First PC Build :: Dedicated Star Citizen Machine

[james_bank]

great. thanks.

next question. assuming everything is cool. is it dumb to not overclock? I don't want to wear shit out by pushing maximums, but is some over clocking just increasing efficiency?

[Maciek]

great. thanks.

next question. assuming everything is cool. is it dumb to not overclock? I don't want to wear shit out by pushing maximums, but is some over clocking just increasing efficiency?

 

Sure it does. It's not night and day difference but pushing your gpu a couple of mhz can give you some performance hit. On my previous card - 780ti I got about 10 fps more in Heaven just by overclocking via Afterburner. I didn't have to touch the voltage. Maybe my card is a good overclocker but I run it on +250 mhz clock and it's super stable.

[james_bank]

if I don't overclock or overclock just a bit, can I get away with aftermarket air cooling for cpu and you?

[Maciek]

if I don't overclock or overclock just a bit, can I get away with aftermarket air cooling for cpu and you?

 

Sure. For the CPU I've always loved Noctua and BeQuiet. I have a DarkRock Pro 3 in my air cooled rig and it's great. Beautiful and efficient. For the GPU I've never tried aftermarket air coolers. I'd recommend getting a card with a decent factory cooling.

Alternatively you can go for a custom water cooling loop for the whole system. It adds to the overall cost, but you get a sexy quiet system that has great potential for overclocking. 

[james_bank]

so it seems I am going to wait a bit.. but how long? I hear that a major jump forward in gaming is just over the horizon. something about direct X and being able to stack gpu gb, so instead of an SLI of two 8gb cards being just 8, it will be 16gb. that sounds awesome and worth the wait. here's the thing.. I don't currently have a gaming rig. right now the plan is to wait for Black Friday/cyber Monday and buy the best I can for 2000 for everything.. soup to nuts.. monitor to keyboard. so the question is.. do you think this will be a long enough wait for the significant advance in gaming people are anticipating?

[Grrizz]

so it seems I am going to wait a bit.. but how long? I hear that a major jump forward in gaming is just over the horizon. something about direct X and being able to stack gpu gb, so instead of an SLI of two 8gb cards being just 8, it will be 16gb. that sounds awesome and worth the wait. here's the thing.. I don't currently have a gaming rig. right now the plan is to wait for Black Friday/cyber Monday and buy the best I can for 2000 for everything.. soup to nuts.. monitor to keyboard. so the question is.. do you think this will be a long enough wait for the significant advance in gaming people are anticipating?

If your talking about black Friday 2016 then yes the new GPUs should be out by then, if your talking about 2015 then no nothing will have changed by then Zen/Kaby lake CPUs I think are due late 2016 but the ones I'm more interested in (10nm) might come a bit later, probably 2017 albeit the new GPUs are the more important thing to hold out for.

Also take the stacked memory thing with a grain of salt, its something devs have to code themselves and based on the fact the GPU manufacturers struggle to get normal SLI/CF working properly I wouldn't count on seeing stacked memory being used any time soon, and when it is it'll probably only be in the minority of games... I could be wrong but also note Mantle could do the same thing but no one ever did it...

IMO if your looking to buy this year getting a decent CPU now is fine but I would either pick up a cheaper GPU to get you going or even look at something second hand so you can get something with a bit of power without taking as much of a loss when you sell it and upgrade to a Star Citizen grade GPU in a years time You might even want to consider the second hand market for a CPU too, is a fantastic place to get stop gap hardware cheap without loosing a lot when you sell it to upgrade at a more suitable time - second hand 2600k's and 700 series GPUs go for a steal ATM.

[james_bank]

I have an addictive personality. I've been researching building a pc for only a week, but the week has been consumed. anyway, from everything I have read and watched, I'm thinking 2016 or definitely by 2017 AMD GPUs are going to be the dominate. if anyone on this forum is old enough to remember VHS vs Betamax.. it seems to me Nvidia is pulling a Betamax by keeping shit locked down and charging for licensing. thoughts?

[Grrizz]

I have an addictive personality. I've been researching building a pc for only a week, but the week has been consumed. anyway, from everything I have read and watched, I'm thinking 2016 or definitely by 2017 AMD GPUs are going to be the dominate. if anyone on this forum is old enough to remember VHS vs Betamax.. it seems to me Nvidia is pulling a Betamax by keeping shit locked down and charging for licensing. thoughts?

I would say at best AMD will catch up performance wise and close the market share gap but I doubt they will dominate, it'll take more than 2 years for a company with less than 20% market share and year over year losses to turn things around. Licencing is just a way of turning profit on money spent on R&D, every company does it and if they give something away for "free" its because it aids in making profit indirectly.

[james_bank]

so no one understands the analogy? oh well. here is a vague build idea. a cpu with at least 6 cores and hyper threading. a Titan x. cpu and gpu both water cooled (sealed) in a Fractal Design Define S case. dram4 appropriate motherboard and 500gb ssd.

[james_bank]

*duplicate post deleted*

[rentaspoon]

so no one understands the analogy? oh well. here is a vague build idea. a cpu with at least 6 cores and hyper threading. a Titan x. cpu and gpu both water cooled (sealed) in a Fractal Design Define S case. dram4 appropriate motherboard and 500gb ssd.

Don't get the titan x unless you want bragging rights

https://youtu.be/VQou5h0Zh2k

AMD are happy being second place, if you look at what they did with Mantle and Freesync AND managed to "scare" Nvidia to release the 980ti.

[Maciek]

Instead of TitanX you can go for 2x 980Ti. It's not that much more expensive but the horsepower is amazing.

And with the high-end parts that you're looking, 1080p makes no sense. Try 3440x1440. It's so badass that I'm never going back to 16:9.

[james_bank]

Don't get the titan x unless you want bragging rights

https://youtu.be/VQou5h0Zh2k

AMD are happy being second place, if you look at what they did with Mantle and Freesync AND managed to "scare" Nvidia to release the 980ti.

thanks. makes sense.

[james_bank]

Instead of TitanX you can go for 2x 980Ti. It's not that much more expensive but the horsepower is amazing.

And with the high-end parts that you're looking, 1080p makes no sense. Try 3440x1440. It's so badass that I'm never going back to 16:9.

I was shying away from SLI. As far as 1080p I was going that route for two reasons. 1. save some cash. 2. im more interested in smooth for vs the craziest resolution I can get. Maybe once star citizen is full released and optimized I would upgrade the monitor. yeah? or are the parts I'm picking really so over kill for that.. that I can get the same great fps at the higher res? just to throw a number out.. I'm looking for minimum 65 fps at any time.

[Maciek]

I was shying away from SLI. As far as 1080p I was going that route for two reasons. 1. save some cash. 2. im more interested in smooth for vs the craziest resolution I can get. Maybe once star citizen is full released and optimized I would upgrade the monitor. yeah? or are the parts I'm picking really so over kill for that.. that I can get the same great fps at the higher res? just to throw a number out.. I'm looking for minimum 65 fps at any time.

 

In my office machine I have a 980Ti with a 3440x1440 screen. I'll do the SC update tomorrow and run the game with fraps. I'll let you know what the fps looks like with this setup.

[james_bank]

In my office machine I have a 980Ti with a 3440x1440 screen. I'll do the SC update tomorrow and run the game with fraps. I'll let you know what the fps looks like with this setup.

very kind. thank you.

[norritt]

thanks for the info. two 970s is less than 20 bucks more. here is just one video about 980 vs 970 sli.

 

If you ask me you can totally forget about the GTX980, it delivers the worst price performance ratio of the cards to choose from. Either you stick to GTX970 (optionally SLI), or you go all the way to GTX980Ti. Personally I'd lean towards the 980Ti (actually using it in my current system right now). While SLI 970s do deliver *slightly* higer numbers on the paper than the 980Ti alone in various cases, you will have to deal with the typical SLI issues, like waiting for driver optimizations, micro jittering. Also 2 970s will cost more than 1 980Ti and you'll only have 3.5GB of Video RAM available as opposed to 6GB on the 980Ti. I suspect this sub average memory amount to become a serious performance bottleneck in Star Citizen pretty soon. This means the estimated time span of the more expensive 970SLI solution delivering a smooth SC experience to you is a lot shorter than for the GTX980Ti.

[james_bank]

thanks. yeah, the gb is a huge selling point. I'm thinking of buying a used system and upgrading later. check it out. this is what I am looking at buying. I'm sure I can get it all for 1500, but I'm hoping to negotiate down closer to 1000.

Intel i5 4690k

128gb sandisk ssd

asrock extreme4 mobo

fractal r4 case

Duel SLI asus gtx directCU II 780s

8gb ram (will upgrade immediately)

750w corsair psu

lg 34um95-p monitor

cpu cooler master AIO

1.5tb wd hdd

[Stuntz]

thanks. yeah, the gb is a huge selling point. I'm thinking of buying a used system and upgrading later. check it out. this is what I am looking at buying. I'm sure I can get it all for 1500, but I'm hoping to negotiate down closer to 1000.

Intel i5 4690k

128gb sandisk ssd

asrock extreme4 mobo

fractal r4 case

Duel SLI asus gtx directCU II 780s

8gb ram (will upgrade immediately)

750w corsair psu

lg 34um95-p monitor

cpu cooler master AIO

1.5tb wd hdd

 

Not to be *that* guy buuuut....

 

While a good 750w psu is plenty sufficient for a standard sli setup (basically anything not gm200 / fiji based), corsair's psu's vary pretty insanely between great quality and abysmal. Which range of corsair psu is it? There's CS/CX/CM/RM/RMi/HX/AX/AXi, maybe a couple I missed in there somewhere, their naming system's hard to keep with. While I've personally had a great experience with my now ancient (and retired!) hx1000w (over 7 years old and never missed a beat!), and I've heard generally good things about their RMi series, I've heard some worrying stuff about their C? series (all of them!) and some really variable feedback on their ax/axi psu's (great performance with some mixed reliability problems).

 

Just a heads up, your experience, as always, will vary.

[james_bank]

Not to be *that* guy buuuut....

While a good 750w psu is plenty sufficient for a standard sli setup (basically anything not gm200 / fiji based), corsair's psu's vary pretty insanely between great quality and abysmal. Which range of corsair psu is it? There's CS/CX/CM/RM/RMi/HX/AX/AXi, maybe a couple I missed in there somewhere, their naming system's hard to keep with. While I've personally had a great experience with my now ancient (and retired!) hx1000w (over 7 years old and never missed a beat!), and I've heard generally good things about their RMi series, I've heard some worrying stuff about their C? series (all of them!) and some really variable feedback on their ax/axi psu's (great performance with some mixed reliability problems).

Just a heads up, your experience, as always, will vary.

TX series. an older model. Id upgrade it when I upgrade the gpu.. the more I think about it the more I think I should just build my own from scratch. is it worth it for the money as a starting point? I don't currently have a computer. I think the monitor makes it a steal if I can get it all for say.. $1200.

[Maciek]

very kind. thank you.

 

Ok. Did some tests.

With a gtx 980Ti at 3440x1440 on high graphic settings I get about 40 fps in the industrial hangar with 3 ships in it.

In vandull swarm I got about 50 fps. V-Sync disabled. I could easily get more fps by disabling some nonsense settings like motion blur but I wanted to give you settigns easy to replicate on other machines.

Hope that helps.

[james_bank]

Ok. Did some tests.

With a gtx 980Ti at 3440x1440 on high graphic settings I get about 40 fps in the industrial hangar with 3 ships in it.

In vandull swarm I got about 50 fps. V-Sync disabled. I could easily get more fps by disabling some nonsense settings like motion blur but I wanted to give you settigns easy to replicate on other machines.

Hope that helps.

thanks so much. so it seems it will be a long time before I can afford a machine that doesn't dip below 60fps at 1440 in star citizen.

[Maciek]

thanks so much. so it seems it will be a long time before I can afford a machine that doesn't dip below 60fps at 1440 in star citizen.

yup...

[james_bank]

looks like an XL2411z by BenQ for me!

[klh2000]

yes.

Get this: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/wbb2sY

 

 

 

If you want to go cheaper (recommended) get this: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/N9VFD3