The PC Build Thread

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Bryn26 said:
The best rig possible would have an i7-5960X processor, Haswell-E motherboard, 32GB or 64GB Corsair Dominator Platinum DDR4 RAM, two GeForce GTX Titan X's in SLI, a 1TB Samsung 850 Pro SSD, one or more 4K 27+ inch monitors, audiophile audio equipment etc. It would cost about as much as a new Polo.
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I would say quad sli titan x on a 5k led display. reality of the situation is once done it would be the cost of a flat somewhere on the coast :D

It would be a waste though as a few months later there would be something much better out there and you would have some serious buyers remorse.

Me I would go for a 2560x1440 display which a single Titan would handle very well. I've been playing a lot of FC4 and truth be told when things are moving around you don't really notice the difference between ultra & medium running through the trees. If you stand still and pan slowly everything maxed out looks awesome.

Gforce experience is also a crock of schite as they always go for lower settings when you can do much better going by tweak guides for your gpu.
 
ponder said:
I would say quad sli titan x on a 5k led display. reality of the situation is once done it would be the cost of a flat somewhere on the coast :D

It would be a waste though as a few months later there would be something much better out there and you would have some serious buyers remorse.

Me I would go for a 2560x1440 display which a single Titan would handle very well. I've been playing a lot of FC4 and truth be told when things are moving around you don't really notice the difference between ultra & medium running through the trees. If you stand still and pan slowly everything maxed out looks awesome.

Gforce experience is also a crock of schite as they always go for lower settings when you can do much better going by tweak guides for your gpu.
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The heat and noise from quad-SLI, not to mention possible issues with certain games, would make it less desirable for me. If I had no budget constraints I'd be very happy with a single 4K gaming monitor with G-Sync and Titan X's in SLI. They should manage all games maxed out with a high framerate.
 
Bryn26 said:
I'd be very happy with a single 4K gaming monitor with G-Sync and Titan X's in SLI. They should manage all games maxed out with a high framerate.
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There are quite a few games hovering in the upper 30fps to lower 40fps range on a single titan maxed out. Some games simply don't scale well under sli be it x2, x3 or x4 sli.

If you are gonna go this route be it x2-x4 sli it's gonna get hot & noisy so you might as well splash out on a watercooling solution while burning money.
 
Problem with a best PC possible is that you'll reach a point where a 20% theoretical performance gain will cost you 200% or more on the final price.
 
HideInLight said:
Problem with a best PC possible is that you'll reach a point where a 20% theoretical performance gain will cost you 200% or more on the final price.
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Which is why I recommended a few posts up that people buy at the point of diminishing returns.
 
HideInLight said:
Problem with a best PC possible is that you'll reach a point where a 20% theoretical performance gain will cost you 200% or more on the final price.
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Yeah law of diminishing returns. At this stage 4k gaming is not gonna be cheap, at 1080 or 1440 a gtx970 will do a great job and it's not far off from a 980.
 
Hello All

I am also in the market to build a PC (Intel i5). I have browsed through this forum and also went through the NAG system builders guide.

My budget is R 12,000 and I have looked at Takealot only at the moment for prices:

MOBO: http://goo.gl/tEHgTF: R 1,110
CPU: http://goo.gl/LfLq91: R 3,305
Cooling: http://goo.gl/OoI5t1: R 478
Memory: http://goo.gl/tIYkyw: R 1,192 (R 596 x 2)
PSU: http://goo.gl/oV0txq: R 777
Case: http://goo.gl/qj0WcR: R 1,184
HDD: http://goo.gl/YYMY9g: R 799
Total R 8,845

I now need a GPU for the balance (R 3,500) but not sure what is out there. Please have a look at the build above, this will be my first time building a PC. Not sure if the components are compatible or not.

PS: I don't know much about overclocking so I will not be doing that.
PSS: I also see there is not much love for AMD on the forum, why is that?

Any suggestions welcome.

Thanks
 
M@gn3t1c said:
Hello All

I am also in the market to build a PC (Intel i5). I have browsed through this forum and also went through the NAG system builders guide.

My budget is R 12,000 and I have looked at Takealot only at the moment for prices:

MOBO: http://goo.gl/tEHgTF: R 1,110
CPU: http://goo.gl/LfLq91: R 3,305
Cooling: http://goo.gl/OoI5t1: R 478
Memory: http://goo.gl/tIYkyw: R 1,192 (R 596 x 2)
PSU: http://goo.gl/oV0txq: R 777
Case: http://goo.gl/qj0WcR: R 1,184
HDD: http://goo.gl/YYMY9g: R 799
Total R 8,845

I now need a GPU for the balance (R 3,500) but not sure what is out there. Please have a look at the build above, this will be my first time building a PC. Not sure if the components are compatible or not.

PS: I don't know much about overclocking so I will not be doing that.
PSS: I also see there is not much love for AMD on the forum, why is that?

Any suggestions welcome.

Thanks
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Their FX series, is now dated 2012, their last decent range of cpus they bought out price wise and that socket has no future.

The high power usage, and money needed to bring it close to level of intel's performance simply isn't worth it. You also have much more choice with regards to buying options, retail/secondhand/oem and when you get it @ retail you get a better deal Rand/Dollar wise.

Their graphics cards were actually very competent and much better than Nvidia, but the GTX960 just took the crown sitting between the R9 270x and just a little under the R9 280x using much less power and being usable no problems on a 450w power supply. Nvidia basically sitting in all the sweet spot price ranges atm.

AMD is basically overdue now to bring out something new.
 
Hi mybroadband hive mind. I'm trying to spec out a mid-range gaming PC to play iRacing on (and that's about it).

Having looked through some other build suggestions and so on I've specced something along the lines of the following (not "price optimised" or "definitely in stock optimised" yet !):


Total: R 8181

I'd love some recommendations for substitutions to get more bang for my buck (I don't want to go too much over R8K). A couple of considerations:

  • I'm not looking to do any overclocking.
  • Am I cheaping out too much with "value ram"?
  • I'd like a graphics card that one day I can run iRacing (which is not particularly intensive) with 3 monitors, which apparently the 750Ti is just about beefy enough to do so and has the right number of display ports. So ideally any alternative graphics would also be able to do that, but it's not something I will be trying tomorrow and wouldn't necessarily be a dealbreaker for a really good bargain.
  • Am I GPU/CPU heavy? I don't have much interest in playing the latest and greatest videogames so perhaps I can save with an i3?
  • Do I (given I am not overclocking) require any further cooling beyond the stock CPU heatsink/fan?
  • Also I have a SSD sitting around that I can use, hence no HDD on the list.

thanks !
 
insincere_dave said:
Hi mybroadband hive mind. I'm trying to spec out a mid-range gaming PC to play iRacing on (and that's about it).

Having looked through some other build suggestions and so on I've specced something along the lines of the following (not "price optimised" or "definitely in stock optimised" yet !):


Total: R 8181

I'd love some recommendations for substitutions to get more bang for my buck (I don't want to go too much over R8K). A couple of considerations:

  • I'm not looking to do any overclocking.
  • Am I cheaping out too much with "value ram"?
  • I'd like a graphics card that one day I can run iRacing (which is not particularly intensive) with 3 monitors, which apparently the 750Ti is just about beefy enough to do so and has the right number of display ports. So ideally any alternative graphics would also be able to do that, but it's not something I will be trying tomorrow and wouldn't necessarily be a dealbreaker for a really good bargain.
  • Am I GPU/CPU heavy? I don't have much interest in playing the latest and greatest videogames so perhaps I can save with an i3?
  • Do I (given I am not overclocking) require any further cooling beyond the stock CPU heatsink/fan?
  • Also I have a SSD sitting around that I can use, hence no HDD on the list.

thanks !
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Decent. But a 750ti will never run on 3 screens.
 
M@gn3t1c said:
PS: I don't know much about overclocking so I will not be doing that.
PSS: I also see there is not much love for AMD on the forum, why is that?
Thanks
Click to expand...

Well if you're not going for a k series cpu & not overclocking then there is no need for an aftermarket cooler. The stock one is just fine.
What requirements do you have from a motherboard, port & exapnsion wise? You could shave off anything from R300-500.
Find the cheapest 2x4GB RAM kit you can find, you're paying too much I think but then again prices have gone up recently.
Do you really need a R1200 chassis when you can get decent ~R600 chassis?
You could probably save about R100 on the PSU as well I suspect.

Now to get to the point with all the above savings you could easily upgrade to a GTX 970 GPU. I'm assuming this is a gaming build?
If I remember I'll try and do some pricing for you tomorrow.

It's not a matter of not loving AMD, I love AMD but unfortunately in this country their CPU's are expensive compared to international norms and you require a good MB to OC them to their full potential which costs money (R1.3k) and a decent CPU cooler to go with it), if it was the USA or UK it would be a different story.
 
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insincere_dave said:
[*]CASE: CoolerMaster Silencio 352 R 873.00 http://www.wootware.co.za/review/product/list/id/13873/
[*]GPU: GIGABYTE NVIDIA GTX 750Ti OC 2048MB R 2395.00 http://aperturepc.co.za/components/...byte-nvidia-gtx-750ti-oc-2048mb-graphics-card
[/LIST]
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I dunno where you live and what your temperatures are like but do NOT buy that chassis unless you intend buying additional 120mm & 140mm fans for it. In summer it runs really hot here in KZN. Rather go for the Corsair Carbide 200R which also has better cable management than the 352 Silencio & it's cheaper I think. It's the only regret I have from my build & if I could I would swap for a 200R tomorrow.

750ti is a bit weak so maybe consider saving a little more for a gtx 960.

insincere_dave said:
  • Am I cheaping out too much with "value ram"?
  • I'd like a graphics card that one day I can run iRacing (which is not particularly intensive) with 3 monitors, which apparently the 750Ti is just about beefy enough to do so and has the right number of display ports. So ideally any alternative graphics would also be able to do that, but it's not something I will be trying tomorrow and wouldn't necessarily be a dealbreaker for a really good bargain.
  • Am I GPU/CPU heavy? I don't have much interest in playing the latest and greatest videogames so perhaps I can save with an i3?
  • Do I (given I am not overclocking) require any further cooling beyond the stock CPU heatsink/fan?
Click to expand...

No, RAM would not improve your performance in this case, go for the best value.
3 Monitors, not going to happen unless you turn the settings down all the way. Be realistic about your expectations.
No you're not GPU/CPU heavy, many games these days require 4 cores to run properly, i5 is a good choice.
No the stock cooler is fine.
 
ponder said:
Well if you're not going for a k series cpu & not overclocking then there is no need for an aftermarket cooler. The stock one is just fine.
What requirements do you have from a motherboard, port & exapnsion wise? You could shave off anything from R300-500.
Find the cheapest 2x4GB RAM kit you can find, you're paying too much I think but then again prices have gone up recently.
Do you really need a R1200 chassis when you can get decent ~R600 chassis?
You could probably save about R100 on the PSU as well I suspect.

Now to get to the point with all the above savings you could easily upgrade to a GTX 970 GPU. I'm assuming this is a gaming build?
If I remember I'll try and do some pricing for you tomorrow.

It's not a matter of not loving AMD, I love AMD but unfortunately in this country their CPU's are expensive compared to international norms and you require a good MB to OC them to their full potential which costs money (R1.3k) and a decent CPU cooler to go with it), if it was the USA or UK it would be a different story.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the feedback. I will tweak the build a bit.
 
ponder said:
I dunno where you live and what your temperatures are like but do NOT buy that chassis unless you intend buying additional 120mm & 140mm fans for it. In summer it runs really hot here in KZN. Rather go for the Corsair Carbide 200R which also has better cable management than the 352 Silencio & it's cheaper I think. It's the only regret I have from my build & if I could I would swap for a 200R tomorrow.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the feedback :) Should I also swap to the ATX equivalent of the mATX motherboard I picked (which would be MSI H81M-P32L Intel H81 Express Chipset LGA1150 ATX) or does it make no real difference?
 
http://www.takealot.com/msi-intel-h81m-p32-m-atx-motherboard-socket-1150/PLID28720103

http://www.takealot.com/msi-intel-h81-p33-atx-motherboard/PLID34158493

Two more boards with USB3 for the front.

Be careful with the MSI H81M-E35, an issue I've come across is local sites advertising the V2 versions of boards when they stock the entirely different V1.

Make sure it's the V1 that has the frontal USB3. Will see if I can find it.

edit: Ok the V1 version does have the header, and an HDMI port, that's pretty good.

Examine the picture closely at Kalahari, shows the V2 which is wrong.
http://www.kalahari.com/Technology/MSI-H81M-E35-Intel-Motherboard_p_49769716

They should of used this instead.
http://www.msi.com/product/mb/H81ME35.html#hero-overview
 
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