Question about potentially building a gaming PC 

"DC3 LS, will be perpetually replacing cars until the end of time" (dc3ls-) 04/26/2018 at 12:30 • Filed to: None

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Granted I’ve just recently started looking into this stuff, so I’m by no means very knowledgeable. But does anyone have advice for an Intel processor versus AMD? Because from my understanding AMDs are generally more powerful per dollar than Intels, but I hear a lot of people say Intel is still better because most games are better optimized for Intel processors than AMD. So you’ll wind up with better and more consistent performance with Intel than AMD.

Nibby > DC3 LS, will be perpetually replacing cars until the end of time 04/26/2018 at 12:35

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i’d still go intel for compatibility reasons and they run cooler as well

though now is not a good time to build a gaming PC cause of GPU prices are high and so are RAM prices

cmill189 - sans Volvo > DC3 LS, will be perpetually replacing cars until the end of time 04/26/2018 at 12:35

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Unless you’re dealing with the bleeding edge of performance and 4K gaming, it really doesn’t matter anymore. Your GPU choice will make more of a difference than CPU. Just buy whatever you like and can afford.

random001 > Nibby 04/26/2018 at 12:37

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RAM prices are never coming down....

DC3 LS, will be perpetually replacing cars until the end of time > Nibby 04/26/2018 at 12:39

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Yeah, that’s definitely a bummer. Are the higher prices here to stay or is it likely they’ll come back down in the near future?

DC3 LS, will be perpetually replacing cars until the end of time > cmill189 - sans Volvo 04/26/2018 at 12:42

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I’ll keep that in mind. In terms of performance I’m not looking to do anything crazy. I think I’d be happy with 60 fps and graphics above “potato” since I’m used to console.

Mercedes Streeter > DC3 LS, will be perpetually replacing cars until the end of time 04/26/2018 at 12:46

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I agree with cmill189, unless you’re shooting for 4K or VR,   get yourself a $100-ish CPU (like a Ryzen 3 or Core i3-8100) and a decent GPU (even a 1060 3GB will work fantastic) and you’ll be able crunch through basically any current game and games at least a few years into the future.

random001 > DC3 LS, will be perpetually replacing cars until the end of time 04/26/2018 at 12:47

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https://www.slashgear.com/how-amds-combat-crate-could-jump-start-your-gaming-pc-build-26528621/

Nibby > DC3 LS, will be perpetually replacing cars until the end of time 04/26/2018 at 12:52

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not sure really but GPU prices should go down when the next gen NVIDIA cards are released in a few weeks/months

ITA97, now with more Jag @ opposite-lock.com > DC3 LS, will be perpetually replacing cars until the end of time 04/26/2018 at 12:55

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I ended up buying a pre-built Dell gaming system for that reason. At the time last year, the whole system was about the same price as I could buy the GPU alone to build one myself (which was my original plan).

itschrome > Nibby 04/26/2018 at 12:55

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GPUs are back near MSRP.

R Saldana [|Oo|======|oO|] - BTC/ETH/LTC Prophet > DC3 LS, will be perpetually replacing cars until the end of time 04/26/2018 at 12:57

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AMD gives you the opportunity to do more with less, while paying less.

itschrome > DC3 LS, will be perpetually replacing cars until the end of time 04/26/2018 at 12:59

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Really you won’t notice the difference between most Intel and AMD options. Buy the most cores with the highest clock speed you can afford basically. I like 6 core, 12 thread my self. RAM is pricey but buy the best and the most DDR4 you can afford. GPU, Nvidia all day and luckily they are almost back to MSRP. Again go for the card with the most VRAM you can afford. The 1060 at 289 with 6GB is a good deal right now. Dont aim for 4k gaming you’ll go broke and it’s not really worth it any ways. Just a solid 1080p capable system.

winterlegacy, here 'till the end > DC3 LS, will be perpetually replacing cars until the end of time 04/26/2018 at 13:28

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At the moment I’d highly recommend grabbing an AMD processor. They’ve made it clear they’re supporting the AM4 socket into the future, and if AMD sticks to what they usually do (making a plus version of the socket which also happens to be backwards compatible) a current Ryzen 2xxx processor will last you many years and an upgrade or two, especially the 2600 - a cheap hexacore that makes my i5-4690k look hilariously bad when the extra physical cores come into play. It’s just a hint slower on single threaded applications, but you really won’t notice it if you pick up a 2600.

Right now the bottleneck is on GPU prices, as well as RAM prices. GPU prices appear to be dropping slowly, but RAM just keeps going on an upwards trend. If you’re going to buy a GPU I can only recommend the 1050Ti, as it has performance on par with a GTX 960 (the GPU I own) and I can confirm that the 960 takes most modern games like a champ. You may be able to get better deals if you find gently used 10xx cards, or high-end 9xx cards (GTX 970/980.)

I can cook you up something in PCPartPicker, if you’d like.

DC3 LS, will be perpetually replacing cars until the end of time > winterlegacy, here 'till the end 04/26/2018 at 13:46

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Thanks for the advice. I’m not sure exactly what kind of specs I’m looking for. Right now I’m thinking of just using Far Cry 5 as a bench mark. Because I figure if my build could run that reasonably well, it should be good for at least a few years.

Although if you have anything that would be better to use as a benchmark let me know. Because Idk how intensive it is compared to most new games on the market.

DC3 LS, will be perpetually replacing cars until the end of time > winterlegacy, here 'till the end 04/26/2018 at 13:48

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Just to add. Performance wise I’m just looking to get 60fps and have about the same graphics as the current gen console. From their I’d just balance graphics vs. FPS depending on the game I’m playing.

Grindintosecond > DC3 LS, will be perpetually replacing cars until the end of time 04/26/2018 at 13:55

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Poor Prices on ram and gpu cards are jacked up over the bitcoin miners buying them all up. Prices are slowly coming down so because of it, a built system from a vendor will get you the best deal so far. The AMD is the gaming chip if you don’t need Anything else. If you plan to encode video, do heavy processing, heavyweight architectural autocadding or movie special effects, etc, Intel is better for the extra mathings it can do per cycle in a market AMD doesn’t compete with. Im running a 4 core AMD 965 since 2009 and all i really need to watch is how much memory i need to add and change out gpu cards if i need more oomph. At 1080i, im doing just fine with a nvidia 1077. But if im gonna run things on high, that card will need to be changed in another year or so. That chips lasted a long time and still does well. Never felt i needed intel other than copying movies to disc when that was a thing to do.

Once prices normalize, im planning a new system to get usb 3.x, more cores and ssd pci/internal drives to set myself up for the next 10 years. Not sure how much noise you like but i spent the money for Corsairs H series water cooling unit...very worth it, and another chunk for their quiet case, i hardly know its on.

Good luck.

Montalvo > DC3 LS, will be perpetually replacing cars until the end of time 04/26/2018 at 14:00

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My previous experiences with AMD have been nothing short of horrific but that was some time ago. Supposedly their new stuff is pretty good but I still always recommend Intel. Sure you pay a premium but you have a tremendous amount of support and customer service. At the end of the day it all comes down to your price point and what kind of end result you are looking for. It’s not the case now though but AMD used to not have on board graphics so you needed a GPU to get any kind of display. Intel you could boot right up enough to troubleshoot any issues you had. Check to see what kind of deals you can get, stores like microcenter always have sales of CPU/Mobo bundles and that might make some choices easy. My rig which is built for native 4k gaming/VR/CAD/Video editing uses an Intel 4790k and two 980ti cards in SLI. Intel/Nvidia pairings have never left me in a bad spot so I can only recommend them.

Mercedes Streeter > DC3 LS, will be perpetually replacing cars until the end of time 04/26/2018 at 14:06

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What’s your budget like? I can cook you up something on PCPP to give you an idea of what your machine could be like.

NKato > winterlegacy, here 'till the end 04/26/2018 at 14:06

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The second gen ryzen is pretty good

His Stigness > Nibby 04/26/2018 at 14:07

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I thought when comparing CPU temps using a good cooler AMD ran cooler because they used solder, or something, on the dies?

But speaking from personal experience using a cheap 360mm cooler on both my 1950x and Ryzen 5 (1500?) they both ran between 40-50 degrees during stress testing.

His Stigness > itschrome 04/26/2018 at 14:09

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Because I’m dumb I was looking at GPU’s back in stock, but I noticed, with the help of camelcamelcamel, that at least with EVGA, they still haven’t brought down the msrp on some of their cards.

winterlegacy, here 'till the end > DC3 LS, will be perpetually replacing cars until the end of time 04/26/2018 at 14:10

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I have no idea what game is the one to benchmark, but as I mentioned earlier, the 1050Ti is going to be the best bang for your buck. It does everything the GTX 960 can do, just that little bit better, and with more power efficiency. The 1060 will cover most any video game in existence with the option for 1080p60 on very high/ultra settings, but in most games, you will be fine with 1080p60 at high settings, as the high settings seem to work just fine.
Watch Dogs 2 really throws my computer for a loop and has my processor and video card at max load most of the time, and the 4690k+960 can run the game at 1080p60 for the most part unless I’m looking out over lots of explosions, with high quality textures and slight anti-aliasing. I think current gen consoles (minus things like the PS4 Pro) kind of bog down a little at that point.

The lower end Ryzen processors with onboard graphics are kind of meh, and compared to the i3-8350k the 2600 is a little slower, but Intel has a thing for quickly deprecating old hardware a little too quickly for my liking. I ended up buying a 4690k a few months before they teased Skylake, and that kind of sucked, because I had no forwards compatibility.

EDIT: I just realized that having the extra threads really helps if you want to record your gameplay using something like OBS, as modern games can bog down a lot due to that extra overhead of recording + encoding.

DC3 LS, will be perpetually replacing cars until the end of time > Grindintosecond 04/26/2018 at 14:12

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Awesome, I think I’ll probably go with AMD since I’m just looking to do kind of a mid tier build. I did a quick look for already built PCs, but for what I’m looking at, it looks about the same price, although I’ll have to check further since this was kind of like a quick glance.

itschrome > His Stigness 04/26/2018 at 14:12

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nah, MSRP hasn’t changed but we are very close to buying them for MSRP; which is nice. I might spring for that evga 1060 6GB my self for my birthday next month. at $289 it feels like a good deal.

winterlegacy, here 'till the end > NKato 04/26/2018 at 14:14

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First gen Ryzen was already amazing, second gen Ryzen is just improving on greatness. If I was going to upgrade today I’d be picking up a 2600.

DC3 LS, will be perpetually replacing cars until the end of time > Mercedes Streeter 04/26/2018 at 14:14

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I was trying to keep it close to $500, but idk if that’d really be achievable and have it somewhat future proof.

Mercedes Streeter > DC3 LS, will be perpetually replacing cars until the end of time 04/26/2018 at 14:22

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Here’s a quick and dirty job.

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/PfCrr6

You can lower the price by a decent margin by getting used parts (that’s how I dropped the cost on my subsequent computer builds). Used RAM and a used GPU can slice a decent amount off alone. However, I would avoid used motherboards. You can also find new parts for cheaper prices on eBay, I usually just use PCPartPicker to get an idea of what parts I need, then I use some Google Fu to beat the PCPartPicker price.

The biggest limitation of this build is a 32GB RAM limitation. However, if you only plan on gaming on this machine, 32G gives you a lot of breathing room.

Another issue is OS. Unless you have any copies of Windows laying around, that’s going to set you back another $100.

His Stigness > itschrome 04/26/2018 at 15:49

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I’m too lazy (and busy) to check right now, but last time I looked I think the 1080 ti’s still had inflated prices on EVGA’s website.

I really want to get rid of the dumb gigabyte 1060 3gb that came with my CyberpowerPC “starter kit.” But it’s hard to justify spending 400-500 on a 1070 or 1070 ti when I have my 1080 ti hooked up to the main monitor.

NKato > winterlegacy, here 'till the end 04/26/2018 at 21:18

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I already priced out a new rig. $2,200. I’ve got a long road ahead of me, lol.