For about a year now, I've been scouting the new offerings from Intel, AMD, and Nvidia, but I never realized how complicated the rest of the DIY market had become. Because of that, I've met and exceeded my saturation level of information.
My current build is old. Real old. I'm pretty sure I've made some upgrades to it over time, but the last one of any note was adding an SSD and Win7... and that was back in 2010. My box is a Phenom II X2 550 BE w/ 4 GB of DDR3 and Radeon 4850 (purchased back in Dec 2008... yeesh). The upside is that it's only pushing pixels to an old Dell 19" monitor with a 1280 X 1024 resolution, so even more modern games still work, if not at high level.
My problems, beyond the old box, is that my use case has changed greatly over the last 5 years. I no longer game nearly as much as I used to (huzzah being married, employed full-time, and in my thirties... but no kid... yet). Most of the time, I'm browsing the internet and trolling forums, or using Office, email, and solving the great mysteries of life. And for such activities, my box is just fine. But for that 2-4 hours a week (mostly Sat. and Sun.) that I want to game, it's a dog. Neglecting the ethical and moral issues of MMOs (har), I've recently become enamored with FFXIV. In doing so, I realized that for the first time since I could actually control my computer purchases, I was hovering at the minimum spec line.
Long story short, I've realized the errors of my ways. But while picking a CPU (i5-4670K) was easy, the form factor (mATX) and motherboard (Asus ROG Gene) wasn't too hard, and AnandTech helped out on the DDR3 speed/timing questions, I'm getting lost in the forest of cases, PSUs, cooling, GPUs, and displays.
My use case does not involve overclocking. I don't have a horse in the water cooling vs. air cooling discussion. I don't care much about brands, as I've even sucked it up and accepted that Asus isn't worth disregarding anymore. But I want a machine that is quiet, will stay on 24/7 without heating the house or tripling my electric bill (it's more to do with the circuit that my computer shares and the ability to trip the breaker on power up.... never mind), and be at least capable of pushing a 1920 x 1200 display with most of the eye-candy turned on.
When idle, I would like it to be no worse than ambient noise levels, maybe just a low hum or whir in the background. No entertainment is done from this box beyond myself, so HTPC-style silence is not necessary. As far as budget, this is a bit of a dream build, and I'm dreaming of dual GPUs now with upgradability in the future to a multi-monitor setup. At the same time, Titans are not even close to realistic, and even the 780 and 290X are beyond what I think it a decent value proposition (even including the price cuts). I would like to keep the GPU spend under $700. Of course, that means it's the rebranded AMDs or the current line-up of Nvidia cards. But even with that, there is still a question on the case, cooling options, and displays (currently considering the Dell U2412M as I want a 16:10 monitor without spending $400).
Needless to say, this is long winded. I'm in the US and I tend to use Newegg. The space I have for a case is probably the exact width of the new BitFenix Phenom mATX case... or a little less. I don't have my tape measure handy to find out. If water-cooling made sense, I don't have the time for a custom loop, nor the energy to monitor it, so a CLC would be my limit. I also just look at those tower coolers and cringe... but I'm sure they don't destroy the motherboard or anything. The computer is stationary and there are no moves planned any time soon.
Anyway, looking for options and real-world experience. When I last built, Antec was the only legitimate case and PSU out there. That doesn't seem to be the case. And displays seem.... complicated. Any help is appreciated.
My current build is old. Real old. I'm pretty sure I've made some upgrades to it over time, but the last one of any note was adding an SSD and Win7... and that was back in 2010. My box is a Phenom II X2 550 BE w/ 4 GB of DDR3 and Radeon 4850 (purchased back in Dec 2008... yeesh). The upside is that it's only pushing pixels to an old Dell 19" monitor with a 1280 X 1024 resolution, so even more modern games still work, if not at high level.
My problems, beyond the old box, is that my use case has changed greatly over the last 5 years. I no longer game nearly as much as I used to (huzzah being married, employed full-time, and in my thirties... but no kid... yet). Most of the time, I'm browsing the internet and trolling forums, or using Office, email, and solving the great mysteries of life. And for such activities, my box is just fine. But for that 2-4 hours a week (mostly Sat. and Sun.) that I want to game, it's a dog. Neglecting the ethical and moral issues of MMOs (har), I've recently become enamored with FFXIV. In doing so, I realized that for the first time since I could actually control my computer purchases, I was hovering at the minimum spec line.
Long story short, I've realized the errors of my ways. But while picking a CPU (i5-4670K) was easy, the form factor (mATX) and motherboard (Asus ROG Gene) wasn't too hard, and AnandTech helped out on the DDR3 speed/timing questions, I'm getting lost in the forest of cases, PSUs, cooling, GPUs, and displays.
My use case does not involve overclocking. I don't have a horse in the water cooling vs. air cooling discussion. I don't care much about brands, as I've even sucked it up and accepted that Asus isn't worth disregarding anymore. But I want a machine that is quiet, will stay on 24/7 without heating the house or tripling my electric bill (it's more to do with the circuit that my computer shares and the ability to trip the breaker on power up.... never mind), and be at least capable of pushing a 1920 x 1200 display with most of the eye-candy turned on.
When idle, I would like it to be no worse than ambient noise levels, maybe just a low hum or whir in the background. No entertainment is done from this box beyond myself, so HTPC-style silence is not necessary. As far as budget, this is a bit of a dream build, and I'm dreaming of dual GPUs now with upgradability in the future to a multi-monitor setup. At the same time, Titans are not even close to realistic, and even the 780 and 290X are beyond what I think it a decent value proposition (even including the price cuts). I would like to keep the GPU spend under $700. Of course, that means it's the rebranded AMDs or the current line-up of Nvidia cards. But even with that, there is still a question on the case, cooling options, and displays (currently considering the Dell U2412M as I want a 16:10 monitor without spending $400).
Needless to say, this is long winded. I'm in the US and I tend to use Newegg. The space I have for a case is probably the exact width of the new BitFenix Phenom mATX case... or a little less. I don't have my tape measure handy to find out. If water-cooling made sense, I don't have the time for a custom loop, nor the energy to monitor it, so a CLC would be my limit. I also just look at those tower coolers and cringe... but I'm sure they don't destroy the motherboard or anything. The computer is stationary and there are no moves planned any time soon.
Anyway, looking for options and real-world experience. When I last built, Antec was the only legitimate case and PSU out there. That doesn't seem to be the case. And displays seem.... complicated. Any help is appreciated.
