Who's a PC builder / enthusiast?

[weakhead]

I'm looking to start a conversation about PC building.

I've built a couple of systems before, but the last one was many years ago. I've spent the last two weeks looking at sample builds and watching YouTube videos. There are so many options I'm starting to go a little crazy.

I'm not looking to build a system right away, but I'm not sure the 4 year old Xeon CPU I have is going to work so I'm starting to looks at builds. I just bought an EVGA 6GB 1060, that I'm installing tonight in my old system.

I have not purchased TGC yet but I will be this spring when I get set up in the garage.

Questions that I have right now:
1) Are there any benchmarks that will replicate TGC or a AAA game (Battlefield 1, Witcher 3, etc) that would be comparable? A lot of builds talk about being able to run a certain game at 1080p or 1440p at a certain frame rate.

2) Micro-ATX vs ATX? I understand the difference between a Z board (overclocking) and H board (no overclocking). Why do some people recommend mATX boards and put them in ATX Mid towers? Is it just price?

[keither5150]

Every game is different and since you are probably only installing TGC.....that's the only one that matters.

TGC is not hard on the CPU or memory..... just the video card.
When you build.... i5 3.4 GHz or better, 8GB ram or more and a GTX 1060 6GB or better for 1080p.
FPS on TGC is what matters. With the above specs you should be able to get 60FPS and have a nice visual.

I never really understood the purpose of micro ATX........ smaller case I guess.... no advantage really.
Overclocking has not really been needed for quite some time. I was an overclocker back in the day, but today it is not really needed. In the 90's we were increasing our CPU speeds by as much as 30-40% at times. Anyone remember the first Celerons? I wonder what would happen if you took a 6700k to 6 GHz?

Factory overclocks on video cards are another story....many times, you can buy a OC version for the same money.... It is safe to do so as long as there is adequate cooling on the card and in the case. Most cases have empty slots for extra fans. Extra fans are a great idea.

FaultyClubs wrote and excellent post about the computer requirements for TGC.... Everyone thinking of building should read it.

[weakhead]

Thanks, I will definitely post a build list for review before buying. I am going to try the Xeon first and also wait for the AMD release of Ryzen in March to see if it brings the Intel prices down.

The post by FaultyClubs is very good. I think he proved that the "budget" 1080p builds are enough for TGC CPU-wise and to spend your money on the video card (like you've said too).

[Yrrdead81]

I'll link the same thing I link on most of these threads but if you've built before it saves you some time. I like it because it gets updated every month and it saves me research time;

http://www.mmo-champion.com/build-of-the-month/

On the mATX front it is just price usually you sacrifice a couple DIMM slots and a PCI-e16 slot or two. Cmon we are in the golf sim market, pc prices are a joke. We pay $1k for $60 software . Though if you are trying to make some kind of custom enclosure some of the ITX solutions can support a full video card and are pretty neat.

[weakhead]

Thanks for the link. I also saw someone had linked to here
https://www.reddit.com/r/PCMasterRace/wiki/builds

Cmon we are in the golf sim market, pc prices are a joke. We pay $1k for $60 software .

But I think the wife has started to notice the purchases adding up . I just don't want to spend $1500+ on a PC when an $800 one will do just as well.

[Yrrdead81]

Well just know where you want to spend your limited budget; Processor - don't need to overclock so ignore any of the "k" series. Graphics - sorry you need to splurge here. HDD/SSD - pretty easy to go cheap here especially if this machine is dedicated to sim, you just don't need a ton of storage and it is easy to add later. Ram - 8gb is fine, especially on a budget. Just realize that you are probably going to spend $500-$600 on processor and graphics card.

[weakhead]

Thanks. I've been playing with putting together builds on https://pcpartpicker.com/list/ and that is the builds that I am focusing on.

[djwang]

Every game is different and since you are probably only installing TGC.....that's the only one that matters.

EXCEPT that a 13'x16' (or larger) open space, seems ideal for whole room VR (as a rare second use) ... just sayin'