Tweak my PC Specs

A

ATITek

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 6, 2004
Messages
138
Thoughts on these specs for a new gaming PC. My current Velocity Micro is having hardware issues. This is not a VM.

Windows 8 64
Processor 3rd Generation Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3770K quad-core processor
3.5GHz, 8MB Shared Cache
HeatSink Liquid Cooling Solution
2GB Nvidia GTX680 [Dual Bracket; DVI, HDMI, DP & VGA via adapter]
2GB DDR3-1333MHz SDRAM [3 DIMMs]
2TB 7200 rpm SATA hard drive
Secondary Hard Drive No secondary hard drive edit
Blu-ray player & SuperMulti DVD burner edit
MB Pegatron Intel Z75 w/ integrated sound card / 5 GT/s (FM Direct Media Interface bus)
 
Can you not build a system yourself? That list seems to be a preconfigured system.
 
Time out:

-- Are you recycling parts from your old system into this new one?
-- Why are you going with a Z75 board versus a Z77 board?
-- Two gigabytes of DDR3 1333 RAM? Three DIMMs?
-- What vendor(s) are you considering if not Velocity Micro?
 
Sorry, 12GB of ram. Not two. Typo.

http://www.shopping.hp.com/en_US/home-office/-/products/Desktops/HP-ENVY-Phoenix/C9D63AV


I am unhappy with Velocity Micro. I spent mega money on my current rig and it was nothing but issues. I don't plan to recycle anything from it. Sending it off into the sunset. I am having all sorts of hardware crashes on my VM. Time for it to go.

I am just looking for something that is powerful and available quickly like the HP.
 
On my phone so I can't come up with a build yet but I would avoid HP since their parts would actually be worse than Velocity Micro. Try Puget Systems Or Maingear.
 
I purchase for the company I work for. We have over 100 HP desktops and they are all still working after 8 years of use. HP hardware has always been top notch. In fact, my VM has more issues with retail components than any other brand PC i have ever owned.
 
I was talking about their gaming PCs, not their regular desktops.

In any case, I have some questions:
1) What will you be doing with this PC besides gaming? Photoshop? Web browsing? etc
2) What's your budget? Are tax and shipping included?
6) Will you be overclocking?
8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC?
 
Danny Bui said:
I was talking about their gaming PCs, not their regular desktops.

In any case, I have some questions:
1) What will you be doing with this PC besides gaming? Photoshop? Web browsing? etc
2) What's your budget? Are tax and shipping included?
6) Will you be overclocking?
8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC?
Click to expand...

1. Games and web surfing. (Games: BF3 and SimCity right now)
2. $1,500 to $1,800 total
3. Probably not. Just want a decent gaming experience.
4. I plan to buy by the end of the week. My VM is dead in the water.
 
Forget about what brand I buy. I can duplicate these specs on VM, MainGear, Falcon, and so forth. Currently just trying to get some direction on what specs I need for a mid-range gaming PC. I am hung-up on some of the hard drive choices. nVidia is the only graphics card I will use. No 1 brand of PC builder matters to me yet.

My current system has an SLI config, but I felt that was a waste of money.

Here are my current spec selection:


Windows 8 64
Intel Core i7-3770K quad-core processor 3.5GHz // 8MB Shared Cache
Liquid Cooling Solution for Processor
1x 2GB Nvidia GTX680
16GB DDR3-1600MHz SDRAM [2 DIMMs]

256GB Solid state drive
1TB 7200 rpm SATA hard drive

Blu-ray player & SuperMulti DVD burner
CHIPSET Intel Z75 w/ integrated sound card

OR swap the SSD and HDD for 1:
3TB 7200 rpm SATA 1st hard drive plus ExpressCache 16GB Disk Cache
 
CPU wise, you do not need a Core i7. You really wouldn't be able to notice that much of a difference between the Core i7 3770K and the cheapest Core i5 3470 in real world games that'll justify the higher costs. Since you're not oveclocking, you can save money by not going with a K series CPU. As such, the regular Core i5 3470 or Core i5 3550 (whichever is cheaper and available from your OEM of choice) will suit your need just fine.

GPU wise, what's the max resolution of your monitor?

Storage wise, definitely the SSD + single drive route. I recommend the Intel 520, Crucial M4, Samsung 840 Pro, Plextor M5S and M5P series SSDs.

RAM wise, you honeslty don't need 16GB of RAM. You would be fine with 8GB of RAM. With that said, RAM is relatively cheap and if you have room in your budget, go for 16GB of RAM.
 
The monitor I am considering is 23inch running 1920 x 1080. Also, should I go IPS or PLS?

Any concerns of things I would need to worry about with a SSD? Are they as stable as a traditional HDD? I normally run WD Black drives if I am looking at a traditional HDD.

I plan to get about 5 years out of this. Do you think the Core i7 would be better down the road?
 
ATITek said:
The monitor I am considering is 23inch running 1920 x 1080. Also, should I go IPS or PLS?
Click to expand...
Best hit up the display subforum for the answer to that question.
ATITek said:
Any concerns of things I would need to worry about with a SSD? Are they as stable as a traditional HDD?
Click to expand...
Honestly, not to worry about. Today's SSDs are lot more sturdier than past SSDs. If you choose good SSDs, yes they can be just as stable as traditional drives. I've already recommended some very good SSDs.
ATITek said:
I plan to get about 5 years out of this. Do you think the Core i7 would be better down the road?
Click to expand...
Best I can say is "Maybe". Games would have to be heavily multi-threaded by then.
 
I wouldn't count on an i7 benefiting you 5 years from now over an i5 in gaming. Hyper threading has been around forever now and games still don't take advantage of it.

So go with an i5 like Danny suggested. You can spend more money on a better GPU with the money saved where you'll notice real world performance increases in most games.
 
16gb is a little overkill at the moment... if it isn't much more $ than just 8gb, go for it.

However on the talk of ram, if you are making this future proof, you might want a 4gb gtx 680 or 3gb 7970. 2gb is close to it's limit right now, some even exceed 2gb vram with visual modifications.

SSD or nothing at all. As mentioned earlier, those are some good SSD's to select from.

On the talk of CPU's, I'd just get the less expensive i5 and put a nice CPU cooler on it and overclock it. You can get a nice 120mm heat sink fan for under $20 and overclock the i5 way beyond the i7. I have a $20 cooler on mine and overclocked it from 3.3ghz to 4.7ghz and it's been stable for a year now. That's 1.4ghz of FREE power.
 
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