New Rig advice: £2500

Zikar

Zikar

Zikar

Associate
Joined
23 Sep 2013
Posts
82
Hello Overclockers, I've been saving my money and I'm feeling the time would be good to get a brand new rig.

So, here is what I'd like my rig to be able to do:
60FPS 1440p Gaming of the latest and greatest graphically intense games.
Also, Oculus Rift ready.

So, my checklist of items would be:

Required:
Very Good 1440p monitor for gaming.
At least three USB 3.0 connections (more the better)
NVidia graphics card.
16 GB ram.
SSD for boot drive
Large TB HDD for game installations.
64-bit Windows (opinions on 10? Or should I stick with 8.1?)

Optional Extras:
New gaming Mouse, new mechanical Keyboard (only if, by some miracle, there's money left over)

Are my desires possible with £2500? Or am I still too light?
 
I think we can do better than that... how about 4K monitor, a badass GPU, and the keyboard+mouse you asked for?

The GPU should be able to blast out the latest games at 4k, but just in case it struggles, the monitor is perfectly capable of "dropping" to 1440p at which point the 980TI shouldn't even break a sweat.

And at £2330, you have £170 to play with in the configurator if you want to upgrade (Tip: for about an extra £50 over your budget you could swap the 980TI to a Titan for even more badass per minute)

Note that you can probably get this slightly cheaper if you build it yourself, I just found it faster this way... and if spending £2k on a PC, it's nice to have the "single unit" warranty with OcUK.

My basket at Overclockers UK:
  • 1 x Dell P2415Q 24" 3840x2160 IPS 4k Widescreen LED Monitor - Midnight Grey= £349.99
  • 1 x OcUK Tech Labs Haswell-E X99 Pro Gaming PC Configurator = £1,961.84
    • Case:NZXT Noctis 450 White Full Tower Chassis
    • Motherboard:Asus X99-A Intel X99 (Socket 2011) DDR4 ATX Motherboard
    • Processor:Intel i7-5820K 3.30GHz (Haswell-E) Socket LGA2011-V3 Processor - OEM (CM8064801548435)
    • Memory:Team Group Elite 16GB (4x4GB) DDR4 PC4-19200C16 2400MHz Quad Channel Kit - Black (TPKD416GM2400HC16Q
    • CPU Cooler:Corsair Hydro H100i GTX 240mm High Performance Liquid CPU Cooler (CW-9060021-WW)
    • M.2 Solid State Drive **For Operating System If Selected**:Unwanted
    • Solid State Drive 1:Samsung 250GB 850 EVO SSD 2.5" SATA 6Gbps 32 Layer 3D V-NAND Solid State Drive (MZ-75E250B/EU)
    • Solid State Drive 2:Unwanted
    • Mechanical Hard Drive 1:Seagate 1TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache HDD - OEM (ST1000DM003)
    • Mechanical Hard Drive 2:Unwanted
    • Optical Drive **Please Check Chassis Support**:Unwanted
    • Graphics Card:Asus GeForce GTX 980Ti DC3 OC Strix 6144MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (GTX980TI-6GD5)
    • Graphics Card 2 (SLI/CrossFire):Unwanted
    • Power Supply:XFX XTR 850W '80 Plus Gold' Fully Modular Power Supply
    • Sound Card:Unwanted
    • Networking:Unwanted
    • Case Lighting:Unwanted
    • Operating System:Microsoft Windows 10 64-Bit DVD - OEM (MS-KW9-00139)
    • Security Software:Unwanted
    • Keyboard:SteelSeries Apex M800 Mechanical Gaming Keyboard (64174)
    • Mouse:Zowie ZA11 High Performance Gaming Mouse - Black
    • Monitor:Unwanted
    • Gaming Headset:Unwanted
    • Speakers:Unwanted
    • Gaming Chair:Unwanted

Total: £2,334.93
(includes shipping: £23.10)
​


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Oh wow.

And yes, £50 over budget is manageable.

I see that you've added a water cooler, never had one before, are they much maintenance?
 
Not at all - these are the relatively new "Closed loop" water coolers and are a totally different beast to the full watercooling setups. Everything is sealed and you basically treat it like an air cooler: No attaching, filling, refilling etc. It's just a pump/heatsink, a bit of fixed tubing, and a radiator you fix to your case

There's a very slight risk of leaking, but it's incredibly rare. They're also slightly trickier to fit, but the advantages are excellent cooling, they're a little quieter (particularly at idle/medium power), and perhaps most usefully they eject CPU heat straight out of the case (rather than pushing it around inside the case like an air cooler does).

If you can spare the £50, the nVidia Titan X is a phenomenal card. With a similar CPU this review got 29 fps minimum when gaming at 4K (avg 40, max 50) at max settings, with similar results in Far Cry etc. And as I said, worst case you just drop to 1440p (where you'll get 60+FPS)

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/nvidia-geforce-gtx-titan-x-gm200-maxwell,review-33151-3.html

I'm not sure if OcUK overclock that specific model, but if not you should easily be able to get 4GHz out of it, and probably closer to 4.5-4.6, or you may be able to ask them to do it (I'm assuming there's a charge for that)
 
So, if I get that Zotac Titan X, it'll be fine. Brand doesn't matter right? That's the only one in stock.

About the monitor, I know you can drop down resolutions, but will displaying 1440p on a 4k monitor look as clean as a 1440p monitor running natively? I've also heard that running non-native resolutions can damage monitors (although, that was several years ago).

If 4k will only be hovering around 30fps with VSync - or else have massive tearing - I'm not sure it would be worth it... unless of course my above fears are totally unfounded.
 
If I were in your shoes, I'd go for something like this:

My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £2,576.92
(includes shipping: £23.10)
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Good point. Add a hammer to that list, then it will.

Edit:

My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £2,591.88
(includes shipping: £28.02)
​
 
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Hmm, no, I wouldn't go with a curved monitor. Aside from being incredibly over-priced, the curve is little more than a gimmick in my opinion, not truly improving immersion or image quality.
 
Zikar said:
So, if I get that Zotac Titan X, it'll be fine. Brand doesn't matter right? That's the only one in stock.

About the monitor, I know you can drop down resolutions, but will displaying 1440p on a 4k monitor look as clean as a 1440p monitor running natively? I've also heard that running non-native resolutions can damage monitors (although, that was several years ago).

If 4k will only be hovering around 30fps with VSync - or else have massive tearing - I'm not sure it would be worth it... unless of course my above fears are totally unfounded.
Click to expand...

Titan X isn't worth the extra money over a 980 ti as the performance is very close. You will have a better gaming experience at 1440p with a single 980 ti. At 4K resolution you really want 2 x 980 ti's.

Are you going to be building this pc yourself ?
 
I think I can just about swing that extra money for a monitor like that.

lee32uk said:
Are you going to be building this pc yourself ?
Click to expand...
I usually do, but this is quite a lot of money, might get it built by OC and take advantage of warranties etc.

So Audigex's original build, plus FL630's standard 1440p monitor seems like a good build. What do you guys think?

Edit: Ah, wait, the monitor is now out of stock... bummer.
 
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You can ask ocuk to build you a pc to your own spec. Just a matter of posting your basket in the pre-sales section and getting a quote.

For some reason the images are not working with the basket.

This spec has a 1440p G-Sync Monitor. I haven't included a Mouse/Keyboard but you would still have money left over for that.


My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £2,055.71
(includes shipping: £15.90)
​
 
Too me a while to find the pre-sale section, it's slightly hidden. :)

That's looking nice, thanks for doing those individually.

I went with a different case though, the https://www.overclockers.co.uk/nzxt-phantom-enthusiast-usb3.0-full-tower-case-black-ca-023-nx.html. It's cheaper and isn't white and hideous... ;) So unless it catches things on fire or something...

Sorry if it seems like I'm constantly throwing this out there for more opinions, but I'm sure you'll all appreciate that this is quite a bit of money and I want to make sure I get the best deal.

With that said, anyone else got any thoughts, should I go with this?

My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £2,028.95
(includes shipping: £23.10)
​
 
Well cases are a personal thing :) Do you not want one with a window ?


Also the Corsair H110i GT might not be compatible with that case, so check with customer services.
 
I'm in a similar boat, with a Rift on order, but I'm holding out for news on the new Pascal GPUs before taking the plunge.

I advise you do the same unless you're in a rush. I don't see the point in dropping £500+ on a GPU with the new architecture just (potentially) round the corner.

They might not (probably won't) be released in time for Rift, but it's worth waiting a couple of months if you can.
 
kingbal said:
I'm in a similar boat, with a Rift on order, but I'm holding out for news on the new Pascal GPUs before taking the plunge.

I advise you do the same unless you're in a rush. I don't see the point in dropping £500+ on a GPU with the new architecture just (potentially) round the corner.

They might not (probably won't) be released in time for Rift, but it's worth waiting a couple of months if you can.
Click to expand...
There's always new architecture for something around the corner. ;)

I find that it never makes a huge difference right away, anyway. It's more of a gradual climb than a massive jump.
 
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