All right guys, what do you think about this config? How powerful would it be? It's what I'm looking to get currently, but I'll be honest: didn't follow the hardware market for the past...6 years

 

• ASUS MAXIMUS VIII HERO
• ADATA 16GB XPG Z1 DDR4 2800MHz CL17 KIT AX4U2800W4G17-QRZ
• INTEL Core i5-6500 3.20GHz 1151 BOX
• ASUS STRIX-GTX960-DC2OC-2GD5 GTX960 2GB GDDR5 OC PCIE

If you have the money you should get a 970 instead, just my opinion :3

If you have the money you should get a 970 instead, just my opinion :3

 

It costs about twice as much, it it really that much better to warrant that difference?

 

 

If you have the money you should get a 970 instead, just my opinion :3

 

 

 

It costs about twice as much, it it really that much better to warrant that difference?

It depends on what you want, the 970 comes with the division, a $60 game, the 960 (at least here) only comes with the card (but it's around $100 bucks cheaper), there is also the R9 390 which goes at around $300 and comes with a Hitman game code. It depends on what you want.

The 970 comes with Shadowplay which is nice...

 

http://media.bestofmicro.com/M/W/475160/gallery/BF4-FR_r_600x450.png

 

So... depends what you want to do...

 

If you're going to play RTS I doubt you'd notice anything.

Well, I don't live in the US, so no games/bonus materials included with my purchase. I'm just curious whether the 970 is that much better over the 960 to warrant paying ×2 as much.

 

EDIT: Thanks Blade!

Edited March 19, 201610 yr by ccabal86

All right guys, what do you think about this config? How powerful would it be? It's what I'm looking to get currently, but I'll be honest: didn't follow the hardware market for the past...6 years

 

 

• ASUS MAXIMUS VIII HERO
• ADATA 16GB XPG Z1 DDR4 2800MHz CL17 KIT AX4U2800W4G17-QRZ
• INTEL Core i5-6500 3.20GHz 1151 BOX
• ASUS STRIX-GTX960-DC2OC-2GD5 GTX960 2GB GDDR5 OC PCIE

Hi,

 

1. You're overspending on motherboard. You don't need all the bells and whistles with a 2gb vga card. They're redundant. Save that money, invest into vga, atleast 4gig 960 of not 970.

2. You don't need 6-series Intel processor on desktop. Get the cheapest i5 you can get in 5 series or even 4 if you find something. The generation on generation performance improvement is marginal, its mostly in power efficiency and that is more useful in laptop. With 2gb vga, you honestly don't even need i5 tbh. Save the money, invest in vga.

 

3. What are you going to do with 16 gig ram? Dude, get 8 gig 1800 MHz hyperfury-x, its decent priced. You don't really even need 16gig with 970, let alone 960.

 

 

Tldr:

 

You're paying premium on all the wrong elements, save money, invest in vga.

 

Are you buying from online store?

No, there's a local store that will also do the assembly.

 

It seems I will go 970 instead of 960, would it still make sense to scale back on the motherboard?

I've been also thinking about upping my rig few months ago (it's so old I could send him to school some time ago). When I looked around, my conclusion was Skylake motherboards are to expensive at that time, so I've just got myself new graphics card and I'm now waiting.

 

As for your config:

 - if you're not playing with graphics you surely won't need 16GB of Ram - 8 will be enough (and you can upgrade that anytime).

 - Your proc is just the one I've wanted to buy myself and I think it's worth its price.

 - I got myself GTX 970. It's about 60% more expensive than gtx 960 and about 50%-100% more efficient (depending what game was benchmark on). My proc is CoreDuo E8400, yet I'm still able to run most games on the highest graphics settings, as long as they're not poorly optimized processor wise (like F4 is ).

 

There's also one more thing - rumors about new nVidia architecture - Pascal, that's coming out this year and is supposed to be much better than everything we've seen so far. How much of a truth and how much of a marketing is in there I don't know - but if you're not in hurry you might want to wait and see.

It's coming around June, right? The problem is that it will still be pretty overpriced when it comes out :-\

Well, it's a generational shift after a few years. 

 

I still dont see why you guys want skylake on desktop?

 

See, I got this rig few weeks ago, so I did alot of research and got me the most bang for buck performance:

- i5 - 4460

- 8 gig hyperfury x 

- Asus h81m - e or c motherboard

- Nvidia Asus strix Gtx 970 - 4 gig

 

Games like Dota 2, CS:Go, they work ultra setting without a hitch. 

 

Witcher 3, Batman Arkham Knight, Fallout 4 etc, they work amazing but i cant tick off *everything* as max-max and im on 1080p.  

 

The point is in all of these games, the bottleneck is the VGA card, it's not: i5 4460, it's not 8 gigs of ram and it's not motherboard.

 

buying skylake, 16 gigs of ram etc with 960 or even 970 is equvilant of trying to fit in a VW golf engine inside your Ferrari, you can load up all the bells and whistles, but when everything is said and done, the speed and performance of the vehicle will be determined by it's engine.

 

The weak link in your build is the VGA card, and it's not just a weak link, it's a very weak link with rest of the parts way way ahead. You can even put in a 970 with your 16 gig of ram etc and you'll still find that it's your card that bottlenecks. 

 

See here for my build:

http://ironcentral.org/community/topic/55532-pcmasterace-question-of-budget-gaming-pc/

It's coming around June, right? The problem is that it will still be pretty overpriced when it comes out :-\

Sure it will, but hopefully price of previous generation cards will fall down. Especially if you're not afraid to buy used ones (that still have a long guarantee period left).

 

And Shah...I don't really know . I saw benchmarks and Skylake wasn't that good compared to previous generations...but when I buy a new thing I don't wan't to buy something that's few years old already - that's probably the thinking .

 

I was torn myself because of that. Didn't want to get into past generation but at the same time Skylake cost wasn't optimal (due to outrageous motherboard prices, since CPU prices alone are decent).

 

And like you said, unless you're playing CPU intensive games (like MMOs) investing in a good GPU is much more important (like I've said, so far my ancient CoreDuo E8400 is doing its job, with some exceptions like F4).

Yea, tl;dr Mand has alot of money lying around so that he's gonna spend it for the heck of it, i would'nt recommend it. the only difference you'll notice in CPU generations is the weight of your wallet.

 

Another thing ccabal, VR market is about to take off big time. The min requirement is 970. So, yea/ 

 

Also, dont cheap out on the power supply, no need to get ultra high end, but get a decent one, you dont want things blowing up. 

 

Who gave you those specs? is it the guy at the shop? If so, either he doesnt really know his shit or we're in the middle of broad daylight robbery and I would'nt let that happen. Dont listen to Mand, he's clearly bad influence here. I'm gonna get you the best bang for your buck brosef.

Here's my build that I got 2 years ago and I play pretty much everything on max.

 

Processor - AMD FX8350

Mobo - Asus M5A97 Evo R2.0

RAM - 8 GB Kingston HyperX 1866

Graphics - Initially with the rig I bought a GTX 760 and upgraded to a GTX 970 a when it came out last year.

PSU - Seasonic M12SII 620

 

Shahenshah is right, no need to spend on a Maximus unless the rest of your rig is in line with it. I wouldn't get a maximus unless I was getting a 980 to go with it. Spend more on your graphics card, get a decent motherboard and everything else can be upgraded as new stuff comes out.

 

Right now, I am thinking of waiting another year before upgrading because I really don't see the point of it. Desktops are awesome and long lived.

Thanks for all the input guys. The guy who gave me the specs is a co-worker, not the guy at the store. It was something to go off of.

 

Another question: HDD vs SSD? I heard that having your system files/games on an SSD makes everything go much smoother, and HDD is for stuff you don't use every day. Any truth to that?

I'd say get HDD for sure, 1-2 tb, whatever fits into your budget, this is where you dump all your HD porn. 

 

For c:/ or windows, I'd highly recommend getting SSD, even a shit one is miles ahead of hDD, Samsung evo series is excellent, decently priced and great reviews all around.

 

Because see SSD 1 tb is goint to be batshit expansive, so for data, you get HDD, 1 tb is dirt cheap. 

 

For Windows, as your c:/ partition get 250gb or 500gb, keep that purely for windows, ms office and you know, drivers and anti-virus, chrome etc, the basic but necessary stuff.

 

Install your games on HDD etc. 

 

SSD windows is blazing fast and smooth and a world of difference really, youre windows will fly.

 

So tldr: SSD for Windows, HDD for porn. 

 

SSD would be my next immediate upgrade. After that, im going to sit content for the next 2-3 years.  I'm more of a dota-2 and CS:GO kind of guy, im not really into single player games like withcer or fall out 4 or batman etc. So even 970 is an overkill for the Dota and CS:GO, but it keeps me plugged in for next 2-3  years. I'm very satisfied with the quality of graphics it outputs.

 

Also, for the monitor, 970 will do ultra or near ultra for most games at 1080p, for 4k, you'll need to lower your settings. 970 isnt really for 4k displays, you really need to up the ante to 980 ti etc for that. 

 

And so i'd say stick to 1080p monitor. or if you're getting 4k monitor, you play games at 1080p, porn at 4k. That's workable at 970. 

 

Another important thing - see what's the price of ATi equivilant of 970. Sometimes you can get a better deal with better prices, nvidia charges bit of premium. The reason i didnt get ATi was it's not really that well distributed here and if something goes wrong, i cant be arsed around for support. 

All right. I think I have it down now. I'm either going to make the order on Friday or I'll wait for Pascal, which should come out round June/July - for better prices.

 

I still have some non-graphics intensive games I can play until then, so I don't need the new rig THAT badly....I guess I'll make my decision soon

Edited March 20, 201610 yr by ccabal86

Yea, tl;dr Mand has alot of money lying around so that he's gonna spend it for the heck of it, i would'nt recommend it. the only difference you'll notice in CPU generations is the weight of your wallet.

 

Also, dont cheap out on the power supply, no need to get ultra high end, but get a decent one, you dont want things blowing up.

 

I got a 1200 Watt back in 2012. Power consumption was high for my GPU and I figured they would be even higher in 4-5 years. Boy was I wrong, since GPUs are now more power efficient.

OK bros, I went to the store today, and we set up the config. The consideration was to get a rig with upgradability potential, so If I later want a stronger GFX card, the setup would still work.

 

ASUS B150M-PLUS

Intel Core i5-6500 LGA1151

8GB 2133Mhz Kingston DDR4 HyperX Fury Black RAM

Samsung 120 GB SSD 2,5" SATA3 MZ-75E120B 850 EVO

3,5" SATA3 1TB WD 64 MB HDD WD10PURX

GeForce GTX970 Asus STRIX-GTX970-DC2OC-4GD5 PCX

Chieftec 700W GPS-700-A8

 

The case: Zalman Z11 Plus Blue looks amazimg IMO

And, I'm on my new rig

Congrats!

 

Alot more balanced build than last time :-)

 

I like it.

Ccabal, compulsory pics of your rig required. 

Will take a few pics tomorrow

Will take a few pics tomorrow

Still waiting on those pictures

Takes effort

Takes effort

I'll be back in a year and a half for those pictures. I knows it a crunch on time, but I have faith you can produce them in such a fast manner