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

[torongill]

I haven't done any assembling for a long time now, but logic dictates it's better to buy one good card than two not so good. First you won't have so many problems with SLI compatibility and second -about one year from now you'll probably be able to buy the same card for half the price and by that time the game you mostly play will be patched to enable stable double-card performance.

The only thing I wouldn't advise is to buy the absolute best card right now on the market. Unless it's for bragging rights and you have the money to throw away. Otherwise invest in other better components that will give you added performance or will make the machine more stable or bearable - more efficient and less noisy cooling, keyboard+mouse, sound, maybe a bigger SSD.

Personally, I'll be waiting for the release of the game and the first reviews and then I'll buy most of my stuff. Although I may have to forsake the game and the rig assembling for quite a while if some things do come true for me

I believe by Labor day there will be some reviews and tentative benchmarks, which will let you know what hardware to look for, so you may in fact save money.

[vietanh797]

Lately I build this one for one of my friends that also play TW
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/JHqJ
It give him a large range of options to upgrade. He already have a win7 Ultimate 64bit +mouse,keyboard and headphone so I didn't list them into the build. I don't like the case but he choose it himself(his personal's taste).
What do you think about this build?

the VGA is the same as mine this one http://www.msi.com/product/vga/R7770...n-1GD5-OC.html

[Totalheadache]

I've never had any problems running any of the Total War games with my SLI 580s. Shogun 2 runs at a near constant 60 FPS, even in large battles I've never seen it drop below 40, and this is with everything maxed (except MSAA, which is set to 4x).

Yes of course SLI or Xfire will add extra heat/noise. But I game with headphones so the noise is hardly noticed. As for heat, as long as you have a case with good air flow its fine, even after long hours of gaming, I never really see my 2 580s pass 75C, nor my CPU which is overclocked to 4.5GHz ever pass 72C.

well dont see many people report no issues with sli + total wars. will be interested to see how you get on with rome2.

i never added a 2nd 580 because I can pull a near 60fps with a single card @1920x1200, yeah with the odd dip to around 40...but that's the total war engine for you.

yep headphones are a solution but i prefer to play with them off, not that it would bother me as I would watercool both the gpu's. not everyone would though. certainly wouldnt be a big issue for me but the heat/factor is def worth taking into consideration...(well i'd say you def want a certain size decent case, like a corsair obsidian 650d).

[gamerwill253]

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?

Just all kinds of gaming for the upcoming releases of new games.

[Sharpe]

When are PC parts going to drop in price this year?

That is when I shall spend my dead presidents.



Seriously buying a top end PC now is the equivalent to setting fire to a pile of money.

[gamerwill253]

When are PC parts going to drop in price this year?

That is when I shall spend my dead presidents.



Seriously buying a top end PC now is the equivalent to setting fire to a pile of money.

Is it because new parts are coming out this year?

[Sharpe]

I assumed that new parts came out every year.

[Biggus Splenus]

Wow, so much posts I'll try to cover a few things from my view and experience blah blah blah.

When doing SLI/CFX on Total War, it's fine to use 2 really high end cards like 580, 680, 7970 or 7950, because just one of those cards can max out S2 anyway. I tested a rig with 2 7770 in CFX, but the graphics on S2 up to the highest, and it ran relatively fine. But them all the text started to glitch out, like blink on and on, and then sometimes my cursor would completely disappear off the screen, except for the very tip pixel which would be offset a few inches. So it was impossible to play, that mouse glitch caused so many loses on multiplayer So it is definitely better to put the money you spent on 2 low end cards, for one high end card. PS. the 650 and 650Ti are absolutely terrible, the lowest cards you want are 660 and 7850, in my opinion, they are both still relatively cheap and offer great performance to price.

In current TW titles, overclocking can earn you a noticeable boost. S2 can use 2 cores at the most (most of it been dumped on the 1st core, 2nd core does light tasks). So image you have a 3570k which has 4 cores at 3.4Ghz, only 2 can be used, so that gives you a max performance of 6.8Ghz towards Shogun 2 (in turbo mode a core does 3.8Ghz, so that's 7.6Ghz). You can quite safely overclock each of these cores to 4.5Ghz with a custom cooler, equaling 9Ghz total for Shogun 2. So you have 6.8Ghz on stock, 7.6Ghz in turbo, and 9Ghz on overclock. The real difference would be a little smaller, because like I said before the 2nd core only does a little of the work, but you can still notice a decent difference.

The highest end PSU you need for any single GPU is 750W (minimum I would recommend for the highest end cards), any higher is for multi card setups, or dual-GPU cards (like the 7990 and 690). Like it was said previously in this thread though, don't just go buy any random PSU, in this tutorial I will show which ones are best for gaming PCs.

As for the best GPU brands, ASUS, MSI and Evga are definitely the best out there, Gigabyte, Sapphire are great too, Galaxy, Powercolor and HIS are just ok.

@Bearnation54 - for your monitor, you want something with 2ms response time, 1920x1080 resolution (any bigger can work graphics cards too hard), and buy from either ASUS, LG, Dell, Samsung, or even BenQ. BenQ is definitely know to be the best gaming monitors. In my opinion avoid Acer.

@Sharpe - no new graphics cards are coming out, but in 3-4 months Intel and AMD are releasing some new CPU sets for the desktop. Both of these are not going to be amazingly better, about 10% says most people. So if you can't wait to build a PC, go ahead and get one now because your not missing out on much, but if you can wait then wait

@gamerwill253 - I'll show you a really good build soon for what you want. Just one pointer though; you chose the 2011 chip, which is a very expensive chip set, you're better off with 1155. Like I said to Sharpe though, Intel are making a new chip set (1150) soon.

[Totalheadache]

Wow, so much posts I'll try to cover a few things from my view and experience blah blah blah.

When doing SLI/CFX on Total War, it's fine to use 2 really high end cards like 580, 680, 7970 or 7950, because just one of those cards can max out S2 anyway. I tested a rig with 2 7770 in CFX, but the graphics on S2 up to the highest, and it ran relatively fine. But them all the text started to glitch out, like blink on and on, and then sometimes my cursor would completely disappear off the screen, except for the very tip pixel which would be offset a few inches. So it was impossible to play, that mouse glitch caused so many loses on multiplayer So it is definitely better to put the money you spent on 2 low end cards, for one high end card. PS. the 650 and 650Ti are absolutely terrible, the lowest cards you want are 660 and 7850, in my opinion, they are both still relatively cheap and offer great performance to price.

In current TW titles, overclocking can earn you a noticeable boost. S2 can use 2 cores at the most (most of it been dumped on the 1st core, 2nd core does light tasks). So image you have a 3570k which has 4 cores at 3.4Ghz, only 2 can be used, so that gives you a max performance of 6.8Ghz towards Shogun 2 (in turbo mode a core does 3.8Ghz, so that's 7.6Ghz). You can quite safely overclock each of these cores to 4.5Ghz with a custom cooler, equaling 9Ghz total for Shogun 2. So you have 6.8Ghz on stock, 7.6Ghz in turbo, and 9Ghz on overclock. The real difference would be a little smaller, because like I said before the 2nd core only does a little of the work, but you can still notice a decent difference.

The highest end PSU you need for any single GPU is 750W (minimum I would recommend for the highest end cards), any higher is for multi card setups, or dual-GPU cards (like the 7990 and 690). Like it was said previously in this thread though, don't just go buy any random PSU, in this tutorial I will show which ones are best for gaming PCs.

As for the best GPU brands, ASUS, MSI and Evga are definitely the best out there, Gigabyte, Sapphire are great too, Galaxy, Powercolor and HIS are just ok.

@Bearnation54 - for your monitor, you want something with 2ms response time, 1920x1080 resolution (any bigger can work graphics cards too hard), and buy from either ASUS, LG, Dell, Samsung, or even BenQ. BenQ is definitely know to be the best gaming monitors. In my opinion avoid Acer.

@Sharpe - no new graphics cards are coming out, but in 3-4 months Intel and AMD are releasing some new CPU sets for the desktop. Both of these are not going to be amazingly better, about 10% says most people. So if you can't wait to build a PC, go ahead and get one now because your not missing out on much, but if you can wait then wait

@gamerwill253 - I'll show you a really good build soon for what you want. Just one pointer though; you chose the 2011 chip, which is a very expensive chip set, you're better off with 1155. Like I said to Sharpe though, Intel are making a new chip set (1150) soon.

9 ghz wow! you dont multiply any core speeds...

e.g my cpu does 4ghz 24/7 over it's 4 cores and that's it...there is no 9hz in turbo mode (on any cpu). highest oc's we see atm are in the 4.5-5ghz region...for enthusiasts..

[Biggus Splenus]

Oh no, I was just adding both of the cores together that would be working on Shogun 2. Won't be getting that, but now that I think about what I was doing, it didn't really make any logic

But you could get 7Ghz, it is possible out of a CPU...... for a professional overclocker

[gamerwill253]

Wow, so much posts I'll try to cover a few things from my view and experience blah blah blah.

When doing SLI/CFX on Total War, it's fine to use 2 really high end cards like 580, 680, 7970 or 7950, because just one of those cards can max out S2 anyway. I tested a rig with 2 7770 in CFX, but the graphics on S2 up to the highest, and it ran relatively fine. But them all the text started to glitch out, like blink on and on, and then sometimes my cursor would completely disappear off the screen, except for the very tip pixel which would be offset a few inches. So it was impossible to play, that mouse glitch caused so many loses on multiplayer So it is definitely better to put the money you spent on 2 low end cards, for one high end card. PS. the 650 and 650Ti are absolutely terrible, the lowest cards you want are 660 and 7850, in my opinion, they are both still relatively cheap and offer great performance to price.

In current TW titles, overclocking can earn you a noticeable boost. S2 can use 2 cores at the most (most of it been dumped on the 1st core, 2nd core does light tasks). So image you have a 3570k which has 4 cores at 3.4Ghz, only 2 can be used, so that gives you a max performance of 6.8Ghz towards Shogun 2 (in turbo mode a core does 3.8Ghz, so that's 7.6Ghz). You can quite safely overclock each of these cores to 4.5Ghz with a custom cooler, equaling 9Ghz total for Shogun 2. So you have 6.8Ghz on stock, 7.6Ghz in turbo, and 9Ghz on overclock. The real difference would be a little smaller, because like I said before the 2nd core only does a little of the work, but you can still notice a decent difference.

The highest end PSU you need for any single GPU is 750W (minimum I would recommend for the highest end cards), any higher is for multi card setups, or dual-GPU cards (like the 7990 and 690). Like it was said previously in this thread though, don't just go buy any random PSU, in this tutorial I will show which ones are best for gaming PCs.

As for the best GPU brands, ASUS, MSI and Evga are definitely the best out there, Gigabyte, Sapphire are great too, Galaxy, Powercolor and HIS are just ok.

@Bearnation54 - for your monitor, you want something with 2ms response time, 1920x1080 resolution (any bigger can work graphics cards too hard), and buy from either ASUS, LG, Dell, Samsung, or even BenQ. BenQ is definitely know to be the best gaming monitors. In my opinion avoid Acer.

@Sharpe - no new graphics cards are coming out, but in 3-4 months Intel and AMD are releasing some new CPU sets for the desktop. Both of these are not going to be amazingly better, about 10% says most people. So if you can't wait to build a PC, go ahead and get one now because your not missing out on much, but if you can wait then wait

@gamerwill253 - I'll show you a really good build soon for what you want. Just one pointer though; you chose the 2011 chip, which is a very expensive chip set, you're better off with 1155. Like I said to Sharpe though, Intel are making a new chip set (1150) soon.

I will be waiting for your build Splenyi. I SHALL WAIT.

[Toho]

I assumed that new parts came out every year.

to be honest it really doesn't matter, I have a 'high end' PC now which I upgraded from a laptop that was like over 8 years old.
My PC should be able to run everything on ultra for next 2 years and upper high for next 3 to 4 years.
with that kind of mentality you will never get a PC because like you said; they release better stuff every year.

[Biggus Splenus]

Exactly. You'd be better off spending around $1100-$1300 on a brand new build, and then spending about another $200-$300 per year on it just for upgrades. It's better than spending $1300 every 2-3 years on a brand new build.

[Sharpe]

What I meant is that the now outdated parts that I want would drop in price with the release of new parts. I would never buy brand new hardware.

[Semper_Fidelis]

Can you use SLI on a non vanilla GPU? I am getting a 670 FTW and I have a mobo that supports SLI, so could I do that or does the GPU have to be the vanilla version?

[Biggus Splenus]

@Semper_Fidelis - the correct term is Reference Cards, not vanilla and yes it is possible. You can SLI any card IF it has the same GPU (670 can only go with 670, 650 only with 650, 7870 only with 7870, etc.). They don't even have to be the same brand, they just both need 670 in their name.

Example; you can SLI both these cards:

Gigabyte GeForce GTX 670 OC 4GB
http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?...ducts_id=21726

and

ASUS GeForce GTX 670 DirectCU II
http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?...ducts_id=20212

Notice they both have totally different cooling solutions (one custom, one reference). One has 4GB of ram, the other has 2GB. One runs at 1058MHz in boost, the other runs at 980MHz in boost. All that difference wont make any compatibility issues while in SLI

It's the exact same situation with AMDs CFX too, just to clear that up for anyone that might ask.

[Totalheadache]

@Semper_Fidelis - the correct term is Reference Cards, not vanilla and yes it is possible. You can SLI any card IF it has the same GPU (670 can only go with 670, 650 only with 650, 7870 only with 7870, etc.). They don't even have to be the same brand, they just both need 670 in their name.

Example; you can SLI both these cards:

Gigabyte GeForce GTX 670 OC 4GB
http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?...ducts_id=21726

and

ASUS GeForce GTX 670 DirectCU II
http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?...ducts_id=20212

Notice they both have totally different cooling solutions (one custom, one reference). One has 4GB of ram, the other has 2GB. One runs at 1058MHz in boost, the other runs at 980MHz in boost. All that difference wont make any compatibility issues while in SLI

It's the exact same situation with AMDs CFX too, just to clear that up for anyone that might ask.

to save headaches sli/xfire same cards, same memory, same brand. however you can mix and match brands and oc v vanilla versions.

that said say you have a vanilla and a ftw version, the vanilla version will have to be bumped up to the ftw speeds when run at stock, which shouldnt be a problem.

however re the mixing different cards with different memory I think that's a no no and pointless because the 4gb card is hampered by the 2gb one...well i read around a bit on this and I think this is not advised..(i am not 100 percent sure but i'd risk a £20 bet )

you're on a roll splenyi! (j/k. winks).

[A Barbarian]

@Totalheadache
Thanks for your offer with the water cooling. But I have to think a bit more about my next move first. I just got a 27" 2560x1440 monitor and now my single 7970 (with a custom Alpenföhn Peter cooler) is sometimes choking with that resolution when I try to use some AA (which I am addicted to), lol. I think about adding a 2nd 7970 but since the Peter cooler is pretty big, space is a problem. Watercooling would help here. But a setup for CPU + 2 GPUs would be pretty expensive. Apart from price, XSPC which you mentioned seems to have some of the best solutions.

Peter cooler

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[Totalheadache]

@Totalheadache
Thanks for your offer with the water cooling. But I have to think a bit more about my next move first. I just got a 27" 2560x1440 monitor and now my single 7970 (with a custom Alpenföhn Peter cooler) is sometimes choking with that resolution when I try to use some AA (which I am addicted to), lol. I think about adding a 2nd 7970 but since the Peter cooler is pretty big, space is a problem. Watercooling would help here. But a setup for CPU + 2 GPUs would be pretty expensive. Apart from price, XSPC which you mentioned seems to have some of the best solutions.

Peter cooler

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

nice cooler. big diff with that higher res? (in terms of quality)

tbh dont really need to change my pump but it's bugging me from day one that the cap never fitted flush, suppose I could phone up and say am not satisfied even though have used it for months...np that you dont want, probably be able to sell it on ebay..

watercooling does get expensive (circa £250 for a good setup) but if you love hardware it's a must at some point just for the fun!

prob u now have is if you get a 2nd card will it fit? could wait for next gen..which I am doing..

[A Barbarian]

2560 on 27" is pretty nice since the dot pitch is smaller than the 1920 on 24" before so everything looks already a bit smother even without AA. And besides the larger real estate the colors are much nicer than before (now PLS/IPS before TN). I tried several IPS 24" panels before but always had problems with backlight bleeding and IPS glow (grey shimmer with dark scenes in a dark room). But especially the IPS glow is much less of a problem with the Samsung SA850D I have now. It looks like Samsungs PLS technology (which is similar to IPS) seems to have an edge in that department.

Space will be a bit of a problem with the 2nd 7970 in my Fractal R3 but I just ordered some Prolimatech Ultra Sleek Vortex 14 fans which have a lower profile than normal fans and might just allow to squeeze in the card

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Regarding next-gen GPUs, they seem to be still away by about 9 months and not even a Titan would give the frame rates (I am usually happy with 40fps) with higher AA/SSAA which I would like to have.