Desktop Computers

Will be purchasing a new PC soon and a new TV. Does anyone use a 4k television with their PC over a 4k monitor?

If you're hellbent on spending $1000 on graphics, you'd be better off with 2x 980's than with a Titan ZYXwhatever.

Or, you could be not stupid and wait for Pascal. Maxwell is almost a year and a half old, and your rig is going to be obsolete in 3-6 months. If you're only doing 1080, there's zero reason to go above a 970 for the moment.

Boloboy_sl said:

Here is the build I'm going for in the next few months. Let me know what ya think.

case - Cooler Master HAF 932 Advanced
power supply - EVGA 220-G2-0850-XR 80 PLUS GOLD 850 W ECO Mode Fully Modular
motherboard - ASRock ASRock Fatal1ty Gaming Z170 Gaming K6
cpu - Intel Core i7-6700K 8M Skylake Quad-Core 4.0 GHz
cpu cooler - Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO
ram - G.SKILL Ripjaws V Series 32GB (4 x 8GB) 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 3200
graphics card - EVGA GeForce GTX TITAN X 12G
sound card - Creative Sound Blaster Audigy FX 5.1
ssd - OCZ Trion 100 2.5" 240GB SATA III TLC Internal Solid
hd - WD Blue 1TB Desktop Hard Disk Drive - 7200 RPM
cd drive -ASUS 24X DVD Burner - Bulk 24X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 8X DVD+R DL 24X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 16X
os - 64 bit windows 1-
anti virus - maleware bytes
monitor - Acer Predator Z35 bmiphz Black 35" 4ms HDMI Large Format Monitor VA 2560 x 1080 (2K) 300 cd/m2 ACM 100,000,000:1 (3000:1)
mouse - razr naga
keyboard - razr deathstalker
headset - HyperX Cloud II Gaming Headset with 7.1 Virtual Surround Sound for PC / PS4 / Mac / Mobile - Gun Metal

Click to expand...

I'd get a 980 ti and/or less ram and get a larger 500 gb or 1tb SSD drive.

Fractal Design Define R4 is on sale at NewEgg for $70 today

That's about $15-20 off normal price.

Some interesting advice. My rig will be obsolete in 3-6 months? So what just wait. Like there is any game that is gonna push that rig for what 3-5 years but its obsolete in 3-6 months? Or am I just way off?

"Obsolete" isnt the right word at all. It will no longer be "top of the line" in 3ish months

Nvidia unveils Pascal specifics up to 16GB of VRAM, 1TB of bandwidth | ExtremeTech

Don't spend $1000 on a video card now, when something better could be on the market in a couple months.

The smart buy would be a $300 970 or a $650 980ti. Both will get you by just fine for the next year or so(probably 2 years out of the 980Ti) if you're doing 1080p gaming.

If you want to do 4k gaming, you really should wait for the new Pascal cards. No single card right now is going to be a long-term 4K solution.

Boloboy_sl said:

Some interesting advice. My rig will be obsolete in 3-6 months? So what just wait. Like there is any game that is gonna push that rig for what 3-5 years but its obsolete in 3-6 months? Or am I just way off?

Click to expand...

TLDR:

1.Buying a Titan X is a stupid idea, buy a 980 Ti instead (save $350) for virtually the same performance
2.You can reduce your amount of RAM to 16 GB with no negative gaming performance (save $100)
3.Get a Samsung 850 EVO instead of that OCZ drive (spend extra $10)
4.For all that is good and holy, get a G-Sync monitor (could save money here too actually)

Components that *should/could* last you 3-5 years:CPU/CPU Cooler, RAM, MOBO, Powersupply, SSD and Case
Only item that you will likely need to upgrade:GPU

Here's my input:

I can't say for sure whether or not this will hold true for the Skylake i7-6700k, but considering that the Sandy Bridge 2500k was released in 2011 and is finally at a point ofdefinitelyworth being replaced, your CPU (as well as your Motherboard and RAM) should have the longest gaming life. The 3770k, which was released in April 2012, isnearly identicalto the 6700k in terms of gaming performance.

GPU
The Titan X is a $1,000 graphics card while the 980 Ti is roughly $650.

Here is the approximate average amount of FPS gain you'd get by spending the additional $350 on the Titan X vs. the 980 Ti when gaming at Ultra/Highest Quality settings in a variety of games:

1920x1080 (1080p): +2.45%
2560x1440 (1440p): +2.83%
3840x2160 ("4K"): +3.91%
Source

So you can see you can save $350 by making the switch to a 980 Ti and is a no brainer when considering gaming at 1080p or any resolution for that matter.

RAM
You definitely do not need 32GB of RAM from a gaming stand point. You will literally seeno increase in performanceonce you get to 8GB or more of RAM. But I don't know how much you multitask. 16GB is overkill for gaming but you're not a pleb by the looks of how much you're willing to spend - 16 GB would be fine for you. So that is another $100 saved with no performance loss.

SSD
While it is true OCZ made shit drives in the past, they were bought out a while back and have fixed their issues for the most part. However, I don't think anyone would argue with me in recommending a Samsung 850 EVO 250 GB over what you have. The cost difference is $10~ andthe EVO is a must faster/better driveand worth the $10.

Monitor
If you are primarily concerned with gaming, fuck the monitor you got. Get something with G-Sync. Like theAcer Predator XB271HU for $880or the Asus PG27AQ if you want 4K or Asus PG279Q for 1440p. G-Sync/Free Sync is fucking amazing and I will never game without it again.

Thanks Jeydax, I`ll switch those items and save a bit. Think I`ll grab two monitors. Much appreciated all.

switched to these items.

Acer XB280HK bprz Black 28" 1ms 4K UKD Widescreen LED Backlight G-sync Monitor
Acer H6 Series H236HLbid Black 23" 5ms (GTG) HDMI (for web surfing)
MSI GeForce GTX 980 Ti DirectX 12 GTX 980TI GAMING 6G 6GB 384-Bit GDDR5
SAMSUNG 850 EVO 2.5" 250GB SATA III 3-D Vertical

Boloboy, all good changes but think about this regarding your monitor:

The 980 Ti is going to struggle running games over 60 FPS on a "4k" (3840x2160) monitor like you have at ultra/highest/max settings.

Couple Examples:

3840x2160
Ultra/Max/Highest game settings
Source

Game: FPS
BF4: 57
Crysis 3: 41
Shadow of Mordor: 48
Dragon Age: 41
Far Cry 4: 41
Total War Attila: 23
GTA V: 27

So there's other options, but my opinion here are probably your choices right meow:

1) Pick a G-Sync monitor that is 1440p instead of "4K" and enjoy very good FPS at max/ultra settings on a singe 980 Ti
2) Buy the Acer XB280HK and either stomach 40ish FPS at max settings or lower the game quality for better FPS until you replace the 980 Ti with one of nVidia's Pascal cards sometime in 2016
3) Buy another 980 Ti to go SLI and increase your 4k FPS by 75%~ on average (ie: 40 FPS becomes 70 FPS)

Edit: Another benefit of getting a 1440p monitor is that several of them have refresh rates of 144 Hz instead of 60 Hz.

For anyone looking for a cheap path to play around with the Rift, this may be a good option
HP Z420 Xeon Six Core E5 1650 3 20GHz 16GB 160GB SSD 2X NVS300 Win7 Pro COA | eBay

A used HP Z420 workstation machine from ~2 years ago. I bought one with an offer for $400 which the seller accepted (free shipping). I currently have a 970 in my PC ($300) and I'm going to drop it into this, plus a $20 PCIe 4x USB3 card and a $40 bluray optical drive. I already have a $120 4TB SATA drive to pop in and might replace the 120GB SSD with a 480gb SSD and add 16GB more of ECC DDR3 memory.

My machine right now is actually good enough to run Rift (9800 on Firemark) but its USB3 ports are all fucked up and even after spending hours trying to figure it out I can't get most of the USB3 ports on it to work, think the motherboard somehow fucked them up. Don't really wanna build a new machine right now with the newer Skylake chips around the corner, plus of course the new generation of Nvidia/AMD cards coming this summer. But for $400 there you get a lot of power real cheap, a solid case (600W PSU), can't do SLI but one card is just fine. Won't overclock or anything like that either but I don't care. I figure late fall or early next year I'll build out a new PC thats going to be twice as fast or more and I could probably sell this sucker with a 970 in it for at least $600.

Not a desktop question really but not sure where else to ask. Can someone recommend a good Nas option for home use? Primarily it will house pictures and videos, although I may want to run plex on it as well. Something cheap, 4TB or higher storage. Easy enough for the wife to use.

Is the WD stuff good for this?

Big thing will be whether you want the NAS to do the transcoding, or if you will be running the Plex server on a PC somewhere. That results in a big jump in price on the NAS. I've had very, very good luck with my Qnap 439. It's way too old to transcode, but otherwise it's been solid.

Or you can buy an HP Microserver Gen8 for ~200$, install FreeNas andbe done with it. In time, if you need it you can go upgrade up to 16gb ram and a 6 core i7 (if you need it).

Plex is really just a nice to have. I just need a static place to store important documents, pictures, videos and backups. I rarely use plex so it's not a big deal. If you can find me a HP server for 200 I'll consider it.

Quick question, for a gaming rig, would you rather choose a I7 5930k or the new I7 6700k ? And why ?

6700k has higher clock speed, smaller process, lower power consumption, better benchmarks (although not by much) and is a year newer.

The 5930k isn't really a gaming processor. Being a 6-core processor it's quite a bit of waste and overkill if all you are doing is gaming on it. It's like $200 more than an 6700k and is 0% better for gaming(and arguable worse). It's a beast of a processor if you're doing video editing, graphic design, or any of that kind of crap though.

6700k all the way for gaming, even though it is artificially price inflated right now due to shortages, it's still cheaper than the 5930k

This is a good idea to see what single core performance is like on various CPUs
PassMark CPU Benchmarks - Single Thread Performance

Its kinda sad how badly Moore's law has broken for single core. My i7-3820 benchs at 1950, the Z420 I ordered for $400 (few posts above) benches about the same, and a CPU 3 years newer only benches at 2325 - 19% improvement in 3 years from an i7-3820 to an i7-6700k. Even less if I OC'd my 3 year old CPU.