EDIT; Never buy MSI, q_q. If you do you will regret the decision, I've had a MSI mainboard once and a MSI GPU, uhm.
A game that needs more than 3.5 GB of VRAM? Seriously? If requirements are reaching that sort of benchmark, it'll probably be time to upgrade anyway. Regardless, I don't have the budget for anything above a 970. I will need a mobo that can mount a second 970 though, I intend to buy a second maybe a year from now or when the price has decreased enough to make it worthwhile.
Why do you regret buying MSI products?
(01-31-2015, 11:12 AM)Wulverine Wrote: Even with the price drops, Australia has the tenacity to have their computer parts be more expensive than other countries
Currently it's looking better to buy some of the parts from stores in the USA and have them shipped here... because they're still cheaper that way than Aussie retail prices, Q_Q
(01-31-2015, 11:19 AM)Saronsen Wrote: IF YOU DON'T GET TWO NVIDIA TITANS, I HAVE TO QUESTION YOUR ROLE AS A PC USER
I'd offer suggestions, but it'd just make me sad that my rig fried out and I can't fix it.
Uhm, long story short meaning my MSI products and those of my friends all were crap. We had to reinstall BIOS constantly (2-3 times a weeks). After changing our mainboards to ASUS, it ran just fine. I think since 2012 I've only reinstalled windows 2 times.
However, the mainboard I've suggested you can hold 2 GPU's AMD Crossfire I believe, not sure but it will do good with them don't worry. And ASRock is a good brand. They have a bad reputation, but they've fixed their quality issues don't worry. But if you want to have a real quality product you should go for an ASUS mainboard. Though it will cost 2x more (200€), uhm.
Intel Haswell Core i5 4590 Socket 1150 6MB 3.3Ghz Tray 209.3$
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Rev 2 CPU Cooler 32.8$
Kingston 8GB (8GBx1) DDR3 1600MHZ CL11 KVR16N11/8 109.01$ ( Or 169$ 8GBX2 )
Antec One Mid Tower Gaming Black Case 53.15 43$
Antec NEO Eco 520C 520W 80Plus Brone ( Power Supply ) 58.83$
Western Digital 1TB 64MB Caviar Green IntelliPower Sata3 WD10EZRX 52.14$
Sandisk SSD SDSSDHP-128G-G25 Ultra Plus 128GB 530/290 ( Better then say.. EVO 820 ) 82.65$
Gigabyte GA-H81-D3 Socket 1150 H81 Chipset VGA + RS232 88.24$
Sapphire Radeon R9 280 DUAL-X BOOST OC 3GB GDDR5 2xDVI HDMI DP PCI-E 216.33$
Compiled from www.rsm.co.il ( Israeli store ) - I don't know the prices in the states, but If it's cheap as much as it is here then this is probably the best you could muster with your budget. I would also like to add that you shouldn't buy RAM sticks with 1333mhz, because then you'll have less speed when the next generation comes, this is why I put 1600mhz.
Also, I choose I5 because of the budget, but if you can avoid i5 and get i7 - do it - Next generation games will run much much better and have much more support to i7.
ASROCK is indeed ASUS. It is the same Chinese manufacture.
And yes MSI IS crap.
Regarding the GFX: If you are wanna play DX11+ games 3Gb and above is really recommended.
But you should aim for a 4 core CPU because of compability reasons.
And I was not making jokes regarding the shipping costs.
Regarding the GPU; I really doubt I'm going to need 3GB VRAM because I don't normally play that many brand new games with graphics turned up to maximum. If you want to check the specs on my current laptop's GPU, look up the Radeon HD 7690M (and prepare to cringe). The 970 is a world of difference and I'm going to be playing mostly the same games I play currently, minus the risk of overheating which is seriously prevalent during the hot Australian summer.
I will stay away from MSI boards; ASUS it is. I can manage a price increase in order to get a more reliable brand.
(01-31-2015, 11:41 AM)Echo 7-7 Wrote: A game that needs more than 3.5 GB of VRAM? Seriously?
Star Citizen
(01-31-2015, 11:41 AM)Echo 7-7 Wrote: If requirements are reaching that sort of benchmark, it'll probably be time to upgrade anyway. Regardless, I don't have the budget for anything above a 970. I will need a mobo that can mount a second 970 though, I intend to buy a second maybe a year from now or when the price has decreased enough to make it worthwhile.
Terribad idea.
Better buy single 970 and stick with it or extend the budget to buy 980. SLI and Crossfire are pure waste of money. Screw the adds and run around the net do the FPS numbers and compare.
Lets say Card X have graphic output of 1, when you buy 2x X you expect to receive output of 2 but in reality you get 1,2-1,6 at maximum depending on the game.
Also does not forget that it is idiotic to add second card of the same type later because it would not be the best buy option- either it would be outclassed by newer models for the same price and would be extremely expensive because it is not produced any-more.
Realistically it is better to buy middle to high end graphics and sell them after two years for 50% of their bought value while buying the new mid-to high end graphic to replace it.
At the end of the 2 years cycle you have brand new competitive middle-high GPU that would last another 2 years running on max all the new games for the price of 2 outdated SLIed/Crossfired GPUs that would need replacement anyway and would preform worse then the said brand new middle-high end GPU. Another dirty trick is that newer games are supported by only newer version of Direct X and newer Sharder version- so even if you have 4 GPU SLI- brutal powerful on paper when they are directX 9 or 10 you cannot play the newest games since they are not supported.
One CPU-Mobo can do well 4 years after boosting the graphic on year two and with some healthy overcloak. Here is example how my 4 years old i-2500k does compared with your CPU choice: http://www.ocaholic.ch/modules/smartsect...ng=english
Your brand-new CPU would be 3% faster then my 2011 CPU great right?
Also note that it is idiotic to buy 4690k, buy 4670k instead for OCing there is no difference- both go at 4,5 without a problem. Use the difference to boost from 970 to 980 with adding some more money. Most games tend to be GPU bottlenecked nowadays, so buying better GPU is more important. CPUs as I showed havent changed much in performance since 2011 till nowadays.
Noctua NH-D14 is a way too expensive - I would suggest to drop it and replace it with something cheaper that does the same thing, if you are reasonable( you want your CPU to last longer then 6-8 months) you wont OC more then 4,5-4,7 depending on the chip, so the extra cooling that would be needed to reach lets say 5 is useless. I run Thermalright True Spirit 140 that have same temps as the Noctua NH-D14, it also have the same noise level but cost half the price. I do use another dirty trick to level up the said 4-6 degrees difference by using the best thermal paste available- Phobya HeGrease Extreme (must buy paste safes 30-40$ worth of cooler price).
May be next gen games in 2016-2017 would utilize better multi-core CPUs and may be Star Citizen would run better on newer CPUs however I run Dying Night (2015 game at max at steady 60 FPS only by removing N-vidia add-ons (I have ati 7870 LE) on my 2011 based rig- got both CPU and Mobo second hand in 2012, then got GPU update at begging of 2013 and cost less then 400 € currently.
A lot of the stuff that you would read in the internet is pure bulshit marketing, that is far away from reality. May be greatest example would be that I have exact the same ram as yours bought for 28 E for 8 GB in 2012. Now the same Ram cost double the price per GB.
I seriously don't get all the hate for msi here. Having a laptop and a gpu from them, I have no complaints whatsoever. Both run perfectly and I would recommend them to anyone else building a pc.
(02-01-2015, 12:42 AM)Radion Wrote: I seriously don't get all the hate for msi here. Having a laptop and a gpu from them, I have no complaints whatsoever. Both run perfectly and I would recommend them to anyone else building a pc.
This is luck factor. I used MSI mobo- worked fine. I used 4x Asus Mobos, one died on first month, one still works after 10 years.
Mobo is quite irrelevant- I would just buy the cheapest that have good phase control and allows decent OC, especially since more then 1 GPU slot is idiotic in practice and the expensive ones have many GPU slots.
Nowadays seems that ASrock do quite well by offering cheap and good Mobos. On the other side ASUS have best Bios OC options. 4 things only are needed for good mobo- 12 phases- MUST in order to OC well, double bios, decent raid, and if possible decent audio. Just google around some tests and buy the cheapest that offer steady OC performance.
In my experience SLI ain't worth it. I had two GTX 680 (actually still do, just not using that PC much). It just introduces own myriad of issues and annoyances, extra stuttering while fps gains aren't really good. Some games refuse to play well with SLI enabled and sometimes performance gets worse compared to one card. Quite frankly for 1080p gaming there ain't much use of it.
As for mobos, regardless of the brand you'll go with just keep in mind those 'high-end'/'gamery' ones often enough aren't really worth the price premium - they don't really offer better performance, just excess of bells and whistles, and feature-heavy ones are more prone to have issues and hardware conflicts than more basic boards, so really I would suggest to choose by the features you'll need. Doesn't mean you should rush for cheapest ones either, those tend to be aimed at OEMs, but even a budget board with Z97 chipset around $100 mark will do fine.
If you like playing Skyrim with tons of mods then perhaps extra VRAM would come handy, so may be that's something to consider.
For SSD brands I'd suggest going with Intel, Samsung, alternatively Crucial does make fine SSDs as far as price/quality goes.