I'm helping a friend out, he's desperately in need of a new PC (older parts are starting to die on him including the motherboard), and he is crazily enough thinking of a CyberPowerPC. No bashing will be done in this post, but what I need is a computer that will beat this one for either the same cost or maybe even a little bit under. I know that he just wants an enthusiast system, so what he's using it for doesn't matter, he's got the money and wants to spend it. If you could all help me out here that would be fantastic. Also don't worry about his experience level, I'll be the one building it for him. Thanks so much guys!
What's he using his PC for? because if it's just gaming you should be picking up a decent display with it over buying a $600 GPU, and just going with an i5.
@Streetguru Thanks so much man for all your help, it looks like my friend is going to go with the R9 380 card, but I'm trying to convince him to up his budget some, just so that way I can get him a nicer case, possibly the H440 if that's a good one in your opinion. As far as for what he's using it for, I think it's some media consumption (hence the Blu-Ray drive), then mainly MMOs, and some higher end games, not sure which titles exactly though. (Possibly the Witcher 3) For that price he thinks it's a steal so thanks for all your help!
@ThatBootsGuy So... would you say that the R9 Nano is enough of an upgrade, or is it something more of a novelty?
Also for your guys' heads up, I'll be the one doing the overclocking if it should be done, so please keep that in mind as well, but other than that, there's no reason for him to overclock to my knowledge. You guys are the best, I love this forum so freaking much!
Actually playing blu ray disks on a PC is a problem, as you need third party software to do it, best off with a blu ray player, probably a used PS3 at this point.
Isn't his budget like $1500? my builds only around 1200, and like I said, should buy a nice display if he doesn't already have one.
Well i was gonna post a link to a comparison of r9 nano vs 960 but too much trolling going on there. If you can fit it in the budget a Nano would be a better option than the 380 but if not then try for the highest sku amd card you can. Note: I'm only saying AMD because Nvidia has been known to nerf performance of older generations of cards like the 7xx series once they release new cards in order to make themselves look better and encourage more people to upgrade w/ every generation.
@Streetguru He actually already has a pretty nice monitor, he's been keeping his peripheral setup pretty recent, it's just the PC that needs replacing now. If you think a Blu-Ray player is a better choice, I'll go ahead and let him know, I think he does do some burning with a community theater that he operates with, but don't hold me to that.
@ThatBootsGuy If that's the reason for you choosing AMD that sounds much more logical than just picking up a card simply for fan reasons. So I'll see what I can do for him in regards to that card, and who knows, maybe he'll knock it up to the Nano.
Once again, you guys have been so helpful, I'll post the final build that my friend decides on and post some pictures on a different post of the assembly and all that. Thanks!
I am curious do you have documentation / references to back this statement up? I don't disagree nor intend to provoke a war of sorts, but this is the first time I have heard such thing.
There's a lot of talk about this in the Nvidia forums as well as other places just search it up (I unfortunately do not have the time to see if anyone has done comparative review videos for this and I don't have the resources do do the research myself but I'm sure others on the forum have). Look here to see some of the conversations and the sources are also provided to see the first hand account of things: http://rebrn.com/re/psa-nvidia-tanking-witcher-performance-on-series-cards-in-favor-41532/
A prebuilt is less of a pain in the ass. Origen is a good place for one. They stress test all their machines before shipping and honestly my next box is going to be from them. Might be worth peeking at.