Desktop Computers
- Thread starter brekk
- Start date
Intrinsic
Person of Whiteness
- 14,340
- 11,887
Mist
Eeyore Enthusiast
- 30,478
- 22,327
What about malware? Someone ganking your GPU cycles to mine bitcoins?
Seriously though, that's not normal.
Prodigal
Shitlord, Offender of the Universe
- 1,378
- 1,688
Not to derail much - grew up in NE Alabama, pulling for Bama since I was old enough to know what football was, went to Auburn for a year before my family moved to NC, decided to take a year off then transferred credits to NC State. Enjoy being a fan more since I'm not in the midst of the extreme crazies there (in the state, not AU).
Ok, thinking about building a desktop, not in a huge hurry since my laptop will run everything on high settings - wait for next Intel iteration?
Crone
Bronze Baronet of the Realm
- 9,709
- 3,211
For the longest time we haven't seen a huge improvement in processors. What is Skylake doing for us? I have a i5-2500k and over the last couple years, any upgrade talk steered away from upgrading my processor because it wasn't worth it.
What makes it worth it now with Skylake?
Mist
Eeyore Enthusiast
- 30,478
- 22,327
Not sure if this will be true going forward. DX12 might actually be able to put those extra PCI lanes to use for SLI setups with next gen cards.
Mist
Eeyore Enthusiast
- 30,478
- 22,327
More PCI lanes on the boards,DDR4, CPU power use cut by a third. Probably a whole lot of nothing for raw compute power, though if they actually TIM the chips right this time the overclockability might be insane.
Jysin
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
- 6,278
- 4,034
It's not just the processor upgrades like Mist laid out, it's also the Sunrise Point platform controller chipset upgades too. Native support for up to ten USB 3.0 ports, twenty PCIe 3.0 lanes, three M.2 Sata ports, DMI 3.0, etc. It's a pretty good leap over the previous gen. I already have a PCIe expander board maxed with USB 3.0 connections. It's time to move forward.
Mist
Eeyore Enthusiast
- 30,478
- 22,327
You forgot DDR4 on the high end boards.
Also I think Skylake chips will have 128mb of DRAM for use with the onchip GPU that can be accessed as L4 cache.
Denaut
Trump's Staff
- 2,739
- 1,279
Alright, I've asked about this before but I really need some graphics card advice.
I built my PC in October of 2013 and with it a GTX760. My usual practice is to do a new build every 4-5 years and a GPU upgrade about halfway between. I'm a bit of a cheapskate, but I don't mind paying for value either and I generally skip a GPU generation on that 2 1/2ish year cycle.
I am really considering picking up a GTX970, but I also know Pascal is coming next year with massive upgrades. However, itsoundslike one of the biggest differences with Pascal will come in the form of NVLink piping directly into the CPU bypassing the relatively slow PCI-E bus, and from what I am reading this will likely take longer to become available because of "non-technical" reasons. Ultimately what I wondering is if I should just wait until sometime next year and do a full system upgrade much sooner than I normally would do to all the new features, especially the new Bus. Or if it isn't likely any of that will be possible until a year or two after
I am torn between a 970 now, a Pascal upgrade next year, and a full system rebuild next year with Skylake and pascal. Decisions...
I built my PC in October of 2013 and with it a GTX760. My usual practice is to do a new build every 4-5 years and a GPU upgrade about halfway between. I'm a bit of a cheapskate, but I don't mind paying for value either and I generally skip a GPU generation on that 2 1/2ish year cycle.
I am really considering picking up a GTX970, but I also know Pascal is coming next year with massive upgrades. However, itsoundslike one of the biggest differences with Pascal will come in the form of NVLink piping directly into the CPU bypassing the relatively slow PCI-E bus, and from what I am reading this will likely take longer to become available because of "non-technical" reasons. Ultimately what I wondering is if I should just wait until sometime next year and do a full system upgrade much sooner than I normally would do to all the new features, especially the new Bus. Or if it isn't likely any of that will be possible until a year or two after
I am torn between a 970 now, a Pascal upgrade next year, and a full system rebuild next year with Skylake and pascal. Decisions...
Prodigal
Shitlord, Offender of the Universe
- 1,378
- 1,688
Thanks for the feedback on Skylake, have pretty much convinced myself to wait.
Now to suck it up and install this SSD in my laptop knowing I'll have to spend time reinstalling shit instead of gaming for a night. Might have to bring it to work for the install, less free time wasted.
Now to suck it up and install this SSD in my laptop knowing I'll have to spend time reinstalling shit instead of gaming for a night. Might have to bring it to work for the install, less free time wasted.
Mist
Eeyore Enthusiast
- 30,478
- 22,327
Yeah, I'm doing a full system rebuild with Skylake (maybe Cannonlake by then) and Pascal (probably Pascal SLI) sometime next year, in prep for Star Citizen beta/soft release. I will find someone to buy my 4770k/z87 build off me no problem.
Seananigans
Honorary Shit-PhD
- 12,174
- 29,741
Awhile back, I asked for some advice on what parts to purchase for a PC I was building, and got some great feedback (I build them just fine, I just don't stay up with the tech so am typically clueless about buying parts). My gf is needing a PC now, so I figured I'd stop by and ask again!
Basically from scratch, I think I'm aiming for a $500 price point for her. She won't ever play anything super graphically intensive, she likes stuff like Sims 4, Minecraft, Terraria/Starbound, and might play Marvel Heroes with me. Is $500 enough to build a halfway decent PC? If so, suggestions on parts? I'll need everything aside from monitor.
Basically from scratch, I think I'm aiming for a $500 price point for her. She won't ever play anything super graphically intensive, she likes stuff like Sims 4, Minecraft, Terraria/Starbound, and might play Marvel Heroes with me. Is $500 enough to build a halfway decent PC? If so, suggestions on parts? I'll need everything aside from monitor.
Lanx
<Prior Amod>
- 60,973
- 134,377
You have to make a lot of concessions to get to $500, heck i still went 35bucks over (i could shave 5bucks here 5 bucks there), but you get a realistic breakdown.
PCPartPicker part list/Price breakdown by merchant
CPU:AMD A6-6400K 3.9GHz Dual-Core Processor($43.20 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard:Gigabyte GA-F2A88XM-D3H Micro ATX FM2+ Motherboard($44.40 @ SuperBiiz)
Memory:G.Skill AEGIS 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory($52.99 @ Newegg)
Storage:Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive($44.10 @ SuperBiiz)
Video Card:Sapphire Radeon R7 265 2GB Video Card($109.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Case:Corsair SPEC-01 RED ATX Mid Tower Case($47.99 @ Micro Center)
Power Supply:Corsair CX 500W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply($61.98 @ Newegg)
Optical Drive:Samsung SH-224DB/BEBE DVD/CD Writer($12.99 @ Newegg)
Operating System:Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 (OEM) (64-bit)($86.88 @ OutletPC)
Keyboard:Logitech Corded Keyboard K280e Wired Standard Keyboard($8.99 @ NCIX US)
Mouse:Logitech B120 Wired Optical Mouse($9.90 @ SuperBiiz)
Speakers:Logitech S-150 1.2W 2ch Speakers($9.00 @ SuperBiiz)
Total:$532.41
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-05-22 03:29 EDT-0400
Few pics of my pc and battlestation rebuild, and the helpers. The fur adds 10 fps
The cheap plastic stand on the LG to the left is leaning, have to find some stronger tape or an anchor type solution to get it flush with the center monitor. Also, kind of tired of Corsair. Maybe bad luck, but I've had an H80 die on me within a year, the AX1200i I was going to use is defective (using my awesome and trusty Seasonic Platinum 1 instead, should've stuck with it in the first place), and 1 of the 8 sp120 fans I bought is noisy and has to come out.
On a positive note the machine is now super quiet. Every fan is pwm and wired with a powered pwm splitter to the cpu_fan header. The MSI 970 fans and the Seasonic psu fan don't spin at all at low temps. I left the power button LED unplugged (cause fuck that bright blue led) and can have trouble telling the system is on at all. Except for the quiet ticking of that bad fan I mentioned.
The cheap plastic stand on the LG to the left is leaning, have to find some stronger tape or an anchor type solution to get it flush with the center monitor. Also, kind of tired of Corsair. Maybe bad luck, but I've had an H80 die on me within a year, the AX1200i I was going to use is defective (using my awesome and trusty Seasonic Platinum 1 instead, should've stuck with it in the first place), and 1 of the 8 sp120 fans I bought is noisy and has to come out.
On a positive note the machine is now super quiet. Every fan is pwm and wired with a powered pwm splitter to the cpu_fan header. The MSI 970 fans and the Seasonic psu fan don't spin at all at low temps. I left the power button LED unplugged (cause fuck that bright blue led) and can have trouble telling the system is on at all. Except for the quiet ticking of that bad fan I mentioned.
