Gaming hardware recommendations

Forums › Gaming › Gaming hardware recommendations

1 | 2 | 3

2844 posts

Uber Geek

#2240943 19-May-2019 19:48

Torque: Hmmm I have mixed opinions of PBTech - mainly based off other peoples horror warranty/return stories, not my own dealings.

I've been a PB Tech customer for 25 years and haven't experienced any significant issues.

I will look at the Computer Lounge packages. I do buy from them occasionally as they often have things which I can't get elsewhere.

Batman

Mad Scientist
29760 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#2240973 19-May-2019 20:55

yeah good luck, similar specced system on CL cost about $1,000 more

Jase2985

13457 posts

Uber Geek

ID Verified

Lifetime subscriber

#2240976 19-May-2019 21:05

Batman:

yeah good luck, similar specced system on CL cost about $1,000 more

when i checked earlier it was about 50 cheaper for a similar system and it came with a 2tb spinning drive

do your research before making silly comments

Jase2985

13457 posts

Uber Geek

ID Verified

Lifetime subscriber

#2240981 19-May-2019 21:16

identical components to the PBTech one (where i could find the brand) and CL came out $25 cheaper, and has a better PSU, and wifi card.

im not saying go with them im just saying @batman dont make such brash comments when clearly you have no clue

"trust me, I am in with the times"

SpartanVXL

1306 posts

Uber Geek

#2240988 19-May-2019 21:27

If you can wait a few months the AMD zen 2 7nm cpus should be coming out with some serious improvements. As with their previous series, good speed ram is recommended at 3000/3200MHz CL 16/14.

If needing pretty soon then a Intel coffeelake 8700k or similar. What ive found is if you buy midrange you ten to have to upgrade sooner as you wont have the performance you’d like in the future.

Although with the recent Intel performance-for-security flaws i personally wouldn’t buy Intel anymore. Amd is only vulnrable to the inital variant of spectre, not this one and their new chips should have hardware mitigations now.

Plus with AAA game engines likely to scale up (frostbite) Amd core count is appealing, especially if they offer a 16c cpu.

GPU is probably a 1660ti or 2070. Pascal is now 3years (?) old by now, probably want to get a more recent card if you want it to last.

Psu should be a seasonic/Corsair RMx/evga G2 series 500W or so. You’d only get higher unless you actually need it, a mid-range nvidia card is 180-250W and the cpu unless overclocked wont really pass 100W.

Batman

Mad Scientist
29760 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#2240990 19-May-2019 21:33

Jase2985:

Batman:

yeah good luck, similar specced system on CL cost about $1,000 more

BS

when i checked earlier it was about 50 cheaper for a similar system and it came with a 2tb spinning drive

do your research before making silly comments

Of course I checked, knowing that geeks with shotguns are prowling around the place, and I checked again.

https://www.computerlounge.co.nz/shop/ready-to-ship#!categoryId=419&page=1&q=&scid=-1&isListMode=false&lastPage=2&Filters%5B0%5D.Key=Sort&Filters%5B0%5D.Value=1

Show me yours

Batman

Mad Scientist
29760 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#2240995 19-May-2019 21:42

Jase2985:

identical components to the PBTech one (where i could find the brand) and CL came out $25 cheaper, and has a better PSU, and wifi card.

im not saying go with them im just saying @batman dont make such brash comments when clearly you have no clue

"trust me, I am in with the times"

I don't think SirHumphreys is here to buy components to build the cheapest PC around and save a penny for the mortgage.

He wants a PC that games, and lasts 5 years.

He wants a high end Intel or Ryzen (some games run better on Intel, some on Ryzen), big SSD, RTX 2070.

That's what he needs.

In case you didn't know, in gaming, these are the things to focus on to get FPS and loading times. Not the wifi card. PSU won't give you FPS either - it's either sufficient, or not sufficient. It will last 5 years. And I really hand on heart do not recommend anyone to game on wifi. Ever.

Equinox IT

Cloud spending continues to surge globally, but most organisations haven’t made the changes necessary to maximise the value and cost-efficiency benefits of their cloud investments. Download the whitepaper From Overspend to Advantage now.

Jase2985

13457 posts

Uber Geek

ID Verified

Lifetime subscriber

#2241103 20-May-2019 05:41

Batman:

Of course I checked, knowing that geeks with shotguns are prowling around the place, and I checked again.

https://www.computerlounge.co.nz/shop/ready-to-ship#!categoryId=419&page=1&q=&scid=-1&isListMode=false&lastPage=2&Filters%5B0%5D.Key=Sort&Filters%5B0%5D.Value=1

Show me yours

like i said i put in the identical components to the one quoted, one of the ones you posted, and it was cheaper at CL and it was going the be slightly better. nothing to show, im sure you can do the same thing.

and you missed the point, you claimed similar speced CL computers would be $1000 more, which is BS

https://www.computerlounge.co.nz/gaming/core-series

Go there and modify it to suit

like i said im not trying to push computer lounge just trying to dispute your ridiculous claim

Most big PC stores in NZ will be within $100-200 for the same or similar components

SirHumphreyAppleby

2844 posts

Uber Geek

#2241107 20-May-2019 07:10

Batman:

I don't think SirHumphreys is here to buy components to build the cheapest PC around and save a penny for the mortgage.

He wants a PC that games, and lasts 5 years.

Yes, Batman is correct here. I will of course seek the best price for what I end up purchasing, but I'm not looking for the cheapest solution, just recommendations on what hardware is most appropriate for modern gaming. People who aren't gamers aren't familiar with the latest generation GPUs, product lifecycles or driver quality (I recall ATI drivers used to be bad). I only care about video decoding on my personal GPUs... in other words, built-in video is all I'll ever need. The priority for my neighbour's son is essentially something that won't be abandoned and unusable within 5 years. His old Radeon met this requirement with the last system. It's not expected to still be running the newest games at the highest frame rates.

The CL/PB pricing debate is also not relevant. I have an account with PB, so they're usually the cheapest for me (and convenient, head office is within walking distance), but I will consider parts from other sources if it will save my neighbour some money.

SirHumphreyAppleby

2844 posts

Uber Geek

#2244559 24-May-2019 13:13

Does anyone have any recommendations for a specific RTX 2070 to buy?

I obtained a quote from PB based on the system @Batman recommended. The quote includes a EVGA RTX 2070 XC Ultra, which is just under $150 more than a Gigabyte RTX 2070 Windforce (second cheapest card, the cheapest is designed for ITX boards and only has a single fan), but other than a small difference in GPU clock speed, there doesn't seem to be much difference.

I will consult my neighbour regarding disk space, but otherwise I think I have all the info I need.

Batman

Mad Scientist
29760 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#2244587 24-May-2019 13:59

Re graphics card For a normal user, there is little noticable difference. The difference in price is in the specific card design - usually heavily leaning on thermal performance and magic componentry to allow power users to overclock the card. The other is noise, some card are noisier. Finally temperature - some cards run cooler. The final 2 doesn't affect performance by much assuming the case is well ventilated.

FOr the fine details you have to look at specific reviews as you actually never know from just looking at the design.

In terms of how many fans - it's not that easy to figure out if they will do extra cooling. The heat has to get from the GPU to the heatsink to be blown - so heat sink design, material and implementation is as important as how many fans. Then the heat needs to get out of the case. If you release all the heat into the case it's going to just sit there and cause the GPU to heat up.

So I can't say which is better.

The EVGA is factory overclocked. Which probably doesn't mean too much in real world performance but then again you need to look at specific reviews.

Based on that and glancing at some reviews of both cards,

Tl;dr - both cards should have very similar performance.

Batman

Mad Scientist
29760 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#2244588 24-May-2019 14:02

PS i do not recommend overclocking cards. if you do a little tweak here and there, there is little perfomance gain (but yes there is some, but not noticable). If you tweak any more than just a little, sometimes the games crash for no reason after hours and hours of no crash (probably accelerated aging IMO). Then you spend hours figuring out why your game crashed. If you can't find a reason it's usually because of the overclock. That's very troublesome just to gain a few fps.

SirHumphreyAppleby

2844 posts

Uber Geek

#2244596 24-May-2019 14:07

Good advice. Fortunately, they don't care too much about fps, just about being able to play the games. I'll do a bit more research and likely recommend they go with the cheaper option unless there is a compelling reason not to (e.g. high defect rate).

1024kb

1167 posts

Uber Geek

ID Verified

Lifetime subscriber

#2244607 24-May-2019 14:19

I've recently put together an Asus Strix i470 ITX board with Strix RTX 2070, Ryzen 7 processor, 256GB NVMe & 32GB DDR4, packed into a LianLi box. The result has exceeded expectations, I fully recommend Ryzen with Asus Strix kit.

I don't game but I do process video & render 3D. As well as run benchmark comparisons, because this setup scores very well, stomping all over equivalent Intel rigs.

Reliable overclocking is easy. Using big, slow fans the system runs cool & quiet on air.

I'm impressed with the ITX board engineering, Asus motherboarding @ it's best. I've now got a small, unobtrusive box housing a powerhouse computer that I'm yet to see break a sweat. The ITX board required zero compromise, it's got all the ports & connectivity I need.

I had time on my side, this wasn't an urgent build, I'd rather take time investigating & buying carefully on the way in, with the end result being a long-lived computer.

Amazon provided much of the product, for example, I saved $200 on the RAM vs local prices. Trademe had the LianLi case, so cheap it was almost free.

By shopping patiently I was able to upgrade from the originally intended GTX1070 to RTX2070, funded by cheaper prices on the board, chip, RAM & SSD. I figure the 3-4 week delay over local provision has given me a full year on the use-by date.

After reading your project requirements, I'd pretty much repeat my build procedure again.

Megabyte - so geek it megahertz

SpartanVXL

1306 posts

Uber Geek

#2244621 24-May-2019 14:46

Ram prices have come down considerably. At one point you were looking at $400 for 16GB of 3200 cl14 memory.

As pointed out, there is little difference in models of the same graphics card aside from looks/thermals and which manufacturer you had to deal with in terms of their failure rate/return/warranty. They all have the same chip, some might run better due to silicon lottery etc.

I will disagree on the overclocking comment. While it might not apply to Pascal/Turing as much since they hit their max potential quite easily already, OC’ing within safe parameters is perfectly alright to do. Unless you raise voltages to unsafe levels or run the chip too hot (regardless of OC frequency) you will not ‘degrade’ your chip any more than as if you were doing so with regular use.

Perfect example is AMD hardware. Their ryzen cpus automatically overclock using xfr/pbo and their graphics cards are also recommended to UNDERvolt and raise clock slightly as they are set to too high a voltage from factory.

1 | 2 | 3