I want a new gaming rig

[viper37]

My 2011 Dell laptop has died on me (disk failure). What's good? It should be able to handle football manager, paradox games, world of warcraft, civ games, etc.

Intrigued by the small macbook, could that run those games though?

I had good luck with Acer laptops in the past.
I tend to avoid Lenovo, for their crap spyware they've been caught twice with, and HP because I don't find them that good for the price.

I'd say look for an Asus, Acer or Dell, depending on the prices and configuration.

[Liep]

ASUS ZenBook UX303UB looks interesting

Currently at €1275

[Barrister]

ASUS ZenBook UX303UB looks interesting

Currently at €1275

Yeah, the ZenBook is what I was thinking of earlier.

Like I said - if gaming is a top concern, I'd take that over a MacBook because of the discrete graphics / not having to dual boot.

If you primarily wanted a notebook for work / websurfing / video watching, with gaming as a side concern, I'd go with the Mac.

[viper37]

Hmm. I did a little research, it sounds like for a current build it is probably not quite there yet price wise, at least from a "bang for your buck" standpoint.

Rather than spend an extra couple hundred to go from a SATA SSD to a PCIe SSD, you would be better off spending that money on a faster CPU or GPU...?

It's moving fast:
http://www.gamespot.com/articles/samsung-960-evo-review/1100-6445420/

[Berkut]

Hmm. I did a little research, it sounds like for a current build it is probably not quite there yet price wise, at least from a "bang for your buck" standpoint.

Rather than spend an extra couple hundred to go from a SATA SSD to a PCIe SSD, you would be better off spending that money on a faster CPU or GPU...?

It's moving fast:
http://www.gamespot.com/articles/samsung-960-evo-review/1100-6445420/

Nice! I didn't realize the performance difference was that extreme!

Man, going from traditional HDD to SSD was a incredible boost, this is another 3x faster bump again.

At what point does this SATA type memory become fast enough that you have to start wondering if you really need system RAM at all?

[Maladict]

My 6 year old PC died on me, decided to go new instead of replacing parts.
I think this is the best I could do for my budget (999 euros), but feel free to critique it.
Not that it matters, I've already ordered

Cooler Master Silencio 452 Midi Tower
Intel® Core™ i5-6500
Cooler Master Hyper TX3 EVO
MSI B150 PC
Kingston® ValueRAM® - 16 GB
Samsung 750 EVO - 250 GB - SSD
Seagate BarraCuda - 3 TB - HDD
MSI Geforce GTX 750 Ti - 2G
Cooler Master B600 ver.2 - 600 W
ASUS BW-16D1HT - DVD/Blu-Ray
Microsoft Windows 10 Home - 64 Bit

[viper37]

At what point does this SATA type memory become fast enough that you have to start wondering if you really need system RAM at all?

I really have no idea.  I naively think that for each increase of static memory speed (SSDs), there will be a corresponding increase in RAM speed, so there'll always be a gap.  After all, we have cache memory on CPUs and video ram that are much faster than conventional ram right now.  I suppose that once GDDR5 becomes affordable, we'll see something like that to replace DDR3/4.

And there's the whole connection thing.  SATA has a limited bus width (the speed at which the information can pass through the motherboard to reach the CPU and vice-versa), PCI-E is less limited, RAM has even less limitations, but at some point, if when we reach these limits, some kind of new interface is needed, and that's beyond my knowledge.

[Barrister]

My 6 year old PC died on me, decided to go new instead of replacing parts.
I think this is the best I could do for my budget (999 euros), but feel free to critique it.
Not that it matters, I've already ordered

Cooler Master Silencio 452 Midi Tower
Intel® Core™ i5-6500
Cooler Master Hyper TX3 EVO
MSI B150 PC
Kingston® ValueRAM® - 16 GB
Samsung 750 EVO - 250 GB - SSD
Seagate BarraCuda - 3 TB - HDD
MSI Geforce GTX 750 Ti - 2G
Cooler Master B600 ver.2 - 600 W
ASUS BW-16D1HT - DVD/Blu-Ray
Microsoft Windows 10 Home - 64 Bit

I know the 750 Ti was the latest and greatest a few years ago, but you'd bet more bang for your buck getting something like a 960 or 1060.

Otherwise looks fine.

[Maladict]

My 6 year old PC died on me, decided to go new instead of replacing parts.
I think this is the best I could do for my budget (999 euros), but feel free to critique it.
Not that it matters, I've already ordered

Cooler Master Silencio 452 Midi Tower
Intel® Core™ i5-6500
Cooler Master Hyper TX3 EVO
MSI B150 PC
Kingston® ValueRAM® - 16 GB
Samsung 750 EVO - 250 GB - SSD
Seagate BarraCuda - 3 TB - HDD
MSI Geforce GTX 750 Ti - 2G
Cooler Master B600 ver.2 - 600 W
ASUS BW-16D1HT - DVD/Blu-Ray
Microsoft Windows 10 Home - 64 Bit

I know the 750 Ti was the latest and greatest a few years ago, but you'd bet more bang for your buck getting something like a 960 or 1060.

Otherwise looks fine.

True, the GPU is average at best. Just realised I put this in the gaming rig thread, that's not really what I'm going for. Not going to run anything more demanding than EU4 and the like.

[Barrister]

My 6 year old PC died on me, decided to go new instead of replacing parts.
I think this is the best I could do for my budget (999 euros), but feel free to critique it.
Not that it matters, I've already ordered

Cooler Master Silencio 452 Midi Tower
Intel® Core™ i5-6500
Cooler Master Hyper TX3 EVO
MSI B150 PC
Kingston® ValueRAM® - 16 GB
Samsung 750 EVO - 250 GB - SSD
Seagate BarraCuda - 3 TB - HDD
MSI Geforce GTX 750 Ti - 2G
Cooler Master B600 ver.2 - 600 W
ASUS BW-16D1HT - DVD/Blu-Ray
Microsoft Windows 10 Home - 64 Bit

I know the 750 Ti was the latest and greatest a few years ago, but you'd bet more bang for your buck getting something like a 960 or 1060.

Otherwise looks fine.

True, the GPU is average at best. Just realised I put this in the gaming rig thread, that's not really what I'm going for. Not going to run anything more demanding than EU4 and the like.

EU4 or Stellarix aren't exactly slouches when it comes to graphics.  I think I would still recommend spending just a tiny bit more and getting even a GTX 950 or so - it's a more modern architecture, will run cooler than the 750 Ti, and give better graphics.

Oh wait - you already ordered.  Nevermind then - it looks very nice.

[Maladict]

 
I'll definitely consider a GPU upgrade if I feel it's underperforming.

[Tamas]

Do we know hence January the new Intel generation is coming, and how quickly I can expect the price of current CPUs to fall as a result?

[viper37]

Do we know hence January the new Intel generation is coming, and how quickly I can expect the price of current CPUs to fall as a result?

In a year and half, barring the occasional 30$ special, the i5 6600k has been sold at roughly the same average price, 300$.  Same goes for the earlier generation, like i7 4790k.  The price hasn't moved a lot.

I wouldn't expect Intel's price to go down just because they introduce a new generation.  The older generation took many years to drop in price.

The only thing that will push it down is the price and performance of the future AMD Zen processors.  If it lives up to its hype and they can deliver the product, it might push Intel prices down a little.  Right now, they're talking Q1 2017, so don't expect any price drop until spring summer.

Right now, if you want to buy a CPU, your best bet would be to look at boxing day specials.  If you find a CPU you look there, take it, don't wait for anything hypothetical.

[Tamas]

Thanks

The girlfriend has handed back her laptop to her uni, and I stopped her from buying a new one - makes much more sense for me to buy the desktop in January and give her my current laptop, as I'd be buying a PC next year anyways. But this way it is much sooner then expected.

[Tamas]

I think I am going to reduce my ambitions to a i5 6600k, with 16GB of fairly decent RAM, the neutered 3GB Geforce 1060, a Samsung 250GB SSD (not the M2 kind, yet), and a fairly basic 1T HDD. But I am going to get a motherboard with an M2 slot as that shall be my first eventual upgrade, and then a better videocard eventually.