About to pull the trigger on a new computer

[JughedJones]

I know I should build my own and save money... I really do. But I'm an absolute clutz, (and just got some money that came in.)

I'm about to press 'Purchase' on a pre-built rig from ibuypower.com


I've read a number of reviews and they sound mostly quite positive. However, let me tell you the specs and you tell me if I'm missing something here.


Case 1 x Apex EL 660 Gaming Case - Black


Processor 1 x Intel® Core™ i7 4820K Processor (4x 3.70GHz/10MB L3 Cache) - Intel Core i7 4820K

Processor Cooling 1 x Corsair Hydro Series H55 Liquid CPU Cooling System - Standard 120mm Fan

Memory 1 x 16 GB [4 GB X4] DDR3-1600 Memory Module - Corsair Vengeance

Video Card 1 x NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 - 3GB - EVGA Superclocked - Single Card

Motherboard 1 x Gigabyte GA-X79-UP4 -- 4x PCI-E 2.0 x16

Power Supply 1 x 750 Watt - Corsair RM750 - 80 PLUS Gold, Full Modular

Primary Hard Drive 1 x 120 GB Samsung 840 EVO SSD -- Read: 540MB/s, Write: 410MB/s - Single Drive

Data Hard Drive 1 x 1 TB HARD DRIVE -- 32M Cache, 7200 RPM, 6.0Gb/s - S

Optical Drive 1 x 24x Dual Format/Double Layer DVD±R/±RW + CD-R/RW Drive - Black - FREE upgrade to BLU


What do you guys think? I can overclock that processor pretty good right?

It's a lot of money, but I don't mind as long as I'm not leaving something out or I'm not seeing something that's crappola.


Thanks!

 

[Asp Explorer]

Depending on the primary focus of the machine - I wouldn't worry about overclocking.

If you are running a 3Gb card - I'd look for more system memory than 16Gb. Remember - whatever is pushed to your card has to come from main RAM, so you effectively have 12Gb.

120 Gb as a System SSD may be enough. The EVO is nice though, although I'd say it's far too small.

Optical drive? Not used one in years - unless you count the ones in consoles.

You are being sold short on your RAM - your CPU will cope with 1866, no point at all in having a posh i7 if your RAM fell out of a donkey.

Hard drive? As long as it works it doesn't matter. As I said, 120Gb may not be enough for your system and games and data. You may want to consider a larger SSD, or employ caching so you just see one single C: drive.

 

[deej]

...or have the small SSD purely as the OS/Boot drive and then get another larger one for all your stuff.

 

[JughedJones]

Depending on the primary focus of the machine - I wouldn't worry about overclocking.

If you are running a 3Gb card - I'd look for more system memory than 16Gb. Remember - whatever is pushed to your card has to come from main RAM, so you effectively have 12Gb.

120 Gb as a System SSD may be enough. The EVO is nice though, although I'd say it's far too small.

Optical drive? Not used one in years - unless you count the ones in consoles.

You are being sold short on your RAM - your CPU will cope with 1866, no point at all in having a posh i7 if your RAM fell out of a donkey.

Hard drive? As long as it works it doesn't matter. As I said, 120Gb may not be enough for your system and games and data. You may want to consider a larger SSD, or employ caching so you just see one single C: drive.

I'm not too worried about the 120 SSD being inadequate. I only play 2 or three games at a time. I'll just have to get better at making sure that's all that I have on there at one time!

The RAM thing is new to me though. 16 gigs of Corsair Vengeance isn't enough? I've been told all along that it would be plenty... but thanks! I didn't know it might produce a bottleneck.

 

[JughedJones]

...or have the small SSD purely as the OS/Boot drive and then get another larger one for all your stuff.

Yeah.. It has a 1 TB drive for data and crap.

The 120 gigs is only for OS and games.

 

[Asp Explorer]

The RAM thing is new to me though. 16 gigs of Corsair Vengeance isn't enough? I've been told all along that it would be plenty... but thanks! I didn't know it might produce a bottleneck.

Oh 16Gb is plenty - even 8Gb would be enough for gaming for a while. 1866 is faster than 1600 - although the difference is not huge. It just makes no sense to me to have a powerful engine, and then run it on the cheapest fuel you can find, that's been sitting in direct sunlight for a year and some drunk piddled in the can

As for GPU RAM - as I said, that has to come from main RAM, and is then stored and worked internally as the scene and textures progress in VRAM.

Someone better than me can explain it better I'm a mainframe guy - the closest I get to graphics is a text box

 

[StarTux]

Plenty good, honestly you'd be fine with an i5, but going the extra with the i7 is no bad thing.

2GB minimum on video card, and you're 3GB.

You're set for awhile, but what are you using for a monitor or monitors?

 

[JughedJones]

Plenty good, honestly you'd be fine with an i5, but going the extra with the i7 is no bad thing.

2GB minimum on video card, and you're 3GB.

You're set for awhile, but what are you using for a monitor or monitors?

Just one.. it's pretty crappy but it gets me 1080p.

I'm probably going to get a new one.

 

[JughedJones]

Oh 16Gb is plenty - even 8Gb would be enough for gaming for a while. 1866 is faster than 1600 - although the difference is not huge. It just makes no sense to me to have a powerful engine, and then run it on the cheapest fuel you can find, that's been sitting in direct sunlight for a year and some drunk piddled in the can

As for GPU RAM - as I said, that has to come from main RAM, and is then stored and worked internally as the scene and textures progress in VRAM.

Someone better than me can explain it better I'm a mainframe guy - the closest I get to graphics is a text box

Right on. Do you think upgrading to an ASUS MOBA is worth 200 bucks? Or am I good with the motherboard I listed?

(I just switched to 1866 RAM!)

 

[Asp Explorer]

All depends on what that expensive motherboard does for you.

Some peeps love advanced features. Some peeps will never, ever use them.

As long as it supports your processor, has enough RAM slots for what you want, and enough SATA3 and PCIE slots for what you see yourself ever plugging in for the next 3 years or so, you should be good.

A $200 motherboard may not give you any actual benefit over a $40 one - depending on your use profile.

Hell - I bought an overclockable K CPU and shoved it into an unoverclockable motherboard because I wanted stability My RAM runs at about 2/3 of it's rated speed to keep it stable. Everyone's case is different

 

[JughedJones]

All depends on what that expensive motherboard does for you.

Some peeps love advanced features. Some peeps will never, ever use them.

As long as it supports your processor, has enough RAM slots for what you want, and enough SATA3 and PCIE slots for what you see yourself ever plugging in for the next 3 years or so, you should be good.

A $200 motherboard may not give you any actual benefit over a $40 one - depending on your use profile.

Alright.

I'm doing it.

Thanks a lot guys! I really appreciate your help. What a rush!!!! You don't spend money like this every day!

 

[Radia]

If you are running a 3Gb card - I'd look for more system memory than 16Gb. Remember - whatever is pushed to your card has to come from main RAM, so you effectively have 12Gb.

Are you sure about this, I thought the CPU fed the data directly to the GPU's VRAM via the PCI BUS?

 

[dobbo]

Processor 1 x Intel® Core™ i7 4820K Processor (4x 3.70GHz/10MB L3 Cache) - Intel Core i7 4820K

Video Card 1 x NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 - 3GB - EVGA Superclocked - Single Card

I bought a gaming lappie with that CPU and GPU. Elite runs sweetly. 50+ frames/ / second.

I'd press buy, but you make up your own mind, I just hope this information helps in some small way.

 

[Athan]

i7-4790k ?

Processor 1 x Intel® Core™ i7 4820K Processor (4x 3.70GHz/10MB L3 Cache) - Intel Core i7 4820K

If you can wait upto another 2 months you may want to hold out for the i7-4790k being available from retailers. It's an i7-4770k on speed, and for running at the same clock should run cooler and with lower/smoother power draw. Of course it's also clocked 500MHz higher (both normal and 'boost') than the 4770k, so it'll actually tend to run hotter and draw 4W more power if you push its limits.

I say 'upto 2 months' because UK retailers have varying guesses as to when it'll be available, ranging from 20th June through to 15th August.

See:

http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/cpu/70473-intel-core-i7-4790k-devils-canyon-22nm-haswell/?page=9
http://www.digitalstormonline.com/u...-canyon-review-and-benchmarks-stock-idnum294/
http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Processors/Intel-Core-i7-4790K-Devils-Canyon-Review-and-Overclocking

 

[Asp Explorer]

Are you sure about this, I thought the CPU fed the data directly to the GPU's VRAM via the PCI BUS?

The CPU does feed the GPU's VRAM directly via PCI-E, however that data has to be created first in main RAM. Assets are loaded from disk by the OS, cached into RAM, the game engine running on the CPU then passes applicable assets to the GPU from RAM to VRAM, in VRAM the GPU renders the scene, applies post-processing, and passes that scene to framebuffer (also in VRAM) to display.

The GPU can access main RAM without CPU intervention, but obviously if the required data is not there (say a new ship appears) then that data has to be fetched from disk, and the process started again.

I'm not very good at explaining these things lol - and I could be very wrong - so perhaps someone more au fait can explain better

 

[dognosh]

One of the online mag sites did a test of "how much memory do you need to play games ?" using current games(this was last month) and their conclusion was that 4 gig is more than enough to play any game, 8 is a bit over kill, anymore than 8 will be a waste.

They ,however, did say if you are working with graphics/video/design software, they benefit from the more RAM you have.

 

[Athan]

One of the online mag sites did a test of "how much memory do you need to play games ?" using current games(this was last month) and their conclusion was that 4 gig is more than enough to play any game, 8 is a bit over kill, anymore than 8 will be a waste.

They ,however, did say if you are working with graphics/video/design software, they benefit from the more RAM you have.

It depends on the game, and the current state of it.

In SWtOR beta I was seeing 2.5GB+ processes, but it went down to 1.5GB on release, they'd obviously had debug code in the beta.

Likewise Landmark beta (the EverQuest Next Minecraft-a-like) is getting bigger and bigger on process size too.

So if you play alpha/betas a lot then more RAM is likely a good idea.

Keep in mind that 2.5GB is starting to push it on 4GB RAM when you need the OS and background programs too. The last thing you want is to start swapping/paging madly mid-game. Having some RAM free for file caching is also a great idea (although Windows still seems to suck at this compared to Linux).

As such I'd still say 8GB, as 2x4GB sticks, is the sensible amount of RAM to get currently. Not that this is stopping me from getting 16GB (2x8GB) in my upcoming upgrade .