New PC

[The Sam]

Hey everyone! long time no post.

I was talking to xcon yesterday about suggestions for a new PC and he advised me to ask here.

So I'm looking to get a new PC soon since my current one is very last gen and it's lasted me since 2008. There's a huge amount of games on the way and I want to be ready for them.

Fallout 4
Deus Ex
MGSV
FFXV (a PC version is rumoured)
Hitman
Dishonored 2
GTAV (played it on PS3 and I want to replay it on PC)

I'll use it for development too, but a good gaming rig would accommodate for that easily enough.

I'd like to keep my budget around 900, I'd want this to last me a while but I don't want to go mad

I know for certain that I really want this case, it takes micro atx, and has enough room for two double height graphics cards and plenty of hard drives.
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/showprod ... catid=1489

overclockers have a nice system builder tool, but it would be nice to get the parts separately so I can fun building it, I'm sure it would be cheaper too
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/syscon_i ... =FS-045-OG

I don't follow graphics cards or processors much so I'm not sure which ones to go for. I just want one graphics card for now, not interested in crossfire/SLI and unless I'm mistaken ATI cards get along better with Linux - when I'm not gaming on Windows 8.1/10 I'll be on Fedora for pretty much everything else.

As for other bits, I'm looking for
RAM, 16, maybe 32
400-500GB SSD
don't need an optical drive
Don't need hard drive (already got some decent ones)
On board sound and Ethernet should do me fine

I'm also looking for a new 5.1 speaker set as mine doesn't go above 40% volume for some reason >.<

Any advice or suggestions would be much appreciated, thanks and have a good day

[Wishy]

Hi Sam,

Skylake will be out on August 5th according to a number of different sources. You'd be silly to build a system based on anything else.

8 or 16gb of ram is fine at the moment. 32 is overkill unless you've got some very specific workloads (Heavy video/photo editing, lots of virtual machines)
SSD - the newer PCI-E M2 SSDs will work very nicely - they're a price premium, but they're much, much faster...

Steve

[Freelance]

Regarding the list of games you're interested in, two on there (MGS5/GTA5) you can spec for now, and the others at this stage are going to be educated guesses at best. It would be nice to think they wouldn't "do a Crysis" and hike up requirements too quickly, but over the last few years we've already seen a few big titles that do.

MGS:ground zeroes (TPP prequel) and GTA5 are actually quite easy on system requirements and scale nicely depending on how you choose your settings. There's a lot of data of how well certain hardware works for them. I can get a very nice med-high-ish 1920x1200 performance out them on my ivy bridge i5 3570 and radeon 7850. There's always going to be some variation in how demanding games are.

Personally I'm trying to wait until next year for a graphics card upgrade as amd and nvidia should have full new lines out on 16nm and HBM2, but that's down the road. I'll probably be waiting to see which games are conservative on their graphics requirements until then and playing the more demanding stuff later.

I think the generic boilerplate gaming PC build if you're building now is still a good current i5, and either a geforce 960 or 970 or radeon 280/285/290/380 depending on your budget (with 4GB VRAM for decent life). AMD's new CPU "Zen" is coming next year, but that's not really useful for you building now, and it's an unknown quantity.

[The Sam]

Okay thanks

I'll have a think about it, I'm not really interested in bleeding edge stuff so I'll probably go for a decent i5 and a 970 or something depending on how much I can get them for, and I'll see how I am when most of those games come out next year.

[iMess]

Hey Sam, certainly been a while!

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com

This lets you choose what you want and gives you the lowest prices and direct links to stores to purchase them. Hope that helps!

Note: Regarding Skylake - the processors are likely to come without cooling, literally just the CPU so if that the road you choose, you'll need to consider either a good aircooler (BeQuiet are excellent) or a AIO/Closed loop watercooler.

[Freelance]

One thing to keep in mind with PCPP is delivery costs, they could add up if you're getting the cheapest items from 5 shops that would eat into any savings.

It's also not comprehensive, there's some shops not on there like https://www.alternate.co.uk

[iMess]

One thing to keep in mind with PCPP is delivery costs, they could add up if you're getting the cheapest items from 5 shops that would eat into any savings.

It's also not comprehensive, there's some shops not on there like https://www.alternate.co.uk

Indeed, however most will be available from Amazon. Its good to get a broad set of choices tho!

[Freelance]

I love amazon because of their no fuss returns/replacements. If it doesn't work/breaks then you deal with them rather than RMAing, because they're a general store for all kinds of item rather than a specialist store that'll have you jump through hoops, they just want you to keep shopping with them. They can pay/refund the delivery as well.

[The Sam]

I never heard of those sites before, tried out PC part picker last night, it's awesome. I'll take a better look at it tonight. Thanks!

[Merson]

because they're a general store for all kinds of item rather than a specialist store

Did you really just explain what amazon is? lol

Anyway...

http://compare.eu
http://skinflint.co.uk/

Why buy from Amazon UK when you can save a bomb from buying in Europe? The pound is strong against the euro, may as well make use of that fact. Hell, even use amazon.de/fr/es if you feel uncomfortable, you'll still be saving money.

[Techfreak-SSM]

because they're a general store for all kinds of item rather than a specialist store

Did you really just explain what amazon is? lol

Anyway...

http://compare.eu
http://skinflint.co.uk/

Why buy from Amazon UK when you can save a bomb from buying in Europe? The pound is strong against the euro, may as well make use of that fact. Hell, even use amazon.de/fr/es if you feel uncomfortable, you'll still be saving money.

One site I do recommend is http://www.hardwareversand.de/en/ €12 delivery and discount on lots of prices if you use the links above.

Great links there Merson, have added them to my bookmarks for when the need arises to get newer parts

[iMess]

Hi Sam,

Skylake will be out on August 5th according to a number of different sources. You'd be silly to build a system based on anything else.

Skylake has been delayed for 6months now. If you can wait that long then sure..

[Wishy]

Hi Sam,

Skylake will be out on August 5th according to a number of different sources. You'd be silly to build a system based on anything else.

Skylake has been delayed for 6months now. If you can wait that long then sure..

Not seen anything relating to this. Do you have a source?

[Freelance]

Unless they're talking about when it was meant to be released random roadmaps leaks or some prediction by a guy with a blog 2 years ago.

What has changed recently is cannonlake, which was to be the 'tick' to skylake's 'tock', now there's kaby-lake coming next (2016) which is a second 'tock', and it'll be another year (2017) before intel go 10nm with cannnonlake. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Tick-Tock )

Product releases and roadmaps always see a bit of flexibility anyway, and they'll release to different markets at different times, there will be refreshes, etc.

[Wishy]

Yes, so Skylake on 5th august (Confirmed my many many sources. X170 boards are already being produced, and benchmarks are out), and Kaby in a years time a second tock because 10mm is well behind expected timelines, and intel don't want to wait 2 years for another release.