Need help with a build

[Irishnutcase]

Hey all, I just wanted to ask who ever about a brand new computer build.
Going along with the sticky:

• What is your location? Prices, websites, and deals vary based on country. This is very important. U.S.
  
• What is your budget is your currency? Around 2k
  
• Are you looking to build your own computer or do you want a pre-assembled one? Keep in mind that building your own computer, especially at the “mid to high end” levels needed for Star Citizen, you will get a far better deal compared to buying pre-built. However if building your own is simply not an option, we understand. Don’t be scared though! If you’ve never built before, and have general computer hardware knowledge, it’s easy! We’ll help you out. Bulding
  
• What do you need besides the Desktop Tower? Monitor(s), keyboard, mouse, speakers, headphones, Operating System disc (lol), etc Just what's needed to put it together
  
• Any product, store, or manufacturer preferences? NVIDIA and Intel
  
• What do you plan on using your computer for? Herp, derp, I know. Star Citizen. But certain uses may require tweaks in hardware to be fully efficient. hi end gaming, heavy internet use (fiber connections?)
  
• When are you looking to build? If this computer is strictly for Star Citizen, the longer you wait (generally speaking), the better. However if you need a computer at a specific time, we will cater to that. Generally, you don't need to look into building until a few weeks before you want it. Prices and hardware greatly change over the months.Within a month or two.

I also wandered about the new 1080 card coming out, a couple of people I know are saying get it but is the 980 (ti?) a better deal or is the 1080 worth the wait?

An idea of a build for me might be (theorizing)
i7, motherboard (type unknown as of now, need help in selecting one), 24Gigs of ram (can go higher), SSD hard drives, 980ti or 1080 graphics card, power supply (unknown).

 

[Ripcord33]

I would recommend the 1080, it beats the 980ti in performance, and will be about the same price range depending on manufacturer.

As far as motherboards go, depends on which I7 you go with, skylake processors have a different socket than the haswell series. you cant pick a motherboard until you pick your CPU. and obviously, the motherboard will vary how many sticks of ram you can add, so if its a standard dual dimm slot board get 4x8gb and you have 32gb of ram. Power supply depends on all power requirements of the rest of your build. How many SSD's are you looking at? a good rig can have 1 or 2 SSD's and the rest as HDD. Personally i would go with 2x 500GB SSD's, one for the OS and the other strictly for gaming and video production, while also adding 2x2TB HDD's at a minimum for storage space (I do a lot of video editing and photo work, as well as some modding).

Personally on my tower: I run strictly ASUS motherboards, i have never had any issues with them, and their Intel based chipsets are great quality. I don't have experience on their AMD chipsets. I would gladly recommend any ASUS board that fit your CPU Socket.

This website helps tremendously with matching parts together and figuring out PSU requirements: https://pcpartpicker.com/

Direct Link to new build parts picker:
https://pcpartpicker.com/parts/partlist/

 

[Montoya]

$2k is perfect for a nice build!

 

[Mog_No_1]

Ive had custom PCs and off the shelf PCs over the years. Sold my soul for a custom build 12k many years ago and 2 years later had the bodgy water cooling hose split and fry the internals. Were tears that day.

THERMALTAKE I CURSE YOU!

Upgraded my system Nov last year with an Alienware. They do high end specs within reason and were actually very well priced considering. You can also beat down the sales person in price so dont take the website pricing as gospal. The only negative thing about the Area 51 system from Alienware I have found is that the normal golden rule of keeping your system drivers up to date has caused issues with reading multiple harddrives. A word of advise for the Alienware users, update whatever drivers you want but leave the SATA drivers alone unless Alienware release something. If you want more custom options Origin PC certainly offers anything your mind could conseave but at a very high price. Personally if you shop about and find the right deal through a manufacturer, the cost difference is nominal from a system build ground up by yourself. Then you also get the warrantees and technical assistance a company also will offer when things go to poop.:rolleyes:

 

[Mog_No_1]

PS....you dont need more than 16 gigs of RAM for any game on the market. You only need more if your doing things like video editing or something. If your only gaming get 16 and put the saved money into a better CPU or GPU. Those 2 items alone will kick some goals in gaming and help make the system "future proof".

 

[Murderer]

Do you even lift bro?

 

[Ripcord33]

PS....you dont need more than 16 gigs of RAM for any game on the market. You only need more if your doing things like video editing or something. If your only gaming get 16 and put the saved money into a better CPU or GPU. Those 2 items alone will kick some goals in gaming and help make the system "future proof".

Absolutely correct. I run 64GB because i do massive amounts of rendering between modding for other games and my video editing. If you don't do those then putting that money towards a 1080 and say a I7-6500k would be pretty much future proof for the next 2-4 years at a minimum, my old tower built 6 years ago still runs most new games at medium settings. but my new tower runs them all at ultra with 60fps lol

 

[Mog_No_1]

Absolutely correct. I run 64GB because i do massive amounts of rendering between modding for other games and my video editing. If you don't do those then putting that money towards a 1080 and say a I7-6500k would be pretty much future proof for the next 2-4 years at a minimum, my old tower built 6 years ago still runs most new games at medium settings. but my new tower runs them all at ultra with 60fps lol

Why do 1 1080 when you can go 2? :rolleyes: Its like everything, can always continually up the hardware but you get to a point of minimal actual improvement. Your right though, the requirements for games havent changed much in awhile. My last built rig cost a packet with tri280's (whatever year that was) and then the only upgrade of that system when things were getting sluggish was to tri 580s and ran with that till end of last year. Would still play anything on ultra settings but certain things you could pick it struggling. Dual 980tis now and runs anything like a dream with a Acer Predator G-sync monitor at 2560 x 1440, a thing of beauty. Still the games arnt really pushing the hardware, has been the VR push that will get people upgrading......

COME ON OCULUS RIFT YOU SON OF A BITCH.......GET SOME STOCK AND SEND ME MY PREORDER! :rolleyes:

 

[Irishnutcase]

Do you even lift bro?

Deadlift, Clean, Bench, or Squats?

 

[Irishnutcase]

Just wanna say thanks for all the input! Anyway would it be better to build the computer just swap the current graphics car till the 1080 comes out or goes down in price? or just flat out buy it?

Edit: What is a good RAM set to look at for buying?

 

[Mog_No_1]

Just wanna say thanks for all the input! Anyway would it be better to build the computer just swap the current graphics car till the 1080 comes out or goes down in price? or just flat out buy it?

Edit: What is a good RAM set to look at for buying?

For RAM it depends on your motherboard and what it will take. Then find something that will work in your price range. Ive always had a thing for Corsair Dominator RAM which is a fetish from years back. As for the GPU, if you wait it will get cheaper, but its getting cheaper coz its outdated tech with better cards available. If you can afford it, buy it now and get the benifit. You could always go the 980ti which will dump in price with the next gen cards and maybe get SLI for the same price as 1x 1080. 980ti's which is what I have will still cream any software you throw at it. All depends on what you want to do, what you currently have, if your partually upgrading for a stopgap and most important how much money you want to cough up.

 

[MastahZero]

Just wanna say thanks for all the input! Anyway would it be better to build the computer just swap the current graphics car till the 1080 comes out or goes down in price? or just flat out buy it?

Edit: What is a good RAM set to look at for buying?

From my experience, folks do enjoy G.Skill ram because it hits that "High Speed reaching for lowest buck" and they don't have THAT much (meaning comapared to competitors) issues related to latency.

In terms of a GPU, if you can wait, I say hold out a few more weeks, as the "Founders edition" is just a renamed reference card and letting 3rd parties put their loving touches on them will yield better performance. (Looking at you, ASUS!!) If you want to be in for a longer haul of a wait, you can, alternatively, wait for the 1080/70 Ti's to come out (It's a virtual certainty that they will make these, moreso if the red team [AMD] puts HBM [High Bandwith memory] on their Polaris cards) Those will be a tad pricier but one can only asume the performance boost will be greater than the jump for a 980ti to a 1070.

 

[glockjs]

for around that price point this would be a rough aim: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/x4RhPs