re: PC Discussion - Gaming, Performance and Enthusiasts

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Mr Gardoki

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I was messing around with the vtech monitor and saw a setting that turns off vibration. My wife said it couldn't be disabled. Women and technology.

It also reaches to the mailbox without issue, and that's this far - red box to red box:
(google earth view of my house)

It took me a minute to realize what was missing. I hope that's fake.

Could be fake, but people can be dumb. If he couldn't google what slot to use for the card or whether it's compatible with his dell, he certainly couldn't google whether it's ok to slice off some contacts.

I've read forum posts where people have cut off the tips of the heatpipes on a hyper 212 so that their case's side panel would close.

I remember in high school went I thought my PS2 was too loud. I thought to myself, I should cover that vent, then i realized that was a bad idea so I didn't. Some people skip that last step.

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or jump on a 5820k?

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Not unless your budget is in the $2,000 range. Otherwise you are wasting a ton on a higher-end motherboard and overpriced DDR4.

I probably wouldn't recommend the 4790K for any gaming build under $1200-1300, either, unless video editing or streaming your gameplay are going to be a significant part of its use.

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I know DDR4 is at the moment overpriced and showing very little real performance boosts over DDR3, but would it be worth it to already be on that ship in two years or so?

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Right now DDR4 performs worse than DDR3 because of the high latency. I have a DDR3 2133 kit CL9 that will perform better than the fastest DDR4 kit available.

Eventually, the kits will improve and make them viable. But if you buy the inflated priced kit now, you aren't exactly reaping the benefits of DDR4 later until you rebuy newer, faster RAM.

Games aren't taking advantage of those CPUs yet, and there's nothing indicating that they will or will not in any near future. Likewise for quad-channel RAM, which has been around for about 3 years, or really even triple-channel memory. There will most certainly be a new refresh of 2011-3 chips in the next couple of years as well, so it may end up costing you just as much or more in the long run to jump on the "what's-hot-in-2-years" bandwagon.

I'm not saying you shouldn't consider 2011-3/X99 at all. I just wouldn't recommend you try to squeeze it into a constrained budget as a gaming computer. If you go with the 2011-3 platform, a 5820K/Motherboard/16GB DDR4 combo will run you about $900. A 4790K/16GB DDR3 with a similar quality/feature motherboard will be $250-300 cheaper and give you the same gaming performance. Imagine what $250 could do if added back to the GPU allocation. If you cut corners anywhere else to make room the 2011-3 platform, you are making a mistake.

And you are correct that future proofing is a myth. You can plan for SLI/Crossfire in a practical way, but everything else is a waste of time/money. I was trying to explain this to a friend who was spending upwards of $350 on a motherboard merely because he thinks he's going to take advantage of the extra features one day in the future. He never examined closely what those features would be and why he might use them. He bought the board anyway because people are gonna do what they do. There was a similar tale of ignorance with another poster on this board as well.

Something good under $200, maybe even in the $150 range. Probably the MSI Z97-Gaming 5, Z97 MPOWER, or ASRock Z97 Extreme6. Or maybe something in that price range by another brand if the colors are more in line with the aesthetics of my build. It's not that big of a deal. I can be an MSI or ASRock fanboy but drift to another brand for any number of reasons. Just don't get something expensive because you think it'll in any way last longer, improve your overclock on air or closed loop coolers, or offer useful features for future-proofing.

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Right now DDR4 performs worse than DDR3 because of the high latency. I have a DDR3 2133 kit CL9 that will perform better than the fastest DDR4 kit available.

Eventually, the kits will improve and make them viable. But if you buy the inflated priced kit now, you aren't exactly reaping the benefits of DDR4 later until you rebuy newer, faster RAM.

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DDR4 will make my little AMD APU builds sing like a 7870 was in the box. Honestly DDR4 on my AMD builds more than the implementation of DDR4 with the X99 chipset. We really won't see the benefits for a few years, and if ever in gaming.