scumble on 30/5/2016 at 15:47

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This may be of interest although I don't recall extensive hardware discussions in this forum.

I recently stopped deliberating about building a PC for gaming and just ordered up the parts I'd spent months reading about. It is just like me to spend far too long in research and analysis and then fail to decide to actually follow through. I've not put a PC together for years so I enjoyed the exercise.

I might have made more optimal choices, but I ended up getting the following for a Skylake setup:

- Fractal Design R5 case
- Intel i5 6600K
- EVGA GTX 970 SSC ACX 2.0
- MSI Z170A Tomahawk board

I was just giving myself the option of overclocking, but I found out that the i5 6600K doesn't really need it yet.

Probably the main point is jumping up a tier with the graphics card made a big difference to enjoyment of games.

I made a bit of a mistake a few years ago trying to buy a laptop that would be "good enough" for gaming, but it suffers from overheating. I discovered the processor and GPU was getting too hot and throttling, the problem brought out by trying to play GTA5. In order to get the laptop to work properly I had to take the bottom of the case off, perch it upside down on a box and balance a couple of heatsinks salvaged from a old PC on the copper heat conductor.

So after this silliness I went up to the level of the GTX970, rather than being too restrained.

At 1080p it seems I can throw pretty much anything at this system except the Witcher 2's ubersampling option. I had expected Crysis 3 to present some challenge due to hearing a lot about how intensive it is, but I've pushed up all the settings and it looks perfectly smooth to me. I might not be getting locked 60fps but that clearly isn't a necessity.

I think it's just a rarity in life to have expectations hugely exceeded. I can actually just get on and enjoy playing rather than spending ages fiddling with settings to balance quality with a playable FPS.

I'd be interested to know who else has had some satisfying upgrades in the last year or so. I've been steering clear of resolutions past 1080p because it's looking too expensive still, and I'd prefer not to spoil myself too much.

Renzatic on 30/5/2016 at 18:31

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Do what I did, and build a tiny computer.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3018396/AssembledPC.JPG

It's a quarter of the size of my old PC tower, with absolutely no sacrifices to performance whatsoever. I throw it into a bag, and carry it over to friend's houses all the time.

And if that's still too big for you, there's always the Alienware Alpha. It packs a lot of power into a frame smaller than the current gen consoles.

Nameless Voice on 30/5/2016 at 21:08

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I still have the same system I bought around three and a half years ago - i5-3570K, Radeon 7950, 16GB RAM - and for the most part I haven't found anything that it can't cope with yet.
Maybe I'm just not playing enough modern games, or am not picky enough about the framerate so long as it's not really choppy?

Either way, I had no real trouble running anything at 1080p at mostly maximum settings, up to Fallout 4
The progress in computer power seems to have slowed down a lot in the last few years.

My current plan is to look into getting an OLED monitor once they actually come out and become a bit more mainstream (e.g. not the $4-6k proposed starting price) - that will probably be 4K and so it'll be time to upgrade the rest of the PC.

twhalen2600 on 30/5/2016 at 23:41

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Just recently I built a new gaming rig. Basic specs are an Intel i7 6700, EVGA Geforce GTX 980ti, 16 gigs of RAM, and Windows 10. I'm also using one of Intel's SSDs that has a PCIe connection (the Intel 750 series). It's my boot drive, and, honestly, my previous build, in which I used an Intel SSD with a SATA connection (the Intel 520 series), seems to boot faster. Maybe it's because that build has Windows 7. Does Win 7 boot faster than Win 10?

I mainly got the build for Doom (4), which runs fine at ultra settings. Fallout 4, MGSV, and Witcher 3 are the other games I've tried on it. Fallout 4 runs great - and I'm finally able to play it, as it didn't run at all on my previous build. MGSV and Witcher 3 I had already played a ton of on my prior build - Witcher 3 runs a bit smoother, and there's hardly any difference with MGSV. (My prior build had an Intel i5 3570K and an EVGA Geforce GTX 660ti).

I have both in an NZXT case. My older one is the white Phantom steel case, my never one is a black Phantom case. Both look great. I used a Gigabyte motherboard for both.

My older build I built three years ago, and before that I just got Dells and Alienwares (now the same thing, I guess). Building my own rigs has been much more satisfying. I encourage anyone who hasn't to do so.

Neb on 31/5/2016 at 04:20

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I'm now booting Windows 10 from an SSD and I'm loving the speed. Before, when I got home and just wanted to use the PC, I'd boot it up and then walk away to make a drink or something, log in, then let it do its business for a few more minutes. Now, it's just press button, type password, and I'm in.



I got myself one of these, and I found it more annoying than the reviews made it out to be. It has an angled flappy bit inside for cables to pass through between the different sides, but it's flush with some of the sockets on the motherboard, so I had to jam some of the cables in at a bit of an angle that I'm not happy with. Also, that fancy SSD holder doesn't fit my Samsung 2.5-Inch 250 GB 850 EVO, which, as far as I know, is super popular. I just ended up fixing it in like a regular HDD.

I just think it's a bit over-designed. Also, the power button is on the top, and is exactly the right size for my kitty cat to prod when she's bored and wants to find ways to get my attention.