Gaming monitor died and got refunded, need replacement advice

[havocideuk]

Hey guys, in a bit of a muddle as to which monitor I should be looking at buying.

As per title my BenQ 2411Z 144hz 1080p (non g sync) which i had for ~18 months had a back light or similar die which caused a large black patch in the lower left of the screen. Happily the place where I bought it from which shares a name with a rain forest refunded me the full amount and send a courier to collect it.

I'm in a bit of a dilemma in that I've put the funds aside for a new build already (6700k 1070, basically my xmas present to myself) but wont have enough to drop another 300 on top of the 220 refunded to me to purchase a 27" 144hz 1440p gsync, which is my "ideal".

I've been looking at alternatives, such as 1080p 144hz with g-sync but these seem kinda expensive for what they are, and I've no idea of what brands are consistent on QA and colour/blacks quality these days.

I eventually want to buy a 27" 1440p 144hz gsync such as the asus rog or whatever, and trying to decide if its worth getting something to fill the gap in the interim or just use a 1 monitor setup with my spare working monitor (old Dell u2410 IPS 60hz i use for photo editing).

Any advice welcome!

 

[havocideuk]

What is your current system specs?

As it may not be worth upgrading cpu and gpu etc for use with the g-sync monitor.

2600k, r9 290, really starting to show its age, the 290 resell value is still decent (140~) maybe due to mining i dunno.

 

[havocideuk]

This is me every time I play a game on my Dell S2716DG 144Hz 27 inch G sync

It's so worth it dude. It really is. Here are some suggestions to make it happen:

KEEP your current CPU and motherboard. Overclock that 2600K as high as you can with reasonable voltage. Go to 16GB of RAM if you have not done so already. Get a fast SSD if you don't have one already. Sell your 290. Buy a 1070. With all the money you saved on a 6700K, DDR4, and a Z170 board, you have more than enough to buy your dream monitor.

A 2600K at 4.6-4.7GHz is almost equivalent to a stock 6700K in terms of how much it can crunch. Your only real limitation on the platform you have is that your CPU limits you to PCIE 2.0. That's honestly ok though for a 1070. Here's why:

Sure, PCIE2.0 lanes are about half as fast as PCIE3.0 lanes, but a lot of people who only have 16PCIE 3.0 lanes to work with will run 2 cards, at 8 and 8 lanes each. Those 8 PCIE 3.0 lanes are equivalent to 16PCIE 2.0 lanes, which is what you have to work with. It'll be fine.

The 2600K is legendary dude. It has proven itself to be a fighter, thanks to great overclocking (easy too) and the fact that Intel has more crept along than taken leaps and bounds in terms of CPU performance since 2011.

Keep your 2600K machine now and upgrade when something comes out that makes upgrading your 2600K the same as going from a Q6600 to a 2600K would have been. If you want to upgrade now, a REAL upgrade for you would be something like a 6800K (6 core i7). That would be purely an E-Peen upgrade though as 4 cores are still fine for gaming.

As far as gaming monitors go, a lot of people will tell you to go with ASUS' ROG but I personally really love this DELL monitor. It has the lowest input lag of any gaming monitor AFAIK and even though it is TN, it is a spectacular panel.

BTW I recommend a Gigabyte 1070 with a windforce cooler. Google 1070 1080 VRM and you will see that EVGA cards have actually gone bang inside people's machines due to poor/no VRM cooling. Out of all the cards tested on this article I saw, they found that the VRMs on the Gigabyte Windforce cards (they were testing a G1 here) were running coolest out of the lot. In some cases almost 40 degrees centigrade cooler. That's nothing to shake a stick at and will encourage longevity in the card.

Excellent post, thank you so much.

So I bit the bullet and bought the monitor a couple days ago, it should be arriving today if the couriers website is accurate!

What I didn't realise was that the resell value on my current components is actually quite reasonable, so I'm able to squeeze the extra money together to buy the full system, I'm pretty hyped.

I would keep the 2600k and do as you suggested however over the years its become less stable OC'd, it spent its first ~3 years at 4.5, then started having issues and got it stable again at 4.4 for another year, the past couple of years its been sitting at 4.2. This is with regular cleaning and replacement of thermal paste, I put it down to either being not the strongest of chips (individually, not the line) or just wear and tear.

As for GPU, ive read that basically every 1070 can be OC'd to 2ghz with relative ease, is there any reason to not go for the cheapest one with a good cooler? The palit gamerock 1070 for example has been getting excellent reviews.