Should handle it fine, FTW can generally overclock to 680 speeds which I'd imagine is good for some years. Save your money on the second one.
Yes please. Written form.
Yes please. YouTube form.
No thanks/don't really mind.
Should handle it fine, FTW can generally overclock to 680 speeds which I'd imagine is good for some years. Save your money on the second one.
Under the Patronage of Leonidas the Lion|Patron of Imperator of Rome - Dewy - Crazyeyesreaper|American and Proud
♠ We Few, We happy few, We Band of Brothers ♠
♠ For He who sheds His blood with me shall be my Brother ♠
CPU: i5 3570k @ 4.4GHz, Water Cooler: Corsair H100i (2x Noctua NF-F12 pull), MoBo: ASRock Z77 Extreme 4,
RAM: Corsair Vengeance 8gb 1866MHz CL9Red, GPU: ASUS DCIIOC GTX 770, PSU: Corsair AX750,
Case: Corsair 500r White, SSD: Samsung 840 128gb, Optical: LG BH16NS40 OEM Blu-ray Writer,
Monitors: Alienware AW2310 23.6" & Samsung UA40ES6200, Audio: Creative T20 Series II &
Sony HTCT260H, Keyboard: Logitech G510 & K400r, Mouse: Logitech Anywhere Mouse
Amazon or Newegg for me! If you have Amazon Prime you can get whatever you ordered the next day with barely any extra shipping cost. Not trying to advertise I'm just saying..
Do not get the 680, it's geared towards animation and video rendering more than gaming. Just a single 670 is perfect for your budget I think, and making sure you have the option to add another 670 in the future is always a smart move.
^ This.Never buy new parts off of eBay. It's always worth the warranty.
As for the 690 and 7990, they are dual GPU cards, ie. the 690 has two 670 GPUs inside of the card. I honestly wouldn't bother with a card that holds that much power and cost $1000 alone, I mean, the VGA setup should be the most expensive part in your gaming rig, but that much power can not be fully utilised in all games today on an average monitor setup.
It is obvious that AMD is moving towards the general desktop and more towards general gaming, and I really do hope that AMD gets all the support they can for this move. If Rome 2 is geared for future AMD processors then I will be happy, but at this specific time Intel has a superior CPU performance.Rewriting an engine costs millions of dollars, GCN hit the market already, and it will be used in all major titles for the next 5 years. It would make no sense to not optimize it for AMD while they're under the hood, so to speak. Especially when the game is already supposed to be optimized for AMD.
Not everyone is American or from the UK though....
Thomas, go to pccasegear.com for Australian parts. There is also cplonline.com.au which isn't as good, but they are both generally cheaper than ebay. I bought my PSU (power supply unit) from America and bought a separate Australian ATX power cord from the local shop because this particular PSU I wanted was $70 cheaper in America, and the power cord cost me $10, shipping was $30, so I still got $30 off. It was the Corsair AX760i, very high quality but usually outside of peoples budget. I also bought my Corsair H100i water cooler from America because it was $35 cheaper there and only $10 shipping.
So yeah, have a little look at Amazon.com before buying in Australia. There is one rule though; you CANNOT buy CPUs, motherboards or graphics cards from oversea retailers, your just not allowed to, they must be bought from a local retailer. I'd recommend buying cases locally too, because their oversea shipping price will be monstrous.
Last edited by Biggus Splenus; March 12, 2013 at 12:41 AM.
| R5 3600, RTX 2060, MSI B450I, 32GB 3200MHz CL16 DDR4, AX760i, NH-U12S |
right, well OK, this has been enlightening. If I were to buy one today, it'd look something like this:
i5 3570k
Z77 mobo
GTX 670 FTW
~12GB RAM
700W PSU
1TB HDD (could always just use one of the ones I have now)
128/256GB SSD as primary
perhaps 60GB SSD as secondary
DVD RW (got one here that works fine)
Gaming Case
Gaming Mouse n Keyboard.
A mousepad that isn't a freebie marketing piece of crap.
Thoughts?
♠ We Few, We happy few, We Band of Brothers ♠
♠ For He who sheds His blood with me shall be my Brother ♠
CPU: i5 3570k @ 4.4GHz, Water Cooler: Corsair H100i (2x Noctua NF-F12 pull), MoBo: ASRock Z77 Extreme 4,
RAM: Corsair Vengeance 8gb 1866MHz CL9Red, GPU: ASUS DCIIOC GTX 770, PSU: Corsair AX750,
Case: Corsair 500r White, SSD: Samsung 840 128gb, Optical: LG BH16NS40 OEM Blu-ray Writer,
Monitors: Alienware AW2310 23.6" & Samsung UA40ES6200, Audio: Creative T20 Series II &
Sony HTCT260H, Keyboard: Logitech G510 & K400r, Mouse: Logitech Anywhere Mouse
How do one get 12 GB RAM ?
CIVITATVS CVM AVGVSTVS XVI, MMVIIN PATROCINIVM SVB Dromikaites SVB MareNostrum SVB Quintus Maximus
Want to know more about Rome II Total Realism ? Follow us on Twitter & Facebook
I think it's a great build, but I would make a few changes to some things. CPU is great, for the Z77 mobo I would go with ASRock Extreme 4 or 6. ASRock have the lowest return rates for their motherboards, which equals more reliability. They also have great overclocking support and stability. They offer the same as the ASUS and Gigabyte boards but with more reliability and at a cheaper price, it's a no brainer! There's only $30 difference between the extreme 4 and 6, but the best 'bang for the buck' between the 2 is the extreme 4, but I think you will easily afford the extreme 6.
For the graphics card I would personally go with the ASUS 670 DirectCU II, because it comes with a custom cooler and heatsink (unlike the reference one on the Evga FTW) at the same price, plus it comes with software that allows you to adjust it's specs to your liking. There is the other alternative of getting the Evga 670 FTW Signature, which also has its own custom cooler and heatsink but is fairly hard to find in Australia, but once you do find it expect to pay a hefty sum of cash. So overall, I would definitely suggest ASUS over Evga. If your picking between the Evga FTW and ASUS DirectCU II (cost the same), then your picking between power, and cooling & less noise respectively.
12GB of RAM is too much for gaming, and not to mention impractical on a 1155 chip set motherboard (which you have). RAM sticks (or DIMMs) only come in sets of 2, and you cannot get 6GB DIMMs. You could get 3 DIMMs of 4GB, but like I said, it's impractical. All modern games RIGHT NOW don't even use 8GB of RAM, only take advantage of about 6GB, so getting 12GB will be overkill. Get a set of either Corsair Vengence or G.Skill Sniper 2x4GB RAM because they are compatible with all Z77 motherboards (preferably the later because it has less obnoxious heatsink fins, so you wont have to worry about compatability with other parts, but choose whatever suits you). These 2 brands are the easiest and cheapest to find in Australia.
I would try go for a power supply higher than 700W if you want the option to add another 670 in the future. Just a little more like 750W. The best brands are Corsair, Seasonic (very expensive though), Antec, XFX and the newer Silverstone ones (like the Strider and Strider Plus series).
1TB HDD is fine, and I would go with a 256 SSD, in about half a year I would expect those to drop to the present price of a 128 SSD, it's evolving fast. As for the brand of SSD, go with Samsung. Right now their 840 Pro series are the most reliable and fastest SSDs on the market, but if you can't afford that just go with the regular 840 series. Samsung and Intel are equally reliable, but Intel cost a lot more just because they are Intel. A single 128GB SSD should be enough, just put your OS on there, your most beloved programs and the high-end games that are most demanding. It's easy to add another SSD if you feel like it.
Before discussing cases, you have left one one vital part; the CPU cooler. I highly advise not to use the stock cooler, it's noisy and does a terrible job, but I'll give you 4 options here: stick with the stock cooler (please don't ), get an after market heatsink, get a closed-loop (ie. pre-built) water cooling system, or make a custom loop water cooling system. These option go in order of cheapest to most expensive, and if this is your first PC build I won't be advising the last option. I personally wanted to go with the 3rd option (pre-built closed-loop) because it reduces the common incompatibility issues with big RAM sticks and big aftermarket heatsinks, it also looks much neater and gives you a few degrees more performance over the best heatsinks. If I've confused you, then I would suggest going with the pre-built water cooling system, because on your budget you will be able to afford it.
The case should be picked last, because it doesn't do anything to your performance and should be picked to be compatible with your interior, not the other way around.
The Alienware monitor you already have (while I'm 100% against Alienware) is actually really good, but you could have got something cheaper that was just as good, assuming you got it at retail price. But at least we don't have to take into consideration the cost of a new monitor.
At the moment I have made a wishlist with what I would recommend you having it as
http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?...ion=wish_lists
This will play S2 maxed out.
We still need to add an aftermarket CPU cooler (tell me if you want water cooling or heatsink), a case, and a desktop set (keyboard, mouse and pad). Firstly you need to decide what cooling you want, then I can help you pick a case that can fit everything you have (I will give you a wide option because cases are a matter of taste, especially in appearance). Then you can spend what ever money you want on the desktop set.
Last edited by Biggus Splenus; March 12, 2013 at 02:29 AM.
| R5 3600, RTX 2060, MSI B450I, 32GB 3200MHz CL16 DDR4, AX760i, NH-U12S |
Thanks Splenyi for the effort. I'll keep all that in mind. It was just a ramble, so things will change, but it's good to know that's it's pretty much there. I forgot to mention the cooler, but would naturally have gone for the aftermarket heatsink, but wanted a step up. The closed loop water cooling sounds like a good idea, looking at the range.
+1
♠ We Few, We happy few, We Band of Brothers ♠
♠ For He who sheds His blood with me shall be my Brother ♠
CPU: i5 3570k @ 4.4GHz, Water Cooler: Corsair H100i (2x Noctua NF-F12 pull), MoBo: ASRock Z77 Extreme 4,
RAM: Corsair Vengeance 8gb 1866MHz CL9Red, GPU: ASUS DCIIOC GTX 770, PSU: Corsair AX750,
Case: Corsair 500r White, SSD: Samsung 840 128gb, Optical: LG BH16NS40 OEM Blu-ray Writer,
Monitors: Alienware AW2310 23.6" & Samsung UA40ES6200, Audio: Creative T20 Series II &
Sony HTCT260H, Keyboard: Logitech G510 & K400r, Mouse: Logitech Anywhere Mouse
If you want a pre-built water cooling setup, I would suggest getting a Corsair case, either the 500R, 550D, 650D or the C70. There's also the Bitfenix Ghost, but it doesn't have some of the great features that the Corsair cases do, hence the smaller price tag.
550D is silence oriented, so the H80i is probably the best cooling option there. In the other 3 I mentioned, I would suggest the H100i. The H90i and H110i shouldn't be too far off, so it might be worth waiting for them because they use 140mm fans and radiator instead of 120mm, which equals more air flow at lower noise.
PS. I'm a bit of a Corsair fanboy but I still know when someones product is better than Corsairs, like Swiftech's H220 which is apparently the highest quality pre-built water cooling right now. NZXT already have a dual 140mm radiator if you don't want to wait for Corsairs Hi series of this size.
Last edited by Biggus Splenus; March 12, 2013 at 02:59 AM.
| R5 3600, RTX 2060, MSI B450I, 32GB 3200MHz CL16 DDR4, AX760i, NH-U12S |
Loving the setup so far. What are the cons for Water cooled? I've always wanted to build a rig with it included, but I was always that little bit out of my depth when it came to cooling.
The Alienware monitor was a bloody fantastic buy at $190 in an auction. The RRP is still I think at ~$449, so good score there. It was "manufacturer refurbished", but it came in the Alienware box, with seals and protectors intact.
In terms of keyboard/mouse, anything will do, but i'm looking at lower end keyboards that have led back-lit keys, cus it's pretty annoying playing on a bright screen at night and needing a light on to see the keys, which in turn reflects off your screen.
Last edited by ♠ Thomas Cochrane ♠; March 12, 2013 at 03:27 AM.
♠ We Few, We happy few, We Band of Brothers ♠
♠ For He who sheds His blood with me shall be my Brother ♠
CPU: i5 3570k @ 4.4GHz, Water Cooler: Corsair H100i (2x Noctua NF-F12 pull), MoBo: ASRock Z77 Extreme 4,
RAM: Corsair Vengeance 8gb 1866MHz CL9Red, GPU: ASUS DCIIOC GTX 770, PSU: Corsair AX750,
Case: Corsair 500r White, SSD: Samsung 840 128gb, Optical: LG BH16NS40 OEM Blu-ray Writer,
Monitors: Alienware AW2310 23.6" & Samsung UA40ES6200, Audio: Creative T20 Series II &
Sony HTCT260H, Keyboard: Logitech G510 & K400r, Mouse: Logitech Anywhere Mouse
No cons to water cooling apart from the price. Never fear of a leak, that's not going to happen unless you yank on the tubes with a considerable amount of force or cut the tubes. It's even easier to install than air cooling heatsinks.
That is a great buy for the monitor
For the keyboard I would recommend a Ducky one
http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?...1361&vk_sort=4
About $140 AUD and comes in a ton of colours. It's expensive because of the mechanical keys, but if you don't really care about them and just want the LED back lights, the best option is this Razer
http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?...ducts_id=22074
But you can only get it in green.
For the mouse, it depends on what you want. Corsair have a great FPS mouse with a sensitivity button (deigned for good sniping). They also have an MMO mouse which could come in handy with Total War if you configure the custom keys properly (quickly giving orders to your legion with a single click), but the key placement is a little strange in my opinion, but you might like it.
http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?...h=258_697_1303
Logitech have a great MMO mouse too which have a bunch of key on the side where your thumb is (which light up any way you want, so it can match your board colouring ), I think it's got a great appearance and it has a nice braided cord. Definitely worth your money.
http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?...ducts_id=21066
I know these seem fairly pricy, but they will last a long time
Last edited by Biggus Splenus; March 12, 2013 at 05:01 AM.
| R5 3600, RTX 2060, MSI B450I, 32GB 3200MHz CL16 DDR4, AX760i, NH-U12S |
@Splenyi
Sorry, but you have a bit of a dangerous half-knowledge, mixing up stuff and sometimes presenting your personal opinion as fact or as the 'absolutely best thing to do'. Please be a bit more conservative with your opinions, thanks!
PS: I am assembling PCs since 20 years
Regarding the original poll: If possible, I would wait until Rome 2 is out and has been benchmarked before building a rig explicitly for Rome 2. Especially the multi-core optimization is a completely unknown variable and can have a big impact regarding the CPU choice (Intel has superior performance per core but AMD offers more cores for less money).
Just a general tip regarding graphics cards. If you buy a card for $250 or more, I wouldn't buy a model with 2GB memory anymore. Only if you usually don't use any AA it might be a safe choice. HD textures and HD texture mods are getting more and more popular and even on a 1920x1080 resolution you can exceed 2GB using HD textures (e.g. modded Skyrim). I know that the default memory for Nvidia cards is 2GB atm but usually there are also 3GB or 4GB models available for some extra cash.
Sorry if I done so, can you point out where?@Splenyi
Sorry, but you have a bit of a dangerous half-knowledge, mixing up stuff and sometimes presenting your personal opinion as fact or as the 'absolutely best thing to do'. Please be a bit more conservative with your opinions, thanks!
Well, I for one want to be playing Rome 2 when it comes out, and I don't want to have to wait till benchmarks to order and assemble my PC. So I guess this is a PC built in anticipation for Rome 2Regarding the original poll: If possible, I would wait until Rome 2 is out and has been benchmarked before building a rig explicitly for Rome 2. Especially the multi-core optimization is a completely unknown variable and can have a big impact regarding the CPU choice (Intel has superior performance per core but AMD offers more cores for less money).
I am aware of that, but Shogun 2 doesn't need more than 2GDDR5, and I doubt Rome 2 will either. TW just doesn't need or use graphics the same size or as much textures as games like Skyrim. 3GDDR5 will only come in handy when you are playing a heavily, graphically modded Skyrim (for example) or using a multi-monitor setup. Vanilla games these days don't really need 3 GDDR5 apart from games with seriously intensive graphics like Crysis. But again, this is a TW build.Just a general tip regarding graphics cards. If you buy a card for $250 or more, I wouldn't buy a model with 2GB memory anymore. Only if you usually don't use any AA it might be a safe choice. HD textures and HD texture mods are getting more and more popular and even on a 1920x1080 resolution you can exceed 2GB using HD textures (e.g. modded Skyrim). I know that the default memory for Nvidia cards is 2GB atm but usually there are also 3GB or 4GB models available for some extra cash.
I know you can get Nvidia cards with more than 2 GDDR5 but that is a lot more expensive than an AMD card with the same memory. I was going to cover all this thoroughly, but I obviously haven't yet, hence no YouTube videos
EDIT: I've renamed the thread to clear up anyone's thoughts.
Last edited by Biggus Splenus; March 12, 2013 at 06:12 AM.
| R5 3600, RTX 2060, MSI B450I, 32GB 3200MHz CL16 DDR4, AX760i, NH-U12S |
Yeah, woah. Probs not going to go with that end of Keyboard/ Mouse. Don't like the Macro keys, because MMOs are the worst thing to happen to gaming since they stopped making N64... and the price is too much to ask. I've seen some customisable backlit keyboards for under $100.
time for some End Game BF3!
♠ We Few, We happy few, We Band of Brothers ♠
♠ For He who sheds His blood with me shall be my Brother ♠
CPU: i5 3570k @ 4.4GHz, Water Cooler: Corsair H100i (2x Noctua NF-F12 pull), MoBo: ASRock Z77 Extreme 4,
RAM: Corsair Vengeance 8gb 1866MHz CL9Red, GPU: ASUS DCIIOC GTX 770, PSU: Corsair AX750,
Case: Corsair 500r White, SSD: Samsung 840 128gb, Optical: LG BH16NS40 OEM Blu-ray Writer,
Monitors: Alienware AW2310 23.6" & Samsung UA40ES6200, Audio: Creative T20 Series II &
Sony HTCT260H, Keyboard: Logitech G510 & K400r, Mouse: Logitech Anywhere Mouse
actually the 680 is pretty much made for gaming, and a 690 has 2 680 chips, like the 7990 has 2 7970 chips, i think youre confused with the new titan, which is more suited for mediawork, they also have special computing gpu's like quadrosDo not get the 680, it's geared towards animation and video rendering more than gaming. Just a single 670 is perfect for your budget I think, and making sure you have the option to add another 670 in the future is always a smart move.
Never buy new parts off of eBay. It's always worth the warranty.
^ This.
As for the 690 and 7990, they are dual GPU cards, ie. the 690 has two 670 GPUs inside of the card. I honestly wouldn't bother with a card that holds that much power and cost $1000 alone, I mean, the VGA setup should be the most expensive part in your gaming rig, but that much power can not be fully utilised in all games today on an average monitor setup.
^ don't worry I don't want a 680 anyway. the 7970 was perfect, but I'm leaning towards the added compatibility of the 670 (which outperforms the 7970 in most areas anyway)
♠ We Few, We happy few, We Band of Brothers ♠
♠ For He who sheds His blood with me shall be my Brother ♠
CPU: i5 3570k @ 4.4GHz, Water Cooler: Corsair H100i (2x Noctua NF-F12 pull), MoBo: ASRock Z77 Extreme 4,
RAM: Corsair Vengeance 8gb 1866MHz CL9Red, GPU: ASUS DCIIOC GTX 770, PSU: Corsair AX750,
Case: Corsair 500r White, SSD: Samsung 840 128gb, Optical: LG BH16NS40 OEM Blu-ray Writer,
Monitors: Alienware AW2310 23.6" & Samsung UA40ES6200, Audio: Creative T20 Series II &
Sony HTCT260H, Keyboard: Logitech G510 & K400r, Mouse: Logitech Anywhere Mouse
Ah, more typos I've been tired lately, that's my excuse
| R5 3600, RTX 2060, MSI B450I, 32GB 3200MHz CL16 DDR4, AX760i, NH-U12S |
Damn, I lost my original detailed response, lol. So here in a quick form (quotes are not exact anymore):
While many games don't profit from the hyperthreading of i7 CPUs and some even perform lower with hyperthreading enabled, there are some games which can profit from it and the future there will certainly be more since better multithreading/multi-core usage is the only way to increase the performance substantially (single core performance is going up relatively slow). Sure i5s have the better price/performance ratio (I have a i5-2500k myself) but i7 can be great for games too (if you have the money).Originally Posted by Splenyi
While the Extreme 4/6 are very good boards and have an excellent price/performance ratio, in the last 2 years, I had less problems with ASUS boards (didn't use any Gigabyte boards) and found their system software superior to ASRock. So it's a trade off.Originally Posted by Splenyi
No, TW games don't use CUDA. The pathfinding, AI, animation, ... related to the units are all calculated by the CPU (and essentially a single core) which is why the performance goes into the knees when too many units are trying to get across a bottleneck like a bridge for example. If I remember correctly, according to the benchmark comparisons I have seen, it seems that MSAA runs better on Nvidia cards and when it's enabled they usually win but without MSAA AMD is often faster.Originally Posted by Splenyi
Except for the CUDA section where you mix up a lot of stuff completely, you are mostly right but I would just be a bit more careful with your statements.
Regarding building a PC before Rome 2 is out, consider these facts:
- S2 was completely broke for most X58/X79 chipset users who used a AMD 7xxx graphics card for more than 1 year (until AMD finally fixed the issue in a recent beta driver)
- S2 was completely broke for all AMD bulldozer CPU users for a few weeks/months (needed motherboard BIOS updates)
- One S2 patch introduced a 50% performance penalty for all GTX670/680 cards for a few months (until Nvidia fixed their drivers)
Last edited by A Barbarian; March 12, 2013 at 07:17 AM.
Although there is sure some useful info to be found in this thread in my opinion it is still of high risk.
This thread is supposed to be a tutorial for others to invest money on something that has not been
approved yet and where there is no chance to prove until the game is being released.
Fact is; you can be prepared with best hardware and knowledge but this will never guarantee that
the game will work - it just happens by occasion that some games do not like certain setups
and whatever you do - you won't get it to run (no matter how expert one is).
A tutorial usually stands for: do it like explained here and it will work
I made that mistake once - to get a decent rig for arma (a month before it's release) and it just didn't
work - every other game worked on that rig like cheese - just not arma - no matter what i did/changed.
~S~ CD
Ever wanted to be able to attack the city of rome the second turn when playing a roman faction yourself in RTW? then click here
|Sith|IV|Chris_Death
My youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/Chrisdeath69?gvnc=1
~S~ CD
I'm running a
i5-3570K + Coolermaster Hyper 212 Evo
Asrock Z77 Extreme 4 sLI ready
ZOTAC GTX 670 - option for a second one.
650W XXX Edition XFX
1TB Sata HDD
120 GB Corsair SSD (for OS en the heaviest games in terms of loading times)
8 GB DDR3 1600 ripjaws (to be upgraded in time)
Corsair Carbide 500R - pick a case big enough so it's able to actually fit your GFX's and leaves enough airflow room, having cables run behind the sidepanel is a plus
64bit win7
Dual monitored, Wacom Intuos tablet and the whole shebang (dual monitoring is just awesome to work with for college stuff etc)
I run crysis 3 at ultra settings
I run NTW DM at 40 unit cards, 2x unit size - as good as max settings
I run Shogun 2 at max settings (i don't play it often though, but benchmarked it)
Just so you have something to compare it to.
Rig is made in August. All you have to make sure for is that you have enough cooling/airflow