i7 and a 760? That's not a very balanced combo for gaming, a huge bottleneck there.

If you're not into gaming and want a workstation just buy a machine using the built in Intel iGPU.

It's still a good deal for the hardware alone, trying to match the specs for the cash was not possible:

PCPartPicker part list: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/PwHvTW
Price breakdown by merchant: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/PwHvTW/by_merchant/

CPU: Intel Core i7-4770K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor (£275.41 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: ASRock B85M-PRO3 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (£45.99 @ Ebuyer)
Memory: Kingston Predator Series 16GB (4 x 4GB) DDR3-1866 Memory (£54.98 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Seagate 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Hybrid Internal Hard Drive (£75.99 @ Ebuyer)
Video Card: Zotac GeForce GTX 760 2GB AMP! Edition Video Card (£178.58 @ Amazon UK)
Case: Deepcool TESSERACT BF ATX Mid Tower Case (£28.98 @ Ebuyer)
Power Supply: EVGA 500W 80+ Certified ATX Power Supply (£34.99 @ Novatech)
Optical Drive: LG UH12NS30 Blu-Ray Reader, DVD/CD Writer (£38.49 @ Ebuyer)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8.1 OEM (64-bit) (£59.99 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £793.40
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-02-09 13:40 GMT+0000


Depends what you want, if you're gaming this system isn't good value at all. You're better of spending less on the CPU, RAM and Motherboard and more on a GPU.

If I was after a new gaming PC for this price I'd build this:

PCPartPicker part list: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/zPGmYJ
Price breakdown by merchant: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/zPGmYJ/by_merchant/

CPU: Intel Core i5-6400 2.7GHz Quad-Core Processor (£149.99 @ Ebuyer)
Motherboard: Asus H110M-K D3 Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard (£46.98 @ Ebuyer)
Memory: Patriot Signature 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£27.99 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Sandisk Z400s 128GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£31.98 @ Novatech)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£37.00 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: PowerColor Radeon R9 380X 4GB PCS+ Myst. Edition Video Card (£186.99 @ Ebuyer)
Case: Fractal Design Core 1100 MicroATX Mini Tower Case (£28.49 @ Novatech)
Power Supply: EVGA 500W 80+ Certified ATX Power Supply (£34.99 @ Novatech)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8.1 OEM (64-bit) (£59.99 @ Amazon UK)
Wireless Network Adapter: TP-Link TL-WN725N 802.11b/g/n USB 2.0 Wi-Fi Adapter (£6.98 @ Novatech)
Total: £611.38
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-02-09 13:58 GMT+0000

People here then usually throw up these arguments:

1) It's hard, I can't build my own PC!

You seriously can, it's so easy. And here in this thread I promise to help ANY HUKD member who asks about building a PC, I will even go so far as to help you via Skype if you need it. I'm completely serious - just PM me. Also you have the advantage of building the machine you need, not what someone else thinks is a good configuration and being able to upgrade down the line without sacrificing warranty.

2) What if I breaks down? What about my warranty?!

Most individual PC parts have a three year warranty, if a part fails you send it back and get another. This PC only has a one year warranty, if it has a problem you have to send the entire thing back, usually at your expense - if you've upgraded it during that time you may have lost your warranty.

3) Lenovo/Dell/Alienware/etc are a known brand! I can buy with confidence knowing it'll be a great machine.

Lenovo and Dell have both been caught shipping machines with rootkits/backdoors into their systems that aren't part of a standard Windows install. You cannot trust them.

4) If I want to game I'll just get a XBOX One or PS4 / PC Gaming is EXPENSIVE.

There are plenty of reasons why that's not a great idea/true.


Here's why you have no idea what you're talking about.

Silly choice for gaming as you can get an i5 and a 970 for this price.
However its not a bad deal, if for some reason you needed an i7, i'd just say its a strange combination of parts

I didn't say i7, if you'd have read my comment

These threads always end up with people saying the deal is crap and that there's better around, which is fine, but why cant people post links to THEIR offerings to help us out?

Silly choice for gaming as you can get an i5 and a 970 for this price.
However its not a bad deal, if for some reason you needed an i7, i'd just say its a strange combination of parts

I didn't say i7, if you'd have read my comment

Not bad but slow ass ram for that processor

Good price I guess but I agree with i5 and better GPU would be better

Poor imo. The average Joe will think great an i7 but its a below par GPU and a 2TB drive would be much better replaced with a mid size SSD.

Worth pointing out that unless this comes with Blu-Ray player software which has the Codec for videos you are going to need to buy software as I don't believe any free players support blu-ray video

Yeah, seriously build a pc. It may seem expensive but i guarantee it will last. My build - i7 4790k 16gb 1866mhz ddr3 ssd and hdd - amd radeon r9 390x 8gb gddr5 (sapphire oc) is amazing! Barring a bunch of typical compatibility issues (disadvantage over a console) and troubleshooting being an open ended book (again consoles - call company, they fix - no third parties to contact), its great!

These threads always end up with people saying the deal is crap and that there's better around, which is fine, but why cant people post links to THEIR offerings to help us out?

my brother has just bought an i5/970 with 2tb hdd and 120gb SSD 16gb RAM and it cost £900 so i'll be interested to see where this £600 deal is coming from.

Would you be prepared to build?

You can get an i5 4690k for roughly £180
And a 970 is about £270
The rest of your budget can go on your mobo, hdd, psu, ram ect and you can budget them things and still get good performance

Amazon seem to do the best prices around for Most computer parts, plus I prefer their delivery since you know which days they're going to deliver

Quck google of i5 and gtx 970 brought this http://www.dabs.com/products/zoostorm-mana-white-i5-4460-8gb-2tb-120gb-ssd-gtx-970-windows-10-7877-0843-BP3V.html?utm_source=google&utm_medium=ppc%20product%20search&utm_campaign=Computing%20-%20Desktops%20and%20Monitors%20-%20Desktop%20PCs&gclid=CjwKEAiAuea1BRCbn-2n7PbLgEMSJAABQvTTW7bVAxNN8JqlQLoNi6s8jSVVSFS8LZcvLlfXiYz9ehoC4drw_wcB

Quick google of i5 and gtx 970 brought this as well http://www.box.co.uk/Cube_SPECIAL_i5_3.2GHz_8GB_120GB__1TB__1779393.html?gclid=CjwKEAiAuea1BRCbn-2n7PbLgEMSJAABQvTTMb-urqlW9jMMx76-WhbrtgefTYOqaXsLqzs7CbRJqhoCoHzw_wcB both linked were 679 Im sure if i spent more than 30 secs looking i would probably find a better deal but these are not far off.

£565.72 this is how much it is worth in parts + windows license make it decent deal

OMD!!, hehehe. :-)

It's a few months since i looked around. I was tempted by the yoyotech best buy offering at the time. That's with a 960 which is still slightly better balanced than this one for gaming. But put i5 970 into ebay search and you'll find some options from e.g. freshtechsolutions which are also better balanced for games. Good price for this one though if you want an i7 now and plan to upgrade gfx later (big shift in the market expected this year)

I would still go for an i5 and 970 for the same price - Link. You can get a windows 10 key from reddit for £25. But this is a good deal so I voted hot as it should last a long time.

Isnt erazer a medion brand?

That CPU is bottlenecked by that GTX 960 though, complete overkill.

amazing deal, if I hadn't recently bought a PC I'd get this. The GTX 760 can actually power an Oculus Rift fairly well too (not perfectly but OK)

it might not be balanced for the time being but with that 6600k 4.4ghz OC you'll have a good platform for future upgrades. Think about a GTX '1070' or '1170' put in one of those, the CPU will be a good match.

Not really. People aren't bottlenecking i5 2500k's now with 980Ti's. Plus with DX12 it won't really matter so much any more. If you're gaming just get a cheaper i5 and spend more on the CPU.

i5, 970, 16GB RAM, 2TB HDD and a 120GB SSD for around £600?



PCPartPicker part list: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/QtBf3C
Price breakdown by merchant: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/QtBf3C/by_merchant/

CPU: Intel Core i5-4440 3.1GHz Quad-Core Processor (£148.98 @ Ebuyer)
Motherboard: Biostar H81MHP2 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (£33.48 @ Ebuyer)
Memory: Crucial 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£55.98 @ Ebuyer)
Storage: Sandisk Z400s 128GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£31.98 @ Novatech)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£54.89 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: Asus GeForce GTX 970 4GB Video Card (£249.95 @ More Computers)
Case: Zalman ZM-T4 MicroATX Mini Tower Case (£25.97 @ Overclockers.co.uk)
Power Supply: EVGA 500W 80+ Certified ATX Power Supply (£34.99 @ Novatech)
Total: £636.22
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-02-09 14:39 GMT+0000

No Windows license but you can either buy it from Reddit for £25 or buy it from Amazon for £60.

Slighlty better for a extra 90 quid. Better processor and graphics. Be better to build your own but hey some people can't be arsed.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Intel-Core-I7-4790-4-0Ghz-1tb-8gb-GTX-970-4gb-Carbide-Computer-Gaming-PC-/161722564212?hash=item25a76a7e74:g:IeIAAOSwNSxU~hic

yes but you kind of answered my point. The 6600k in a few years will probably not bottleneck a top-end GPU (980ti in today's standard) as oppose to the cheaper i5. Let's look at it this way, would a i5 2300 bottleneck a 980ti? probably in some games...

a 2300 is barely slower than the 2500k. Sandy Bridge is only about 10% slower than Haswell clock for clock. Haswell to Skylake is about the same improvement again.

Intel are lazy because they can afford to be while AMD flap around trying to bankrupt themselves.

Besides very little gaming is CPU bound, so as long as you've got four cores you're golden for plenty of time to come.

Seems like a decent enough deal. Of course you can get more for your money if you pick out the parts yourself but not everyone is confident enough to do that.

That maybe. However, some of us are still waiting on the link. Please

I've provided them.

Good shout. Agreed, much better than the deal here. My bro's rig has slightly more expensive parts and a larger PSU in case he wants to SLI in the future. Including a windows license he paid £900 assembled and delivered. I dont think its such a bad premium for your first computer to have all the cable management nicely done. He will feel more comfortable upgrading rather than building from scratch. I did the same a couple of years ago.

a beefy CPU is nice is you plan on doing a lot of emulation. I can run (most) wii games at 1440p full speed which is really nice. I appreciate most will just be playing pc game so this wont be a consideration.

I always find it strange when people say they don't want to built a computer themselves so they pass up on a really good deal or a more powerful machine. Even if you don't want to build it yourself, you can easily just buy the parts needed -to- build it from Amazon then take all the parts into a local computer shop who will build it for you with your parts for something like £40. That way it's been properly build and you still have the benefits of a machine where you chose exactly went into it.

I want to build one but I'm only buying it for the sole intention of playing one computer game - Team Fortress 2. I don't know how much computer would be regarded as overkill considering it is a 9 year old game at this point. I currently use an AMD A8 3870k with Radeon 7850 and 4gb RAM. The whole machine is extremely sluggish and the game runs fairly poor with all settings the lowest at 1080p - typically something like 32-40 fps. I want to get a stable locked 60fps at 1080p with everything high/maxed.

Should be good for the next couple of years:

PCPartPicker part list: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/tdVqcf
Price breakdown by merchant: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/tdVqcf/by_merchant/

CPU: AMD Athlon X4 860K 3.7GHz Quad-Core Processor (£58.83 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-F2A78M-D3H Micro ATX FM2+ Motherboard (£35.99 @ Amazon UK)
Memory: Patriot Signature 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£27.99 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Crucial BX200 240GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£49.99 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: Zotac GeForce GTX 950 2GB Video Card (£121.98 @ Ebuyer)
Case: Zalman ZM-T4 MicroATX Mini Tower Case (£25.97 @ Overclockers.co.uk)
Power Supply: EVGA 500W 80+ Certified ATX Power Supply (£34.99 @ Novatech)
Total: £355.74
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-02-09 15:39 GMT+0000

Reuse your existing Windows license/Hard Drives.

Will play games a better quality/higher framerates than a PS4/Xbone.

Surely your current one should run it on high @ 60fps.

I would suggest your current machine, add another 4gb ram , make it 8gb, add a SSD and do a completely fresh install of windows. Make sure you have all the correct drivers, and that shoud give you 60 @1080 tbh

Haven't you just built a machine which is only marginally better then his current set up of AMD A8 3670k with Radeon 7850 there ?

The Athlon X4 860K is only slightly better and the GeForce GTX 950 again not a huge amount in it.

I'd say the same as the other response. Try an SSD and a completely new install of windows on current base and see what that gives for a minimum spend. If not sufficient then the SSD will be useful for a new build anyway.

Can this play minesweeper?

Er? No.

The 860K much faster.




7850 is about equal to a R7 265/R7 270. (Pitcairn Pro was renamed Curaçao Pro).

Remember when comparing to build-your-own or other such solutions, you need to factor in the legitimate copy of Windows.

Absolutely rubbish!

This is a great deal! Somehow you've posted a worse option that costs more....

Ignoring the snobbery of your post & adding to it with my own. As an IT contractor that has also built PC's since the early 90's the original deal is much better than yours & cheaper. If someone doesn't want the hassle of building their own PC because they're obviously not hugely tech savvy then don't advise them to buy an AMD graphics card. That's just stupid for the amount of hassle it will cause with drivers & compatibility issues.

My rig is almost identical to the original one posted here & it will run any game at max settings at 1080p without any issues. Anything above 1080p & yes the graphics card will need updating but the majority will not need or be able (limited to monitor) to play above that anyway.

Your post is crazy talk!

My Dad is bigger than your Dad.

Also what driver issues? I've never had an issue going all the way back to a Rage 128 Pro.

So what setup would you recommend please?

Was tempted with this then thought I would probably build something better value for money (haven't build a pc in maybe 5-6 years xD)

Currently running most games low on:
Processor - AMD A8-3850 APU with Radeon(tm) HD Graphics
Video Card - AMD Radeon HD 6550D
Memory - 4.0 GB
250GB SSD

I play MMOs (FF14 low/ps4, Moba's low, TF2 low, D3 low) which gets me by but looking to going back to lans etc. so need something that is portable,can handle games at a steady rate and that looks moderate/high with possibility of easier upgrades for new/later gen. Currently use a 40" tv to play these games but I have a 21" stored away.

Stuck what parts to get as I've been out the loop for ages. The maximum case would have to be H21"W21"D13" as it will be stored in a little enclosure that has front/rear access for air intake.

If he spent £900 on the i5, 970, hdd & ssd and 16Gb ram he got ripped off.

i5 6600K £202 ebuyer
EVGA GTX 970 (Brands purely random) £267
2TB Seagate HDD £60
120GB Sandisk SSD £36
16GB Hyper X DDR4 RAM 2400MHz £70

Thats only £635


They would be better spending the bit extra seen as Skylake is out its pointless building an older generation system when the newer parts have a lot better availability now.

Would very much recommend investing in an SSD!

you need to add..

motherboard, £120 for half decent one
psu, £50 at least
case, £40+ for something not completely rubbish
cpu cooler @£20 or more
mouse keyboard £20 going for cheap
monitor @£100 at least for pretty basic level

plus a mobo, psu, case, cooling and copy of windows.....

i know right, ridiculous comment.

Any game maxed out on a GTX 760 (or equivalent AMD card)? It might run, but the frame rate is going to be horrible.

Witcher 3
GTA 5
Rise of the Tomb Raider
Crysis 3

Even using my GTX 970 at just over 1500mhz all of the above can't be made to run maxed out at 1080p whilst maintaining a highly desirable 60fps. Considering that 60fps gaming is one of the massive advantages of PC gaming over console gaming, it seems fairly daft to miss out on.

Thanks, been mulling over a new PC - primarily for work related stuff, multi media etc - but always useful to have some flexibility.

You seriously think an i7/760 is better than a i5/970/380x for gaming? Maybe you're in the wrong profession. Your similar rig can run everything maxed out no problem? At 20fps perhaps.

pointless, you can buy a PS4 for 1/3 of the price

If I'm looking for a PC just mainly for HD video processing, (and no games whatsoever), is it best to be looking at the type of processor or video card as the priority feature?
Im sure this machine would probably do everything I need, but as its a bit above my budget, what hardware would I be able to cut back on considering it will never see the internet, let alone any games?
Thanks

Would that be a machine capable of meeting the specs for the Oculus Rift?

Not bad deal. Heat <3

True,
I myself have just got a 6600k for a skylake build

I mentioned the 4th gen since for some reason people tend to still go for the old chipset..

But I had the same thought as you said, lga 1151 so that its future upgrade proof :smiley:

You literally described my build though xD aside from a 250gb ssd and a 980ti instead of a 970

The deal looks fine to me. This confusing in the comments is the exact reason I stay out of PC gaming on a budget as its way to confusing what's a good part? Someone always comes along to explain why its **** and for only a little extra you can get a much better GPU or cpu so what's the point?

£700 oh for £800 you could get this or this.

Like anyone I'd love a super high end PC but without spending loads you can't, its always going to be sub par to someone.

Heat for the deal as it seams good to me, it will run most games high settings, if someone can link to a better deal on a pre-built PC then go ahead.

Also its not how hard it is to build a PC, its that so much could go wrong that maybe they don't have funds to correct their mistakes. Plus maybe they don't want to headache of doing it.

Has anyone ordered it yet? I tried and got email back "We're sorry but unfortunately we are unable to process your order at this time" tried calling and sent email. It took the code £200 off.

Can the optical drive write to bd-r's ? Or is it just dvd-rw ?

the price is well above my price range, anybody got an idea on a good price for a machine that will play a wii emulatgor or tombraider on a 1080 tv but on a budget with an option to upgrade in the future to the graphics card?

Is this any good for playing solitaire on

I say great minds think alike

And thanks for the compliment : )

Ollie87 Ive read through this thread and although im not in the market for a PC your enthusiasm has almost made me want to build one, something ive not done for about 20 years... Hats off sir. You deserve credit for your sincere offers to assist people.

Good man... You get a Freezin Wolf thumbs up..

Not in that way you filthy beast!

Is it uglier than a 50 year old strippers 'flaps' - yes.

Then it's a perfect gaming PC.

Its a deal, voted hot!
Ignore the so called gamer builders, who remind me very much of the HI-Fi crowd.

Happily building my own gamer Pc since 1992 :P

I can't believe my hilarious and blatent comedy post was removed and i got a ticking off from a mod...

Booo... It was well funny!

Seems reasonable deal to me and ive built a fair few pcs. Gtx 760 in my current machine and is does high settings with good fps at 1080p. Admitedly its now the most outdated part in My machines but its a good gpu.

im after something that can handle 30-40Mb raw files for photo editing and 4K video editing, will this do or any suggestions? Prefer to buy form Amazon. Thanks.

It isn't a huge bottleneck, that GPU runs very well with that CPU and only has a slight bottleneck

I don't think you grasp how unbalanced it is. You could swap to an i3 and not seen a decrease in gaming performance in 9.5/10 games.

An i7 is pointless for any gaming build that doesn't have multiple GPUs. It's just a waste.

Interesting thread... Or is it.

It's an unbalanced system if you are buying it purely for gaming. Which is completely down to the individual. If you do some gaming now and then, some indie games maybe, and want more power than what the iGPU gives but need more CPU power for other tasks, I'd say it's balanced.

ollie87 added another like to your first reply. I am (in the near future) a PC building convert. Thanks.

Well you didn't state that :wink:

Is that because none of the current games are mostly single core bound? Wouldn't this change with future games on DX12 which can use multiple cores?

I didn't get that far. Marketing nonsense :stuck_out_tongue:

Wow, that's an ugly case.

Any clue on the PSU they use in these? Certainly one of the most important components in any computer, regardless of its intended use.

I think the key issue here is much less that the card sucks, cos it isn't terrible, and much more that the CPU is overkill comparative to the rest of the build, and completely unnecessary if the intended use is gaming.

Ollie87, nice to see some Linus appreciation here :smiley:

DX12 even though it makes more use of the CPU with much less overhead, core performance is still important.
An i7 might be more be beneficial in future titles if the extra threads used improve overall performance. We need more games.

I got the i5 version of this back in 2014 and everything on the inside screams cheap from the 625w PSU, the loud CPU cooler, generic RAM to the stock 760 with a blower fan which sounds like a jet engine.

Think of it like a funnel, the GPU pours water into the funnel, the better the CPU the wider the funnel. A weak CPU with a powerful GPU the water gets stuck, since only so much water can get through the thin funnel. This is the opposite, like pisising into the grand canyon, you've wasted money on a nice wide funnel with little water to pour into it.

Too many gamers around here.

This would be a good system for audio, right? Once an audio interface is added of course.

The GTX 760 doesn't have full DX12 support though.

No current GPU is "Full DX12 support" so to speak. Feature levels are only part of it. If you include optional features and tiers, none do.

The most beneficial feature of DX12 is the low level nature of it and the reduced overhead. Which is supported by any GPU that has support for the API, at the most basic level.

Been a long time since I built a PC Ati Rage days, use to do it as a living. My last PCs ended up being Dells with Quad Core 6600 (at the time good specs) because they got posted here at an amazing price; still going strong one runs as a Windows Media Center and the other one runs as a hackintosh.

Been looking at upgrading last week to something modern to do Video and Photo stuff dual Windows and Hackintosh. The banter on this thread has been really useful in pros and cons of component pairings.

point proven. still cost more than a ps4.

It's a PC though. Much more capable :stuck_out_tongue:

What inputs do my monitors (2) need for dual display?

I really don't understand people like ollie87 being so evangelistic..
Having been building PCs since the late 80s early 90s when it was much more financially viable i am well aware of the pitfalls and whilst they only happen rarely they do happen and can be devastating.
I recently built a PC for a friend and defying the 0.01 or so failure rate the PSU arrived with a non spinning fan, being a purist i never plug a new psu into a mainboard until its passed my tester so didn't catch me by surprise but to anovice builder this could have been devastating both financially and mentally.
Lego indeed.
Also typical of a fanboi is the tunnel vision, not all games use GPU/CPUs to the same extent, strategy games/ AI based games for example rely much more on CPU power.

In the Basket Summary on the right it says eCoupon in blue, click on that and add the code.

Ollie just wondering whether u could give advice on a pc build. I aim to be able to max up City Skylines and Flight simulator X , which apparently require quite a powerfull pc, could you please give me a pc build please? is it i5 and gtx970 MSI a good combo? cheers mate :smiley:

for excel maybe. PC gaming is just far too technical worrying about frames per second benchmarking this that and the other. console gaming just wack in disk and play.

No SSD - cold.

That's fine, why are you here then if your PS4 is so great? Cool trolling mate, super cool dude right here.

Enjoying 900p at 30fps?

Fairly certain you've got your funnel back to front :/
CPU -> GPU

Not in gaming.

I don't get why people still praise the GTX 970.

Take into account Nvidia's 4gb vram advertising fraud. (3.5gb in reality).

The fact that Maxwell GPUs (GTX 970) will not run Directx 12 very well. Maxwell cannot do parallel rendering well; only serial. Nvidia Maxwell architecture is built for sequential processing, amd is built better for parallel processing. Dx11 favours sequential, Dx12 favours parallelism.

This is why many AMD cards benchmarked better in Dx12

If you think Nvidia's false advertising was shady then wait till you read this: http://www.overclock3d.net/articles/gpu_displays/oxide_developer_says_nvidia_was_pressuring_them_to_change_their_dx12_benchmark/1

There's not a chance I would pay over £200 for a GTX 970.

Once you experience all your favourite games in glorious 60fps (or even more, the wonders of PC!), you ain't going to want to go back to the console experience of most games being 30fps at best and dipping into the 20s, if not even the teens when things start to get a bit hectic, i.e exactly when you want a decent frame rate so you can actually control what's going on properly.

PC gaming is easy. Buy/build a system based around an i5 4690(k) or i5 6600(k) and either a NVidia GTX970 or an AMD R9 390. Sorted. In almost (I only say almost to cover my back, I can't think of any exclusions off the top of my head) every game you'll get 60fps @ 1080p with the details turned up higher than a PS4 will ever manage. You can even use a PS4 controller if you like.

As for benchmarking, you really don't need to even worry about it if you don't want to, it's just a thing some PC gamers enjoy. That's the wonderful thing about PC, there's so much choice :smiley:!

I think (s)he meant that CPU provides instructions to the GPU, not the other way around.

Yeah - actually you're right I'm sure they meant that.

It's a bit more nuanced than that any way - since it depends on your system. In the case of this Lenovo the CPU is just there idling away while the GPU is going hell for leather. Bit of a waste, it's always much better to get a balanced system.

There's a couple of things the GTX 970 has going for it (coming from someone who prefers AMD):

1) Support (not that it really matters now-a-days) - it's the most popular GPU on the Steam surveys currently which means devs will target it
2) Although Gameworks **** over anyone who doesn't have a newer nVidia card it does put the 950/960/970/980 at an advantage when games first launch. The latest AAA titles always play best on launch on these cards, can sometimes take a week or two for AMD to catch up to the optimisation.
3) It tends to be super quiet and does (only marginally) tend to run cooler than the R9 290/R9 390 etc
4) It had an mITX version before AMD could make one - which meant a lot of people bought them for HTPCs
5) Linux support is better than what AMD can offer right now, although that is changing.
6) In my experience nVidia GPUs tend to work better than AMD ones with weaker CPUs. GTA V with my R9 280 and G3258 was unplayable until I moved to a i5-4670k but people with weaker nVidia cards and the same CPU seemed to have no issues.

Yup, total waste. An i5 4690k/6600k paired with either a GTX 970 or R9 390 would run absolute rings around this in every game I can think of for a similar overall CPU and GPU total outlay.

not really interested in gaming but would this be suited as an office pc .

I would build it myself cos you would use a real SSD and a real Gaming card and an i5 quad.

Old tech and expensive. What is there to love.

Needing a new music workstation pc, I think this would do the job?

Would've been a good post if you didn't have to include bs pcmr link. Anyways thanks op ordered for my lil bro

I disagree. Once a part goes wrong, you then stress out trying to source the root cause of the issue. PC's are a headache and you have to be prepared for this when you buy one.

Also, consoles - You contact one company.....PC's - Potentially multiple companies (and you run the risk of them passing the buck - Also, imagine having to contact multiple companies using heavy accented Indian contact centres where they cannot discern a G from a D). It's all about what works for you though. I game on PC and consoles. There are advantages and disadvantages to each, but both mediums have relevance to different audiences of gamers.

It saddens me to see people (at the extreme - Not in this case, nor the person replying to) squabbling over what is best and being boastful and elitist. What can you do though?

Wait, what? In the age we're in, PC and Console gaming have never been so similar. Digital download is commonplace on consoles, as is Hard drive installation of games. Playing on a console is no more 'whack the disk in and play' than a PC is in this day and age, even if you do purchase a physical copy of the game.

PC gaming, in terms of graphical capability, is far superior to console gaming. Yes, console gaming has a lot going for it, especially for the casual gaming masses, but to say a PC isn't a more capable piece of hardware is just straight up incorrect. Most mid ranged PCs far surpass consoles in terms hardware capability, and not for a whole lot more in terms of cost.

So buy this and get a 1 year warranty or build yourself for 5-10 year warranty? Hmmm...

Not sure why this deal is voted so hot?

Also personally I never saw the point in having an "Overclockable" processor when you can get a faster non-overclocked processor - aren't you just stressing the processor/system unnecessarily just for the extra few % of performance?

​Not actually true, higher ram will increase frames a bit

I'm sorry but that's completely false.

Evidence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWgzA2C61z4

​Thw 760 doesn't run everything at Max 1080p 60fps any more. Newer games seem much more taxing to it. I literally SLI'd mine in the past few days and now it's back to maxing everything at optimal fps.

A video from 2013...

Check this one out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Er_Fuz54U0Y

Console gaming isn't just whack a disk in and play. Not in this day and age. You have to install it like you do with a PC.

If you think all you can do apart from game on a PC is run excel then all hope is lost.

Your video isn't comparable since we're talking about DDR3, not 4 in a Haswell based system like in the video I posted.

That's not comparable either since they're throwing in different CPUs are variables. I've not built a DDR4 system yet but I imagine like there was with DDR3 there is a sweet spot where spending more on RAM doesn't really increase your gaming performance any more.

I imagine we'll get a better comparison once DDR4 is more mainstream (and AMD start using it it too).

The point was... Memory speed makes a difference in games... Depending on the game.

Also, I want to add that I'll not be posting in this thread any more. It's taking up too much of my time troll fighting.

If any one wants help just PM me and I'll do it on a one on one basis - that includes helping you physically build a PC.

For #6, AMD's DX11 drivers are total rubbish. They have far, far more CPU overhead than NV's drivers. On a ludicrously fast system, the difference is slight. On a slow one, it can be night and day. AMD has put all of their efforts into Mantle and DX12. I'm sure this will pay off in the future, but for current and older games AMD drivers are best avoided on slower CPUs (unless they've put in a Mantle layer).

I was skimming through some of the others... I'm sure I saw someone put DDR3 with a Skylake processor. That's not going to end well. And there are perfectly decent Z170 boards for under £100. MSI Tomahawk, just to throw one out there.

'one key overclock' capability, so sounds like the motherboard can overclock the 4770k.
Reviews say it supports SLI and Crossfire too.
Just ebay the 960 and replace with better card for gaming,
then add an SSD if you want and clone Windows across ...
Awesome deal.

wow! I don't think you could find a pre-built PC better than that for the price!

I need a case only but theres been no deals posted for a while

​hey Ollie I was wondering if you could tell me if this was a decent build or not and if not could you tell me what parts I should get instead. thanks.

I'd counter that by saying that most PC components have much longer warranty periods than a console; 3 years for most stuff and far more sometimes, especially on cases and PSUs. So whilst, yes, you do have to find the faulty part (though that's not usually too hard with some logical thinking and Googling), in return you get a much longer warranty period.

As for companies passing the buck from one to another, it could be a problem, though you can build a PC with as many parts as possible from the same company (off the top of my head, EVGA do GPUs, motherboards and PSUs).

You're right though, as with everything, PCs and consoles each have their own advantages and disadvantages. However, there does seem to be some myths surrounding PC gaming and how apparently difficult and expensive it is to get into and maintain. You're also right that people arguing, without facts or any useful information, is pathetic and tiresome. However, civilised, informed discussion and education is always to be encouraged (on any subject really, not just gaming) :smiley:.

​yeah I forgot to post link lol. http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/TrLkhM

PM me.

The other model (X510 - Black) with an R9 290 4GB seems a lot more balanced. No idea if the code works for it though.

It doesn't seem to work, unfortunately.

Interesting that it's got to over 1200 degrees despite all the "experts" writing it off.

It's really not all that interesting. It's a good price for the hardware. People are writing it off as a gaming PC, as being unbalanced. The rest are voting on hardware I guess.

From a purely financial perspective it's a fairly good deal for a pre-built system with the hardware it has. However, it's crap as a gaming computer; the GTX 760 and i7-4770k are just totally mismatched, it's either total overkill on the CPU or desperately needs a much more powerful GPU (even then, a cheaper i5-4690k would be a more than adequate CPU).

​u are a very helpful guy
I mean it

Any one have expirience with pcspecialist uk ?

OUT OF STOCK!

Lenovo has really bad security issues. I personally wouldn't use any of there products after reading the following: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-32607618

They cancelled my order last night but still charged credit card, awaiting refund!

My bad, misread it. XD I see you're point but 970 I assume you'll mean GTX based cards and not the normal one? It's not as cheap as Ollie's suggestions so you'll need to make some compromises on price of other components elsewhere.

Both myself and my brother bought machines from them. Very happy.

this should run kodi fine

Thank you

What time did you order? How did you find out that they cancelled?
I ordered last night at around 10pm.

​I'm sorry but it's not. Evidence

https://youtu.be/cvTWmNEpg3Q

hi ollie, could you please give me a link from pcparts so i can build a gaming machine with gtx970 and i5? i dont know what other components i can combine these with tbh. thanks mate :smiley:

Anyone know of any other similar pre built rigs in the same price range?

Sold out

Has anyone upgraded to a SSD, I am having huge problems!
EaseUSTodo Backup keeps throwing up errors.