Want Help Building / Upgrading a PC?

[jackophant]

Hey guys,

I love speccing PC builds, and I often do it for friends and family as well as a couple of paid systems.

For a lot of people who want a new PC it can often be quite an intimidating prospect, so I would like to offer my services to all of you should any of you need them!

For the people who live close to me I've often aided them in building the machine, but for other people further afield I can help spec a build on a website (or sites) of their choice just so they know they've got a good deal and/or the right parts for what they want.

I'm doing this freely in my spare time, it's just something I enjoy doing.

You can request a build here in the thread or drop me a message. All I need to work with is:

• Budget
• Intended machine use
• Part preferences

Any builds I complete (unless requested) will be published to the OP for other people to reference. I can also help with any peripherals you may be interested in.

Edited January 5, 2016 by jackophant

[Pampers]

I am wondering if I should upgrade my battlestation or purchase a new ship. Will get back with current spec when I get home

Danke

[Beck]

I'll take you up on this!

I posted over on reddit about this so I'll just copy/paste it here!

What is your intended use for this build? The more details the better.

Gaming, game development, streaming and general usage.

If gaming, what kind of performance are you looking for? (Screen resolution, FPS, game settings)

1080p@144hz with full settings to start with, potentially going up to 1440p or 4k in the near future. Would I need a second 980ti for this?

What is your budget (ballpark is okay)?

Around £2k maximum. Will to push the boat out a little further if it gives massive gains or it is worth the extra money.

In what country are you purchasing your parts?

UK

Post a draft of your potential build here (specific parts please). Consider formatting your parts list.[1]Don't ask to be spoonfed a build (read the rules!).

PCPartPicker part list[2] / Price breakdown by merchant[3]

Type	Item	Price
CPU	Intel Core i7-6700K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor[4]	£312.17 @ Ebuyer
CPU Cooler	Corsair H100i GTX 70.7 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler[5]	£86.11 @ More Computers
Motherboard	MSI Z170A GAMING M7 ATX LGA1151 Motherboard[6]	£169.97 @ More Computers
Memory	Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3200 Memory[7]	£127.98 @ Novatech
Video Card	Asus GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB STRIX Video Card[8]	£569.99 @ Aria PC
Power Supply	Super Flower Leadex Gold 850W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply[9]	£110.88 @ CCL Computers
Sound Card	Asus Xonar DX 24-bit 192 KHz Sound Card[10]	£56.30 @ CCL Computers
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	£1433.40
	Generated by PCPartPicker[11] 2015-10-16 15:33 BST+0100

Provide any additional details you wish below.

So a couple of questions from me:

• I've heard good things about the MSI motherboard. But I've heard a lot more noise about the Asus Maximus VIII Hero. Which of the two would be better? Is there a motherboard better than both of these?
• CPU Cooler - Which one of the Corsair H100's is the better out of the bunch? The GTX has a slightly bigger radiator and quieter fans if I remember correctly, but is it better?
• Cases - I have no idea what is the "best" these days. Obviously a good airflow is key. Which cases will fit the H100 in as well as looking nice and tidy? I know some of this is down to personal taste but I'd like something which functions well. I'm not a big fan of anything that looks too crazy. Currently I have a Coolermaster HAF X, which is probably as "crazy-looking" as I'd like.
• Is the sound card any good? It seems quite old since the description says "Vista Ready" over at OcUK. No idea what's good so if someone could point me to something better for around the same price I'd appreciate it.
• Lastly, am I missing anything from this build? (I already have hard drives and SSD's, any peripherals I might need, along with a copy of Windows 8/10)

I'm fine with building a PC and everything. I just don't follow hardware so closely anymore so I don't really know what's the "best" these days!

I don't really have any parts preferences or manufacturer loyalty. I just go for whatever is best within reason (not mega expensive etc!)

Would like to hear your input

[Pampers]

CPU: Intel Core i7-2600K 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor
Motherboard: Asus P8Z68-V PRO ATX LGA1155 Motherboard
Memory: Corsair XMS3 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory 
Memory: Sapphire Radeon R9 280X 3GB GDDR5 
Case: Fractal Design Arc Midi R2 (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case
Power Supply: Corsair Professional 650W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply
 

What is your intended use for this build? The more details the better.

Gaming and game development.

If gaming, what kind of performance are you looking for? (Screen resolution, FPS, game settings)

1080p@144hz with full settings + another monitor with skype and other idle programs on

What is your budget (ballpark is okay)?

Around £1k ish.

In what country are you purchasing your parts?

Sweden

 

Edit: how much more expensive is it to get 32gb or 64gb of memory

Ty Beck for format

Edited October 18, 2015 by Pampers

[jackophant]

I'll take you up on this!

Would like to hear your input

Eurgh, nested quotes don't work...

Looks like a solid build to be proud of! The 980Ti should work plenty well for what you want right now, but it depends what sort of games you'll want to be playing on maxed settings, using the example of witcher 3:

In my personal opinion, 4K gaming is overrated and I would take good framerates with "optimised settings" over jerky lens flares.

I've seen a lot of dedicated gaming builds pairing the 6700K with DDR3 for the lower latencies and the fact that the DDR4 speeds are overkill for what games utilise atm. However, if you're using it for game development and other tasks, you should still see a benefit.

Motherboards are funny things, and in my experience it's more down to benchmarking than anything else. Intel's Z chipsets just carry a premium for overclockability so if that's something you're into then go for it, but I don't OC, so I would just choose a mobo that best suited my needs for the lowest price possible.

Again, OCing, If you're using a full size case with plenty of airflow then a big air cooler like mine, the Noctua DH-N14 runs super quiet. Water cooling only really has an edge on upper limit OCing, but if you're set on the H100 GTX then it's the marginally better of the two. It's basically a redesign with slightly better materials, but the dimensions are a little different so in some of the tighter cases, people will need the H100i.

I'm not a fan of some of these grotesque cases with unnecessary lumps and grills, they look like they're trying too hard to be sci-fi and it pisses me off. I think corsair have a gorgeous range of cases (see above CPU cooler screenshot for my 350D) but a lot of cases these days seem to be taking a much more modest approach to design which I welcome. Nothing is really "best", and these days everything is very simple to work internally so I'd say it mainly comes down to what you like the look of and will it fit your parts inside.

In the interests of gaming I've always stuck with a USB headset for more reliable sound production across any PC I play on, and sound cards have caused me nothing but trouble in the past (fucking creative...). But what do you want from your soundcard?

 

CPU: Intel Core i7-2600K 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor
Motherboard: Asus P8Z68-V PRO ATX LGA1155 Motherboard
Memory: Corsair XMS3 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory 
Memory: Sapphire Radeon R9 280X 3GB GDDR5 
Case: Fractal Design Arc Midi R2 (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case
Power Supply: Corsair Professional 650W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply
 

What is your intended use for this build? The more details the better.

Gaming and game development.

If gaming, what kind of performance are you looking for? (Screen resolution, FPS, game settings)

1080p@144hz with full settings + another monitor with skype and other idle programs on

What is your budget (ballpark is okay)?

Around £1k ish.

In what country are you purchasing your parts?

Sweden

 

Edit: how much more expensive is it to get 32gb or 64gb of memory

Ty Beck for format

Just need to clarify here: this is your current build and with £1kish you want to either build a new machine or upgrade the current one?

I'm not entirely sure why you would want 32GB/64GB of RAM unless you were running a server, but it will cost you upwards of £4-6/GB. Your current CPU can't utilise RAM faster than 1333MHz and cannot see more than 32GB and neither can your mobo.

To find a CPU that can access 64GB you'll also need an extreme edition chip, or one of the more modern architectures (even my i7-4790K uses max 32GB).

[Pampers]

   Just need to clarify here: this is your current build and with £1kish you want to either build a new machine or upgrade the current one?

I'm not entirely sure why you would want 32GB/64GB of RAM unless you were running a server, but it will cost you upwards of £4-6/GB. Your current CPU can't utilise RAM faster than 1333MHz and cannot see more than 32GB and neither can your mobo.

To find a CPU that can access 64GB you'll also need an extreme edition chip, or one of the more modern architectures (even my i7-4790K uses max 32GB).

Yes, that is my current build, I can spend more than 1k if a full re-buy is recommended. That ram amount is needed if I want to do some high quality scan work at home, but not really worth at all for that price

[jackophant]

Yes, that is my current build, I can spend more than 1k if a full re-buy is recommended. That ram amount is needed if I want to do some high quality scan work at home, but not really worth at all for that price

I'm intrigued to see what can be done with all this RAM, but you'd need a huge mobo as well to have 8x8GB sticks of RAM for a 64GB. You could have 4 16GBs but then price is eye watering and that's just DDR3 @ 1333Mhz.

However! You can pick up 4x8GB of DDR4 @ 2133MHz for £140ish which is pretty reasonable imo, so what you lack in terms of capacity you make up for in speed. I'm unfamiliar with your use of RAM so I'd need to do some more research into what the ideal setup would be. Either way, food for thought...

You can build a pretty good 1080p@144Hz rig for around £1k, so if you've got a bit more to poke at it you could have something very nice indeed. However, regarding upgrading, buying a similar generation, higher performing CPU will be unnecessarily expensive, so the only thing I would suggest upgrading if that is your path of choice is your graphics card as the CPU is still fairly decent.

[Pampers]

Ah okay, think I might wait a year before doing anything drastic then. I got that GPU last year and pretty happy with it, although one of the two fans has become really sluggish and loose and makes really loud squeaking noises under stress. When not gaming I have to manually block it with an object to keep my hearing sanity Don't have the tools to remove the cover and lube it up either...so maybe I should get a newer card, any recommendations?

[jackophant]

I got that GPU last year and pretty happy with it

Then why are you looking to upgrade?

[Beck]

Thanks for the input, Jacko!

Yeah, I probably wouldn't go 4K anytime soon anyway since a 144hz 4k monitor is stupidly expensive (And I'd need a second 980ti most likely). 2k is probably doable and CSGO is pretty easy to run. I don't mind if other games get a lower framerate since it doesn't matter as much.

I will be OC'ing but not to extreme lengths. I just push it as far as I can without any crashes and not too much heat + voltage increase so I don't burn the CPU up. I might look into a good air cooler in that case. Besides fan noise doesn't bother me since I wear headphones most of the time.

When I'm not using headphones (Whilst in single player games, doing work etc) I have a good set of speakers (Logitech Z5500's) so a good sound card would be nice just for sound quality. Though I'm not a massive audiophile I can notice a difference between onboard and a dedicated sound card usually. I'll try read up a bit more on some sound cards.

But I shall be building a rig within the next couple of weeks so will post a build log or something when I'm done. Gotta be ready for Fallout 4!  

[jackophant]

When I'm not using headphones (Whilst in single player games, doing work etc) I have a good set of speakers (Logitech Z5500's) so a good sound card would be nice just for sound quality. Though I'm not a massive audiophile I can notice a difference between onboard and a dedicated sound card usually. I'll try read up a bit more on some sound cards.

If that's the case, some of the mobo manufacturers tout special onboard audio which has been specially isolated etc etc, blah blah blah, and I credit this mostly to ASUS in my experience. They generally make quite a big deal out of sound hardware/software on a whole range of their products, so an ASUS mobo may be the way to go. I still use an ASUS RoG Spitfire USB soundcard from an old pair of headphones and it's fantastic (but im a sound noob as well )

Good luck getting FO4 ready, we don't have long!

[Pampers]

Then why are you looking to upgrade?

Because one of the gpu fans sounds like a rusty gate being constantly opened

[jackophant]

Because one of the gpu fans sounds like a rusty gate being constantly opened

Well if you really can't fix it then sure. How much do you want to spend on a graphics card then?

Going too extreme could cause bottleneck issues, but at the same time could also future proof you for your rig upgrade when it happens.

[Skybex]

Hey @jackophant. Since you provided good info on the gaming laptop, I will also take you up on this offer

Not a new build, but upgrading my current rig. I bought the computer about 5-6 years ago. Was a prebuilt at a decent price but has since become a bit old. a few years ago I replaced the gfx card, psu and added an extra 4gb of ram. Then shortly after I bought a new case for it since the gfx card was too big for the case and I had to take a hacksaw to it and cut away the hard drive drawers to fit it. But now I find that during gaming my cpu and mobo temps can reach near 100deg. So thinking to replace the mobo as well as installing a new cpu fan since the mobo is a pretty old model and doesn't support usb 3.0, variable speed fans and other stuff. Additionally since I have bought a new table I finally have space for a dual monitor setup so looking at that and would like advice on monitors. And will also add an SSD drive.

Current specs are

CPU: http://ark.intel.com/products/41316/Intel-Core-i7-860-Processor-8M-Cache-2_80-GHz 
Motherboard: https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/P7P55D_LE/ 
Memory: 4 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148149 
GFX: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202003 
Case: http://www.fractal-design.com/home/product/cases/define-series/define-r4-arctic-white-window 
Power Supply: http://www.corsair.com/en/tx750w 

A couple of things I would like to know. firstly will the psu support the new mobo and a quality cpu fan with the rest of the stuff I have? No need for watercooling as its already pretty cold here and the new case gives good air flow.

The gfx card only has 1 x hdmi, 1 x dvi single and 1 x dvi dual. Will that cause a problem when looking to have a dual monitor setup?

Is it also worth dropping the ram for some decent stuff, or will what i have keep for a while longer?

And of course recommendations on a new mobo, fan, SSD and monitor/s.

[blackdog]

Hey @Skybex in terms of moneyz it's probably more expensive, but if you are not buying a second monitor to place next to the old one… why not just buy a single fat ass one like a 30" curved or something like that? Would resolve your problem of single kind display output.

I've often wished for multi-monitor, but I think that's most effective if you stack them vertically (in this regard a laptop workstation is great cos it definitely can accommodate all the secondary tools palettes), or if you are a coder and need a vertically rotated one to write and one to display.

Edited October 20, 2015 by blackdog