10 Biggest Mistakes People Make When Designing a Gaming PC

[turkey3_scratch]

I browse pcpartpicker and tons of forums, and these are the ten biggest mistakes I see gamers make when designing a gaming PC. Not all of these are detrimental to performance but the majority are just poor ways to use money.

 

10. Not Saving Money for Actual Games

So many people on tight budgets forget to save money to buy actual video games! There is no use having a gaming machine that cannot play any games since you have no money. Try to remember the cost of games when building a gaming computer. You may say, "well, you can save up money after you build one for games." Well, you can also save money for a better computer in the first place, so you're pick.

 

9. Going with SLI/Crossfire

Unless your GPU is the absolute best GPU on the market, there is no reason to get multiple GPUs. A better, single, stronger GPU is smarter because it does not pose the issues multiple cards do. Multiple cards sometimes don't scale properly, or at times games won't even support SLI or Crossfire. Having multiple graphics cards also contributes to more power consumption and more heat in the case. When the case is filled with such heat, VRM capacitors on both GPUs and the motherboard heat up, which reduces their lifespan. Always go with a single GPU if multiple can be avoided. It may sound less "cool", but it's well-worth it when strictly speaking of a PC's performance and reliability.

 

8. Too Much RAM

16GB is the sweet spot for price/performance right now, but the truth is many and most games still use under 8GB. It's uncommon to find one that uses more. Even $30 saved by dropping from 16Gb to 8GB of RAM can dramatically help you get a better GPU on a budget. If you have specific games in mind, research them and see how much memory they use. From my personal experience, playing even AAA games such as Assassin's Creed Syndicate use only a couple GB of memory. It cannot be denied that there are some games than use more than 8GB, but do your research and see if the ones you plan to play use more or less.

 

7. Overestimating or Underestimating Wattage

A lot of people tend to think that their powerful gaming PC must require a huge power supply, a 1600W beast of a monster! Well, no, it does not unless running 4 GPUs. When calculating the wattage needed for a gaming computer, avoid wattage calculators. These calculators often do not take the exact graphics card model into consideration and post a wattage only relative to the reference model. Sometimes they overestimate or underestimate too much. It is best to ask an expert on what wattage is recommended, as he or she will know off the top of their head. Another problem is that many people tend to think their cards draw much lower power than they really can. There is a difference in a GPU under actual stress and one under gaming stress. Gaming is a light load, but some games such as AC Unity stress the GPU as hard as a stress test. When under stress, these GPUs can often draw 40% more power than a gaming load. Also, any non-reference card comes out of the factory already overclocked, and these cards draw a lot more power. GTX 970s can easily draw over 300W for brief moments under stress, and a 980Ti can draw as high as 370W+. Well-designed power supplies can handle these brief spikes, but aside from the spikes an overclocked GPU under stress will use a lot more power than while gaming, and one should always take into consideration the stress test value of their particular GPU.

 

6. Cheaping out on the Monitor

The monitor is everything you see. A high quality monitor contributes to a more immersive experience while gaming. The quality of a monitor should not be something that is ignored when designing a gaming rig (if purchasing a monitor). Someone with a cheap GPU on a nice monitor very well many have a better gaming experience than someone with an expensive GPU on a cheap monitor. Try to get a monitor with good quality but don't overspend, either.

 

5. Overclocking on a Budget

I totally understand the joy of overclocking, but when it comes to a $1000 gaming computer, overclocking is not the best choice. When overclocking a processor, it requires a high-end motherboard and better cooling. People underestimate how much this adds up in cost. Take a Z170 motherboard compared to an H110 board. In general, the board is at least $60 more when talking about a quality one for a decent overclock. If one wants to overclock even more, it requires a stronger VRM and VRM cooling, making a motherboard about $100+ more expensive. This money can be put into a better GPU. Once the processor gets overclocked to a point, the stock cooler will no longer suffice, resulting in another $30 at least for a quality cooler. If the budget for the gaming rig is really high, such as $1500, it makes sense that overclocking is a consideration, but anything $1000 and below the bulk of the money should be leaning toward a better GPU.

 

4. Overspending on the CPU

You need to get out of your head the idea that gaming is super tough on a computer. Sure, it's tough, but anyone who has done actual professional work on a computer will shun gaming as a mere light load. Gaming is not the lightest load - it certainly does require a good amount of processing power. But it is nowhere near the heaviest load a computer will see. There are processors out there designed for tasks much larger than gaming, such as high-end I7 processors and various Xeons. These processors, while they will game very well, are very costly and may not be the best price/performance as a gaming chip. They are well-suited for intense CAD work, video encoding, compiling large amounts of code, modelling and rendering, servers, etc. There are all tasks that can and often require more processing power than gaming. So, especially when on a budget under $2000, pick a CPU that is well suited for gaming and not overkill, because games are more dependent on the GPU when it comes to putting out more FPS.

 

3. Getting an SSD

There is a common fallacy going around that because SSDs are so common nowadays, you need one in your gaming PC. False! Not true at all! In fact, aside from loading times, you'll get a much better gaming experience by purchasing a HDD and putting SSD money toward a better GPU. It's all about getting a better GPU. You spend more time actually playing a video game than at the loading screen, so it's smarter to put the money toward a better GPU. If the budget is high, getting an SSD is a nice treat, but especially on lower budgets the money can be better spent.

 

2. Watercooling

Cutting to the point, the truth is that closed loop water coolers cost far more than air coolers and have many downsides. For one thing, they perform on-par with an air cooler about 3/5 of the cost. They can be extremely noisy (H110i). They can heat up the motherboard greatly because heat is not being ventilated as with air coolers. Lastly, they cost a lot more money. Money is the key here. How one spends his or her money is important in any gaming computer. The money spent on such a cooler could easily go toward a better GPU. There is nothing wrong with buying an I5-6500, an H110 motherboard, the stock cooler, and using it with an R9 390X. Watercooling in general is a gimmick because these closed loops do not have any large performance increase over high-end air coolers. Yes, "water cooling" sounds very cool, but it's not smart for managing your budget in a gaming PC.

 

1. Getting a Poor Quality Power Supply

Many cheap power supplies may do alright for an office machine, but they are not designed for a gaming rig. Don't think that just because a power supply says "700W" on the label it's good. It means absolutely nothing. What matters are various other qualities of a power supply: protections and their trigger thresholds, voltage regulation, ripple suppression, noise suppression, transient filtering, capacitor quality, crossloading, hold-up time, etc. These are far more important than rated wattage, and gamers who purchase low-quality power supplies constantly end up with bad end results, sometimes with damaged hardware. It's cheaper to get a more expensive power supply; it's more expensive to get a cheap power supply.

[Oshino Shinobu]

I would disagree with #3. SSDs are so cheap now that unless you're on a really tight budget, I would consider it a pretty much essential component. The amount that it speeds up the general responsiveness is well worth the money. You can pick up 120GB SSDs for less than $40, which really isn't a huge amount. Just getting Windows from Reddit/G2A instead of retail is enough saved to get an SSD. 

[turkey3_scratch]

10 minutes ago, Bajantechnician said:

-snip-

Yeah that can be a major problem, too. Corsair makes good products, but some people get the idea that everything they make is the best price/performance. I think brand loyalty is more a lack of research than anything.

 

10 minutes ago, Oshino Shinobu said:

I would disagree with #3. SSDs are so cheap now that unless you're on a really tight budget, I would consider it a pretty much essential component. The amount that it speeds up the general responsiveness is well worth the money. You can pick up 120GB SSDs for less than $40, which really isn't a huge amount. Just getting Windows from Reddit/G2A instead of retail is enough saved to get an SSD. 

Yes but look at the size of games. AAA games are taking up 60GB of space easily. That 120GB SSD will only store two games, whereas a 1TB hard drive can store a ton.

[Bajantechnician]

1 minute ago, turkey3_scratch said:

Yeah that can be a major problem, too. Corsair makes good products, but some people get the idea that everything they make is the best price/performance. I think brand loyalty is more a lack of research than anything.

Also nvidia vs amd.

but thats for another topic

and vram

[Kobathor]

I'm with Oshino. An SSD was the best thing to happen to my PC. Lightning fast boot times, Google Chrome opens seconds after boot (compared to my HDD, which took about a minute of time before apps started working,) the file browser is snappy, my whole experience is just.. better.

 

If you wait for sales, you can snag 240-255GB SSD's for about as much as a TB HDD. If you only have enough for one drive, I would go for the former, and add an HDD when you save $50.

[Oshino Shinobu]

2 minutes ago, turkey3_scratch said:

Yes but look at the size of games. AAA games are taking up 60GB of space easily. That 120GB SSD will only store two games, whereas a 1TB hard drive can store a ton.

Not for game storage. Just boot and frequently used programs. Storing games on an SSD is a luxury as it mostly just affects loading times (sometimes texture pop-in). For General system responsiveness, a 120GB SSD is what I would consider almost essential in a gaming PC. 

If we were talking about a PC that is literally just used for games and nothing else, then sure, an SSD isn't that beneficial. Hell, even then you could install Steam on the SSD and have that load up quicker. 

[turkey3_scratch]

An SSD was about the best thing that happened to my PC, too. I loved the loading speeds of everything, but it did not enhance my gameplay as much as a better GPU would. A 250GB Samsung 850 EVO costs $80-$90. That money can go toward a better GPU, and a 1TB hard drive stores more games.

 

Agree to disagree?

[Flowey]

Just now, turkey3_scratch said:

Yeah that can be a major problem, too. Corsair makes good products, but some people get the idea that everything they make is the best price/performance. I think brand loyalty is more a lack of research than anything.

Definitly a lack of research, I myself was going for a gtx 970 for about 2 months (planning took about 4)until I realised, after a bunch of research how, since my build's theme is futureproof, a r9 390 would fit and perform much better, especially regarding VR.

[Bajantechnician]

8 minutes ago, Oshino Shinobu said:

I would disagree with #3. SSDs are so cheap now that unless you're on a really tight budget, I would consider it a pretty much essential component. The amount that it speeds up the general responsiveness is well worth the money. You can pick up 120GB SSDs for less than $40, which really isn't a huge amount. Just getting Windows from Reddit/G2A instead of retail is enough saved to get an SSD. 

$40 is the difference between a r9 390 and a r9 390x,

a GTX 970 and a 980, a 980 and a 980ti

[turkey3_scratch]

Just now, Bajantechnician said:

$ is he difference between a r9 390 and a r9 390x,

a GTX 970 and a 980, a 980 and a 980ti

Yes that's sort of where everything brinks down to - every bit of money toward a better GPU is better. Though there is a point when you can cheap-out too far, as in the PSU.

[AshleyAshes]

11 minutes ago, turkey3_scratch said:

7. Overestimating or Underestimating Wattage

To add to this one, I've gotten away some some reasonable low wattages.

 

I have an overclocked i7 4930K with a Radeon R9 390X running on a Corsair TX750, no problem.

 

Overclocked i7 3770K and overclocked Radeon HD 7950 running on a CX600, no problem

 

I even have a server running an i5 4970 with Radeon HD 6950 that has to spin up nine hard drives on bootup that formerly used a CX600.  This one, I was considering more watts to allow for the 'high consumption during spinup' I'd read about, but I used my Kill-A-Watt and during power on while spinning up all nine drives concurrently, it only peaked at 200w out of the wall.  I went with an EVGA 650W P2 PSU really just for the energy efficiency for a server that runs 24/7.

 

It'd be interesting to see a 'Workbench' episode covering PSUs in terms of 'How much do you actually, REALLY need?'

[KuJoe]

When I built my PC, I grabbed a bunch of the cheapest 120GB SSDs I could get an set them up striped (RAID0) just for my games. There's no reason to do mirrored for games since if I lose a drive and have to start over again it's just a few hours until Steam/UPlay/Origin/Battle.net has me back to where I was (and with nightly backups using GameSaveManager I don't have to worry about saved games going missing for local games either).

[Oshino Shinobu]

1 minute ago, turkey3_scratch said:

An SSD was about the best thing that happened to my PC, too. I loved the loading speeds of everything, but it did not enhance my gameplay as much as a better GPU would. A 250GB Samsung 850 EVO costs $80-$90. That money can go toward a better GPU, and a 1TB hard drive stores more games.

 

Agree to disagree?

850 EVO is $80-90, but a 240GB TRION 150 or Ultra L5 can be picked up for less than $60.

True, it won't do anything for the gaming experience, but chances are people will use their PC for things other than gaming. Just having your web browser on an SSD can make a fair amount of difference. 

Difference in priorities, I guess. Whether I'd spend the money on an SSD or put it towards the GPU would depend on the budget. If you're really on a tight budget, then $40 can make a lot of difference for the GPU, but at higher end prices, it's not going to get you much more. 

[Bajantechnician]

1 minute ago, turkey3_scratch said:

Yes that's sort of where everything brinks down to - every bit of money toward a better GPU is better. Though there is a point when you can cheap-out too far, as in the PSU.

edited lol

 

Just now, Oshino Shinobu said:

850 EVO is $80-90, but a 240GB TRION 150 or Ultra L5 can be picked up for less than $60.

True, it won't do anything for the gaming experience, but chances are people will use their PC for things other than gaming. Just having your web browser on an SSD can make a fair amount of difference. 

Difference in priorities, I guess. Whether I'd spend the money on an SSD or put it towards the GPU would depend on the budget. If you're really on a tight budget, then $40 can make a lot of difference for the GPU, but at higher end prices, it's not going to get you much more. 

You read the title?

"

10 Biggest Mistakes People Make When Designing a Gaming PC

Started by turkey3_scratch, 16 minutes ago

"

[wyattzx]

I disagree with a majority of your points here...

 

You should not compromise your PC build simply because you'll be unable to afford AAA titles at first. You can either continue to save, or buy yourself a high-end machine now, and just play F2P titles until you have the money for AAA games. There's no point in getting a cheaper CPU, GPU, etc, just so you can afford a game.

 

SLi is not a bad investment, and SLi GTX 970s can actually outperform a single card at the same price. (970 > 980 Ti with SLi compatibility) Yes, you have to work around compatibility, but the performance gains when it DOES come in to play can be huge. Plus, you can buy one now, and one later. Not everyone can afford a GTX 980 Ti right now, so buying a GTX 970, and then another one later can be a great investment.

 

RAM is cheap right now, and there's no point in holding yourself back. As long as the board supports it, I see no reason to get 16GB of RAM for $40 more than 8GB. A lot of games will benefit from it nowadays, and it's only usually 5-10% more on your total cost, even when budget-building.

 

Under-estimating wattage is not good, but there's nothing wrong with overestimating. Especially since a good EVGA 750W PSU can be had for $50, where a 450W will cost you $35. As long as the brand quality is good, there's nothing wrong with plenty of headroom on your wattage, especially with an affordable PSU. 

 

Cheaping out on the monitor? A lot of people will get by on a $120 23" LED TN panel just fine, and you can't blame them. Not everyone needs to spend $450 on a 27" 144hz panel. The nice thing about PC is being able to buy what you want and what you need, and nothing more, or less. You can get a 23" 1080p IPS 5ms response panel for $130.

 

Not sure what you mean by avoid overspending on a CPU. An i5 4690k / i5 6600k is a good CPU for gaming, and anything below that you're more than likely going to see bottlenecks with current titles. Yes, you don't need a 6700k, 5820k, or anything of the like, but you certainly don't want to go cheap, either. You didn't specify a figure though, so I won't either.

 

An SSD is near-essential nowadays. If it's going to make the difference between an R9 390 and a 750Ti, then of course you shouldn't bother. Otherwise, just be a smart shopper. Save $10 on your PSU (this goes back to my comment on quality, affordable PSUs) and $15 on your motherboard, $15 on your case, and $10 on your RAM, and suddenly you have enough budget for an SSD. It's not hard, and it's an absolute godsend. I'd say, in a week, I save a matter of hours with programs, Windows boot time, etc. Convert that to my hourly pay for commission work, and it ends up being somewhere in the neighborhood of $50-60 a WEEK.

 

 

[turkey3_scratch]

Just now, AshleyAshes said:

To add to this one, I've gotten away some some reasonable low wattages.

 

I have an overclocked i7 4930K with a Radeon R9 390X running on a Corsair TX750, no problem.

 

Overclocked i7 3770K and overclocked Radeon HD 7950 running on a CX600, no problem

 

I even have a server running an i5 4970 with Radeon HD 6950 that has to spin up nine hard drives on bootup that formerly used a CX600.  This one, I was considering more watts to allow for the 'high consumption during spinup' I'd read about, but I used my Kill-A-Watt and during power on while spinning up all nine drives concurrently, it only peaked at 200w out of the wall.  I went with an EVGA 650W P2 PSU really just for the energy efficiency for a server that runs 24/7.

 

It'd be interesting to see a 'Workbench' episode covering PSUs in terms of 'How much do you actually, REALLY need?'

Your first one makes perfect sense, that should not draw more than 550W. 390X probably 350W under stress, perhaps more even. I wouldn't expect that rig to use more than 600W ever under stress. Same with your second one, though the CX 600 had something like 540W on the 12V rail (I forget the exact value). I can see how it'll run on a CX 600.

[Bajantechnician]

3 minutes ago, AshleyAshes said:

To add to this one, I've gotten away some some reasonable low wattages.

 

I have an overclocked i7 4930K with a Radeon R9 390X running on a Corsair TX750, no problem.

 

Overclocked i7 3770K and overclocked Radeon HD 7950 running on a CX600, no problem

 

I even have a server running an i5 4970 with Radeon HD 6950 that has to spin up nine hard drives on bootup that formerly used a CX600.  This one, I was considering more watts to allow for the 'high consumption during spinup' I'd read about, but I used my Kill-A-Watt and during power on while spinning up all nine drives concurrently, it only peaked at 200w out of the wall.  I went with an EVGA 650W P2 PSU really just for the energy efficiency for a server that runs 24/7.

 

It'd be interesting to see a 'Workbench' episode covering PSUs in terms of 'How much do you actually, REALLY need?'

@Slick

[SteveGrabowski0]

13 minutes ago, Oshino Shinobu said:

I would disagree with #3. SSDs are so cheap now that unless you're on a really tight budget, I would consider it a pretty much essential component. The amount that it speeds up the general responsiveness is well worth the money. You can pick up 120GB SSDs for less than $40, which really isn't a huge amount. Just getting Windows from Reddit/G2A instead of retail is enough saved to get an SSD. 

Or you could just pirate the os and games if you're not willing to pay their actual price. A 120 GB SSD is a waste, you could put maybe one big game on it. Putting that $40 into the cpu or gpu is a much better use of your money for a gaming system. I don't understand the hype behind ssds. They're nice but I could totally go back to using an HDD as my boot drive considering how little time it takes to boot on a HDD. But I would definitely miss my GTX 970 if I dropped down to an R9 380 with the money I spent on my SSD.

[Bajantechnician]

2 minutes ago, NonaHexa said:

I disagree with a majority of your points here...

 

You should not compromise your PC build simply because you'll be unable to afford AAA titles at first. You can either continue to save, or buy yourself a high-end machine now, and just play F2P titles until you have the money for AAA games. There's no point in getting a cheaper CPU, GPU, etc, just so you can afford a game.

 

SLi is not a bad investment, and SLi GTX 970s can actually outperform a single card at the same price. (970 > 980 Ti with SLi compatibility) Yes, you have to work around compatibility, but the performance gains when it DOES come in to play can be huge. Plus, you can buy one now, and one later. Not everyone can afford a GTX 980 Ti right now, so buying a GTX 970, and then another one later can be a great investment.

 

RAM is cheap right now, and there's no point in holding yourself back. As long as the board supports it, I see no reason to get 16GB of RAM for $40 more than 8GB. A lot of games will benefit from it nowadays, and it's only usually 5-10% more on your total cost, even when budget-building.

 

Under-estimating wattage is not good, but there's nothing wrong with overestimating. Especially since a good EVGA 750W PSU can be had for $50, where a 450W will cost you $35. As long as the brand quality is good, there's nothing wrong with plenty of headroom on your wattage, especially with an affordable PSU. 

 

Cheaping out on the monitor? A lot of people will get by on a $120 23" LED TN panel just fine, and you can't blame them. Not everyone needs to spend $450 on a 27" 144hz panel. The nice thing about PC is being able to buy what you want and what you need, and nothing more, or less. You can get a 23" 1080p IPS 5ms response panel for $130.

 

Not sure what you mean by avoid overspending on a CPU. An i5 4690k / i5 6600k is a good CPU for gaming, and anything below that you're more than likely going to see bottlenecks with current titles. Yes, you don't need a 6700k, 5820k, or anything of the like, but you certainly don't want to go cheap, either. You didn't specify a figure though, so I won't either.

 

An SSD is near-essential nowadays. If it's going to make the difference between an R9 390 and a 750Ti, then of course you shouldn't bother. Otherwise, just be a smart shopper. Save $10 on your PSU (this goes back to my comment on quality, affordable PSUs) and $15 on your motherboard, $15 on your case, and $10 on your RAM, and suddenly you have enough budget for an SSD. It's not hard, and it's an absolute godsend. I'd say, in a week, I save a matter of hours with programs, Windows boot time, etc. Convert that to my hourly pay for commission work, and it ends up being somewhere in the neighborhood of $50-60 a WEEK.

 

 

sli scales terribly.

 

just saying

[Oshino Shinobu]

2 minutes ago, Bajantechnician said:

$40 is the difference between a r9 390 and a r9 390x,

a GTX 970 and a 980, a 980 and a 980ti

That entirely depends on your budget. If you're only just able to afford a 980, $40 isn't going to get you a 980Ti. 

You obviously need to prioritise based on budget and each specific system. $40 isn't always better spent on the GPU, and neither is it always better spent on an SSD. 

I get your point, but it only really works if you've got the budget so close to the next step up. 

[turkey3_scratch]

1 minute ago, NonaHexa said:

I disagree with a majority of your points here...

 

You should not compromise your PC build simply because you'll be unable to afford AAA titles at first. You can either continue to save, or buy yourself a high-end machine now, and just play F2P titles until you have the money for AAA games. There's no point in getting a cheaper CPU, GPU, etc, just so you can afford a game.

 

SLi is not a bad investment, and SLi GTX 970s can actually outperform a single card at the same price. (970 > 980 Ti with SLi compatibility) Yes, you have to work around compatibility, but the performance gains when it DOES come in to play can be huge. Plus, you can buy one now, and one later. Not everyone can afford a GTX 980 Ti right now, so buying a GTX 970, and then another one later can be a great investment.

 

RAM is cheap right now, and there's no point in holding yourself back. As long as the board supports it, I see no reason to get 16GB of RAM for $40 more than 8GB. A lot of games will benefit from it nowadays, and it's only usually 5-10% more on your total cost, even when budget-building.

 

Under-estimating wattage is not good, but there's nothing wrong with overestimating. Especially since a good EVGA 750W PSU can be had for $50, where a 450W will cost you $35. As long as the brand quality is good, there's nothing wrong with plenty of headroom on your wattage, especially with an affordable PSU. 

 

Cheaping out on the monitor? A lot of people will get by on a $120 23" LED TN panel just fine, and you can't blame them. Not everyone needs to spend $450 on a 27" 144hz panel. The nice thing about PC is being able to buy what you want and what you need, and nothing more, or less. You can get a 23" 1080p IPS 5ms response panel for $130.

 

Not sure what you mean by avoid overspending on a CPU. An i5 4690k / i5 6600k is a good CPU for gaming, and anything below that you're more than likely going to see bottlenecks with current titles. Yes, you don't need a 6700k, 5820k, or anything of the like, but you certainly don't want to go cheap, either. You didn't specify a figure though, so I won't either.

 

An SSD is near-essential nowadays. If it's going to make the difference between an R9 390 and a 750Ti, then of course you shouldn't bother. Otherwise, just be a smart shopper. Save $10 on your PSU (this goes back to my comment on quality, affordable PSUs) and $15 on your motherboard, $15 on your case, and $10 on your RAM, and suddenly you have enough budget for an SSD. It's not hard, and it's an absolute godsend. I'd say, in a week, I save a matter of hours with programs, Windows boot time, etc. Convert that to my hourly pay for commission work, and it ends up being somewhere in the neighborhood of $50-60 a WEEK.

 

 

When talking about SLI, I'm talking about SLI from the get-go, not in the future. SLI is great if you already won one card. RAM, because that $40 can go toward a better GPU. Yes you are right about great deals like the EVGA B2, but many people would get something like an 850W G2 with a GTX 970. The monitor, I'm talking about getting something like a 720p TN. I'm nowhere near talking about the necessity of $420 monitors. I leave it up to reader interpretation, but a solid IPS 1080p for a good price is the sweet spot.

 

For CPU, I agree I5 is the sweet spot, I7 is overkill when on a budget. That's sort of the point I made throughout. For the SSD, you're talking about commission work. I'm talking about video games.

[wyattzx]

1 minute ago, Bajantechnician said:

sli scales terribly.

 

just saying

It can, but it can also scale amazingly well. It depends on the title. Yes, a single card is usually better, but if a single, cheaper card now (that pockets you $300 that can go into other things) and another one later can work, then i't usually best to do that. 

[Bajantechnician]

Just now, Oshino Shinobu said:

That entirely depends on your budget. If you're only just able to afford a 980, $40 isn't going to get you a 980Ti. 

You obviously need to prioritise based on budget and each specific system. $40 isn't always better spent on the GPU, and neither is it always better spent on an SSD. 

I get your point, but it only really works if you've got the budget so close to the next step up. 

yeah, i got you,

maybe $900 vs $950

[turkey3_scratch]

1 minute ago, Oshino Shinobu said:

That entirely depends on your budget. If you're only just able to afford a 980, $40 isn't going to get you a 980Ti. 

You obviously need to prioritise based on budget and each specific system. $40 isn't always better spent on the GPU, and neither is it always better spent on an SSD. 

I get your point, but it only really works if you've got the budget so close to the next step up. 

You make a good point, but you can always pocket leftover money.

[AshleyAshes]

3 minutes ago, turkey3_scratch said:

Your first one makes perfect sense, that should not draw more than 550W. 390X probably 350W under stress, perhaps more even. I wouldn't expect that rig to use more than 600W ever under stress. Same with your second one, though the CX 600 had something like 540W on the 12V rail (I forget the exact value). I can see how it'll run on a CX 600.

My Kill-A-Watt pegged the maximum draw of my 4930K workstation machine at about 485 watts actually while slamming both CPU and PSU benchmarks.  Similarly, my 3770K box peaked out at only about 370w.

 

But your post kinda highlights the mental over estimates that people are making when figuring how much power is being consumed and not spending $25 on a Kill-A-Watt to see how much power is ACTUALLY being sucked out of the wall.