PC gaming hardware thread.

TheCookie197 · **Joined:** 23rd Sep, 2010 **Posts:** 729

True, but if if they're even 20% slower than AMD is suggesting, the pricing is still pretty good compared to Intel.

[edit] Plus, RGB stock cooler.

Bamba · **Joined:** 25th Jul, 2010 **Posts:** 11128

After my creaky old machine struggled a bit with Abzu I bit the bullet and upgraded to this:

http://www.ebuyer.com/770820-pc-special ... s-d1165105

It's not top of the range or anything but as I've gone all in on the PS4 side of the fence I just wanted a 'decent' PC and this fits the bill. I think it's the little brother of myp's PC and it was him that pointed me towards eBuyer so hat tip to him for that. This post serves no purpose except as an opportunity for people to point out how much I fucked up when I could've got something else that was better and cheaper.

BikNorton · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 10074

I know someone at AMD who has been coyly smug for a few months and has been 'at last!' the last few days.

I don't think it should be immediately discounted as marketing bumph.

Hearthly · **Joined:** 11th May, 2008 **Posts:** 13382

As long as AMD are competitive again I'll be happy, Intel have been backpedalling for years now.

Ryzen doesn't need to blow the established i5/i7 hegemony to pieces, it just needs to offer decent performance at a decent price relative to Intel chips, and make AMD CPUs a meaningful option.

For sure if they can pull another 'Athlon XP' style scenario out of the bag then so much the better, but I'll settle for them simply being back in the game.

Doctor Glyndwr · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 32619

BikNorton wrote:

I don't think it should be immediately discounted as marketing bumph.

No, I doubt it's nonsense. It looks very promising. But I have some questions around e.g. single core performance (reading between the lines a little, it felt like AMD only wanted to talk about multicore benchmarks at the launch.) Not long to wait now.

Doctor Glyndwr · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 32619

Doctor Glyndwr wrote:

"Benchmarks" being AMD's marketing materials. I think we shouldn't book the parade until Ars/Anandtech have them in their hand.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/03 ... en-review/

Quote:

Gaming isn't a strong point for AMD's fledgling architecture. For many, myself included, that is a massive disappointment. AMD clearly sees an eight-core future, just as it did with Bulldozer. But developers still aren't there yet. For all the fuss made about DX12 and the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One ushering in a new era of multicore-optimised games, a 4C/8T CPU continues to be the best way to shovel data over to a graphics card.

There's a chance that Ryzen's gaming performance will improve over time thanks to driver updates and AMD's promised closer relationship with game developers. Or that the upcoming quad-core Ryzen chips can make up the performance via clock speed. And, if you're running at 4K resolution where you're resource limited on the GPU, not the CPU, the differences are minimal anyway. But right here, right now, when over 90 percent of gamers run at 1080p or lower resolutions—as much as it pains me to say it—if I had to pick the best CPU purely for gaming, I would pick an Intel Kaby Lake i7-7700K.

For content creators, budget conscious streamers, and workstation users, the 1800X is more compelling. £500/$500 won't get you into the eight-core club at Intel unless you're willing to take a significant cut to clock speed. The $450/£430 Xeon E5-2620 v4, one of the cheapest eight-core chips Intel sells, has a core clock of just 2.1GHz and only boosts as high as 3GHz. Even with the Xeon's IPC advantage, the 4GHz 1800X would be significantly faster.

The Ryzen 7 1800X, then, is a tale of two chips. One is a disruptive, market changing, eight-core workstation powerhouse; the other is a competent, if wholly unsatisfying gaming CPU.

TheCookie197 · **Joined:** 23rd Sep, 2010 **Posts:** 729

The gaming results in the benchmarks I've seen are strange. I don't quite understand how the chips can be on par with the 6800k/6900k in most things but fall so far behind in gaming.

Grim... · **Posted:** Thu Mar 02, 2017 18:06

Drivers, hopefully.

Doctor Glyndwr · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 32619

Cookie197 wrote:

The gaming results in the benchmarks I've seen are strange. I don't quite understand how the chips can be on par with the 6800k/6900k in most things but fall so far behind in gaming.

Because it's an octocore chip where each core is individually less powerful, but because games still favour strong single-core performance.

TheCookie197 · **Joined:** 23rd Sep, 2010 **Posts:** 729

That's what I thought at first too, but PaulsHardware's video (as well as a few others) clearly shows the 6850k having a very close single core score to the 1800x, but still beating it in games - sometimes by a good 10-15%. I get that synthetic benchmarks aren't exactly reliable, but AMD must've messed up something here for the gaming fps to be so different. I hope it does turn out to be drivers.

Bamba · **Joined:** 25th Jul, 2010 **Posts:** 11128

Having finally got my new machine all up and running I wanted something that would help me appreciate the upgrade. The best things I could find in my Steam library were the 2013 Tomb Raider (surprisingly ugly even at Ultra settings, I genuinely remembered it being a very pretty game) and The Vanishing of Ethan Carter Redux (pretty enough but still a bit meh). I don't want an actual game to play as I've already got enough of those lying around, so I was checking out the Crysis games as they're the usual go to for this kind of thing. It turns out that Origin are selling Crysis 3 for two quid! I know it's getting on these days, but still! Two fucking quid! Nice. I look forward to being disappointed in my brand new PC as soon as it finishes downloading and I can fire it up.

Hearthly · **Joined:** 11th May, 2008 **Posts:** 13382

GTX 1080Ti reviews are now live and it's available for pre-order from Nvidia's website for what I assume is a fairly close release date.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digit ... -ti-review

On the plus side it's basically a Pascal Titan-X but for less money, on the minus side it still costs £699, which is exactly what it also costs in dollars. (Yay Brexit!)

Also exists in a strange sort of niche since it's overkill for 1440p/60FPS (a regular 1080 or even a 1070 is just peachy there), so it really is a 4K card only.

Still, experience teaches us that this generation's high-end is next generation's mid-high range (for example a 1070 pegs very close to a 980Ti), so PC is probably a graphics card generation away from genuine mainstream 4K gaming.

Satsuma · **Joined:** 20th Apr, 2008 **Posts:** 14356

Bamba wrote:

Having finally got my new machine all up and running I wanted something that would help me appreciate the upgrade. The best things I could find in my Steam library were the 2013 Tomb Raider (surprisingly ugly even at Ultra settings, I genuinely remembered it being a very pretty game) and The Vanishing of Ethan Carter Redux (pretty enough but still a bit meh). I don't want an actual game to play as I've already got enough of those lying around, so I was checking out the Crysis games as they're the usual go to for this kind of thing. It turns out that Origin are selling Crysis 3 for two quid! I know it's getting on these days, but still! Two fucking quid! Nice. I look forward to being disappointed in my brand new PC as soon as it finishes downloading and I can fire it up.

You can take this with a pinch of salt and someone will surely correct me for lying but I heard somewhere that Crysis 1 is a much better looking game on high spec PCS because of [some PC thing] and that later Crysis's's targeted running on consoles. So if you can get the original for pence (which you surely might) that might give your rig a run for its money.

Also, it's a much better game.

Bamba · **Joined:** 25th Jul, 2010 **Posts:** 11128

I certainly heard exactly that about Crysis 2 but I thought the third one took back it's crown to a certain extent. Certainly Eurogamer always use it as part of their benchmark mix. I've only played the first bit and it's a fucking awful game so far but I'll probably drop it down to Easy so I can get a bit further in and see what it looks like.

Grim... · **Posted:** Fri Mar 10, 2017 23:34

I'm down with that. Crysis 1 looked much better than Crysis 2.

Hearthly · **Joined:** 11th May, 2008 **Posts:** 13382

I remember Max Payne 3 as being very pretty all maxed out, although it was a 360 era game of course, it did have a few extra graphics options that were PC-specific. I can't imagine that costing much more than 74p these days.

/checks Steam. Oh, £14.99.

Or Borderlands 2 with everything dialled up, again very last-gen in a lot of ways but all the Phys-X whizzery was splendid.

GTAV is quite a thing of wonder at mega-PC max settings (which incidentally I could only do as a sort of 'take a look' thing, my PC didn't have the horsepower to have everything enabled for actual gameplay) - mind you with a GTX1060 you probably won't either.

Why not try that Origin Prime thing for a month and just install and have a look at every game included with it, and then cancel?

Satsuma · **Joined:** 20th Apr, 2008 **Posts:** 14356

I bloody love Max Payne 3. I just hope Rockstar don't put it to sleep for another 9 years.

myp · **Posted:** Sat Mar 11, 2017 16:09

Satsuma wrote:

I bloody love Max Payne 3. I just hope Rockstar don't put it to sleep for another 9 years.

It's already been 5.

Bamba · **Joined:** 25th Jul, 2010 **Posts:** 11128

I actually have Borderlands 2, and the first one, with all the DLC after that really cheap Humble Bundle a good while back. Shinies notwithstanding, is it worth playing the first one or should i just skip straight to the sequel?

TheVision · **Posted:** Wed May 10, 2017 11:53

Is this the right thread for this? I'm not sure, but what the hell...

Where's the best place to buy PC's from these days? I'm going down the PC route for video editing so need a monster PC that will cope with throwing videos around but admittedly, I'm out of touch with the PC hardware scene (I blame the fact that JC doesn't post here anymore)

Bamba · **Joined:** 25th Jul, 2010 **Posts:** 11128

PC Specialist seem to be pretty decent:

https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/

They're responsible for my and myp's most recent machines.

myp · **Posted:** Wed May 10, 2017 12:54

Yep, really pleased with it too!

Mr Dave · **Posted:** Wed May 10, 2017 13:38

Lonewolves wrote:

Yep, really pleased with it too!

I didn't think yours had enough LEDs when I saw it.

Hearthly · **Joined:** 11th May, 2008 **Posts:** 13382

It's a looooong time since I bought an entire PC for myself, (like, 12 years long), so I've more been 'components' than 'systems' for that length of time.

However, Mrs Hearthly's PC came from Overclockers and they were splendid in all regards, really good job on the build too (into what is regarded as being a very difficult case to do a good build in).

PC Specialist routinely do very well in Custom PC and PC Pro, and seem to have a great reputation with their customers too. Not the cheapest but if you're spending big dollars arguably worth paying that bit extra, their warranties are solid too.

Scan would be another one to consider, been around forever and again, always review well and very favourable reputation with their customers.

If I were buying a new PC for myself, I'd go with PC Specialist or Scan.

Mr Dave · **Posted:** Thu May 11, 2017 9:33

I got my VR machine from https://www.freshtechsolutions.co.uk

It works.

JohnCoffey · **Posted:** Fri May 12, 2017 14:54

Lots and lots of luverly water.

Triad.

Dianoga.

And Riff Tamson, currently having a second loop fitted.

TheVision · **Posted:** Fri Jun 30, 2017 9:47

I've been on the PC specialist site and I've been quoted the following for just under £1700. What do you reckon? It looks good to me but then again, what do I know? It's got a lot of numbers!

Quote:

Case
CORSAIR CARBIDE SERIES™ 200R COMPACT GAMING CASE
Processor (CPU)
AMD Ryzen 7 1700X Eight Core CPU (3.4GHz-3.8GHz/20MB CACHE/AM4)
Motherboard
ASUS® PRIME B350-PLUS (DDR4, 6Gb/s, CrossFireX)
Memory (RAM)
32GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR4 2133MHz (2 x 16GB)
Graphics Card
8GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 1070 - DVI, HDMI, 3 x DP - GeForce GTX VR Ready!
1st Hard Disk
2TB SATA-III 3.5" HDD, 6GB/s, 7200RPM, 64MB CACHE
M.2 SSD Drive
256GB SAMSUNG PM961 M.2, PCIe NVMe (up to 2800MB/R, 1100MB/W)
DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
Power Supply
CORSAIR 650W CS SERIES™ MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET
Power Cable
1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Processor Cooling
Corsair H80i V2 Hydro Cooler w/ PCS Liquid Series Ultra Quiet Fans
Thermal Paste
STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Wireless/Wired Networking
10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT (Wi-Fi NOT INCLUDED)
USB Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS
Operating System
Genuine Windows 10 Home 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence
Operating System Language

Hearthly · **Joined:** 11th May, 2008 **Posts:** 13382

I'd be inclined to knock the RAM down to 16GB and increase your SSD capacity. (There's nothing wrong with 32GB, but it's overkill unless you know you're going to be using it for serious video/image work or the like.)

256GB isn't that much SSD storage and you really, really, want to be running all games and apps from SSD.

M2 SSD storage is expensive so you could meet it halfway and add in a 512GB SATA SSD.

Keep the SATA HDD as is, mass storage is always useful.

Other than that, tidy spec IMO.

TheVision · **Posted:** Fri Jun 30, 2017 10:00

Thanks Hearthly. Good advice. I already have a 500gb SSD in my current PC so I was in two minds whether to reuse that, or increase the size of the new one.

I will have to sort all my files off it first and to be honest, that could take forever so I might just go for a new one.

Bamba · **Joined:** 25th Jul, 2010 **Posts:** 11128

TheVision wrote:

Thanks Hearthly. Good advice. I already have a 500gb SSD in my current PC so I was in two minds whether to reuse that, or increase the size of the new one.

I will have to sort all my files off it first and to be honest, that could take forever so I might just go for a new one.

Can't you just install the old drive into the new machine as a secondary 'files' drive and then you don't need to copy anything anywhere?

Also, is the general consensus that Ryzen is the way to go? I was under the impression that it hadn't actually lived up to expectations and the i7 chipset was still the best if you were spending the money (which you clearly are here)?

DavPaz · **Joined:** 27th Jun, 2008 **Posts:** 38458

Hearthly wrote:

... unless you know you're going to be using it for serious video/image work ...

Well, there you go.

Hearthly · **Joined:** 11th May, 2008 **Posts:** 13382

Bamba wrote:

Also, is the general consensus that Ryzen is the way to go? I was under the impression that it hadn't actually lived up to expectations and the i7 chipset was still the best if you were spending the money (which you clearly are here)?

For a pure gaming machine Intel is still best, but once you get into multi-threaded work Ryzen really shines. (And Ryzen doesn't lag much behind i5/i7 in games, either.)

TheVision · **Posted:** Fri Jun 30, 2017 10:34

DavPaz wrote:

Hearthly wrote:

... unless you know you're going to be using it for serious video/image work ...

Well, there you go.

Good spot

Good point on the SSD though Bamba. I could just drop it in there couldn't I? See? This is why I come here for advice!

Hearthly · **Joined:** 11th May, 2008 **Posts:** 13382

TheVision wrote:

Good point on the SSD though Bamba. I could just drop it in there couldn't I? See? This is why I come here for advice!

It depends if you want to be faffing about putting old parts into a shiny brand new PC, potentially messing up the lovely cable management and/or invalidating your warranty (I'd check with PCS on that), also the old SSD may well be quite a bit slower than a brand new one. (I don't know the specs of your existing SSD, of course.)

When you're spending proper new PC cash, to my mind it makes sense to just go for a clean sweep of new stuff.

Grim... · **Posted:** Fri Jun 30, 2017 10:41

That strikes me as a lot of money.

Where's it going?

TheVision · **Posted:** Fri Jun 30, 2017 10:46

Grim... wrote:

That strikes me as a lot of money.

Where's it going?

Where is the money going or where is the PC going?

The money will be going to PC specialist.. the PC will be going under my desk.

Hearthly · **Joined:** 11th May, 2008 **Posts:** 13382

Grim... wrote:

That strikes me as a lot of money.

Where's it going?

That's how much a reasonably specced new PC costs. The Brexit vote hasn't helped since everything costs 15-20% more than it did a year ago.

Grim... · **Posted:** Fri Jun 30, 2017 10:54

It's twice the cost of the one I bought yesterday, and I can't really see where the extra money has gone.

Also, if this is for work, you really want RAID 1 on both drives.

TheVision · **Posted:** Fri Jun 30, 2017 10:56

Grim... wrote:

It's twice the cost of the one I bought yesterday, and I can't really see where the extra money has gone.

Also, if this is for work, you really want RAID 1 on both drives.

Twice the price? Where did you get yours from Grim...

Also, imagine for a second that I'm a total noob and don't know what RAID 1 is. Can you explain it?

Bamba · **Joined:** 25th Jul, 2010 **Posts:** 11128

TheVision wrote:

DavPaz wrote:

Hearthly wrote:

... unless you know you're going to be using it for serious video/image work ...

Well, there you go.

Good spot

Good point on the SSD though Bamba. I could just drop it in there couldn't I? See? This is why I come here for advice!

Yep, that's basically what I've done over the years; I've got a 'files' drive that has just moved with me from PC to PC. My actual C drive has changed with each machine, and got a mid-cycle upgrade to an SSD on my previous PC, because why not, but the secondary drive still has shedloads of space on it so no reason not to just bring it along every time.

Bamba · **Joined:** 25th Jul, 2010 **Posts:** 11128

Grim... wrote:

It's twice the cost of the one I bought yesterday, and I can't really see where the extra money has gone.

Neither can we, unless you actually give us the spec and cost of your machine.

Hearthly · **Joined:** 11th May, 2008 **Posts:** 13382

TheVision wrote:

Also, imagine for a second that I'm a total noob and don't know what RAID 1 is. Can you explain it?

It'll be two identical drives, and the contents of one are mirrored to the other in real time, so if a drive fails you still have a good copy of all your data.

TheVision · **Posted:** Fri Jun 30, 2017 11:09

Hearthly wrote:

TheVision wrote:

Also, imagine for a second that I'm a total noob and don't know what RAID 1 is. Can you explain it?

It'll be two identical drives, and the contents of one are mirrored to the other in real time, so if a drive fails you still have a good copy of all your data.

That makes perfect sense. Thank you.

Grim... · **Posted:** Fri Jun 30, 2017 11:30

Also it bumps up your read speeds (because it gets half the data from one drive and half the data from the other at the same time).

That may have been a little simplified.

The one I ordered wasn't nearly as high spec, but it was no slouch. Bits came from all over, but it was basically:

2 x 240GB SSD drives
A case
Gigabyte GA-H110M Motherboard (This one: http://www.gigabyte.us/Motherboard/GA-H ... -rev-10#ov )
7th gen i5 7400 (3.0GHz)
16GB RAM
Win 10 Pro
DVD RW
An power supply
3 year warranty

£700inc

So it's not liquid cooled, and it's using onboard graphics because no-one's going to be playing games on it, but even when you add £400 for the GFX card you still only get to £1100.

So I guess I can see where the extra cash has gone - if you buy all high shelf bits it's going to add up.

I think the important question here is: what are you going to be doing with it?

DavPaz · **Joined:** 27th Jun, 2008 **Posts:** 38458

This is my favourite bit

Quote:

Thermal Paste
STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING

TheVision · **Posted:** Fri Jun 30, 2017 12:24

That's an important question Grim... I'm going to be using it to edit videos for my business so it needs a bit of grunt behind it and ideally, needs to last for a fair while.

Grim... · **Posted:** Fri Jun 30, 2017 12:58

Your CPU and RAM will do most of the lifting there, so that GPU could be toned down if you don't want to play games on the thing.

The only real thing it'll help with is you encode speed, but you want a farm for that anyway

Hearthly · **Joined:** 11th May, 2008 **Posts:** 13382

Grim... wrote:

2 x 240GB SSD drives
A case
Gigabyte GA-H110M Motherboard (This one: http://www.gigabyte.us/Motherboard/GA-H ... -rev-10#ov )
7th gen i5 7400 (3.0GHz)
16GB RAM
Win 10 Pro
DVD RW
An power supply
3 year warranty

£700inc

So not the same at all then, and it's quite easy to see where the extra money has gone :hat:

Grim... · **Posted:** Fri Jun 30, 2017 13:05

Hearthly wrote:

Grim... wrote:

2 x 240GB SSD drives
A case
Gigabyte GA-H110M Motherboard (This one: http://www.gigabyte.us/Motherboard/GA-H ... -rev-10#ov )
7th gen i5 7400 (3.0GHz)
16GB RAM
Win 10 Pro
DVD RW
An power supply
3 year warranty

£700inc

So not the same at all then, and it's quite easy to see where the extra money has gone :hat:

It's a PC to do work on.

Hearthly · **Joined:** 11th May, 2008 **Posts:** 13382

Grim... wrote:

Your CPU and RAM will do most of the lifting there, so that GPU could be toned down if you don't want to play games on the thing.

Quite a lot of video editing packages offload some or all encoding and rendering to the GPU these days.

The 1070 is a great card for gaming too, so if the PC will be doing gaming duties as well, it's a solid choice.

Be Excellent To Each Other

PC gaming hardware thread.
Takes down the torture rack.

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Be Excellent To Each Other

PC gaming hardware thread. Takes down the torture rack.

Who is online

PC gaming hardware thread.
Takes down the torture rack.