4k gaming build

Lord Lucifer

Lord Lucifer

Lord Lucifer

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Joined
12 Jun 2014
Posts
57
Hello all,

I wanted to make the jump to 4k. I'm capable at PC building but it's been a while so I'm not in know so to speak.

Some brief research has lead my system to consist of the following:

S9BRlje.jpg


Now, I need help on the case. I appreciate the watercooling stuff there is not of the highest order, but I'm not too confident with it as I'm new to it.

Also, I need advice on a highest quality 4K monitor (input lag not to important as I won't be competitive gaming on it) and a 1080p gaming monitor (for console and PC competitive gaming).

Please feel free to tweak away. All help massively appreciated! Would like to get this system ordered my Monday.

Thanks!!
 
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Your spending more than is needed here. Though I must say its one of the only builds I've seen that could actually max 4k games, but then you are sinking 2k into graphics cards :P Basically you dont need the 64GB of ram most people will say 16 is overkill, 32 is insane and 64 is just unnecessarey unless you have a specific need for it. The 2TB SSHD is pretty pointless as well when you already have a 500GB SSD boot drive. You would notice no difference just going for a standard HDD as the second drive.

The biggest error you have made is around the CPU / board though. The cpu you have picked is a different socked to the board so simply wont fit. I've specced up the below basket based around your own with the main aim being to try and save cost to give you an idea of how I would do it. I've also made sure its a K series CPU so you can do some overclocking.

Picking a case is quite difficult for this buld. With the CPU cooler I've picked you need to make sure it has 2*140mm mounts in the top for the cpu cooler, another 2*120mm mounts in the front for the two radiators for the 295x2s, and then enough space to mount your drives without drive cages interfering with any of those radiators or that massive power supply. Without spending massive money the only case I can think of that can really do this is the 760t (some of the bigger XL cases can do this easily but there well over £100 more). I'd personally go for this case, ditch both of its lower hard drive cages as you can mount the SSD behind the tray instead then just get an adapter to mount the single 3.5" drive in one of the 5.25" slots. That way you get two nice clean open 120mm intakes on the front for the two GPU radiators which you could run as an intake. You can then use the two 140mm mounts on the roof for the CPU cooler probably again as intakes, and use the rear 140mm as an exhaust.

YOUR BASKET
2 x PowerColor AMD Radeon R9 295 X2 8192MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £1079.99 (£2,159.98)
1 x Corsair AX1500i Digital ATX 80 Plus Titanium Modular Power Supply (CP-9020057-UK) £329.99
1 x Intel Core i7-4790K 4.00GHz (Devil's Canyon) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £269.99
1 x Gigabyte Z97X-Gaming G1 Intel Z97 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £259.99
1 x Samsung 500GB SSD 840 EVO SATA 6Gb/s Basic - (MZ-7TE500BW) £209.99
1 x Corsair Graphite 760T Windowed Full Tower Gaming Case - Black (CC-9011044-WW) £144.95
1 x Kingston HyperX 16GB (2x8GB) PC3-19200C11 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit - Black/Red (HX24C11BRK2/16-OC) £129.95
1 x Corsair Hydro H110 280mm High Performance Liquid CPU Cooler (CW-9060014-WW) £91.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 2TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST2000DM001) HDD £59.99
Total : £3,683.45 (includes shipping : £22.20).



When it comes to 4k monitors they all use the same panel at the minute so just pick your favourite. They are all about £500 so even when you add a monitor to this build your still cheaper than your origional basket and it should do the job just as well and actually work :P
 
Just at a glance.. That CPU isn't compatible with that motherboard. Im sure some will be around soon salivating at the chance to spec you a build.

Edit - little late.
 
Ah oops, See silly mistake there already!!

Will changing the CPU effect peformance then? On a previous forum thats the CPU I was recommended...

As for budget, a slightly insane thing to say, but budget wise... No not really no. Whatever makes 4K work at high frame rates which seems to be a challenge in itself!

Thanks!
 
The CPU i've picked in my build above is the same as the one you picked but its the K version so can be overclocked (meaning it will actually be more powerful in the end). I've simply picked a different board to make it work.

I honestly dont think you can beat my above build on price unless you drop the SSD to a 250 / 120gb version instead. The CPU / PSU / GPU are all necessarey and I've already picked a cheapish case and good value board.

To give you an idea how it would look when built take a look at this http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FS-443-OE&groupid=43&catid=2474 as its a very similiar pre-built.
 
BinnsY said:
Your spending more than is needed here. Though I must say its one of the only builds I've seen that could actually max 4k games, but then you are sinking 2k into graphics cards :P Basically you dont need the 64GB of ram most people will say 16 is overkill, 32 is insane and 64 is just unnecessarey unless you have a specific need for it. The 2TB SSHD is pretty pointless as well when you already have a 500GB SSD boot drive. You would notice no difference just going for a standard HDD as the second drive.

The biggest error you have made is around the CPU / board though. The cpu you have picked is a different socked to the board so simply wont fit. I've specced up the below basket based around your own with the main aim being to try and save cost to give you an idea of how I would do it. I've also made sure its a K series CPU so you can do some overclocking.

Picking a case is quite difficult for this buld. With the CPU cooler I've picked you need to make sure it has 2*140mm mounts in the top for the cpu cooler, another 2*120mm mounts in the front for the two radiators for the 295x2s, and then enough space to mount your drives without drive cages interfering with any of those radiators or that massive power supply. Without spending massive money the only case I can think of that can really do this is the 760t (some of the bigger XL cases can do this easily but there well over £100 more). I'd personally go for this case, ditch both of its lower hard drive cages as you can mount the SSD behind the tray instead then just get an adapter to mount the single 3.5" drive in one of the 5.25" slots. That way you get two nice clean open 120mm intakes on the front for the two GPU radiators which you could run as an intake. You can then use the two 140mm mounts on the roof for the CPU cooler probably again as intakes, and use the rear 140mm as an exhaust.

YOUR BASKET
2 x PowerColor AMD Radeon R9 295 X2 8192MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £1079.99 (£2,159.98)
1 x Corsair AX1500i Digital ATX 80 Plus Titanium Modular Power Supply (CP-9020057-UK) £329.99
1 x Intel Core i7-4790K 4.00GHz (Devil's Canyon) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £269.99
1 x Gigabyte Z97X-Gaming G1 Intel Z97 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £259.99
1 x Samsung 500GB SSD 840 EVO SATA 6Gb/s Basic - (MZ-7TE500BW) £209.99
1 x Corsair Graphite 760T Windowed Full Tower Gaming Case - Black (CC-9011044-WW) £144.95
1 x Kingston HyperX 16GB (2x8GB) PC3-19200C11 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit - Black/Red (HX24C11BRK2/16-OC) £129.95
1 x Corsair Hydro H110 280mm High Performance Liquid CPU Cooler (CW-9060014-WW) £91.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 2TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST2000DM001) HDD £59.99
Total : £3,683.45 (includes shipping : £22.20).



When it comes to 4k monitors they all use the same panel at the minute so just pick your favourite. They are all about £500 so even when you add a monitor to this build your still cheaper than your origional basket and it should do the job just as well and actually work :P
Click to expand...

Wonderful! Thanks for your help sir, I'll get on that!! I was considering the PQ321Q monitor as I thought it was currently the best 4k image option...?

Also any recommendation for that 2nd 1080p gaming monitor (console and PC).

Oh and one final thing, I chose a SSHD as I wanted to keep my entire Steam library ready to go rather then managing current playing games etc.

Thanks again for that amazing post.
 
No worries. Theres a lot of very experienced people on here so I'll be intrigued to see if any of the more knowledgable ones disagree with my build as when your spending this much theres always more than one option.

The SSHD always sounds like a nice idea but they only have 8GB of SSD space so it will barely keep one game in that cached memory. It's good if you only play one game at a time and thats the one you are always going to load, but I'm just not convinced its worth spending twice as much on.

Having said that, the £40 price increase represnts 1% of the total build cost of a system this expensive so if you still want it go nuts :P

I'd honestly forgotten about the PQ321q but I'm not that clued up on the 4k monitors as they arent something that interest me at the minute (I'm eagerly waiting for the ROG swift) so I'll let someone more knowledgable give you the answers to that one :P
 
I'm very happy with my Samsung 4K, but were I to buy anew I'd get one with a better stand or at least a VESA mount. (I will note that Samsung actually manufacture the panels so the panels on their own monitors will be the best.) And you've got enough GPU power to run three 4K monitors. Rather than getting two 295X2 cards, you might consider pairing a 295X2 with a 290X. or go for 3x 8GB Sapphire R9 290X cards.
 
I'd hesitate to recommend my AOC U2868PQU for gaming use but I'm not sure if I've just got a panel with a few issues or if its a general problem with the AOC 4K panel - from any single source regardless of resolution and refresh rate the mouse has a skating on ice feel which is possible due to high input lag - but its goes away completely when using PBP mode so either this panel has issues or AOC's 4K Scaler has issues. Not tried any other 4K panels to compare though.

Also in fast paced stuff overdrive artifacts are a bit more noticeable than I'd like for gaming use even with lower settings of it and without it the clarity in motion takes a dump.

If it wasn't for that I'd reccomend it unreservedly in all other ways its a brilliant panel.
 
Rroff said:
I'd hesitate to recommend my AOC U2868PQU for gaming use but I'm not sure if I've just got a panel with a few issues or if its a general problem with the AOC 4K panel - from any single source regardless of resolution and refresh rate the mouse has a skating on ice feel which is possible due to high input lag - but its goes away completely when using PBP mode so either this panel has issues or AOC's 4K Scaler has issues. Not tried any other 4K panels to compare though.

Also in fast paced stuff overdrive artifacts are a bit more noticeable than I'd like for gaming use even with lower settings of it and without it the clarity in motion takes a dump.

If it wasn't for that I'd reccomend it unreservedly in all other ways its a brilliant panel.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the info, thing is my understanding is that gaming monitors come at the cost of image quality and by the sounds, heavily so. I'd rather get a high quality image 4k capable screen that may have some lag, but perfectly fine for single player/non-competitive games and a separate 1080p monitor as close to lag free for gaming both console and PC.

I tend to play fighting games a lot where the majority of the audience is console so thats why 1080p monitor will be fine.

Thanks for the suggestion though. Sounds like currently the Asus PQ321Q is the 4k monitor of choice given it's IPS origins and colour/viewing angles screen it'll suit day to day and single player gaming fine...

I don't mind spending money on the 1080p screen so long as it's minimal lag and as good image as possible...

Thanks again.
 
Quartz said:
I'm very happy with my Samsung 4K, but were I to buy anew I'd get one with a better stand or at least a VESA mount. (I will note that Samsung actually manufacture the panels so the panels on their own monitors will be the best.) And you've got enough GPU power to run three 4K monitors. Rather than getting two 295X2 cards, you might consider pairing a 295X2 with a 290X. or go for 3x 8GB Sapphire R9 290X cards.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the info, I think though given I expect Witcher 3 and Arkham Knight to be demanding @ 4k I think having 2x R9 295x2 will help future proof the machine a little...
 
Lord Lucifer said:
Thanks for the info, thing is my understanding is that gaming monitors come at the cost of image quality and by the sounds, heavily so. I'd rather get a high quality image 4k capable screen that may have some lag, but perfectly fine for single player/non-competitive games and a separate 1080p monitor as close to lag free for gaming both console and PC.

I tend to play fighting games a lot where the majority of the audience is console so thats why 1080p monitor will be fine.

Thanks for the suggestion though. Sounds like currently the Asus PQ321Q is the 4k monitor of choice given it's IPS origins and colour/viewing angles screen it'll suit day to day and single player gaming fine...

I don't mind spending money on the 1080p screen so long as it's minimal lag and as good image as possible...

Thanks again.
Click to expand...

Dunno what the other 4K panels are like for gaming, people seem fairly positive about the Samsung in that regard and I'm not 100% sure if I've just got a duff panel or if its a thing with these AOCs - I've got a bunch of other high res TN and IPS 60Hz panels, including the Dell U2913WM, that all feel more responsive and aside from one do better for fast paced gaming as well as some 120Hz panels (BenQ XL2420T and Samsung 2233rz).
 
I've been getting withdrawal symptoms from lack of bling builds.

Subbed :D

Can't speak of others mate but Ether specced me a quality build last year which I ended up purchasing
 
Just a thought but a while back, OCUK had a specific build for 2x 295x2 cards. It might be worth having a search.
 
Jay Blizzay said:
I've been getting withdrawal symptoms from lack of bling builds.

Subbed :D

Can't speak of others mate but Ether specced me a quality build last year which I ended up purchasing
Click to expand...

Haha, yeah - I'm hoping this will be a nice epic build haha! BinnsY made some good recommendations earlier in the thread (the case looks awesome!) but I'll keep the thread rolling for suggestions a bit longer and order tomorrow.

Quartz said:
Just a thought but a while back, OCUK had a specific build for 2x 295x2 cards. It might be worth having a search.
Click to expand...

Cool, thanks. I'll look into it!

(PS: How do you link a basket to a forum post?? It's a cleaner option then my image tag!)
 
Jay Blizzay said:
I've been getting withdrawal symptoms from lack of bling builds.

Subbed :D

Can't speak of others mate but Ether specced me a quality build last year which I ended up purchasing
Click to expand...

I would love to see some pictures it finished :)

As for this spec I'm finding it hard as the I want the colour scheme to be just right and I'm trying to avoid the R9 295 as Quadfire doesn't always scale very well....
 
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