i need help building a computer Follow

These two sites are fairly useful to get an idea of what parts good for their price, and both offer complete system builds, which you could use as a guideline or just follow it completely if you didn't want to do any research (although I'd still recommend doing some research before you buy).

http://www.tomshardware.com/

http://www.hardware-revolution.com/

If you want to directly compare products like CPU or GPU, read reviews for whichever product came out later, and it will likely compare the two you're deciding between. Aside from that, this is a pretty useful tool for direct comparisons. http://www.anandtech.com/bench/CPU/2

This forum helped me out a ton, the people here tend to be very knowledgeable and there are sub forums for every individual component if you need to find out more about any in particular. http://www.overclock.net/

If you have any questions about anything specific, feel free to ask. For now I recommend checking out the sites I listed, especially the "best parts for your money" sections and build ideas on the first two links to at the very least get an idea of what a build within your price range could look like.

EDIT: Btw, if you already know most of this and just need a CPU/GPU recommendation, I will say that my i5 760 and GTX 460 ran the game just fine when I played. With that said, a current generation i3 and any mid level GPU in today's market would be fine as well, so it just depends on how much you want to spend. If you do plan on making full use of that $1-1.5k budget, you could grab something like a 7970 and i5 2500k, which should run the game with ease.

Edited, Apr 9th 2012 2:02am by Susanoh

Looking good, though you may want to look into getting 8gb of ram, mainly because it's fallen so much in price lately and can be found for under $40.

For PSU, I usually look for brands I know to be reliable like Corsair and Antec, and check the reviews on sites like newegg/amazon to make sure it's a durable product. AMD recommends at least a 500w PSU to accompany a 6950.

The case is largely personal preference, there's quite a few nice ones out there with a variety of different sizes and designs. My main gaming computer has this one http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119197 and another computer in my house used for web and light gaming has this one. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811147060 Both were just fine to work with and I have no complaints, the HAF 922 is a little big if that's a concern of yours, but it has excellent cooling. There's tons of other cases out there that I'm sure would work just fine, these are just the ones I've worked with.

Can't speak for cooling, I'm not into overclocking so I've stuck with the stock coolers on my CPUs. I can say that if you're not going to overclock and want to save some cash, the stock cooler will likely do its job just fine.

I personally have had great success with Windows 7 x64 Home Premium and Norton 360.

Regarding cooling if you're not over-clocking, I'd suggest keeping with the stock cooler and sticking as many fans into the case as it will support. Aftermarket case fans can be pretty inexpensive (~$10 each) and will keep all your components significantly cooler. Also when selecting your case, be aware if it does in fact, include any fans with it. I learned that lesson when mine arrived and it did not.

Cooler Master HAF 932 Advanced Tower Case
Intel Core™ i7-2600K Processor, 3.40GHz w/ 8MB Cache
Asus P8Z68 Deluxe / Gen3 w/ DDR3 1600, 7.1 Audio, Dual Gigabit Lan, 1394, PCI-E, Quad CrossFireX / SLI
Corsair Vengeance 8GB DDR3 1600MHz CL7 Dual Channel Kit (2 x 4GB), Racing Red
Corsair Force Series 3 Solid State Drive SATA III, 240GB
Western Digital 1.5TB Caviar Black 7200rpm SATA III w/ 64MB Cache
eVGA GeForce GTX 550 Ti SuperClocked 1GB GDDR5 PCI-E w/ Dual DVI, HDMI
Corsair Enthusiast Series TX650 V2 Power Supply

Sub Total:$1,589.92

EDIT: This is what i use at least, and it performs phenomenally.

Edited, Apr 9th 2012 1:35pm by TwiddleDee

What would you recommend i change the 550 Ti with? As for why i chose it because it's good quality for good price.

FFXIV Version 2.0 is still nearly a year away. Unless you absolutely have to have a computer now, the best advice you'll find here is to wait until it comes out and make your selections based on the updated graphics engine.

Your budget is enough that you could put something together that will run XIV well regardless of the changes made in 2.0, but waiting is still the better option. A computer you pay $1500 today for will cost you probably half that come 2.0 if not less.

*EDIT*

The suggestions to slack in the CPU department for a greater GPU aren't good suggestions. CPU will bottleneck the performance of your graphics unless you are overclocking, especially with the power the current high tier GPUs have. For example, I currently use a GTX 480 which is nearly 2 years old now. I run my CPU at what most would consider a high overclock (almost 20%) and my CPU still bottlenecks my graphics.

CPU >= GPU > PSU > RAM > the rest

Edited, Apr 9th 2012 9:24pm by FilthMcNasty

If you're referring to my post, we're talking about "downgrading" from an i7 2600k to an i5. These two CPUs are nearly identical when it comes to gaming performance. Every review I've seen has shown a very small increase from i5 to i7, and I've even seen instances where the i5 pulled ahead in some tests. That's not to say that the i5 is better, but when the "inferior" product can at times pull ahead in tests it only goes to show how razor thin the differences between them are.

The price difference between the two is $100 new on amazon and newegg. The graphics card discussed is the 550 ti, which if you add about $100 to that, you'd have roughly enough for a GTX 560 ti, which is quite a bit better than the 550 ti, as shown in this comparison. http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/541?vs=547

As for the CPU holding the GPU back, I really don't think that's going to happen here. In any GPU review that uses an i5 or weaker in the test system, the GPU performs exactly as you'd expect. Example: http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2012/03/05/amd-radeon-hd-7850-2gb/2 If an i5 isn't holding back a 590, it's definitely not holding back the low end GPUs we were discussing.

I wouldnt even wait till Ivy bridge. If you do get any performance increase it will only be marginal. Ivy is mostly for reducing power according to new sources.

the card would be fine in the current system, make sure you have that i5-2500k running at a minimum of 4Ghz which it should do with ease and on the factory cooler

Unless you are overclocking your CPU, chances are high that if you have a current gen GPU it is being bottlenecked by the CPU. As an example, i7 CPUs(I believe it was a 920 or 930 used in the testing at that time) needed an overclock to 4.1GHz to keep from bottlenecking a GTX 480. Basically any overclock up to 4.1 showed notable results while anything above barely made a difference. That info is from quite a while ago when the 480s were released.

The link you posted is just base clocks. I'm not sure why you would conclude that overclocking the CPU wouldn't lead to better results. Find a benchmark that compares a CPU running at base clocks and then overclocked with the same GPU. The results will yield at least one of two conclusions, in some cases both:

1) The CPU bottlenecked the GPU and the results were better with a CPU overclock to reflect this, or

2) The game was CPU intensive to begin with(Starcraft II and to a lesser extent, XIV) and the results were even better in comparison.


The whole point of suggesting the sandy bridge processors, assuming you meant the unlocked version, is to overclock them for better performance. An unlocked 2500 is capable of clocks well over the threshold for most current gen GPUs so I never suggested they not get this CPU. I was pointing out that for someone who isn't an enthusiast or willing to overclock and stabilize their system, they will see better performance from a better CPU because they generally have higher base clock speeds.

tl;dr


Edited, Apr 10th 2012 7:07pm by FilthMcNasty

There have been scores of 'help me build an XIV rig' threads and I usually see people saying to favor GPU over CPU. Your link does show that the i5 with a higher quality GPU will show good results and I won't dispute that, but the results are on games that are more GPU intensive games and there isn't any comparison between the same CPUs running at different clock speeds that would allow you to draw any conclusion about GPU bottlenecking.



Take a look at this.

It's a benchmark of SC2 which is a CPU intensive game. Similar to XIV it doesn't use Physx and those calculations are CPU bound. The GPU used is the same one I have and there are comparisons between the same processors at base clocks and overclocked. The 2500 isn't represented here, but the closest processor to it posts nearly 25% increase to average FPS. Other similar benchmark comparisons will show the same results and the gap would probably be even larger if the 2500 were tested. Keep in mind that the result from the bench is still bottlenecking the GPU.

Nothing wrong with the build, but the suggestion to downgrade the CPU and the reasoning behind it was why I responded. About the only way the CPU wouldn't hold the GPU back is at incredibly high resolutions that tax the GPU to it's limits. Most people run at standard resolutions.

I love all your comments guys. I been looking at motherboards on new egg and it seems to me that they all have something wrong with them from the reviews that i have read so i am having a hard time deciding which one i should choose since they all seem to be bad.

Every time I see a benchmark of an unlocked SB processor running at stock I want to kick a kitten in the face. You might as well suggest they save even more money and downgrade from the 2500k to the locked version. Spend another 20 bucks on a GPU that you won't run to it's potential...

so i just bought my case and Processor
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=6634207&Sku=A406-2044
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115072 so i cant overclock this processor?

I have that case and I must say I am quite pleased with it. It has much more space than my last one and it allows me to manage the cables so it doesnt look like a monstrous mess (and helps airflow). And I would agree with the majority of people on the i5-2500k for the processor. You really dont need an i7-2600k for gaming.

700w psu would be sufficient for a system with 2x GTX 560 ti (SLI) if it is a quality model.

It isn't the same thing, but the comparison is between the locked and unlocked versions of the 2500. The point was that if you aren't overclocking then you aren't reaching your potential so why bother with a processor that doesn't allow you to reach said potential. I just think it's pointless for people to run benchmarks(or make decisions or form opinions from them) on unlocked processors that aren't overclocked.

XIV definitely isn't a game that uses the processor efficiently and the majority of games don't take advantage of HT, I agree. The i7 does however have more headroom to OC and that will be a factor in gaming, especially for XIV. The 2550 is nearly the same price as the 2500k. I'm not saying the 2500k is a wrong choice, but budget allowing; there is a better choice.

@OP

You can change your processor to any other processor with the same 'socket type'. If you wanted something else later you could remove the 2500k and plug in any other processor that is LGA 1155.

Edited, Apr 13th 2012 1:41am by FilthMcNasty

True but you most likely going to need to flash your motherboard to get the IB processors working properly on it.
Not a big issue but might cause a lot of problems if one doesn't know it. :)

I have that case and I love it. I also have a Silverstone Raven II and I like the Phantom way better. And of course that CPU I have as well with a Corsair H80 liquid cooler. I have a Corsair 850w pro PS - that one looks similar. And of course usually you can't go wrong with ASUS MBs. I'd say you're on the solid right track.

2500k vs 2600k based on your links...

Healthy lead in Aquamark which is a bit dated, but was once standard. Wait, let me check my eyes here... the 2500k paired with 4 6990s was beaten in 3DMark performance by a 2600k pushing a pair of 3870s? confusedjackiechan.jpg

Also beaten by nearly 20% in 3DMark running the same GPUs in crossfire. 5% increase in DX11 performance with Heaven.



Again, there is no other point to using an unlocked CPU so I'm not certain why we would disregard overclocking. Out of the box, the i5 and i7 match up very well together in terms of gaming performance, but that changes when you use them as intended. There aren't any other components(monitor possibly but that's negligible at worst) that really factor into the equation. Your RAM is stable or it isn't. You have enough power or you don't.

It's only a minor upgrade if you don't plan on using it for what it is meant to be used for. Think of it in terms of performance for the dollar; you might save that 100 up front but if you aren't allowing your GPU to perform as well as it could, you're basically tossing that money right back out the window.

*EDIT*
HT will increase performance in games, but since nearly none of them are optimized to take advantage of it, it only comes out to a few FPS. It can however scale up to a fair gain in performance depending on the situation. 83 to 90 FPS not so much, but it's definitely noticeable when your frame rates are not that high to begin with say from 55 to 60.

Edited, Apr 13th 2012 8:44pm by FilthMcNasty

Actually you did. Pretty much your exact words. I even quoted you.


From what I gather you're saying that(as I agreed with and bolded above) the two perform nearly identically with the slight edge going to the i7. You also don't feel that the slight edge is worth $100. If I'm misunderstanding you somehow then you'll have to clarify, but it seems pretty straightforward.


I was with you up until the part about "slight boost". The price difference is static and shouldn't factor in anyway since you are suggesting it be spent elsewhere. Lets just set that aside for now and deal with performance because that's my issue with what you are saying.

The gap in how much the i7 outperforms the i5 increases the more you overclock. What does that mean? It means that the value of the i7 increases in comparison to the i5. So then, if it's expected that people will overclock to get the most value out of their dollar to begin with, why would you base a suggestion on a value assigned to an under-performing setup? That's what I don't understand.

We established that overclocking increases gaming performance. We also established that GPUs are bottlenecked by stock-clocked processors. Increasing CPU performance on it's own will increase gaming performance, but also comes with the added benefit of increasing GPU output. That's even more value added to benefits brought by boosting the CPU.

As far as the comparison of those two GPUs goes, the nomenclature dictates the winner. You don't really even have to look at the benchmarks. Wouldn't buy anything less than x70 to be honest, but x60 is entry level. Anything lower than that isn't going to do well at all. Compare the benchmarks of a 470 vs a 560 clock for clock. Compare the benchmarks of a 480 vs a 570 clock for clock. I see a pattern forming...

Edited, Apr 14th 2012 4:47am by FilthMcNasty

Both of the 2xxx-k processors are not meant for 'average' users. They're meant for people who are going to overclock. To quote the link you provided...





You posted both of the relevant links earlier and they all have the GPU and CPU clock speeds listed. In the newer link from OCC look at the difference between the i5 and the i7. Factor in that the i5 is running a higher OC and the i7 would have performed even better had they matched speeds. (not sure why they didn't downclock the 2500 to the 2600 for the sake of comparison) Now also consider the GPU they tested with...Even bigger gap. The GPU can be OC'd to get more than these results show.

Gotta consider everything.

In FF14 potential of the i5-2500k vs a i7-2600k or a i7-2700k would be approximately 10% difference ( taking 30FPS as a random number this means you get 30FPS baseline with the 2500k vs 33FPS with the 2600k and the GTX 550) mostly due to:

HT - which at most is worth 5% on a quad core from my testing in FF14
Larger cache - 5% approximately based on IPC improvements

the GTX 550 has approximately a 50%-65% disadvantage to the GTX 560, putting this into FPS the 2500k would get the base 30FPS + 50% adjustment for gpu power (conservatively) for 45 FPS while the 2600k would give you 33 FPS.

FF14 is cpu bound but you aren't comparing processor A a dual core at 1.5Ghz to processor B a quad core at 4.0Ghz you are comparing one at 3.7 (stock clocks, no HT, lower cache) to one at 3.8 (stock clocks, with HT, slightly larger cache) or both at approximately 4.5 Ghz (the highend of the overclock within safe voltages spectrum).

As I said before, the x60 is the entry point for any sort of decent performance from XIV. I don't suggest x60 and I wouldn't suggest lower than x80 if the person wanted solid performance.



The difference in performance of these processors running at stock is not the same as the difference in performance of these processors OC'd. They are a lot closer to performing the same when they are not overclocked. They aren't worlds apart when they are overclocked, but in terms of performance for the dollar, the $100 premium looks a lot better than it does when you aren't making good use of the processor.

Also, the OP is considering dropping $250 on a mobo. I just find it ironic that we're arguing over $100 where there is a clear increase in performance, especially considering that it would be money much better spent on the CPU than on the mobo. We're talking about a system being used solely for the purpose of playing a game that is far from being optimized to take advantage of components regardless of what the budget is. You're wasting money either way...

Edited, Apr 16th 2012 12:14am by FilthMcNasty

This in that price range although I think it's cheaper directly from EVGA's website.

Great parts and warranty, stellar RMA service should you have any problems and their community forums are a great place to get help or even ask general questions. If your upper limit is $250 then this is about the best you can get. If you want to put up a little more then the Z77 just came out, but to be honest a basic P67 board is probably more than enough for your needs and it's only about $150.

Like Shadowspell said it really depends on what you want from a mobo, but if it's just for general web surfing, word processing and XIV then the money would be better spent elsewhere. You really don't need to spend that much on a motherboard.