So is this a good gaming rig?

[GrizzlyCow]

For the amount of money you're spending on this machine, you should just build it yourself. It's not hard. Some people have called building computers "Adult Legos". If you're buying prebuilt, check out Origin PC and Alienware. They're both safer for your wallet. Best is to build it yourself.

If you want more information about choosing parts, you should check out this SA thread [http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3525843].

ASRock Boards are fine, but I never had the pleasure of dealing with their customer service. No, SSDs do not possess any Read endurance, but it does have Write Endurance. Nontheless, a decent SSD will last for quite a bit. You don't need a i7 4770K for gaming. AnandTech [http://anandtech.com/show/7189/choosing-a-gaming-cpu-september-2013] and TechPowerUp [http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/Core_i5_4670K_and_i7_4770K_Comparison/8.html] has some more information, but suffice to say, the performance difference between an i5 and i7 (for games) is not worth the price difference.

Your display is important, and it'll be the deciding factor of what graphics card you need. So, are you going to be gaming at 1080p or 1440p? High refresh rates?

edit: Also, Windows 8.x is not bad or inferior to Windows 7. You can skip 99% of the new Metro UI if you want. Under the hood, it is a bit better, and it does provide a small performance boost in at least one game [http://hardocp.com/article/2013/11/24/battlefield_4_windows_7_vs_81_performance_review#.UppWzBQhbIU].

 

[Vegosiux]

The CPU is a bit overkill for gaming, an i7 will not really have much of an advantage in performance over an i5. Also, unless you're going to go into heavy overclocking...well let's just say even the stock cooler is "good enough". I run mine slightly overcloked, and it does its job.

 

[Get_A_Grip_]

Build seems really good.

I would highly recommend getting an SSD, even a small one just for the OS and the applications you most frequently use.
Regarding Windows, I'd go with Windows 8 and install StartIsBack. Win 8 actually does provide some minor performance increases and has a much faster boot times.

 

[Boris Goodenough]

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?

The only thing that HDDs have over SDD is price, and that huge gap is getting narrower for every passing generation.
http://www.storagereview.com/wd_black_4tb_desktop_hard_drive_review_wd4003fzex
http://www.storagereview.com/intel_ssd_530_review

IOPS is in the low hundreds for a great HDD and in the tens of thousands (some near 100k) with an average SSD.
Latency is in the hundreds of miliseconds for HDDS and in the microseconds with SSDs.

Also for what you are actually asking about sorry it took so long to get it:

Now for some sequantial tests on ATTO:
WD Black 4TB:
http://www.mediafire.com/conv/8a8c1a847f27ad97d532bed3012aea46c3f9a20d5765d9aec43a7e8e0fb870536g.jpg

Intel 520 SSD (older model than the other one I linked, and a tad faster sadly):
http://archive.benchmarkreviews.com/images/reviews/storage/SSDSC2CW240A3/ATTO-Intel-SSD-520-Series.png

Up until around 16k the HDD is a bit faster than the SSD but after that you see around 2½ times in favour of the SSD in raw speeds, now add huge IOPS and low latancies into the mix and we have a whole other beast.

 

[zama174]

Snip.

Alrighty, the rig itself is fine. Like others I'd recommend getting a 32-64 gig SSD for your OS, but it isnt needed. However the problem is the company itself. Ibuypower has a lot of bad rep for shipping DOA parts, unfinished instillation of parts, and sometimes not shipping the right parts in the case. (Ordering two graphics cards but getting one instead.) That being said, their customer service seems pretty okay at replacing them, but if you're unlucky with them expect most likely two weeks to a month to get it up and running properly.

That being said I'd recommend Cyberpower, you can get nearly the same rig for 300 less here.


http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/system/Gamer_Infinity_8800_Pro/

And a rig thats even better for 200 more with this one.

http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/system/Gamer_Infinity_XLC/

 

[The Lugz]

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?

yes, drop the i7, grab an ssd instead

what most people don't know is many i5's and i7's are the same chip with features turned off.
depending on the actual parts, some have different gpu's and core configurations because they are actually built to i5 spec

anyhow, there are almost no games that benefit from an i5>i7 upgrade so you're completely fine dropping that cash elsewhere.

the actual difference in 'feel' using an ssd is kinda hard to describe, everything you do simply feels snappier like the whole pc is a higher quality, and I can tell you i'm never going back, it's just one of 'those' things you want it because it's better.

in technical terms, you're reducing the latency between read and write operations to the main drive since the ssd has no mechanical parts there is vastly less waiting time between accessing different blocks of memory so file intensive operations such as loading 4,000 textures for a game while roaming around the world for example will speed up by a phenomenal amount, and you'll experience less jitter.

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?

for older ssd's the 'only' change was the overall latency, for newer ssd's the total read/ write is actually faster too
and in raid you can copy an entire video across them in about 20 seconds.

harddrive technology is actually surprisingly complex, it's not just a bin to stick all your data in it's much more like a streaming service, think of data retrieval like a youtube video you have x bandwidth and you shove a video through it it either has the bandwidth or not, but then you have complex buffering systems that make the video play even if the bandwidth is too low, at the cost of performance.

another little known factoid about the humble hard drive is the cache, most hard-drives have a block of DRAM stuck to the back of them, which they quickly shovel data into and out of and that makes up the gap between slacking read and write cycles since the dram has a speed closer to your system's DDR ram, some typical sizes are 32 and 64 MB for large or high performance drives

so under some circumstances ( copying one large and intact non-fragmented file, of say 15MB for example )
it would fit entirely in the harddrive's 32 MB DRAM cache and be read in in one coherent chunk and then read out as fast as it can operate over it's motherboard connector ( typically 3 or 6 GB/s this is the bus width, not the DRAM speed which varies. ) ever copy a tiny file from one drive to another with no transfer time? this just happened.

this is why some manufacturers ship 6gb/s hard-drives, regardless of the fact the drive itself is incapable of saturating that bandwidth, the controller can use the dram to burst small pieces of data very quickly across the connection, for file servers this can result in a massive boost in peak throughput.. so in this case, it may be able to best an ssd but for large complicated multi-threaded workloads it doesn't stand a hope in hell.

more modern SSD's such as the newer Samsung 'pro' ssd's, also have a dram cache meaning they can ( with software assistance ) provide speeds of 500MB/sec read or greater constantly, ( and slightly slower write, due to the requirement to 'clean' the data off first, but that's a whole other story ) even with varying workloads due to the tiny latency of the flash drive itself, and the immense I/O capabilities of DRAM.


needless to say I am a proud owner of one of these drives, just because of how damn awesome they are.

hope that helps someone!

 

[loc978]

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:

Spoiler: snip

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.

...all of that setup for testing, and he uses a fairly CPU intensive game (BF3... and he talks like it's impressive that it can utilize 4 threads) alongside a graphically intensive, CPU light game (Witcher 2)... both with small memory profiles. ARMA 2 hosting over 100 players, Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance (developed in 2007, capable of using 17 processing threads... and people act like quad cores are a big new thing... they're a minimum standard now) modded out with 9 AIs and 20000 units on the field... stuff like that should make it into these tests as well. You can bog down a hexacore multithreaded i7 with gaming... just not with the games he used.

As for faster RAM... the biggest thing I've seen it help is with multitasking with games. Whether you're alt-tabbing or using multiple monitors and windowed mode, the faster your RAM, the less likely you're going to see it hang getting back into the game. Its a big concern for me, maybe not so much for some people. Then again, I went from 800mhz RAM to 2133 in one leap. The difference is less pronounced from 1600 to 2133, but it's there.

As for load times, I've seen a game take 2 minutes to load on a 7200RPM SATAII drive that takes about 15 seconds on an SSD... same machine (Borderlands 2, if you're curious). I imagine the SATAII drive most likely had crappy cache, though. Not sure, wasn't my hardware.

 

[gorfias]

Up until around 16k the HDD is a bit faster than the SSD but after that you see around 2½ times in favour of the SSD in raw speeds, now add huge IOPS and low latancies into the mix and we have a whole other beast.

more modern SSD's such as the newer Samsung 'pro' ssd's, also have a dram cache meaning they can ( with software assistance ) provide speeds of 500MB/sec read or greater constantly, ( and slightly slower write, due to the requirement to 'clean' the data off first, but that's a whole other story ) even with varying workloads due to the tiny latency of the flash drive itself, and the immense I/O capabilities of DRAM.

people act like quad cores are a big new thing... they're a minimum standard now)

Thanks guys. I guess I'm worried about longevity though, that there are far fewer total read/writes in the life of a SSD. A guy I know that compiles programs avoids them for that use. I do have to admit that even he uses SSD for his family's builds.

I did just get an HP X2 for my daughter that has an SSD for Christmas. And loc978, I have played it safe with CPUs. I do think using a dual core on a gaming rig not the safest thing to do (they were great in 2007 when Crysis came out). My boy's build has an Athlon Quad 640. My media tower an I7-930 and my desktop an I7-2600K. Do I need that power for gaming? I really don't think so. I don't "need" anything more than my Gamecube. But I don't think anyone who loves this stuff like us sticks to what they "need".

Thanks again all. I will, on my next build, at a minimum, put in a SSD for the operating system.

 

[Suave Charlie]

Personally on my build, i5 + 7950 and 1tb hdd, it boots from cold in under 7 seconds with windows 8 and I just can't justify the price of an ssd when it's that good already.

A lot of people seem to have problems with windows 8 but I think it's bloody marvelous, especially once you realise that you should treat the metro ui as the start menu and not the desktop.

 

[Bravo Company]

Thanks guys. I guess I'm worried about longevity though, that there are far fewer total read/writes in the life of a SSD. A guy I know that compiles programs avoids them for that use. I do have to admit that even he uses SSD for his family's builds.


Thanks again all. I will, on my next build, at a minimum, put in a SSD for the operating system.

Do know there IS a limit to how many write operations you can have with a SSD. You can only write to a SSD a limited number of times, although you can read from them an unlimited amount. However, SSD technology has become better and better at handling this, if a part of your SSD has a sector (a block, so to speak, that data is stored to)that is being written to a whole bunch, then it will start using sectors that aren't being used as much to try to limit maxing out sectors. Either way, it will take you a while to max out the writes to a SSD, but it can happen.

Also, SSDs are not intended to be used for mass storage, ever, there isn't a reason to store music or pictures on a SSD.


As for your build, an i7 is pointless for gaming, we're barely getting good multi-core support now, With the architecture of consoles getting closer to computers, we hope multi-core support gets better.

Finally, you could look into getting an ATI graphics card. AMD/ATI are powering the hardware in the consoles and they have a new graphics api (api is what allows software to use your hardware) called mantle coming out. It could make a huge difference, or it could not. We don't know yet since it hasn't been seen yet. Its just food for thought. ATi's new 290(x) seems to be pumping out huge performance (wait until aftermarket coolers are introduced tho, stock coolers on that thing are HORRIBLE). The 280x is a pretty solid card too, its pretty much ATi's previous top of the line card for $30 cheaper. (its a rebrand tho, but I won't start on a soapbox about that right now...)

 

[prpshrt]

it's a pretty sweet deal considering that you get a monitor included in the price and that its not something you built yourself. I'd say go for it. You can always get a small 60GB ssd for the OS down the line.

 

[Vausch]

If you don't want to spend the money on an SSD, I'd suggest a hybrid drive. They store most of the OS on flash memory to cut boot times down significantly and don't cost much more than a standard drive.

I'd also opt for an AMD R9 280X rather than a 770. They're cheaper and offer better performances too.

That said though, it looks like a great rig. I'm building a similar one myself, actually.

 

[gorfias]

it will take you a while to max out the writes to a SSD, but it can happen.

Thanks, that is what I'm worried about with them. If I just use a smaller one for the operating system, that should limit writes while improving performance.

As for your build, an i7 is pointless for gaming, we're barely getting good multi-core support now, With the architecture of consoles getting closer to computers, we hope multi-core support gets better.

I am trying to future proof some. I posted a video earlier in this thread where a tech guy (Linus) tells us dual cores are about all you really need. Today, you really better have a quad core. Another poster stated there are games even today that will max out all cores.

Finally, you could look into getting an ATI graphics card.

Linus was saying after dual core, it is all about the graphics card. My boys Athlon quad has a 5760 that cost under $100 that is pretty good. My I7-930 has an old GTS 250 that had, at the time, the widest bus (256 bit) in its price range. It is GDDR3 and can't do DX11, but it is very surprising how well it still performs. I bench tested Batman Arkham City on it and got 52 FPS. I only got 55 FPS on the same game on my 2600K desktop with my HD 7970. I wish I'd gotten a GTX 780ti instead, but when I got the 7970, for about 3 months, I had bragging rights on the fastest single GPU on the planet. For 3 months. Still a pretty good card and can be gotten cheap nowadays.

I'd also opt for an AMD R9 280X rather than a 770. They're cheaper and offer better performances too.

This site says the 770 is about 20% faster than the 280X. Dunno how much you can trust a single site, but worth considering. http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html

 

[veloper]

it will take you a while to max out the writes to a SSD, but it can happen.

Thanks, that is what I'm worried about with them. If I just use a smaller one for the operating system, that should limit writes while improving performance.

As for your build, an i7 is pointless for gaming, we're barely getting good multi-core support now, With the architecture of consoles getting closer to computers, we hope multi-core support gets better.

I am trying to future proof some. I posted a video earlier in this thread where a tech guy (Linus) tells us dual cores are about all you really need. Today, you really better have a quad core. Another poster stated there are games even today that will max out all cores.

There is no future-proofing. Hardware prices drop too fast for that.
It's cheaper to upgrade a mainstream-performance rig more often, than to buy a high-end part that will be outperformed by a common part after two years.
The low end isn't recommended if you want to play new titles, but the high end isn't worth it either. Stay in the middle, or just a little above.

Then there's the matter of overkill. Basicly, games have a tendency to make the most of fast GPUs, while fast CPUs are idling.
I recommend visiting xbitlabs, check their CPU game benchmarks and note how little difference a high end CPU makes, when you "only" have the new Titan or a dual GPU setup.
You'll be replacing the GPU long before the CPU.

 

[gorfias]

There is no future-proofing. Hardware prices drop too fast for that.
It's cheaper to upgrade a mainstream-performance rig more often, than to buy a high-end part that will be outperformed by a common part after two years.
The low end isn't recommended if you want to play new titles, but the high end isn't worth it either. Stay in the middle, or just a little above.

Then there's the matter of overkill. Basicly, games have a tendency to make the most of fast GPUs, while fast CPUs are idling.
I recommend visiting xbitlabs, check their CPU game benchmarks and note how little difference a high end CPU makes, when you "only" have the new Titan or a dual GPU setup.
You'll be replacing the GPU long before the CPU.

Good advice and I sort of do that. Depends what a mid level chip is. My I7-930 cost me $200 about 4 years ago and is still fine. I can't see replacing that computer for a few more years. It is noticeably faster than my kid's Athlon quad core that cost me $105. The extra $95 seems well spent.

Around the same time, my buddy was thinking of spending $1K for a I7-980X air cooled. Even he realized it a waste compared to spending "only" $550 on an I7-970. He saved about $300 by buying two GTX-570s in SLI rather than two 580s. To this day, he is able to do programing rendering using the GPUs that do the jobs faster than his 970.

ITMT, as you write, about a year later, I bought my 2600K for $270 which according to passmark, is about as fast as his $550 970.

Thanks for the xbitlabs. I'll check them out.