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General discussionBuilding a new computer, looking for advice on parts(30 posts)solved(30 posts)solved
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This is my favourite topic
Posted January 23, 2017
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MJVandershonk: what do you guys think of modular power supplies?

I've never seen them before but I've just been looking at a 650w corsair branded one: http://www.ebuyer.com/724681-corsair-rm650x-high-performance-power-supply-cp-9020091-uk
I have one, had a ton of PSUs, and I absolutely recommend getting one. I have Coolermaster M600.

Non-modular are only acceptable for small cases with little hardware, otherwise you get a lot of useless cables inside - even if you bind them, its going to look ugly and influence airflow.

Speaking of PSU, your top priority should be getting one with good capacitors (Japan and rated at least 105c!). www.jonnyguru.com is a good site to compare them.
Post edited January 23, 2017 by Lin545
Posted January 23, 2017
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MJVandershonk: what do you guys think of modular power supplies?

I've never seen them before but I've just been looking at a 650w corsair branded one: http://www.ebuyer.com/724681-corsair-rm650x-high-performance-power-supply-cp-9020091-uk
That's actually a good power supply unit. From what I read online, the Corsair RMx series is supposed to be one of the best you can get. To answer your question, you should definitely go with a modular power supply whenever possible.
Post edited January 23, 2017 by CanThing12
Posted January 26, 2017
January is almost up so its time I started to get on with things.

I'm going to go for the corsair PSU since it sounds good, I'll be ordering the parts next Monday unless something comes up like a compatibility issue or a part is out of stock.

thanks for all your help and advice guys.
Posted January 26, 2017
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MJVandershonk: Please accept my apologies for the incoming wall of text, its a long reply and its also getting late here.

I just noticed that I didn't make it clear in the OP what I am wanting this pc for. Over 95% of the games I play are older off-line titles (battlefield 2, source engine games etc and the only multiplayer I use is over a LAN so I'm not looking to build a supercomputer for the latest games like overwatch and the like since I've no interest in them.

the main reason that I'm wanting a replacement machine is that out of the three computers I've got on the LAN, this one is by far the weakest. since I only use the LAN with my uncles and they are notoriously picky about what they play the pool of games which we play is extremely small. Since I set up the LAN in 2006 and they started coming over regularly some time after we have played a total list of:

Battlefield 2 and mods
Enemy territory: quake wars
Counter Strike:Source
CS:GO
Insurgency
Day of infamy
A 2 weeks long coop campaign of IL2 1946
company of heroes (1 month tops)

having picky uncles + very few games supporting LAN = very few MP titles taking my interest.

The reason I'm building a mid/high spec machine over a budget/second hand parts 32 bit one is that over time I have built up a semi-sizeable backlog of single player 64 bit titles (transport fever, superhot, satellite rain ect) which wont require a cutting edge system, yet greater than my current one. star citizen is still under development so the requirements will increase over time. this build should let me get into it, though not necessarily at top settings.
Seeing what you want to do with it, an i7 CPU is complete overkill. You can play all that stuff perfectily wel at high settings (1080p) with an i5-7500 (or maybe even lower?), with Star Citizen the obvious exception. And even for that title the recommended specs are lower currently if you can accept medium/high graphics settings, from what I could find.

As for memory; for those titles, you don't need memory that's clocked at ultra high speeds either (though going for the cheapest (and thus, usually, slowest) possible memory is not the best idea either).

Also, since you mentioned you don't upgrade your system often, the mainboard you selected is a really nice board, but why do you need a Z170 chipset? Seems to me H170 (or maybe even B150) would be perfectly ok, and significantly cheaper. See here for a nice comparison table (it's for Sky Lake, not Kaby Lake, but still).

And last, +1 for modular PSUs. I totally agree with the sentiments of the other posters.

Just my two cents ofc :)
Posted January 26, 2017
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MJVandershonk: Please accept my apologies for the incoming wall of text, its a long reply and its also getting late here.

I just noticed that I didn't make it clear in the OP what I am wanting this pc for. Over 95% of the games I play are older off-line titles (battlefield 2, source engine games etc and the only multiplayer I use is over a LAN so I'm not looking to build a supercomputer for the latest games like overwatch and the like since I've no interest in them.

the main reason that I'm wanting a replacement machine is that out of the three computers I've got on the LAN, this one is by far the weakest. since I only use the LAN with my uncles and they are notoriously picky about what they play the pool of games which we play is extremely small. Since I set up the LAN in 2006 and they started coming over regularly some time after we have played a total list of:

Battlefield 2 and mods
Enemy territory: quake wars
Counter Strike:Source
CS:GO
Insurgency
Day of infamy
A 2 weeks long coop campaign of IL2 1946
company of heroes (1 month tops)

having picky uncles + very few games supporting LAN = very few MP titles taking my interest.

The reason I'm building a mid/high spec machine over a budget/second hand parts 32 bit one is that over time I have built up a semi-sizeable backlog of single player 64 bit titles (transport fever, superhot, satellite rain ect) which wont require a cutting edge system, yet greater than my current one. star citizen is still under development so the requirements will increase over time. this build should let me get into it, though not necessarily at top settings.
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skimmie: Seeing what you want to do with it, an i7 CPU is complete overkill. You can play all that stuff perfectily wel at high settings (1080p) with an i5-7500 (or maybe even lower?), with Star Citizen the obvious exception. And even for that title the recommended specs are lower currently if you can accept medium/high graphics settings, from what I could find.

As for memory; for those titles, you don't need memory that's clocked at ultra high speeds either (though going for the cheapest (and thus, usually, slowest) possible memory is not the best idea either).

Also, since you mentioned you don't upgrade your system often, the mainboard you selected is a really nice board, but why do you need a Z170 chipset? Seems to me H170 (or maybe even B150) would be perfectly ok, and significantly cheaper. See here for a nice comparison table (it's for Sky Lake, not Kaby Lake, but still).

And last, +1 for modular PSUs. I totally agree with the sentiments of the other posters.

Just my two cents ofc :)
thanks for the info.

regarding the ram, the lower speed ram at the time of writing is more expensive than the 3000mhz one (see my above post).

Thanks for telling me about those other boards since I didn't know there were other socket 1151 chipsets, I just happened to find that particular one amongst a small group I was interested in and compared it to the other features in asus's z170 line-up and it seemed like a good balance, I was under the impression that the z-170 series was a recently designed board ranging from low end budget to high end use, judging by the features offered.

Since I've already planned my build around it I'll stick with it but its useful to know about the others for future use since sometime in the future I may need to overhaul my other PC.

My brothers PC runs an older I5, sandy bridge I think. while an I5 would run all those things great, I do want a bit of future proofing. I've heard around the kaby lake series has been made windows 10 exclusive for one reason or another and since I'm planning on moving up to windows 7 I figured I may as well get something that will last a fair while (the i7). I might go to windows 10 eventually but I really hate the look of 8/10. if I do move to windows 10, kaby lake uses the same socket so there is the potential for upgrade if necessary, although I have heard there isn't too much difference.
Posted January 27, 2017
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MJVandershonk: My brothers PC runs an older I5, sandy bridge I think. while an I5 would run all those things great, I do want a bit of future proofing. I've heard around the kaby lake series has been made windows 10 exclusive for one reason or another and since I'm planning on moving up to windows 7 I figured I may as well get something that will last a fair while (the i7). I might go to windows 10 eventually but I really hate the look of 8/10. if I do move to windows 10, kaby lake uses the same socket so there is the potential for upgrade if necessary, although I have heard there isn't too much difference.
Yeah, if you want to keep running Windows 7 for the foreseeable future, a Sky Lake CPU is probably a better idea. The performance difference isn't very big anyway.
And if you want to last as long as possible with a system, obviously the faster the cpu the better; still, with the main technical differences between i5 and i7 being in cache size and hyperthreading, I think an i5 would last you several years as well.

All in all, I'm pretty sure you won't have any performance related complaints about the system parts you chose. Actually, for future proofing, I think your GPU is the weakest link :) But that's easily replaceable in the future, anyway.
Posted January 27, 2017
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MJVandershonk: My brothers PC runs an older I5, sandy bridge I think. while an I5 would run all those things great, I do want a bit of future proofing. I've heard around the kaby lake series has been made windows 10 exclusive for one reason or another and since I'm planning on moving up to windows 7 I figured I may as well get something that will last a fair while (the i7). I might go to windows 10 eventually but I really hate the look of 8/10. if I do move to windows 10, kaby lake uses the same socket so there is the potential for upgrade if necessary, although I have heard there isn't too much difference.
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skimmie: Yeah, if you want to keep running Windows 7 for the foreseeable future, a Sky Lake CPU is probably a better idea. The performance difference isn't very big anyway.
And if you want to last as long as possible with a system, obviously the faster the cpu the better; still, with the main technical differences between i5 and i7 being in cache size and hyperthreading, I think an i5 would last you several years as well.

All in all, I'm pretty sure you won't have any performance related complaints about the system parts you chose. Actually, for future proofing, I think your GPU is the weakest link :) But that's easily replaceable in the future, anyway.
I did look at the next series up for nvidia (1070) but there's no way I'm paying nearly £400 for a graphics card. I don't know what the deal is with insane prices like that.
Posted February 01, 2017
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Lin545: Pardon me. This test is huge bullshit.

...
Hmm, it does seem like there are quite a few who agree with you in the comments of that page. Seems like the previous charts they posted were much better. Thank you for replying and bringing this to my attention. What a shame since a list like this would be very nice to be able to reference to.
Posted February 02, 2017
I haven't really followed the parts market in the last couple of years, because I switched exclusively to laptops, but I don't see a SSD on your list, which is the single most important component in any new build. I'd go for at least 512GB, and play games from it. Loading times become almost inexistent even in load-heavy games. And of course everything else will feel much snappier.
Posted February 02, 2017
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Lin545: Pardon me. This test is huge bullshit.

...
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rotorde: Hmm, it does seem like there are quite a few who agree with you in the comments of that page. Seems like the previous charts they posted were much better. Thank you for replying and bringing this to my attention. What a shame since a list like this would be very nice to be able to reference to.
Toms HW Guide had a similar table if I am not mistaken. They try to solve the issue of comparing 5+ y. hardware with more recent one, because hardly anyone benchmarks such hardware range on say 3dmark 2000. But its problematic because newer budget cards while performing about same as highend old cards in old tests, usually outperform these in newer tests with higher API version. Thus is the reason some hardware is incorrectly rated in their test.

Also due to different internal architectures cards behave very different based on load.

This is why a reliable universal test that can sufficiently benchmark a harfware piece whilst minimizing impact of other hardware parts on the score is important, and this is why passmark's table is good source to determine median expected performance as every entry is also a median value submitted by passmarks customers as opposed to individual tests of THG or similar or approximations. But still the small sentence above applies and actual load does affect performance depending on chip arch.
Posted February 04, 2017
OK guys, I have received all my parts and I've built up the PC mostly, I've had to order some cables that didn't come with the parts.

I've been thinking about what some of you said about SSD drives but I don't know what I'm looking for. according to asus, the board I have features an "M.2 SSD port". when I look that up I find its more something for laptops, I've noticed 2.5 inch drives, I'm guessing these were the ones you guys were talking about?

this is one I've seen: http://www.ebuyer.com/695893-samsung-850-evo-500gb-2-5inch-ssd-mz-75e500bw

what would I plug one of these into, are they just going on the standard 4 sata ports on the board like a regular HDD or do they have somewhere special to go?
Posted February 06, 2017
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MJVandershonk: OK guys, I have received all my parts and I've built up the PC mostly, I've had to order some cables that didn't come with the parts.

I've been thinking about what some of you said about SSD drives but I don't know what I'm looking for. according to asus, the board I have features an "M.2 SSD port". when I look that up I find its more something for laptops, I've noticed 2.5 inch drives, I'm guessing these were the ones you guys were talking about?

this is one I've seen: http://www.ebuyer.com/695893-samsung-850-evo-500gb-2-5inch-ssd-mz-75e500bw

what would I plug one of these into, are they just going on the standard 4 sata ports on the board like a regular HDD or do they have somewhere special to go?
Yes, you basically hook it up like a normal hard drive with the sata ports on your motherboard. You also have to use one of the sata power cables from your power supply unit. The SSD you have picked out there should be compatable with your motherboard.
Posted February 09, 2017
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MJVandershonk: OK guys, I have received all my parts and I've built up the PC mostly, I've had to order some cables that didn't come with the parts.

I've been thinking about what some of you said about SSD drives but I don't know what I'm looking for. according to asus, the board I have features an "M.2 SSD port". when I look that up I find its more something for laptops, I've noticed 2.5 inch drives, I'm guessing these were the ones you guys were talking about?

this is one I've seen: http://www.ebuyer.com/695893-samsung-850-evo-500gb-2-5inch-ssd-mz-75e500bw

what would I plug one of these into, are they just going on the standard 4 sata ports on the board like a regular HDD or do they have somewhere special to go?
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CanThing12: Yes, you basically hook it up like a normal hard drive with the sata ports on your motherboard. You also have to use one of the sata power cables from your power supply unit. The SSD you have picked out there should be compatable with your motherboard.
I should have the rest of the parts by this Friday, just waiting on the SSD and a new monitor cable now, I bought a couple of case fans too, I was surprised only one came with the case.
Posted March 04, 2017
OK its been a few weeks now and I've finally gotten round to finishing up. I spent about a week sorting out a damaged windows key and another working out the best way to move my data over. in the end I used the built in easy transfer to move purely the documents folder and user profile, then cloned the old disk to the new storage one and manually went through weeding out the parts I didn't want like programs from the stuff I did like profiles, saves, maps and the like.

Performance wise it boots very fast like you guys said it would and I've not had any trouble game wise yet. the most trouble I've had is looking up how stuff is different from XP like networks. I was able to connect to the LAN and join a game of medal of honour on the other pc although it calls the LAN an unknown network and I cant seem to set it which is a bit annoying.

Thanks to everyone for your help and advice, it was really useful.
Posted March 04, 2017
From Windows 7 forwards, setting up a network was MUCH simpler (talking Windows). No longer did I need to holler for my friend, an occasional support question on the phone sufficed.

Have fun and get a lot done with that new toy of yours!
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This is my favourite topic
Community
General discussionBuilding a new computer, looking for advice on parts(30 posts)solved(30 posts)solved
(30 posts)solved