Could you please rate this spec?

[lawtoni]

Thanks in advance for any tips you can give me.
This is my first foray into gaming for 20 odd years!
I am looking for a pc that can handle the most up to date games at good speed.
Shootemups, racing simulations and Civilisation will be where I will start off.
Basically hoping to be blown away by the games of today since such a long time away!

Thanks again


£1,055 inc VAT

Processor (CPU) Intel® Core™i5 Quad Core Processor i5-6600K (3.5GHz) 6MB Cache
Case STYLISH PIANO BLACK ENIGMA CASE + 2 FRONT USB
Motherboard ASUS® Z170-P: ATX, LG1151, USB 3.0, SATA 6GBs
Memory (RAM) 8GB KINGSTON HYPER-X FURY DDR4 2666MHz (1 x 8GB)
Graphics Card 4GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 970 - 2 DVI, 1 HDMI, 1 DP - 3D Vision Ready
1st Hard Disk 500GB Samsung 850 EVO SSD, SATA 6Gb/s (upto 540MB/sR | 520MB/sW)
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive 24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
Power Supply CORSAIR 550W VS SERIES™ VS-550 POWER SUPPLY
Processor Cooling INTEL STANDARD CPU COOLER
Thermal Paste STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Sound Card ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Wireless/Wired Networking WIRELESS 802.11N 150Mbps/2.4GHz PCI-E CARD
USB Options MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 4 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT
PORTS
Power Cable 1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Operating System Genuine Windows 10 Home 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence
Windows 10 Upgrade FREE Upgrade to Windows 10 with all Windows 7 & Windows 8.1 Purchases*
DVD Recovery Media Windows 10 (64-bit) DVD with paper sleeve
Office Software Microsoft® Office Home & Student 2013 (1 License & Disc)
Anti-Virus BULLGUARD INTERNET SECURITY - 3 User, 1 Year + 100MB Online Backup
Warranty 3 Year Standard Warranty (1 Month Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year

[TheEnd]

Looks decent enough, can't see any major holes in it.
Power supply might be a little small, but I'd imagine the guys have done their calcs and the hardware gets more efficient as time goes on and would be less power hungry.

[T1berious]

1st thing I'd do is get rid of that stock cooler.

It will be very noisy and not be that good at keeping your temps down.

£40 on a Noctua Cooler \ Heat sink will be money well spent. Cooler and most importantly quieter.

I'm guessing that case will come with fans? If they are speed switchable you'd be amazed at the difference upgrading case fans make.

I pretty much have to check the things on as it's near as dammit silent My old PC sounded like a jet on take off!

Edit: what Monitor are you running? GTX 970 will be good for 1440 with bells and whistles.

[lawtoni]

T1berious said:

1st thing I'd do is get rid of that stock cooler.

It will be very noisy and not be that good at keeping your temps down.

£40 on a Noctua Cooler \ Heat sink will be money well spent. Cooler and most importantly quieter.

I'm guessing that case will come with fans? If they are speed switchable you'd be amazed at the difference upgrading case fans make.

I pretty much have to check the things on as it's near as dammit silent My old PC sounded like a jet on take off!

Edit: what Monitor are you running? GTX 970 will be good for 1440 with bells and whistles.

Thanks very much for all of the advice so far. I will upgrade the cooling.
I was planning to keep my Acer 1080dp G276HL monitor, but would that be a weak link?

[RizzoTheRat]

I'll second the cooler comments, I've just put a coolermaster TX3 in mine it's so much quieter. For the sake of £17 I should have done that years ago. My case was only big enough to fit in a tower cooler with 90mm fan, if you'ce case is fat enough you might be able to fit a 120mm.

Spec says 1st hard disk but no mention of a second. 500GB isn't a lot these days but with a SSD that size for stuff that needs the speed a second disk needn't be that quick. £70-80 gets you a reasonable 3TB disk.

Edited by RizzoTheRat on Monday 17th August 12:38

[Shnev91]

For me. bigger PSU. I dont even look at anything less than 800 watt these days. I'm not big into my cooling because I dont overclock that much but the others seem to think it's a good idea and at the cost they're listing I would agree.

P.S Im jealous. I want that graphics card.

[bstb3]

My only two concerns would be that the PSU will limit options to expand further and is probably near it's limit - if possible I'd ask if they could put a 750 or something in instead. Cost wise should make next to no difference.

Also the lack of a traditional hard drive also could be an issue. Easy enough to add in later should you wish, but if you aren't confident doing so then best put one in now. Size depends on what you plan on doing, but I'd go for around 1-2TB initially. Again shouldn't be that expensive.

[mp3manager]

Ditch the SATA SSD and get the Intel 750 Series PCI-E 400Gb.

It's more expensive and 100Gb less storage but nearly 4 times as fast.....no brainer in my book.

[130R]

mp3manager said:

Ditch the SATA SSD and get the Intel 750 Series PCI-E 400Gb.

It's more expensive and 100Gb less storage but nearly 4 times as fast.....no brainer in my book.

Costs twice as much .. On a top end machine I would have one but otherwise you would be better off using that money on the GPU.

[mp3manager]

130R said:

Costs twice as much .. On a top end machine I would have one but otherwise you would be better off using that money on the GPU.

I'll retract that then, as the i5-6600k only supports 16 PCI-E lanes and the PCI-E SSD would use x4 PCI-E lanes, dropping the GPU down to x8.
If OP is buying a 970, he'd be better off increasing his budget for a G-Sync monitor.
Any semi-serious gamer who's using a GTX 9xx nowadays on a fixed refresh rate monitor, is just mad.

Edited by mp3manager on Tuesday 18th August 04:37

[mikef]

T1berious said:

what Monitor are you running? GTX 970 will be good for 1440 with bells and whistles

From a thread in the computers forum:

mikef said:

Frame rates from Battlefield 4 on GTX 970 FTW:

Res	Low	Medium	High	Ultra
HD	200*	200*	175	100
4K	138	96	58	30

Comments above are spot on
- better cooler - tower air-cooling with push-pull fans
- better PSU - I would be looking at 750W or better

I'd also pay a couple of quid for the better thermal paste

Edited to add: maybe a slightly better case to reflect the cost of your other components? If this is PCS, they do tidy builds so a window case is an option

Edited by mikef on Tuesday 18th August 07:32

[lawtoni]

mp3manager said:

130R said:

Costs twice as much .. On a top end machine I would have one but otherwise you would be better off using that money on the GPU.

I'll retract that then, as the i5-6600k only supports 16 PCI-E lanes and the PCI-E SSD would use x4 PCI-E lanes, dropping the GPU down to x8.
If OP is buying a 970, he'd be better off increasing his budget for a G-Sync monitor.
Any semi-serious gamer who's using a GTX 9xx nowadays on a fixed refresh rate monitor, is just mad.

Edited by mp3manager on Tuesday 18th August 04:37

Thanks for this. But a g-sync 27" monitor is what? £450?
That's half again as much as the whole system!!
IS selecting the 'VSync on’ option (on the game?) not an option as the costs are getting out of hand!?!?

[lawtoni]

mikef said:

T1berious said:

what Monitor are you running? GTX 970 will be good for 1440 with bells and whistles

From a thread in the computers forum:

mikef said:

Frame rates from Battlefield 4 on GTX 970 FTW:

Res	Low	Medium	High	Ultra
HD	200*	200*	175	100
4K	138	96	58	30

Comments above are spot on
- better cooler - tower air-cooling with push-pull fans
- better PSU - I would be looking at 750W or better

I'd also pay a couple of quid for the better thermal paste

Edited to add: maybe a slightly better case to reflect the cost of your other components? If this is PCS, they do tidy builds so a window case is an option

Edited by mikef on Tuesday 18th August 07:32

Thanks also for this.
Is upgrading the case purely aesthetic? or doe it have an impact on the build other than looks?
It is indeed a PCS build (you know your stuff!!)

[mikef]

Aesthetics, build quality, ease of fiddling around with components; and then choose one of quietness (Coolermaster Silencio, Fractal Design R5) or airflow, with the option of additional fans (Coolermaster HAF or similar cases)

[WannaNiceCar]

Looks a good setup for the price as others have already said.

Main reason for my posting is that I have a very similar setup to your proposed rig and just wanted to point out the bits that I have noticed with my machine...

The GTX 970 is a very capable card but if you want to ramp GTA V to the max settings, it will not do it - You will get very high detail settings at 1080, but not quite all of the eye candy if that is what you are after. From my recent (very) quick research into improving GTA V (The main game that I play) 2 x 970's gives an average of roughly 50fps, 1 x 980Ti approx 80fps and a TitanX approx 100fps. Any other games being released over the next couple of years will doubtless push the graphics even harder. Obviously older games can have all their settings maxed out with no real issues.

If you can afford to do so now, try and get a more capable card at this stage (980, 980Ti or if you have wayyy too much cash a TitanX) - Bear in mind that your specified PSU is not strong enough for SLI plus overclocking (For SLI you really should consider 850 as a minimum). Also SLI'ing 2 x 970's only gives slightly better real world performance than a single 980.

With regards to the SSD (as mentioned earlier) your motherboard supports NVMe M.2 drives and a Samsung SM951 512Gb is currently around £290 which *should* give you the fastest SSD performance available at this point in time - Personally, this is going to be my next upgrade (From a Corsair Newtron XT SSD).

Hope you enjoy your new setup.

[HarryFlatters]

Click on this

Search for Minerva

Beefier spec than you've posted, and if you order it through the review page, you get it for £999, even though the components are somehow £1100 if you order it normally

[rhinochopig]

WannaNiceCar said:

Looks a good setup for the price as others have already said.

Main reason for my posting is that I have a very similar setup to your proposed rig and just wanted to point out the bits that I have noticed with my machine...

The GTX 970 is a very capable card but if you want to ramp GTA V to the max settings, it will not do it - You will get very high detail settings at 1080, but not quite all of the eye candy if that is what you are after. From my recent (very) quick research into improving GTA V (The main game that I play) 2 x 970's gives an average of roughly 50fps, 1 x 980Ti approx 80fps and a TitanX approx 100fps. Any other games being released over the next couple of years will doubtless push the graphics even harder. Obviously older games can have all their settings maxed out with no real issues.

If you can afford to do so now, try and get a more capable card at this stage (980, 980Ti or if you have wayyy too much cash a TitanX) - Bear in mind that your specified PSU is not strong enough for SLI plus overclocking (For SLI you really should consider 850 as a minimum). Also SLI'ing 2 x 970's only gives slightly better real world performance than a single 980.

With regards to the SSD (as mentioned earlier) your motherboard supports NVMe M.2 drives and a Samsung SM951 512Gb is currently around £290 which *should* give you the fastest SSD performance available at this point in time - Personally, this is going to be my next upgrade (From a Corsair Newtron XT SSD).

Hope you enjoy your new setup.

Good post. I have a 970 OC'd and it just copes with new games at 1920x1200 on ultra settings for most games.

OP I'd stay with a 1080 or 1200 monitor if you want to keep playing games on a single card. The 980i or Titan will nigh on double the cost of the build.

[8bit]

Shnev91 said:

For me. bigger PSU. I dont even look at anything less than 800 watt these days. I'm not big into my cooling because I dont overclock that much but the others seem to think it's a good idea and at the cost they're listing I would agree.

P.S Im jealous. I want that graphics card.

Biggest myth going, about PSUs. There's no need for anything bigger than 500 unless you're running dual graphics, dual CPUs or both. Even the high-end, dual-Xeon workstations at my work with NVidia Quadro K5000 graphics only have 650W. I've got a 450w in my PC at home with a broadly similar spec, never had issues.

There are plenty of websites that you can feed in your spec (or close to it) and they'll give you actual power requirements, 800w is overkill for this build, the 550w will be quite sufficient or I'll eat my hat.

ETA - I just used this website (http://powersupplycalculator.net/) to approximate your build and it says maximum load power of about 400w.

ETA 2 - I'm surprised nobody's pointed out the RAM yet (unless I missed it) - you only have a single module in there so the memory controller in your CPU will run in single-channel mode. Consider having 2x 4GB in there if you want 8GB, or 2x8 to give 16, that way you'll get better memory access performance. I have 16GB in 4x4GB in my PC and I run with no swap file at all, with no issues.

Edited by 8bit on Wednesday 19th August 12:53

[T1berious]

OP,

I have a GTX 970 and it's plenty enough for most modern games at 1200 with all bells and whistles. However, I do run a 750 PSU as I will want to upgrade it when the next raft of AAA titles are out.

I've just gone through some of these posts and have felt overwhelmed by the amount of info!

So in summary.

Don't worry about your monitor as G-Sync monitors aren't exactly numerous (and they are TN panels for the most part, the IPS ones are crazy expensive at the mo).

Beef up the PSU to a 750, When the time comes to upgrade you're GPU you don't want to have to do your PSU at the same time (that would just suck).

M.2 SATA is plenty fast enough for your O.S. Go for a 500Gb SSD For your productivity as someone mentioned slap a big HDD for storage