PC Build Price Question

[Geekazoid]

Hey there fellow LTT community,

I have a rather curious question for y'all (spoken in a southern accent).

Okay, okay. Seriously though. I'm just wondering, how much should one spend on a build before the price to performance ratio is not so valuable anymore (I hope you get what I mean)?

I've added a poll to help get an overall idea of what everyone thinks.

[FloRolf]

depends on what you are doing and on what level.

[Geekazoid]

depends on what you are doing and on what level.

It's just a general question.

[FloRolf]

It's just a general question.

 

and that was just a general answer. If you just browse teh webs you wont notice a difference between 500 and 1000bucks but if you are heavily video editing and rendering stuff you'll easily notice a difference between 5000 and 6000, giving you slightly lower times/more productivity.

For gaming the sweetspot is around 2-2.5k id say.

[Geekazoid]

and that was just a general answer. If you just browse teh webs you wont notice a difference between 500 and 1000bucks but if you are heavily video editing and rendering stuff you'll easily notice a difference between 5000 and 6000, giving you slightly lower times/more productivity.

For gaming the sweetspot is around 2-2.5k id say.

Okay, so hypothetically speaking, if one was to build a $4,000 editing rig, would there be much benefit versus a $2,000 editing rig?

[KamiKatze]

It get's really pricy when you go above a 4670K and a R9 280X. The performance that you get when steping up to a 4770K and a R9 290 is already not that big, compared to what you're spending. Best price to performance is achieved with a FX 8320 and a R9 270(X) or 280X. After that you're paying a lot $ for not so much performance. The midrange build will already give you High details with AA. But if i was shooting for max details, I'd go for a 4670K + 780 Ti setup. so not more than $1500-$2000

[FloRolf]

Okay, so hypothetically speaking, if one was to build a $4,000 editing rig, would there be much benefit versus a $2,000 editing rig?

 

if you do really heavy stuff id say yes.

[KamiKatze]

Okay, so hypothetically speaking, if one was to build a $4,000 editing rig, would there be much benefit versus a $2,000 editing rig?

 

For 1080P gaming: no.

 

You also have to pull into consideration, how many displays you power, what resolutions they have. A triple 4K setup will benefit from multiple high end GPUs, while a 1080P setup is easily fed with a single top end card.

[Geekazoid]

if you do really heavy stuff id say yes.

I do edit 1080p video in Sony Vegas with not many video tracks, probably at least 5 -7. I usually only have one or two tracks with video and the other video tracks are just for motion graphics and text. Do you think an i5 4670K would suffice for this kind of light load?

Bear in mind I'm currently editing with a Q6600 CPU clocked at stock speed @ 2.4GHz.

[Geekazoid]

For 1080P gaming: no.

 

You also have to pull into consideration, how many displays you power, what resolutions they have. A triple 4K setup will benefit from multiple high end GPUs, while a 1080P setup is easily fed with a single top end card.

Well I plan on getting an ASUS PB238Q 1080p monitor when I purchase my PC parts and I have two other 1080p displays. So I'd have a 3x 1080p display setup.

[Guest GRRigger]

Well, you have to calculate.

 

If we take general specs of high end 1080p gaming machine: ( i made them up, but close price/perf on high end)

 

at least one 120gb ssd / 240gb is ok also

2tb drive ( more for gaming is kinda waste )

4770k ( six core is kinda waste of money )

good midrange mobo that we can do overclock on air. z78 from 90 - 170$ around that price.

h100i i guess is the ultimate cheap(er) cooling option. watercooling is allready where you loose more money than gain performance. if you want you can count also h220 and stuff. so around 130$ max for cpu cooling.

high end gpu like 290, 780 or 290x or 780ti. sli is kinda not needed even on 1440p.

case up to around 120$ ? idk. since you get r4 and h440 and other good cases for nice price, i guess pay more is unnecessary

8 or 16 gb of ram. quality but not avexir core or dominators. quality ram but not expensive.

silent case/rad fans, max 8. depends if you have push pull on rad. 6 or 8 is max

quality psu, up to 150$

 

my estimate( i didnt calculate, but if you want i can calculate in pcpartpicker) is that at around 2000$ and up, you are wasting money

[Geekazoid]

Well, you have to calculate.

If we take general specs of high end 1080p gaming machine: ( i made them up, but close price/perf on high end)

at least one 120gb ssd / 240gb is ok also

2tb drive ( more for gaming is kinda waste )

4770k ( six core is kinda waste of money )

good midrange mobo that we can do overclock on air. z78 from 90 - 170$ around that price.

h100i i guess is the ultimate cheap(er) cooling option. watercooling is allready where you loose more money than gain performance. if you want you can count also h220 and stuff. so around 130$ max for cpu cooling.

high end gpu like 290, 780 or 290x or 780ti. sli is kinda not needed even on 1440p.

case up to around 120$ ? idk. since you get r4 and h440 and other good cases for nice price, i guess pay more is unnecessary

8 or 16 gb of ram. quality but not avexir core or dominators. quality ram but not expensive.

silent case/rad fans, max 8. depends if you have push pull on rad. 6 or 8 is max

quality psu, up to 150$

my estimate( i didnt calculate, but if you want i can calculate in pcpartpicker) is that at around 2000$ and up, you are wasting money

Well if you take a look at my planned build in my sig, is there anything that you would change or add to it? It currently would cost me around the AU$2,200 mark.

[Guest GRRigger]

Well if you take a look at my planned build in my sig, is there anything that you would change or add to it? It currently would cost me around the AU$2,200 mark.

Australia?

It looks fine. The only component that is lower end ( i see you mostly picked high end stuff ) is gpu. Its not bad, but given that you have absolutelly top components across the board, 780 would be more suitable.

And you could definitly cut down on componets to fit 780 in.

[Geekazoid]

It get's really pricy when you go above a 4670K and a R9 280X. The performance that you get when steping up to a 4770K and a R9 290 is already not that big, compared to what you're spending. Best price to performance is achieved with a FX 8320 and a R9 270(X) or 280X. After that you're paying a lot $ for not so much performance. The midrange build will already give you High details with AA. But if i was shooting for max details, I'd go for a 4670K + 780 Ti setup. so not more than $1500-$2000

Are saying that even if someone was to do video editing, more so light video editing, they wouldn't necessarily need to go with an i7?

[Geekazoid]

Australia?

It looks fine. The only component that is lower end ( i see you mostly picked high end stuff ) is gpu. Its not bad, but given that you have absolutelly top components across the board, 780 would be more suitable.

And you could definitly cut down on componets to fit 780 in.

What components are you talking about specifically?

[Guest GRRigger]

What components are you talking about specifically?

I would need to see australias prices, but at a glimplse you can cut down prices with: Case, Ram,  SSD and HDD and alternitevly if you go with 4670k. Also, you dont need gold power supply, but i dont know prices or other seasonic psus in aus so i cant tell. Are corsair rm psus in aus cheaper?

[Geekazoid]

I would need to see australias prices, but at a glimplse you can cut down prices with: Case, Ram, SSD and HDD and alternitevly if you go with 4670k. Also, you dont need gold power supply, but i dont know prices or other seasonic psus in aus so i cant tell. Are corsair rm psus in aus cheaper?

CASE:

As far as the case is concerned, I've gone with the Nanoxia Deep Silence 1 because I just love the look of it and it's only AU$119. I was going to go with the Fractal Design Define R4 but at AU$150 it's a rather expensive and I believe the Nanoxia has similar build quality and the like that the Define R4 has but at AU$30 less.

SSD:

Yes I could reduce this swap out the Samsung 840 EVO 250GB for the 120GB version but I just thought that since I am video editing it might be good to go with the 250GB version for various reasons, however I may choose to still swap to the 120GB version.

HDD:

I've chosen the WD Black HDD for the reason that it is geared towards video editors and media creation so I obviously want the best performance for my build. I've thought about going with one of the Seagate Barracuda drives but several people have complained about weird noises coming from them and having problems with them so I wanted to steer clear of any problems (I do know any HDD can have problems though) and plus I have an external 1TB WD drive and it's performed quite well with no problems whatsoever. So I know WD are the best HD manufacturer to go with.

RAM

Yes I will cut down on the RAM, I'll switch back to 8GB and I'll get more as I need it because it's not that hard to install.

PSU:

It seems to be common knowledge that the one component that you should NEVER cheap out on is the power supply and so I've tried to pretty much stick with that and I tend to steer clear of cheap PSUs. The Seasonic 650W PSU is the best value for money PSU that I could find plus I know Seasonic PSUs are pretty good and reliable and at about AU$160 I feel that that's decent amount to spend on a PSU, any more than that I'd feel as though I was wasting money.

CPU:

Well I have been tossing up between the i5 4670K and the i7 4770K. It seems to be, from what people indicate on here (people like @Hazy125) that if you're doing video edit it's recommended to go with the 4770/4770K as the hyper-threading of the i7 can make about a 20% difference. But then I think, would I really notice that differences? Plus if I have an SSD in my build with the 4670K I think the PC would still feel quite zippy anyway. This is one area that has been weighing on my mind for quite a while. And even now as I type this I feel as though I'm talking myself into going with the 4670K instead. If only I could decide. I may look at switching back to it. We'll see.