New PC for 5-Man: Hardware Advice Needed

[mbox_bob]

I didn't disagree with the original parts list that Hor put together. I put the list up using the UK partpicker site, which would give you a price estimate in £££ which it seemed you were spending from your first post, mainly to show the difference in UK pricing vs US pricing (which may still have other taxes but you don't see). Unfortunately the UK partpicker site is missing a few decent retailers, like scan.co.uk and dabs.com for example, so you don't get as wider variety of parts, so in order to get the parts priced, I chose as close as possible. I guess I should have said up front that it was more of a £££ price comparison for a pretty much par for par build.

As for the case. This is always an easy place to save a little cash. On the other hand, I have 3 Fractal Design cases, so I might be a little biased, but I do setup my machines for silence, and have never had an airflow or build problem with them (well, except for a mini ITX that I did once). If you plan on a full water cooling setup, then case will become more important to you, especially when trying to fit in £600 odd of water cooling gear (not including the computer). When using any non-standard cooling setup, you also need to be aware of what the case will fit, and from experience, it is really annoying finding out that you need an extra 2cm. I was careful to select a case which has a lot of potential and configuration options, although it may not suit everyone.


The monitor I suggested for several reasons.
1. I have one and it's pretty decent. I don't know of any 40" 4k <3ms 144Hz@4K monitors out there, so this was my second choice. I read some reviews on it. It was delivered the next day. It Is not a professional colour monitor (which is sad), but I couldn't afford a 40" 4k one of those either.
2. The Wasabi that MiRai has is not quite 4k. It is something like 3802x2138, although I believe the newer refresh is actual 4k.
3. Warranty issues, if you happen to have one, are much easier to sort out when the seller is in your country (although the Wasabi guy is usually pretty good too from all accounts).
4. You can get it cheaper if you shop around.
5. I provided an alternative which is £100 cheaper, although I know little about it, but Iiyama are usually quite decent.


For your existing machine, to upgrade it would almost be a complete replacement of everything in it, because to change the CPU you'd need to change the motherboard, which would require changing the ram, and a new CPU cooler is probably needed (I doubt you have the brackets). You'll want a new graphics card, and you should probably change the 5 year old PSU too, and depending on the vintage of the case, you may find the motherboard cutouts for the back of the motherboard are in the wrong place (happened to me a few years ago when I thought I reuse an Antec Sonata "Piano Black" case). Nothing a angle grinder wouldn't sort of course. Only really leaves putting in an SSD and you've pretty much got what was suggested.

[MiRai]

CPU: Intel i5-760
CPU Cooler: Contac29
Motherboard: Asus P7H55-M
Memory: 8GB DDR2(?)
Storage: 1TB HDD
Video Card: GTX460
Case: Piano Black Mid-sized
Power Supply: T/Take 550W

Out of curiosity, I guess there is no way I would be able to triple-box or five-box WoD with this machine, not even with a few upgrades?

If you could, I don't think you would get very desirable results since the game has moved to being more heavy on the GPU after they changed the engine, and, in my opinion, that GTX 460 with the fairly gimped IPC of the older i5-760 is just not going to do all that well.

2. The Wasabi that MiRai has is not quite 4k. It is something like 3802x2138, although I believe the newer refresh is actual 4k.

It's definitely 3840x2160, but there is a weird issue along the edges of the display which only affect maybe 10 pixels or so, and I found that by changing the resolution to 3802x2138 through nVidia's scaling in the driver control panel, fixes the issue entirely. However, because the size of my e-peen may be at risk I switched back to 3840x2160 full time sometime last year, and honestly, I no longer even notice the issue at all.

Also, for anyone reading, I have the UHD420 which is now EOL, and the two new models, in the same range of size, are the UHD430 AH-IPS and the UHD400 PVA.

[kazzakistani]

Hi gents, hope everybody is doing fine!

Since soliciting your greatly appreciated help at the beginning of the year I had to postpone my multiboxing adventure for work reasons. More recently things have been quiet and I want to get to it now that I have a chance.

Would you please do me the favour and look over the build we discussed at the time and highlight any changes that you think are in order given new developments? My main question is around GPU and Monitor:

1) 10-series GPU
- I guess it makes sense to go with a 10-series. 1070 or 1080? And then which of the 40 models??
2) Monitor resolution
- For cost and space reasons on my desk I am leaning away from a 4K 40’’ monitor now
- I understand that refresh rate (60Hz or more) and resolution (1080 or 1440) are the main factors in addition to the size of the monitor but I am not sure what I should go for. I guess above 27’’ I am fine with a 1440p and wow would look beautiful enough?
- Let’s say I am looking at a 27’’ or 32’’, should I go for a monitor that can do more than 60Hz at say 1440p? Would I be benefitting from that (in wow or other games)?
- Also Ultrawide would work well for my work-related stuff but I understand they are usually 60Hz, although some seem to deliver 75Hz at 1440p. Does wow support Ultrawide and what is your opinion on that in general?
3) Z170 vs X99
- Do I need to consider an X99 setup at all?

Here is the build we discussed at the time:

1) CPU: Intel Core i7-6700K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor ($369.95 @ B&H)
2) CPU Cooler: Corsair H100i GTX 70.7 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler ($112.99 @ Best Buy)
3) Motherboard: Asus Z170-A ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($142.98 @ Newegg) – Same as #1
4) Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-2133 Memory ($69.99 @ Newegg)
5) Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($87.89 @ OutletPC)
6) Storage: Hitachi Deskstar 7K2000 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($56.95 @ Amazon)
7) Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB Superclocked+ ACX 2.0+ Video Card ($609.99 @ NCIX US)
8) Case: Corsair 750D ATX Full Tower Case ($145.44 @ Mac Mall)
9) Power Supply: EVGA 850W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($109.99 @ Newegg)
10) Monitor: Wasabi Mango 40" UHD400 4K Monitor + Remote ($632.90)

Thanks again for taking the time to read and think this through!!

[Ughmahedhurtz]

1070 is roughly equivalent to a 980Ti according to my benchmarks when building my Mom's gaming rig.

I have an Asus PB278Q 1440p monitor and honestly, since I'm getting to the point where I'll need reading glasses in the next year or three, I'd have really preferred to be at 36-40" at 1440p. My friend has 4k monitors and honestly, I don't see the point unless you're at 65" or higher. Again, sharper/younger eyes might be more picky about that. As for how WoW looks, I still run my clients at 1080p so I can tile them on my 1440p desktop. 1440p WoW at full-screen(windowed) should be right lovely.

As for components, I have the H80i on my 6700K CPUs with a single Noctua NF-F12 fan (The NF-S12A is case, F12 is radiator; I do NOT use the Corsair fans that come with it due to noise issues) and the fan/pump almost never spin up out of "low" speed. The only thing I can hear is the GPU fans. Unless you're wanting to OC the CPU to like 4.6GHz, I would think the H100 might be overkill.

I have the Z170A Gaming 7 motherboards from MSI and have no complaints aside from some minor I/O issues with PCI-E M.2 RAID setups. If you're using SATA EVO SSDs, you're golden.

The Samsung 850 EVO 250GB were down to under $60US on Amazon last week.

I have a Thermaltake Core V71 and Core V31 cases and I like them. Very light and good airflow, with plenty of room for component layout and cabling. Has bays for 4x HDD, 2x ODD and 1 (or 2) SSDs backplane-mounted. Not a really super-sturdy carry-around LAN-party portable case but it works well for us as they just sit under the desk.



Shorter version of the components I regularly use in my family builds over the last 5 years and have had stellar reliability and performance with:

* GPU = EVGA
* Case = Thermaltake
* CPU Cooler = Corsair H80i for water, Noctua for air
* Memory = Corsair Vengeance (via the motherboard MFG's compatibility list)
* PSU = EVGA Gold Modular (SuperNova if available)
* Fans = Noctua
* SSDs = Samsung EVO or Pro

[kazzakistani]

Hey, thanks a lot for your help!!

Completely see your point on the monitor...I would love to go bigger but my desk is so narrow that I am dangerously close to the monitor.
I like your cooler setup and thanks for your thoughts on the other components!

Anybody around that uses an Ultrawide by any chance?

[Lyonheart]

Anybody around that uses an Ultrawide by any chance?

i use the Acer Predator 3440x1440 , ( 5 boxed stacked ) I get 30fps in cities and up to 70ish in less populated areas. I cant run on max setting while boxed.. The main screen slider is on 7 and the slaves on 1.

1080gtx. I got the monitor for the other games i play.. i play all those on max settings and get max FPS ( BF1, Witcher3. ESO, The Division.)