Build Thread 2.0

[Sarex]

25% VAT and a very strong dollar versus the Euro. Yes, it sucks pretty mayjorly right now. 

 

This was always the case, it's just a little more exacerbated right now.

[Humanoid]

Yeah a good 980Ti is now $1100AUD here. Though to be fair a large part of it is due to the Aussie dollar which is in freefall, if you take the US price of $650, add 10% tax, and convert to AUD, it's $970 for the reference version, so it's unfortunately a "fair" price. Similarly with your example, the Amazon price + VAT would be 800+ EUR so it's the Brits who are getting ripped off the most. (It's worth noting that unlike most of the world, US prices as listed are almost always excluding tax, because they have different tax rates for every state)

 

Speaking of which, concern about the exchange rate means I'm moving ahead faster than I had planned to with my own upgrades. I really wanted the R9 Fury (non-X) and I thought that the US price, which will probably drop soon, was in my range. But realistically that's no longer the case, it'll be about $900 here which is unpalatable. So I think I'm picking up a clearance custom R9 290X for $405AUD which looks like my best option now.

 

For comparison, all AUD and all reputable custom-cooled models:

R9 290 $359

R9 290X $405

GTX 970 $460

R9 390 $470

R9 390X $600

GTX 980 $710

 

I like to think I made the right choice - or at least, the equal best one. I'll get a Fractal Design R5 case and EVGA Supernova G2 850W as well since they're things not subject to change before I build a Skylake system later this year. Alas the rest of it I'll have to wait before buying and cop the price rises as the economy continues to falter.

[Bartimaeus]

What online stores do you Europeans and Australians use that generally have the best prices? Curious as to how much more expensive my PC would've been if I hadn't purchased my parts in the U.S...

[Humanoid]

In Australia, MSY is famous for: a) having the best prices; and, b) having the worst website ever created. For normal folk, PC Case Gear is probably the benchmark and are competitive pricewise while maintaining a usable website and decent customer service, but are an online-only business. Scorptec is probably the place to go for a full service store, but charge at the higher end of the spectrum.

Edited July 18, 2015 by Humanoid

[teknoman2]

What online stores do you Europeans and Australians use that generally have the best prices? Curious as to how much more expensive my PC would've been if I hadn't purchased my parts in the U.S...

post your pc and i will tell you how much it would cost in my country

[Bartimaeus]

Chassis: Corsair 300R (non-windowed, because I hate windows: $45)

MB: Asus Maximus VI Hero ($120)

PSU: Silverstone ST50F-ESG ($20)

CPU: Intel i7-4770k ($90)

RAM: 2x8GB DDR3 1600 8-8-8-24 (just find the cheapest set of two you can find, since the specific part doesn't really matter: $75 is what I got mine for)

GPU: N/A (I received mine for free from mute688 )

SSD: Samsung 850 EVO 250GB ($85)

 

In Australia, MSY is famous for: a) having the best prices; and, b) having the worst website ever created. For normal folk, PC Case Gear is probably the benchmark and are competitive pricewise while maintaining a usable website and decent customer service, but are an online-only business. Scorptec is probably the place to go for a full service store, but charge at the higher end of the spectrum.

You weren't kidding about MSY: I have no idea how to use this website. Trying PC Case Gear.

Edited July 18, 2015 by Bartimaeus

[Bartimaeus]

PC Case Gear

 

Chassis: $110 -> 81 USD

MB: $305 -> 225 USD using the VII instead of VI since they don't have VI in stock anymore

PSU: $100 -> 74 USD

CPU: $480 -> 354 USD using the i7-4790k instead of the 4770k (upon release, they were almost exactly the same price anyways, and the 4790k is essentially the 4770k's replacement)

RAM: $160 -> 118 USD

SSD: $165 - > 122 USD

 

 

So I paid $435 (after taxes, by the way) for my system...I would've paid $974 at these prices (and I'm presuming this is before taxes). At these prices, I probably don't bother ever making a PC. Though, to be fair, a few of my parts (the CPU and PSU, in particular) I got at...very unusual prices. But that's still over double the total price...

Edited July 18, 2015 by Bartimaeus

[teknoman2]

that would cost 909 euro (985 USD) here

Edited July 18, 2015 by teknoman2

[Bartimaeus]

A few years ago, 909 EUR would be significantly more in USD (about $1136 at its highest)...so at least there's that, I suppose.

Edited July 19, 2015 by Bartimaeus

[Humanoid]

Would be interesting to price it at Newegg, say, to get an idea of how much a typical US customer pays, not the expert bargain hunters.

[Bartimaeus]

This is probably more along the lines of what you'd pay right now over about a month's purchasing time (for everything: this ignores any potential "super" deals, and instead presumes the normal variance of prices) using a combination of stores, including newegg, amazon, and tigerdirect, but a few reputable others as well:

 

Chassis: $60-70

MB: $140-160 (VI when I bought it; VII it'd be closer to $190-200 right now)

PSU: $80-90 (for my specific model: you could get a roughly equivalent one for probably in closer to the 60-70 range, possibly as low as 50 if you're lucky)

CPU: $300-330 ($330 is the "standard" price, but retailers are often putting a "sale" on it and bringing it down to $300)

RAM: $85-90 (RAM has gotten a bit cheaper very recently: when I bought mine for $75, it was basically a ridiculous mega-super deal, where the cheapest you could normally get the equivalent of my RAM would've been more to the tune of $110-120, whereas now it doesn't seem nearly so crazy)

SSD: $95-105 (like RAM, it also has gotten cheaper very recently: $105-115 would've been closer to normal when I bought it)

 

The difference isn't nearly as extreme. However, am I correct in assuming that there is still a sizable tax to add on to the AUS prices I listed earlier? If so, the gulf probably widens, but if not, that's not nearly as bad. These prices are still bad enough that I wouldn't bother making this PC (i7 and MB, at the very least, would be switched out for something else, and I would definitely be choosing a different PSU model than the specific one I chose, since there are other roughly equivalent models for cheaper), but regardless...

Edited July 19, 2015 by Bartimaeus

[mkreku]

i was looking at some prices and comparing them. the difference in the price of hardware between US and EU is enormous.

 

Gigabyte G1 Gaming GTX 980 Ti

on amazon.com it costs 732USD that is 676E

on amazon.co.uk it costs 678GBP that is 978E

in my country the cheapest is 856E

with that sort of difference, i can get a plane ticket for NY, stay a week to sightsee, buy me a new PC, bring it back with me and it would still cost me less than just buying the PC in the cheapest store of my country

 

It's around 820€ in Sweden. Weird, I always assumed Sweden was the most expensive since we have a lot of (lovely, lovely) taxes.

[BruceVC]

I am about to collect my new GIGABYTE NVIDIA GTX 960 G1 4GB video card    

 

Its has double the memory of my current card so I am looking forward to maxing the graphic settings on games like W3 and GTAV, which I can't do at the moment 

[samm]

Nice, have fun

 

Possible spoiler

However, I'd be surprised if a 960 will allow maxing out the options in TW3 - apparently, it should be just enough for low 30s at best with hairworks off, max settings otherwise, in more demanding situations at 1080p. GTA V is supposed to need a 970 at least for more than 40 to 50 fps at max. settings in more demanding scenes at 1080p. By the way, despite the good reviews it got, the 960 was nVidias smallest version upgrade in the 60s series ever. 460-560 Ti-660-760 steps were bigger, the 960 actually fares wose than the 760 in certain synthetic measures, though not in practice.

 

[BruceVC]

Nice, have fun

 

Possible spoiler

However, I'd be surprised if a 960 will allow maxing out the options in TW3 - apparently, it should be just enough for low 30s at best with hairworks off, max settings otherwise, in more demanding situations at 1080p. GTA V is supposed to need a 970 at least for more than 40 to 50 fps at max. settings in more demanding scenes at 1080p. By the way, despite the good reviews it got, the 960 was nVidias smallest version upgrade in the 60s series ever. 460-560 Ti-660-760 steps were bigger, the 960 actually fares wose than the 760 in certain synthetic measures, though not in practice.

 

That is very relevant....thanks for sharing. I work in software but I am not very familiar with how graphic cards allow you to improve graphic  settings, I am basing my view on my current card having 2GB and can  run GTAV on about 60 % performance. What do I need to consider ?

[Bartimaeus]

Well, it'd help to know what your previous card was so we have an idea on how to compare the two...

Edited July 22, 2015 by Bartimaeus

[BruceVC]

Well, it'd help to know what your previous card was so we have an idea on how to compare the two...

Good point Barti, my previous card was Gigabyte AMD Radeon 5800 2GB

 

What are the most relevant components on a video card that allows you to set maximum settings ?

[Bartimaeus]

It's too much a composite of things to really say...although the larger amount of processing cores/units/whatever they're called these days, the higher the other parameters (memory, memory bandwidth, clock speeds up to a point, etc.) tend to be...though it depends upon the brand and generation (since they change the architecture of the cores from generation to generation, and cores work differently across brands, too, of course). From a 5800 series card, that's still a pretty sizable upgrade, so congratulations.

Edited July 22, 2015 by Bartimaeus

[BruceVC]

It's too much a composite of things to really say...although the larger amount of processing cores/units/whatever they're called these days, the higher the other parameters (memory, memory bandwidth, clock speeds up to a point, etc.) tend to be...though it depends upon the brand and generation (since they change the architecture of the cores from generation to generation, and cores work differently across brands, too, of course). From a 5800 series card, that's still a pretty sizable upgrade, so congratulations.

Yeah , how much would you pay for the video card I'm getting in the USA ?

 

I am paying $400 

[kgambit]

 

It's too much a composite of things to really say...although the larger amount of processing cores/units/whatever they're called these days, the higher the other parameters (memory, memory bandwidth, clock speeds up to a point, etc.) tend to be...though it depends upon the brand and generation (since they change the architecture of the cores from generation to generation, and cores work differently across brands, too, of course). From a 5800 series card, that's still a pretty sizable upgrade, so congratulations.

Yeah , how much would you pay for the video card I'm getting in the USA ?

 

I am paying $400 

 

 

Around 250$ at NEWEGG or TigerDirect.   Nice card.   

[BruceVC]

 

 

It's too much a composite of things to really say...although the larger amount of processing cores/units/whatever they're called these days, the higher the other parameters (memory, memory bandwidth, clock speeds up to a point, etc.) tend to be...though it depends upon the brand and generation (since they change the architecture of the cores from generation to generation, and cores work differently across brands, too, of course). From a 5800 series card, that's still a pretty sizable upgrade, so congratulations.

Yeah , how much would you pay for the video card I'm getting in the USA ?

 

I am paying $400 

 

 

Around 250$ at NEWEGG or TigerDirect.   Nice card. 

 

 

Thanks, you see how we get ripped off in South Africa? It annoys me that the retailers charge so much margin its almost double the price 

[Humanoid]

Unfortunately it's a common marketing trick for the board vendors to add more VRAM to a GPU that can't really take advantage of it, to try to fool people into thinking more is better. The 5800-series came with 1GB VRAM standard and that was all they really needed, the 2GB version was largely pointless. Likewise the GTX960 comes with 2GB as standard, and excepting edge cases, the 2GB version will be as fast as the 4GB version. You're paying more because it's a non-standard version of the card, how much is the 2GB version?

[Bokishi]

Even the 980ti begins to lag when graphics usage approaches 5gb vram

[Humanoid]

Googled a random Saffer hardware shop to look at prices. (Wootware, no idea how reputable they are)

 

GTX 970 = R5000 = $400

GTX 960 2GB = R3000 = $240

R9 280X = R3300 = $264

R9 290 = R4200 = $338

R9 390 = R4800 = $386

 

All of those are reasonably priced, by which I mean largely in-line with European and Australian prices that we've been discussing. Though just to illustrate how much VRAM doesn't really matter, the R9 390 is pretty much just an R9 290 with 8GB of VRAM. It's not going to run Witcher 3 or GTA5 any faster than the 290, and is slower than the 4GB* GTX970. So if you can trade up when you go to the store, try to get a 970 or 290 (discontinued) instead.

Edited July 23, 2015 by Humanoid

[Humanoid]

In: Gigabyte R9 290X (bottom)

Out: MSI R7950 (top)

 

 

Unfortunately it's a bit louder than I'd hoped, but that's to be expected. Every time a new generation of video cards comes out, reviews love to claim that it's the new-best-cooler, and while that's likely technically true, they still fall a ways short of the third-party coolers, such as the Arctic Cooling model above, which was effectively inaudible over the rest of the system. Unfortunately the leftmost fan on it died early, and while the remaining two fans have held up just fine in effectiveness over the past couple years, I suspect another is starting to fail, it makes a loud grinding noise for about 15 minutes after booting up, though it goes back to silent after.  The dimensions of the coolers may look similar on the photo, but the AC one is a fair bit chunkier in person, overhanging a third slot while the Windforce settles in two (though just barely).

 

The Gigabyte Windforce is better than the MSI Twin Frozr that came stock on the 7950, even with the 290X pulling upwards of 50W more power, but it's still not great to live with. Up to 40% fan speed it's great, but the noise ramps up pretty fast after that point and at 60% which it will hit sooner rather than later, the noise dominates everything. I'll give it a week or two to see if I can get used to it, because $75 for an Accelero Xtreme 4 is a fair chunk of change.

Edited July 23, 2015 by Humanoid