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McPhee

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  • 2 weeks later...

So I think I'm done with the Steam Sale now. I've added 40 games to my collection. Most of them are older titles I've been wanting to play for a while but never had the means to do so. I also picked up a few more recent and expensive titles. I got Sea of Thieves at full price because I've been waiting to jump in on that for a while. Also picked up Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, Monster Hunter World (first time with the series), Final Fantasy XV, Titanfall II and a whole bunch of fairly recent indie games (new Ori and the Will of the Wisps, Hyperchage Unboxed and Disco Elysium). Think I spent around £120-130 overall. I'm hoping this keeps me well occupied until the next inevitable Steam sale. I just hope it happens before my Russian bank card expires in November :laughing:

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18 minutes ago, Happenstance said:

Played Tabletop Simulator with @Goafer last night and was really impressed with it. We spent most of the time messing around with the simpler games but we are planning on trying something a bit more complicated when we understand how everything works a bit better.

Maybe try one like this? 

HTB17JIEKpXXXXbFXpXXq6xXFXXXA.jpg

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I've been very modest, only picked up Sonic Generations and Jurassic World Evolution. I did spend another euro on the Humble Summer Adventure Game Bundle, and that got me Oxenfree, The Walking Dead Season 1 + 400 Days and Batman: Enemy Within.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Starcraft II is 10 years old, and the game received a major update as well. It brings some new options to the co-op missions, new achievements for the single player, and a lot of extra features for custom content and the map creator.

Decided to get the Nova campaign as that's on sale now and I haven't played that. Happy to dive back into it for a bit again!

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  • 4 weeks later...

So I’m very tempted to buy a PC for gaming but don’t have a clue where to start. I know that I want:

  • Something as small as possible, with a simple and sleek design (no crazy lights to gas turbines etc.)
  • To be able to play racing sims on super high settings
  • To be able to play flight simulator on super high settings

Budget-wise I’m not really sure what is acceptable, I have in my head up to £5k is fine but if adding more to that would give me a huge advantage I’d be fine too.

Does anyone have any tips for what I should look at?

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33 minutes ago, Happenstance said:

The new load of graphics cards are out soon so it'll be best to wait for them and see what deals start coming up.

That’s really good info to know - thanks!

Any tips on good suppliers I should look out for?

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Just now, will' said:

That’s really good info to know - thanks!

Any tips on good suppliers I should look out for?

I tend to buy Nvidia cards because that's just what I know but from what I hear AMD are a lot more impressive these days. Hopefully some other NE users will appear soon that keep more up to date on all of this than I do.

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Some things to consider:

  • Do you want to build yourself or a ready-made system?
  • At what resolution are you planning to play? Getting super high settings with 60FPS is easier on Full HD then on 4K.
  • Like @Happenstance said, the new NVIDIA generation is inbound (expected somewhere in October I think?) so may be worth waiting on that to either get the newest series or the rest drops in price. Although availability is often bad when it comes to new NVIDIA cards.

But in all honesty with that budget you should be safe and you can probably get anything you want. I'm not sure what the "biggest" size of graphics cards are that fit into a tiny case, but I think in a mini tower you can already fit a 2080 Super.

Edit: AMD is a very valid option, especially for the processor. For graphics cards I still have a slight bias for NVIDIA as most games are optimized for NVIDIA cards. But the AMD graphics cards have improved miles.

Edited by Vileplume2000
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I built my first gaming PC about 2 years ago. Was a bit anxious at first, but putting it together was fun and rewarding in the end, just like adult lego. 

When I went about selecting my parts, I essentially looked at what end result I wanted. I basically aimed at getting 1080p at high framerates and high performance settings, and then selected the parts I needed from there. The box came to about £800 and the monitor £200 so fit nicely into my budget.

@will' is that budget just for the PC or is it also for the monitors, peripherals or even the desk and chair?

You could probably get a top of the line PC for way less than that, so wouldn't worry too much about that. If you're aiming for 4K with high settings, then you'll also need to look at monitors: how many, how big, and refresh rates. That could well eat into the budget if you don't already have these.

When it comes the the case, I have a cheap mid-sized standard case with no bells and whistles. Looks very bland and unstylish but that suits me. I think I initially wanted a smaller design but I find the standard case size to be absolutely fine, I guess it depends if you're going to be moving it around often (e.g. putting it in the living room to play on the big TV). Just beware that if you go with smaller cases, you need to also have a motherboard that fits the case.

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Definitely recommend building your own, will be much cheaper in the end. It's not difficult. I did it last year with zero experience in building PCs. Shouldn't be too hard to source parts at a good price in Singapore. YouTube videos can show you every aspect of building a PC and what to buy in terms of cases / power.

A budget of £5K is a bit extreme, you'll be able to build a competent beast for under £2K. Mine cost me just under a grand and I can run 99% of games at ultra settings in 1080p. Other run at 60FPS in 1440p or 4K if they're not super recent (last 2-3 years). Obviously if 4K60 is your target or higher framerates, you'll be closer to or even slightly over two grand.

A Ryzen processor is the way forward. The new models are generally better than Intel ones and priced much more competitively.

I have an AMD graphics card (RX580) and it does the job for me at this moment in time. Nvidia cards are a little more expensive but seem to run the majority of games better. If you're wanting to play at higher framerates (120hz or 144hz), Nvidia is your best bet in cooperation with a g-sync monitor. Like others have said, new cards are coming soon, so expect the prices of current cards to drop. With a high budget you'd want something that supports Ray-Tracing to future proof yourself. Nvidia also supports DLSS, which allows games to run in a lower res and uses AI to simulate higher res, works wonders for framerates. It's hard to tell the difference in some games, amazing technology. 

Go with M2 storage. It's still expensive, but lightning fast. I bought 512GB for £80, but it was absolutely worth it and reduces the load times massively. 

Not to up to date on mini-systems and gfx-cards as I have have a pretty big tower. 

 

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47 minutes ago, Vileplume2000 said:

Do you want to build yourself or a ready-made system?

My biggest concern with building something myself is knowing what to buy rather than putting it together. If pricing is beneficial then it would probably be fun to buy the bits and try it myself.

48 minutes ago, Vileplume2000 said:

At what resolution are you planning to play? Getting super high settings with 60FPS is easier on Full HD then on 4K

My plan is for this to be on the living room TV which is 4K HDR, so I’d ideally want it to support that properly.

49 minutes ago, Vileplume2000 said:

Like @Happenstance said, the new NVIDIA generation is inbound (expected somewhere in October I think?) so may be worth waiting on that to either get the newest series or the rest drops in price. Although availability is often bad when it comes to new NVIDIA cards.

Sounds like waiting a bit is definitely good to do then, gives me some time to work all of this out too.

31 minutes ago, Happenstance said:

There are also mini versions of graphics cards if necessary. I have a smaller tower so had to get a 2060 Super Mini.

I had no idea! Are they the same spec? Any downsides to getting a mini version over the full size one?

15 minutes ago, Zell said:

I built my first gaming PC about 2 years ago. Was a bit anxious at first, but putting it together was fun and rewarding in the end, just like adult lego.

I love lego, so this is encouraging.

15 minutes ago, Zell said:

@will' is that budget just for the PC or is it also for the monitors, peripherals or even the desk and chair?

Budget is for the PC only, anything left over will go into stuff like steering wheels but will budget for those separately.

16 minutes ago, Zell said:

When it comes the the case, I have a cheap mid-sized standard case with no bells and whistles. Looks very bland and unstylish but that suits me. I think I initially wanted a smaller design but I find the standard case size to be absolutely fine, I guess it depends if you're going to be moving it around often (e.g. putting it in the living room to play on the big TV). Just beware that if you go with smaller cases, you need to also have a motherboard that fits the case.

I don’t think it will get moved around much, but as it’s for the living room I definitely don’t want something huge. Something console size that can go under the TV is ideal.

18 minutes ago, Nicktendo said:

A budget of £5K is a bit extreme, you'll be able to build a competent beast for under £2K. Mine cost me just under a grand and I can run 99% of games at ultra settings in 1080p. Other run at 60FPS in 1440p or 4K if they're not super recent (last 2-3 years). Obviously if 4K60 is your target or higher framerates, you'll be closer to or even slightly over two grand.

The budget is definitely more what I’m OK with rather than what I expect it to cost, my knowledge on PCs is basically zero so learning from you guys. Looking more on the 4K60 side of things but good to know I can do that well under my original budget.

19 minutes ago, Nicktendo said:

A Ryzen processor is the way forward. The new models are generally better than Intel ones and priced much more competitively.

Excellent, will look into those.

20 minutes ago, Nicktendo said:

I have an AMD graphics card (RX580) and it does the job for me at this moment in time. Nvidia cards are a little more expensive but seem to run the majority of games better. If you're wanting to play at higher framerates (120hz or 144hz), Nvidia is your best bet in cooperation with a g-sync monitor. Like others have said, new cards are coming soon, so expect the prices of current cards to drop. With a high budget you'd want something that supports Ray-Tracing to future proof yourself. Nvidia also supports DLSS, which allows games to run in a lower res and uses AI to simulate higher res, works wonders for framerates. It's hard to tell the difference in some games, amazing technology.

Yeah looks like these new NVIDIA cards are what I should go with, more good tips!

21 minutes ago, Nicktendo said:

Go with M2 storage. It's still expensive, but lightning fast. I bought 512GB for £80, but it was absolutely worth it and reduces the load times massively. 

Another thing I had absolutely no idea about so will definitely look into this too - thanks!

So based off of these posts so far, I’m looking at:

  • Ryzen Processor
  • New NVIDIA graphics cards which come soon
  • M2 storage

Anything else I should be keeping in mind?

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For the Mini graphics cards: I think the maximum you can get is a 2060 Super, maybe there are 2070 Super cards. They should perform about the same as the bigger counterparts, only cooling may be less so the fans may be louder. If you are aiming at 4K high settings I wouldn't go under a 2070 Super. 

There are a lot of tiny builds to be found online so you can find inspiration there. m.2 is indeed a very good one, but it is almost becoming the standard now so I thought that was a given haha.

For the rest: Get dual channel RAM (e.g. 2x8 or 2x16 compared to 1x16 or 1x32. Helps a little bit in performance as well. And of course a quality power supply is adviced, don't go for the cheapest one out there but I have a feeling you will not.

And indeed:

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