Console vs PC gaming - building a gaming PC

[ChaMerZ]

Any games you guys recommend? I'm not really into FPSs. Preferably something with at least partial controller support.

These are old & you may already have played them, but check out:

(1) Deus Ex Human Revolution
(2) Hitman Absolution
(3) Dishonored

I'm a stealth fan

[Hush]

Any games you guys recommend? I'm not really into FPSs. Preferably something with at least partial controller support.

These are old & you may already have played them, but check out:

(1) Deus Ex Human Revolution
(2) Hitman Absolution
(3) Dishonored

I'm a stealth fan

Haven't played Deus Ex and not that interested. Played a little bit of Hitman on Xbox but never finished it. I did play Dishonored, which was awesome. I feel like I've come into PC gaming at a time when most stuff that's out I've already played on a console or wasn't interested anyway. I'm waiting for that next big release to catch my attention and then I'll give it a go on PC rather than console (Batman?).

I tried out the demos for Trackmania 2 but I don't think that style of driving game is for me. It is focused on course completion time and not really on racing other cars.

I just finished up Xcom, which was awesome, but I played the majority of it on the Surface tablet.

I'm sure some great games will come along...

Any must play indie titles? I have Braid, Limbo, Bastion, Super Meat Boy, etc. (Humble Indie Bundle)

[ChaMerZ]

aww man just yesterday I was having a discussion with this really die-hard indie fan and he listed a bunch of indie games from the past 5 years that are very good. i can't recall any of em though. if i catch him again, i'll ask as I'm also very interested myself.

[ChaMerZ]

Haven't played Deus Ex and not that interested. Played a little bit of Hitman on Xbox but never finished it. I did play Dishonored, which was awesome. I feel like I've come into PC gaming at a time when most stuff that's out I've already played on a console or wasn't interested anyway. I'm waiting for that next big release to catch my attention and then I'll give it a go on PC rather than console (Batman?).

Or GTAV, although I'm 99% sure you've already played it and burnt out on it. There's still a couple sweet games coming up though. If you're a fan of that sort of thing, the new Sid Meier game looks impressive.

[Hush]

Yeah, I bought GTAV on both 360 and Xbox One. I was considering picking up that Saints Row: Gat out of Hell but it just looks like more of the same Saints Row stuff.

Last night I tried out Dolphin, the Wii emulator. I bumped the res up on New Super Mario Bros. Wii and it seems to look just as good as the Wii U version. Mario Kart Wii looked great as well but had trouble running as smoothly at the higher res.

[ChaMerZ]

Yeah, I bought GTAV on both 360 and Xbox One. I was considering picking up that Saints Row: Gat out of Hell but it just looks like more of the same Saints Row stuff.

Last night I tried out Dolphin, the Wii emulator. I bumped the res up on New Super Mario Bros. Wii and it seems to look just as good as the Wii U version. Mario Kart Wii looked great as well but had trouble running as smoothly at the higher res.

How long did Dolphin take to set up? Dolphin, I hear, is the gold standard when it comes to emulators. One of the greatest emulator's of all time. Wish there was a Dolphin equivalent for the PS2.

Did you play Mario Kart Wii with a wii-mote or a mouse? You should try out RE4. If I ever got Dolphin it would pretty much only be for RE4. There's no other game on the console that I've wanted to play that badly.

[Sigma]

I'd recommend Call of Juarez: Gunslinger: -

http://store.steampowered.com/app/204450/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

It's a great game IMO, it's cheap, and it has full controller support.

Talking of controller support, MS have finally announced a wireless adapter for the Xbox One controller for PC. It's being released later this year, although no exact date/price has been set yet.

[Hush]

Dolphin is super simple, it doesn't even need to be installed. You basically just extract the folder wherever you want, run the emulator and load up a Wii game iso (or wbfs). The first time you run it, it creates another folder in your My Documents where it stores its settings. That way if you upgrade to a newer version of Dolphin, it will retain any settings you changed as it still looks for that folder that was created by the older version of Dolphin.

I was playing Mario Kart with an Xbox 360 controller which I had set up in the emulator to be a 'Gamecube' controller.

For SMB, I paired up an actual Wii Remote with a bluetooth adapter I had lying around.

I've played RE4 on the Wii, but it may be worth revisiting, especially if the res is bumped up. Does it support a control scheme other than Wii remote/nunchuck? If not, I could always grab the Gamecube version.

Sigma, I've heard good things about Gunslinger, I'll check it out. I'll be all over that new wireless adapter when released, as it will be nice not to reduce the number of controller I have lying around.

[Hush]

So I just picked up a $50 1TB Seagate drive which was rated the highest value for speed/size/price here:

http://hdd.userbenchmark.com/

This "budget" PC is turning into a money pit, LOL.

The 500GB I'm using is about 6 years old and pretty slow.

[ChaMerZ]

This "budget" PC is turning into a money pit, LOL.

I don't think so tbh. I know folks who wouldn't have any problems burning all the cash you've burned on this one PC on a single gpu. I am planning on being one of these ppl.

i need a kick ass rig yo

[Hush]

So I've been browsing some games on Steam and I'm noticing that some of them have an Intel Core i5 as the minimum requirement. Is this bullshit? The Evil Within demo says it requires an i7 but my i3 ran the game just fine. What standards are these minimum requirement based on?

[zappy]

I played games on consoles for about 25 years. Built a PC a few years ago and never looked back.

How few are those years? I have a friend, who always has the latest stuff and he told me that his PC is quite dated by today's standards and can't play games like watch dogs.

I am planning on building a PC that will run the latest games (circa 2015) butter smooth. How much, conceivably, would I have to drop? I don't mind dropping 2 stacks for a machine. I could drop 3 but it would really have to be worth it. Like Sigma said, the latest and greatest GPUs, have a horrendous price tag associated with them. Basically, I want it to feel like an investment. I don't want it to be more trouble than it's worth playing the latest games (over the long run). GTA V, which is dropping soon for the PC, looks to be optimized pretty badly from what I can tell.

That's overkill. Less than 2k for sure.

[zappy]

idk about spending that much on GPU. honestly anything above $300 seems like overkill to me, but i've almost always run on budget rigs. the computer i bought a year or two ago was the most i've ever spent and it was only around $800.

as for PC games, i run linux which means i'm somewhat limited, but i play a lot of CS:GO which is a great game, and some warsow every once in a while (not as much anymore) which is a quake style arena shooter with crazy movement.

there's also dota2 if you're into mobas, and a slew of indie shit. things like binding of isaac or dungeons of dredmor, maybe rogue legacy if you like roguelikes, vvvvv is probably required if you've never played it (kickass platformer).

[Sigma]

So I've been browsing some games on Steam and I'm noticing that some of them have an Intel Core i5 as the minimum requirement. Is this bullshit? The Evil Within demo says it requires an i7 but my i3 ran the game just fine. What standards are these minimum requirement based on?

That happens from time to time, which is strange as setting the minimum requirements higher than they need to be would surely only lead to fewer sales. All you can really do if you're not sure is try out the demo or Google to see if anyone with a similar spec rig as yours has played the game.

[Sigma]

BTW, how are you liking your PC? Is it performing as well as you hoped?

[Hush]

Thanks, I was eyeing Far Cry 4 but noticed it said it requires an Intel Core i5. I read on a forum somewhere that a guy was running it on a i3/GTX 750ti (similar to my rig). From what I understand even though the i3 is only dual core the fact that it has hyper-threading somewhat makes up for the lack of 2 cores. So it can run games at a respectable frame rate (but not as well as a true 4 core CPU). I'm tempted to pirate the game to see how it runs, if that's even possible these days?

[Hush]

BTW, how are you liking your PC? Is it performing as well as you hoped?

I do like it, although I haven't really played any 'killer' games on it yet to really push the hardware. I started a new campaign in XCOM with all graphics on 'high'. I know that game probably isn't taxing but it looks great compared to the 360 version or playing it on the Surface (with graphics set to low).

I tried all of the Trackmania 2 demos (Stadium, Canyon, Valley) with graphics set to high and it runs/looks great, but I'm not sure that game is for me.

I'm trying not to force it and just wait for a game that really catches my interest to come along. I've been browsing games on Steam, looking for something unique that isn't offered on consoles, but there isn't a lot with full/partial controller support.

[zappy]

rogue legacy.

[Hush]

Last night I picked up Sleeping Dogs Definitive Ed. for 6 bucks as well as Gunslinger + Blood Dragon for 6 bucks. Steam sales are awesome!

[ChaMerZ]

i never did try sleeping dogs. since it was made by the same group that was responsible for true crime i'm assuming it is halfway decent. true crime ny was a mess of a game though and had hella bugs.

[Hush]

Sleeping Dogs is pretty solid for an open world game, I played the 360 version. I haven't had a chance to play on my PC yet as the download was 15 GB and took most of the evening last night.

[Hush]

One other small observation I made in hindsight after building the PC:

Apparently for 3 bucks more I could have gotten the Corsair 430M power supply. The "M" is for modular which means you can connect only the power cables you need. As it stands I have a huge bundle of power cords stuffed in the case. I don't think it is causing an issue with airflow but going back I would have gotten the modular one.

[Hush]

Here is the parts list on pcpartpicker in case anyone wants to use this as a jump off point:

https://pcpartpicker.com/user/Hush7/saved/#view=jNhTwP

I replaced the PSU I bought with the modular one I mentioned above.

[ChaMerZ]

Here is the parts list on pcpartpicker in case anyone wants to use this as a jump off point:

https://pcpartpicker.com/user/Hush7/saved/#view=jNhTwP

I replaced the PSU I bought with the modular one I mentioned above.

good drop my dude. i will probably have to get a $500 pc to start with since i don't have a lot of bread atm

[ChaMerZ]

Once I graduate and get a job, I'll be looking to join the master race. Good thread OP.

Graduated. Got a job. Now I'm building a rig. My friend told me that you'd have to be a lunatic to get the geforce gtx 980 or any card that is more powerful (titan x ... yikes!!! ) cuz the price to power ratio is incredibly asymmetrical

Friends what is your opinion?

[ChaMerZ]

the canadian dollar must really be in a bad place right now cuz all these cards y'all are talking about that are ~$500 US are about $700 CA. WTF.

[Sigma]

If you've got money to burn, go for a 980 Ti from a third party manufacturer. It'll outperform a Titan X at a lower price, although it's still fucking expensive. If you want to game at 2,560 x 1,440, it's a great card. It's what I would buy today if I could afford one.

At 1080p, a GTX 970 would be decent for gaming at 60FPS on very high/ultra settings in most games. You'd pay about 400 Canadian for a nice third party one if you shop around.

I like MSI's cards. The cooler on them is great. The MSI versions of the 970 and 980 Ti have fans that don't spin at all until the load gets to a certain level, so if you're browsing the web or doing some light 2D gaming or whatever, the cards are silent. Even under load they're quiet. A couple of other manufacturers make cards with fans that don't spin up until a certain load level is reached too.

[ChaMerZ]

If you've got money to burn, go for a 980 Ti from a third party manufacturer. It'll outperform a Titan X at a lower price, although it's still fucking expensive. If you want to game at 2,560 x 1,440, it's a great card. It's what I would buy today if I could afford one.

At 1080p, a GTX 970 would be decent for gaming at 60FPS on very high/ultra settings in most games. You'd pay about 400 Canadian for a nice third party one if you shop around.

I like MSI's cards. The cooler on them is great. The MSI versions of the 970 and 980 Ti have fans that don't spin at all until the load gets to a certain level, so if you're browsing the web or doing some light 2D gaming or whatever, the cards are silent. Even under load they're quiet. A couple of other manufacturers make cards with fans that don't spin up until a certain load level is reached too.

Thanks man. I just might splurge and get the 980 Ti. Didn't know there were a lot of vendors for these cards. What's the significance of the fan not spinning when doing non-compute intensive tasks? Do they use a lot of power or are they just loud?

[Sigma]

They're not loud at all, but I tried to build my PC so it would be as quiet as possible and having a GPU where the fans turn off when I'm not gaming would definitely appeal to me.

The stock NVIDIA cards usually don't have the best cooling - it's definitely good enough, but it's not great. The third party vendors create their own cooling systems, which not only means that they run cooler and quieter, the vendors will often factory overclock the cards and you'll see a 10-15% performance increase over a stock card in most games.

The 980 Ti still isn't powerful enough to run games at 4K with one card - not at 60FPS on very high/ultra anyway - but at 2,560 x 1,440 there won't be many games where you can't hit the magic 60FPS on ultra.

[ChaMerZ]

Yea went to a Canada Computers store earlier today and asked how many different vendors provide the 980 Ti - the guy i was talking to said only two. Since I will be buying incrementally he recommended i start with a case and power supply first before moving on to the heavy duty stuff. initially i was looking to purchase a full tower case, but when i went to the store i found they were more massive than i thought (in fact they only had like two full tower cases, most of the cases there were mid tower). Over there I was told to get a mid tower case instead of a full tower because they usually cover most users needs (unless you want to stuff like four gpus into one, then it's probably good to go with a full tower). I will probably not - probably two GPUs at most.

How's your case game looking like sigma?

Funny thing, when i mentioned to the store guys that I want top of the line shyt aka 980 Ti and core i7, right there and then they said i will probably be dropping $2500 to $3000 CDN on the rig when it's all said and done. I was just like

But this is the one time in my life where i feel i'm justified in spending my money outrageously so I am going ALL in.

EDIT

By the way Sigma - what are the things to watch out for when getting a power supply?