PC GPU died, need help with what to go for next

[Esk]

When 6 years ago? 8GB is the minimum now.

Hardly 8GB is the norm lol

Anyway I think:
i5/7, Make sure it has a K for Oc'ing (7 if you'll use the PC enough to take advantage of HT, if your just gaming i5)
Mobo : to many to pick from and all dependent if its OC or just plug and play you want.
4-8GB ram,
SSD (at least for OS),
Gtx 670 (factory OC if your not ok with doing it yourself) Asus holds the win here last time i looked for factory OC

IMO this sort of build is the best all around package,taking cost/performance into it, While AMD were king of the budget gaming rig imo (3 AMD builds but 2 with nvidia gpu's), atm i just cant get systems i think will overall be worth the money saved when I'm helping m8's put together rigs.

Speaking of speed and latency, on SB chips don't bother going over 1600MHz @ CL9 latency or on IB 1866MHz @ CL9 latency. Anymore adds stress on your CPU's IMC and can and probably will effect your possible CPU overclocking result.


As for I7 brand, ignore it unless you need the the extra threads for video encoding, folding, 3D editing, or bit mining. Stick to either the 2500k or the 3570k, to which i personally say the 3570k for it's lower power consumption and PCI-E 3 feature.


I also see you're interested in AMD, if you're going that route don't bother with FX "Bulldozer", they're slower than their previous generation Thuban/Phenom II clock to clock. FX is widely known in the OC community using an absurd amount of power use when overclocked also.

For AMD stick to either Thuban X6 or the Phenom II X4 960T (Thuban chip with 4 cores, has similar overclocking and better IMC compared to Deneb) or 970.


and lastly

BUILD IT YOURSHELF AND SAVE.

100% on the above comments, my only pondering is in favour of the SB over Ivy but I Oc and Ivy is a fair bit warmer once the volts start flowing.
Not sure which way i would go if i was building one today, but i think SB still.

[Randelmire]

I simply don't understand people who suggest a GTX670 and imply that 4 gb is good enough.

[Dhalmel]

100% on the above comments, my only pondering is in favour of the SB over Ivy but I Oc and Ivy is a fair bit warmer once the volts start flowing.
Not sure which way i would go if i was building one today, but i think SB still.

Yeah IB is warmer, but anything below 85'c~90'c is fine. IB can take the higher temps. This OC temp issue maybe fixed in a future revision due to tri gate transistor manufacturing need to mature and Intel using a real flux solder to the IHS and cpu die, not cheap TIM.


My 3770k tops at 75'c in normal use @ 4.5GHz. Prime95 pushes it to 84~86'c with small size FFTs, during a 48 hour stress test.

[indira]

go high end spend the extra money the parts can take more punishment and will be longer till you need to upgrade.

When 6 years ago? 8GB is the minimum now.

everything has 8GB now, it pertty much all you need too. unless your doing alot of rendering then you would also need alot of EEC ram

[Soukyuu]

Yes, if you only play FFXIV, you won't be close to 4gig of usage. But if you play in window mode, with a music player running, web pages, some other tools, you do get close to 4gig.

I don't know which programs you are using, but I never hit the pagefile in daily use/gaming. I wasn't even close to the 3GB mark, except when compressing something with 7zip at custom settings.

Currently, with Chrome open, my music playing, my messenger being on, AV running, torrent downloading and ffxiv running I am at +-2GB RAM usage. Commit is at 2157MB

It's all about how clean your system is and how much crapware you install. Yes, getting 8GB won't cost you much more, but saying it's the minimum amount is simply wrong. 4GB is more than enough.

maybe for too long. take a closer look at your usage not just the little green bar. 4086 is 4GB your system has already Comited/allocated 4073 of that.

You don't seem to be aware win7 is using all available RAM a fixed percentage of RAM for speeding up HDD access. So the more RAM you have in your machine, the more will be used. This used RAM will be freed in case you need it, so going just by that number is not reliable.

Also, win8 will NOT be removing programs from RAM until it's full, so those numbers will only become more confusing as time goes by. (at least the Metro ones, just like Android and iOS do)

[Randelmire]

I don't know which programs you are using, but I never hit the pagefile in daily use/gaming. I wasn't even close to the 3GB mark, except when compressing something with 7zip at custom settings.

Steam, Chrome, Winamp, MSN Messenger, Avast, sometimes Photoshop (yes, I agree it may seem abusive, but some times I take screenshots and edit them right away), Motioninjoy, Dropbox, Microsoft Excel, Mumble.

You should know that I don't only do gaming with that computer. Depending on what I do, I often go over 4gig usage. (Virtual machines, image and video editing, etc...) Other games in the future may have to use more ram too.

Anyway, by going with 4 gig right now, you may be fine, but maybe in a year or two you will need an upgrade. Why not pay about 15 or 20$ more right away and get 8gb instead of 4gb, if you are already going to buy a gaming computer that will cost you a few hundreds?

Last time I asked myself that question was about 4 years ago. At that time, I agree that 4gb was more than enough, but not today. Not for a gaming computer.

You don't seem to be aware win7 is using all available RAM a fixed percentage of RAM for speeding up HDD access. So the more RAM you have in your machine, the more will be used. This used RAM will be freed in case you need it, so going just by that number is not reliable.

Well, that does mean that you are using more than 4gig in that case. If Windows must free up some of the space used to speed up HDD read, it means you loose that feature.

[Achtzen]

Ram is so cheap now, there's no point in getting less than 8gig. Actually it would be stupid to get anything less than 8gig. Yes, if you only play FFXIV, you won't be close to 4gig of usage. But if you play in window mode, with a music player running, web pages, some other tools, you do get close to 4gig. You are still ok, but the day you will want to run that new cool software while playing if you go over 4gig of ram usage, you will cry.

It is more about being futureproof for about 20$ more (4gb vs 8gb) than actually needing it.

Also the i5 3450 is cheaper, newer and better than a i5 2500. But if you want to overclock, get the 2500k.

I lol'd at the part about future proof

[Randelmire]

I lol'd at the part about future proof

Why?

It's kinda true. I know future proof in computers doesn't really exist, but having 8 gb at start will most likely prevent you from having to upgrade your ram in a few years.

You should also consider the fact that in 2 or 3 years, who knows, maybe DDR4 ram will get released. (Some websites I have read say maybe next year) In this case, DDR3 will get rarer and prices will go up. A lot. (I know, I had to buy DDR2 ram not long about. 4 GB of DDR2 ram was the same price as 8 gb of DDR3 ram...)

[Disc]

maybe for too long. take a closer look at your usage not just the little green bar. 4086 is 4GB your system has already Comited/allocated 4073 of that. that leaves you with 4099mb for your programs to play with. 1.5gb is already used up by ff14 that leaves you with 1.5 gigs left.

Tell me if you only need 4GB, why is it you have 8GB?

Edit: So your using a Paging file....once you hit the max allocate memory that leaves you with 3MB left, your system will be forced to use that swapfile.

I have 4GB RAM, I've never gone over 3.5GB in use at one time. And that was with a Windows XP virtual machine allocated 2GB RAM. I didn't just accept 4GB as the standard because somebody told me it was, I tested & tracked my own use.

Gamer's & casual user's do not need more than 4GB.

Anyway, by going with 4 gig right now, you may be fine, but maybe in a year or two you will need an upgrade. Why not pay about 15 or 20$ more right away and get 8gb instead of 4gb, if you are already going to buy a gaming computer that will cost you a few hundreds?

Because gaming isn't going to require more than 4GB RAM any time soon. And you can put more money into your GPU/CPU/SSD/display by avoiding excess spending in areas that won't impact actual performance.

[Lux_Rayna]

We all know when it comes to PC's gamers like to have big numbers despite the fact that they probably aren't using them. In terms of being practical:

Processor- You don't need more than 4 cores. And you sure as hell don't need an i7. Getting an i7 is really just to brag in terms of a gaming rig. And you really don't need to overclock your processor either. I know its the "cool" thing to do, but you can count the number of games that actually require that kind of performance on one hand. Seriously. Why pay extra to fry your processor?

RAM- You seriously don't *need* more than 4GB. No joke. 8GB is only the standard amongst gamers that like to brag about how awesome their rigs are. If you're using more than 4GB you aren't paying attention to your game anyway; that, or you are a phenomenal multi-tasker. In which case I take my hat off to you.

Graphics Card- Just get the best you can afford. You almost never need to overclock them, so that doesn't matter. Again, very few games require that kind of performance out of a good card. Why fry your GPU? Now if you're running hardcore graphics design programs none of this post even applies to you. I'm assuming we're talking about gaming though.

Cooling- I'm old school, get as many fans as your case can fit. I have like 8 fans in mine. They're cheap to replace, easy to replace, and are effective. Don't get stingy on the fans. Its worth it! You don't need liquid cooling imo, so forget paying extra for that noise. It does look cool though.


All in all gaming doesn't really require a maxed out pc, so don't get carried away.