One PC for 2

[pgDarkness]

Hi everybody,

straight to the point;

I need a Complete PC build (including Hardware and Software configuration) which can do these:

1- Should have 2 series of Standard I/O.
2- Most of the time it will be used by one person. In this case extra series of I/O (mouse, keyboard, headphone, etc.) is not needed but 2 monitors should be at user's disposal.
3- From time to time, it will be used by two person. It would be nice to be able to switch to this mode on demand without need to restart the system, but it's not mandatory.
4- Use case: Main concern is heavy gaming. Other uses are web developing, video and audio editing, game capturing, etc.
5- Not to mention it should be able to output to two different headphones.


Must have peripherals:

1- A good enough Recording Mic.
2- Wireless adapter.

Preferred peripherals:

1- 144hrtz monitor.

I'm upgrading from a 10 years old laptop so I'm not excited about 4k (and above) video output. 1080p is sufficient.

My budget is less that $2500 but I prefer to not to go that far if possible.
Also it would be awesome to have a budget friendly version for about $1000-$1500.
Do not include Windows 10 in the budget. I already have them. But if another mandatory software is required, consider it.

I am the main user and from time to time my wife would join me for a round of battle field or to cooperate on a project.

I have no problem tweaking hardware and software so don't hesitate to provide extra advise.

Thanks in advance.

 

[ksham]

With a $2500 budget, you can build two computers. I don't know about using two keyboard and two mice in the same computer. I don't think Windows can differentiate between multiple keyboards or multiple mice so you two will constantly fight over one another.

One of my coworkers told me there is a Team Player program (https://www.dicolab.com) and that may work in your case. I've never used it and it's not free.

 

[pgDarkness]

With a $2500 budget, you can build two computers. I don't know about using two keyboard and two mice in the same computer. I don't think Windows can differentiate between multiple keyboards or multiple mice so you two will constantly fight over one another.

One of my coworkers told me there is a Team Player program (https://www.dicolab.com) and that may work in your case. I've never used it and it's not free.

Yes, but the problem is the 2nd computer is going to be off most of the time and I don't want to waste my money on that. I prefer to have double the power at my disposal and share it when needed.

And about the I/O, virtual machine can be the answer. It can capture and differentiate between I/Os but I'm not sure it would be the best solution performance wise considering we like to game together too.

Thanks for the answer. I will look into the software you have mentioned.

UPDATE:
I have looked into the TeamPlayer software. It is very awesome and I can see a lot of use cases for it. But I believe its not the answer for me. There are afew problems; for one, there is no different audio outputs. Also I'm not sure its possible to run two instances of every required application (battle field for example).

Thanks for the answer thou.

 

[Corwin65]

I looked at Team Player and it does not seem like it would work for gaming.

 

[pgDarkness]

Hi everybody,

For the software part, here is what I've got so far:

Option I: Virtual Machines
Install Win10 -> Install VM -> Install Wind10 on VM
With the right configuration VM can handle the 2nd series of I/O. (Not tested but I'm pretty sure it can.)

Pros:
1- Switch between 1user and 2users modes on-demand. No restart required.
2- Complete software environments for users on 2users mode.
Cons:
1- Performance! The system is running two different OS and its stuff and one of them is running on an emulator, which costs a lot of hardware juice.
2- I'm not sure about gaming. Does this setup requires two standalone GPUs? If yes, can I use it in SLI or not? It'll be a pain to waste a graphic card on 1user mode!

Option II: Main Frame Style
On good old days, there were hardware which were built to serve multiple users at once. Every users had an experience like it was one PC for him/her.
Now days, we can do the same with desktops.

Pros:
1- Very reliable, Conflict-Free wise.
2- No problem handling 2 series of I/O. Any type.
3- It might have the best performance possible to provide two different software environments.
Cons:
1- Separating I/O happens before even OS loads; I'm not really sure but it must be possible to configure two environments, one for 1user mode (like a normal PC), another one for 2users mode.
2- It's a pain to setup! Nightmare if things go wrong.
3- Requires restart to switch between 1user and 2users modes.

Option III: I don't know
I don't know if it's possible but maybe there is a software out there which provides two instances of every application on-demand on the same running OS and handles the I/O for the 2nd one.
I know there were an option in Kaspersky which runs any application in a sand-box (for security reasons). So it is possible but not sure how far.

Any suggestion would be appreciated.

 

[James Mason]

What you want to do is will result in a very poor experience.
Windows only sees 1 keyboard and mouse input, so no matter how many you connect, they will always send the same signal.
Virtual machines may be able to split it up, but the problem is dividing the power of anything and then emulating results in a huge decrease of how that power is used. That's why emulation of modern consoles is so hard. So emulating a modern computer in a VM is also a bad idea.

Does player two really need a computer that's half as good as yours? Because a computer that's only half as good of yours is pretty easy. Hardware doesn't increase in performance any where near equal to the price increase.
Here you can see how an i5 and an i7 are effectively only 3% different in speed:
http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i7-7700K-vs-Intel-Core-i5-7600K/3647vs3885
but you pay 50% more than an i5 for an i7.
http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/AMD-Ryzen-5-1600X-vs-AMD-Ryzen-7-1800X/3920vs3916
Here we have two processors from the same generation with the same speed but just a core difference, and you can see the doubled price increase only results in a 30% multi threaded boost.

Your option 2 kind of exists, but it's only for extremely low processing power things, nowhere near games. it's only ever used for situations where people are making text entries into forms for a server/mainframe database, nothing at all heavy processing.

The best way to do what you want is to have 2 computers.
Spend 1400 on one, and 700 on the other, you can get 2 monitors and then just switch sources on the 2nd for the 2nd player when needed.

ALSO, you can actually turn that 2nd 700 PC into a dedicated streaming PC, so it can handle all streaming/recording duties while all the gameplay is handled on your main system.

 

[pgDarkness]

What you want to do is will result in a very poor experience.
Windows only sees 1 keyboard and mouse input, so no matter how many you connect, they will always send the same signal.
Virtual machines may be able to split it up, but the problem is dividing the power of anything and then emulating results in a huge decrease of how that power is used. That's why emulation of modern consoles is so hard. So emulating a modern computer in a VM is also a bad idea.

Does player two really need a computer that's half as good as yours? Because a computer that's only half as good of yours is pretty easy. Hardware doesn't increase in performance any where near equal to the price increase.
Here you can see how an i5 and an i7 are effectively only 3% different in speed:
http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i7-7700K-vs-Intel-Core-i5-7600K/3647vs3885
but you pay 50% more than an i5 for an i7.
http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/AMD-Ryzen-5-1600X-vs-AMD-Ryzen-7-1800X/3920vs3916
Here we have two processors from the same generation with the same speed but just a core difference, and you can see the doubled price increase only results in a 30% multi threaded boost.

Your option 2 kind of exists, but it's only for extremely low processing power things, nowhere near games. it's only ever used for situations where people are making text entries into forms for a server/mainframe database, nothing at all heavy processing.

The best way to do what you want is to have 2 computers.
Spend 1400 on one, and 700 on the other, you can get 2 monitors and then just switch sources on the 2nd for the 2nd player when needed.

ALSO, you can actually turn that 2nd 700 PC into a dedicated streaming PC, so it can handle all streaming/recording duties while all the gameplay is handled on your main system.

Well, that's an idea. But I'm not a streamer.
Two things:
1- About main frame style, actually Linus tech did setup it for a GameNet. 1 PC for 12 Players which in the video, they all start playing battlefield.
2- About the performance. I know it will not be logical, but is it practical?
I have no problem playing on mid or low settings on both PC.
Let me rephrase my question in the last post:

Is it possible to run two battlefield 1 in 1pc, one normally and another one through a VM and achieve atleast 30fps on low or mid settings on a ~$1500 pc?
What do I need hardware wise? Two Graphics? maybe two Nvidia 1070? a good enough CPU with enough cores to devide?
or is there a better way.

There are reasons that I'm insisting on buying one pc:
1- I want to experience a $1500-$2000 PC. I've had it enough with 640x480! 🙁 (my current graphic is NVidia 9300 MGS)
2- Most of the time like 5 or 6 days a week, I'm the only user.

 

[James Mason]

Yeah Linus's multi gamer systems are players remoting in or it's dedicated as a multigamer system and they're not stronger when not being used for remote use.
He also spent like $30,000 on each of them.
Each player does have their own GPU, but the GPUs are all separate, so you wouldn't gain the benefit of SLIing GPUs.
You can have a good $1500 system easy, but having multiple players on 1 system is kind of unreasonable.

Other uses are web developing, video and audio editing, game capturing, etc.

This is why I mentioned a 2nd PC.
You get very bad returns on your money after around $1200-1400 in a PC. a $2000 PC is maybe 10% better than a $1500 pc. But a $700 PC is like 70% as good as a $1500.

Why can't this other player bring their own computer to play on?
Also they'd need their own copy of BF1/whatever multiplayer game you were playing anyways.

 

[pgDarkness]

With a $2500 budget, you can build two computers. I don't know about using two keyboard and two mice in the same computer. I don't think Windows can differentiate between multiple keyboards or multiple mice so you two will constantly fight over one another.

One of my coworkers told me there is a Team Player program (https://www.dicolab.com) and that may work in your case. I've never used it and it's not free.

Yes, but the 2nd computer is going to waste for most of the time while I could've have double the power.
And about the I/O, virtual machine could be the answer. It can capture and differentiate between two series of standard I/O but I'm not sure about how it could impact overall performance.

Thanks for the answer. I will look into that software.

 

[pgDarkness]

What you're saying makes sense to me. What builds do you suggest for two PCs?
Cap it for ~$1700.

The other player is my wife.

 

[James Mason]

This is a sort of white and black theme'd build, your main computer:
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD - Ryzen 7 1700 3.0GHz 8-Core Processor ($269.99 @ Amazon)
CPU Cooler: CRYORIG - H7 49.0 CFM CPU Cooler ($29.90 @ Newegg Marketplace)
Motherboard: ASRock - X370 KILLER SLI/ac ATX AM4 Motherboard ($148.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: Team - Dark Pro 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3000 Memory ($144.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Western Digital - Blue 250GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive ($89.99 @ B&H)
Storage: Western Digital - Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($39.99 @ Best Buy)
Video Card: EVGA - GeForce GTX 1080 8GB SC2 Gaming iCX Video Card ($569.99 @ Amazon)
Case: NZXT - S340 (White) ATX Mid Tower Case ($69.99 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: Rosewill - 550W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($54.99 @ Amazon)
Operating System: Microsoft - Windows 10 Home Full - USB 32/64-bit ($104.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Monitor: AOC - G2460FQ 24.0" 1920x1080 144Hz Monitor ($169.99 @ Newegg)
Other: Blue Microphones Snowball USB Microphone (Textured White) ($69.00 @ Amazon)
Total: $1762.79
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-07-13 20:50 EDT-0400
Here's the wife's PC and her/your 2nd monitor:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD - Ryzen 5 1400 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor ($157.49 @ SuperBiiz)
CPU Cooler: CRYORIG - C7 40.5 CFM CPU Cooler ($29.99 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: ASRock - AB350 Gaming-ITX/ac Mini ITX AM4 Motherboard ($108.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Memory: Team - Dark Pro 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-3000 Memory ($75.98 @ Newegg)
Storage: Western Digital - Blue 250GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive ($89.99 @ B&H)
Video Card: EVGA - GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4GB SC GAMING ACX 2.0 Video Card ($154.98 @ Newegg)
Case: Cooler Master - Elite 130 Mini ITX Tower Case ($39.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Power Supply: Rosewill - 550W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($54.99 @ Newegg)
Monitor: AOC - E2425SWD 24.0" 1920x1080 60Hz Monitor ($103.49 @ Amazon)
Total: $815.89
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-07-13 20:46 EDT-0400

unfortunately, we're still under the effects of the ethereum mining craze making all midrange gpus over priced, so it's kind of maxing your budget, but otherwise you'll be set for running your games at 1080 144hz easily:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/id-3449316/explanation-current-increase-gpu-prices-read.html

 

[USAFRet]

Gaming through a VM is a less than stellar experience.
Multi seat gaming is very, very expensive, and mostly just a show system for the utubers.

Build 2 individual systems.