Yet another PC building thread

Kevlar said:

Buy an i5 (k series) and buy as good as a gpu as you can afford thereafter. You won't need to upgrade the CPU for a long time but you can simply add another gpu later

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So, if I understand you correctly, you're advising me to overclock my CPU and later run two GPUs? Wouldn't that need a better (=more expensive) motherboard and power supply?

Most if not all motherboards support crossfire and sli (have two or more pcie slots). A higher wattage power supply would be required to do this though yes.

I was just giving that as an example though, you could just as easily sell the gpu and buy a better one later on.

get the best cpu you can afford now and keep using a cheap graphics card until you can afford something great.

That's what I did when I built the gaming PC I'm using.

If you still need quite a neutral opinion, I've been convinced that an i5 is better than an i7 unless you can really afford the extra costs, as in you don't need the money for anything important like my case was.

I had an i5 2500k on my old PC and it kinda handled most of the games pretty well, don't think I ever ran into a situation where my CPU was the bottleneck, it's around 200e here in Finland though but I keep hearing it's the best bang for your buck.

The graphics card I had was some HD 6950 DC II 2GB I picked up ages ago, it wasn't bad at all. And in my latest upgrade I just took the easy route and picked the most expensive one I found (I'm starting to doubt my purchase as in was my money spent efficiently but hey, yolo)

Hope I could be of some use, contributing never hurts especially if you're as dependent on this board as I am 

ancalimon said:

I have a 7970 on my PC and overclocking my i7 3820's turbo mode from 3.8GHz to 4.3GHz made a big difference on high settings for many games. Meaning even a very fast CPU like mine gets bottlenecked from time to time.

i5 is great for games. If I were in your place, I would have saved more money for a couple of months and get something better.

For GPU, anything above 7850 class is much better than the average.

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Highly recommend dropping hyperthreading and raising the overclock as high as you can stably go. I'm running an i7 overclocked at a stunning 4.5GHz on air cooling without even touching voltages. I doubt anyone on the planet would get an i5 that just barely missed i7 specification and got binned down but had such capability, so to counter Kevlar's comment - the average i7 will overclock better than the average i5 due to the binning process.

Alternatively! If you really wanted to take ancalimon's latest comment to heart and don't mind having poor 3D graphics performance until you get a GPU, you could get a kick ass processor with Intel HD 4000 graphics which will probably -run- most of anything, if poorly. Then you can save up and stick a kickass GPU in there whenever you want.

Splintert said:

So to counter Kevlar's comment - the average i7 will overclock better than the average i5 due to the binning process.

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Show me any benchmark proving this and I will be impressed. IIRC my i5 2500k can overclock higher than most i7s of its generation and ivy bridge.

It may have a higher GHz number but that doesn't mean it will perform better. I remember reading that the conversion from Ivy Bridge to Haswell is around 10% - a 4.4GHz Ivy will be roughly equivalent to a 4.0 Haswell. If a similar conversion exists for Sandy to Ivy, well, your high GHz doesn't hold up as well.

I'll look around and see if I can find anything.

Edit: http://www.ocaholic.ch/modules/smartsection/item.php?itemid=1158&page=10

I don't know about the reliability, but these numbers show that the 2500k lags behind both 3570k and 4670k by a bit when clocked equally, presumably it'd be able to catch up and be about the same at a higher clock at the cost of more voltage.

And now for i5 vs i7.

The performance gain from ivy was due to it being on a different chipset (22nm or something). They messed up and decided to not solder their chips on though which lead to higher temps since the paste they used was **** which led people to 'delid' their ivy bridge chips just for better performance.

Here's a bunch of i5 and i7 overclocks, http://forums.overclockersclub.com/index.php?showtopic=181398

Both seem to go 5.0GHz at the highest for all day use, where someone with an i5 claimed to go 5.3 highest and an i7 at 5.5 highest.

Sorry to interrupt, but your talk about i7s is, I fear, a bit out of my league. I don't want to fight for any last fps. I just want a reasonably prized computer that can run up-to-date games well enough and maybe next year's games on reduced settings. So, I've come up with a new build:


This one would cost me 615€. I chose an older ivy bridge i5 that's been recommended on tomshardware. I know that the socket is outdated, but as I said, I most likely won't buy a new CPU in the next 2-3 or even 4 years (yes, I know I won't be able to play modern games by then). I could also still get a 270x.

Does this one look reasonable to you?

Looks sufficient.

In Vain said:

Sorry to interrupt, but your talk about i7s is, I fear, a bit out of my league. I don't want to fight for any last fps. I just want a reasonably prized computer that can run up-to-date games well enough and maybe next year's games on reduced settings. So, I've come up with a new build:

Code:

Intel Core i5-3350P Box, LGA1155 
MSI B75A-G43, Intel B75, ATX, DDR3
8GB G.Skill PC3-10667U CL9 
be quiet! PURE POWER L8 500W 
XFX Radeon R9 270 Core Edition, 2GB GDDR5, 2x DVI, HDMI, DisplayPort
WD Red RD1000M 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB

This one would cost me 615€. I chose an older ivy bridge i5 that's been recommended on tomshardware. I know that the socket is outdated, but as I said, I most likely won't buy a new CPU in the next 2-3 or even 4 years (yes, I know I won't be able to play modern games by then). I could also still get a 270x.

Does this one look reasonable to you?

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Did you change the PSU? The previous one was sufficient for your GPU. Make sure this also is.

Also WD red series are more suitable for storage and not for installing your programs or games to. If you are planning to use the hdd as your main hdd (like installing OS, games or programs) get a midrange hdd like the Western Digital Caviar Black.  There is also the highend Velociraptor but that's too expensive. Black is the perfect choice for you.

I did and I doublechecked

Thanks about the HDD. It was more of a placeholder anyway. But when I order, I will look for a better one. However, is a Seagate Barracuda so much worse than a WD black?

In Vain said:

I did and I doublechecked

Thanks about the HDD. It was more of a placeholder anyway. But when I order, I will look for a better one. However, is a Seagate Barracuda so much worse than a WD black?

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I don't think it is. Only not as reliable and not as fast from my experience. But keep in mind that there are losts of models with the name Seagate Barracuda 7200 rpm and not all of them are the same. Seagate sucks at naming their models.