Game computer

[Poita (Peter)]

I used to build gaming PCs for a living, feel free to drop me a PM, happy to help out.
Also have a 6 month old gaming machine that I would be happy to let go cheap, with more than enough grunt for Skyrim and AC.

[xelasnave]

Good morning Peter and thank you. I am not up to speed if you read my post in the carbon thread you will get an idea how confessed I am..it is so foreign and horrible so your post here gives my joy and presents a reality I hope will embosser me. Where are you ruffly..sorry I will on as suggested.. I have to sort this done and I know what I send now will distort but I have high interest in the machine you offer if it is up to the task..Birthday demand instant gratification so would be good if I could do something

[g__day (Matthew)]

After building about 30 PCs my self its been quite a while - but an excellent resource for working out what to buy - capability versus budget is right here and its kept up to date almost daily:

http://pcpowerplay.com.au/forums/sho...P-Build-Thread

i.e. you could chose from one of the following three and be quite happy:

TAX REFUND BUDGET
For those who have a neat sum of money for a neat computer

Intel Core i5 4590 - $219
MSI B85-G43 Gaming Motherboard - $125
Corsair Carbide 200R Compact ATX Case - $84
Antec True Power Classic 650W 80 Plus Gold Power Supply - $129
G.Skill Ares F3-1600C9D-8GAO 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 - $105
Gigabyte Radeon R9 270X Overclocked 2GB - $239
Samsung 840 EVO Series 120GB SSD - $99
Western Digital WD Blue 1TB - $69
Samsung SH-224DB 24x DVDRW OEM - $19
$1,088:
This is a superb value build, well balanced with a good upgrade path and will play most games on Ultra settings when paired with a 1080x1920 monitor.

3-YEARLY UPGRADE BUDGET
The epitome of value

Intel Core i5 4670K - $269
Noctua NH-D14 CPU Cooler - $89
Gigabyte GA-Z97X-SLI Motherboard - $199
Corsair Carbide 400R Black Mid-Tower Case - $119
Antec High Current Gamer 750W Modular HCG-750M - $159
G.Skill Ares F3-1600C9D-8GAO 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 - $105
Gigabyte Radeon R9 280X Overclocked 3GB - $369
Samsung 840 EVO Series 120GB SSD - $99
Western Digital WD Blue 1TB - $69
Samsung SH-224DB 24x DVDRW OEM - $19
$1,496:
A rig with good value, has everything without the "has everything" price tag.

RAIDING THE SAVINGS ACC. BUDGET
Bragging rights

Intel Core i5 4670K - $269
Noctua NH-D14 CPU Cooler - $89
Gigabyte GA-Z97X-SLI Motherboard - $199
Corsair Graphite 600T Special Edition White Case - $199
Seasonic XP-860 Platinum 860W Power Supply - $299
Kingston HyperX KHX16C10B1K2/16X (2x8GB) DDR3 - $185
Gigabyte Radeon R9 290 OC 4GB - $479
Samsung 840 Pro Series 256GB SSD Retail Box - $229
Western Digital WD Black 1TB WD1003FZEX - $95
LG CH12NS30 12X BD-R Blu-Ray DVD Combo Drive - $69
ASUS Xonar DX - $85
$2,197:
Awesome. No other word for it. One of the best value graphics setups going around.


* * *

Sorry for all the glaring titles and superlatives - that was there words not mine! I would advise getting the same brand of SSD they advise - but a 256GB version, for a bit more head room (it costs about $100 more than a 128GB one nowadays). My other piece of advice is almost to work backwards from the size of monitor you wish to run; the number of pixels on your screen controls the ultimate workload a game machine has to push. With that said I am running dual 24" Dell and 30" Kogan on my desktop and its probably only equailavent to the bottom rung of those three examples. I use the 30" Kogan 2560 * 1600, the Dell is turned sideways and runs 1920 * 1200 - so I portrait orientated the Dell for long documents and use the Kogan in normal Landscape orientation for general purposes. The 30" Kogan was $780 from memory and its totally brilliant. For an immerse experience add $200 Sennheiser ear phones and your complete.

If I had to chose from those three options I would probably select the middle one, the highest performing one would be a touch of over kill for me! The Gigabyte motherboards are very good and the entire set up (on all three options) are extremely well thought out and balanced.

[geoffw89 (Geoff)]

For the money the Intel doesn't give the performance. Stick to AMD and spend the savings on other good bits.

[g__day (Matthew)]

Geoff, care to back that up with benchmarking facts cause I don't understand what source you can pull that view from?

The link I posted comes from a forum of Australia's top gamers, that have been been building PCs for over a decade, note they don't recommend a single non Intel GPU in the mix.

AtomicMPC - which became PC & Tech Authority has a similar thread
http://forums.atomicmpc.com.au/index...howtopic=13969

Non Intel CPUs only appear as an option on the very lowest of budget machines.

Most high end games need a mid to high GPU, after that your CPU will be the most important part - as the GPU will in many modern games become CPU limited.

AMD CPUs may be cheaper and/or clock high and/or have deeper pipelines, however they achieve less real world throughput clock per clock cycle. Over a decade (under this same Avatar) I have posted many, many thousands of help and how matters on GPUs and CPUs - to PCPowerPlay, AtomicMPC, Beyond3D, Rage3D, Reactor Critical, Guru 3D etc - I kinda do know why I think the way I do.

It changes over time - but Intel has a long lead at mid to high end range. I'd posit with graphics cards nVidia may be slightly ahead of AMD, at just under the highest end of GPUs the AMD GPUs are great bang for buck.

A solid review of which CPU is best can be found here http://www.techradar.com/au/news/com...is-best-936589 basically Intel spend alot more on fab design and is the class of the world at present. Motherboards have many cutting edge features designed for the capabilities Intel provides

http://www.digitaltrends.com/computi...-cpus/#!bksjKB

http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i...vs-AMD-FX-9590

I haven't found a single authoritative benchmark that support the point of view that AMD is better than Intel at anything but the ultra budget range!

[geoffw89 (Geoff)]

Again, the value for money aspect is what I was referring to. Unless you really need to spend a massive amount of money have the fastest benchmarks it is pointless when there will be almost no noticeable difference in the delivery. I have been building PCs since 93 when I started programming. While I haven't been as heavily into following the tech and forums lately since I have less time for racing and flying sims it has appeared to me the hardware has outrun the software in recent years, but I may be wrong.

I respect your input, and that you may have easily misinterpereted my hastily worded comment as I in no way said AMD were the faster option, simply a way to spend money on other areas since the boards and processors are way cheaper. I absolutely value the information you offered having saved it for later reading myself being time limited right now. I think you may be offering a bit beyond what Alex needs for his daughter. Ultimately the choice is theirs, they have a good source of info from you, alternatives to explore and someone experienced to put their machine together.

I look forward to further developments and advice from your direction myself when I finally kick my wife out of my study (she thinks it is her sewing room) and rebuild my Sim racing machine

[g__day (Matthew)]

no worries and thanks. By the way the latest Issue of PCPowerplay has a how to build a PC for yourself section - well illustrated, targeting a sub $900 build.

If Alex's daughter likes to play Skyrim then you need a PC with a bit of grunt - especially on the game's harder settings. If you use Nexus Mod Manager to add tens to hundreds of mods these can add a lot more immersion and challenge to the game. On the second hardest difficulty setting, even with say 5 tough followers, when 50 dreugar attack and their shouts are throwing you all over a cavern - winning is not easy (staying alive even with great armour and weapons isn't easy)!

At ultra high resolution my machine is quite a bit laggy at intense times, just when you need real responsiveness. I run an old Intel quad core Conroe2 Q6600 at stock speeds (2.3GHZ), with 8GB RAM, two SSDs, 6 other HDDs and a AMD 6970 graphics card. I could easily double both the Compute and Graphics speed, but it would require switching motherboard, CPU, heat-sink and memory to double compute - say around $700 - and modernising the graphics card would consume say a further $500. I don't feel a circa $1,200 spend to quadruple my gaming performance is warranted when I have other life priorities at the moment (this from a man who in the past 20 years probably spent well over $30K on PCs)!

The one thing I would stress is buy high quality, brand name gear, especially:

1. Motherboards (everything else runs on them so don't skimp), Gigabyte with its solid state capacitors and excellent power design and shielding are a preferred solution, after that Abit, Asus, MSI aren't bad alternatives.
2. CPU - powers everything, get a great heat sink too - don't stint to save $30 here on either part
3. Power supply - clean reliable power is a must. I love Corsair 800W power supplies or else Antec - gives you beautiful consistent power at high efficiency and buy over 700 watts to give you room to future expand
4. Solid State drives - I have seen many brands at all price points fail; only the Samsung 840 and 830 Evos seem to be faultless for me - love them
5. RAM - I just get generic to match my CPU clock speed, but either 8GB (2 * 4GB)or 16GB (2 * 8GB) as a generic brand in a twin stick configuration are probably okay
6. Case - well I personally prefer larger (i.e. full tower) cases and ensure they have several, quiet few fans to provide a non-irritatingly loud air-cooling. Read any review and grab the highly recommended cases.
7. Hard drives - well buy 1, 2 or 3 TB sized hard drives - I have a preference for 7,200 rpm speed drives from Samsung
8. Sound card - I add on a sound card and use either Soundblaster X-Fi Extreme (a great but dated card nowadays) would be happy to give the Asus Xonar a try!
9. LAN cards - don't bother - just use the inbuilt Gigabyte LAN port on the Motherboard.

Hope that helps. Bottom line - a well constructed $2,000 PC today should run rings around a PC I custom built and tuned and was state of art 6 years or so ago for well over $6,000. Even a well spent $1,500 machine could run all games today at very high settings. A $1,000 machine will run most of yester-years games (and hell Serious Sam, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Oblivion, Pain Killer, Half Life 2, Far Cry and Power slide where brilliant games that soaked up many hours of my life in years gone by).

[xelasnave]

Thank you very much for all that excellent advice Matthew
I had replied earlier but lost the lot
I can only use my new little tablet and don't always get a share of the WiFi here...some nonsence about saving what's left for school work..daughter is home schooled by x and happily they are taking care of me..also in a valley can't use phone.
And thanks Geoff again I am getting deeper in your debt .
I have been to see a guy who I trust at Casino...Country IT...my daughter bless her wants to support local

[xelasnave]

I had more but posted before I timed out and lost the lot.
This morning had a post for the carbon tax thread probably the best words I have ever written all lost...thank goodness it is locked I can cop out doing it again

[xelasnave]

IIntel i7-4790 core i7 processor, 3.6 GHz LGA 1150, quad core, 8 Threads, 8m cache, Intel turbo boost tech 22nm with fan, GDP 84 w

Cmz16 gx3 corsair 16gb 2x 8 GB vengenceperformance dimm 10-10-10-27 2x240 pin red heatspreader

More to come

[xelasnave]

St 1000 dmSeagate barracuda 3.5 / 1 tb / data 6 GB/s/ 7200 rpm /64mb

Gv_n7700 gigabyte n7700c_4gd gtx 770 of PCI_e 3.0, 4 GB 256_bit ddr5 1189/7010 MHz, 2 x dvi, HDMI, do, wf, 3 fans

More tocome

[xelasnave]

Eleven hl antec eleven hundredv2 editors choice case 2 x 2.5 ssd drive bays 2 x usb3 2 x usb2 9 expansion slots support xl_atx no PSU

Maximum Asus maximum v11 ranger / 4 x ddr3 / 2 x PCI_e 3.0 / 1 x PCI_e 2.0 / 6 x data / dvi_d / d_sub / HDMI

Cmpsu_ 75 750 w corsair CX_750 v3 atx power supply, 80 plus bronze, 120 mm fan 4 x PCI_e 8 x data 6 x miles

Windows 7 64 bit

DVD rom

[xelasnave]

Thank goodness nothing was lost very trying typing that.
Tablet easier but still peck peck
This guy I have known since he was a youngster
He came up home once to fix my machine on his new moto cross bike
I got to have a ride
I never realised how much you used your legs to control them
Had a good ride didn't crash and that was my last time on a bike
My x and daughter have got all their stuff there..I did not realise
The budget has doubled but my daughter is as frugal as me so I am happy that I can buy her something
Her mother plays the game as well and that lady deserves more than this world can give her..I mean how many would take you in and look after you after a split
And it was all my fault buying a 12 inch when I should have got a fridge..that's just one of my stupid selfish actions

[xelasnave]

She will love reading your posts Matthew. Although not building the machine she is learning which is beneficial for her and very satisfying for me.
She even pleads for WiFi time to follow this thread and the helpful PMS
I am so happy the way this is going
I personally find the game a little horrific with heads rolling on the floor after many of the combats..And I notice she is always looking for paddy melons so she can borrow my gladious and hack them to pieces
Thanks again very much appreciated

[xelasnave]

Anyways any perceived flaws in the system

[xelasnave]

Sorry I thought I had prefaced the stat list with...
My daughter came home with this list from the chap I mentioned.
I get to see him Monday for a chat.

[Monstar (Johnny)]

Hi Alex,

Just thought I'd add a little to the vast amount of good info that's been put on here. About 6/7 ears ago my nephew came over from the UK to stay with me for 8 months and couldn't live without a good games computer. He ordered all the bits, I don't even know the name of, and put it together. Obviously it cost a lot more than an off the peg puter but he had the money and wanted this. Considering the amount of use it got though it was a good buy. When he went home to the UK he gave it to me as I needed a new one, and for putting him up.

As I said I don't know anything about computer workings, but I do know that at work, around friends and family, and just about every where I go (I use at least 6 at work for different things, they are not ALL on my desk lol) use a load of different computers and this still out performs all of them. Not just in pure speed, but also in user friendliness, multi-tasking and just about every thing you can think of.

When you think that technology wise major store computers are outdated by the time they hit the shelves it has proven to be a great investment.

[xelasnave]

Thank you Johnny
Your words could not come at a better time.
I have not been improving in the leg department as I had hoped and this is causing me to lose a little hope or faith..call it what you will..but your post cheered me up.
Thanks for the encouragement.
Also I have been sitting watching my daughter play skyrim for hours on the plays station and I find it hard to accept the game I guess.
Still it makes her happy and your story somehow brings that aspect back into my focus.
Have a wonderful day and a cloudless night.

[Monstar (Johnny)]

I've been following your story so if I've I helped to cheer you up a little that's good.

After my last post I checked some photos and it was actually more like 5 years ago my nephew was here, maybe time is not flying by as fast as I thought, still it's all relative.

I can't get into computer games at all these days, everything is so fast and I guess my hand-eye co-ordination is not what it was. I enjoyed the Resident Evil series, good old zombie blasting fun. I also used to really get into football management sims, but although they take up a lot of space and time hardly test a computers speed and graphics card.

I always "select all and copy" before posting as I'm using a tablet too most of the time so typing is slow and if it's over four lines I time out.

[xelasnave]

Still getting the hang of my tablet
I can not get over the graphics they are outstanding
I can not do the simplest of tasks...cut and paste is a hit and miss affair
I need word type app so I can review my posts
This is better than the fone
Spent a lot of time exercising today and detect improvement
I can walk without the walker but need it because I fear a fall cause legs will just buckle with no warning.
Had a bath earlier...that was a mistake as I could not get out of the tub
Eventually I made it out but the effort was super human with my arms providing support for all my body
Seeing Dr tomorrow to see if I can drop the pain killer drugs
They just destroy me and cause horrible dreams
I am so tired cause I haven't had a decent sleep in at least a month
Sorry to ramble but its the only thing I am good at....