Always better to buy last year cheaper than current future proof. Stuff changes to fast. Also future technology can not only he faster but cheaper and incompatible with today stuff. No mb will predict tomorrow's new interfaces. Just look at changes in USB or PCI as well as sata and m.2 or msata. Changes will keep happening every couple of years. Waiting for next change in bus tput.
Crazy amount of GPUs ?
- Thread starter Pladio
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Kordanor
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I agree to the opinion that "futureproofing" is a bad idea.
You should buy something which is good today and hits a good value for your money.
That said, there are some components where it makes more sense to buy more than you currently need than others. For example you would actually be fine today with a 5 generations old CPU and you wouldn't notice the difference for gaming. But the price difference isn't high enough and of course the modern boards have a few more features.
My recommendations:
CPU
If you use the PC for gaming alone, go for the i5 ending with a 600k at most. Current generation would be i5 8600k. If you are also doing straming you can get a i7 700k, so for the current generation its a i7 8700k. It's about 50% faster and for gaming there isn't a noticable speed boost (single digit at best) and that's mainly because of the stock speed. The CPUs you will want are going with the "standard" sockets of that time. The best boards start with a z chipset. E.g. right now it's a z370 board with the socket 1151v2. "z" is necessary to use the overclock feature of your CPU (which is indicated by the K at the end) and it's extremely easy to overclock your CPU by 10% or more.
You should however not buy the enthusiast CPUs and boards. There are a couple of i7 processors and also i9 ones. The boards start with an X.
These are much more expensive and only add CPU count with actual decreased clockspeeds for single CPUs making them potentially even slower in games.
GPU
Go for what is reasonable to support the resolution you want to use right now.
If you are playing on 1080p and don't plan to go higher in the next 2 years, a gtx 1060 should do. I wouldn't buy anything faster than a gtx 1070ti as there won't be a recognizable difference, even beyond a gtx 1070 and the price step to gtx 1080 is a bit higher. If you play on 1440p pretty much all cards make sense, depending on your budget. As others mentioned multiple times I don't think that the market is ready for 4k yet as the performance needed is too high for the improvement you get. Unless you have unlimited money I wouldn't go for 4k.
You can find a pretty good benchmark-overview on PCGamer:
https://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/GTX1070Ti-PCG.png
Be aware that these benchmarks are on high settings (besides of the medium 1080p benchmark) so on lower settings you'd also get more fps, possibly without much of a visual impact.
But you will probably not want to have far more than 60fps on the resolution you are using on highest settings as you start paying a big premium for something you don't really see. E.g. 102 frames per second on a GTX1080 on a 1080p resolution are pointless and you paid 120€ for the last 8 fps of that.
Currently I'd say that you get the best performance/money ratio for a gtx1060,1070 and 1070ti.
Once you settled on a GPU you'd need to decide for a manufacturer and model.
There isn't really much to consider here. One thing though: Do not buy any blower-style cards which push the air through the pci blend:
These are running much hotter and therefore "underclock" sooner than others.
Make sure that you see 2 fans on the picture and it should be fine. Don't chose one of the most expensive models either. You might rather want to switch to a higher GPU instead.
Besides of that it's all about the manufacturers features and reputation. E.g. EVGA is supposed to have good customer service and they have a good warranty with optional features. The ASUS Strix on the other hand offers an extra PWM Fan on your GPU so you could either control your case fans via your graphics card settings or control aftermarket GPU fans by doing so (morpheus 2) but that's more of an enthusiast thing.
Drives
Not much to decide here. Go for whatever seems to make sense to you.
However PCIe storage is too expensive for too little gain.
M.2. got more reasonable prices and is a valid option now imho (these little sticks you directly plug into your board).
Also check the warranty of your drive. E.g. samsung pro drives are made for much longer durability than their evo drives. So if you want to pay some premium for durability and reliability you can go with that.
Also probably makes sense to go with a combo of a ssd drive (250gb or more) and an classical HDD as they are still much cheaper per GB. Put your games and OS on the SSD and the other stuff on the HDD.
You should buy something which is good today and hits a good value for your money.
That said, there are some components where it makes more sense to buy more than you currently need than others. For example you would actually be fine today with a 5 generations old CPU and you wouldn't notice the difference for gaming. But the price difference isn't high enough and of course the modern boards have a few more features.
My recommendations:
CPU
If you use the PC for gaming alone, go for the i5 ending with a 600k at most. Current generation would be i5 8600k. If you are also doing straming you can get a i7 700k, so for the current generation its a i7 8700k. It's about 50% faster and for gaming there isn't a noticable speed boost (single digit at best) and that's mainly because of the stock speed. The CPUs you will want are going with the "standard" sockets of that time. The best boards start with a z chipset. E.g. right now it's a z370 board with the socket 1151v2. "z" is necessary to use the overclock feature of your CPU (which is indicated by the K at the end) and it's extremely easy to overclock your CPU by 10% or more.
You should however not buy the enthusiast CPUs and boards. There are a couple of i7 processors and also i9 ones. The boards start with an X.
These are much more expensive and only add CPU count with actual decreased clockspeeds for single CPUs making them potentially even slower in games.
GPU
Go for what is reasonable to support the resolution you want to use right now.
If you are playing on 1080p and don't plan to go higher in the next 2 years, a gtx 1060 should do. I wouldn't buy anything faster than a gtx 1070ti as there won't be a recognizable difference, even beyond a gtx 1070 and the price step to gtx 1080 is a bit higher. If you play on 1440p pretty much all cards make sense, depending on your budget. As others mentioned multiple times I don't think that the market is ready for 4k yet as the performance needed is too high for the improvement you get. Unless you have unlimited money I wouldn't go for 4k.
You can find a pretty good benchmark-overview on PCGamer:
https://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/GTX1070Ti-PCG.png
Be aware that these benchmarks are on high settings (besides of the medium 1080p benchmark) so on lower settings you'd also get more fps, possibly without much of a visual impact.
But you will probably not want to have far more than 60fps on the resolution you are using on highest settings as you start paying a big premium for something you don't really see. E.g. 102 frames per second on a GTX1080 on a 1080p resolution are pointless and you paid 120€ for the last 8 fps of that.
Currently I'd say that you get the best performance/money ratio for a gtx1060,1070 and 1070ti.
Once you settled on a GPU you'd need to decide for a manufacturer and model.
There isn't really much to consider here. One thing though: Do not buy any blower-style cards which push the air through the pci blend:
These are running much hotter and therefore "underclock" sooner than others.
Make sure that you see 2 fans on the picture and it should be fine. Don't chose one of the most expensive models either. You might rather want to switch to a higher GPU instead.
Besides of that it's all about the manufacturers features and reputation. E.g. EVGA is supposed to have good customer service and they have a good warranty with optional features. The ASUS Strix on the other hand offers an extra PWM Fan on your GPU so you could either control your case fans via your graphics card settings or control aftermarket GPU fans by doing so (morpheus 2) but that's more of an enthusiast thing.
Drives
Not much to decide here. Go for whatever seems to make sense to you.
However PCIe storage is too expensive for too little gain.
M.2. got more reasonable prices and is a valid option now imho (these little sticks you directly plug into your board).
Also check the warranty of your drive. E.g. samsung pro drives are made for much longer durability than their evo drives. So if you want to pay some premium for durability and reliability you can go with that.
Also probably makes sense to go with a combo of a ssd drive (250gb or more) and an classical HDD as they are still much cheaper per GB. Put your games and OS on the SSD and the other stuff on the HDD.
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Dilvish
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I have a 5+ year old PC (I won't go into detail) and there's nothing I really want to play that needs higher specs. Yes, I would like a new CPU and RAM to do some ray-tracing, but twice the performance is not really that much. If it were five or ten times the performance, I would upgrade.
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I found this website, which seems pretty good at comparing different build possibilities based on spec vs price.
http://www.logicalincrements.com/
I'd probably go for the Excellent range with the i5 and 1070ti currently. However, not sure what will be there next year.
http://www.logicalincrements.com/
I'd probably go for the Excellent range with the i5 and 1070ti currently. However, not sure what will be there next year.
Kordanor
Wastelander
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Just took a short look, but this page is outdated, using last generation CPUs and also recommending stuff without context.
(Edit: The new CPUs seem to be out of retail stores atm, but e.g. alternate lists that they are available on the 2nd of dec)
Even as enthusiast an i7 makes no sense if you are not going to use it.
16GB vs 32 GB: You are not going to use 32GB. Tiering it higher suggest that the PC gets faster, which it is not. You can buy 32GB to "futureproof" your PC. But fact is, you are probably not going to use them during the next years.
Also graphics card recommendations without mentioning the resolution makes no sense.
So yeah…I'd rather think on my own when putting together the PC. Especially as Graphics card speed, GPU speed, Amount of Ram and HDD Space and Speed pretty much have no relevant influence on each other anymore as long as you are not buying 5-10 year old stuff. Each component should fit the needs you have.
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Makes sense. I guess I'll be back with a list of components in August
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