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PC gaming hardware thread.
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Author:  Grim... [ Fri Jun 30, 2017 15:25 ]
Post subject:  Re: PC gaming hardware thread.

Get a time machine?

You might save a few quid by building it yourself, but I don't know if it would be a great deal of money.

Author:  Hearthly [ Fri Jun 30, 2017 15:26 ]
Post subject:  Re: PC gaming hardware thread.

Don't forget the Brexit effect. So where myp says 'I bought a VR spec PC for £1000 18 months ago', the equivalent PC now costs around £1200.

PCS aren't cheap, they use top quality components and cases, do a high quality build, and charge appropriately.

The GTX1070 is a high-end graphics card, maybe drop that down a notch to a 1060. M2 SSDs are expensive, use a standard SATA SSD as your boot drive instead. Pick a cheaper case. Drop the RAM to 16GB. Change the processor to a 1700 instead of a 1700X. Lose the water cooling and use a cheaper air cooler or just the stock AMD cooler. There are lots of nips and tucks you can do to get the price down, but there comes a point where you're compromising on the machine's ability to do what you want.

If you're happy with the machine you've specced up and the price you're paying then it's not 'too expensive', PCS charge fairly for the machines they build and the components they use.

Personally if I were lashing out a serious wedge of cash on a brand new PC, I'd spend the extra to get exactly the machine I wanted.

Author:  TheVision [ Fri Jun 30, 2017 16:06 ]
Post subject:  Re: PC gaming hardware thread.

Hearthly wrote:

Personally if I were lashing out a serious wedge of cash on a brand new PC, I'd spend the extra to get exactly the machine I wanted.


This is a very good point but you also make some good recommendations on cutting some elements out. I think I'm going to have a play and see if I can get it closer to £1500 inc VAT.

Author:  Grim... [ Fri Jun 30, 2017 17:14 ]
Post subject:  Re: PC gaming hardware thread.

For work, you might also want to consider backup solutions. The earlier they get them in place the easier it is!

Author:  TheCookie197 [ Fri Jun 30, 2017 22:34 ]
Post subject:  Re: PC gaming hardware thread.

I guess you aren't comfortable building your own, TheVision? Using a parts list pretty similar to the one in your original post you can get it for £1500 in PCPartPicker.. Probably cheaper, if you played around with similar components from different companies.

Author:  asfish [ Sat Jul 01, 2017 7:47 ]
Post subject:  Re: PC gaming hardware thread.

http://www.logicalincrements.com/articles/videoediting/

This takes you thtough 5 different builds for Video Editing PC's. Budget - High End

Prices are in $ but it might help you get an idea on if you need to change things with the one your are looking to buy.

Author:  TheVision [ Sat Jul 01, 2017 8:24 ]
Post subject:  Re: PC gaming hardware thread.

Thanks asfish. That looks useful!

As for building it myself Cookie, I don't know. How difficult could it be? I built a PC years ago (a Pentium 3 600 I think) but a lot has changed since then. I'd be worried that I hadn't got the cooling right.

Author:  Hearthly [ Sat Jul 01, 2017 9:34 ]
Post subject:  Re: PC gaming hardware thread.

asfish wrote:
Prices are in $ but it might help you get an idea on if you need to change things with the one your are looking to buy.


Just change the dollar signs to pound signs.

This innovative currency converter is brought to you by Hearthly Technical Industries Ltd.

Author:  Hearthly [ Sat Jul 01, 2017 9:43 ]
Post subject:  Re: PC gaming hardware thread.

TheVision wrote:
Thanks asfish. That looks useful!

As for building it myself Cookie, I don't know. How difficult could it be? I built a PC years ago (a Pentium 3 600 I think) but a lot has changed since then. I'd be worried that I hadn't got the cooling right.


The amount of money you save on a self-build is negligible to zero, and involves a lot of extra faff, especially if the parts are coming from more than one place. It's one of those things you do because you enjoy it, more than it making any actual sense to do so. (It's not particularly difficult to do, though.)

I'll revisit that machine you specced up at PCS today and post a revised build Vision, see what it's possible to nip and tuck cost wise without compromising on the fundamentals of the machine.

Author:  TheVision [ Sat Jul 01, 2017 11:42 ]
Post subject:  Re: PC gaming hardware thread.

Thanks Hearthly. Here's the link to the PC spec above...

https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/saved-co ... xRSKF9S8K/

Like I say, it's going to be used for editing videos mainly with the possibility of playing games... But mainly editing.

Author:  Mr Dave [ Sat Jul 01, 2017 11:44 ]
Post subject:  Re: PC gaming hardware thread.

Needs more LEDs.

Author:  BikNorton [ Sat Jul 01, 2017 12:24 ]
Post subject:  Re: PC gaming hardware thread.

That's a point, UK.hardware.info regularly updates their pick of specs of various PC types, like 4k, video, budget and so on.

Author:  Hearthly [ Sat Jul 01, 2017 12:59 ]
Post subject:  Re: PC gaming hardware thread.

TheVision wrote:
Thanks Hearthly. Here's the link to the PC spec above...

https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/saved-co ... xRSKF9S8K/

Like I say, it's going to be used for editing videos mainly with the possibility of playing games... But mainly editing.


Here you go, pretty much the same thing but for £1,276. (It's actually got more SSD storage than your build.)

Remember I've only tried to do a 'match' for your build, in reality for a video editing PC you're going to want 'all the storage', especially if you're intending to work with 4K video, and as Grim... notes you should think about how you're going to back everything up as well, and the cloud ain't an option for video files. (Big external hard drives are the obvious answer.)

Attachment:
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Author:  JohnCoffey [ Sat Jul 01, 2017 13:15 ]
Post subject:  Re: PC gaming hardware thread.

Don't pair Ryzen with slow ram.

Quick explanation of why.. basically AMD are using something called Infinity Fabric to tie things together. Because of that (and because Ryzen 7 is two quad cores tied together using IF) ram speed makes a massive difference to the IPC. You want 3000mhz ram
No ifs or buts. You will lose 20% performance on 2133 ram. The rather crappy clock speed on Ryzen doesn't help any either.

Author:  Grim... [ Sat Jul 01, 2017 13:48 ]
Post subject:  Re: PC gaming hardware thread.

TheVision wrote:
Thanks asfish. That looks useful!

As for building it myself Cookie, I don't know. How difficult could it be? I built a PC years ago (a Pentium 3 600 I think) but a lot has changed since then. I'd be worried that I hadn't got the cooling right.

The problem with that is hassle - not with the original build, but if something goes wrong in a month or so.

Author:  Grim... [ Sat Jul 01, 2017 13:49 ]
Post subject:  Re: PC gaming hardware thread.

There are upsides, though. If a stick of RAM goes bad on a self-build then you pull it out and send it back for a replacement.

If it goes bad on a purchased box you might well have to send the whole thing away.

However, you'd need to be able to identify that it was the RAM that's broken in the first place.

Swings and roundabouts.

Author:  Hearthly [ Sat Jul 01, 2017 14:14 ]
Post subject:  Re: PC gaming hardware thread.

JohnCoffey wrote:
Don't pair Ryzen with slow ram.

Quick explanation of why.. basically AMD are using something called Infinity Fabric to tie things together. Because of that (and because Ryzen 7 is two quad cores tied together using IF) ram speed makes a massive difference to the IPC. You want 3000mhz ram
No ifs or buts. You will lose 20% performance on 2133 ram. The rather crappy clock speed on Ryzen doesn't help any either.


I guess they're playing it safe because of the early RAM compatibility issues that Ryzen had, but yes they should be offering faster RAM than that by now.

20% might be over-egging the pudding a bit though, a quick Google around a raft on benchmarks shows uplifts from as little as 2-3% up to maybe 15-16%, depending on the application/game.

I agree with the basic point though, faster RAM than 2133MHz should be in a new Ryzen build, might be worth Vision asking what the options are if he decides to order, and indeed why they're only offering 2133MHz in those Ryzen systems.

Author:  GazChap [ Sat Jul 01, 2017 18:34 ]
Post subject:  Re: PC gaming hardware thread.

JohnCoffey wrote:
basically AMD are using something called Infinity Fabric to tie things together.

Should we be calling in the Guardians of the Galaxy?

Author:  JohnCoffey [ Sat Jul 01, 2017 22:40 ]
Post subject:  Re: PC gaming hardware thread.

Hearthly wrote:
JohnCoffey wrote:
Don't pair Ryzen with slow ram.

Quick explanation of why.. basically AMD are using something called Infinity Fabric to tie things together. Because of that (and because Ryzen 7 is two quad cores tied together using IF) ram speed makes a massive difference to the IPC. You want 3000mhz ram
No ifs or buts. You will lose 20% performance on 2133 ram. The rather crappy clock speed on Ryzen doesn't help any either.


I guess they're playing it safe because of the early RAM compatibility issues that Ryzen had, but yes they should be offering faster RAM than that by now.

20% might be over-egging the pudding a bit though, a quick Google around a raft on benchmarks shows uplifts from as little as 2-3% up to maybe 15-16%, depending on the application/game.

I agree with the basic point though, faster RAM than 2133MHz should be in a new Ryzen build, might be worth Vision asking what the options are if he decides to order, and indeed why they're only offering 2133MHz in those Ryzen systems.


Games, not so much. As you say, 3-10% max. Cinebench and rendering however?

At 4.6ghz my 5820k (6 core Haswell 12 threads) makes about 1200 points. My 8 core 16t Ivybridge Xeon @ 3.4ghz makes about 1150.

With 2133 ram @ 4ghz a Ryzen 1700 (non X) makes about 1450 points. With 3000mhz ram it does 1700 easy. Same applies to handbrake.. It's mostly when you use all 8 cores. Games do not do so, but The Witcher 3 has been sorted so has Rise Of The Tomb Raider. In those games it does make a difference, all the way up to 3200 when the memory controller becomes flaky and starts to slope off.

But yeah, 4ghz tops is pretty damn lame, so you want to extract every last bit of performance you can. And in real world apps like virtual machines etc it makes a massive difference.

To add. Ryzen works like a dual CPU rig. So there are basically two separate units that are tied together with IF. Dual socket systems suffer from latency between the CPUs. So that's basically what this IF thing is, a way to tie things together and bring down the latency. Threadripper will be even worse, because you now have 4 quad core units. So the faster your ram goes the faster the "bridge" between the two CPUs goes. The latency drops, and the performance really improves. ATM it's limited to like two games and anything that wants all of the cores and threads. But AMD are really working at it, and I think they have a fighting chance this time IMO. Loads of my mates have switched to Ryzen or finally ditched their raging X58 rigs and upgraded to Ryzen.

Author:  Sir Taxalot [ Mon Jul 03, 2017 5:03 ]
Post subject:  Re: PC gaming hardware thread.

You probably want to spend some good money on a decent power cable and monitor cable

Author:  KovacsC [ Mon Jul 03, 2017 5:43 ]
Post subject:  Re: PC gaming hardware thread.

Sir Taxalot wrote:
You probably want to spend some good money on a decent power cable and monitor cable


Not sure if serious or not.

Author:  krazywookie [ Mon Jul 03, 2017 8:19 ]
Post subject:  Re: PC gaming hardware thread.

KovacsC wrote:
Sir Taxalot wrote:
You probably want to spend some good money on a decent power cable and monitor cable


Not sure if serious or not.

Gold plate those suckers

Author:  Sir Taxalot [ Mon Jul 03, 2017 10:31 ]
Post subject:  Re: PC gaming hardware thread.

KovacsC wrote:
Sir Taxalot wrote:
You probably want to spend some good money on a decent power cable and monitor cable


Not sure if serious or not.


I'm sure there is someone on here with experience of expensive cables

Author:  Grim... [ Mon Jul 03, 2017 10:32 ]
Post subject:  Re: PC gaming hardware thread.

>:(

Author:  TheVision [ Mon Jul 03, 2017 13:33 ]
Post subject:  Re: PC gaming hardware thread.

Thanks for the help Hearthly. The PC you specced looks good to me and it looks like it'll do everything I need but still leave me some money to buy more storage.

One question though.. Would it make much of a difference to increase the RAM to 32gb?

Author:  Grim... [ Mon Jul 03, 2017 13:45 ]
Post subject:  Re: PC gaming hardware thread.

Video editing (in Premier Pro, at least) likes to store loads of stuff in RAM, so it'll help. If you put your scratch drive on the SSD it'll be pretty fast, though.

You could start with 16GB and then buy more if you think it could be quicker?

And send it back it it's not ;)

Author:  Sir Taxalot [ Tue Jul 04, 2017 0:40 ]
Post subject:  Re: PC gaming hardware thread.

Spec of the box is important, but what about the bits you see & touch...

Have you got a good monitor, Vision? Is the colour good, is it big enough, and with a high enough resolution to give you all the controls you need on screen without switching around? Simply, are you happy editing on it, and would you be happy doing MOAR editing on it? Do you want/have two monitors so you look pro?

Also chair, etc - if you are going to be pushing this, you'll be sat there a lot more, so you need to be comfy.

Author:  TheVision [ Tue Jul 04, 2017 21:55 ]
Post subject:  Re: PC gaming hardware thread.

Sir Taxalot wrote:
Spec of the box is important, but what about the bits you see & touch...

Have you got a good monitor, Vision? Is the colour good, is it big enough, and with a high enough resolution to give you all the controls you need on screen without switching around? Simply, are you happy editing on it, and would you be happy doing MOAR editing on it? Do you want/have two monitors so you look pro?

Also chair, etc - if you are going to be pushing this, you'll be sat there a lot more, so you need to be comfy.


All very good questions! My current monitor isn't great so I'll be upgrading that. I'll probably end up with two just for reasons. As for my desk and chair, yes. They're great. I won them both in a charity raffle at work a few years ago and they were really expensive at the time so there's no problems there. They're comfier than sitting in my living room!

Author:  Sir Taxalot [ Wed Jul 05, 2017 5:50 ]
Post subject:  Re: PC gaming hardware thread.

I don't think I'd want to work with just one monitor anymore - I've got so used to having two.

Author:  Mr Russell [ Wed Jul 05, 2017 8:30 ]
Post subject:  Re: PC gaming hardware thread.

Sir Taxalot wrote:
I don't think I'd want to work with just one monitor anymore - I've got so used to having two.

Image
http://dilbert.com/strip/2010-11-04

Author:  Mr Russell [ Wed Jul 05, 2017 8:31 ]
Post subject:  Re: PC gaming hardware thread.

I used to have that on display in my mini 'cubicle', but then I actually got three monitors so I took it down.

Author:  TheVision [ Wed Jul 05, 2017 9:26 ]
Post subject:  Re: PC gaming hardware thread.

Mr Russell wrote:
I used to have that on display in my mini 'cubicle', but then I actually got three monitors so I took it down.


Brilliant!

Author:  Grim... [ Wed Jul 05, 2017 10:11 ]
Post subject:  Re: PC gaming hardware thread.

Four monitors is where it's at.

Author:  DavPaz [ Wed Jul 05, 2017 10:14 ]
Post subject:  Re: PC gaming hardware thread.

I tried three, but I found that just wasn't using one of them. I suppose I could have my calendar open...

Author:  TheVision [ Wed Jul 05, 2017 10:26 ]
Post subject:  Re: PC gaming hardware thread.

I would like 3 with one of them being vertical.

Mainly so I can play Pac-man, Dig-Dug and any shooters on MAME.

Author:  DavPaz [ Wed Jul 05, 2017 10:28 ]
Post subject:  Re: PC gaming hardware thread.

TheVision wrote:
I would like 3 with one of them being vertical.

Mainly so I can play Pac-man, Dig-Dug and any shooters on MAME.

Good idea! Make it a CRT!

Author:  Grim... [ Wed Jul 05, 2017 10:29 ]
Post subject:  Re: PC gaming hardware thread.

I tried a vertical screen for a bit, but I didn't really like it.

...

CS,B

Author:  TheVision [ Wed Jul 05, 2017 10:29 ]
Post subject:  Re: PC gaming hardware thread.

Grim... wrote:
I tried a vertical screen for a bit, but I didn't really like it.

...

CS,B


You need to play more Pac-man.

Author:  Mr Russell [ Wed Jul 05, 2017 10:58 ]
Post subject:  Re: PC gaming hardware thread.

DavPaz wrote:
I tried three, but I found that just wasn't using one of them. I suppose I could have my calendar open...

I could go down to two again without being too fussed. My third monitor is mostly used for my comms channels such as Slack and skype so that they're visible, but 'out of the way'.

Author:  devilman [ Wed Jul 05, 2017 11:22 ]
Post subject:  Re: PC gaming hardware thread.

Grim... wrote:
Four monitors is where it's at.


A couple of the blokes at my last office job had four, with some fancy stand holding them all up. Two is fine for me though at home, although I do own four - one is hooked up to a Supergun downstairs and the other is on my bedroom drawers not plugged into anything because I basically had nowhere else to put it :D

Author:  JBR [ Wed Jul 05, 2017 13:01 ]
Post subject:  Re: PC gaming hardware thread.

My main monitor is vertical. Frankly, sometimes it's a pain in the arse, but it's so much better for reading comics that I've left it that way. And it ends up as a useful test of how things work on a narrow screen. Other monitor landscape as per.

Author:  DavPaz [ Wed Jul 05, 2017 13:29 ]
Post subject:  Re: PC gaming hardware thread.

It's not a bad way to work, as long as your monitor is at least 1024 pixels 'wide' when in portrait mode. Any less than that and webpages start to fuck up and most software will start stacking toolbars.

Author:  Sir Taxalot [ Wed Jul 05, 2017 22:33 ]
Post subject:  Re: PC gaming hardware thread.

Mr Russell wrote:
I used to have that on display in my mini 'cubicle', but then I actually got three monitors so I took it down.


My boss did warn me it was sometimes seen as a status thing, but then gave me an office all to myself, which is also a status thing. I think 3 screens would be overkill for me.

Author:  TheVision [ Thu Jul 13, 2017 11:43 ]
Post subject:  Re: PC gaming hardware thread.

What about an ultrawide monitor? I've seen a few of those in sales the past couple of days. What would be the benefit of one of those over 2 normal monitors?

Author:  asfish [ Thu Jul 13, 2017 12:12 ]
Post subject:  Re: PC gaming hardware thread.

TheVision wrote:
What about an ultrawide monitor? I've seen a few of those in sales the past couple of days. What would be the benefit of one of those over 2 normal monitors?


You obviously get a lot of screen for your money and they are easier to set up than 2 or more screens in that you don't need to piss around with the settings and options.

The finance people at work like them as they can have 2-3 excel sheets open at once, with the Dell and HP models you get software that's let you carve up the screen into different areas.

I have 3 24 inch screens at work managed by a Matrox M9138 card, its not the best solution, the 3rd screen refuses to play @1920 if I try to join all 3 as one desktop, but will do so if its a separate screen, also convinced the card is the cause of my desktop freezing every Monday when I've been away from my PC for the weekend.

I bought a special stand for the 3 screens and can't be arsed to change it all so put up with it.

There are some new HP curved wide screens out now with a windows hello camera that pops out of the top, these did make me thing about changing but the screens are £1000!

Author:  JohnCoffey [ Thu Jul 13, 2017 14:14 ]
Post subject:  Re: PC gaming hardware thread.

New toy.

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/21016244?

Author:  Hearthly [ Fri Jul 14, 2017 21:59 ]
Post subject:  Re: PC gaming hardware thread.

Grumble grumble, no one likes BSODs in this day and age, this is quite a nasty one too. (And it fucking cost me what was pretty much a dead-cert and very hard-earned victory against a twatty Control Mage in Hearthstone.)

I fear my venerable old PC may be nearing its time to shuffle off to the LED-enfused junkyard in the sky.

The one slightly unusual thing my PC was doing at the time of the BSOD was copy 56GB of trance from a shit old hard drive to a 128GB USB key, and that error does specifically refer to fucked disk type shit, so I'll take it from there. It's been running fine since it bombed out earlier on.

Stupid computers. Still, it is a very old man now in PC terms.

Attachment:
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Author:  BikNorton [ Sat Jul 15, 2017 9:23 ]
Post subject:  Re: PC gaming hardware thread.

My work laptop did that until they replaced the sandisk ssd with a Samsung one that didn't just completely stop responding every now and then.

Author:  Hearthly [ Sat Jul 15, 2017 9:59 ]
Post subject:  Re: PC gaming hardware thread.

Ahhh OK looks like it is specifically that drive. It passes a CHKDSK but on a second attempt to copy the trance over it chucked a 'file unreadable' style error about 25% of the way through, and then the drive itself vanished from Windows Explorer!

A quick look into the event log reveals this nastiness.

Oh well, that's a really old 500GB drive so I guess I can just replace it with a newer drive, I use it as kind of a 'working' drive anyway, there's no important data on there (and all my shit is backed up (multiple times)) anyway).

Attachment:
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Author:  JohnCoffey [ Sat Jul 15, 2017 13:09 ]
Post subject:  Re: PC gaming hardware thread.

I had a kind of strange week with PCs tbh. I have three. A 2006, 2008 and 2014. The 2006 runs Ubuntu. Any way, that was on the floor (the 2006) because I was working on the loop in the 2008. Then about a week back the 2008 (my daily beater) shut itself down. After a couple of attempts to turn it back on it just shut itself down again and again. Figured out the fan controller that runs the pump for the GPU (it's got two separate loops) died. So I removed that and connected it up 7v, all was well again. Decided to upgrade the GPU in my 2014, so took that down and gave it a thorough cleaning. I sold the GPU out of it, so it too was on the floor with the Ubuntu machine (2006). Any way, it seems the 2008 was absolutely determined to die and cost me cash because a couple of days later it just froze with a Watchdog_Timeout BSOD. It said it would do a few bits and bobs and then reboot but three hours later it was still stuck on 0%. Rebooted the machine, failed POST at the RAID screen for my OCZ Revodrive. So basically my £40 refurb RAID PCIE SSD decided to call it quits after five years. Not that I am complaining, but yeah, freaky.

So now all I got left is one PC (2006 Ubuntu) so I had to use that for a few days whilst the new GPU for the 2014 came in (Pascal Titan X, big P not little one) and I have had to order a new SSD for the 2008.

But yeah, how funny is that? I have three PCs and within a week I was down to one lol. The 2014 is back in action now. Just waiting on a M.2-SATA adapter for the 180gb Intel SSD I just bought to replace the Revo.

Oh yeah forgot. I also upgraded the ram in my daily beater from two odd pairs of 1600mhz to this. Klevv Urbane 4x4gb 2133mhz.

Image

Hearthly wrote:
I fear my venerable old PC may be nearing its time to shuffle off to the LED-enfused junkyard in the sky.


I'm ashamed to admit I know you :p

Have you not read about capacitor aging and so on? seriously man what is it with you? That rig should have gone to the PC gods in the sky years ago.

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