After 6 years, time for a new gaming rig

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So after 6 long years it is time to build a new gaming rig. the old one lasted long and strong (core 2 duo 8400, 4gb ram, HD4870, NO SSD) it even ran witcher 3 on a "playable" framerate.

Budget ist roughly 1000€ no need for monitor or peripherals but i need a new tower (midi prefered)

in general i have no preference for any brand amd, intel, nvidia i don't care. i care about price to value/power. I prefer solid quality products, i don't upgrade or buy new rig very often so the parts have to last.

CPU:
i am really unsure for the cpu intel / amd ? the new skylake just came out worth to get that ?

GPU:
same for the gpu nvidia or amd ? the new fiji cards from amd got some hype behind them but are they really any good ?

MAINBOARD:
well obviously depends on the cpu, but features i am looking for are, sturdy solid quality with possibility for upgrades and overclocking. i will properly need 6-8 Sata slots for my storage needs.

RAM:
for ram i was thinking either 8 or 16 gb, i don't think one would need 16 GB right now but prices seem quite low right now so why not get it now.

STORAGE:
i was thinking about getting 2 SSDs a small one (64GB) for windows / programs and a larger one(25GB+) for games. + 1or2 TB HDD for general storage. i still got 3x1 TB HDD but they are either quite old or pretty full already and will just be put into the system as extra storage etc.

PSU:
pretty much all my PSU so far have been enermax. but if you can recommend similar high quality psu for less i am all ear.

CASE:
my current one is a slick mat black Lian Li, i like it quite a lot but over the years and lan parties it has suffered quite a bit. so i will need a new one.. i like just simple black cases. the less blinky fancy led stuff the better, i don't care for side windows etc.
good airflow, dust filters and quality build is what tickles my fancy.

COOLING:
my last one is a noctua which worked very well and low on the noise. so i was thinking something like the NOCTUA NH-U14S. but what about those close system water cooling ones from corsair, are they "worth" it for possible overclocking/noise reduction ?

So now i am looking for good recommendations on parts or even a full build.
reasoning and explanation why you picked the part over another are very welcome ? i haven't followed hardware that much lately so i am happy to learn.

i m looking to buy/build this over the next month. if there is a reason to push this back because "this awesome new thing you need will come out quite soon" i m willing to wait.

thx for helping me out.

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Get a nice 2011 not v3 ( X79) for a ridiculous price and keep on trucking..................(IMO) from the previous setup, you know about pc s, just need a little updating in info to make your choice.
All my riggs are X79 and, for me, x99 is going to have to come quite a ways before I even consider it.
I have had enough years of fucking around and being the companies guinea pig and or lab rat............I want to play, surf ,play around............. with no hassles. (IMO) of course that is me.................

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@maxcat
Why do you propose a enthusiest platform over a consumer platform? I would reccommend something along the lines of an i5 k processor since OP tends to hold onto rings for such a length of time.

@diehappy
Intel really hold their own in the CPU market. If it was me, I would go Intel over AMD for the CPU. On the GPU you have more flexibility.

To get a really highend build for €1000 or less will be tight. Here is a simple cost breakdown.

Around €250 on CPU (i5 skylake - use your current cooler for now (if it support 1156 which is compatible with 1151))
Around €120 on MOBO (get DDR3 board and reuse your RAM)
Around €30 on RAM (Use what you have + 4GB)
Around €350 on GPU (GTX970)
Around €80 on SSD (256GB, hold onto your own drives and buy more later)
Around €80 on PSU (decent quality 600W)
Around €90 on Case (get something decent for that price)

Total = €1000 (not incl. shipping)

These are very rough values that I got from looking up genearl price on scan.co.uk. Shop around for better value. I would suggest you look at hardwarversand.de. It has decent prices on most products (maybe not the best), but you only have to pay for shipping once. I don't get free shipping (like UK does) so I can't buy parts from 10 different stores as I get screwed on shipping.

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like I said this is ME, and I still stand behind my comments. The difference between enthusiast and consumer is strictly marketing.
It has always served me to go a little over. You cannot evaluate racing in a go-kart. (IMO)

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i agree X79 doesnt realy make much sense for gaming.
Atleast not anymore.
I dont say that X79 is a bad platform, but if you are looking into a new build today.
Then X79 simply doesnt make much sense to buy new.

Skylake or Intel Haswell would be the best for his needs.
I will look what i can trow together, based on Dutch prices.
Unfortunatly you cannot tranfer UK or US prices to EU prices, because its allot diffrent.

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Sorry to go off topic but you had to say it.

You've never been in a proper racing kart have you? Karts are the epitome of racing. Slick tyres, no suspension, mm from the ground and 14000rpm?

I started racing go-karts. And I love karts. It's the most breathtaking sport in the world. More than F1, indeed, I used to like it most.

Ayrton Senna

1 Like
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i went a bit over budget, but this is what i came up with.
Prices in your country might be lower on some parts,
or maybe you could find a cheaper psu.
THe Asrock Z170 Extreme 4 only offers 6x sata ports.

http://tweakers.net/gallery/526243/wenslijst/

If you need more sata connectivity?
Then you could look to the Asrock Z170 Fatal1ty Gaming K6 for example.
Which also feutures a more beeft vreg design.

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Hey, I did not want to make a case out of it, I cab see we could go, the way you think, into endless arguments on specifics.........
So I will be adult enough to apologize, I am sorry I mentioned the go-karts.

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Please note, that one of the basis of my comment is mainly, the no more does it work ?, the hardware has been around long enough to have most of the bugs out. When I play I do not need to flatten my eyelashes. A asus rampage IV extreme, 3970X...and 7990 on an A399U, are quite satisfying. But I do understand your point of view. It is just i am the I want to be a happy camper, I used to want 110% out of everything, I have grown out of that...yes I have learned, 99% is perfect and trouble-free..............

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i understand, your setup is awesome.
But it will be hard to buy something like that new, since the platform is EOL for more then a year allready.
And prices of platforms that are EOL are allways stay a bit high,
because X79 mobo´s for example, starting to become hard to get over time.
That is basicly my point.

That ofc does not change the fact that your setup is still awesome.

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Thanks for understanding both my side and the hardware evolution combined with the marketing aspect.
And yes if I could buy again, and obviously I will, It is going to be with hardware that has proven its dependability.
I like the way you think. :-)

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thx for the replys so far.

few hours ago i would have asked why not a nvidia gpu but then i read that the latest nvidia gpu now dont fully support all DX12 features.
well i want to use this system for a long time and DX12 is kind of part of the future amd cards pretty much gonna make it into the system now.

@maxcat
i see your point, i also dont need the best of the best, mostly because the price to power ratio is simply ridiculous .
however those skylake cpu right now have a fairly competitive price, performance ratio and are the latest generation.

@MisteryAngel
thx for the input i take that as kind of a baseline.
i m from germany so prices should not differ that much .

for those suggesting using the old RAM etc. it is DDR2 ram ;) thats not gonna work.

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Yeah you can use my build as a base line indeed.
I´m pretty sure you can make some tweaks and whatnot.
Prices will indeed not varry much, i life near the German boarder so i also check on German prices,
But they are indeed about equaly, or atleast in a margin of error.

Some good sellers in Germany are Hardware versand, Alternate, mindfactory etc.

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Gaming rig don't go over budget, you can get a lot for your hard earned dollar these days.
http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/g9VHMp <- I think that is a fairly good build for 2k never mind 1080p.
You will notice a massive increase in performance on all fronts here, I suggest use your old HDD for storage, but do reinstall them games.
If you want Windows then add Windows onto the price, Go for Windows 10, in terms of usage it blows 8.1 out of the water.

Allow me to explain why I chose the parts.

i5 4460 Non OC - Pointless OCing these days I find, chips run perfectly at stock clock and run strong, stock cooler works well with this also and keeps it rather quiet, if you live in a warm country add a CM 212 Evo onto it, one of the best coolers on the market.

MSI Z97S - Sounded cool and was in a good price bracket (Change if you want something cheaper)

16GB 1600 Mhz RAM - I would go for 16GB now, games are getting hungry for RAM, and its cheap, 1600Mhz is standard for me now.

Samsung 850 Evo 250 - Fixes issues that affected the 840 evo, superb little cheap drive, plenty of storage, and fast.

MSI R9 390 8GB - That buffer alone is worth the price of admission, if you want to play 2k or even 4k this should do well, there fast and plenty of memory to boot, drivers are a bit behind Nvidia but it will play nice with Witcher 3.

Fractal Design Define R4 - I have one of these cases and they are superb, just get one.

Corsair 750W PSU - More that enough power for this build, no need for SLI though that 390 is powerful enough.

Enjoy

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I have to side with @XDroidie626 here. The mid-range i5 skylake CPU are not out yet, jamming a high-end i5 in a 1000€ budget takes too much away from other components. Although I have found 1866 to be roughly the same price as 1600 in Germany.

I side with everyone else: Get one SSD, get a second later, larger SSDs will drop in price (250+ Gigabytes).

@diehappy which country?

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Looking at the german partpicker, for solely gaming:

http://de.pcpartpicker.com/p/ZW2YFT

Includes an aftermarket cooler for the sake of ramping the fans down and keeping it quiet - case is really nice for the price and is soundproofed. Went with 8GB instead of 16GB because you might not find you actually cap out 8GB, and even if you do it's cheap as chips to get more and a monkey could install it. Got a 250Gb SSD for putting a couple of games and your OS on, and a larget 1TB HDD for less important programs and mass storage. Went with a decent H97 mobo seeing as you're not overclocking with a locked i5.

You'll struggle to get skylake in without sacrificing on other parts of the build.

Depending upon if you want to record gameplay and edit it/stream etc or not, I might go for this instead though, it's got an xeon E3-1231, which is essentially a 4790 without the iGPU. Had to ditch the aftermarket cooler and go with a 120GB SSD to keep the price down though, it's still 20 eur over budget but that's not too bad.

http://de.pcpartpicker.com/p/pBsWqs

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Hey ! after reading all of this so far, do you get my point ?????? :-)

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RAID0 SSDs can cause lots of failures, if you want super speed just go for PCI-e, Wouldn't trust RAID0 without hardware controllers and BTRFS system (Yes I'm a Linux guy lol)

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I rest my case !

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I never recommended raiding the SSDs, that would be silly.