So is this a good gaming rig?

[Wickatricka]

Looking for constructive criticism for this rig. Trying to get the most bang for my buck. The total amount for this rig is 1600 flat. Here are the specs. X's mean I did not apply those features.

Sorry if its hard to read. I can post it differently if people prefer that. Just looking for some pro advice. Thanks in advance.

 

[Phrozenflame500]

Alright, we have an advice forum <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/index/538-Advice-Forum>here. You'll probably get more people who know what they're talking about and your thread won't descend into another PC vs Console war like the last one.

That being said, can you post the price of the rig? The build itself seems is completely fine but you tend to overpay with pre-builts. I can't read apparently. The CPU is a bit overkill for gaming and there is no SSD, but overall a decent choice if you're not going to build especially with the free upgrades.

Also it may be better to take a screenshot of the page instead of using this format, this is really hard-to-read.

 

[Wickatricka]

Alright, we have an advice forum <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/index/538-Advice-Forum>here. You'll probably get more people who know what they're talking about and your thread won't descend into another PC vs Console war like the last one.

That being said, can you post the price of the rig? The build itself seems is completely fine but you tend to overpay with pre-builts. I can't read apparently. The CPU is a bit overkill for gaming and there is no SSD, but overall a decent choice if you're not going to build.

Also it may be better to take a screenshot of the page instead of using this format, this is really hard-to-read.

I will do that. I was also worried about bottle necking. I'm a total noob when it comes to stuff like this so if that sounds stupid please tell me lol.

 

[Phrozenflame500]

I will do that. I was also worried about bottle necking. I'm a total noob when it comes to stuff like this so if that sounds stupid please tell me lol.

Don't worry, there's no way in hell you're going to bottleneck. As I said the i7-4770k can be considered even a bit overkill for purely gaming use, and your motherboard is of good enough quality.

 

[Wickatricka]

I will do that. I was also worried about bottle necking. I'm a total noob when it comes to stuff like this so if that sounds stupid please tell me lol.

Don't worry, there's no way in hell you're going to bottleneck. As I said the i7-4770k can be considered even a bit overkill for purely gaming use, and your motherboard is of good enough quality.

Ah okay. Is a SSD really necessary though? I mean I've read that it doesn't really affect much. Just the speed of applications loading or am I wrong?

 

[Phrozenflame500]

Ah okay. Is a SSD really necessary though? I mean I've read that it doesn't really affect much. Just the speed of applications loading or am I wrong?

They aren't *necessary*, but they're amazingly useful. It's about 4-6x faster(sometimes more) to read a file from an SSD than an HDD, and they last longer and are more durable to boot. Most people put their OS on them to boot up in only a few seconds, but you can also shove a few games/programs on there to and practically eliminate loading times in them (no FPS gain though).

So, basically, they're luxury parts, but they're some of the best luxury parts out there. If you're on a tight budget you can skip out on them, but on a build of that price it's generally recommended to have a decent SSD.

 

[Auberon]

You'll only have to pay an arm and a leg for SSD comparable to HDD in space. Generally it's used for OS and other essentials, as you'll always use it, and a traditional HDD is for storage/non-essential stuff like games.

 

[Vendor-Lazarus]

Seems like a nice setup, though it's a shame about win 8..nevermind, different topic.
Moving along.
It's about the same as the one I use myself ,except that mine is an ASUS.
I got mine for 6000kronor in the end (ca 900 dollars), because of problems with the bundled OS.
The original price was 8000kr.

 

[Psychobabble]

Seems pretty good. Personally I'd nix the liquid cooling and go with a high performance air cooler like the Noctua NH-D14 which I use in my machine. Now keep in mind this is just due to my personal mistrust in liquid cooling systems, not because I have any factual evidence they are in any way inferior.

Also I would also nix the SSD. Once the technology expands and becomes both reasonably affordable and reliable they will be great. For now I see them as an unneeded money sink, with a much higher failure rate than the older standard hard drives.

Windows 8, bleh. If they still sell Windows 7 I recommend that. I find the core changes to 8 not much of an improvement over 7 and the Win 8 UI is absolutely batshit insane. And yes you can mod it but why the hell should you have to.

 

[loc978]

I generally warn people off ASrock motherboards, they have a reputation for near nonexistent customer service when their boards fail or arrive damaged.

...could use that blu-ray drive upgrade if you want to keep up with optical media... though optical media in general is going out of vogue, I suppose.

You've got a lot of CPU and GPU there with sort of low-standard RAM and storage. If anything bottlenecks, it'll be those... so the liquid cooling on the CPU is definitely overkill. You'd be better off with faster RAM, since your board can overclock that to a pretty serious degree... also an SSD would be a good addition.

As an aside, and sort of unimportant... that board [http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157369] does have 10/100/1000 (1GBps) ethernet on it, despite iBuyPower's little list service only reporting 10/100. That was the first red flag that shot up for me. 10/100 was slow back in 2007, nevermind now.

Oh yeah, and they'd better be giving you Windows 8 for free... they'd have to pay me to take it.

 

[gorfias]

Ah okay. Is a SSD really necessary though? I mean I've read that it doesn't really affect much. Just the speed of applications loading or am I wrong?

From what I hear, you need a good enough CPU (Dual core will do) and enough RAM (4 Gig of DDR3 is good) after that, it's all about your graphics card.

TC has a GTX 770 which is very very good. Heck, I saw a double-wide HD 7770 for $95 on Black Friday that will do a good job. The GTX 770 is more like a $350ish card. It isn't the best, but TC should be able to play most games at high, if not the highest settings.

 

[Yopaz]

Seems pretty good. Personally I'd nix the liquid cooling and go with a high performance air cooler like the Noctua NH-D14 which I use in my machine. Now keep in mind this is just due to my personal mistrust in liquid cooling systems, not because I have any factual evidence they are in any way inferior.

Also I would also nix the SSD. Once the technology expands and becomes both reasonably affordable and reliable they will be great. For now I see them as an unneeded money sink, with a much higher failure rate than the older standard hard drives.

Windows 8, bleh. If they still sell Windows 7 I recommend that. I find the core changes to 8 not much of an improvement over 7 and the Win 8 UI is absolutely batshit insane. And yes you can mod it but why the hell should you have to.

I'm going to agree with this entire post and add something to the part about cooling to make it look like I am actually contributing instead of posting an elaborate low content post.

A (some) friend(s) of mine have had so many issues with water cooling you wouldn't believe it. She had to go to a lot of different stores to track down a replacement for one of the parts which was causing problems. After a few weeks of trying to make it work she eventually just replaced it with air cooling. Granted, this is just one system since the friends I am talking about are a married couple, but that has given me a general distrust towards water cooling. I do believe it's great when it works properly though and due to the high heat capacity of water it's probably better than air cooling. Air cooling is easier and there's absolutely no chance that it will cause water to leak on your vital components (this is paranoia not something I've heard of happening).

Now that aside, I went to the site where I assume you're buying this from which means (if I understand correctly) get this pre-assembled which might mean the water cooling won't be an issue, ASRock's customer support won't be the one you have to deal with and finally you'll be able to pick Windows 7 for an extra $31. Take that offer, Windows 8 might improve with time, but right now I would still recommend Windows 7.

 

[loc978]

Ah okay. Is a SSD really necessary though? I mean I've read that it doesn't really affect much. Just the speed of applications loading or am I wrong?

From what I hear, you need a good enough CPU (Dual core will do) and enough RAM (4 Gig of DDR3 is good) after that, it's all about your graphics card.

TC has a GTX 770 which is very very good. Heck, I saw a double-wide HD 7770 for $95 on Black Friday that will do a good job. The GTX 770 is more like a $350ish card. It isn't the best, but TC should be able to play most games at high, if not the highest settings.

That depends very heavily on the games you play. My old dual-core Athlon X2 6000+ from 2007 might run a brand new corridor shooter just fine with a beefy enough video card... but an open-world game with long load distances, or a CPU-intensive strategy game, or anything with a big ol' physics-laden destructible environment... not so much. Same goes for slower RAM... and a slow hard drive can put your load times from a few seconds up to several minutes.

 

[Arina Love]

if you only gonna game, don't waste money on i7 , save money and buy i5 + stronger GPU that will yield better bang for a buck.

 

[Boris Goodenough]

As others have said:
- BLU-RAY drive instead of DVD drive
- Win 7 over Win 8.1
- SDD as primary drive (OS and programs that take long to load) and then a 1 TB as data storage.

Cooling is fine if you aren't OCing, it's even fine with mild OC. All-in-One water cooling has come a long way and is very stable and don't worry about leaks.
The RAM speeds are fine, you won't notice much with higher speeds, other than in benchmarks. Not the highest quality RAM but as long as you don't OC it from spec you should be fine.

So all in all still good with a bit of room for improvement.

I went looking for the Lepa PSU but I could only find reviews of its siblings, and they were OK, so I guess that's good too.

 

[gorfias]

My old dual-core Athlon X2 6000+ from 2007 might run a brand new corridor shooter just fine with a beefy enough video card... but an open-world game with long load distances, or a CPU-intensive strategy game, or anything with a big ol' physics-laden destructible environment... not so much. Same goes for slower RAM... and a slow hard drive can put your load times from a few seconds up to several minutes.

Got most of my info from this guy:


He had a video saying RAM speed having little impact (1333 vs. 1600 vs. 2100) too. I suppose it still better be DDR3.

First I've heard of big load time differences based upon hard drive. It would have to have some impact, I agree. But seconds to minutes?

I probably will never go SSD, but will stick to 7200 6 GBS min. Given your advice, can't be too careful.

 

[Boris Goodenough]

First I've heard of big load time differences based upon hard drive. It would have to have some impact, I agree. But seconds to minutes?

I probably will never go SSD, but will stick to 7200 6 GBS min. Given your advice, can't be too careful.

Well an SSD won't become much slower over time (with normal usage), as search time is near instantaneous and doesn't need defragmentation (yes I know Win 7 and Win 8+ does it automatically).

Also SSD's failure rate is not something the average gamer/user should worry about. Granted you have to buy a drive that has been tested by more than a review site.
Once you go SSD you won't go back, it's night and day in responsiveness and speed.

 

[gorfias]

Once you go SSD you won't go back, it's night and day in responsiveness and speed.

I've heard that they are much more limited in read/write than standard hard drives. Any truth to that?

 

[Sigmund Av Volsung]

It's good, but if the option to go Win7 64 bit is available, go for it.

Win 8 just isn't up to snuff.

Other than, it's more than enough to tackle most, if not all games in the coming years at max at +60fps.

 

[Sir Thomas Sean Connery]

Only 2 things that I would mess with.

1) You can and should get a cheaper case. There's is basically no reason to spend tons of money on a box.

2) Win. Doze. Sev. En. Seriously, don't get 8. It's vastly inferior.

Otherwise great stuff. I feel incredibly jealous of all your "Free Upgrade" stuff.