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Author Topic: PC Build Feedback  (Read 3339 times)

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ZephyPC

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    PC Build Feedback
    « on: January 26, 2017, 07:23:02 AM »
    https://pcpartpicker.com/list/JvwzCy

    Please look at my current PC Build and give me some feedback. This is my first time building a computer so anything will be helpful.

    This computer's main purpose is gaming (Witcher 3, GTA V, etc..), graphics design and programming.
     
    Thanks!

    DaveLembke



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    Re: PC Build Feedback
    « Reply #1 on: January 26, 2017, 07:47:58 AM »
    Curious why your not getting 2 of the seagates and have a WD and Seagate selected. The WD drive is only 5400 rpm, slower and more expensive while the Seagate is 7200 rpm, faster and a couple dollars cheaper on your list. I'd personally go with 2 of the same Seagate drives if you want 2 x 1TB drives and you will save a couple dollars. Additionally if you ever wanted to run RAID you would have a balance pairing vs one drive slower than the other.

    Everything else looks good. Witcher 3 is a heavy on hardware game and your choice of components are a perfect match for CPU/GPU for that game.

    HP2



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    Re: PC Build Feedback
    « Reply #2 on: January 26, 2017, 07:06:43 PM »
    Looks good to me too. MicroATX board with 4 memory slot is nice to have.

    I would suggest to get an EVGA G2 power supply instead of a Corsair RMx. Corsair's PSU are good, but EVGA is a bit better (imho). They are at the same price. If you want to save a few bucks, you could always use a lower wattage PSU, since modern PC components are very efficient.

    ZephyPC

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      Re: PC Build Feedback
      « Reply #3 on: January 28, 2017, 06:39:56 AM »
      Curious why your not getting 2 of the seagates and have a WD and Seagate selected. The WD drive is only 5400 rpm, slower and more expensive while the Seagate is 7200 rpm, faster and a couple dollars cheaper on your list. I'd personally go with 2 of the same Seagate drives if you want 2 x 1TB drives and you will save a couple dollars. Additionally if you ever wanted to run RAID you would have a balance pairing vs one drive slower than the other.

      Everything else looks good. Witcher 3 is a heavy on hardware game and your choice of components are a perfect match for CPU/GPU for that game.

      Hey Dave, thanks alot for your feedback. I am just confused about what you meant by RAID? Also by 2 SEAGATE: you mean 1 SSD Seagate and 1 HDD Seagate? If so feel free to recommend one. If not then please explain this part a bit more, I am completely new at this

      P.S: The only reason why the WD is there is because someone got it for me as a gift.

      DaveLembke



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      Re: PC Build Feedback
      « Reply #4 on: January 28, 2017, 07:03:39 AM »
      In part listing it showed that you had a Western Digital 5400 rpm drive and a Seagate 7200 rpm drive both were 1TB, none of them SSD both HDD so that is why I questioned that is because on a new build when you buy parts you usually want to stick with pairing of like speed drives vs mixing. You dont have any SSD's listed and a 1TB SSD would be EXPENSIVE if you had one listed. I mentioned RAID as for if you ever wanted to set up RAID for protection of data or the benefit of faster performance that going with 2 like spec drives preferably from the same make/model is suggested.

      More on RAID here to learn more about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID

      Ok on the WD as a gift... I wouldnt put your OS on this drive, I would just use the WD for the additional 1TB storage capacity. If not intending to ever use RAID then you will have no problems with 2 drives of different speed spec. For best performance use the 7200 rpm seagate for your OS and Games for fastest load times.

      If your looking for maximum performance you might also see a speed benefit of your computer if you once system is built, direct it to use the 5400rpm 1TB WD drive for swap space for Virtual Memory since that drive would be idle and ready to assist, while the 1TB Seagate would be busy with serving up files to RAM for the OS and Games and so having the Read/Write process handled by a drive other than the Seagate could show a performance gain in some gaming situations for example with large map files constantly being loaded as your moving around in a game, and this way the Seagates full performance is going to the OS and Games and the WD is acting like a drive for extra data storage and virtual memory swap space.

      More on Virtual Memory Here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_memory

      On one of my systems I have created a smaller partition just for virtual memory swap space and this has an additional small performance gain vs having your swap space scattered across a drive, to keep its allocated space to the best performing access timed part of the hard drive.

      More here on Short Stroking HDD: http://lifehacker.com/how-to-short-stroke-your-hard-drive-for-optimal-speed-1598306074

      By the way none of the optimized stuff here is required in your build of your computer. But if your looking for maximum performance there are tricks you can do to get the best performance that you can out of the hardware combination. Im the type of guy who will spend an hour working on something for a 3% performance gain and then look for other methods to squeeze out more, but for some a 3% performance gain isnt worth the time to configure for it.  ;D

      3% by the way measured by a system benchmark and 3% is just about not noticeable to a user.  :)

      But at times my system is being used to crunch data unattended and so a 3% gain makes it end a video conversion from a 25GB file down to a 1GB file 3% faster. So if it takes 100 minutes before to do the conversion of the last gaming party recording, it now might take just 97 minutes. Still the system is running full tilt for that period of 97 minutes, but faster than taking 100 minutes. Overclocking is another method of gaining performance and I had done that as well, but extreme care is needed to be sure you dont cook components due to the excess heat as well as you might be making a faster computer at that point, but now its requiring additional power to drive the system that much faster and so it can become a faster computer but power hungry computer as well as act like a space heater in a room.  ;D

      With that Core i7, you should be good for the next 5 years or so without having to overclock. It all depends on what your processing needs are.

      ZephyPC

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        Re: PC Build Feedback
        « Reply #5 on: January 28, 2017, 10:52:05 PM »
        Dave, thanks again for such a detailed feedback. It really helped me furthur understand the workings of a computer. I was thinking of replacing the Seagate with an Avexir E100 120GB 2.5" Solid State Drive? If this makes it worse or better, please let me know.

        DaveLembke



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        Re: PC Build Feedback
        « Reply #6 on: January 29, 2017, 06:12:34 AM »
        It will make boot time faster and any games on it faster to load. I have a 120GB Toshiba SSD a SATA III drive running at SATA II speed and its nice and fast, but I have to pick and chose what games go onto my SSD at C: vs my HDD at E: . I also have my virtual memory set to use my HDD vs my SSD to avoid heavy read/write cycles to my SSD as for SSD's have a cell life for the memory cells and they die after  x-many write cycles. *Modern drives have a way to juggle memory cell use to try to avoid heavy use on some cells vs others but the earlier SSD's would have cells die and shrink in capacity as this happened.

        SSD's are good for speed, but I still have more trust in HDD's with my important data. So I only use the SSD's for speed, and my important data I store on the HDD.

        I have yet to experience a capacity shrink of any of my SSD's, but I did have a 90GB OCZ Agility 3 die after heavy use. No warnings at all, just one day the computer was in use and then Blue Screen of Death. Tried to repair the SSD and it was dead and would allow deletion of partition  and creation of a new one but it would cause whatever computer it was connected to as a slave drive to cartwheel the pointer with a blue cartwheel and become unresponsive when trying to format the drive, so i threw the SSD away when I saw that the warranty expired.