Build a PC for Rome 2 / Hardware Recommendations and Advice Thread

[Toho]

to the OP and anyone else thats interested in doing this.
as a noob that knows nothing much about computers just do what I said and this thread will be a gold mine for people like me.

tell us the budget and preferred parts to buy. give us written instructions and a short video that demonstrates the instructions.
make both instructions and the videos short but always have little notes at the bottom for further explanations, tips and warnings.

[Jedi]

Not everyone can afford what you have listed though. 16GB is an absolute overkill though, most games don't even use 8GB. You don't need a power supply between 650 and 850W, 500W is enough for any single graphics card. The FX 8350 should not be forgotten, it runs just as good as the Intel i5 3570k on games that are threaded properly, like Crysis 3 and Farcry 3, but Shogun 2 isn't one of these games. More about you RAM choice, you definitely don't need to spend more money on fast ram. 1600Mhz is ideal for gaming, higher speeds make the smallest difference. Besides, you can just overclock your ram to any speed you want.

And the case should always be decided on last. You don't want to cheap out on a GPU just because you bought a great looking case.

Choosing your PC parts isn't that straight forward.

No offence buddy but you got pretty much everything wrong there apart from 16GB being overkill... Faster ram does help and games do use 8GB.Im not going to go get benchmarks from tomshardware again but games and windows combined will start pushing 8GB very soon.Hell the sims shows fps increases right up to 6GB!

And buying a 500w PSU is simply going to gimp your entire purchase.If someone builds a new pc the first thing they should be doing is buying the best processor they can afford with some fast 8GB ram.Unless these noobs are going to rip out the processor later on and upgrade and by having a 500w PSU you have essentially killed thier upgrade path.

Are you going to run a gtx 680 on a 500w psu? Thats a fire hazard!


Unless you want to be stuck with a rig that cannot be upgraded go ahead and buy that 500w psu.In the meantime people i have built for are using corsair 650w power supplys and 3570k cpus and can in 2-3 years time drop in any high end card they wish (Nvidia 7000 series) to revamp thier computers and bring it back to life.This is something you cannot do on a budget 500w psu build.Yes it may hurt you now to take most of your budget and not use it on a graphics card but in 2 years time when that card shows its age and needs upgraded you have the perfect rig to house a new card.

[vietanh797]

if you just want a PC run S2 good I suggest
Core i3 or i5 if you have money, Ivy bridge type please since they allow you to have PCIEx16 run at 3.0
Ram 4GB is enough for S2, 8GB is just waste of money if you only go for S2 or Rome 2
MB should be Gigabyte, they tend to be more stable than other brands, but you should buy one that allow you upgrade later on not the one that won't sell anymore after 2 years
VGA is important but if you not plan to play game that too old(released 2005 or earlier) then you can try the HD7770 it is quite ok for new game I personally choose MSI brand, I was a fan of Nvidia(they good for RTS game) but lately the those AMD cards is cheaper and better.
PSU about 550W is good to go, but if you want to upgrade your PC later then you may want to choose a 750W, I don't think you will need to go higher than 750W for a gaming PC since it is stupid to use bunch of VGA cards for gaming.
I don't really care about HDD the old one still good and I have time to waste no need to buys expensive HDD that can't store much data and just only help you run a little faster

[Biggus Splenus]

No offence buddy but you got pretty much everything wrong there apart from 16GB being overkill...

Actually, the thing is that I didn't.

8GB is fine, ask any PC gamer that builds his own pc and has tried both 8GB and 16GB. I've done it, and there is no noticeable difference at all. Period. This cannot be argued.

500W is fine on a tight budget build, which is why I chose it for him.

In a full system with the 680, the PC won't even consume 400W of power, it will be between 340-370W, so no where near a fire hazard, still enough room for expansion, and plenty of room for an upgrade. The 7970 however will consume 400W IN A FULL SYSTEM. So there is no need for a higher watt PSU unless you want to SLI/CFX, which obviously cannot be done when you are on a $700-800 budget PC build, like I listed before. You have to know that you don't need a PSU that has 300W excess all the time, you fit your PSU to the rest of your system, just like with all other parts. It's actually really simple.

You say that in a few years he might want to upgrade his GPU, and that the PSU will stop him. This is actually a really stupid assumption. GPUs will not continuosly develop to suck out more power, they are developing for more efficient performance. For example, compare the 680 to the 570. The 570 is much less powerful, but uses more wattage (30W more at max load). If you want a more 'blanced' comparison, then compare the 580 to the 680; 680 sill out performs the crap out of the 580, and consumes 60W less at full load. Another example is the current Nvidia and AMD GPU architecture; Nvidias is more advanced (arguably perhaps), which is why their GPUs can perform on-par (most times) with AMDs at a lower wattage. By the way, I am strickly talking GPU architecture here, not including GDDR5 memory or anything else.

In Nvidia's next GTX series, there will definitely be a much better performance/wattage ratio, which has continuously developed since, well, graphics cards existed. So to end you assumption, your should really consider researching into this and getting your facts right.

Please do not reply to this post saying "no I'm right, your wrong", because I know that just isn't true. I'll try to get some bigger tech heads than myself down here just to confirm this.




...... Ok, now about the your post vietanh

PCIE 3.0 is actually more geared for the future, you will have trouble finding a game these days that will actually max out PCIE 2.0's bandwidth. So 3.0 isn't essential, but it's the best thing to get anyway because Ivy Bridge is currently the most modern CPU, and cost the same as the older ones.

About the RAM part you mentioned... TW seems to be very reliant on RAM speeds and size (which I forgot to mention earlier ), so this is a game when all your RAM specs can make a noticeable difference. 4GB will be fine for an i3 or a low end i5, but if your going with the i5 3570k, then 8GB of RAM will actually be used well.

It's not exactly correct to refer him to Gigabyte. On a budget, ASRock is definitely the best. They offer the exact same hardware features as the bigger brands, like Gigabyte, MSI, and ASUS, but they are a fair bit cheaper. The later 3 brands have better software though. But to be honest, if your on a tight budget, ASRock Z77 boards are they way to go. They also have the least return rates = more reliability. ASUS currently have the highest, which is quite shocking.

For the graphics card.... 7770 is not a good choice, it will only run good on S2 if you pair it with a high end CPU. It's definitely worth investing the few more bucks into a 7850, or better yet, even a few more for the 7870 (owning the best price/performance ratio on the market right now). The lowest end "gaming" graphics cards are the 7850 and 600, any lower and you will notice a huge drop in performance.

Your post on PSU is well stated, but 750W is only going to be necessary for SLI or CFX. My friend has 2 7970's running on a 760W PSU and it never maxes it out, runs amazing.

And yeah, with a HDD you only want to choose between Hitachi, Seagate and Western Digital (in order of reliability; WD most reliable). It's best to get 1TB drives of these, because any higher will have multiple platter = less reliability (although most people wont ever see it fail, so its only a tiny difference, not worth considering, so forget I mentioned it ).

[Jedi]

Actually, the thing is that I didn't.

8GB is fine, ask any PC gamer that builds his own pc and has tried both 8GB and 16GB. I've done it, and there is no noticeable difference at all. Period. This cannot be argued.

500W is fine on a tight budget build, which is why I chose it for him.

In a full system with the 680, the PC won't even consume 400W of power, it will be between 340-370W, so no where near a fire hazard, still enough room for expansion, and plenty of room for an upgrade. The 7970 however will consume 400W IN A FULL SYSTEM. So there is no need for a higher watt PSU unless you want to SLI/CFX, which obviously cannot be done when you are on a $700-800 budget PC build, like I listed before. You have to know that you don't need a PSU that has 300W excess all the time, you fit your PSU to the rest of your system, just like with all other parts. It's actually really simple.

You say that in a few years he might want to upgrade his GPU, and that the PSU will stop him. This is actually a really stupid assumption. GPUs will not continuosly develop to suck out more power, they are developing for more efficient performance. For example, compare the 680 to the 570. The 570 is much less powerful, but uses more wattage (30W more at max load). If you want a more 'blanced' comparison, then compare the 580 to the 680; 680 sill out performs the crap out of the 580, and consumes 60W less at full load. Another example is the current Nvidia and AMD GPU architecture; Nvidias is more advanced (arguably perhaps), which is why their GPUs can perform on-par (most times) with AMDs at a lower wattage. By the way, I am strickly talking GPU architecture here, not including GDDR5 memory or anything else.

In Nvidia's next GTX series, there will definitely be a much better performance/wattage ratio, which has continuously developed since, well, graphics cards existed. So to end you assumption, your should really consider researching into this and getting your facts right.

Please do not reply to this post saying "no I'm right, your wrong", because I know that just isn't true. I'll try to get some bigger tech heads than myself down here just to confirm this.

Well firstly i never said anything about the speed difference between 8 or 16GB of ram.What i said was you were wrong about saying above 1600mhz makes no difference when it does and more so on AMD 8 cores which need 2400mhz to really open them up.

And its not even about watts with a psu.Its is about amps on the 12v rail.The corsair 500w has 34A on the 12v rail.GTX 680 requires 550w minimum with 38A on the 12v rail.You are not even taking into consideration the potential overclocks or SSD,CDROM,FANS etc.And im sure you have lots of experience in this kind of thing when your date of birth is 1995? Your giving out bad advice and someone is going to be stuck with some crappy generic 500w psu when they could simply go with a quality corsair 620w for a few bucks more.Just look around on google for a few gtx 680 500w psu threads.

How many 500w builds have you tested personally or builds where people skimp on the heart of the system? Running a psu near its limits day in day out is asking for psu failure.And when it takes out the rest of the system which happened on a friends corsair 620w then you have to ask questions about other brands when corsair are the best in the business.I know it may be temping to you all guys to save some money on the psu and put it into the graphics card but im telling you its a major mistake i made on a build a few years ago.

Not only did my 600w OCZ GameXstream fail but it would not of powered a GTX 580.It blocked my upgrade path and i made sure i never had it happen again.If you want to learn this lesson the hard way then please be my guest.

[Biggus Splenus]

Well, stalking my age is a little creepy, but I won't talk about that now.

Sorry about the RAM mix-up, I was reading a few posts at a time and confused myself.

About PSU's, Corsair are not the best in the buisness, Seasonic are definitely the highest end, but at a considerable price.

Anyway, back to what is necessary. I suggested this build with an i3 and the 7870 (at the highest, might not even be able to fit this into the budget), because it's a really tight budget build. You can't tell me that a 520W PSU will do fine with this? Maybe a worthy upgrade is getting Antec's 620W HCG power supply, and an extra 10-20 $$$.

By the way, if you where to go with a Corsair PSU you would have to get a CX series, which are not as good as Antec's HCG series. When on this budget, HCG is the way to go.

About amps and wattage; you are taking this somewhere that I never even thought it would reach. Why are you trying to run a 580 on a 500W PSU? I never said that, I'm talking about the 7870 at the highest here. I did say before that the 680 would use under 400W at the max, but I didn't suggest to run the bloody thing on a 500W PSU, that's silly. But the Antec 520W HCG has 40amps and 480W on the 12v rail, so it would be ok anyway. The 620W version has 48amps and about 580W on that rail.

Some cheap PSU's are rubbish, but Antec's HCG series are geared for gaming (as the series title suggests), and focus on the 12v rail, which is why it's a quality choice.

[Biggus Splenus]

I've updated the OP so you guys have some idea with what is to come. I'm open to any ideas that anyone has.

I haven't started the build lists just yet, I'm still working on that.

[A Barbarian]

and games do use 8GB.Im not going to go get benchmarks from tomshardware again but games and windows combined will start pushing 8GB very soon.Hell the sims shows fps increases right up to 6GB!

Considering the relatively low prices I also recommend at least 8GB (2x4GB modules, not 4x2GB) but since almost all games are still 32 bit and therefore limited to 4GB (older games often to 2GB) address space, the actual benefits for games are not very big.

I found this quote on Toms-Hardware:

So far, so annoying. Other than the 64-bit client of Half-Life 2 with the Bombast mod installed, hardly any game sees an increase in frames per second using more RAM.

[Biggus Splenus]

Almost all games are still 32 bit and therefore limited to 4GB

That is definitely the reason for a lot of games, but with others, they just don't need that much ram. Gaming is no where near the most demanding PC area, all of that excessive hardware is definitely not made for it, it's for professionals who do all the hugelly demanding 3D and 2D rendering, video editing , etc. It's for professional use, not hobby. People that have 7990, 690, Titans, high end card CFX/SLI, 16GB ram and over, Sandy Bridge E processors, ROP motherboards etc. in their gaming systems are just plane excessive and greedy, people that NEED 120fps on their penta-monitor setup with 3D mode at the highest settings on Crysis 3. It's ridiculous with the amount of money they spend, and then 2 years it would be obsolete (in their eyes, anyway), so they go spend another $1000

For god sake, buy your wife/girlfriend a present with that cash

[♠ Thomas Cochrane ♠]

I've updated the OP so you guys have some idea with what is to come. I'm open to any ideas that anyone has.

I haven't started the build lists just yet, I'm still working on that.

I think you're doing a good job here Splenyi. Certainly helped me, and anyone that says your info is useless is a fool. I've taken your advice, but that doesn't mean I'm gonna do exactly what you've said, because I know my way around hardware too. So the rest of you can calm your farms.

[Jedi]

Well, stalking my age is a little creepy, but I won't talk about that now.

Sorry about the RAM mix-up, I was reading a few posts at a time and confused myself.

About PSU's, Corsair are not the best in the buisness, Seasonic are definitely the highest end, but at a considerable price.

Anyway, back to what is necessary. I suggested this build with an i3 and the 7870 (at the highest, might not even be able to fit this into the budget), because it's a really tight budget build. You can't tell me that a 520W PSU will do fine with this? Maybe a worthy upgrade is getting Antec's 620W HCG power supply, and an extra 10-20 $$$.

By the way, if you where to go with a Corsair PSU you would have to get a CX series, which are not as good as Antec's HCG series. When on this budget, HCG is the way to go.

About amps and wattage; you are taking this somewhere that I never even thought it would reach. Why are you trying to run a 580 on a 500W PSU? I never said that, I'm talking about the 7870 at the highest here. I did say before that the 680 would use under 400W at the max, but I didn't suggest to run the bloody thing on a 500W PSU, that's silly. But the Antec 520W HCG has 40amps and 480W on the 12v rail, so it would be ok anyway. The 620W version has 48amps and about 580W on that rail.

Some cheap PSU's are rubbish, but Antec's HCG series are geared for gaming (as the series title suggests), and focus on the 12v rail, which is why it's a quality choice.

Well i posted something very fast to give people an idea on how they should go about building and you replied with

Not everyone can afford what you have listed though. 16GB is an absolute overkill though, most games don't even use 8GB. You don't need a power supply between 650 and 850W, 500W is enough for any single graphics card.

I am simply telling you it is not and people could get the wrong idea on how important the power supply is.Maybe you made a mistake there but thats cool and yes 500w is enough for an i3 build and those amps sound plenty.Its going to be silly preparing to put something better GFX wise beside an i3 as its simply going to bottleneck it.

Why are you trying to run a 580 on a 500W PSU?

I am not i tried to run it on 600w which is where i learn my biggest lesson.I built my pc with most of my budget going on an 8800 GTX and went for a dual core and 600w psu which was a fatal error.I wanted to get a 580 for my new pc and use it in the old one until my budget was ready but low and behold the 600w psu was stopping me and it went on to die 9 months later alongside my 8800 gtx.If i did not skimp on a crappy £60 psu i probably could of used my gtx 580 and the core 2 duo would of did nicely in games that dont give a crap about cpu power.This is why i always reccomend a good corsair psu and the best cpu you can afford.

About PSU's, Corsair are not the best in the buisness, Seasonic are definitely the highest end, but at a considerable price.

Seasonic are corsair.Corsair do not make anything they simply rebrand and adjust existing power supplies and give them a 7 year warranty.My AX850 powers the system in my sig and im 99% sure it is a rebranded seasonic as the fan never comes on ever unless its load hits a certain threshhold.As i dont push the psu there is no fan,blissful silence and the efficency stays at roughly 90% so i save money on my electric bill too.And im safe in the fact i know if need be i could SLI titans or whatever else comes to mind.

[A Barbarian]

It's ridiculous with the amount of money they spend, and then 2 years it would be obsolete (in their eyes, anyway), so they go spend another $1000

For some people that's not really a lot of money and/or it's their main hobby where they can easily spend that kind of money, what's the problem? Don't always judge from your own perspective

Also, 16GB or more RAM can be used for a lot of stuff. Personally I use half of the 16GB as a RAM disc where I have my temp folders (fantastic speed for installations/unzipping/temporary windows stuff, automatic cleanup on reboot) and render MP4 videos on it (or record short gaming sequences in compressed form) in the background while I am gaming, so my HDDs/SSDs are less busy and the IOs don't interfere with my other stuff.

[gamerwill253]

Is this build fine? http://pcpartpicker.com/p/BMva

[Biggus Splenus]

what's the problem? Don't always judge from your own perspective

I was only joking I'm only saying it because I can't afford that

Also, 16GB or more RAM can be used for a lot of stuff.

You're definitely right, a ram disk can be very useful, but it's not really a necessity in a budget gaming build. I personally have 16GB in 2 DIMMs, and once I happen to have some spare cash I'm going to double my Dominator Platinums to 32GB.

Ram disks are the fastest storage possible, but seem to be less reliable then SSD or HDD (apparently). You could probably only get a max of 24GB storage on one with a modern build though (32GB max on 1155 chip set; 24GB for ram disk, 8GB for general RAM), so it should only be used for specific tasks, and probably a good idea not to have it as a dedicated one, just set it up when you need it.

[Chris Death]

That is definitely the reason for a lot of games, but with others, they just don't need that much ram. Gaming is no where near the most demanding PC area, all of that excessive hardware is definitely not made for it, it's for professionals who do all the hugelly demanding 3D and 2D rendering, video editing , etc. It's for professional use, not hobby. People that have 7990, 690, Titans, high end card CFX/SLI, 16GB ram and over, Sandy Bridge E processors, ROP motherboards etc. in their gaming systems are just plane excessive and greedy, people that NEED 120fps on their penta-monitor setup with 3D mode at the highest settings on Crysis 3. It's ridiculous with the amount of money they spend, and then 2 years it would be obsolete (in their eyes, anyway), so they go spend another $1000

For god sake, buy your wife/girlfriend a present with that cash

Sorry but same could be said about people who do spend money on a rig built for a specific game which has not yet been released thus not even
seen by them.

Also when you call such people greedy - don't you think it is an insult to those who just can't get into
building their own hardware together but trust in some brands or long year experience with certain
dealers.

There are even people who just don't understand that tech stuff but do also want to get a piece of the
cake.

There are people out there who do own enough money to not having to bother learning how to build a
pc on their own - calling them greedy for that is plane stupid and looks only like: "you won't do it my way? you're greedy then".

~S~ CD

[Biggus Splenus]

Is this build fine? http://pcpartpicker.com/p/BMva

Right off the bat it seems very un-balanced.

Can you tell me exactly what you would be using this build for? Just so I have a good idea of what to optimise. And what is your budget too?

[Biggus Splenus]

@Chris Death - see previous post.

[A Barbarian]

Ram disks are the fastest storage possible, but seem to be less reliable then SSD or HDD (apparently).

Less reliable in which way? Regarding failure likelihood, they are probably more reliable than HDDs since they don't have any mechanical moving parts and probably also compared to SSDs since their design is already more established and tested. The only possible weakness could be the RAM driver used since that's a somewhat complex piece of software.

I'm going to double my Dominator Platinums to 32GB.

Make sure you have Windows 7 Professional or Windows 8 since Windows 7 Home Premium only supports 16GB which is pretty stupid.

[Jedi]

For some people that's not really a lot of money and/or it's their main hobby where they can easily spend that kind of money, what's the problem? Don't always judge from your own perspective

Also, 16GB or more RAM can be used for a lot of stuff. Personally I use half of the 16GB as a RAM disc where I have my temp folders (fantastic speed for installations/unzipping/temporary windows stuff, automatic cleanup on reboot) and render MP4 videos on it (or record short gaming sequences in compressed form) in the background while I am gaming, so my HDDs/SSDs are less busy and the IOs don't interfere with my other stuff.

Ram disk is what i drool about.... No issues with Trim being chipset dependant and no need for using raid.I went with two m4's in raid and i just about get 1GB/sec bandwidth.The ram disk would probably make those speeds look pretty damm slow.The problem is overclocking with such huge amounts of ram does not play nice at all.And if your ram starts to degrade so does your storage medium so it can be a little unreliable in that situation.

It is a real pity as money aside i would take your arm and leg off to get Rome II on a ram disk and have 16GB spare.64GB of DDR3 is just unworkable on most budgets and Rome is probably going to be 30GB unzipped grr

[magpie]

Hi all, I hope I did not come across as to negative about building a new PC.In my previous post.
A tutorial would always be an excellent asset to forum member,s.
Maybe it could have a more general title rather than targeting a future game with unknown qualities?
Myself I am still using my old build, Although I am using an 850 W PSU. 8 Gb of DDR2 Ram an old trusty Intel dual core at 3.5 and a 2 Gb graphic,s card.plus 24 inch Dell screen.
All on an Asus board. Old fashioned I know but it keeps me going.