Build Thread 2.0

[Humanoid]

I ....I don't actually know, I haven't had reason to hit any of them. They don't look like cheapo rubber knobbly bits on basic membrane keyboards, yeah, but my only concern really is that there's no longer an 'Fn' key on the bottom row, which made the earlier Das model a 102-key keyboard. This is how it looks on their marketing anyway:

 

[Bartimaeus]

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...

 

Actually, with how much I do random math calculations, a calculator key on my keyboard is awesome, and I love it and use it all the time.

Edited November 9, 2015 by Bartimaeus

[CAIN]

I am planning my first build. I have always either upgraded an existing computer or bought stock. I have a budget $1000-$1250 (US). I decided on a Intel i5-6500, 16 gigs of ram, ssd (OS), 1TB hard drive,and a decent power supply. I cannot decide on a case or video card. Any thing from a plain box or a few leds. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

 

[Bartimaeus]

Your power supply model is necessary in order to help with a GPU. Case is so up to personal taste, you kinda have to provide a little more wants/needs...windowed or not, LEDs (color?) or not, any specific case color..?

[CAIN]

I was think of a 600w to 800w power supply. I am looking for a case with good airflow and easy to work on. I am pretty open about about the look of the case or color. I was

thinking anywhere between $75 to $125. Will be playing current games (Fallout 4, POE, all the new or semi new RPGs) on it. Right now I have old Dell T3400 playing everything

on low if they play at all. Thanks

[Humanoid]

Try something like this:

 

 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-6600K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor  ($239.99 @ Amazon)
CPU Cooler: Scythe Kotetsu 79.0 CFM CPU Cooler  ($39.89 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: Asus Z170-A ATX LGA1151 Motherboard  ($153.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3000 Memory  ($99.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO 500GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive  ($159.99 @ Micro Center)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($51.88 @ OutletPC)
Video Card: Asus GeForce GTX 970 4GB STRIX Video Card  ($296.99 @ NCIX US)
Case: Fractal Design Define R5 (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case  ($107.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA G2 550W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply  ($76.50 @ Newegg)
Total: $1227.21
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-11-20 23:44 EST-0500

 

 

Notes:

 

- No OS so if you need to buy Windows within that budget, need to trim a bit.

- One obvious candidate would be dropping to a non-K CPU, which also drops the need for the third-party cooler (as K models don't come with one).

- 550W is plenty for any system with one graphics card. Assume ~100W for the CPU and ~200W for the video card, plenty of headroom.

- There are probably some bundle deals that can cut down the price even more, but I disregarded them - but there's a Newegg bundle for that RAM plus a 6600 non-K for example.

Edited November 21, 2015 by Humanoid

[CAIN]

That looks really good. I plan on getting window 10 from my work. I do not plan on overclocking so a non-k CPU would save me a little money. Would it

be worth get 32 gigs of ram, or would it be overkill? I have to remember that website (PCPartPicker).

[Bartimaeus]

It depends on your needs. If you're not doing professional image/video editing, I would say 16GB is already way overkill, but good futureproofing. 32GB is just utterly ridiculous unless you have specific needs.

[Bartimaeus]

"- One obvious candidate would be dropping to a non-K CPU, which also drops the need for the third-party cooler (as K models don't come with one)."

 

Is that a new thing? My 4770k definitely came with a cooler.

[CAIN]

It depends on your needs. If you're not doing professional image/video editing, I would say 16GB is already way overkill, but good futureproofing. 32GB is just utterly ridiculous unless you have specific needs.

I work as a graphic artist but seldom do any serious work from home. Mainly used to play games. I will take your advice and stick with 16GB and save some money. 

[Humanoid]

Yeah, it's a new thing, K-series CPUs come in smaller boxes maybe about the thickness of a paperback novel.

 

Cain, for gaming at the moment and for newer Intel CPUs in general RAM speed matters much more than it used to, which is why the recommendation is to get 16GB of faster RAM such as that DDR4-3000. The default speed of DDR4 is DDR4-2100 and that's a big performance hit for certain games. I know Fallout 4 in particular is a big outlier, it benefits massively from higher RAM frequency. Faster RAM > more RAM.

[Bartimaeus]

Really?  Do you have any specific benchmarks in mind for me to look over? My general rule of thumb has always been that RAM speed matters so incredibly little for gaming, it is basically never worth paying anything more than a few bucks more total for faster models - say, the price difference between DDR3 1600 11 CAS and 9 CAS. Beyond that, I've never seen anything to suggest it serves any point for gaming...but again, maybe that's changed recently, and I'm happy to learn better.

I mean, even the anandtech 6700k DDR3 vs DDR4 benchmarks I've looked at seem to suggest it's of almost zero consequence, with maybe 1% performance deviations on average...buuuut it doesn't seem to spell out the exact speeds of the two different RAM models used, so maybe it's misleading. Again, happy to learn more/better.

Edited November 21, 2015 by Bartimaeus

[Humanoid]

I think the theory is that the new consoles with their new memory architecture means games designed for them really love bandwidth. Even in that context though, this test was a real eye-opener to the extent I'd have guessed there's something wrong with the test:

 

 

via Techspot

Edited November 21, 2015 by Humanoid

[Bartimaeus]

That's a pretty significant difference, particularly for the Intel CPUs.

 

(edit): Well, all things considered, even the AMD results are pretty significant. Just that...the Intel results are even MORE significant.

Edited November 21, 2015 by Bartimaeus

[Sarex]

Damn maybe I should bump up my RAM to 2666Mhz, but then I will lose my adaptive voltage (curse intel and their lack of giving a ****).

 

@CAIN Another question to ask yourself is how quiet do you want your PC to be. The stock cooler will be very noisy when it spins up and not all GPU coolers are made equal, same goes for cases.

[CAIN]

Damn maybe I should bump up my RAM to 2666Mhz, but then I will lose my adaptive voltage (curse intel and their lack of giving a ****).

 

@CAIN Another question to ask yourself is how quiet do you want your PC to be. The stock cooler will be very noisy when it spins up and not all GPU coolers are made equal, same goes for cases.S

My current PC is can get really loud when I push it. I can take some noise but the quieter the better. I have been reading a lot of reviews of cases and it looks

like Antec, Coolmaster, NZXT, plus a few other have gotten good reviews. This is all been very helpful. Thanks guys.

[Sarex]

My current PC is can get really loud when I push it. I can take some noise but the quieter the better. I have been reading a lot of reviews of cases and it looks

like Antec, Coolmaster, NZXT, plus a few other have gotten good reviews. This is all been very helpful. Thanks guys.

 

Ok here is a quick guide from my experience as far as noise is concerned.

 

First, CPU coolers:

- All in One (AIO) water kits are not that quiet, it's usually the pump that is a culprit, so unless you want to spend 250-350 bucks skip them.

- An air cooler is great because you can get similar performance for less cash (80$ or less), and you can pretty much only hear them when it's dead quiet and you are listening for it. The down side to them is that they take up a lot of space and sometimes cause compatibility issues with other components. (I use Noctua NH-D15)

- If you want to go really cheap and you don't plan to overclock (getting a non K cpu) you can just get a new fan for the stock intel cooler (I would recommend a Noctua PMW fan).

 

Second, Cases:

- Any big brand will usually offer quality (build material) cases. The difference usually comes down to esthetics and to a lesser degree (at least nowadays) modability and airflow. Again it comes down to if you plan to overclock or not. If you don't, then you would want a case with the least amount of holes in it (more holes more ways for noise to get out and dust to get in) and preferably being made from mostly aluminum. There are even some cases out there with sound isolation material in it. Also see that you get a case without fans, 90% of the time they are crap and you would want to replace them, so grab a case with 2 vents (front and back) and put your own fans in it (again Noctua is the way to go).

 

And third, PSU (power supply unit):

- Here is where you would want to invest some cash. A PSU is a foundation of your PC, so it a smart idea to shell out for a decent PSU, it will be efficient and make less heat which makes for less noise. Seasonic makes great PSUs (other brands also use their PSUs, they just put their sticker on them).

 

Ah, yes, I forgot about a graphics card. Hmmm, well they will get noisy under strain, there is no way around that unless you want to water cool them which is an expensive endeavor. But that tends to be less important, because when they are under strain you will usually have some other noise to cover them up, like games or movies. Anyways the thing you want to watch out for is their noise when they are not in use. Asus Strix series is great for that, because the fan doesn't spin at all when the card is not in use, so no noise.

 

All in all Humanoid's recommendation is great.

[Sarex]

Noticed a white dot on my monitor today... Guessing it's stuck pixels... It will not show on a black picture, but on any other color (most noticeably white) it will show as a bright spot. Going to turn in it for service, but I got no clue if they will fix it. There is a stupid policy about the number of dead/stuck pixels allowed on the panel. Although I think it's definitely more then one as the resolution is 3440x1440 and I gather that the pixels are much smaller then the dot I'm seeing.

 

edit: I got a magnifying glass and it looks like all the pixels are changing color. Seems the issue is with the brightness of said pixels.

Edited December 6, 2015 by Sarex

[teknoman2]

i often notice black pixels appear on my screen out of nowhere, especially when i play war thunder... most of the time its dirt that goes away with a very light pass of a cloth on the spot. however i do have 2 burned pixels and one spot where the surface has a bump because of an unwiped drop of spit left after a sneeze

[Sarex]

Monitor packed and ready to be shipped to service tomorrow. Back to 16:10 (1650:1050), so strange and yellow, lol. Hope they won't take a month to fix it if they do indeed decide that it falls under warranty...

[Bartimaeus]

Trying to make a very cheap HTPC to replace my current junker HTPC that I made out of extremely old parts. The current HTPC runs 1080p movies perfectly, but basically can't do anything else, including even streaming 480p YouTube videos. That's what happens when you're using a decade and a half old single-core Athlon 64, I guess.

 

I have an old i5-750, but no motherboard...why is it so hard to get a hold of a junky consumer-grade LGA 1156 board for a non-ridiculous price?

[Humanoid]

I have a HTPC but I'd be tempted to just try one of those Intel Compute Sticks if I was starting fresh. Wireless-N might not be able stream my Blu-ray rips, but other than that it looks good.

[Bartimaeus]

Yeah, that's a no go for me. I keep my own hard drive storage of my own BluRay encodings that I've spent a lot of time converting down from the 40+GB raw rips to my own liking that I'm not prepared to throw all away for the sake of convenience, . Plus old football game recordings, TV shows, et cetera, et cetera. I also keep a backup of my own main PC that I occasionally update to ensure I never lose any of my precious collections of music, videos, games, et cetera, et cetera.

So it has to be a real HTPC. My current one is just so *slow*. I'm seriously surprised it's still kicking, given its age, and the fact that the vast majority of the motherboard's capacitors are all visibly burst. It's an old hunk of junk, but it's a tough old hunk of junk.

[Humanoid]

Perfect excuse to set up a NAS. :D

[Bartimaeus]

I think that's essentially what I'm already doing - it's just not technically a NAS proper, but a Windows build whose storage is more or less an image of my own main system's storage but with additional files (videos, generally speaking, but also some other stuff including old files) that I don't carry on my own main system. I watch movies over the network from it, but I'm also able to watch movies directly on it via Windows as well (which you wouldn't be able to do if it was an actual NAS, which means I don't want it to be an actual NAS as it's also an HTPC for my TV...).

 

(edit): Hmm, this all reminds me: I still haven't done anything with my 240GB SSD that's just sitting in one of my other PCs for like the past half year. Hmm. Oh well.

Edited December 22, 2015 by Bartimaeus