Build Thread 2.0

[213374U]

So I'm looking into building a new rig and kick my current laptop to the curb. I'm aiming to stay under 1500€. I'm looking at either a GTX970 or 980. Either option would be valid, but going for a 980Ti would be a gross cost overrun. Do you guys think the price difference between the two (just about 170€) is justified by the performance difference? How long could I reasonably expect a 980 to run games at 1080p in high or ultra settings?

[mkreku]

Difficult to say. First off, I would recommend the Radeon R9 390X if you're thinking about a GTX970 - GTX980. It's slightly more expensive than the GTX970, but significantly faster (and with 8GB GDDR5 I'd say slightly more future proof) at 1080p.

 

Personally I think the price/performance ratio for the GTX980 isn't as good as for the Radeon R9 390X/GTX970.

 

The GTX980Ti is just stupid as is the Fury.

 

The Nano is kind of cool though, except for the price.

[Sarex]

So I'm looking into building a new rig and kick my current laptop to the curb. I'm aiming to stay under 1500€. I'm looking at either a GTX970 or 980. Either option would be valid, but going for a 980Ti would be a gross cost overrun. Do you guys think the price difference between the two (just about 170€) is justified by the performance difference? How long could I reasonably expect a 980 to run games at 1080p in high or ultra settings?

 

I went with the 970 personally, the performance difference just wasn't there when compared to the price you needed to shell out for the 980. The only thing that I liked about the 980 is that it comes with 3 display ports vs. the one on the 970.

[Bartimaeus]

Mirroring mkreku here a little: I would personally opt for the 970 if you're planning on sticking with 1080p: at that resolution, the 970 exchanges blows with the 390x, often winning or losing by just a little. You're also getting higher reliability (in terms of hardware failure), and much, much better power consumption. If you're planning on going to a higher resolution at some point, I would go with the 390x instead.

[213374U]

Thanks for the replies! I'm probably going to opt for the 970 then: we've been having downright insane raises in the electricity bill, so it's kind of a big deal for me. The 970 also means I can get away with a 500w power source, further bringing down the price of the rig to ~1100€, and if the world hasn't ended by then, an upgrade a year or two down the line would be much more justified.

 

Much obliged, folks.

Edited September 8, 2015 by 213374U

[Humanoid]

The 980 has never been justifiable, yeah, it's either the 970 or the 980Ti on nVidia's side, the rest of their range doesn't really stack up. So yeah, just backing the call for the 970 which is probably the overall pick from both nV and AMD sides assuming you stick with 1080p.

 

The only wildcard is really if you can find a clearance 290/290X for significantly cheaper than the 970 somewhere - the load power difference is around 50W, going up to 75W worst case so it's managable even on a 500W PSU at stock clocks. They're probably long gone from most stores now though. 390 series is a bit harder to justify without a price advantage, the 970 is a better experience *now*, and while early signs are that the AMD cards may well gain the advantage as Win10/DX12 gain market traction, that's probably far enough into the future such that you may have upgraded anyway by then.

Edited September 9, 2015 by Humanoid

[Humanoid]

One unfortunate accident of timing is that the MGS5 bundle offer ended today and nVidia have yet to announce anything to replace it. Mind you, AMD don't bundle anything worth a damn either, so it's a level playing field in that sense, but if you're in no rush, you might get something decent if you wait.

[teknoman2]

for my next card i would wait until the next nvidia gen comes around. unless its urgent

Edited September 12, 2015 by teknoman2

[Keyrock]

SCANDALOUS sexy unboxing pictures (taken by a really ****ty photographer - me):  

 

WARNING: FULL HARDWARE NUDITY!  PARENTAL GUIDANCE STRONGLY SUGGESTED.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[teknoman2]

i was making some market research and came to a conclusion (dont know if i mentioned that before)

a top grade pc in my country would cost me 3500-4000 euro (prices fluctuate lately).

with that money i can buy a plane ticket to New York, stay as a tourist for a week, buy the same pc, come home and still have some money left over from the 4k budget

[Sarex]

i was making some market research and came to a conclusion (dont know if i mentioned that before)

a top grade pc in my country would cost me 3500-4000 euro (prices fluctuate lately).

with that money i can buy a plane ticket to New York, stay as a tourist for a week, buy the same pc, come home and still have some money left over from the 4k budget

 

 

Wut? That doesn't sound right. What are the specs of that PC?

[teknoman2]

I-7 5960X 1200 euro while it costs around 1000$ (880euro) in USA

MSI GTX 980Ti 890 euro while it costs 650$ (572euro) in USA

intel 1.2TB SSD in PCI-e 1300 euro while it costs 900$ (760euro) in USA

we are already over 3k and we are missing 70% of the PC... and these 3, if bought in USA, are 1000 euro cheaper than here

Edited October 18, 2015 by teknoman2

[Sarex]

I-7 5960X 1200 euro while it costs around 1000$ (880euro) in USA

MSI GTX 980Ti 890 euro while it costs 650$ (572euro) in USA

intel 1.2TB SSD in PCI-e 1300 euro while it costs 900$ (760euro) in USA

we are already over 3k and we are missing 70% of the PC... and these 3, if bought in USA, are 1000 euro cheaper than here

 

Damn, it's cheaper in my country, but still no where near the US prices...

[teknoman2]

the prices are those of the average shop. with a bit of research i can find them cheaper but in total i may save 400-500 euro for the entire system. if i go to USA and buy it there i can save up to 1700-2000euro on the total price, money that i can use to spend a week or more sightseeing around the country (plane tickets included).

[Humanoid]

Would you get charged import duty or some other tax when taking it home though? I'd probably have to pay all sorts of fees on return to Australia if I tried to do that.

 

It's worth noting that US prices are listed without sales tax, and a quick search shows that you generally can't get the tax refunded on leaving the US, unless you purchase in Texas or Louisiana, or perhaps more practically from a state which has no sales tax like Oregon. American sales taxes are confusing as hell but you mentioned New York and Wikipedia claims net sales tax in New York City amounts to 8.875%, which you can't get back, so factor that into your purchase price. If you get charged both that and your own country's taxes on return, you may find the savings nearly wiped out.

[Spider]

otoh, if you order something online in the US, there's no sales tax either (except for one or two states). So you could have whatever you need delivered to your hotel.

 

But then you're praying that things get delivered on time, so may not be worth the risk.

[teknoman2]

Would you get charged import duty or some other tax when taking it home though? I'd probably have to pay all sorts of fees on return to Australia if I tried to do that.

 

It's worth noting that US prices are listed without sales tax, and a quick search shows that you generally can't get the tax refunded on leaving the US, unless you purchase in Texas or Louisiana, or perhaps more practically from a state which has no sales tax like Oregon. American sales taxes are confusing as hell but you mentioned New York and Wikipedia claims net sales tax in New York City amounts to 8.875%, which you can't get back, so factor that into your purchase price. If you get charged both that and your own country's taxes on return, you may find the savings nearly wiped out.

i used New York as an example. there are ways to circumvent the import taxes (they are the main reason for the huge difference in price after all). i can simply mail each piece separatelly to my brother, preferably in a repackaged state that allows it to be put in a large envelope instead of a box making it less suspicious. private correspondence is subject to privacy laws and nobody is allowed to open it if it is not labeled "merchandise" so it can pass under the radar

[Bartimaeus]

otoh, if you order something online in the US, there's no sales tax either (except for one or two states). So you could have whatever you need delivered to your hotel.

Uh, not true at all, actually. There's no sales tax for online retailers that don't have a physical presence in your state...nowadays, that's most major retailers, so you'll likely get charged sales tax. Newegg doesn't have sales tax in my state, though, and combine that with it generally having the best prices across the board, and that's where I usually shop for PC stuff.

[teknoman2]

even with tax, hardware in USA is 30-40% cheaper than EU

[Sarex]

Got a WD Green 6TB HDD, although only 5.45TB is usable... Also have 3 Noctua A14 FLX ordered to switch out the stock Corsair case fans.

[Bartimaeus]

1000 bytes (1 KB) * 1000 bytes (1 MB) * 1000 bytes (1 GB) * 1000 bytes (1 TB) * 6 = 6 TB, or 6000000000000 bytes. 1024 bytes (1 KiB) * 1024 bytes (1 MiB) * 1024 bytes (1 GiB) * 1024 bytes (1 TiB) * 6 = 6 TiBs, or 6597069766656 bytes. 6597069766656 bytes - 6000000000000 bytes = 597069766656 bytes. 597069766656 bytes divided by 1024 (583075944 KiBs) divided by 1024 (569410.10 MiBs) divided by 1024 equals 556.06 GiBs. 6144 (the number of GiBs in 6 TiBs) - 556.06 = 5587.94 GiBs, which divided by 1024 is 5.45 TiBs...or actually, it should round up to 5.46TiB, but I guess Windows prefers to round down in all circumstances instead.

Sorry if that's a bit wordy/numbery: the common and frequently (and erroneously) told explanation is that the differences between the advertised size and the actual size in Windows is the result of the way the drive is "formatted", as if formatting a drive would somehow magically take up roughly 9% (when the denominator of the size is in TBs/TiBs) of the drive. It's actually just because drives are advertised in TBs or terabytes (powers of 1000 or 10, depending upon your point of view) and operating systems and actual computers in general use TiBs or tebibytes (powers of 1024 or 2, depending upon your point of view)...but operating systems (that I know of) make no distinction between the two different number systems, which leaves people in the dark as to why hard drive sizes are the way they are. I would like to see the hard drive industry to switch over to powers of 1024, but it does seem to work in confusing end users into thinking they'll have more space than they actually do before they buy the actual drive, so they probably never will.

You may already know this, but it's always fun to do the math, so I figured I might as well explain for anyone who doesn't already know.

Edited November 8, 2015 by Bartimaeus

[Sarex]

1000 bytes (1 KB) * 1000 bytes (1 MB) * 1000 bytes (1 GB) * 1000 bytes (1 TB) * 6 = 6 TB, or 6000000000000 bytes. 1024 bytes (1 KiB) * 1024 bytes (1 MiB) * 1024 bytes (1 GiB) * 1024 bytes (1 TiB) * 6 = 6 TiBs, or 6597069766656 bytes. 6597069766656 bytes - 6000000000000 bytes = 597069766656 bytes. 597069766656 bytes divided by 1024 (583075944 KiBs) divided by 1024 (569410.10 MiBs) divided by 1024 equals 556.06 GiBs. 6144 (the number of GiBs in 6 TiBs) - 556.06 = 5587.94 GiBs, which divided by 1024 is 5.45 TiBs...or actually, it should round up to 5.46TiB, but I guess Windows prefers to round down in all circumstances instead.

 

Sorry if that's a bit wordy/numbery: the common and frequently (and erroneously) told explanation is that the differences between the advertised size and the actual size in Windows is the result of the way the drive is "formatted", as if formatting a drive would somehow magically take up roughly 9% (when the denominator of the size is in TBs/TiBs) of the drive. It's actually just because drives are advertised in TBs or terabytes (powers of 1000 or 10, depending upon your point of view) and operating systems and actual computers in general use TiBs or tebibytes (powers of 1024 or 2, depending upon your point of view)...but operating systems (that I know of) make no distinction between the two different number systems, which leaves people in the dark as to why hard drive sizes are the way they are. I would like to see the hard drive industry to switch over to powers of 1024, but it does seem to work in confusing end users into thinking they'll have more space than they actually do before they buy the actual drive, so they probably never will.

 

You may already know this, but it's always fun to do the math, so I figured I might as well explain for anyone who doesn't already know.

 

[Sarex]

Btw, I'm looking at purchasing EK XLC Predator 360 (if I can get the shop to order it) and then plugging in the next gen (probably nvidia) graphics card when it comes out. The issue I'm having is that my Corsair 760T has a top mesh for the cooler but it lacks a dust filter for it which irritates me to no end as my apartment accumulates dust very quickly. Though there is a "cheap" fix for the problem, it looks very nice, it's magnetic and it looks like it would do a better job at keeping the dust out than the stock dust filter.

[Humanoid]

I bought myself a Das Keyboard 4 Ultimate - i.e. the one with blank keycaps. Not because I wanted blank keycaps, but because it was cheaper, being on clearance for one reason or another. A bit mixed on it now that I've given it about one week's workout.

 

- The mechanism to raise the angle of the keyboard is accomplished by means of a plastic ruler with magnetic pads, which is simply placed towards the back of the base. The ruler function is neither here nor there, it's hardly convenient to have to pull it off the bottom of your keyboard if you need a ruler. But the design itself is problematic because it means the keyboard in this configuration is reliant on only the front two rubber feet to keep it from sliding around: the back feet are raised off the surface and the plastic ruler provides next to no grip. So I'd put this down to a silly gimmick that has an adverse effect on the core function of the keyboard, dumb dumb dumb.

 

- Further to the above, it turns out the issue with sliding around on the desk is exacerbated because of product variance, there are reports of either the left side or the right side being the side with no grip. One of the rubber feet doesn't make proper contact with the desk so the whole keyboard ends up pivoting around the other one. A little twisting of the keyboard goes some way towards fixing this at least. Suspect this is related to the aluminium plate that forms the top surface of the keyboard: it's not quite rigid enough to keep the keyboard structurally flat at all times, and so if it gets twisted slightly during manufacturing or shipping, it tends to retain that shape.

 

- The aluminium top plate is a bit wider than it needs to be, forming a sort of flange/lip around the outer edge of the keyboard because the plastic main body is narrower. I guess the idea is to give the plate a bit more structural strength, but it makes the keyboard a bit (in particular the space between the left edge and the first column of keys) wider than I'm used to.

 

- Now has dedicated media keys and volume control, as opposed to them being alternate functions of the F-keys (with an annoying extra modifier key being placed next to the Windows key on the previous version). I generally like this setup but the volume wheel is easy to hit accidentally if you're moving the keyboard.

 

- USB 3.0 hub built in is nice, and it doesn't require an extra USB port on the PC to be used. On the previous model, the keyboard needed two USB ports - one for the keyboard input itself, and another to enable the USB 2.0 ports on the keyboard. Also the new design has the USB ports at the top (rear) of the keyboard, instead of out of the right side. I prefer the new arrangement.

 

 

All in all, eh, it's a bit of one step forward one step back from the previous model. Not hugely impressed and might have gone with something else if I had the opportunity to try them out, but will happily use it for the next few years. (The main reason I got it was because it was a good deal during an eBay sale, so I got it sight unseen. Previous keyboard was fine but one of the USB ports had died after an accident involving Diet Coke)

[Gorgon]

pfft. Media keys, really. Are they rubbery plastic and only ever used by accident like the ones on my logitech. 

 

I've got a button for the calculator. I mean... did they just run out ideas...