Help me build my PC 2017 Catch All

Vega 56 might be worthwhile IF (big IF) you can get it at retail.

https://www.hardocp.com/article/2017...

There is one thing that is very clear, AMD is the king of DirectX 12 API performance at this time. It was true with Polaris, it was true with GCN versions before that, and it’s very true with AMD Vega architecture. When gaming with DX12, AMD Vega does not lose performance. This is in opposition to NVIDIA Pascal which seems to lose a lot of performance in some DX12 games.

In other games AMD Vega actually takes advantage of DX12 and provides faster performance over DX11. In every game comparing Vega to Pascal AMD’s new Vega wins in DX12. This allows games like Sniper Elite 4, Tom Clancy’s The Division and even Gears of War 4 to simply play better and faster on AMD Radeon RX Vega 56. If this trend continues, it will be very positive for both AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 and 64 moving forward comparing to the competition.

In DX11 games we also found AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 mostly faster than GeForce GTX 1070. There are some games that performance is neck-and-neck, and some that are a few percentage faster on GTX 1070. Out of the majority of games we tested in this evaluation though AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 came out on top overall. There were some big performance advantages in some games, and smaller ones in other games. Some were as big as 20%, which is very significant.

AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 is a completely different beast in comparison to GeForce GTX 1070 than Radeon RX Vega 64 was to GeForce GTX 1080. The one slow area once again seems to be MSAA in some games, but if you can use FXAA or SMAA shader based AA methods instead performance should be very close.

Interesting (German language) article on Vega undervolting.

They managed to push their Vega 56 to higher clock speeds at 1.1V and beat a stock Vega 64.

An undervolted Vega 64 managed to eke out some extra performance too and reclaim the top spot, but by a small margin.

Of course, the reason AMD cards are volted as they are is to improve yields, so not every card is going to be able to undervolt and then run at a higher clock speed, but probably a lot are. It was the same deal with Polaris, as damn near everyone on an RX 480 was undervolting and running at higher clock speeds (speeds that basically later became the RX 580), myself included.

For people not afraid of a little MSI Afterburner, a Vega 56 might be a bit more interesting than at first glance.

Seeing at-the-wall power draw numbers for well cooled Vega64's that are 10 watts shy of 1080Ti SLI setups on the same other hardware.

I feel like every time I look at a new set of benchmarks someone's found something that makes Vega64 look worse.

Thin_J wrote:

Seeing at-the-wall power draw numbers for well cooled Vega64's that are 10 watts shy of 1080Ti SLI setups on the same other hardware.

I feel like every time I look at a new set of benchmarks someone's found something that makes Vega64 look worse.

I mean I get that power draw is a big deal but in the end if I have a monster system with a 1500W PSU I don't really care about power I care about performance. That's the main issue I have with the 64's. They draw way to much power for their relative performance.

My favorite system of all time was when I ran 3 1440P 32" LCD's connected to my dual AMD 295x system. That system stressed the 1500W PSU I had in it but nothing ever ran the 3 monitor system better than that. Nvidia's multi-monitor drivers were never as good as AMD's and even though it consumed insane amounts of power it was worth it since nothing ran that setup better at the time.

Oh absolutely. The lack of relative performance is exactly why the power draw numbers are so nuts.

You can get the same performance out of a regular 1080 and do it at half the total system power draw. It's so nuts.

At least the 56 is an interesting card.

Manta173 wrote:

Current Build from 2013 with hard drive and vid card upgrades:

CPU: Intel Core i5-4670K 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor
Motherboard: Asus Z87-Plus ATX LGA1150 Motherboard
Memory: Crucial 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory
Storage: 256GB Solid State Drive
Video Card: GeForce GTX 970
Case: Fractal Design Define R4 (Black Pearl) ATX Mid Tower Case
Power Supply: SeaSonic S12II 620W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply
Primary Monitor: Acer G236HLBbd 23.0" 1920x1080 60Hz Monitor
Secondary Monitor: Old flat screen...
Keyboard: Logitech G15
Mouse: Logitech G9x

Ok, I am finally getting around to fixing this poor broken thing. As I said months back in the previous thread... I think the mobo is dead. I got a suggestion of selling off the working DDR3 and processor and then getting a new mobo, processor, and DDR4 ram as that will be a required part of the upgrade.

I'm looking for general suggestions as starting points for an eventual full upgrade as I move through the system. Ideally I will back fill in new parts and have a new machine completely by the end of the year, but I need to do it piecemeal.

I assume there is no way to avoid doing the processor, ram and mobo simultaneously is there?

After I am up and running with those, I will probably go for a new power supply just to give me piece of mind, and from there video card and monitor possibly followed by one of those fancy mechanical keyboards.

I am looking at this parts list from PC Gamer as a starting point.

Processor: Intel Core i5-7600K $235
Mobo: MSI Z270 Gaming Pro Carbon $90
Ram: G.Skill Ripjaws V Series DDR4-2666 16GB (2x8GB) $122

In theory this should be a good core upgrade to tide me over until I get the rest of my parts.

Any thoughts?

I've been working out a PC build for my daughter, and figured I'd bounce it off the thread even though it'll be more of a MIDI workstation than a gaming PC. Her requirements:

- CHEAP.
- Small.
- Low power.
- Will work with MIDI/keyboard input. (Sonar DAW)
- Will play a few older games. Sims 4, Minecraft, Portal.
- Size of monitor doesn't matter.
- Very upgradeable.

I've got it down to ~$500 with monitor. The only part unlisted is a 2TB HDD I already have . It'll be added for storage. There's no discrete graphics, but none is needed currently so we're keeping it simple.

https://pcpartpicker.com/user/LouZif...

The only thing I'm questioning is whether a sound card is going to give a decent return on investment with her use of MIDI/Sonar. She's a beginner with DAWs, but is a talented keyboardist who wants to get into doing more with digital music. Granted, built in sound isn't going to sound as nice... but other than that I have no idea how much or little a sound card will help - or whether (just like with discrete graphics) it can wait.

manta173 wrote:

In theory this should be a good core upgrade to tide me over until I get the rest of my parts.

Any thoughts?

Should be fine, but keep in mind that the biggest payoffs frequently come from the video card, rather than the processor. If you can't afford to do everything at once, doing graphics first would typically give you more of an immediate upgrade. It's quite common for a CPU upgrade to, well, not do very much. If your existing bottleneck is video, a faster CPU will usually improve things only a scoche.

Of course, if the decision is cashflow-related, rather than technical, then it may make perfect sense to do it how you're doing it. But from a purely technical standpoint, the graphic card will usually give you more up front, and then will open up even more later on, when you get a beefier CPU going. This is particularly true with NVidia cards, which drive CPUs very hard.

LouZiffer wrote:

The only thing I'm questioning is whether a sound card is going to give a decent return on investment with her use of MIDI/Sonar. She's a beginner with DAWs, but is a talented keyboardist who wants to get into doing more with digital music. Granted, built in sound isn't going to sound as nice... but other than that I have no idea how much or little a sound card will help - or whether (just like with discrete graphics) it can wait.

Well, it's easy to add one later if you need to. The Xonar series has excellent sound, for instance, and you can get a basic one for about $30.

I think my suggestion would be to run with motherboard sound at first, and see if she's really getting into it. If she's productive and things seem to be happening, then consider the upgrade. Cheaper motherboards tend to have fairly lousy sound, so if she acts horrified at what she's getting, then you can also spring for a better card at that point. Low-end DACs can have resampling problems and can sound grainy and harsh even when working at their native resolution; ask her what she thinks of the sound she's getting out of it.

If she doesn't already know what good sound should be like, then educating her with a good set of headphones driven by quality gear would seem to be in order. (a few tens of hours is usually sufficient, but that means you'll need to let her hang out on that gear for awhile.) Once she knows what good reproduction *should* sound like, she'll have a better idea of whether her computer is doing the job.

manta173 wrote:

I am looking at this parts list from PC Gamer as a starting point.

Processor: Intel Core i5-7600K $235
Mobo: MSI Z270 Gaming Pro Carbon $90
Ram: G.Skill Ripjaws V Series DDR4-2666 16GB (2x8GB) $122

In theory this should be a good core upgrade to tide me over until I get the rest of my parts.

Any thoughts?

If it were me, who is apparently the self-appointed Ryzen cheerleader of the thread, I would get a Ryzen 1600X instead of an i5. Similar gaming performance for the cost plus two whole extra CPU cores for multi-threaded loads. There's a DigitalFoundry video I posted on the first page of this thread with testing comparisons.

Outside of that, yeah, a "guts" upgrade would hold you over fine for now. That GTX 970 is still plenty decent for 1080p60 gaming.

LouZiffer wrote:

I've been working out a PC build for my daughter, and figured I'd bounce it off the thread even though it'll be more of a MIDI workstation than a gaming PC. Her requirements:

- CHEAP.
- Small.
- Low power.
- Will work with MIDI/keyboard input. (Sonar DAW)
- Will play a few older games. Sims 4, Minecraft, Portal.
- Size of monitor doesn't matter.
- Very upgradeable.

I've got it down to ~$500 with monitor. The only part unlisted is a 2TB HDD I already have . It'll be added for storage. There's no discrete graphics, but none is needed currently so we're keeping it simple.

https://pcpartpicker.com/user/LouZif...

I want so badly to scream "Ryzen!" for this too, as that $109 that buys a dual core i3 could get you quad-core Ryzen R3, but integrated GPU plus mini-ITX kinda screws that up. You could get a cheap or used GPU to get around the first part and still get a quad-core well cheaper than you can from Intel, but the mini-ITX part is harder to address, as there are very few Ryzen mini-ITX boards yet, and they're all in 3 digits, not budget boards.

Oh, stupid me, I forgot context and that he was fixing a busted machine, not upgrading. Nur. All I had to do was read back one post further, and didn't. Sigh.

Ryzen would be a perfectly decent option. Just like with the 7600K, it's probably not going to make a huge difference; the system will feel about the same as it did. If you do any kind of real work with the computer, where you're doing substantial CPU heavy lifting, I'd probably go that way. Ryzen is very appealing for many bulk computational tasks.

If it's purely for gaming, the 7600K will probably give you slightly better framerates, but I'm rather unhappy with Intel about the 7XXX series and the deliberately-sandbagged overclocking. They use a really lousy thermal material inside the chips, which causes heat issues when it really shouldn't. You'll still get more frames per second at present running one, but OCing is more limited than it should be.

Oh, another note: the 7600K doesn't come with a CPU cooler, so you have to buy one aftermarket. (you'd want to anyway, the stock Intel coolers kind of suck.) Particularly if you're OCing, buying a good one would be an excellent idea. I'm being slowly talked back around to supporting the all-in-one liquid loops; maybe the horrible luck I've had really has just been horrible luck, and not a sign that they're inherently unreliable. Maybe.

LouZiffer wrote:

The only thing I'm questioning is whether a sound card is going to give a decent return on investment with her use of MIDI/Sonar. She's a beginner with DAWs, but is a talented keyboardist who wants to get into doing more with digital music. Granted, built in sound isn't going to sound as nice... but other than that I have no idea how much or little a sound card will help - or whether (just like with discrete graphics) it can wait.

On board sound will probably tide her over for now. An itx build doesn't allow for expansion, but you can get very good external professional sound cards if she gets more serious.

I don't know much about Ryzen specifically, but I think *Legion* has a point. Most audio software is multi threaded so the build will be better served with more cores.

Basically, I think your daughter will be better served with a mini-ATX build in a compact case with a super cheap GPU. The mini-ITX build allows for practically zero upgradeability.

I'm looking to upgrade, and the Ryzen 3 is tempting for my need, and I feel cheap for this upgrade.

But, wow, the cost of ddr4, it's crazy... Is that normal at the moment?

MrDeVil909 wrote:
LouZiffer wrote:

The only thing I'm questioning is whether a sound card is going to give a decent return on investment with her use of MIDI/Sonar. She's a beginner with DAWs, but is a talented keyboardist who wants to get into doing more with digital music. Granted, built in sound isn't going to sound as nice... but other than that I have no idea how much or little a sound card will help - or whether (just like with discrete graphics) it can wait.

On board sound will probably tide her over for now. An itx build doesn't allow for expansion, but you can get very good external professional sound cards if she gets more serious.

I don't know much about Ryzen specifically, but I think *Legion* has a point. Most audio software is multi threaded so the build will be better served with more cores.

Basically, I think your daughter will be better served with a mini-ATX build in a compact case with a super cheap GPU. The mini-ITX build allows for practically zero upgradeability.

I have a mini-ITX build currently and know its limitations. With good external sound cards out there, the single GPU slot is the one she'll eventually need. At least for as long as her motherboard lasts. We live in 400 square feet with limited power, so our needs aren't typical.

With that said, I've put together a Ryzen 3 system with most of the same components. It comes in at about $100 more.

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/7grthq

Power usage doubles, but a good chunk of that is the video card which is understandable. It uses the Silverstone SG11B case. Slightly larger but reasonable. I added a GeForce GT 730 which will still run circles around Intel's 7th gen core integrated graphics. I also added wifi as it's not included in budget micro-ATX boards for a decent price.

Things to think about while I let this idea simmer...

- I'd be pushing back the need for a video card a ways, but it may be less wasteful to go with a 1050 now if we're buying one anyway.
- We do stock speeds on everything. Does she need an aftermarket CPU cooler on the Ryzen?
- The extra PCI-E slot and two m.2 slots are nice to have.

It should be noted that most sound interfaces for the purposes of recording/music production are typically external devices, usually via USB. I have a USB2 interface and even when I was on a 2009 era i5, I got really low latency. Therefore the lack of expansion slots on a Mini-ITX board aren't really a limitation. I would lean toward Ryzen 3 over i3 mostly because you'll have 4 real cores, rather than 2 cores w/ hyper threading. Music stuff tends to be more CPU bound, so I feel like having 4 full cores would work better.

Thanks! You are correct I am fixing an old broken machine, so the video card is a bottom of the list thing right now which is hard for me to type out... lol

I have always stayed with Intel and Nvidia with my builds as it seems the competition looks good for 6-12 months and then they don't... Brand loyalty sort of, but more watching other people's computers dying quickly...

I know from experience that I will not overclocking even if I like to think about it occasionally, but I will look into coolers.

So, any good place for me to look up fair pricing for the CPU and RAM I am offloading?

Manach wrote:

I'm looking to upgrade, and the Ryzen 3 is tempting for my need, and I feel cheap for this upgrade.

But, wow, the cost of ddr4, it's crazy... Is that normal at the moment?

Yeah, DDR4 prices have sucked for a while now, and it doesn't show much sign of letting up soon. This was from back in April, and shows how the price rise began in the second half of 2016.

LouZiffer wrote:

- We do stock speeds on everything. Does she need an aftermarket CPU cooler on the Ryzen?

No. The stock cooler is perfectly capable of dissipating the heat a stock-clocked 1200 will generate.

I read somewhere that DDR4 is high because of competition from phones for the available supply, which is apparently driving prices up sharply. I wasn't aware that phones used DDR4, but if that source was accurate, they must be.

In the market for a high quality PSU.. you could do a lot worse than this Seasonic 850W for $129

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...

I have some moolah coming to me and I'm waffling what to do with it. I want to upgrade my machine and am waffling between getting a new video card or replacing the monitor. I don't foresee getting money like this for a while so i can't do both.

I currently have the MSI Gaming X 1070. Great card and for the monitor I have it suits it fine.
My monitor is a LG 2560x1080 34 inch ultrawide. (model is escaping me)

My CPU is from around 2014 and is an i7 so I'm confident that won't be a bottleneck if I upgrade the videocard.

So currently I'm trying to decide, Aeorus 1080ti (or other if I'm convinced otherwise), or a *x1440 144hz monitor (model unknown though I'd like to stay 21:9).
I'll have approx $1200 Canadian to spend. So like $50 US. /s

I'm leaning towards the videocard to make the machine more futureproof and when the cash does appear, I can get the monitor at a later time and I won't have to worry about the videocard not being able to handle it.

I also have 2 smaller 20in monitors on either side but I don't run 3 monitor gaming. Just use them for maps or command sheets etc while gaming.

Getting close to my next upgrade.

Currently thinking:

Re-use the most recent parts - case, Hyper 212 cooler, GTX 1070, PSU, drives.

New parts:
i7 7700. Not really interested in overclocking.
16GB DDR4. 2400? Is there any useful difference with faster clock speeds? I read one test/review that indicated you might get 1-2 FPS difference with faster RAM with certain titles on a good day. This does not persuade me that faster is better.
M.2 SSD of some sort. Still getting to grips with the differences here and looking at what is available locally.
Motherboard - I'm looking at a Gigabyte B250 vs a Z270. The specs and features are almost identical. The Z270 supports faster RAM. Any reason for/against the cheaper board?

Well, I recently saw some numbers from CEMU (the Wii U emulator), and memory speed had a pretty substantial impact on frame rates. The three things they were testing were CPU overclock, memory speed (affected everything almost exactly as much), and tight memory timings (little impact on max frames, but as much impact on minimum frames as the other two settings.) My takeaway was that all three things matter.

There were also some Battlefield and Witcher 3 benches posted somewhere in this forum three or four months ago, and they showed similar impacts. Memory speed makes a pretty substantial difference for those games, W3 in particular. Those were just higher-clock tests though (DDR4-XXXX ratings), rather than timings, IIRC. I hypothesize that timings would also have affected minimum frames on those games as well, but I don't actually know this.

groan wrote:

So currently I'm trying to decide, Aeorus 1080ti (or other if I'm convinced otherwise), or a *x1440 144hz monitor (model unknown though I'd like to stay 21:9).

Well this is an easy choice, because only one of them exists.

There are no 1440p 144hz ultrawides. You're pretty much looking at 100hz at best at 3440x1440. Although just today, Alienware announced one that will "overclock" to 120hz, on sale now for $1500. Obviously though, that exceeds that $1200 CDN budget.

So you'd either need to compromise on the refresh rate, resolution, or go 16:9.

*Legion* wrote:

Well this is an easy choice, because only one of them exists.

There are no 1440p 144hz ultrawides. You're pretty much looking at 100hz at best at 3440x1440. Although just today, Alienware announced one that will "overclock" to 120hz, on sale now for $1500. Obviously though, that exceeds that $1200 CDN budget.

So you'd either need to compromise on the refresh rate, resolution, or go 16:9.

Ya, My research and requests were off, a bit. I should have just stopped at the 3440x1440 requirement.
I'm leaning towards the vid card, but which one?! I read a little while ago that the Aorus rates well and is quite quiet. Some people are reporting that the construction is iffy and due to the size it sags in the slot, alot.

Anyone out there with a 1080 TI that they are very happy with?

EDIT:
Although, this looks pretty sweet! Now I don't know?!
https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B016GNX4SE/

groan wrote:

Anyone out there with a 1080 TI that they are very happy with?

If your case/budget will allow it I cannot speak highly enough of the cards that come with a 120mm closed loop water cooler attached. They flat out stay cooler than all the air cooled cards at equivalent performance and noise levels.

My Founders Edition that I put EVGA's kit on is the coolest running GPU I've had maybe since I started building PC's.

If you want some good testing numbers, here's a review of EVGA's hybrid card with some good info.

I have the "non-hybrid" evga 1080ti sc2 and it works great. I don't really have much to compare with, but I bought it because of multiple sources saying how quiet/cool it runs.

EVGA 1080 Ti FTW 3 has been good to me.

Thanks for the input. The EVGA's also come with Destiny 2 right now but I don't think I'll have the $$ before that promo ends.

I just have to decide, stick with my 1070 and jump on that Acer G-sync deal or go 1080TI and stick with my 1080p 34" ultrawide.

It's almost a coin toss at this point.
:/