returns to balanced. I do not know if I will make it back to SC:FA and FAF as I have other priorities at the moment, but if I do, I would very much like a computer that can run it. I often refer people to "Mavor therapy." "As always, I try to do my due diligence and make sure I'm actually getting good value for my money." Money is not really an object here, I mean I could just plop down the 4k for a 4960k, right? RAWR! But that would be absurd and not very sound decision making. I strongly doubt that I would see that large a difference in games/general use between the 4960K and 6600K or even the 6700K "One thing I will add, I've always been an i5 > i7 in terms of values - so pure quad core vs. quad + HT. However, in several newer titles I'm seeing HT really come into its own, allowing for even better CPU load balance over all cores. You also get an extra 2mb of cache on the i7's too, which may be the bulk of the improvement I don't know. Regardless, the i7's appear to be coming into their own, though the £80+ price premium if buying new would still hurt, as that's money towards more ram, a better GPU etc." THIS, this is what I was interested in. I sometimes miss these things. I still really like the i3, but it is increasingly looking like I need to update my knowledge on these things. I am still not sold that gaming or just playing a game or two would really see that much of a performance improvement, but I am going to do some more reading. "Motherboard-wise, I never go super high-end (exception being the Gigabyte boards, bought second-hand, in my current gamer) as I have no use for half the extras they put on them." I do.... well, I go high-end, but then never use the features - at least outside of overclocking. Just to try them out(I have always purchased Asus) the last time I purchased a motherboard I went with a high-end Asrock, and I have been.... kinda pleased with its performance, but I have always wanted a Sabertooth, so I am going to go that route. "Auto-OC motherboard. No. The auto-settings for overclocking on motherboards work, but they invariably hugely over-volt the CPU." This is also good. I did not know this as I have only ever done it manually via the bios. "My main gaming PC for a long time had been a fully custom water-cooled" I simply cannot bring myself to do this. I know I am reasonably good with building pc's, I have even been secretly curious about it, but goddamn! This last time around I went with the H100i thinking I would be awesome with the partial water cooling solution and I am NOT impressed. Do not get me wrong, I am sure a full system with reservoir, pump and all the piping is a very different animal, but based on testing, the H100i seems sluggish to respond to sudden temp differentials and is a %*&#$ to clean. "So, that's basically what I did. I snagged myself the cheapest GTX 1070 I could find." and "GPU-wise, nice choice, your US pricing is a lot better than UK that's for sure." With GPU's.... well, that is the real trick. I know I started this thread with questions about cpu's, but I enjoyed your thoughts on your gpu adventures(harrowing as I am sure it was ) I choose the founders edition card because I... well. I looked at all the listed specs, the reviews, and what I could find on forums and web searches, then I took out my dart and I threw it and said, "that one!" The founders edition seems to fit almost exactly where I want the price vs performance vs specs to rest. As far as the pricing... yikes. You do not really hear about it as much, mostly due to the cultural self-image inconvenience, but 60-70% of America is dramatically under-employed. So 600 dollars for a card is asking quite a bit. I am fortunate as I can consider these things, but many cannot, and it is very sad. I do not know what the situation is like in the UK, I confess to be a little frustrated with the whole "Brexit" thing, but maybe it was warranted? I only mean to say I bet the earning and spending power is greater in the UK than here in the states. I am going to be traveling to Europe soon to try and be somewhere else for a while. I think I will start in Germany, but I am eager to see your beautiful country Krenios. "a pair of 500gb Samsung EVO 850 SSD's" I have yet to do any kind of raid scenario with hard drives as I am confident that games essentially run out of the ram. So if I can put up with the slightly increased timing from a 7200 rpm drive in loading speeds, how can I justify the additional expense of SSD's? Now that being said, I do not want to be a hypocrite, I do have my windows partition on a 60gig SSD so that the machine itself boots faster, but for everything else, I am at a loss to spend the extra bucks. This is true, but life is also long and full of adventures and I like to make sure I have the means to explore those adventures when I want to have them "imminent DX12" and M.2, PCI-E 3.0, wider CPU > PCI bus etc. etc. However, they're still not quite enough to swing it for me." Three things I really want to make sure I match are the Graphics card, a motherboard with the latest pci express, and Directx 12. I kind of surrendered the ball the last time I tried this correlation(mostly in haste,) but this time I am going to be a little more careful. "Doing lots of research online, and speaking to people who'd actually spend their own money on similar Sandy Bridge to Skylake upgrades, the general gist of things was that yes, of course the 6700k is better, but it's not that much better." Intel is very very.... sneaky. The last time I assembled a computer I went with the AMD-8320 mostly due to ethical frustrations with Intel, and I payed for it. Equating my concerns about important concepts like income inequality and global warming with Intel vs. AMD was a terrible choice on my part, and I am going to listen to my knack for technology this time. If more companies try to challenge Intel, and Intel, in turn, tries to destroy them, THEN I will shop elsewhere. "Comparing my budget build to others who have much newer CPU's and a 1070, sees very little difference in the FPS and overall gaming experience we see in numerous titles." My zippy little 650 ti's in sli configuration are a beastly little duo. I have been stunned at what I can throw at them and they just eat it up. So most of these efforts are aimed at the CPU. "FYI: I have the Palit Gamerock GTX 1070, the only downside is it's quite large, so not for SFF cases methinks." and I love EVGA, so I will be hard pressed to leave them, but I am open to suggestions. Also: "Now, regarding CPU load on individual cores, GPU make and model is rather relevant here. As between us we have a large variety of kit to test on - plus I have more kit than all the others combined, and I assembled every bit of kit myself lol - we've been able to make some interesting comparisons. We've observed that nVidia's "Multi-threaded Optimisation" driver profile option can actually make a huge difference in certain titles for certain newer CPU's and GPU's." No need to sell me on this, Nvidia all the way, but thank you for the input. They are a very nice manufacturer/software designer. Many thanks for all the ideas!
I changed my mind on some things... this is my current idea only add another 4 case fans of the same type: http://pcpartpicker.com/list/qCJQd6
Yeah, I am going to call that good. Sit on it for a week and then go for it. Thank you everyone for the ideas!
Cool. This should be a very nice build when done, do keep us posted with your progress if you are able. Scoob.
Maybe I've missed the point here, but I stopped putting PCs together from scratch when it stopped being cost-effective. Currently, I'm using a stock ASUS system with aftermarket RAM/PSU/GFXCard in it and I'm loving it. Almost all my games run on ultra settings with 50-60 fps and I've never even so much as considered running SLI. Don't get me wrong, it's neat to have if you're going to SLI 2 older cards, but if you're spending the extra cash on a MoBo just so you can SLI, you'd be better off buying a better card and getting stock MoBo with PCIx16 3.0 for forwards compatibility. I've honestly yet to run across a game that requires 2 graphics cards running in tandem to handle it (unless the graphics cards in question are older maybe). CPU is the i7- 3770k, 16GB of gaming RAM (don't remember the specs or manufacturer name - doesn't really matter much) and an MSI GTX 960 (GDDR5 for all you plebs using GDDR4 cards j/k lol). I think the PSU was Rosewill or something 750W or 800W. The whole system was on sale for like 800 bucks and this was like 4 years ago almost. Bought a 660ti on sale back then with the PSU for about 300 bucks total (NOTE: the 660ti has TERRIBLE overheating problems...if you have one of these and your performance is suffering it is likely overheating and needs to be cleaned or have a cooling system installed). Played amazing for the past 3 + years with no issues, slow downs, lags or fps drops. A few months back, I realized I had a birthday coming up and one of the games I was playing I actually had to turn the graphics (shadows or reflections if I recall) down a bit because the frame-rate was choppy. So I decided to shop a bit and for another +/-300 bucks, I upgraded the RAM and GFX card and *viola,* good as new and back to crapping all over my friend's XB1. So I think all total, it cost me about 1100 when I first bought it in like...2012. Since then, I've spent another 300 bucks, bringing the grand total to about 1400, maybe 1500 spent in the last 4+ years. Just keep in mind that when it comes to CPUs, the clock speed is not the only stat to keep an eye on - the cache and front side bus size are important (as these directly affect how much information can be sent/received/processed in a single clock cycle (making it exponentially more useful than higher clock speed in many cases). Focusing on the clock speed alone is like having a car that can do 0-60 mph in a few seconds flat, but it can only go 1 block at a time before it stalls out and you have to restart the engine.
I do periodically go onto various eTailers sites and see what their ready-built machines go for. Invariably I can save a LOT of money just buying the same bits and building it myself. As I've done lots of times for myself and friends. Of course, I enjoy building custom PC's, so any money saving is a bonus There are often PC's for sales that look good on the specs page, with decent amounts of ram, large hard drives etc., but digging deeper often shows they use inferior components, motherboards that offer limited, if any, upgrade options etc. As an enthusiast I like to know every component, and it's likely why my PC builds last so long between major upgrades. I mean, other than the GPU and upgraded SSD's, my PC is over 5 years old...that's pretty good going. I've not put a full, from scratch, build together for years, but built on what I had already. My second hand 2600k, second hand motherboard and Ram from another PC along with a couple of new SSD's and the GTX 1070 have made for a really nice little build. This build simply plays everything I want max'd out at my 1920x1200 resolution at a vSync-capped 60fps, so I'm happy. Scoob.
Oh don't get me wrong, I will still build them from scratch too. Just for fun mostly, as it doesn't really save much (if any) cash in the end. lol Oftentimes I find myself spending extra cash that way because I found a component or peripheral that is better (read: more expensive) and make a hundred little upgrades, deviating from my original plan.
Yeah, that's the thing, you set yourself a budget and off the shelf would get you a reasonable PC, but the money you save building yourself you get higher-end parts. Spend is the same, value is better. Certainly the reputable companies I'd use if I were to go off the shelf charge quite a premium. Friend of mine bought a pre-built system a while back - it was a 4690k based system when Devil's Canyon was still quite new. I worked out, but didn't tell him, that for the same price I could have built his PC + a substantial upgrade. So, his 750ti (really?) replaced with a 980Ti (yep, really!) and in addition to his 1tb HDD - which I'd have gotten a 3tb instead - he could have had twin fast SSD's in RAID0. In addition I could have gotten a good AIO CPU cooler, replacing his ok, but not as good air cooler. The only thing I'd not be able to match directly, and this is where the value is for many people which is fair enough, the the warranty that covers the PC as a package, not the individual parts. In the end it wasn't actually long before he upgraded his GPU as the 750Ti wasn't really cutting it, he went for a 970 at the time, which could be nabbed pretty cheaply. The good thing is, I find that you can often get bundle deals to get parts even cheaper. When spec'ing up my new 6700k build, which I then later abandoned of course, I could save over £40 just getting the mobo I wanted and the CPU I wanted together, other parts combined too for even more savings. If you're prepared to wait for the deal, and don't have to buy now, you can get real bargains. Scoob.
To be honest, I'm happy I didn't bother building my PC from scratch last time. I got good parts for all the things that matter (I bought the tower on sale because of the CPU and replaced the RAM/PSU/GFX card) and I've spent less keeping my PC up to date than my friends have on their consoles in the last few years. I'm not worried about having a super cooling system either, as I don't bother overclocking (it's over-rated anyway tbh), I just buy new hardware. Had a few OC nightmares back in my college days and determined it's just not worth the marginal increase in performance when you stand a solid chance of burning out parts and having to buy new ones anyway. Though I guess we've exited the general upgrade part of the discussion and I'm referring to my own personal needs now. lol Besides, I have a 1 year old little girl, and she's almost knocked my tower over a few times already on accident (probably has once or twice when I wasn't home lol). I think if I went crazy on spending or bought custom parts and she winds up breaking it, I would be much more upset. Worst case for me, I spend another 500 bucks on a tower with a decent CPU and play Frankenstein for a night. Though...having said all that: when the wifey and I move to a bigger place, I hope to have a second bedroom for use as a nerd cave. If that works out, the next PC I will probably go back to building from scratch.
Heh, fair enough. It's all about balancing your time. I've arranged days off work in advance before due to new PC kit arriving. Also, in the UK at least, there really can be some quite major savings if you're prepared to do the build yourself, so I'd never consider and off the shelf. Glad you got a bargain, if you're not after cutting-edge, maybe buying the outgoing model of Tower as you did, then I can see why that would be a wise purchase. As for me, a combination of old second hand bits from a mate, and a few new bits works great Here's to your man-cave, I have mine...but also computers dotted around other rooms too lol. Scoob.
