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

[Metallistic]

I use artic cooling coolers they come with their own silver thermal grease so I don't have to care for proper application

I am talking about the thermal paste between the actual chip and its heatsink, not between the heatsink and the CPU cooler that sits on top.

[Samuel Pidgeon]

Does this pc look good enough for games like this http://m.ebuyer.com/512383

[alQamar]

Does this pc look good enough for games like this http://m.ebuyer.com/512383

Except some minor things it is a good pick. You may go for it. I assume you cannot build an own by yourself otherwise visit the OP please to inform yourself.

I am talking about the thermal paste between the actual chip and its heatsink, not between the heatsink and the CPU cooler that sits on top.

Sorry that's hard I never would dare to open this case... amazing. I will never forget how fragile open cores are (intel 3 and AMD Athlon XP)

[Biggus Splenus]

Thanks to alQ's suggestions, I've change the Extreme Enthusiast PSU to a Platinum Seasonic 660W, instead of a Fractal (nothing wrong with Fractal, but SS is the best ). I'm still looking for different case options for this tier, alQ suggested the NZXT 810, but that's only $10 more than the Carbide 500R in the previous tier...

I've also added the option to get a larger PSU in the Extreme Enthusiast for future SLI/CFX. I'll do it to all the other tiers soon.

[alQamar]

Splenyi thanks for that but in case of the "case" I have to laugh. The 810 case is perfectly with cooling, look and space galore and has been silenced. A feature we did not have used before. I find it not professional to decline to choose it just it seems to be quite cheap for the pick and tier . Meant that in a friendly way, please think about it. The carbide 500R is a good choice of yours for the other tiers. The nzxt may be too huge for non enthusiasts. So I would prefer to preserve it for both enthusiast tiers (SLI, crossfire, water cooling) and use the 500R for the excellent tier.
Btw did you find time to study my link in the pm about vendors and labeled psu. It seems Seasonic HEC and FSP are the biggest player's. As for HEC I can leave reputation too used them for entry many years (case plus psu) never failed in 20 years. But Seasonic has better quality details and warranty conditions. I was surprised even be quiet dark power is a re labeled Seasonic cas be quit act like a vendor on a german market and not a re labeled, how ever this explains same price class and warranty conditions, the world's too small sometimes

[Biggus Splenus]

I didn't know the 810 has all those features, if I wasn't so lazy I would have checked The size maybe be a factor for some, but you're right, most enthusiast wouldn't mind a large case (I would imagine, although I hate large cases). I'll put it into the enthusiast section instead of the 500R, and I'll put the 500R in the Excellent tier, before Enthusiast. How does that sound? Then we can find an even better case for Extreme Enthusiast (I was thinking either a Silverstone FT02 or FT04, both cases have best in class air cooling (seriously, nothing is better), sound dampening, aluminium, sturdy as hell, it's everything).

I'll also upgrade the case in very good to the 400R

EDIT: Just remembered I need to put that AC cooler in somewhere. I wanted to replace the Tt Frio with an AC cooler, but something price closer to $50-55, how good is their i30? Other options are the Freezer 13 (and CO version, what's the difference?), and the A30. Will need to check comparison benchmarks for the best.

[alQamar]

good solution now. We might consider ultra enthusiast with water cooling for gpu (evga copper series) and cpu that would honour the tiers description The only problem is my lack of knowledge here honestly with proper water cooling. I will check the Silverstone and offer you pics and my impressions via PM. The I30 is for intel only and A30 for AMD never used them before they are brand new. What I don't like is they aren't versatile like the freezer 13 which can be used for all sockets. The CO version has slightly better fan and cooling which is designed for long time 24/7 operation. I cannot yet give personal experienced based reputation to anything but the Freezer 13

[Biggus Splenus]

I don't want to cover enthusiast water cooling at all in this thread. People that know how to watercool won't be looking at a thread on how to select components. If you know what I mean

I did a search on newegg and it looks like Silverstone's FT02 is being phased out, but the FT04 is brand new and in stock. Look up Anandtech's review and you'll see its amazing performance.

[alQamar]

I agree with that. FT04 seems brand new is not available here. Perhaps they use other naming for other regions. Only FT03 here.

[Biggus Splenus]

FT03 is a small foot-print designed case, nothing like the FT02 or FT04. THe FT04 has 2 fans and outperforms every case in cooling, even the Rosewill case with 8+ fans

[alQamar]

Mmm so it seems I cannot assist you with a second opinion with that case.

[Biggus Splenus]

Well we can always look for other choices, but I really like that one. Almost bought it, but size became an issue

Made some changes to the OP
- switched around the cases like I said. Extreme Enthusiast still has the same case as the other enthusiast, but we'll try to solve that soon.
- switch the Tt Frio for the Xigmatek Dark Knight II, which was around the price I was looking for, and seems to perform really well. Open to other suggestions.

I feel like I'm forgetting to do something though.

EDIT: Changed the name of the thread, I think it suits it better now. A naughty admin changed it before asking me last time

[alQamar]

mm hard stuff. The problem is that bigger Lian Li cases are not good available around the world.

[-Concrete-]

Could do with some advice, i'm looking at a 1x8GB 1600mhz ValueRAM stick, or 2x4GB 1600mhz Hyper-X RAM. Both are Kingston brand, priced the same, which would actually be better? I'm leaning towards the normal ValueRAM.

[Metallistic]

Could do with some advice, i'm looking at a 1x8GB 1600mhz ValueRAM stick, or 2x4GB 1600mhz Hyper-X RAM. Both are Kingston brand, priced the same, which would actually be better? I'm leaning towards the normal ValueRAM.

Go with the 2x4GB. It is always preferred to take advantage of the Dual Channel feature, which increases the performance of your RAM.

[Samuel Pidgeon]

I have found a pc I would like and it was my first choice http://www.chillblast.com/pconf.php?productid=19006
as I can't seem to find a good gaming pc that isn't too expensive I am aiming for £600 to £700 I have read the OP I'm looking for high graphics pc so I can play this and shogun 2 maybe a few others as well.

[alQamar]

Hello lads, I just had my first Haswell under my finger tips and this CPU makes me really sad: the Overclocking of an 4670k is a nightmare! Then I read some more reports about OC and Haswell on techpowerup. Additionally I saw two more things that makes me thinking that Haswell is the most badly launch since the Pentium 2.

I was not able to make an OC just by raising the turbo settings like on Ivy Bridge and Sandy Bridge, he accepted everything but does not run stable. Furthermore you might remember the stuff I've posted that OC Haswell K CPU is now possible with H87 instead of Z87 chipset boards. Now I have to read that Intel is acting against this and in the last step would even forbid OC K Haswell CPUs via Windows Update and before that force the mainboard vendors to lock H87 again. So anyone that bought a H87 on my recommendation or the press is now really kidded.

Splenyi, all stuff I've read about Haswell, even in performance comparisons does not suit for my taste. We should not go with this hype and lean back to something that works better > Ivy Bridge.

I will ran some test soon with Shogun 2 so we can compare my Sandy Bridge and the Haswell directly, so same benches I've made some days ago. Then we will have a real comparison if Haswell is worth to buy anyway.

[ahedgpe]

Hello lads, I just had my first Haswell under my finger tips and this CPU makes me really sad: the Overclocking of an 4670k is a nightmare! Then I read some more reports about OC and Haswell on techpowerup. Additionally I saw two more things that makes me thinking that Haswell is the most badly launch since the Pentium 2.

I was not able to make an OC just by raising the turbo settings like on Ivy Bridge and Sandy Bridge, he accepted everything but does not run stable. Furthermore you might remember the stuff I've posted that OC Haswell K CPU is now possible with H87 instead of Z87 chipset boards. Now I have to read that Intel is acting against this and in the last step would even forbid OC K Haswell CPUs via Windows Update and before that force the mainboard vendors to lock H87 again. So anyone that bought a H87 on my recommendation or the press is now really kidded.

Splenyi, all stuff I've read about Haswell, even in performance comparisons does not suit for my taste. We should not go with this hype and lean back to something that works better > Ivy Bridge.

I will ran some test soon with Shogun 2 so we can compare my Sandy Bridge and the Haswell directly, so same benches I've made some days ago. Then we will have a real comparison if Haswell is worth to buy anyway.

If I understand correctly, you were unable to get a stable OC by just using the Turbo settings? I just got that CPU two weeks ago with a Gigabyte z87mx-d3h. I have only tinkered a little so far, but was able to get a stable OC to 4.0ghz only using the turbo settings and no increase to voltage. Ran Prime95 overnight and max heat around 70 with nonstock Coolmaster Hyper TX3. It actually was sooo much easier than OCing an AMD. This is my first Intel in many, may years and so much easier to OC than AMD has been at least. Just thought I would share!

[Metallistic]

Oh well, can't say I am surprised. Intel have over 70% market share so cutting corners and forcing people to buy a particular model/generation of CPUs and/or motherboards is going to become more and more common. After the Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad CPU series, overclocking has become a privilege with a price tag stapled onto it.

It has always been the case that you need to invest in an overall solid system and cooling to be able to overclock, but now you also have to buy a specific processor model (namely, the K series, featuring an unlocked multiplier).

By the way, alQamar, how are the temperatures?

[alQamar]

Hello again now I am just a little bit more tamed, but not kicked off my chair.

4.0ghz only using the turbo settings

which is ridicilous comparing to the boost of 4,5 GHz on our Intel Sandy and Ivy Bridge mate.

Finally we managed to OC the 4670K to 4,1 GHz stable and based on turbo settings only and with no voltage changes. This reflects roundabout the maximum I read about that should be "easy" possible that way (4,1-4,3 GHz)


We made the benchmarks with same settings and drivers, the only thing different are Windows version and our hardware

i7 2500k @ 4,5 GHz CPU Benchmark Shogun 2 1920x1080: 41 FPS
i5 4670k @ 4,1 GHz CPU Benchmark Shogun 2 1920x1080: 42 FPS (+12 % which includes the lower clocking - this backups the performance plus I've read about for Haswell comparing Sandy Bridge)

i7 2500k @ 4,5 GHz GPU Benchmark Shogun 2 1920x1080, FXAA maxed settings, EVGA 670 FTW: 76 FPS
i5 4670k @ 4,1 GHz CPU Benchmark Shogun 2 1920x1080, FXAA maxed settings, EVGA 770 SC: 84 FPS (+ 11%)
Pricing (new parts):
251 € for the i7-2600K vs 205 € i5-4650K
279 € for the 670 FTW vs 381 € GTX 770 SC

May I now say: I would mind the price differences regarding to the effective performance plus on Total War engine?!
I am out of words.