As far as power goes I like to buy one that lasts many years rather than a new one every build (I've had the same 1000W power supply through many different builds), however if you're confident with the single card for life you should be fine, (also if you're upgrading from an old nVidia card you can designate the old one to do the PhysX computation, allowing the primary to spit out more frames).
For the Samsung drives, the prices must have been mismatched when I looked it up. Before committing I would recommend looking up the warranty, when I bought the 850 pro I got a 10 year warranty (which is crazy when it's on an SSD) and a free game at the time (I doubt it's even close now as SSDs are common). The more salient point would be that the controller on the SM651 and SM951 series are made by MGX while the 750 - 950 series have the Samsung controllers (the main reason for my trust in Samsung drives is that they make all parts unlike most other SSD manufacturers). Just a thought.
Personally, I'd wait if you're going to be buying cards and the like - Both AMD and Nvidia have some new stuff coming out around mid-year, which should nudge the price down a bit. Or, y'know, you can just buy the new one if you want.
Depends on what his current card is, but I agree waiting for the 980ti price drop would be great on the other hand you could be waiting and not playing games. Or get a super cheap 900 series card now and turn it into the PhysX card when you can get something super powerful by the time Oculus comes out.
I don't really know Linkigi's budget so it's hard to make a recommendation.
Quite a bit if you are running a game that makes use of PhysX, e.g. in a Tri SLI you would preferably make one of the cards a PhysX card as opposed to sharing it across all 3. It's like having one card process everything that is going on in the game and do the physics, which tells the other card(s) what to render.
Literally like asking what does a second core on a CPU do? It does shit all if you run single threaded software but does a lot if the software optimises for multi-threading.
The main plus point is if upgrading from an old ass card you don't have to trash it.
It works if one is a PhysX card, but not for SLI. I think CrossFire works with cards of the same series (say a 280 and a 290).
Yep. You can also Crossfire with APUs. To save people listening to me because everyone knows I don't know shit, here's a video.
And here's a summary:
- NVIDIA cards must be identical GPUs and ram configs, while AMD cards are Crossfire compatible with other cards in the same architectural family and with different RAM configurations
- Crossfire is available on more motherboards (and on cheaper ones)
-Newer AMD cards do not require a connector to crossfire with another card, though most come with connectors.
Well, my college desktop apparently isn't up to Witcher 3 specs, so it's definitely new computer time right now. I could use advice on video cards - r/buildapc seems to push the AMD r9 390 as having good price-performance, but I'm not sure if the old wisdom that AMD cards perform way inconsistently still holds.
Put together another list, as it's computer time. Apparently if you're verging into throwing-some-money-away territory the AMD Fury performs better than the GTX 980.
Put together another list, as it's computer time. Apparently if you're verging into throwing-some-money-away territory the AMD Fury performs better than the GTX 980.
Yep, just grab a quiet heatsink / fan combo for the Fury. Should also be a little bit better with Direct X 12 considering DX12 borrows much of the AMD Mantle design.
Freesync is on way more monitors than G-Sync for any future updates. Only time the 980 wins is if a game uses proprietary code e.g. nVidia's "hairworks".
I used AMD and nVidia cards for multiple machines, both are pretty on par now.
Build looks fine for those components.
I'm surprised you held out for so long after college before buying a gaming rig, it was literally the most important thing for me to get after a job, apartment, bed and mattress, I went way overboard with the machine because I had disposable income lol.
Well, I'd bought a computer in the middle of my third year of college with internship money - I couldn't philosophically justify replacing a two-year-old computer at the time.
Okay I have a bit of an issue. I took a tower off a friend's hands. He built it himself, just needed an HDD. Well I've hooked one up and I've been trying to put an OS on it but I can't get any picture on the monitor. Monitor has power, HDD has power, as far as I know everything else has power, but the monitor doesn't even feel like it's getting any input from the computer. I've tried a VGA cable and a HDMI cable, is there anything I'm missing here?
Not even a BIOS screen shows up? Doesn't sound like the hard drive, unless something got shorted out when you put in the hard drive. Do you know the monitor itself is good?
Not even a BIOS screen shows up? Doesn't sound like the hard drive, unless something got shorted out when you put in the hard drive. Do you know the monitor itself is good?
Yeah I've tested the monitor on my laptop with both cables and it works.
Update: Yep, can only use DVI cables because that's what the video card has. Anyway now I have another problem in that it doesn't recognize the USB stick I have the boot media on, and I can't get to the setup page because it either goes through the BIOS screen too fast to press the delete key.
You can buffer pressing the button but most BIOS will have a pause to see if you want to enter settings. May also not be delete but could be F2 or another function button.
USB has to be the first thing to be booted from so make sure that it is selected in boot order.
I got Ubuntu installed but I think I might have fucked the wifi card. I had to install it twice because the first time I accidentally the power button on the surge protector. After that the installer couldn't connect to the wifi and after installation it would show the signal as being very weak, even though the router is in the next room and everything else shows a full signal.
Though my Communist friend agrees I probably should just hardwire my PC anyway.
I'm always dubious about the usefulness of the Asus apps for the motherboard (beyond the drivers) however the new suite on the Z170 boards is pretty good.
Asus has pretty much automated overclocking, the prior iteration of this software was hit or miss from what I've read however I tried out the newest one AI Suite 3.
It was able to determine a pretty good overclock (4.7ghz, with a very safe voltage increase for Skylake). Each core also has a discrete overclock. It literally took less than 5 minutes and the only thing I had to do was login on resets and the one crash which the software was ready to handle. RAM is also overclocked for you (I got 3000 MHz without dropping timings).
The fan control is excellent, the suite has a step which checks the controllable fan speed and voltages for every fan. You can also assist by telling the suite where in the chassis each fan is and it detects the CPU fans itself (don't even need PWM fans, all of mine are 3 pin fans). It will also shut down fans if the motherboard, CPU or pch are low enough temperatures.
There is also an app which let's you select the between performance, eco and away. Eco mode can be customised based on how much power I want to give the computer, for example currently it only has 94w, I'm just browsing, the CPU is underclocked to 800 - 1000 MHz (it's dynamic based on what is required). The RAM is still overclocked as fast memory should always be available. CPU voltage also varies, most of the time it is undervolted.
If I click Performance (if I need to start encoding things or play games), it will overclock the CPU to the 4.7GHz level and spin up the fans if components get too warm.
TLDR: New motherboards make overclocks stupid easy, automated dynamic SATA power, fan speeds, clocks and voltages will also elongate the life of components.
Also my motherboard now pulses with colours when I play music, in time with the bpm (way better than on screen visualisations) .
Me, looking at mobos: "The fuck is that? The fuck are those? Do I need this?"
It does take a wee of education to learn what the components do and what functionality you'd need but it's worth it. If you've never given it a lot of thought you'll probably finding some area that is lacking after the buy but then you'll know what you need going forward.
Comments
For the Samsung drives, the prices must have been mismatched when I looked it up. Before committing I would recommend looking up the warranty, when I bought the 850 pro I got a 10 year warranty (which is crazy when it's on an SSD) and a free game at the time (I doubt it's even close now as SSDs are common). The more salient point would be that the controller on the SM651 and SM951 series are made by MGX while the 750 - 950 series have the Samsung controllers (the main reason for my trust in Samsung drives is that they make all parts unlike most other SSD manufacturers). Just a thought. Depends on what his current card is, but I agree waiting for the 980ti price drop would be great on the other hand you could be waiting and not playing games. Or get a super cheap 900 series card now and turn it into the PhysX card when you can get something super powerful by the time Oculus comes out.
I don't really know Linkigi's budget so it's hard to make a recommendation.
Literally like asking what does a second core on a CPU do? It does shit all if you run single threaded software but does a lot if the software optimises for multi-threading.
The main plus point is if upgrading from an old ass card you don't have to trash it. Ok then just get the 980 as the enthusiasts are still selling 980s to get 980Tis. Plus the 980 works fine for Oculus based on current requisites.
Speaking of which I need to get a CPU, motherboard and RAM upgrade before getting an Oculus or will just use them at University.
And here's a summary:
- NVIDIA cards must be identical GPUs and ram configs, while AMD cards are Crossfire compatible with other cards in the same architectural family and with different RAM configurations
- Crossfire is available on more motherboards (and on cheaper ones)
-Newer AMD cards do not require a connector to crossfire with another card, though most come with connectors.
-AMD cards can crossfire a GPU with an APU
SO MANY KS.
Freesync is on way more monitors than G-Sync for any future updates.
Only time the 980 wins is if a game uses proprietary code e.g. nVidia's "hairworks".
I used AMD and nVidia cards for multiple machines, both are pretty on par now.
Build looks fine for those components.
I'm surprised you held out for so long after college before buying a gaming rig, it was literally the most important thing for me to get after a job, apartment, bed and mattress, I went way overboard with the machine because I had disposable income lol.
USB has to be the first thing to be booted from so make sure that it is selected in boot order.
USB drive has to be of recognisable format.
Though my Communist friend agrees I probably should just hardwire my PC anyway.
I'm always dubious about the usefulness of the Asus apps for the motherboard (beyond the drivers) however the new suite on the Z170 boards is pretty good.
Asus has pretty much automated overclocking, the prior iteration of this software was hit or miss from what I've read however I tried out the newest one AI Suite 3.
It was able to determine a pretty good overclock (4.7ghz, with a very safe voltage increase for Skylake). Each core also has a discrete overclock. It literally took less than 5 minutes and the only thing I had to do was login on resets and the one crash which the software was ready to handle. RAM is also overclocked for you (I got 3000 MHz without dropping timings).
The fan control is excellent, the suite has a step which checks the controllable fan speed and voltages for every fan. You can also assist by telling the suite where in the chassis each fan is and it detects the CPU fans itself (don't even need PWM fans, all of mine are 3 pin fans). It will also shut down fans if the motherboard, CPU or pch are low enough temperatures.
There is also an app which let's you select the between performance, eco and away. Eco mode can be customised based on how much power I want to give the computer, for example currently it only has 94w, I'm just browsing, the CPU is underclocked to 800 - 1000 MHz (it's dynamic based on what is required). The RAM is still overclocked as fast memory should always be available. CPU voltage also varies, most of the time it is undervolted.
If I click Performance (if I need to start encoding things or play games), it will overclock the CPU to the 4.7GHz level and spin up the fans if components get too warm.
TLDR:
New motherboards make overclocks stupid easy, automated dynamic SATA power, fan speeds, clocks and voltages will also elongate the life of components.
Also my motherboard now pulses with colours when I play music, in time with the bpm (way better than on screen visualisations)