Gaming / Work PC Build
Community Forums/General Help/Gaming / Work PC Build
| ||
| My current PC (and everything in it) is about five years old and it's probably due a replacement. I've set a budget of around £2,000 and I've done a little bit of reading as my component knowledge is as out of ate as the PC. Novatech Eclipse Mid Tower (including 2 case fans) MSI Z170A GAMING M7 Intel Z170 (Socket 1151) Motherboard Intel I7 6700K 4.0GHz Cooler Master V8 Ver.2 CPU Cooler Corsair Dominator Platinum 32GB (2x16GB) DDR4 PC4-25600 3200MHz Samsung 850 EVO SATA 6Gb/s 2.5" 500GB SSD Seagate Barracude 3TB 64MB Hard Drive MSI GeForce GTX 1080 Founders Edition 8GB GDDR5X Novatech 750Watt Modular Power Supply 80plus Bronze Samsung 224DB 24x DVD Re-Writer 450Mbs 802.11a/b/n 2.4/5.0 Ghz Wifi Windows 10 Professional Does anything leap out at you as wrong or missing? For reference, I considered a six core CPU but since it's going to mostly be for gaming and game development, I think the Skylake CPUs are as good or better. I also considered two GTX 1070s instead of the 1080 but SLI doesn't seem well enough or widely enough supported to present good value. |
| ||
| > Samsung 224DB 24x DVD Re-Writer Is there still need to have an optical drive in your computer? > Novatech Eclipse Mid Tower (including 2 case fans) I am pretty sure that the fans included in cases aren't the most silent ones. So if you want to keep things "calm and silent" you might think of replacing them sooner or later. Reading about your GPU wishes, I assume that you wont hear the case fans :-) So just keep that in mind once you get annoyed by the fan sounds > 450Mbs 802.11a/b/n 2.4/5.0 Ghz Wifi There is surely a 1gbit LAN NIC on board of your mainboard. Is there really the need to put in a WiFi card? Wifi = higher ping (which is not what you want when [online] gaming) > Rest Dunno much about current/up-to-date hardware - my computer is surely 5+ years old now (and did costs about 350€ that time ...). And if I have to setup computers for others, they never get more expensive than 1000€ - so the "top-notch"-GPUs are unknown to me. bye Ron |
| ||
| Thanks for the thoughts, Ron. I will definitely want an optical drive. I often rip audio CDs from collector's editions of games. I suppose I could do it on my laptop but that thing is hardly ever set up. The MSI mobo does indeed have a gigabit Ethernet port and some fancy software to make the most of it. I've got a Steam Link that I'll be using to game in the lounge too so I'll definitely be using LAN for everything I can. So I guess I probably don't need wifi, but since it's about £20, I figured it was worth having just in case I need to work somewhere where Ethernet isn't practical. I'm not sure what you meant about my GPU choice. The MSI GTX 1080s are virtually silent, so I've read. You're probably right about the case fans. Fan noise doesn't bother me but having a silent GPU cooling system and then having noisy case fans is probably a bit stupid. I think they have blue LEDs too which will clash with the red on motherboard and GPU. So I should probably replace them with a pair of Corsair Red AF120s. |
| ||
| Sorry, did not check the GPU (if it is noise or not) - I just assumed, as you need a 750 Watt PSU, then there is surely some heat which will need to get transported ;-) Me is still living in the world of "fans". No fancy-cooling-solutions used here or in computers of friends. So for me, the only solution is big fans (120mm) and low-power-consuming components - which of course is not "gaming friendly" in all cases. @ 20 Pound Yes, it is not much (compared to the rest) but it is still 20 to much if you do not use it at the end - and when you then choose to use it, you recognize that "450" is no longer the fastest your other devices offer (=> outdated). Also you wont move your desktop computer that often - else it would be a notebook/laptop :-) @ RAM Check if the mainboard lists the RAM in the compatibility list (if there is some). I had some trouble with DDR3-RAM in the past - disabling features like "cool n quiet" because of some incompatibilities (RAM was fine, Mainboard was fine - they just did not like each other). bye Ron |
| ||
| I can't find a compatibility list but the motherboard has DDR4 boost which according to MSI is supposed to make it compatible with just about any memory kit out there. Corsair recommend the motherboard for their ram in general, but not specifically for the Dominator dual channel kits. So I think that sounds encouraging? |
| ||
| Think so too. Bye Ron |
| ||
| Does anything leap out at you as wrong or missing? If the motherboard supports it, get an M.2 SSD drive like the EVO 950 M.2 instead of SATA -- they can be much faster. (SATA maxes out at 6Gb/s, while depending on the model of your drive and your motherboard's capabilities M.2 can be 6, 10 or even 32Gb/s -- But do note that there are also some "M.2 Sata" drives which would have the same 6Gb bottleneck. IIRC the 850 EVO M.2 is a sata model) Another thing to consider is getting a bluray burner instead of DVD, higher capacity plus allows you to watch bluray movies. |
| ||
| If the motherboard supports it, get an M.2 SSD drive like the EVO 950 M.2 instead of SATA -- they can be much faster. Really? I didn't expect it would have much real world impact on loading times for gamea and apps, and the 950 is over twice the price of the 850 SATA. |
| ||
| I have an 850 myself, and doing a speedtest will get me 585MB/sec, which is pretty much saturating the 6Gb/sec sata channel. If you look at benchmarks online you'll find that the m.2 tests much faster than that - the sata controller is the bottleneck for SSD today, m.2 uses the pci express bus instead. |
| ||
| Ah, I see what you mean now. I can well imagine that you'd get better results from an NVME drive when using a benchmarking tool. I'm not sure whether you'd ever manage to hit the SATA maximum when loading apps or games, or even video editing. I can see it being a huge benefit if you were running a fileserver or webserver though. |
| ||
| I agree with Gabriel with the MSI GTX 1080s, or wait for the non-FE 1080s. The FE are meant to run hotter and cost more. |
   |