Why don't I want to buy a prebuilt gaming computer vs building?
 

I want to get back into sim racing now that I have a house and room to put up a nice 3 monitor sim.

The video card, hard drive, and power supply died in my original rig......the motherboard is approaching 8 years old, so instead of upgrading the old RAM and everything, I'd like to just go ahead and buy/build a brand new setup with quality parts that I will be able to upgrade as necessary over the next 5-7 years.

I know iRacing isn't particularly graphics intensive, but I'd also like to be able to run things like Assetto Corse and Project CARS 2 on 3 monitors at high settings............and possibly down the line one of the headsets like Occulus Rift. But I'm not ready to bank on one of the VR headsets just yet since I haven't used one.


Thoughts?

I chose to build my first PC because I wanted to learn how. Kinda like building my first Miata. I did it all myself, made mistakes and learned what not to do and even sometime what to do.

There are a lot of one or two year old PCs out there for a killer prices. My housemate just got into a med-high end PC for a few hundred bucks on Craigslist and it pretty much out-performs my 4 year old build which cost four times as much when I did it. However, my rig runs flawless today and housemate's graphics card already failed and Asus has had it for warranty repair for the last month and a half.

If you are into building one, of course the best bet is the upcoming holiday season and PCPartPicker for low prices.

One of the best upgrades I had to my sim racing setup was the move from a 60Hz monitor to a 144Hz FreeSync one, that makes a huge difference.
I would suggest to go with FreeSync / GSync monitors.

Other than that: what is your budget?
To get a general idea, you can always use Logical Increments

I built my last one, and upgraded it, unless I'm looking in the wrong places, I'm not seeing huge price differences between building and buying like there used to be.

Probably $2k for the computer itself.

I'll look into those monitors, I suspect buying 3 instead of 1 will preclude them. Thanks for the think I'll check it out.

One thing is for sure, if you intend on running Pcars 2 or a high-end sim on three monitors on at least 144 hz you will need all that $2000 budget.

I will need to revisit my PC needs soon as well. When Pcars 2 drops I'm going to log some hours for sure, and I'm only on my living room 60hz television. I need a proper gaming monitor setup.

2k? Wow.
You could build a serious machine with that kind of money.

http://www.pbh2.com/wordpress/wp-con...l-jump-suv.gif

Find a Gsync (nvidia) as it's widely available vs the FreeSync (ATi).

:burncash:

For what it's worth, price wise.. You could build a 'nice' Intel system for maximum frames per second in games. Keep it cool with a all in one water cooled system. 1080ti (Be all, end all) card to go as well. SSD (OS) + HDD (Other games, save files etc)

What he said. :party:

I like building my own PCs just for the fun. You're right, though, there doesn't seem to be huge cost savings anymore. If you do build one, use PCpartpicker.com. It's pretty much the most awesomest website ever.

That's the point. Build a hoss of a machine that will run all the bad boy games on 3 monitors for a few years to come and not have to worry about lesser parts being stressed to the max failing early.

I'd also like to make it as thermally efficient as possible and as quiet as possible.


3 monitors, a huge machine, wheels, pedals, etc..............tends to heat up a room quite a lot.

I'm mostly interested in your monitor of choice. If you're dead set on 3, i would assume 144hz @ 1080p. I don't think you need any of that freesync gsync garbage. My 144hz monitor is beautiful without it. It seems like only added cost.

Edit* my cousin runs a 4k monitor with a GTX1080 and it sometimes struggles. While the 3 monitor setup at 1080p is somewhere just less than 4k, you MAY be able to get away with a single 1080 or 1080ti if you can afford it.

Suggestions on monitors? I don't care about that. I guess I'd need to see a 144hz monitor, your eyes can't even really recognize a 60hz refresh rate.

I have.

You can get the 24" version with freesync for about the same cost i think.

The difference between 60hz and 144hz was pretty substantial. If you see it back to back you will notice. Also, you need to turn it on in the GPU settings.

Hmmm, I had 3 27" monitors last time, I really wanted to do 3 30" monitors this time.

For example, this is the video card and monitors I was using for iRacing and Assetto Corsa, @ 1080p 60hz, the video card wouldn't quite keep up with Assetto Corsa nearly maxed out.

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...82E16814202080

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...82E16824009588

Yeah, a gtx1080 is like double the power of that old card. Though, like i said the 1080 can find itself in some trouble in 4k. But with your budget, just buy two or get a 1080ti.
Getting into 30 and 32" monitors limits your options, especially at 1080p. You could always just get one ultrawide. I've sim raced on one of those before and it's pretty nice.

I think I'd prefer the simplicity of running just one 1080ti (suggestions on card brands on this one?). That should be MORE than enough to handle 1920x1080 x 3, which is plenty of resolution .\\.

I'll check over the weekend, I don't think my power supply is dead (I think I replaced it when I did the SSD).

Suggestions on motherboard and processor? There are so many options/brands.........and then different levels of the Intel, it's kind of mind boggling on what to go with.

What would your hypothetical build be?

I've used pretty much all the different brands of cards, i will say EVGA is my favorite, followed by PNY.
As far as boards, i've only ever used Asus, they have ALWAYS been good for me and i have never had a failure or any type of issue with them. Not to mention i like how well optioned their boards are, they seem to always have what you want even on lower end ones. Even when i was one of the first people with ryzen they came out with regular bios updates and had everything under control as much as they could. I will not be using another board in the future unless asus really pisses me off somehow.

I would highly suggest M.2 storage. Processor brand? Rumor has it the new coffee lake CPUs do not have soldered heat spreaders. This could be an issue if you're looking to watch your temperatures.

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/pJ4qtJ

Right at 2k.

:party:


I just picked a middle of the road case, obviously subject to change.

For a 'games only' build, 7700K Intel cpu, z270 chipset motherboard (Asus more than likely). AIO liquid cooler for the cpu, fractal just released their celsius s36 product which would be plenty for a cpu overclocked system. I've been a fan of EVGA or MSI graphic cards, I'm sure ASUS would be just as good. 1080ti $$. m.2 ssd if you can afford it and a 4TB WD Black drive as a HDD. Ram, some Trident z or corsair dominator @ 16GB, 2x8GB. Case and Corsair PSU. Filters for filters to keep it dust free.


If I were building 'my' own system, I'd go for the threadripper. :likecat:

Is liquid cooling worth it on a CPU you won't overclock? With a good motherboard, 4Ghz+ processor, etc.......is OC'ing even going to be necessary?

Is a liquid CPU cooler going to be more efficient as such it will be quieter because it won't need a fan murdering the RPMs to keep it cool?

You want an AIO for the CPU, yes. It will keep case temperatures way down, this will help your GPU. it will increase case flow. It will also help your overall room temperatures.
I wouldn't bother overclocking. Modern CPU's boost well, my 1800x hits 4.1 pretty regularly on it's own. Even when i was using the little h50 before i built my custom loop.

I guess one thing that I'm worried about in regards to the case and liquid coolers, is the lines being long enough or interfering with power cables and getting it all clean and together so they don't block airflow of physically don't fit.

I know my current mid-tower ATX case, I had to take a pair of tin snips to the hard drive cage so that monster Sapphire card would fit in the case. If I go with a full tower case, are the lines on the AIO cooler going to be long enough, stuff like that.

Is one of the liquid cooled Video Cars worth it as well?

Personally I find the choices better with FreeSync compared to Gsync.
You can buy 3x Samsung C27FG70's for 400 dollar a piece at NewEgg.
Those monitors have a nice VA panel, 144Hz, FreeSync
Have you ever tried it? The 144Hz monitors with *sync are fine when you hit 144 fps consistently. However, the experience all changes when your FPS ends up below 144. I have seen it side by side. I tried my brothers GSync monitor for one day and could not live without. Ordered a C24FG70 (FreeSync because I have a RX470) the next day and have not regretted it.

A good aftermarket air cooler will be quiet too. The CPU only dissipates a little over 100W, that is just half of what your graphics card dissipates. If you want a quiet system, focus on cooling for your graphics card.
A good flowing case is also a bonus for a quiet system. If your case flows well and you are not overclocking, I see very little value in water cooling the CPU.

Wrong: the amount of power dissipated by the CPU will stay the same. The difference in CPU temperature does not change the TDP.

If you decide to buy FreeSync monitors, you have to use an AMD GPU. In your case that would be a AMD RX Vega 64.
If you go with GSync monitors, you have to use a nVidia GPU. In your case that would be a nVidia GeForce GTX1080 Ti.

As for the CPU: the Intel CPUs usually do well in CPU limited games.
Assetto Corsa and Project Cars are not really CPU limited as far as I know: so you can also go with an AMD Ryzen CPU if you want.

I am right. You always hit power limit before thermal limit on a GPU. Not bathing a GPU in hot air by the CPU means that the GPU is going to run cooler. You also get to reduce the noise level. Less fans in the case overall and the GPU fans spin less.

Having seen gsync monitors in use, i would still stay away from them.
I think you are also confused about the frequency and FPS and how they correlate. If you get low FPS it doesn't matter what frequency your monitor is. If you're getting more than 144FPS then you need a higher frequency monitor to see those extra frames. gsync is just a gimmick, since your monitor at 144htz will display up to that many frames anyway. I've been gaming for years now and screen tearing and input stutter is hardly noticeable even at super wide resolutions in driving games. When it is noticeable it's not at the focal point. You usually always focus on the middle monitor on a very small group of pixels somewhere towards the center not out at the edges. In fact, i'd even say that a normal 60htz monitor would work just fine. I guess the Freesync monitors are much better on price than G-sync, but i'm not really up on the AMD video cards other than Vega, and that doesn't look like a good purchase for this situation.

Heat in the room is all determined by power, not temperature. It does not matter if the GPU runs at 50*C or 80*C and whether the air coming out of your case is 40*C or 55*C. Temperatures only tell you how efficient the cooling system works. With an efficient cooling system the components can hit their power limit consistently, so you put more heat into the room. I see why water cooling the CPU makes sense if you like to run the least amount of fans, but I would run as much fans as possible. Many fans does not equal noise, many quiet fans can cool as good as a little number of loud ones.
I personally have a Fractal Design Define R4 and a Scythe Mugen CPU cooler. Together with the dual fan Gigabyte Radeon RX470 it is a really quiet gaming PC, even at full load.
If you put a more power hungry GPU in that case it would also get noisy, but you can mitigate the noise a little bit by adding extra case fans if you have a good case.
With the GPU consuming almost twice the amount of power of the CPU, I would say water cooling the GPU makes more sense than water cooling the CPU.

I am not at all confused about frequency and FPS.
First of all I completely agree that GSync/FreeSync does not add a damn if your FPS match your refresh rate. So 144FPS and 144Hz = brilliant on every monitor.
However, things change when your frame rate drops below your refresh rate. You will get tearing and judder, or if you run Vsync you end up at half the frame rate.
I am super sensitive to frame rate, judder and tearing. I can tell you even with my FreeSync monitor when Assetto Corsa drops below 100 FPS.
When your frame rate hovers around 100 fps with FreeSync / GSync it plays virtually as nice as 144 fps on a fixed 144Hz monitor.
But here is the catch: which graphics card allows you to hit 144FPS consistently in Battlefield 1 on ultra?
I can tell you a GTX 1080Ti cannot even do that, so that is where GSync / FreeSync shines because you have no tearing and judder in that case!
With my RX470 I can play on high at roughly 80-100 FPS and it plays very nicely. I also started playing PUBG lately and what I hate most about that game is the terrible frame rate, as it averages only around 70 fps on my system.

If you want to see the difference, go and see the FreeSync demo with the wind mills in person. This visualizes the problem very well and if you do not see the difference there you are probably the same person that experiences 40 fps as "smooth gaming".

I agree with the fact that the GTX1080Ti is better than the RX Vega, but they are not in the same price range. If you have a monitor with Gsync / Freesync chasing the last 10fps also becomes less relevant.
Ultimately it is your own choice, but I would rather give up a few FPS to get Gsync / FreeSync.

I'm really happy with this i7-7700K.

Any input on the cooler lines being long enough for a full size ATX tower? My mid-tower case resulted in cutting the drive bay cage to get it to physically fit, the previous big video card that is.

Depends on the tower and the location of your radiators. Most recent towers from decent brands (Fractal Design, Cooler Master, Corsair, etc.) have the ability to remove drive bays.
Buying a case without 5,25" drive spaces is also a bonus for better cooling. I am personally quite fond of the Fractal Design Define S: Fractal Design
Cable management is supported by most decent cases today. The higher end power supplies usually come with longer cables, decent brands specify the cable lengths.

Hmmm, I was afraid that would be the answer. I really don't care to mess with doing my own DIY cooling setup.

It will fit on the top, you may have trouble fitting it at the front.

What if I went AIO on the CPU and GPU?

Or just do one or the other and prioritize good airflow through the case?

I'm going to put together a hypothetical build later and you guys can give me some critiques. What I'm reading on logicalincrements is that the Intel equivalent i7 is slightly better at gaming than the Ryzen's, but the Ryzen's are better at everything else, sound fair?

IMO, place an AIO on cpu and call it a day. Most GPU's have beefy enough air coolers to keep temps at bay.

And cheaper.

You can do whatever you want with an AIO, you can also use the back fan spot to mount a single rad on. I think fractal design has a "modular" or "expandable" AIO system, so you can put multiple things in the loop.

Noted. I don't need multiple VM capability, video/photo editing (unless I get another track car in a year or two, really will just use it for gaming and internet browsing.

I only need VMs for work, and I use my laptop and our VMs are setup on a big bank of servers on the west coast at HQ. So I don't have to do it locally.

Stepped away from this for a bit after a nasty surprise from my old apartment.

Suggestions on a motherboard with enough inputs to allow two monster graphic cards (to upgrade later on if I want) AND have room to fit an NVMe for the boot drive?