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The PC Building Thread

The Forza Motorsport series has always been locked at 60fps on the 360. It's very hardware intensive so that's why they've not been able add weather effects or night racing. GT5 on the other hand does both of these things but the frame rate drops significantly as a result.
 
60Fps is difficult to let go once your a PC gamer, Grand Theft Auto 4 is a great example, it felt sluggish when I had it on the console but try it on the PC and then back on the console. If it ran like that on your PC you wouldn't say your PC could run it.
 
YoungGun_UK said:
60Fps is difficult to let go once your a PC gamer, Grand Theft Auto 4 is a great example, it felt sluggish when I had it on the console but try it on the PC and then back on the console. If it ran like that on your PC you wouldn't say your PC could run it.
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Yup I agree plus 60fps is a must for racing titles ans fast twitchy fps games

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk
 
Jonney, Just to update you mate. I also tested out Project CARS Build 144 which is a DX11 game on max details at 1920x1080 and vsync and it stayed constantly at 60FPS even with other cars surrounding me.

I think its just the Rfactor 2 BETA Code needs refining mate.

On another strange note I tried to do a race on F1 2011 at Melbourne and all the trees in the background glitch up and show glitchy graphics like.... :( Everything else seems to be fine as I did a race at Monaco and no such graphical issues.
 
m.schumacher said:
Jonney, Just to update you mate. I also tested out Project CARS Build 144 which is a DX11 game on max details at 1920x1080 and vsync and it stayed constantly at 60FPS even with other cars surrounding me.

I think its just the Rfactor 2 BETA Code needs refining mate.

On another strange note I tried to do a race on F1 2011 at Melbourne and all the trees in the background glitch up and show glitchy graphics like.... :( Everything else seems to be fine as I did a race at Monaco and no such graphical issues.
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To be fair. Although pcars looks a lot better then rf2. The physics are child's play compared to rf2. Rf2 is doing far more shit in the background.

Plus its a beta hehe

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I'm glad I was unable to buy the stuff I wanted the other day. Since then I have changed my mind twice about which grpahics card I want and after reading that article will probably change it again.
 
Its very hard to make a decision. I have just seen that you can get a 570 for only £25 more, time to do some more research :CONFUSE:.
 
That's the thing though, you can always say "for only 'x' amount more I can get this..." and then things start getting out of control.

If the 560 ti is a good performer for £150 then I think it will do me.
 
Yeah I know, I have a problem keeping to a budget on anything for that reason. Sometimes its better to have less money to spend.

After reading some reviews I have settled on the card that I linked, the EVGA GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448 Core Classified. Not only does it come in a nice box, it actually performs better than the more expensive 570 due to it being factory overclocked. It will also perform very similarly to the 580 if overclocked again so it seems like very good value to me.
 
EVGA do a either a 10 year warranty or lifetime, can't remember which. Really highly thought of cards, good choice.
 
They must have alot of Confidence in their product. I wonder if that warranty is void if you overclock the card, must be, but how would they know?
The card is limited edition unfortunately, depending on how much my parents want to borrow I might order it tomorrow. I would be annoyed if I cant get it when the loan has been repaid.
 
Ern Dog said:
They must have alot of Confidence in their product. I wonder if that warranty is void if you overclock the card, must be, but how would they know?
The card is limited edition unfortunately, depending on how much my parents want to borrow I might order it tomorrow. I would be annoyed if I cant get it when the loan has been repaid.
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You void warranty if you install a custom cooler. Not if your overclock it

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They will never know, only if you overclock in the BIOS of the video card.

But I have had bad experiences overclocking my GPU so never do it anymore.

I have also just bought an OCZ VERTEZ 3 SSD and I must say the difference in performance now is absolutly incredible.
Machine boots now in no time at all and all my applications load instantly.
 
Jamezinho said:
Thanks for this, by the way mate. It's an interesting read.

What sort of cooling set-ups do you guys have? How many fans are advisable?

Also.....sound cards? Do I need one? Obviously I realise they are required to output 5.1 (which I would like to do).
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My system is AIR cooled with the Dark Rock Pro cooler cost me £45 but is the best air cooler available at the moment. I currently have my i7 2600k running at 4.5GHZ without any problems, i can get 5GHZ but runs at 80-85c when under full load for a period of time but then under real world your processor rarely runs at 100% constantly. Plus my machine runs silent.

Sounds cards are only needed if you have had one in the past and know how much better they sound.
I have always had a creative sound card and recently when I sold my X-FI, I got an ASUS ROG Rampage 3 extreme board with what they claimed is the best onboard sound you can get, when I first plugged it in I thought the sound quality was poor. After 2 days I had no choice and went out and bought a new X-FI.
The only other soundcard worth getting is the ASUS Xonar ones I think they are called and there only good because they use the X-FI chip.
 
Ern Dog said:
I'm not really sure how things work but would having a SSD allow you to cut back RAM?
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Not really. Just get 8GB and you'll be set for a while anyway.

Jamezinho said:
Thanks for this, by the way mate. It's an interesting read.

What sort of cooling set-ups do you guys have? How many fans are advisable?

Also.....sound cards? Do I need one? Obviously I realise they are required to output 5.1 (which I would like to do).
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My Fractal Design R3 has two 140mm fans at the front and a 140mm fan at the rear. That's it and it pretty much does a good job. I'm a little tempted to put a fan on the bottom of my case sucking air in to help out my GPU but it's nothing urgent and can wait.

I'm using a Coolermaster Hyper 212+ as my CPU cooler. My system is generally very cool, 30c just browsing around. Playing games like Skyrim and the GPU can go to around 80c and the system heats up a bit more but it's still a normal level of heat. My 2500k is overclocked to 4.2Ghz and I don't think it really adds much to the temp at all.

I didn't bother with a soundcard when I was just using my TV for sound. But during my new PC build, I bought a £70 pair of speakers and a £130 pair of headphones and both really need a powered soundcard to get the most of my output.
 
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That's what I've got and is a great card. After that, you're paying something like £80 or so I've read.
 
Jamezinho said:
Thanks for this, by the way mate. It's an interesting read.
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No problem. Something else I came across that you may find interesting, this is a article about building a powerful and cool PC in a smaller case(its 3 inches taller than the fat PS3's).
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/microatx-gaming-overclocked,3039-3.html

Also some advice on picking a power supply, seeing as there are soo many different ones this is a good read.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/power-supply-psu-review,2916.html
 
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I have been following this thread and really wish I had a grand to spare :((

Seeing all of the mods you can get for games and the graphics is just amazing, if I had the money I would definately invest in a set up.

Just a question though, how technical is it to put all together? is it just a case of slotting stuff together and attaching a few wires? or is it alot more complicated than that. Can anybody do it is what I am basically asking?

Also for the set ups you guys have, how much would you say you spent and how much would the equivelent be, fully set up and ready to go from a shop? just want to see how much money you save doing it all yourself?

Last question, how long would you say it takes to put it all together and have it all working?
 
BobbyBox said:
I have been following this thread and really wish I had a grand to spare :((

Seeing all of the mods you can get for games and the graphics is just amazing, if I had the money I would definately invest in a set up.

Just a question though, how technical is it to put all together? is it just a case of slotting stuff together and attaching a few wires? or is it alot more complicated than that. Can anybody do it is what I am basically asking?

Also for the set ups you guys have, how much would you say you spent and how much would the equivelent be, fully set up and ready to go from a shop? just want to see how much money you save doing it all yourself?

Last question, how long would you say it takes to put it all together and have it all working?
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It's pretty easy but there's guides and Youtube vids all over the place. I imagine anyone can do it if you follow instructions, and it basically is just a case of slotting and screwing things in.

Depends what the shop is. PC World would cost probably 1.5x-2x what it'd cost to make yourself. Possibly the same with your local shop. Dell are a bit cheaper but not as good quality. Buying yourself, you know what you're getting.

Putting it together ... probably an hour or two for me but then I've been messing with computers since I was a kid and work in I.T. anyway. With no prior experience ... I dunno, half a day? I guess it depends how quickly you pick things up.

It's pretty easy to work out. You have your case, you know you need to put your power supply in a certain place so you screw that in. You know your motherboard screws into the case. You plug things into the board (and really the connections are such that you can figure out where they go just by looking), you connect your cables up from your components to the board and PSU etc.

I guess that makes it sound easier than it can be but it's really not that hard. It's crazy that people pay computer shops and PC World to build PC's and fit parts for them.

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/pcs-for-gaming/706_7026_70026_xx_xx/xx-criteria.html

Now that is ridiculous. Ern Dog is building a £700 PC that's not much different to £1400 PC's at PC World.

£1349 and you only get an Nvidia GTX 550 :LOL:
 
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