Question Need help deciding components

Mar 31, 2020
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Hey I'm setting up my first pc, and what a perfect time to do so since we're stuck inside lol. Anyway I plan on getting a Dell XPS special edition, as I've heard that it's quite good for handling games, very upgradable, has tons of customization of specs when buying, and I'd rather avoid the hassle of building one honestly. The questions I have are concerning what specs I should get when buying it. Now I've heard that a current gen 6-core i5 cpu is about the most a game can take advantage of, and that an i7 cpu would just be overkill and a waste of money. I've also heard this about ram, that 8gb is the most it can take advantage of and therefore 16gb is simply a waste of money. With that being said, is it worth it to maybe get an i7 and 16gb of ram for future proofing? With the new consoles coming out I'm concerned developers will make games more demanding, and would they maybe be able to take advantage of an 8-core cpu and 16gb of ram? Or will that be so far into that future that I am just wasting money? Because if a 6-core i5 and 8gb of ram are going to be sufficient for a very long time, I won't even bother and just save my money.
My main concern is with the GPU as I have little to no knowledge on GPUs at all, and of course that's the most important part. They offer RTX 2060, 2060 super, 2070, and some lower and some higher. Keep in mind I am NOT a competitive gamer by any means, I'm 100% fine with 60hz and that's all my monitor supports anyway. I would prefer to be around 60fps, and play in 1440p. I do want my games to look nice, my monitor is 1440p so if I can play games in that resolution I'm good. But I don't know what graphics card I would need to be able to support that. My thoughts from the research that I've done are that I need to get a RTX 2060 super, but I wanted to get thoughts from other people before making any decisions.
Any help would be GREATLY appreciated!!
 
Mar 9, 2020
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Go for a AMD Ryzen system !
The best price-performance cpu at the moment is the Ryzen 5 3600.
I recently bought this :
  • CPU : Ryzen 5 3600
  • Motherboard : Gygabyte B450m DS3H
  • RAM : 2x8 Gb Corsair Vengence LPX
  • Graphics : Gforce 1050 2Gb
  • SSD : Transcend 256 Gb

I tested it intesively and overall the performance is indicated as high-end.
If you would use the RTX 2060 or higher then you surely can play anything at ulttra high settings.

The price i paid for the mentioned hardware was just under 500 euro.
If your budget is up to 1000 euro then go for the high end Ryzen family and an better motherboard.

Just don't buy with haste, you can get a lot of extra power for less money if you look around and compare prices and such.
 
Mar 31, 2020
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So in terms of Nvidia RTX series graphics cards, what would you need to be able to play a game in 1440p at around 50-60fps? What about 4k at 50-60fps? I'm totally new to graphics cards but trying to see what graphics card would be needed to run at those resolutions. Not sure if it matters but my monitor is only 60hz so i'm not doing anything crazy, just wanting to run at high resolutions and have a somewhat stable framerate. So between the RTX 2060, 2060 super, 2070, 2070 super and 2080, what would i need to be able to play in 1440p and what would i need to be able to play in 4k with a decent framerate? Thanks for any help you can give!!
 

auzzle

Honorable
Jul 2, 2014
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It also depends on what setting you are running in game. For example I am running a GTX 1070 powering 1x 4K Ultra wide monitor for gaming and 1x 4k Monitor. With the new COD Warzone I can play with everything mostly on Max settings although I have to lower the render resolution to 90% of 4k to get more than 60 FPS and texture quality is Medium. My CPU is an i5 9600k. If you are looking to play 4k Max I would recommend the RTX 2080 so long as your CPU decent.
 
Mar 31, 2020
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So i'm setting up my first desktop, and need help deciding which CPU would be ideal to get. This is going to be a gaming PC, and I heard that a current gen i5 cpu has the max amount of cores that current games can take advantage of, and as such an i7 would be a waste of money. Is this true? Or is it worth considering an i7?
Also if it is true that an i5 is the best performance i'll get right now, is it worth getting an i7 for future proofing? Will any games in the near future be able to take advantage of those extra cores? Or will an i5 be perfectly fine for the foreseeable future?
Just trying to get the best cpu without paying extra for stuff i don't need, cause i won't really be doing anything demanding outside of gaming, so if an i7 isn't going to help in that department it would be a complete waste of money. Thanks for any suggestions you can give!
 

logainofhades

Titan
Moderator
I wouldn't consider any i5, at this time. They are having trouble with frametime variance, in newer titles, and that trend is only going to get worse. Either go with a Ryzen 5 3600/3600x, Ryzen 7 3700x, or an i7 8700k, or better. With 10th gen, on its way, it's hard to recommend an 8th or 9th gen CPU, right now, though.
 
Mar 31, 2020
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So i'm setting up my first pc, it will be used as a gaming pc generally speaking, as well as some other casual things like watching youtube, surfing the web, etc. I'm trying to figure out how much memory to get for it, and i heard that 8gb of ram is the most a game can currently take advantage of. Is this true, or will 16gb give better performance?
If 8gb is the most that games can benefit from currently, is it worth getting 16gb for future proofing, or will 8gb be sufficient for quite some time? Gaming will be the only demanding thing i do at all, so if 8gb is perfectly fine for that and will be for quite some time, 16gb will be just a waste of money. But if in the near future games will start taking advantage of that extra memory, it may be worth getting the extra.
Just trying to get a pc that will be future proofed for a while without spending extra money on things that will serve no purpose. I'd appreciate any help you can give!
 
Mar 31, 2020
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So i'm getting my first pc now and am trying to decide what type of storage to get. This is gonna be a gaming pc for the most part, and i'm deciding between a hybrid drive with like 256gb SSD storage and 1tb or HDD storage, or just a 1tb SSD. The hybrid drive would be able to store the operating system and some files as well so those boot up very quickly, and the HDD would store the games. Or if i were to get the SSD everything, including the games, would be stored on that. Now the deciding factor is if games actually benefit at all from being stored on SSD storage rather than HDD, so that's my question. Will my games load faster if i have them saved to the SSD or will they basically load the exact same that they would on an HDD? Cause if it's no faster at all than buying a large SSD would obviously be just a waste of money, but if there is a benefit and they load faster, i would very much prefer to just get a large SSD drive and not bother with mechanical hard drives at all. So can anyone answer if i will get any sort of benefit from them being saved on flash storage or if i'd just be wasting money? Thanks for any help you can give!
 
Mar 31, 2020
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I wouldn't consider any i5, at this time. They are having trouble with frametime variance, in newer titles, and that trend is only going to get worse. Either go with a Ryzen 5 3600/3600x, Ryzen 7 3700x, or an i7 8700k, or better. With 10th gen, on its way, it's hard to recommend an 8th or 9th gen CPU, right now, though.
I prefer intel CPUs, but i5's are struggling with current games? So I would be better off getting an i7? I really was just wanting to know if getting an i7 would give better performance or if i'd be wasting money by upgrading. When are 10th gen ones releasing?
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
To your question:
Games will load levels faster if they live on an SSD vs on an HDD.
IMHO, SSD's are NOT a waste of money. See my parts list below...ALL SSD.

The only real issue is, of course, money vs space needs.
2TB HDD is much cheaper than 2TB SSD.
 
Mar 31, 2020
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I routinely use more than 8GB so I’d go 16 GB in any “gaming” rig
You use more than 8gb while just gaming? If that's the case it sounds like i'd be better off upgrading to 16gb. I just wasn't sure if i'd be wasting money upgrading or not, since I didn't know if it would give me any better performance or not.
 

WildCard999

Titan
Moderator
Windows 10 allocates memory as needed and will use more if the system has more. You could have two systems with exact same specs but one with 8gb and one with 16gb, Windows will use less on the 8gb system then the 16gb for the same tasks. I don't stream and I see around 12gb used while gaming on a 16gb system. Honestly, if I were building a system now and had the extra budget I would go 32gb (2x16) so I'd be good for more then a few years because trying to add in another kit later on is a crapshoot and with AMD Ryzen may need to lower the speed of the memory to make it stable so you could lose out on performance.
 
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So i'm setting up my first pc, it will be used as a gaming pc generally speaking, as well as some other casual things like watching youtube, surfing the web, etc. I'm trying to figure out how much memory to get for it, and i heard that 8gb of ram is the most a game can currently take advantage of. Is this true, or will 16gb give better performance?
If 8gb is the most that games can benefit from currently, is it worth getting 16gb for future proofing, or will 8gb be sufficient for quite some time? Gaming will be the only demanding thing i do at all, so if 8gb is perfectly fine for that and will be for quite some time, 16gb will be just a waste of money. But if in the near future games will start taking advantage of that extra memory, it may be worth getting the extra.
Just trying to get a pc that will be future proofed for a while without spending extra money on things that will serve no purpose. I'd appreciate any help you can give!

I was in the same problem as you, I didn't know if I wanted to spend extra but you can pick up corsair vengeance 3200mhz 16gb ram for only 70£ (87$). Whereas 8GB is usually the same price. While this isn't the most important thing, you will notice that you are running low and your computer is running slower. Games also tend to warn you about low memory (i.e Just Cause 3) if you have 8gb. AAA titles also need alot of RAM and especially if you are going for Ryzen. 8GB is the minimum you need but 16GB is recommended, It is definitely a nice to have
 
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The 9700K gives formidable performance in gaming, as does the 9900K, although each requires additional money be spent on the CPU itself, and a decent cooler as well.

Withe 9700K costing more than twice what the 3600 costs. and even the 3700X costing $120 less than the 9700K, the latter is increasingly a tough sell... (That being said, I did recommend one and assemble one for a friend two months back, as I figured that combo of parts had a better chance of 'just working' right out of the box, and, being only in his area for a week long visit, figured that was worth something. And, it was not my money being spent anyway)

Even if 10th gen is announced on time, I doubt anyone is shipping them for weeks later, or even longer with the CV chaos...and, i rather doubt a core count increase (to ten cores) and a 100 MHz clock speed jump is going to be a noteworthy improvement over the 9900K in gaming, barring some groundbreaking tweaks no one is aware of. That Intel would have the audacity to actually consider a hike in it's prices for the upcoming top models is almost laughable...
 
Mar 31, 2020
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I’m setting up a gaming pc right now and am trying to figure out what specs to go with. I’m currently thinking about going with this:

-9th gen i5 9400 cpu
-8gb ram
-RTX 2060 super
-2tb SSD

I’m wanting to play in 1440p at 60fps, will this set up be able to? Or do I need to increase anything?
 
Mar 31, 2020
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Should be okay. What PSU are you intending to use? I would also suggest you consider 16GB (2x8GB) of memory for better overall performance, especially for a gaming rig.
It’s an 850w power supply if I remember correctly. Is an RTX 2060 super the bare minimum gpu needed to get 1440p @60FPS? That’s all my monitor can support, so if a cheaper graphics card would be able to output that I obviously don’t want to waste money
 

COLGeek

Cybernaut
Moderator
The GTX 2060 should pair well with your chosen CPU. I wouldn't go to a lesser GPU is 1440p gaming is your objective.

Not all PSUs are created equally. Do you know the specifics of the one you are considering?

Don't cheap out on a PSU, it the heart the keeps the system going and you don't want to take chances with it. You don't need a 850w PSU. A quality 500w unit will meet your needs.