Thinking of Getting a New PC

[Robin]

... or 'Robin needs a PC'

I'm thinking about building one in the next month or so. There isn't really a budget but I want it primarily for gaming and to run things like Project Cars and GTAV pretty much maxed out.

I would be gaming on a 1080P TV so as long as it can handle that it should be fine. I will also need it for Photoshop / CAD and it will need to run 4 desktop monitors (2 DVI and 2 VGA) for work.

These are some specs I have put together of what I'm thinking of getting,

Intel Core i7-4790K Devil’s Canyon Quad-Core 4.0GHz LGA 1150
Asus Sabertooth Z97 Mark 1 LGA 1150
Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600
EVGA GeForce GTX960 2GB GDDR5
Seasonic Platinum SS-860XP2 860W

Other parts coming from old system.

I could move some money off the CPU on to the GPU, also would that amount of RAM be OK to start with?

Thoughts?

 

[NLxAROSA]

I'd upgrade to something stronger than a GTX960 if you want to max out the new stuff. Since you're sticking with 1080p, a 970GTX or 980GTX should do (though nobody knows how well those really will perform with GTA V).

 

[sesselpupser]

I'm not an expert but I'd be surprised if Photoshop or CAD benefit much* from what an i7 gives you over an i5 and for gaming you certainly don't need an i7. If you're doing video rendering or real-time physics simulations then yeah, an i7 is worth it, but from what I recall the biggest limitation I faced with Photoshop/Illustrator (vectors, so kind of like CAD but only 2D) was RAM and VRAM. 8GB is fine to start with but it would be wise to make sure you can add more, most professional Photoshop users I know (I was briefly in the industry so I know more than one!) have 16GB or more.

I disagree with @NLxAROSA, a GTX 960 should be fine for 1080p 60Hz for some time to come. Rockstar reckon a GTX 660 would run GTA V at 1080p/60 and a 960 is comparable to a GTX 680 which is what I have, I haven't met a game I can't get a nice frame rate from with good settings yet. Edit: I've just noticed he said "max out", in which case I'd actually probably agree - I'd be surprised if I can properly max out (even excluding anti-aliasing) GTA V on my 680.

Oh and 860W is overkill for an i7/960 build unless you're planning to add a second graphics card later - which I wouldn't recommend, by the way - or you're running loads of power-hungry peripherals and drives, so I'd suggest looking around the 650-750W range. I think PC Part Picker has a power draw estimation feature so you can check. Of course you can over-spec the PSU but they have an optimal power draw, a system drawing significantly below that will waste power which is something to be mindful of. Nvidia and Intel tend to make their processors more efficient as time goes on (AMD just likes turning up the power draw) so you don't need to worry too much about exceeding your power budget with a graphics card update a few years down the line, but PSUs do degrade as they age so it's wise to not cut it too fine. Alternatively you could stick with 860W and never worry about replacing the PSU, but your electricity bill will be higher as a result.

Final note: Get an SSD. It would almost certainly make Photoshop a lot more responsive if you were to keep (or at least temporarily move) files you're working on on solid state storage. You could even double your RAM, assign half of it to be a RAM drive and then copy files from the SSD to the RAM drive (RAM drives are volatile so you will lose the stuff you keep there when power is removed) to make it even faster, maybe.


*It seems Photoshop benefits from hyperthreading sometimes, I don't know by how much, though. Still, if I were in your position I'd probably be looking at i5s rather than i7s.

 

[NLxAROSA]

Check the latest Titan X power consumption tests: even that monster won't draw more than 400-ish watts for the whole system on full load. Going lower with the PSU and switching to i5 will bring the GTX970 within price-range.

 

[TenEightyOne]

It seems Photoshop benefits from hyperthreading sometimes, I don't know by how much, though. Still, if I were in your position I'd probably be looking at i5s rather than i7s.

My two penn'orth... if you're running large sequences of "actions" then I think you'd see a benefit from i7. That aside I think your advice is spot-on.

 

[Robin]

Thank you so much for the replies guys 👍

If I swapped out the GPU and PSU for these,

EVGA GeForce GTX970 4GB
SeaSonic X Series 650W Gold

and changed the CPU to this,

Intel Core i5-4690K Devil's Canyon Quad-Core 3.5GHz

It brings it to a similar total with a bit left for extra things.

I probably don't need the power of an i7, I don't think anything I will be doing work wise would really require it but I just liked the idea! Things have changed with computer hardware and less emphasis is on the CPU running the show than it was 10+ years ago.

I was also attracted to the GTX960 because it was newly released compared to the older 970. Does it hold any hardware improvements over the older Maxwell stuff?

I was definitely considering an SSD, maybe a small one (60GB ish) just for the OS and yeah it would be useful as a temporary file store.

 

[NLxAROSA]

The 960 has about two/thirds of the power of a GT970 (when compared in 3DMark), other than that it's pretty identical. There's the 3.5+0.5GB thing for the GTX970, but I'd be extremely surprised if you run into that at 1080p. I have the same card and it's absolutely amazing. 👍

As for SSD: I'd go with a bigger one than 60GB, especially because they're really cheap these days. I'd go with a 128GB as a minimum for the OS and the odd game.

With current game sizes (most are becoming well over 50GB) and the associated loading times, I'm actually considering to upgrade my rig with a 1TB SSD.