PC gaming hardware thread.

JohnCoffey · **Posted:** Fri Sep 18, 2015 19:45

The last time I ran a Matrox card was with two 15" CRTs and I remember playing Max Payne on two monitors and getting the wow factor lol. Man, how things have changed !

Not done anything to my PC really of late as I just haven't needed to. I did buy a 480gb SSD and made a novelty mount for it though.

And fitted.

And really of late all I've been doing is gaming

no fiddling or messing. I am a good chunk through Dying Light now after starting it again (because I forgot to back up my save games when I bought the new PC..) and have been playing Dead Island Riptide with a mate. We finished that last night so now I'm just waiting on him to buy Dying Light so we can play that in co op also.

Just waiting for Fallout 4 really

MaliA · **Posted:** Tue Sep 29, 2015 20:28

Fucking bastards things, PCS are. Smartwebads has taken over and fucked the PC. I have tried Malware bytes, adw cleaner and removing chrome, removing them from control panel and it still won't go away. I think I will memory stick any files and reinstall windows.

DavPaz · **Joined:** 27th Jun, 2008 **Posts:** 38464

and stay off dodgy porn sites

Satsuma · **Joined:** 20th Apr, 2008 **Posts:** 14359

What's a Smartwebad?

BikNorton · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 10078

Grim... wrote:

Four monitors are where it's at. Tried five, that was too many.

BenQ 3201PT. Just right.

Connected to a quadro 410 with 512MB (yes, 512MB) DDR3 (yes, DDR3) because that's the only low-profile, single-slot, not-too-long, low-power, DP1.2 card I could find which would go in my HP Microserver (dual core 1.5GHz Turion II!)

It rocks a UHD desktop brilliantly but full-screen YouTube and Xbox streaming make the nvidia driver shit the bed, even if I switch to 1080p.

Yet weirdly MPC HC can play a ripped Bluray upscaled to UHD with only (only!) 50% GPU usage.

I use it to VPN to my work desktop.Going back into the office where I have a pair of 1080p monitors (i keep asking for a UHD monitor in exchange for skipping a 2x cost hardware refresh, but am never allowed. Work is very odd) makes me sad. NOT AS SAD AS THE WORK INTERNET CONNECTION WHEN I WORK FROM HOME LOL.

Grim... · **Posted:** Wed Sep 30, 2015 18:03

Four of them would be pretty expensive.

BikNorton · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 10078

You should try and make the justification.

Looking at just the bottom half of my one is better than looking at two full HD monitors. I don't think a 2x2 array of monitors would be better than one full one. Even if they were 1440p, though I would have to check in person.

Its still pretty scary, if I'm honest.

Findus Fop · **Joined:** 14th May, 2009 **Posts:** 4300

Those with even a fractional interest in the life of Mr Fop will have already forgotten I was flapping around trying to choose a PC a while ago.

Well, after literally days of sweat-palmed fretting, with my opportunity-cost anxiety soaring with every scroll of the mousewheel as I dwell on configuration options (seriously, when I click buy, just let me buy it, don't present me with 600 ways I could have something better), I plumped for this:

Chillblast Centurion

Thanks to those who took the time to offer advice and wisdom, I couldn't have done it without you*.

Also got two 23 inch Asus monitors as they were on offer.

*I'd have gone to PC World, got an HP and be £300 richer.

Satsuma · **Joined:** 20th Apr, 2008 **Posts:** 14359

I gots the same box that the wires and stuff come in!

Findus Fop · **Joined:** 14th May, 2009 **Posts:** 4300

Saturnalian wrote:

I gots the same box that the wires and stuff come in!

It's a lovely box. Might move into it.

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

That's a really nice PC for the money, and the SSD will make it fly. (OS, apps, and whatever games you can fit on there, all will benefit massively.)

The default graphics card is a smidge on the weak side for my taste, but it'll handle 1080p gaming fine with the odd nip and tuck to the settings - and you can always upgrade later if needs be.

The CPU is seriously powerful though.

Nice purchase

Satsuma · **Joined:** 20th Apr, 2008 **Posts:** 14359

Is it better than my one, AE?

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

Saturnalian wrote:

Is it better than my one, AE?

Blimey you'll have to remind me of the specs, got a screenshot/invoice/link?

Satsuma · **Joined:** 20th Apr, 2008 **Posts:** 14359

Hearthly wrote:

Back to the £500 PC conundrum.....

I realise Saturn that it's very annoying when you state what you want and how much you've got to spend only for someone like me to say 'Ahhh yes but if you just spent a bit more....' - but that's exactly what I'm going to do however I do think it's worth noting, because if you can stretch to £600 then the performance jump from the £500 offerings really is stunning.

In short you're getting an overlocked quad-core i5 processor (considerably more powerful than anything seen in any of the builds suggested thusfar), 8GB of RAM, a 2GB Radeon 260X (which is reckoned to kick about as hard as the PS4's GPU) that will see you right for high quality 1080@60 gaming, a 1TB hybrid drive (1TB of traditional hard drive storage married to 8GB of super-fast SSD cache) and Windows 8.1. (It's got your HDMI as well.)

Apparently it runs nice and cool and quiet as well.

For £600 this is a seriously impressive PC, although you will need to add a keyboard and mouse which will take you past £600 (albeit not by much), but this is genuinely a PC that will last you for years.

Attachment:

600pc.JPG

This one, wasn't it!

Satsuma · **Joined:** 20th Apr, 2008 **Posts:** 14359

Page 78: good times.

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

Ahhh yes I remember that one now.

Clearly Mr Fop's PC is generally a bit more powerful all round, although that's only to be expected some 18 months later and for £100 more.

CPU wise there isn't a great deal in it though (but his is faster and a newer architecture), the 'proper' SSD in Mr Fop's PC (and an M2 one at that) will outpace your SSHD, graphics card wise there isn't a massive gulf between them (as best I can recall the vanilla 750 and the 260X are pretty close in performance terms overall).

Both of them are solid PCs, and both will do just fine for all day-to-day use and high quality gaming at 1080p, with expected (albeit often minor) compromises on the slider bars and settings.

I'd expect both to have a good few years of use in them as well.

MaliA · **Posted:** Thu Oct 15, 2015 19:53

Sat! Your keep net is full!

Satsuma · **Joined:** 20th Apr, 2008 **Posts:** 14359

HE SAID IT WAS FUTURE PROOF! I demand my money back!

TheVision · **Posted:** Thu Oct 15, 2015 20:32

A bloke said that to me when he sold me a 3D telly. (that it was future proof, not that he wanted his money back)

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

Is Intel still the best to go for when it comes to CPUs? I've recently upgraded my Graphics card.. and my processor really isn't powerful enough for it.

JohnCoffey · **Posted:** Fri Oct 16, 2015 1:01

Cookie197 wrote:

Is Intel still the best to go for when it comes to CPUs? I've recently upgraded my Graphics card.. and my processor really isn't powerful enough for it.

It all depends. There are certain circumstances where AMD have a couple of CPUs worth considering but it depends on what parts you have already and your budget.

Once you get to I5 territory there's really nothing from AMD to compete but at the lower end of the scale they do scrap quite well with their 6 core FX6300 and FX8320E.

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

The thing is though, AMD's per-core performance is so bad compared to Intel, that I'd be hard pushed to think of a scenario where I wouldn't just recommend the cheapest i5 currently available.

But yes, it does depend on what you already have in terms of motherboard and RAM and suchlike too.

(And AMD's chips aren't terrible in and of themselves.)

JohnCoffey · **Posted:** Fri Oct 16, 2015 14:52

Hearthly wrote:

The thing is though, AMD's per-core performance is so bad compared to Intel, that I'd be hard pushed to think of a scenario where I wouldn't just recommend the cheapest i5 currently available.

But yes, it does depend on what you already have in terms of motherboard and RAM and suchlike too.

(And AMD's chips aren't terrible in and of themselves.)

The FX6300 is a great budget mid range chip. IIRC it costs a little bit less than a comparative I3 yet in threaded tasks will wipe the floor with the I3. The IPC of the FX Visheras is roughly as good as your I7 920 per clock so they're really not bad, just nowhere near as good as any of Intel's more highly threaded CPUs.

The 8320 used to be my budget chip of choice and I had two rigs with them in. Fine CPUS

Only issue was that to get toward 5ghz you need a very expensive motherboard.

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

My current motherboard is an Asus P5Q3 Deluxe, CPU is Core 2 Quad Q9500 and I've got 16GB Corsair Vengeance RAM. So yeah.

JohnCoffey · **Posted:** Fri Oct 16, 2015 21:24

Is the ram DDR3? 1.65v or lower? if so then you can keep that. What sort of thing are you looking for? IE - gaming, office duties etc? And most importantly what's your budget?

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

DDR3 1600Mhz, not sure about voltage. I've recently started a game development course at University, so I'm looking for a CPU that'll easily run big game engines (Such as Unreal 4) for the next 4/5-ish years, and of course I will be gaming on it too. Budget is kinda... not sure at this point, it'll really depend on what I can get and for how much.

Bobbyaro · **Joined:** 18th Apr, 2008 **Posts:** 11843

How much would a pc that can play fallout 4 cost?

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

Bobbyaro wrote:

How much would a pc that can play fallout 4 cost?

Around the £600-£700 mark would get you a pre-built system with the ability to play the game at 1080p nicely maxed out.

£500, even - Not the best CPU in the world, but not bad for the cash. Personally I'd stretch out to an Intel CPU but if, for example, £500 was your limit, this is a decent PC. The star of the show here is the GTX960 graphics card, which is a really strong 1080p GPU.

http://www.ebuyer.com/718724-cyberpower ... c-ecc01272

Yeah here for an extra £100 you get a strong Intel i5 CPU, and an extra terabyte of storage, with the same excellent GTX960 graphics card.

http://www.ebuyer.com/722003-cyberpower ... c-ecc01284

Bobbyaro · **Joined:** 18th Apr, 2008 **Posts:** 11843

Cheers, thought it would be around that. What about if I wasn't that fused about 1080p maxed out? Basically, can you get something for around the same Price as a ps4?

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

Bobbyaro wrote:

Cheers, thought it would be around that. What about if I wasn't that fused about 1080p maxed out? Basically, can you get something for around the same Price as a ps4?

Eurogamer managed to build a PC for around £350 earlier this year that outpaced a PS4.

You're into self-build territory though.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digit ... g-pc-guide

JohnCoffey · **Posted:** Sat Oct 17, 2015 12:19

Avoid the Pentium, they're pants.

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

JohnCoffey wrote:

Avoid the Pentium, they're pants.

The £350 version used an i3, they specifically recommend spending a bit extra to get the i3 in there as opposed to the Pentium.

JohnCoffey · **Posted:** Sat Oct 17, 2015 12:41

Yeah the Pentium is pretty woeful tbh. Even overclocked with a Titan Black up its arse it was still stutter heaven.

I wouldn't get an I3 though I would get a FX 6300. Once the football is over and MrsJC is back (later tonight) I will do a spec for a decent PC for gaming.

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

JohnCoffey wrote:

Yeah the Pentium is pretty woeful tbh. Even overclocked with a Titan Black up its arse it was still stutter heaven.

I wouldn't get an I3 though I would get a FX 6300. Once the football is over and MrsJC is back (later tonight) I will do a spec for a decent PC for gaming.

Yeah four or six proper AMD cores are probably better than two hyper-threaded Intel cores.

Plus I've never been totally convinced by hyper-threading anyway.

JohnCoffey · **Posted:** Sat Oct 17, 2015 12:55

Hearthly wrote:

JohnCoffey wrote:

Yeah the Pentium is pretty woeful tbh. Even overclocked with a Titan Black up its arse it was still stutter heaven.

I wouldn't get an I3 though I would get a FX 6300. Once the football is over and MrsJC is back (later tonight) I will do a spec for a decent PC for gaming.

Yeah four or six proper AMD cores are probably better than two hyper-threaded Intel cores.

Plus I've never been totally convinced by hyper-threading anyway.

HT is OK but yeah, never going to replace an actual core.

http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Processors ... eaks-Cover

Is one of the more honest reviews, not the ones claiming that the I3 beats the FX 8 cores in every game ZOMG. That was the Ivy I3 but little has changed.

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

Overclockers have redesigned their website.

I know this would not normally be worthy of a mention, (and indeed, still isn't), but I'm mentioning it anyway because this is literally the first time I can EVER remember them redesigning it. How long did they stick with the old design? I think it's been the same since they launched in 1999? Is that possible? It certainly seems so.

Needless to say I'm not really sure I like the new design very much and prefer the old one.

I am shopping around for a new PC though, so I'll be having a browse.

JohnCoffey · **Posted:** Sun Oct 25, 2015 11:55

Shut up!?!?

You're finally getting a new one?

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

Aye, got a few spare quid knocking about at the minute so decided to treat myself, I haven't bought an entire new PC since 2005 (!), which was the one I got from Vadim. (In fact, my current PC is built in the case that the Vadim PC came in!)

Not going to go nuts though, targeting an i7 Skylake, 980Ti, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD etc. Want to spend less than £1500.

Need a new NAS as well, since my private cloud is reaching capacity.

Cras · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 49232

Hearthly wrote:

my private cloud is reaching capacity.

That sounds like a really polite way of saying you need a shit.

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

Cras wrote:

Hearthly wrote:

my private cloud is reaching capacity.

That sounds like a really polite way of saying you need a shit.

I only use the phrase because it's so teeth-grindingly annoying.

JohnCoffey · **Posted:** Sun Oct 25, 2015 13:15

Skylake is a total rip off. I would aim for the 5820k its within £50.

asfish · **Joined:** 5th Dec, 2010 **Posts:** 3353

Quote:

Need a new NAS as well, since my private cloud is reaching capacity.

Thecus is worth a look, had them for years and they have mostlty been solid , had issues with one unit and have always been able to ship it to Holland and speak to people to get it fixed

Also like the fact the newer ones have 2 or more USB3 so you can add a HD in a caddy and have cheap extra network storage if needs be

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

My current NAS is Western Digital, it's over six years old and has been 24/7 for the entire time, and it still works perfectly. (It's just getting full now.)

As such I'll probably go with what I know and trust, this seems to fit the bill.

http://www.ebuyer.com/618585-wd-my-clou ... 80jch-eesn

Attachment:

Screenshot 2015-10-27 at 15.29.23.png

JohnCoffey · **Posted:** Tue Oct 27, 2015 16:41

I'm going to get a NAS soon. Would only need about 2tb tops. Are they easy to set up and network into etc?

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

Yeah they're a piece of piss, generally speaking they have a web interface that you log into very much like you would a router.

From there you can configure it how you want it in terms of users, shares, permissions, quotas, view device and drive health and all other settings etc.

They present themselves on the network that you can access with a normal UNC patch i.e.

\\mybookworld\johncoffey

\\mybookworld\funnycatvids

And so on.

Modern ones can do all sorts of other shit which I'm not interested in so have no idea about.

JohnCoffey · **Posted:** Tue Oct 27, 2015 16:56

Sounds good. It's only really my PC I want to back up and right now I have about 3tb's worth of drives in there but they're nowhere near full.

Grim... · **Posted:** Tue Oct 27, 2015 17:03

Hearthly wrote:

My current NAS is Western Digital, it's over six years old and has been 24/7 for the entire time, and it still works perfectly. (It's just getting full now.)

As such I'll probably go with what I know and trust, this seems to fit the bill.

http://www.ebuyer.com/618585-wd-my-clou ... 80jch-eesn

Attachment:

Screenshot 2015-10-27 at 15.29.23.png

I've got the 4-bay (no included drives) version of that, which is a nice bit of kit. It was a little cheaper from Dabs (at the time).

I also took delivery of this bad boy today:

Attachment:

2015-10-27 16.02.08.jpg

Grim... · **Posted:** Tue Oct 27, 2015 17:04

Hearthly wrote:

Modern ones can do all sorts of other shit which I'm not interested in so have no idea about.

You can run SabNZBD on them

zaphod79 · **Joined:** 16th Apr, 2008 **Posts:** 14489

I have an older Synology 4 bay one

Its probably worth looking at what you would actually use it for - having a NAS just for backup may be a little overkill

JohnCoffey · **Posted:** Tue Oct 27, 2015 17:21

Well what else would you suggest?

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.