PC Build Advice/Review Thread

[shepardG]

Monitor specs?

[Mabubeezareel]

It's your CPU that's bottle-necking you. MMOs in particular are very CPU-dependent, and FFXIV is no different. Best you can do is to overclock your current CPU to get a bit of an FPS boost, else you're looking to need a new CPU/mobo to really let that 970 breathe a bit.

[Senji]

Looks like 1080p.

That cpu is overclockable, however not with that stock Dell motherboard. To buy a good used 1156 board to overclock, you probably won't get the results you're looking for so it would end up being a waste.

i5 4690k +mb combo deals been popping up often, there's also microcenter if nearby. That's what I'd recommend, paired with a cpu cooler and follow a guide to squeak a little more out of it.

Would be a good time to think about upgrading your case if your using a stock Dell one.

[Tisi]

Yeah that's what I figured. The dell CPU/Mobo are the only original parts left now. What kind of price range will I be looking at?

@ Senji - I will probably end up getting this case - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811119233

[Purrrfect]

Is there anything worthwhile and not excessively expensive to upgrade from an [email protected]?

[Gryffes]

Is there anything worthwhile and not excessively expensive to upgrade from an [email protected]?

Nope.
The 2500 holds up very well.

Even an i7 4790 only has about a 20-25% single thread performance advantage over it, if you wanna do a lot of video editing/rendering then an i7 becomes worth it, otherwise there isn't much advantage over an i5 for any other real world task.
Mostly the performance gains since the i5 2500/i7 2600 have just been nm size of the die, and most of the gains have been in power use, with the performance increases being relatively smaller.

Your OC'd 2500k will prob beat a non-OC 4790 in single thread ( gaming ).

[Hadley]

Though this has already been touched upon, but XIV does rely much more on the CPU than any other game I've run through my rig recently. I'm in a similar boat atm. Killer GPU setup and any additional gains would require a CPU/Mobo/RAM replacement. Moving to Haswell would be a sick upgrade for you. If you could hold out a little bit longer, you can see what Broadwell has to offer once it's on the market. In the meantime, perhaps you could scale down the graphical settings that are a bit reliant on the CPU to get some additional gains until you swap hardware.

[Hadley]

Nope.
The 2500 holds up very well.

Even an i7 4790 only has about a 20-25% single thread performance advantage over it, if you wanna do a lot of video editing/rendering then an i7 becomes worth it, otherwise there isn't much advantage over an i5 for any other real world task.

I've found the extra cores to be extremely useful with virtualization. Can eat through cores and RAM pretty quickly depending on what you have cooking.

[Black]

hiiiiiiiii

most likely im making new build next month however i have yet to decide on 2 things

the motherboard....MSI z97 gaming 7 or Asus Maximus VII hero the asus about 90$ more here

and the case CM Haf X or NZXT H440. haf for sure will provide better cooling i think

[Waraji]

I was going to comment on this way earlier. After comparing both boards on their official site (Newegg was missing additional info on the MSI board). The only huge hardware difference between the MSI and ASUS boards are the USB 3.0 slots.

Other than that, it really comes down to how much you value build quality, brand recognition, preferences, etc. Both boards are pretty evenly matched, although I suspect the ASUS board has a far more advanced overclocking interface, if that’s your thing. If you don’t care much for fancy GUI, consider the MSI I suppose.

I may have missed another glaring feature, but I don’t think I did. ASUS is red? :vroom:

On another note, you, and more people really, should consider the form factor size more often. Do you really need a full ATX board and a huge case? Or would you really benefit(wallet and spacial) from a more compact setup that other hardware combinations offer? I say this because I’m currently in the planning stages of converting from Full-ATX in a NZXT Phantom, to a Micro-ATX, with a single GPU setup (with possibility for dual-) enclosed in a much smaller case than I’ve been personally used to for well over 10 years now. ~Food for thought.

[jmc]

I managed to get my hands on a Nvidia 980 from a friend for a great price, and was wondering if I should now upgrade my CPU.

Currently running a i5 2500k not oc'd. Would a upgrade to a newer i5 or maybe a i7 be worth it?

[Arkanna]

I managed to get my hands on a Nvidia 980 from a friend for a great price, and was wondering if I should now upgrade my CPU.

Currently running a i5 2500k not oc'd. Would a upgrade to a newer i5 or maybe a i7 be worth it?

I'd say probably not. More CPU power is always better but I'd personally let one more generation pass before upgrading from a 2500k.

[Boyiee]

I managed to get my hands on a Nvidia 980 from a friend for a great price, and was wondering if I should now upgrade my CPU.

Currently running a i5 2500k not oc'd. Would a upgrade to a newer i5 or maybe a i7 be worth it?

Absolutely not, you have a real powerhouse now that will last you for a bit before needing to upgrade. You're at least 1 or 2 cpu cycles from needing to upgrade.

I'm on an i7-950 oc and upgrading for me would even be minimal with my 980.

[Krandor]

The difference between various generations of i#-whatever processors is very minimal, and so few games will actually be limited by a processor. Even as GPUs gain more and more power each year they're still the bottleneck in almost every situation for gaming.

[jmc]

Sounds good, I'll just OC the 2500k then

thanks

[Josiahkf]

Recently bought a new PC


and a 28" 4k monitor online seperately; Do any of you have something similar? Reviews online list having trouble seeing everything due to the high resolution vs small size. So is 32+ the smallest size you'd say can comfortable display 4k? or is 28 adequate etc

until now the largest I've used is a 22" 1600 x 1080 so I have no idea

[Talragan]

Hey guys, quick question. Thinking of doing an upgrade finally to my gaming desktop, was wondering what people think my bottleneck(s) are?

Posting specs here, would appreciate if people tell me what they think would get me most bang for my buck to replace.

cpu: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 930 @ 2.80GHz (8 CPUs), ~2.8GHz
vid: Gtx 460 (used to run 2 in sli but 1 burnt out, only 1 now, I personally think its probably bottleneck)
Memory = 6144MB Ram
Moboard = gigabyte X58A-UD5 (should be plenty good enough for now)

Thanks

EDIT: I play quite a bit of csgo, mmos, building games like 7dtd, rust etc. and some 4X. And the off adventure / fps. Just want to be able to play DA:I for example with more than a few fps and elite dangerous maybe etc.

[Isiolia]

GPU is easily the biggest bottleneck there.

[Talragan]

Would GTX 970 be overkill?

I got the cash for that

[Isiolia]

If you're using like 1680x1050 monitor or something, maybe? More generally, it might be more than you absolutely need at this point in time, but I don't doubt you'll wind up taxing it with something in the next year or two.