New PC Questions (Buying, SSDs, Graphics Cards, and DIMM)

[Yoli]

So Yoli wants to build a PC, but Yoli is technologically inept.

Edit: This sort of turned into a ramble, as my posts often do. Here's a really fast summary of my questions in re a pc for FF14:

1) Is there a decent reputable site where I can get one assembled/shipped to me? I'm pretty sure I'd break it trying on my own.

2) Are SSD drives worth finding?

3) What's a safe bet for a graphics card? Is there any reason most sites (HP, etc) don't have an option for adding the newer ones (ATI 5870, etc)?

4) What's a DIMM (with RAM), and should I care how big or small the DIMM number is?


I understand that the best way to do it is to just sort of order the parts, piece it together yourself, and end up with exactly what you want. I'm fairly convinced that I'll end up breaking at least /something/ doing that though, if not /everything/, so I think it'd be a safer bet to try and find a site that will build one for me and ship it on over.

I thought maybe I could just upgrade my graphics card and fix stuff up for 14, but it turns out the newer graphics cards don't fit in my current HP tower, so that's a no go (the goal of this is all just to have something that can play ff14 wonderfully in hi-def/res, and not really anything beyond that). For the same reason, I'm a bit paranoid of the fact that so many of these sites don't have a selectable option for the newer graphics cards (I'll call cust service if I have to of course, but thought maybe I could get a fast answer here too, from someone not trying to sell me anything).

I've been looking around a bit at Dell's/HP's stuff, mostly. I noticed that they all have kind of "low" top customization options (like the fanciest HP pc I could find only had the ATI 5770 card available... which probably isn't a bad card, and might be fine for ff14? But all the people leading the hi-res leaderboards on the ff14 benchmark thread here seemed to have some version of the 58-- card, or equivalent). The CPU's seemed a bit "slow" to - the best I found (I think?) was a 6-core 3.33GHz i7, but a lot of people over on the benchmark thread here had things up towards 3.8 or 4 GHz.

I know dell's alienware had the option for the newer graphics cards, but I think those computers look really silly, with all the glowing lights and random "vents". No offense if you're a fan; I'd rather just have a normal looking tower if at all possible.

Any of you guys know of any reputable sites that could build something for me, or know if the 6-core 3.33 GHz with the ATI 5770 is going to be just fine for running ff14 on high settings and I'm worrying over nothing at all? I don't really object to overpaying a little bit, if it's able to guarantee that stuff arrives non-broken.

Three other questions.

With these newer cards, are they going to require extra cooling or power? Do they make obnoxious ammounts of noise or anything?

And I heard a lot of people saying good things about SSD drives. Would picking one of those up be strongly worth it for something like this, or just overkill? I also hear that SSD drives only have a certain ammount of times you can write to them or something? Any advice/tips/thougths in re: SSD?

What's the deal with DIMMs when you're picking up memory? Like over on the HP site you can get 9 GB RAM in 5 DIMM, 10 GB RAM in 4 DIMM, or 12 GB in 6 DIMM (and then even higher ammounts in 6 DIMM, if you wanted to). They're all at 1066MHz. Is DIMM something to worry about, or do I just care about how many GB there are since they're all at 1066MHz? On the same note, would anything more than 12GB make much of any difference for FF14? I don't plan on running a ton of other stuff in the background or anything, and I'm thinking not.

Sorry this is a bit long. Thanks if you can answer these questions, or just give any other general advice.

[SubzeroDiabolos]

This post is most likely useless because I didn't bother reading that bible you posted.

All i'm gonna say is this. I don't have anything to base this on, because I don't have 1, but all I keep earing about SSDs is they're the sex. As for the cards being noisy, I have a Radeon HD 5850, at first I thought the card was a decibel monster. I don't even hear it anymore, all I hear now are the 5 case fans.

My current windows 7 "informations and performance tool" gives my computer 7.3 or 7.4 everywhere, except HDD data transfert wich is at 5.9.

Take that for what you want. Also, I would stay the fuck away of dell, unless it's alienware. But that's just me.

EDIT: wtf holy shit are you seriously thinking about putting 12 gb or ram just for gaming? DON'T

[Gethsemane]

I suggest building it yourself. There are so many youtube videos out there that will show you how to build a PC from the ground up with little problems whatsoever. The only thing you really need to worry about in my opinion is the seating of the heat sink and the thermal paste. Also make sure when you screw the motherboard to the case that it has spacers, nothing metal is touching etc. Self explanatory stuff really.

Use newegg.com to buy all of your parts. Most of the parts are wholesalers meaning you save a lot of money in the end. As for the ATI card, 5870 should be fine for what you need. Do you need to build the computer NOW or could you wait? Lot of prices will go down by then due to 8 cores hitting the market near the FFXIV release date.

i7 is way too much money. AMD 6 core is 305.00 compared to Intel's 6 core for 1,000.00. If you got the money than waste it. Though that's 700.00 I could spend on other stuff. I'm not an AMD fan boy but when it comes to business sense it doesn't make sense to spend more money per core on Intel than an AMD.

Build it the way you want though but I think you'll save about 500.00 to 700.00 if you wait until after summer to build it. Write down NOW what the top of the line stuff is and then wait 3-4 months and buy it when it's cheap. You should be future proof with a 6 core. Maybe the 8 cores will be out by the time you do build it.

What is really killing me right now is AMD APU chips will be out in the spring of next year I am reading and I will have already invested in a new PC like you are doing for FFXIV. Not sure how interchangeable the APU cards will be, hopefully it fits right in.

[Amastacia]

1) Building one on your own is an "insert tab A in slot B" process, and as long as you pay attention and don't try to force anything into place, it's nigh impossible to fuck up.

2) In a word, yes. To expand, based on the essay under the questions... they are not a great investment strictly from a gaming perspective, as their costerformance ratio is way out of whack compared to traditional media and the benefits they provide in-game are minimal (mainly faster loading). They make for spectacular OS drives, and for general OS use and multitasking, they are fantastic. Going out and buying one expecting better game performance, or spending money on a big one so you can fit your OS and all your games on it are both mistakes.

3) Margins are larger on the midrange cards, so you'll see the high-end stuff reserved for their "premium" brands (e.g. Alienware, Voodoo) as volume in regular old PCs would be low anyway. There are a ton of other threads here talking about enthusiast-grade video cards, the nVidia GeForce 470 or ATI Radeon 5850 are both good options from performance and cost-effectiveness standpoints.

A DIMM is the proper name for a single stick of RAM. You want the lowest number possible to maintain the proper channel count for your CPU, for the sake of simplicity, reliability and to reduce the odds of some incompatibility. Most setups will be dual-channel, and require 2 DIMMs. Some high-end Intel setups (i7 9xx) will require 3 because they are triple-channel.

[SubzeroDiabolos]

Make sure when you screw the motherboard to the case that it has spacers, nothing metal is touching

I have a funny story about this... Back when I built my first PC from A to Z (wich is this one tbh) at first I though spacers we're supposed to go on top... Because I didn't know they were called spacers...

So yea, I just put my mobo on the bottom of my case, screw the spacers in there like it's how things are done.

Looking back I wonder, wtf was I doing, seriously. But hey, it's been working A-1 since then.

[Amastacia]

Oh, and you're never going to find a 3.8-4GHz CPU of any kind from a vendor.

All the people at the top of the leaderboards are running heavily overclocked.

Dropping a thousand on a hex-core i7 980X is a stupid thing to do. I'll disagree a bit with Gethesmane and say that paying some premium for Intel is fine, but only insofar as once you step past about the $150 mark, stock-for-stock Intel will outperform AMD at the same price point. If you plan on overclocking, best buys tend to change, but even though it's gotten much simpler, overclocking is not a tab A/slot B process.

And just for perspective, the Q6600 I run is currently at 3.4GHz. It came from the factory at 2.4GHz. If I can figure out why I'm having stability issues, it's going even higher than where it is now, provided voltage and temperatures are both still at reasonable levels.

[Zeh]

Could buy an i7 920... Mines at 4.20ghz, just get read some voltage tweaking guides and invest in a water cooling setup.

[Drako]

SSD is awsome, buy 2 60gb or 2 128gb if u have the money.

Having just 1 is already lightning fast compared to regular HDs, but with 2 or 3 is so fast you just cant believe it.

I have 3 30gb.

[thisbjon]

I can answer question 2 from my experience.

Even though SSDs are pretty hype right now, they are not worth the money for the minimal performance gains. Having 2 SSDs in raid is awesome but really expensive. You should probably get raptors or the new hybrid SSD/HD.

Only the OS and some applications benefit from SSDs. The speed of the hard drive usually have minimal impact on gaming. SSDs will slightly decrease the loading time in games. What effects gaming the most is obviously the gpu/video card in which you probably want to invest in that more.

[Drako]

I can answer question 2 from my experience.

Even though SSDs are pretty hype right now, they are not worth the money for the minimal performance gains. Having 2 SSDs in raid is awesome but really expensive. You should probably get raptors or the new hybrid SSD/HD.

Only the OS and some applications benefit from SSDs. The speed of the hard drive usually have minimal impact on gaming. SSDs will slightly decrease the loading time in games. What effects gaming the most is obviously the gpu/video card in which you probably want to invest in that more.

going from 15-20 seconds to 3-5 seconds load is not slightly decrease imo.

They are worth the money imo, its the only upgrade that makes you feel like you really did an upgrade.

[Knyghtmayre]

I can answer #1:

mWave: http://www.mwave.com/mwave/subcatego...D=202&parent=5
LU Computers: http://lucomputers.com/site/
CyberPowerPC: http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/category/configurator/

I've used the first 2 sites for barebone PCs in the past. As far as price, mWave I've found to be the best. LU is based in Canada and their prices are a bit higher. CPPC I haven't used personally, but I'm certain others have. If you really don't want to build it yourself, one of those is certainly where I'd start looking for pre-assembly.

[Omniyoji]

Aww Yoli, if I was your RL friend I'd help you build one, but the best I could recommend is visiting this site:

http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/

I know there's also another one or two but I can't recall.

Goodluck~


EDIT

damn you Knyghtmayre you're such a nightmare!

[Boyiee]

SSD is awsome, buy 2 60gb or 2 128gb if u have the money.

Having just 1 is already lightning fast compared to regular HDs, but with 2 or 3 is so fast you just cant believe it.

I have 3 30gb.

Have you ever posted anything besides this same exact post in tech?

[Yoli]

Wow. Just got back from a morning out, surprised to have 12 replies.

Thanks guys, interesting stuff to know. I had no clue the 4.0 people were just running their PC's overclocked - that explains a bunch. Didn't know 8-core pc's were coming out soon either. That would probably drop the price on the 6 core one a lot if I waited, which is also great to know.

Appreciate the help.

What's the deal with liquid cooling? Does it work just like a fan, but it's quiet? Does it take any special maintenance or anything? Does it work just as well/better?

[Omniyoji]

It works better than a fan. A fan normally pulls air from outside (cool) into case then exits outside (hot). Liquid cooling works just like the coolant system in your car. The liquid absorbs the heat from your CPU/GPU (hot) then travels to a radiator (re-cools) then back to your CPU/GPU.

Normally my friends went with a liquid cooling for the quiet factor. I personally haven't built/used a liquid system but I could imagine you'd be extra careful when switching out parts and would have to eventually switch out the coolant ?_? but idk

[Crowort]

Water cooling is great, but can you even get that for a good price (it is costly doing it yourself) if like the OP you don't want to build yourself?

I'd suggest not doing a water cooling setup yourself if you don't even feel confidant about building a PC up.

SSDs are great, but I agree that they aren't worth the price yet. Your might feel they are worth it. It is an easy thing to add later if you change your mind.

I'm not sure how long there is to go on the new CPUs but there is always new tech coming out, if you wait for it you'll never build imo.

[Drako]

Have you ever posted anything besides this same exact post in tech?

no i didnt.

[sruon]

There's a corsair watercooling set really easy to setup for the CPU if you want, it's not as extreme as a real watercooling (and not very expensive compared to a regular fan) but it should give good performance.

[Amastacia]

It works better than a fan. A fan normally pulls air from outside (cool) into case then exits outside (hot). Liquid cooling works just like the coolant system in your car. The liquid absorbs the heat from your CPU/GPU (hot) then travels to a radiator (re-cools) then back to your CPU/GPU.

Normally my friends went with a liquid cooling for the quiet factor. I personally haven't built/used a liquid system but I could imagine you'd be extra careful when switching out parts and would have to eventually switch out the coolant ?_? but idk

I think you mean it *can* work better than a fan.

The problem is, $100 spent on water cooling vs. $100 spent on high-end air cooling isn't the slam-dunk for water you'd think it is.

Thermalright IFX-14, or Noctua NH-D14 with 2-3 good fans will outperform any budget water cooling setup.

If you are doing it right with a large radiator, water blocks on the CPU, all GPUs, and potentially the Northbridge, you can get much better results... but you're also spending a shitload of money to do it.

And while it is true that water cooling wins on the quiet scale, a well-designed case with good 120-140mm S-FDB fans (Scythe, Thermalright, and Noctua all make them, as well as others) is quiet, and what fan noise there is doesn't have a whiny note to it, so it's not irritating to have to listen to.

Etid: Fixed lysdexia on Noctua nodel mumber.

[Crowort]

There's a corsair watercooling set really easy to setup for the CPU if you want, it's not as extreme as a real watercooling (and not very expensive compared to a regular fan) but it should give good performance.

The h50 can be pretty good, but it isn't any better than a normal high end heatsink and fan setup. And isn't as good the best of them.


Thou I still don't think the OP is going to need either option. If you don't want to build a PC, you really shouldn't OC (I'd say it take more research).