Gaming/All Purpose PC Build Recommendation

Barrel · 15 Jul 2015 at 11:19

Hi

First thing's first, I don't necessarily have a set budget but I'm thinking it's going to be about £2000 - £3000 for what I want. If you keep it within these limits it should be fine but it would be nice to have more justification/explanation the closer it gets to the £3000 budget.

I know there are people that will argue the budget is overkill for a gaming PC but this isn't the only thing I'll use it for. It will primarily be a gaming PC but I want the ability to do whatever I fancy with good performance - I dabble a lot with different things. I want to be able to stream while gaming but at the same time do some video rendering/CAD stuff every now and then, maybe even some music/audio production if I get back into guitar playing. It will also be used for other things like video watching, music storage, documents, etc, but these obviously don't effect the build that much. Games range from simple LoL, Rocket League, Steam arcade-style games to newer more demanding games like Witcher 3, Fallout 4, Ark, Star Citizen, etc.

I would like an up-to-date build - I understand in a technology market in which there are always new things on the horizon this isn't an easy request to adhere to. Basically, I want the latest that I can get at the minute or at least the ability to use it going forward, e.g. DDR4 RAM, 1440p/4K gaming at high frames & settings, etc. Please note that I will upgrade going forward but I'm not planning on overclocking - the upgrades will be things like additional RAM, adding another graphics card, additional SSDs, etc.

I will need everything except a headset, mouse & keyboard - currently using a Corsair H1500, Roccat Kone XTD & Roccat Ryos MK in the unlikely event people want to know when putting a build together for me. So I will need a monitor in the budget, however the 4K monitor can come down the line. I like the idea of starting with two monitors at first (probably one/two 1080p monitors with the budget?) then picking up a 4K monitor in a deal or when I have the spare money. Please note I still want the ability to 4K game with this build. I will need an OS and my preference is Windows 7 because I'm familiar with it and I think it is more user friendly. However, if there are good performance reasons to go with Windows 8 then I will go for that.

I've probably missed something but I'll try and catch it in replies or edits. Please feel free to ask any questions or give any advice.

Thank you in advance.

Barrel

dacads · 15 Jul 2015 at 12:25

What about a 27" 1440p G-Sync monitor? Can be changed to suit your preferences anyway.

YOUR BASKET
1 x Asus PG278Q ROG Swift 27" G-Sync 144Hz Gaming Widescreen LED Slim Bezel Monitor - Black/Red £629.99
1 x Gigabyte GeForce GTX 980Ti G1 Gaming 6144MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £599.99
1 x Intel 5820K 3.30GHz (Haswell-E) Socket LGA2011-V3 Processor - Retail (BX80648I75820K) £329.99
1 x Avexir Core Red Series 32GB (4x8GB) DDR4 PC4-21300C15 2666MHz Quad Channel Kit (AVD4U26661508G-4CIR) - Red Light £299.99
1 x Asus X99-Deluxe Intel X99 (Socket 2011) DDR4 ATX Motherboard £299.99
1 x Samsung SM951 512GB M.2 PCI-e Gen3 8Gbps x 4 Solid State Drive (MZHPV512HDGL-00000) £259.99
1 x EVGA SuperNova G2 1300W '80 Plus Gold' Modular Power Supply (120-G2-1300-XR) £164.99
1 x Phanteks Enthoo Evolv ATX Mid Tower Case - Gun Metal £139.99
1 x Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-Bit - OEM (GFC-02733) £79.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 2TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST2000DM001) HDD £58.99
1 x Alpenföhn Matterhorn Black CPU Cooler £39.95
1 x Samsung SE-218GB/RSBS Ultra Slim External DVD-RW Drive - Black (Retail) £26.99
Total : £2,930.83 (includes shipping : Ex.VAT).

Obviously case is objective, you can go with a full tower to get more slots for SSDs etc

Some money could be saved in a few areas you don't think is necessary/justified.

Barrel · 15 Jul 2015 at 12:44

dacads said:
What about a 27" 1440p G-Sync monitor? Can be changed to suit your preferences anyway.

Obviously case is objective, you can go with a full tower to get more slots for SSDs etc

Some money could be saved in a few areas you don't think is necessary/justified.

Thanks for the fast reply. I'd be happy with a 1440p monitor but I would prefer to have two monitors. I know this might be a stupid question but can you run monitors at different resolutions at the same time? For example, could I have the 1440p monitor running at 1440p for gaming purposes and then buy a small 15" 1080p monitor to have on the side for browsing while gaming purposes? Or would they both need to be running at 1080p?

I like the build you have suggested however I do have a few questions:

- There's obviously a big difference in price between the 980Ti and Titan X but does the Titan X perform better with 4K? I'm thinking of SLI down the line, surely 2 Titan X's SLI are better than 2 980Ti SLI? If it's not a huge difference for the jump in price then I will go with the 980Ti, I just haven't done much research into it.

- Is there any reason you've stuck with a 5820k and not gone for the 5930k? I know it's a bit naive to think higher numbers means better performance but I'm assuming there are some benefits. Again, I'm not necessarily thinking about the jump in price here but if that's the reason then fair enough.

- If I were to try and save money in certain areas, like you mentioned, what are these? I think I can see that the RAM could be brought down to 16GB and maybe a smaller SSD for now but are there any other areas?

Thanks again for your suggestion.

lee32uk · 15 Jul 2015 at 13:18

You can run two monitors at different resolutions. With your budget though you can fit 2 x 1440p monitors in there.

The 980 ti is the better value card. Performance wise it is almost as fast as a Titan X.

The 5820K is fine if you just plan on running 2 graphics cards. The only difference with the 5930K is that it has extra pci-e lanes, and a slightly higher clock speed (3.5GHz rather than 3.3GHz) so if you were planning on running 3 or 4 way sli or adding things like pci-e ssd's then it would make more sense.

Barrel · 15 Jul 2015 at 13:24

lee32uk said:
You can run two monitors at different resolutions. With your budget though you can fit 2 x 1440p monitors in there.

The 980 ti is the better value card. Performance wise it is almost as fast as a Titan X.

The 5820K is fine if you just plan on running 2 graphics cards. The only difference with the 5930K is that it has extra pci-e lanes, and a slightly higher clock speed (3.5GHz rather than 3.3GHz) so if you were planning on running 3 or 4 way sli or adding things like pci-e ssd's then it would make more sense.

I have a big enough budget for two 1440p monitors? The build he suggested is already at £2930 so unless I go for a far cheaper monitor then I'd be about £500 over budget. I think if I dropped down to like a 24" then I could save money. I use a 21" monitor at work and that's a big step up for me, as I'm currently using a 15" laptop for gaming, so a 24" would be more than sufficient.

I don't know what PCI-E SSDs are so I'm not sure I'd be planning on that but it would be nice to have that option I guess

lee32uk · 15 Jul 2015 at 13:27

This has a 1440p G-Sync and also a 1440p IPS Monitor which will give better colour reproduction.

If you don't play a lot of fast paced games then you could go with 2 of the IPS screens.

You can only have a max of 16GB Ram with Windows 7 home premium anyway. You would need the professional version if you wanted to add more ram.

YOUR BASKET
1 x Asus PG278Q ROG Swift 27" G-Sync 144Hz Gaming Widescreen LED Slim Bezel Monitor - Black/Red £629.99
1 x Gigabyte GeForce GTX 980Ti G1 Gaming 6144MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £599.99
1 x Asus X99-S - Intel Core i7 5820K Six Core CPU & Motherboard Bundle ***£30 Saving*** £524.98
1 x Asus PB278QR 27" Professional LED Multimedia Monitor - Black £429.95
1 x Crucial BX100 500GB SSD SATA 6Gbps 7mm Solid State Drive (CT500BX100SSD1) £139.99
1 x EVGA SuperNova G2 1000W '80 Plus Gold' Modular Power Supply £134.99
1 x Corsair Vengeance 16GB (4x4GB) DDR4 PC4-21300C15 2666MHz Quad Channel Kit - Black (CMK16GX4M4A2666C15) £119.99
1 x Phanteks Enthoo Pro Mid Tower Case with Window - White £89.99
1 x Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-Bit - OEM (GFC-02733) £79.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 2TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST2000DM001) HDD £58.99
1 x Alpenföhn Matterhorn Black CPU Cooler £39.95
Total : £2,848.79 (includes shipping : Ex.VAT).

lee32uk · 15 Jul 2015 at 13:40

Barrel said:
I have a big enough budget for two 1440p monitors? The build he suggested is already at £2930 so unless I go for a far cheaper monitor then I'd be about £500 over budget. I think if I dropped down to like a 24" then I could save money. I use a 21" monitor at work and that's a big step up for me, as I'm currently using a 15" laptop for gaming, so a 24" would be more than sufficient.

I don't know what PCI-E SSDs are so I'm not sure I'd be planning on that but it would be nice to have that option I guess

You can go with smaller monitors if you want, but 1440p are usually 27". You can get 25" 1440p ones but there aren't many on the market. At 24" the resolution is normally 1080p.

The pci-e ssd's such as the Intel 750 and the Samsung m.2 in Dacads spec have much faster read/write speeds than the one in my build. For most people though, a Crucial BX100 or Samsung 850 EVO is fine.

Quartz · 15 Jul 2015 at 13:54

Two monitors will make you much more productive.

With regards to 980 Ti vs Titan X, you should look at the VRAM usage figures for the games you intend playing

Barrel · 15 Jul 2015 at 14:16

Quartz said:
Two monitors will make you much more productive.

With regards to 980 Ti vs Titan X, you should look at the VRAM usage figures for the games you intend playing

Yeah, I definitely want the two monitors. I think I'll go for one G-Sync and one IPS. The sizes will take some getting used to but it's not exactly a bad thing to have to do.

I'll have a look at some reviews online of the VRAM usage but I have a feeling there won't be much difference. I'll probably end up going for the 980Ti but it doesn't hurt to look, I guess.

dacads · 15 Jul 2015 at 14:17

Here are some normal monitors that you could consider, which don't have the NVidia G-Sync technology but you could get two monitors within your budget.

YOUR BASKET
1 x BenQ GW2765HT 27" Widescreen LED Gaming Flicker FREE Monitor - Black £319.99
1 x AOC Q2770PQU 27" Widescreen LED Monitor - Black £299.99
1 x Acer Predator G277HU 27" ZeroFrame Gaming Widescreen Monitor - Black/Silver (UM.HG7EE.007) £289.99
1 x Dell UltraSharp U2515H 25" QHD IPS Professional Widescreen LED Monitor - Midnight Grey £269.99
Total : £1,213.02 (includes shipping : £27.55 Ex.VAT).

At 4k you might need the extra vram the Titan X provides but the 980 Ti is certainly capable enough performance wise.

http://www.tested.com/tech/pcs/529725-testing-geforce-gtx-980-ti-4k-benchmarks/

Barrel · 15 Jul 2015 at 14:24

lee32uk said:
You can go with smaller monitors if you want, but 1440p are usually 27". You can get 25" 1440p ones but there aren't many on the market. At 24" the resolution is normally 1080p.

The pci-e ssd's such as the Intel 750 and the Samsung m.2 in Dacads spec have much faster read/write speeds than the one in my build. For most people though, a Crucial BX100 or Samsung 850 EVO is fine.

So you can still use PCI-E SSDs with the 5820k? Or has Dacad made a mistake there? If you can still use PCI-E SSDs with the 5820k I'll probably just stick to that, however I'd rather go for the 5930k if not. Depends where I can get the faster read/write speeds really.

As for the monitors, it looks like I'll be going for two 25" ones if I can find a decent one cheap enough. I don't mind getting used to the bigger size of one monitor but I'm not sure I have the desk space for two 25"+ monitors.

Barrel · 15 Jul 2015 at 14:50

lee32uk said:
This has a 1440p G-Sync and also a 1440p IPS Monitor which will give better colour reproduction.

If you don't play a lot of fast paced games then you could go with 2 of the IPS screens.

You can only have a max of 16GB Ram with Windows 7 home premium anyway. You would need the professional version if you wanted to add more ram.

What about the free update to Windows 10? If I take that will the limit still be there on my RAM?

dacads · 15 Jul 2015 at 15:01

No I haven't made a mistake

You can use the SSD I specced with the 5820k.

As for your RAM question Windows 10 64bit will support 128gb maximum with the normal version

Barrel · 15 Jul 2015 at 15:53

dacads said:
No I haven't made a mistake You can use the SSD I specced with the 5820k.

As for your RAM question Windows 10 64bit will support 128gb maximum with the normal version

I don't mean to sound ungrateful by questioning it, I was just a bit confused about what was being said! My apologies.

I'll probably just get Home Premium Windows 7 and upgrade to 10 before I want to take my RAM higher then.

lee32uk · 15 Jul 2015 at 15:54

Yes the Samsung SM951 SSD will work fine.

The i7 5820K has a total of 28 pci-e lanes. If you run a single graphics card then that will run at x16. The SSD uses x4.

For SLI the graphics cards would run at x16/x8 and the SSD at x4.

The i7 5930K has 40 pci-e lanes, so SLI would run at x16/x16. In real world terms you probably won't notice a difference.

lee32uk · 15 Jul 2015 at 16:03

Barrel said:
I don't mean to sound ungrateful by questioning it, I was just a bit confused about what was being said! My apologies.

I'll probably just get Home Premium Windows 7 and upgrade to 10 before I want to take my RAM higher then.

The release date for Windows 10 is July 29th. I would probably wait until they iron out any issues before upgrading to it.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/features