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Opinion on prospective build

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  • MalaboogaMalabooga Member UncommonPosts: 2,977
    Picks

    Corsair 350D
    ORIGIN PC High-Performance Ultra Silent Fans
    650 Watt EVGA SuperNOVA G2
    GIGABYTE Z170MX-Gaming 5
    ORIGIN FROSTBYTE 120 Sealed Liquid Cooling System for 1151 Socket
    Intel Core i7 6700K Quad-Core 4.0GHz (4.2GHz TurboBoost)
    Single 8GB AMD Radeon RX 480
    16GB ORIGIN PC DDR4 Powered by Kingston 2666MHz (2 X 8GB)
    MS Windows 10 Home
    480GB ORIGIN PC Approved Solid State Drive
    1TB ORIGIN PC Approved Hard Drive
    24X CD/DVD Burner
    Lifetime 24/7 U.S. Based Support and Lifetime Free Labor. 1 Year Part Replacement & 45 Day Shipping Warranty
    No Part Upgrade Service

    Report

    • Case: Corsair 350D
    • Exterior: Not Painted
    • Current Special Offers: Back to School Promo
    • The ORIGIN Difference: ORIGIN PC Neuron - The Best Gaming Experience Guaranteed
    • Case Fans: ORIGIN PC High-Performance Ultra Silent Fans
    • Power Supply: 650 Watt EVGA SuperNOVA G2
    • Motherboard: GIGABYTE Z170MX-Gaming 5
    • System Cooling: ORIGIN FROSTBYTE 120 Sealed Liquid Cooling System for 1151 Socket
    • Processors: Intel Core i7 6700K Quad-Core 4.0GHz (4.2GHz TurboBoost)
    • Graphic Cards: Single 8GB AMD Radeon RX 480
    • Memory: 16GB ORIGIN PC DDR4 Powered by Kingston 2666MHz (2 X 8GB)
    • Operating System: MS Windows 10 Home
    • Hard Drive One (Operating System Drive #1): 480GB ORIGIN PC Approved Solid State Drive
    • Hard Drive Two: 1TB ORIGIN PC Approved Hard Drive
    • Optical Drive (No Playback Software Included): 24X CD/DVD Burner
    • Audio: On Board High Definition 8-Channel Audio
    • Networking: Onboard Network Port
    • ORIGIN Maximum Protection Shipping Process: ORIGIN Wooden Crate Armor
    • Warranty: Lifetime 24/7 U.S. Based Support and Lifetime Free Labor. 1 Year Part Replacement & 45 Day Shipping Warranty
    • ORIGIN Recovery: ORIGIN Recovery USB3.0 Flash Drive
    • Evolve Part Upgrade Service: No Part Upgrade Service
    • Free ORIGIN PC T-shirt: ORIGIN PC T-Shirt Extra Large
    • Web Browser: Microsoft Internet Explorer/*Edge

    Total: 1852$
  • mbrodiembrodie Member RarePosts: 1,504
    Malabooga said:
    http://pcpartpicker.com/list/HpyyXH

    Okay, if you want to save nearly 700.00 USD with better overall performance and if you want to build it yourself I've priced the parts for you.
    First post

    "(Please spare me the "build your own it's cheaper" comments because that's not going to happen.)"

    I literally built him/her a better PC for a fraction of the cost. With proof using PCpartspicker which compares what major online retailers are selling them for.

    This takes out the middle man who is literally charging him/her 700.00 for a less powerful computer. With 700 dollars they could put two 1070's, buy a multi-monitor display or fancy peripherals like razor, corsair and/or logictech keyboards and mice with that money left over.

    It is indirectly saving him/her money while providing a better overall list of parts. All he/she would have to do is built it their self.

    Seriously, go onto the origin site and look at the cost of the computer by default with a 480. Then look at the price they're charging to upgrade to a 1070. It's an additional 285.00 USD!

    Look at the pricing realistically for the two cards:

    AMD RX 480: Sapphire 21260-00-20G $269.99
    Nvidia GTX 1070: Gigabyte GV-N1070G1-GAMING-8GD $419.99

    Tell me how purchasing a 1070 is $300.00 USD more than a RX 480?
    he stated he doesn't want to build his own.

    thats what was getting pointed out to you

    he said in the original post he made.. "(Please spare me the "build your own it's cheaper" comments because that's not going to happen.)" 

    so he wants to go with a company thats going to do it for him, regardless of the money he's saving... it's not an argument, it's not worth derailing the thread over. We know he can do it cheaper himself, but he's not interested in going that route.. so i guess respect the OPs wishes.
  • MalaboogaMalabooga Member UncommonPosts: 2,977
    dreamer05 said:
    Malabooga said:
    Well the Origin one comes out at 1852$ with 480GB SSD and RX480

    Getting GTX1070 thats ~40-50% faster than RX480 is another 300$

    Hmm the Origins one I had built was at $2578.

    EDIT: I was building the Millennium, but it's around your price when building the Neuron, which doesn't have the same motherboard options like the Asus Pro.
    Well you literally spent 400$ on a pretty case ;P
  • MalaboogaMalabooga Member UncommonPosts: 2,977
    edited July 2016
    Malabooga said:
    http://pcpartpicker.com/list/HpyyXH

    Okay, if you want to save nearly 700.00 USD with better overall performance and if you want to build it yourself I've priced the parts for you.
    First post

    "(Please spare me the "build your own it's cheaper" comments because that's not going to happen.)"

    I literally built him/her a better PC for a fraction of the cost. With proof using PCpartspicker which compares what major online retailers are selling them for.

    This takes out the middle man who is literally charging him/her 700.00 for a less powerful computer. With 700 dollars they could put two 1070's, buy a multi-monitor display or fancy peripherals like razor, corsair and/or logictech keyboards and mice with that money left over.

    It is indirectly saving him/her money while providing a better overall list of parts. All he/she would have to do is built it their self.

    Seriously, go onto the origin site and look at the cost of the computer by default with a 480. Then look at the price they're charging to upgrade to a 1070. It's an additional 285.00 USD!

    Look at the pricing realistically for the two cards:

    AMD RX 480: Sapphire 21260-00-20G $269.99
    Nvidia GTX 1070: Gigabyte GV-N1070G1-GAMING-8GD $419.99

    Tell me how purchasing a 1070 is $300.00 USD more than a RX 480?
    MSRP of RX480 8GB is 239$, MSRP of 1070 founders edition is 449$

    And he pointed out quite clear that he is aware of all implications of not building his own, and that he doesnt want to do it.
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  • dreamer05dreamer05 Member UncommonPosts: 679
    Malabooga said:
    dreamer05 said:
    Malabooga said:
    Well the Origin one comes out at 1852$ with 480GB SSD and RX480

    Getting GTX1070 thats ~40-50% faster than RX480 is another 300$

    Hmm the Origins one I had built was at $2578.

    EDIT: I was building the Millennium, but it's around your price when building the Neuron, which doesn't have the same motherboard options like the Asus Pro.
    Well you literally spent 400$ on a pretty case ;P
    You may be right. I think the motherboards might be different though. ASUS Z170 PRO GAMING (Intel Z170 Chipset) (Up to 5x PCI-E Devices)  is the motherboard I have selected at Digital Storm. Origin's default is GIGABYTE Z170XP-SLI. Which is better?

    image

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  • MalaboogaMalabooga Member UncommonPosts: 2,977
    edited July 2016
    Why are you comparing a premium founders card to a normal RX 480?  Of course your going to pay more for that. What a botched example.

    Because thats what system builders use (offer) and others are still very shaky supply and just couple of $ cheaper anyway.

  • mbrodiembrodie Member RarePosts: 1,504
    Why are you comparing a premium founders card to a normal RX 480?  Of course your going to pay more for that. What a botched example.
    it's invalid regardless, he doesn't want to build his own.. and the $300 more is what origin quotes.
  • MalaboogaMalabooga Member UncommonPosts: 2,977
    dreamer05 said:
    Malabooga said:
    dreamer05 said:
    Malabooga said:
    Well the Origin one comes out at 1852$ with 480GB SSD and RX480

    Getting GTX1070 thats ~40-50% faster than RX480 is another 300$

    Hmm the Origins one I had built was at $2578.

    EDIT: I was building the Millennium, but it's around your price when building the Neuron, which doesn't have the same motherboard options like the Asus Pro.
    Well you literally spent 400$ on a pretty case ;P
    You may be right. I think the motherboards might be different though. ASUS Z170 PRO GAMING (Intel Z170 Chipset) (Up to 5x PCI-E Devices)  is the motherboard I have selected at Digital Storm. Origin's default is GIGABYTE Z170XP-SLI. Which is better?

    Well, since you arent really into overclcoking (from what ive seen) its all the same really.
  • mbrodiembrodie Member RarePosts: 1,504
    dreamer05 said:
    Malabooga said:
    dreamer05 said:
    Malabooga said:
    Well the Origin one comes out at 1852$ with 480GB SSD and RX480

    Getting GTX1070 thats ~40-50% faster than RX480 is another 300$

    Hmm the Origins one I had built was at $2578.

    EDIT: I was building the Millennium, but it's around your price when building the Neuron, which doesn't have the same motherboard options like the Asus Pro.
    Well you literally spent 400$ on a pretty case ;P
    You may be right. I think the motherboards might be different though. ASUS Z170 PRO GAMING (Intel Z170 Chipset) (Up to 5x PCI-E Devices)  is the motherboard I have selected at Digital Storm. Origin's default is GIGABYTE Z170XP-SLI. Which is better?
    I honestly can't see an instance of where you would be using 5 x PCIE slots, so i mean having that many slots doesn't make it a better motherboard the gaming 5 motherboards are meant to be pretty nice, but i've always been an Asus motherboard fan myself, that said it's a motherboard they are both doing to do roughly the same things
  • dreamer05dreamer05 Member UncommonPosts: 679
    So motherboard choice doesn't really make a huge difference?

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    "God, please help us sinful children of Ivalice.."

  • mbrodiembrodie Member RarePosts: 1,504
    dreamer05 said:
    So motherboard choice doesn't really make a huge difference?
    in this instance no, it should't unless you're planning on doing some serious oveclocking in the future or running 4 x graphics cards?
  • MalaboogaMalabooga Member UncommonPosts: 2,977
    No, for your needs go basic one, it will already have pretty much all features that youll ever use (and more)
  • dreamer05dreamer05 Member UncommonPosts: 679
    Thanks so much for all of the advice guys! You've saved me from making some not so good choice. I really appreciate it. =)

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    "God, please help us sinful children of Ivalice.."

  • acidbloodacidblood Member RarePosts: 878
    edited July 2016
    Not sure if it's too late, but just a few suggestions from DIY builds I've done over the years.

    1. If you are going to spend money, do it on core components like the motherboard, power supply, case, primary hard drive and to some extent the CPU. Things like RAM, graphics card (GPU) and secondary HDDs are important of course, but much more easily replaced / upgraded / added later.

    2. That said, don't go overboard. If you are going for a single GPU setup you really only need a 600-750W PSU (depending on the rest of the system), but get a quality one (Gold+ from a good brand at the very least). Also, you don't need an ultra mega super X motherboard with 4 PCIx16 slots (but again, get a quality one).

    3. Get an SSD for the main drive; trust me, you won't want to go back. 120GB is a minimum, 256GB would be better these days. 512GB if you want to install your favorite games on it as well.

    4. Get a good case. A good case doesn't necessarily mean expensive, or flashy; the best cases I've ever had were less than $100 and plain looking. A good case should have good cooling performance and easy access to things like USB / audio ports and dust filters. FYI don't be fooled by 'tool-less' cases, screws are just as easy to use, hold better, take up less space and don't break.

    4. If you are going for a single GPU get a GTX1070 or GTX1080 (if you want 4K). They are a good step up from the last gen and while the AMD 480 is a good card for the price Edit: it doesn't really hold up in modern games beyond 1080p; even in Ashes of the Singularity, a game AMD cards do well at, it struggles to maintain 30fps (http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-radeon-rx-480-polaris-10,4616-5.html) at 1080p, while the 1070/1080 easily beats it, maintaining 30/40 fps at 1440p (http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/nvidia-geforce-gtx-1070-8gb-pascal-performance,4585-3.html) for the same power draw / heat.

    5. If you aren't going to spend the $$ on a top end GPU, don't waste money on a top end CPU. Most games are GPU limited, so unless you want to do some serious video encoding getting more than a 'sweet spot' (price for performance) current gen CPU is a waste.

    6. 16GB of RAM is still plenty, but consider 2x8GB as having the option of upgrading to 32GB (most gaming motherboards have at least 4 slots) isn't a bad idea.

    7. Read some hardware reviews. Paper specs rarely tell the whole story and professional reviews are a good way to weed out the pros / cons of a certain bit of hardware and what it is actually worth in a real system.

    Post edited by acidblood on
  • ceratop001ceratop001 Member RarePosts: 1,594
    Building a cheap setup through Origin just makes no sense. They make good computers but they are way overpriced in my opinion. Try learning to build your own. It really isn't that hard and there are plenty of guides and videos that will walk you through the process. For what origin charges you for a so called cheap computer you could build a much better one.
     
  • QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,531
    Why are you comparing a premium founders card to a normal RX 480?  Of course your going to pay more for that. What a botched example.
    The founder's edition card isn't a premium card.  It's merely what's available.
  • QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,531
    dreamer05 said:
    So motherboard choice doesn't really make a huge difference?
    If you get a really cheap junk motherboard, it can be a problem sometimes.  But the sort of boutique vendors you're looking at won't even offer that.  They will charge something like 50% more than it would cost to build your own, but they do at least give you nice parts for that premium.

    If you're of the view that that price premium is worth it to save yourself a couple of hours assembling parts, that's fine.  If you think you'd be unable to assemble your own computer, then I'd ask how you're going to plug in the new computer when it arrives.  Building a computer is much, much easier than it used to be.  The hard part is choosing parts, but you can get help with that.  Actually screwing it together is just a matter of reading directions, using a screwdriver, and having intuition at a level of putting a square peg into a square hole and a round peg into a round hole rather than the other way around.
  • dreamer05dreamer05 Member UncommonPosts: 679
    Building a cheap setup through Origin just makes no sense. They make good computers but they are way overpriced in my opinion. Try learning to build your own. It really isn't that hard and there are plenty of guides and videos that will walk you through the process. For what origin charges you for a so called cheap computer you could build a much better one.

    I have zero interest in building my own, at all.

    Origin is overpriced it does seem.

    I'm down to Digital Storm and AVA Direct.

    AVA Direct is about $300 cheaper for the same build.

    I know Digital Storm has a really good reputation, and so does AVA Direct from what I can see, but for some reason Digital Storm seems more comfortable. If anyone has experience with either company I'd like to hear form them.

    image

    "God, please help us sinful children of Ivalice.."

  • ceratop001ceratop001 Member RarePosts: 1,594
    dreamer05 said:
    Building a cheap setup through Origin just makes no sense. They make good computers but they are way overpriced in my opinion. Try learning to build your own. It really isn't that hard and there are plenty of guides and videos that will walk you through the process. For what origin charges you for a so called cheap computer you could build a much better one.

    I have zero interest in building my own, at all.

    Origin is overpriced it does seem.

    I'm down to Digital Storm and AVA Direct.

    AVA Direct is about $300 cheaper for the same build.

    I know Digital Storm has a really good reputation, and so does AVA Direct from what I can see, but for some reason Digital Storm seems more comfortable. If anyone has experience with either company I'd like to hear form them.
    I understand completely about building your own. It was just a suggestion but I wish you the best. I have no experience with Digital Storm or AVA direct. I read your original post and like your build. I have a computer with a GTX 960 my nephew uses and it works great on everything. If I could suggest since this a new computer try to get something with at least a GTX 970 or higher if your budget can handle it.
     
  • QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,531
    Earlier, I promised an explanation of why you need an SSD, so here it is.

    The problem with a hard drive is that, whenever you want to read or write something, you have to wait for it to physically spin to the right spot before it can even start.  That takes about 10 ms.  10 ms might sound fast, but what happens when you need to load 500 small files?  Multiply that 10 ms by 500 and you get 5 seconds.  Loading a lot of programs (not just games) involves a lot of small file I/O like that, and so you get to sit and wait.  Any little things under the hood that involve a lot of small file accesses make you sit there and wait.  Even simple web browsing crawls along much more slowly than it ought to.

    You've probably seen sequential throughput numbers saying this SSD can do 500 MB/s and that hard drive can do 150 MB/s or whatever.  Those numbers basically don't matter, as 100 MB/s real-world performance is plenty fast for nearly all consumer use.  The problem is that you only get that performance if you're doing huge file reads and writes so that a hard drive can spin to the right spot once and then read a ton of data without having to stop to move to do a different random spot on the platter.

    When you have to access a bunch of small files, a hard drive can easily spend 99% of its time waiting for platters and drive heads to move to the right spot.  Then instead of 150 MB/s, you might chug along at 1 MB/s.  150 MB/s is fast for storage, but 1 MB/s is not.

    So what about solid state drives?  Well, a solid state drive doesn't have moving parts, so it doesn't have to wait for moving parts to move to the right spot.  There is still a bit of a delay to do a bunch of random access I/O, but it's on the order of 0.1 ms, not 10 ms.  Yes, faster by a factor of 100.  In the harsh circumstances where a hard drive crawls along at 1 MB/s, an SSD isn't going to get anywhere near 500 MB/s, but it might still get 20 MB/s.  That's a massive difference, and it might mean that the SSD takes 1/4 of a second to do its work rather than 5 seconds for a hard drive.

    The difference is most easily measured in boot times, program launching, and zone loading in games.  But that's not the half of the real benefit of SSDs.  Getting rid of the short but perceptible latency between when you tell your computer to do something and when it actually does it makes a huge difference in how fast the computer feels.  It's hard to measure, but it's obvious when you experience it.  You've been used to computers feeling sluggish for so long that you've probably never realized that it doesn't actually have to be that way.

    It actually makes such a huge difference that if you were to buy your new computer and swap the SSD with your old hard drive (meaning, put the new SSD in your old computer), then ask a friend who isn't tech savvy to try both and tell you which computer is faster, he'd tell you that the old one with the SSD is faster, at least if he didn't try playing demanding games on it, as an SSD will rarely affect your frame rates.  A fast SSD with slow everything else makes that big of a difference, and commonly makes the system as a whole feel faster than a slow hard drive with fast everything else.

    When you first try using a computer with an SSD, it doesn't necessarily feel massively faster than what you were used to.  When stuff just works right, it not nearly so noticeable as when it breaks.  It's kind of like if you're used to a blue screen per day and finally move to a stable computer, you don't really notice the absence of crashes unless you stop to think about it.  But get used to the speed of an SSD for a week and then go try to use the previous computer again and the old one will feel painfully slow.
  • mbrodiembrodie Member RarePosts: 1,504
    dreamer05 said:
    Building a cheap setup through Origin just makes no sense. They make good computers but they are way overpriced in my opinion. Try learning to build your own. It really isn't that hard and there are plenty of guides and videos that will walk you through the process. For what origin charges you for a so called cheap computer you could build a much better one.

    I have zero interest in building my own, at all.

    Origin is overpriced it does seem.

    I'm down to Digital Storm and AVA Direct.

    AVA Direct is about $300 cheaper for the same build.

    I know Digital Storm has a really good reputation, and so does AVA Direct from what I can see, but for some reason Digital Storm seems more comfortable. If anyone has experience with either company I'd like to hear form them.

    just looking at the websites then... the computers look flashier on digital storm which is probably why it feels more comfortable, sometimes the flashier looking the computer the more high quality it looks.... that being said AVAs site looks fine too just the custom machines don't look as flashy, they look like they have gone for more performance per dollar
  • QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,531
    dreamer05 said:
    Building a cheap setup through Origin just makes no sense. They make good computers but they are way overpriced in my opinion. Try learning to build your own. It really isn't that hard and there are plenty of guides and videos that will walk you through the process. For what origin charges you for a so called cheap computer you could build a much better one.

    I have zero interest in building my own, at all.

    Origin is overpriced it does seem.

    I'm down to Digital Storm and AVA Direct.

    AVA Direct is about $300 cheaper for the same build.

    I know Digital Storm has a really good reputation, and so does AVA Direct from what I can see, but for some reason Digital Storm seems more comfortable. If anyone has experience with either company I'd like to hear form them.
    They're targeting different markets to some extent.  Origin targets people who have no clue what they should get, but want something nice and don't mind overpaying for it.  That makes a ton of sense for people who make $500k per year working 60 hours per week, so that time is precious and money is plentiful.  It makes a whole lot less sense for someone making $50k per year who is shorter on money but unable or unwilling to assemble his own computer.

    AVA Direct gives you a much broader selection of parts and will basically build whatever you want them to build.  I'm pretty sure that what they do is to basically let people place an order, then go buy the parts you order, screw it together, and ship it to you.  They absolutely will build you a cheap junk computer if that's what you ask for, so you do need to know something or get help when picking parts.  But they'll also build you something very nice if that's what you order.  It also means that they charge a much smaller price premium than a boutique vendor like Origin, and offer a much wider selection.
  • dreamer05dreamer05 Member UncommonPosts: 679
    That's what I was thinking about the two companies as well. It seems like they do the exact same thing. But thanks to y'all I know what I want so AVAs price is appealing.

    image

    "God, please help us sinful children of Ivalice.."

  • CleffyCleffy Member RarePosts: 6,414
    I took a look around at several sites to see what will make the best bang for buck.
    I went to Falcon Northwest, Origin PC, Digital Storm, Puget Systems, AVA Direct, and CyberPower PC. Choosing between these vendors has a lot to do with the level of care you want. With Falcon Northwest, Origin PC, Digital Storm, and Puget Systems you will get superior customer support but pay on average 50% more. You configuration options are also limited and typically include water cooling.
    If you go CyberPowerPC, you get lots of options, lots of promotional offers for free headsets and keyboards, and a price near building it yourself. You can also opt out of the water cooling which saves $200-$400. However, you sacrifice quality control and the warranty.
    AvaDirect is the in between of both options.
    When I was configuring them I had several goals.
    1. A quality power supply between 500w-650w. For a single GPU this should be sufficient. You typically don't want too much power as there is a sweet spot for power efficiency. If you get an 850w supply, you are burning more energy since its less efficient at smaller loads.
    2. Intel Core i5-6500K or better.
    3. Non-stock CPU cooler.
    4. RX480, GTX1070 GPU (RX480 if available)
    5. 500+ GB SSD primary drive
    6. 1+ TB HDD secondary drive

    Given those options here are the results:
    Falcon Northwest $2359.00
    Digital Storm $1724
    OriginPC $2300
    Puget Systems (Too expensive, axed option) 
    AVADirect $1614
    CyberPowerPC $1495
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