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Pc builds, upgrades, advice

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Dryden said:
Keep in mind you could also reduce that price by $330 by cutting the m.2 boot drive to a 256Gb and halving the RAM down to 16Gb. Or with that MSI mobo swap the 512 m.2 for two 256s and do a RAID0 striped array (you'll lose some of the slots for discreet GPUs if you do this, but it's not an issue unless you would run multiple GPUs in SLI).

I've become a big fan of MSI over the last two years. Have always had good luck with Gigabyte too. I am not a fan of ASUS, as I've had service life and driver support issues with them on a lot of recent boards. Maybe they're better now, but I'm not going to find out with my own money until MSI gives me a reason to buy something different.
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ASUS is horrible anymore. We purchased a number of boards from them in 2013/2014 and the failure rates were ridiculous.
 
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jwinslow said:
Thanks. I'm often running out of room with my 512 SSD on my laptop, but that's because I'm constantly downloading and later offloading files. That would not be an issue with my desktop machine with storage taking place elsewhere (with regular backups as well).

I may do the math and see if I can get away with two raided 256s. I doubt I'll ever be running multiple GPUs.

So from the sounds of it, I should be just fine eventually scaling up to 4k with this rig for photo editing and mild gaming use? I doubt I'll ever be a big gamer any more. If I do, I can always throw another one in there (and I am certain I won't be running twins).
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The Skylake chip will be fine for multiple 4K displays and gaming at medium detail. I'd personally go with that and wait two months for a Black Friday deal on an eventual discreet GPU if you even find it necessary.

Now I'm not much of a gamer anymore either. My 2500k with 6850 GPU has handled everything I've bought on Steam for the past four years. Finally purchased Deadpool last month and ran that at max detail with no issues, though I'm not trying to game across three monitors or run the latest AAA titles that have dropped this year.
 
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This thing is incredibly quiet, and that's with both sides still open n(temporarily). They sure make these things nicer than they did back in the late 00s.

I have an old GTX 560 Ti in my ancient build. Would I get much help from adding that to this rig? I'm following your suggestion of waiting for a great (Black Friday?) sale to add an optional discrete GPU.
 
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I'm running a 550
jwinslow said:
This thing is incredibly quiet, and that's with both sides still open. They sure make these things nicer than they did back in the late 00s.

@Dryden, I have an old GTX 560 Ti in my ancient build. Would I get much help from adding that to this rig? I'm following your suggestion of waiting for a great (Black Friday?) sale to add an optional discrete GPU.
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I'm not super up to date on how pc's work, but I think any load that you can take off the cpu is good.

http://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-GTX-560-Ti-vs-Intel-HD-4600-Desktop-125-GHz/2180vs2168
 
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Sorry to hijack your thread jwins, but I need some pc build advice as well. @Dryden

My current setup:
  • Intel I5-3570K
  • Nvidia GTX 660 Ti
  • Intel 520 Series 120 GB SSD
  • 7200 RPM 1TB HDD
  • Asus P8z77-v Pro Motherboard
  • 8gb Ram
I am contemplating upgrading my GPU to a 960 or 970 graphics card. Would the rest of my system be a bottleneck on the GPU? My goal of the system is to be able to play Fallout 4 without much hickup. Would upgrading or adding more ram be a good investment as well?
 
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This seems to be the PC thread of choice, so I'll just chime in here for anyone reading at home.

I recently bought a new laptop for business (i.e. no porn, no fun really other than Steam / Civilization 4 & 5).

Bought it as a refurbished deal off newegg.com.

I have bought 100's of truckloads of used equipment at auction and had to rebuild much of it myself, so this wasn't too big of a hurdle for me, especially since it was already fixed.

Anyway, here is what I got for basically $250 something delivered.

Intel I5, something something chip
standard graphics, no extra card
160 GB SSD
8 GB Ram
Windows 7 (haven't upgraded to Windows 10 yet, afraid of Steam / Civilization and I have no issues with 7 worth upgrading that I know of; I run a linux boot as well).


All in very happy. Everything works, light use in form of a scuff and whatnot. Anyone out there looking to buy a PC should realize it is a nearly dead market so you might as well go used. Unless you are looking to run cutting edge graphics, it is the most bang for your buck, and I like to maximize my banging, especially if I got to pay for it n'mark may.

Back to the laptop, I love it. Very quiet and not too hot though that vent can get warm while playing Civ5. The SSD and extra Ram seem nice but it seems best in linux. Either OS boots really quick. Handles spreadsheets, internet, Civ5, and pictures editing (basics not pro; just coins, like I said no porn) all at the same time with zero issue.


Anyway just wanted to encourage people to look at the refurbished option as it has worked well for me. eBay had a bunch of good refurbished computers too.
 
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CentralMOBuck said:
Sorry to hijack your thread jwins, but I need some pc build advice as well. @Dryden

My current setup:
  • Intel I5-3570K
  • Nvidia GTX 660 Ti
  • Intel 520 Series 120 GB SSD
  • 7200 RPM 1TB HDD
  • Asus P8z77-v Pro Motherboard
  • 8gb Ram
I am contemplating upgrading my GPU to a 960 or 970 graphics card. Would the rest of my system be a bottleneck on the GPU? My goal of the system is to be able to play Fallout 4 without much hickup. Would upgrading or adding more ram be a good investment as well?
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Your CPU would certainly not be a bottleneck for a 970/980. The only upgrade you might have to consider is upgrading your RAM but you may not even have to do that. I would get the GPU, fire up Fallout 4, and check your utilization. You can also you programs such as MSI Afterburner for more advanced performance and utilization tracking of your components. Of course, this also depends on what else you're doing while playing Fallout 4. If nothing else you should be okay. Me, I have like 20 things going at once between 4 displays while playing games - and even then rarely use half of my 32gb of RAM.
 
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