Gaming/VR rig recommendations

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Discussion

ZesPak

24,421 posts

195 months

Wednesday 18th October 2017
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MintyScot said:
Agreed Sata SSD's are more than sufficient for gaming. Infact conventional HDD's are just fine. An SSD is a luxury.

I myself run a Samsung 960 Evo 256GB M.2 SSD for my C drive and an 850 Evo 1TB Sata SSD for my games.

I actually installed Civ 6 on a spare conventional drive in error and the only difference between it and the SSD was the longer game load times which is understandable but still reasonable.
The only real improvement is in loading times.
And, spinning up HDD's can generate quite some noise.

mp3manager

4,254 posts

195 months

Wednesday 18th October 2017
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ZesPak said:
I'd like to believe that, but all real test I've seen or read offer minimal performance benefit, especially for gaming.

Have you got a couple of links to back up that extreme quote?
I don't need to dig up any links, I know from experience, how much quicker M.2 NVME is rather than SATA on my system. YMMV.

ZesPak said:
Anyway, saying a regular Sata SSD is "just too slow for gaming" is just plain wrong and gives me little hope in the rest of your statement.

Edited by ZesPak on Wednesday 18th October 13:18
Fair enough, stuck to your slow SATA, no skin off my nose.

ZesPak

24,421 posts

195 months

Wednesday 18th October 2017
quotequote all
mp3manager said:
ZesPak said:
I'd like to believe that, but all real test I've seen or read offer minimal performance benefit, especially for gaming.

Have you got a couple of links to back up that extreme quote?
I don't need to dig up any links, I know from experience, how much quicker M.2 NVME is rather than SATA on my system. YMMV.
Sorry but no surprise there.

This one is dutch, but the benchmarks (in actually real world controlled environments) speak for themselves:
https://be.hardware.info/reviews/7484/4/pcie-vs-sa...

Unless you're a serial unrarrer, it makes no difference whatsoever.

Same here, actually specifically for gaming:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIXSSOzyLbs

Conclusion of the article:
People who say it has improved vastly for them are just trying to justify their purchase.

So yes, I'll stick with my actually-just-as-fast-in-the-real-world SSD.

So while this is acurate:
anonymous said:
[redacted]
This is the biggest load of bs in this thread:
mp3manager said:
I have a Samsung 950 Pro and it just stomps all over any SATA SSD, which although are cheaper per GB, are just too slow for gaming.
Edited by ZesPak on Wednesday 18th October 20:23

snuffy

9,660 posts

283 months

Wednesday 18th October 2017
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mp3manager said:
I'd change that to the fastest SSD, which would be an M.2 NVME drive. I have a Samsung 950 Pro and it just stomps all over any SATA SSD, which although are cheaper per GB, are just too slow for gaming.
Whilst it's certainly true that M.2 NVME drives is way faster that a SATA SSD, it's not true that they are too slow for gaming. Especially given that the majority of people will be running games perfectly fine off a HDD.


snuffy

9,660 posts

283 months

Wednesday 18th October 2017
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chris285 said:
Agreed on this, especially on SSD side look at say a 256/512GB for the OS and a game or 2 and then get a mech drive secondary for storage etc
That's what I have, 1 SSD for Windows 10. Another SSD for games, and a M.2 SSD for VMs. And then a HDD for everything else.

chris285

811 posts

131 months

Wednesday 18th October 2017
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In regards to the cooler, I believe the fluid is designed to last around 4/5yrs tops. A full custom loop is designed to be drained and filled every 6months usually or maintained, to prevent the solution from working less efficiently

I have a first gen H100i and it's a great cooler, but the pump is noisy after a few years now and given it's quite a bit more than an air cooler if you are not overclocking it's less worth it unless you are an enthusiast.

I was trying to cut back if not needed but of course you can add back if you like

Order66

Original Poster:

6,726 posts

248 months

Sunday 22nd October 2017
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So, All the kit has been delivered, in the end I took a lot of recommendations from here and also changed a few parts due to availability. The build was relatively simple really - If anything easier than what I used to do 10/15yrs ago (the last PC I built had a pentium 4), and definitely aided by the avalanched of YouTube vids available on the subject. Hardest bit was fitting the small connectors for the case switches (because I'm getting old and eyesight doesn't like small/dark).

In the end I built:
Corsair 400Q case - nice and stealthy black box, and the "quiet" model
ASUS Prime Z270-K Motherboard
Intel i7700K processor
EVGA 1080ti SC2 GPU
2x8Gb Corsair Vengeance 3000MHz memory
EVGA 750w Gold PSU
Corsair H100i V2 AIO Cooler (factory refurb - looks like new)
Cruicial MX300 525Gb M.2 SSD
Corsair Gaming KATAR 8000dpi mouse
Aukey mechanical keyboard
Windows 10 Pro
Asus ROG PG348Q G-sync 34" curved ultrawide monitor
Oculus w/Touch

Its running rock-solid with low temps everywhere. Lightning fast at everything. The Asus motherboard software seems to be somewhat automatically overclocking to 4.5GHz in "standard" mode with very low fan usage.

Did have an initial scare when I installed the "Corsair Link" monitoring software, it reported the motherboard temperature at 118C but with some investigation reading it looks like this is just a data point that is not actually reported by the motherboard. The 118C is always 118C and the ASUS software for the motherboard reports normal/low temps (20s), so looks like an error/default value or a datapoint that isn't provided.

First impressions - the monitor is just awesome. I'll be using this rig for work as well and I should have gone for a monitor like this years ago - such a pleasure to use.

I've got a Samsung Gear VR so no stranger to VR but I was completely blown away by the "First Contact" app of the Oculus. The immersion is very convincing and the touch controllers and the way they work are simply genius - I thought they were just going to mimick a gamepad, but the way they can simulate making a fist, picking things up etc is just outstanding and absolutely make the immersion real. At one point I dropped a "tool" and tried to catch it with my foot - my brain was so far into the other reality.

Next stop was Project Cars 2 in VR - superbly realistic and the immersion is superb. Only played with keyboard and was all over the place and got motion sick pretty quickly (first time ever for me - I never get motion sick, high seas/aeroplanes/racecars on the Samsung VR were no problem) - but think it is to do with rushing the setup and using the keyboard so no smoothness in the driving (was bouncing off all the barriers). Will take my time today to get the steering wheel and playseat involved and put in time setting up Oculus (although not much seems adjustible).

VR is absolutely the future of gaming - I appreciate this is first gen stuff and has issues with focus/resolution/barn door effects etc but even then the effect is superb and somewhat has to be experienced to be believed.

I put my mother in the Oculus last night and started up the first contact app without telling her what I was doing - for a brief moment she was in complete disbelief and almost said something like "where am I, how did I get here" before her brain caught up and realised she hadn't physically moved. Afterwards she was trying to explain the experience to my wife and was babbling nonsense and admitted its not a sensation that you can really explain, you have to experience it.

MintyScot

848 posts

191 months

Sunday 22nd October 2017
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The whole build looks very nice. I'm sure you will be happy with it.

I would definitely manually overclock the 7700k though to get the best from it. I'm not sure if the 4.5ghz "turbo boost" is on all cores or just the 1.

Edited by MintyScot on Sunday 22 October 17:46

Order66

Original Poster:

6,726 posts

248 months

Sunday 22nd October 2017
quotequote all
MintyScot said:
I would definitely manually overclock the 7700k though to get the best from it. I'm not sure if the 4.5ghz "turbo boost" is on all cores or just the 1.
Yes, have a feeling its just a single core. I do intend to get into the whole overclocking thing very soon, although it isn't required - everything is running absolutely flawlessly.

I have set up the steering wheel and playseat, and set up the oculus better and no motion sickness in Project Cars 2. The game does need a lot of fettling in settings to get the HUD etc usable and to even begin to get the cars handling/driving realistically, but it is getting there.

The other huge bonus is that my own car is in Project Cars 2,and I don't mean just a car of the same spec, my ACTUAL car is in there - the dark red Caterham 620R that was used for this game is in my garage. I know it is my car because mine was the one used for all the official photography, and the dash layout on the car is unique to my car - no other in the world was built in that colour with that dash layout, so it is my car......very very cool.

Chuck328

1,580 posts

166 months

Monday 23rd October 2017
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Damn that's well done.

I have have an i7 7700 (kaby lake). When I ordered and installed the corsair vengeance ddr4 (3200 - I think) the pc wouldn't boot.

Googling suggested an issue with that the i7 won't run by default with anything more than 2400 but that it could be sorted with some fecking about.

I guess you didn't have any of these problems?

I solved mine by 'downgrading' to 2400Mhz

Nice build though.!

Order66

Original Poster:

6,726 posts

248 months

Monday 23rd October 2017
quotequote all
Chuck328 said:
I guess you didn't have any of these problems?

I solved mine by 'downgrading' to 2400Mhz
Just enabled the XMP profile in the BIOS and it sorted it all out for me. I could also select the DRAM speed manually if needed, but again in the BIOS. I would presume it is motherboard dependent rather than anything to do with the processor.

130R

6,807 posts

205 months

Monday 23rd October 2017
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All DDR4 RAM will run at 2133MHz unless you overclock it.

Edited by 130R on Monday 23 October 12:08

ZesPak

24,421 posts

195 months

Monday 23rd October 2017
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Order66 said:
The other huge bonus is that my own car is in Project Cars 2,and I don't mean just a car of the same spec, my ACTUAL car is in there - the dark red Caterham 620R that was used for this game is in my garage. I know it is my car because mine was the one used for all the official photography, and the dash layout on the car is unique to my car - no other in the world was built in that colour with that dash layout, so it is my car......very very cool.
That IS cool biggrin

chris285

811 posts

131 months

Monday 23rd October 2017
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I am jealous :P

bmad

104 posts

197 months

Tuesday 24th October 2017
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Order66 said:
MintyScot said:
I would definitely manually overclock the 7700k though to get the best from it. I'm not sure if the 4.5ghz "turbo boost" is on all cores or just the 1.
Yes, have a feeling its just a single core. I do intend to get into the whole overclocking thing very soon, although it isn't required - everything is running absolutely flawlessly.

I have set up the steering wheel and playseat, and set up the oculus better and no motion sickness in Project Cars 2. The game does need a lot of fettling in settings to get the HUD etc usable and to even begin to get the cars handling/driving realistically, but it is getting there.

The other huge bonus is that my own car is in Project Cars 2,and I don't mean just a car of the same spec, my ACTUAL car is in there - the dark red Caterham 620R that was used for this game is in my garage. I know it is my car because mine was the one used for all the official photography, and the dash layout on the car is unique to my car - no other in the world was built in that colour with that dash layout, so it is my car......very very cool.
You have an almost identical setup to me, right down to the wheel! It's an awesome rig and future proof for whatever VR goodies come out over the next couple of years. Make sure for project cars 2 you get the Jack Spade force feedback profiles for the wheel. The stock ones are rubbish. Jacks completely transform the feel. Also with your setup you can boost the oculus pixel density on most games to 1.5. You will need to lower some graphical settings a touch but the increase in pixel density far outweighs the minor eye candy reduction. Either use oculus debug tool or the other tool that resides in the windows tray to change density. Sorry I can't remember it's name. Might actually be oculus tray tool!

Order66

Original Poster:

6,726 posts

248 months

Tuesday 24th October 2017
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bmad said:
Make sure for project cars 2 you get the Jack Spade force feedback profiles for the wheel. The stock ones are rubbish. Jacks completely transform the feel. Also with your setup you can boost the oculus pixel density on most games to 1.5. You will need to lower some graphical settings a touch but the increase in pixel density far outweighs the minor eye candy reduction. Either use oculus debug tool or the other tool that resides in the windows tray to change density. Sorry I can't remember it's name. Might actually be oculus tray tool!
Great info - will give all that a try today. Thanks!