PC options from scratch noob build

[horncastle]

Hi I only have a laptop and looks like I will need to get around to buying/making a PC for September.

I have been watching vids etc and Iam thinking you need to spend maybe about £800 for a setup to run the game at a decent fps, seems to be fairly well optimised from what I can tell.

Can people give me opinions on the following

Build vs buy
I think there are plenty of videos on Youtube to help build a PC and it does not look overly complicated however there is the time to learn and get all the bits that might not be compatible. Do off the shelf PC's still have a massive markup in price compared to building your own?


4k monitors vs Occ rift
I think a cheaper option and better experience would be a Rift vs say 3 high end monitors. But then its still a development model so do people think it is worth waiting until Facebook release the final consumer version? There is a long waiting list I understand as well?

Also do you sacrifice being able to enter commands on the keyboard with the Rift and have to take it off occasionally?

Input devices
From what I read there is not full degree of movement the yaw is toned down and thrust and sweet spots have been mentioned a lot so I assume the joystick and thruster combo is a popular choice. However I imagined playing in a similar fashion to a chopper with a standard stick and then a secondary stick for up and down etc maybe pedals as well.

Is such a setup a waste of money or too difficult to get setup

Seat

Seems a lot of options and controls so do you need to use the keyboard and mouse a lot? Im imaging the game will be pretty addictive so ideally wanted some lazy boy chair with some sticks on the arms, I saw a cool setup in another thread like this. However I have seen a lot of pics of a standard desk etc.


Headsets and voice
I am not too sure what teamspeak is, I assume its a voice over network thing rather than a chat window. Will a pair of headsets and mic be required to get the most fun? I think with the headset you could get some awesome sound with out annoying the rest of the house and the SFX are meant to be really good so this would be a good outlay?

Also saw a few vids with voice control/commands, does this work really well or is it hit and miss?

Anything else I have missed? I can wait a few months more to integrate a beer fridge and automatic pringle dispenser

Thanks in advance for any help or anecdotes on you experiences

 

[Don_Von_Hulio]

1. If You Build it, You Will Play.
There is still (will always be, thats business) a markup and those computers may only have an i7 to merit the $1200 price tag while the rest of the components are subpar.

2. IMO id go with a normal 1080 monitor with the fastest response time you can find. Asus has a good selection. So buy like a nice $150~ monitor or two.... then save for the Oculus.
I wouldnt know about not being able to see your controls (dont have an Oculus), but i use a HOTAS and i can do everything i need to without looking at it.

3. I think there are already threads that talk about using dual joysticks. But the way Elite is setup, imo id still say got the HOTAS route because they offer more buttons to assign commands to. I have the 'Saitek X55 Rhino' and i cant see myself using anything else to enjoy the game with.

4. Depending on input device, you will either have to use the mouse, or you dont have to but still is an option while in the station when in the selection menus.
Lots of ways of doing it. Id like a Lazy Boy setup too but i dont have that kind of room. I just made some wooden mounts for my HOTAS and then screwed them the bottom side of desk. The sticks are a permanent fixture currently. But im still deciding on a different solution since i just got a new office chair that has wider arm rests than my old chair.

5. Teamspeak is a voice chat service that someone has to setup prior, and is also basically a chat window too. Elite will have text communication but im not sure about the quality of the voice chat, or if it will be an option ingame.

I have a wired Astro A40 with Mixamp, sound quality is good enough for gaming and the mic from what im told sounds clear to others. Its a semi open/closed headset, so the sound is not completely sealed. I only use it unless i need the mic. Im thinking about just giving it away and getting a standalone mic so i dont have to switch headsets...

6. From what ive seen on the forums the voice command thing works pretty well.

 

[Amos]

Hi I only have a laptop and looks like I will need to get around to buying/making a PC for September.

I have been watching vids etc and Iam thinking you need to spend maybe about £800 for a setup to run the game at a decent fps, seems to be fairly well optimised from what I can tell.

Can people give me opinions on the following

Build vs buy
I think there are plenty of videos on Youtube to help build a PC and it does not look overly complicated however there is the time to learn and get all the bits that might not be compatible. Do off the shelf PC's still have a massive markup in price compared to building your own?

Personally building is better than buying one off the shelf, if you guild one you can customise it to your liking, if you buy one off the shelf you have to suffer what the manufacturer has put in, in some cases those components can be subpar.

You do not need to spend a stupid amount of money really, it all depends on how far you want to go with it, key points really, lots of ram minimum 8gb a good vga card a GTX 6x or a radeon R9 series would be enough and a decent cpu, my cpu is a amd 965 phenom II, I get overall 50-60 FPS over 3 monitors with my system.

In most cases take the middle ground you will have a decent machine and save some money too.

 

[bassman]

Self build is pretty straight forward. CPU and motherboard are about the only things that have to be matched i.e. cpu/chipset/socket type, everything else will just plug and play.

On your budget Id go for mid performance range "over clocking" grade motherboard/cpu/cooler/graphics/PSU/ram components as they will generally be super stable when running on default settings.

As someone said above, too high a monitor resolution isn't necessarily a good thing for a gaming system as you really want your monitor to operating at its native resolution at a high framerate so I'd second the choice of a "standard HD" res i.e. 1024 vertical for a mid range system especially if your going for a multi monitor setup.

Id also seriously look at a head tracking solution as an alternative to a 3 monitor or occulus setup. Especially cost effective if your up to making your own LED tracking clip.

 

[Fes]

If you are wanting a 4k / rift / triple high end screen setup, I would think that you may have trouble achieving that at a £800 price point.
I believe there was mention somewhere of the new rifts video card requirements being in titan territory. I run a triple 2560x1400 driven with a GTX780ti and my frame rate will drop to as low as 20 at times. I think to realistically build a system in that price range you may need to consider something with slightly lower resolution.

 

[Rune]

Hi there.

Build vs buy.

The difference in price between self built and off the shelf don't have as much of a gap if you're going for a standard brand off the shelf model. Problem with those is you don't know what the quality of the parts inside are (you get what you pay for), so don't expect superb performance.

If you guy to higher end off the shelf from a specialist then you save a fair bit building it yourself, plus you have the satisfaction of saying "I made that." It's one of the reasons I prefer to build them myself, plus I know exactly part for part it is built from. I'd say build it yourself, save some money and get the satisfaction of putting together your first rig

4k monitors vs Occ rift

Depends how much you can afford, 3 high end monitors plus the GPU required to drive them is going to be a significant outlay. However they are available now where as the commercial version of the rift is someway off. How much are you willing to spend vs how much time are you willing to wait?

Also I have my HOTAS set up to do everything, don't need to use the mouse or keyboard for anything. This will help with OR. So will Voice Attack.

Voice Attack leads me to your question about voice software and headsets. First off Voice Attack works brilliantly, it uses the Microsoft voice recognition api so spend a bit of time in Control Panel teaching the PC to learn your voice. The sw seems to learn from usage as well, been using it for 3 weeks or so now and very rarely have cases where it fails to recognise a command. Not being able to see your controls was a major worry for me regarding OR, the combination of the HOTAS and Voice Attack has stopped me worrying.

In terms of 2 joysticks and pedals, I have no idea if this will be a good set up or not. What I will say is it's very easy to do control horizontal and vertical thrusters with a HAT switch and HOTAS setups have more than one.

Edit: Also meant to mention I have been playing the game mainly with a Corsair Vengeance 1500 headset because of VA. Yesterday I decided to play the game with 5.1 speakers and no mic and whilst it worked fine and I didn't need VA I prefer using it with the headset, as the sound is more closer and it feels more immersive plus it's really cool to be able to give voice commands for functions that don't need a really fast response. Things like toggling the lights, landing gear starting super cruise and hyperdrive, just feels more fun to me.

 

[Commander M.O.]

The biggest problem with building one yourself at the moment is getting a decent operating system. A full version of windows 7 is not easy to come by and windows 8 blows (to put it mildly as possible). You'll probably have to get an OEM version of 7 ...

OEM copies are purchased through online retailers and, occasionally, in retail stores. They are designed for system builders, and are just a copy of the OS, identical to the full retail version. However, they come with several limitations:
* Once installed on one computer it can never be installed on another machine, nor are you permitted to replace the motherboard.
* You receive no technical support from Microsoft.
* You can only perform a clean installation of the OS, not an upgrade.


I really do not recommend any version of 8 for a desktop, others might.

 

[Rune]

The biggest problem with building one yourself at the moment is getting a decent operating system. A full version of windows 7 is not easy to come by and windows 8 blows (to put it mildly as possible). You'll probably have to get an OEM version of 7 ...

OEM copies are purchased through online retailers and, occasionally, in retail stores. They are designed for system builders, and are just a copy of the OS, identical to the full retail version. However, they come with several limitations:
* Once installed on one computer it can never be installed on another machine, nor are you permitted to replace the motherboard.
* You receive no technical support from Microsoft.
* You can only perform a clean installation of the OS, not an upgrade.


I really do not recommend any version of 8 for a desktop, others might.

I use 8.1 pro and have no issues with it. Have it set to boot to desktop and use my Start screen purely as a program launcher, so the tablet friendly functions aren't used or get in the way.

Also worth keeping in mind that Direct X 12 support is unlikely in Windows 7, not and issue if you have AMD graphics due to mantle but could be a big factor if using Nvidia as it does not have an equivalent.

 

[gerrelli]

You can buy custom built rigs (i,e, someone else builds it but you choose parts) but they are not cheap, I paid about £2000 for mine just over a year ago from http://www.chillblast.com/

I got a i7 3.4Ghz, 16GB RAM, 420GB SSD + 1TB, GeForce GTX 570 GC, 21" LCD 1080 + recently got a 27" LCD 1080 just for Elite, cost me £150ish.

 

[MikeyTT]

On the build or buy front. If you have never built a system from scratch it can be quite daunting, and depending on your general DIY skills (following instructions, being careful, not rushing, etc.) might not be the best route to go.

I've built several systems over the years and I find it easy now, but the first one was a nightmare and I ended up screwing it up.

Off the shelf wise a system like the one I've just pulled from Overclockers would be more than adequate for single 1080p screened gaming in ED: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FS-016-OG

If you're pushing to triple screens then a bigger badder GPU will be required. More than 8GB RAM for pure gaming is pointless. For ED the CPU isn't thrashed that hard so no need to go mad on that. SSDs are good and quick, but once in game you won't really notice between spindles and solid states.

But, it really depends what else you'll use the box for. If you're video editing then more RAM is always welcomed, as would SSDs. Some editors can take advantage of NVIDIA and/or AMD GPUs, so watch out for that.

You real need to put a list of things down that you want the box to do and then look at what you can achieve within you funds. Here, or on the overclockers forums there are always people willing to help out on this kind of stuff. Although you'll never get any agreement on exactly what's best. You'll always get those in the AMD camp and those in the NVIDIA camp.

As for controls, I would second the other poster on a stick/hotass combo. I have the Thrustmaster Warthog personally, but the x52/x56s seem popular choices.

On the audio side I use Teamspeak a bit, although not yet for ED. It is very good if you like that kind of stuff. I have two headsets I use for it. Wireless Astro A50s, which are excellent and a set of wired Sharkoon x-tatic pros. The sound is better in the astros but there are far more options on the sharkoons. Would recommend both very highly.

 

[ddrooster]

ED computer build

Hi
I went through the same process as I wanted to play but only had a laptop
I put together the following from Dabs
AMD 8 core 4 gig processor
asus m5A97 board
2 tb hard drive
8 gig corsair ram
a decent case and 750 w power supply
1 gig amd graphics card ( I only run a single monitor)
a dvdr drive
a couple of fans
keyboard and mouse
a black widow joystick
wifi card
decent set of sony headphones
and the bit that realy upset me
windows 8.1 @ £90
the whole package a few bob less than £600
the whole set up has been tested at standard speed and if u use the overclocking utility it runs at 4.3 ghz if I want to

everything worked fin straight out of the box and it took a morning to build

all I need now is the patience to learn the game


enjoy building your own its easyer than you think
regards
dave

next up is a desk and chair setup when I find the right joystick the blackwidow was a mistake

 

[Bootsock]

Hi I only have a laptop and looks like I will need to get around to buying/making a PC for September.

I have been watching vids etc and Iam thinking you need to spend maybe about £800 for a setup to run the game at a decent fps, seems to be fairly well optimised from what I can tell.

Can people give me opinions on the following

Build vs buy
I think there are plenty of videos on Youtube to help build a PC and it does not look overly complicated however there is the time to learn and get all the bits that might not be compatible. Do off the shelf PC's still have a massive markup in price compared to building your own?

If you are after a smaller gaming machine to replace a laptop which can still take a lot of hardware I think the Shuttle bare bones XPC range takes some beating.

If you are not massively confident in system building these systems can make a great confidence builder e.g. the SZ87R6 offers an easy support list for tested components to take the risk out of component selection (even if more than these components work) whilst offering a nice easy manual to tell you how to put it all together.

Well worth a look as it's really good kit and you can built it to your budget.

Decent components like a good PSU mean that the unit will quite happily run an i7 with a GTX780ti and up to 32GB of RAM. Not bad for an easy to build system that will quite happily fit discreetly near a TV.

 

[Patrick_68000]

Perhaps in the forum "Hardware & Technical Forum" ?