Show off your gaming PC

[guddler]

Inspired by retrorepair's FS post here

If you have a nice new gaming rig you want to show off so we can all talk about them, then post it here. I'll start off by moving the posts that shouldn't really be in that FS thread over here, and of course we'll start with Retrorepair's rig. If you want to buy it, go to that thread linked above...

[EDIT] Sorry, I'm having to do this in a bit of a funny way, if I move the posts they're going out of order for some reason! So I'm copying / pasting / quoting...

guddler2015-11-14 11:58:48

 

[guddler]

I put this together a couple of months ago only to realise I don't really play PC games anymore

I thought I'd put it here to see if anyone was interested before I eBay it. This thing is a gamer's wet dream and an absolute beast. Crysis 3 runs flawlessly on the highest spec and the PC doesn't even break a sweat! It's ranked in the top 3% of the fastest PCs in the world according to 3DMark!

Specs are:

Coolmaster CM Storm Stryker case

i7 6700k 4ghz Skylake CPU

Hydro Series H110i GT Liquid Cooler

Maximus Hero VIII Motherboard

32gb DDR4 RAM in quad channel config

2x EVGA GeForce GTX 980Ti 6GB GDDR5 Graphics Cards in SLI

2x Samsung 850 Evo 1tb drives for storage

Intel 750 PCIe 400gb SSD for OS

Pioneer BDR-209DBK BD/DVD/CD Burner

Cost me well over £3k, only asking £2000 posted in the UK for a quick sale. Literally only had about 5 hours use max.

guddler2015-11-14 11:55:55

 

[guddler]

Think it can play Pacman via Mame?

.....seriously though, what resolution are you running and what framerates are you getting playing Crysis 3?

That monster could probably handle triple 4k screens by the sounds of it.....

guddler2015-11-14 12:00:23

 

[guddler]

......seriously though, what resolution are you running and what framerates are you getting playing Crysis 3?

That monster could probably handle triple 4k screens by the sounds of it.....

I thought the exact same thing mate

 

[guddler]

I have a VERY similar setup in all but the graphics department. Maximus Gene VIII motherboard (so the Micro ATX version of this), 16GB of DDR4 instead of 32, same processor, SSD's, only real difference is I'm running a single GTX970.

My intention was to buy a second GTX970 but I'm topped out above V-Sync on my 2560x1080 monitor with maximum settings on games like GTA-V as it is so I don't see the point in the second card at the moment. I was going to go up to a 3440x1440 monitor and that would be when I got the 2nd GPU but again, I'm already over the moon with what I have.

Anyway, point is, if my machine can drive over 60FPS on max at that res, then the same machine with 2 x 980Ti's is going to be at least 100+ FPS I would think. Can't see the 32GB of ram making much difference, games don't use the 16GB yet really.

 

[guddler]

Man, do I sense a show your PC thread in the pipeline?

My old rig is rocking an i7 920 @ 4.2ghz, ram at 2000mhz c7 and a single power guzzling space heater GTX480. As it's a bit old it found it's way into an old Daytona 2 shell with a G25 clamped onto the frame to play Assetto Corsa.

The GPU is bottlenecking quite a bit tbh so was going to upgrade it to a GTX970 but since the game is still playable at 60fps+ with 24 cars on screen I didn't bother just yet.

Have you encountered the ram performance issue when running games at high resolutions with the GTX970 mate? I was thinking of buying one for my racing game rig.

I have to say that the first gen i7 CPU's have really stood the test of time!

Sorry to hijack your for sales thread Joel.

 

[guddler]

The 'pre-fancy names' CPUs did do very well indeed. Mine was an i7 950 @ 3.06Ghz. The system was over 5 years old iirc. Because I'd upgraded the graphics twice (once out of choice, once because that one failed) it was still running most stuff at reasonable rates on max settings but it was starting to show it's age in the CPU department and particularly in MMOs it was struggling when there were a lot of people online in the same area.

So I waited patiently for Skylake to come along and just recently dropped the £700 or so needed to upgrade. New case, PSU, memory, mobo and CPU. GPU and disks I was able to carry over. I'm well pleased with the result.

I'll post some pics later. I'm even proud of the snazzy case but I did have to get the hacksaw out on the internal drive bay to get the power supply to fit which I wasn't overly impressed about.

 

[Vamino]

Nice one for creating this thread mate!
If I would have created it then it would have probably vanished into oblivion.

>Race rig:

Well, at 4.2ghz the old i7 'race rig PC' still has a bit of grunt, great CPU's the old i7's.
The GPU really lets it down at higher resolutions though, hence wanting to upgrade to at least a GTX970. It heats up the room lovely though which is great for this time of year, I do need to wear headphones due to the fan spinning though!

Here's a pic of the old girl:

Dug out the old bench screenshot too. Benched for 10 hours once the settings were dialled in, man the leccy bill was high that month!

How much more performance do you get with Skylake mate?
What were your old GPU's?

I've just built my mate a budget PC using some old and new bits, I'll post pics and price etc later when I have time to take pics.

Cheers.
Vamino2015-11-14 12:42:35

 

[Vamino]

Not exactly at the same spec as Joels, but here is a recent build for anyone interested, it's just a cheap PC I built for a mate.

His budget was 250, not exactly Ideal but I gave it a go. I chose to use mostly new components as the warranty was more appealing than buying a second hand mobo/PSU/GPU which I had no idea of knowing their history. Plus I didn't want the hassle of something going wrong and not being able to send it back to the retailer.

It took longer than expected to set the SW up and do the updates, definitely not something I'd be wanting to do every day!

Components:

Case: Antec P50 Window (£31 off Scan on a today's special value)
PSU: Seasonic 430w ECO Green (£30 new off Scan)
Mobo: Asrock H61M-VG4 (£35 new off Amazon)
CPU: i5 3570s (£55 2nd hand)
GPU: Asus 1GB GDDR5 R7 250 (£55 new off Scan)
DVD drive: Generic Samsung (£11 new off Scan)
OS: W7 pro Licence sticker (£15 used off Ebay, validated fine)
Ram: 4GB Corsair c7 Low profile (£11 used, was my old ram)
Mame joypad: White Play Sega/Sega Saturn USB joypad (£4 new off Ebay)
Hard drives (Free. Gave him an old 250GB as OS drive and a 500GB as storage drive)
HDMI Cable (£3 new off ebay)

I also sold him an official Xbox360 controller and Official MS PC receiver for 20, I didn't really want to sell it but he couldn't play Fifa 16 without it.

The results were actually quite good considering it's an entry level/low budget PC. At 720p it plays Fifa 16, Crysis 2 and Battlefield 3 at very playable framerates using high or above settings. He certainly wasn't expecting the graphics to be as good as they are.
Vamino2015-11-17 12:15:32

 

[guddler]

So, I had reason to go into the side of the gaming rig today. So I took some pics while I was in there.

Full size pics are here:
https://www.icloud.com/sharedalbum/#B04G4TcsmGVvO9E;D2246745-03DE-4E4E-9673-48575F84704B

Basically my goal this time round was that I wanted to have something that was not a hossing great tower. These days even 'mid-tower' cases feel like full towers to me! So I went Micro-ATX. I would have gone Mini-ATX but I wanted to retain the option of going SLI in the future and you can just about do it with one of these.

I already had in mind that I would get an external slim DVD writer instead of using my internal drive so that keeps it nice and neat IMO. As luck would have it there's a lot of air space in this case and when you couple that with the fact that the GPU fans don't even spin up until you hit 60C, this machine is about as quiet as you could reasonably expect. Manufacturers would call it silent, but I'm realistic and know that moving parts CANNOT be silent. It's just not possible (I have sensitive hearing).

So when the case arrived, a couple of almost dire issues:

1. That DVD drive. Just as well I'd intended not to fit it because it wouldn't have gone in

2. The gap between the GPU and the CPU cooler is virtually non existent (seriously thought I was in trouble here!)
3. How little space to squeeze that power supply in??!!

(Tucked around the back on the other side is a caddy for the SSDs. It holds two and both are populated)

So, clearly I didn't bother to fit the DVD drive. I took the cage out. Everything was just easier that way. As you'll see in a later pic the GPU and CPU cooler are so close that I crafted a piece of thick(ish) card to make sure the two will never short out. Obviously the GPU shouldn't move but I was still nervous. GPU's cost too much to have one go pop on me

But that PSU...

I was a bit miffed about this. I ended up having to cut a big hole in the side of the HDD drive cage. So I can never have a second HDD. But that one is 2TB so I can't see that being a problem any time soon. I just figured cutting a hole in a 70 quid case was better than risking a shorted PSU and potential dead motherboard and CPU along with it. Skylake i7's are horrendous money at the moment and experience has shown they won't go down that much over their lifetime.

So anyway, enough waffle. Some more pics...

Oh, gratuitous shot at the end of my monitor which I also love. 21:9 super-wide gaming is the future! In fact, I really like this setup all round

 

[subzero]

Heres my wee pc, planning a new motherboard and processor upgrade after xmas:

AMD Phenom II X4 955 (4 cores) 3.2ghz
Palit Nvidia GTX 960 4gb DDR5 Gfx (just added!)
8gb ddr3
bog standard dvd writer
Cooler Master CPU cooler (just added)
Xbox 360 wired controller
7 hard drives (3 internal, 4 external!)

cables could do with a tidy but well, it works, and star wars battlefront looks and plays awesome
subzero2015-11-30 22:52:38

 

[Vamino]

Time to resurrect this thread......

I've finally (almost

) completed my gaming rig for playing Shenmue III.
I've recently bought a R9 380 off a mate and bought 16GB ram from CCL, I now just need to transfer some data off a 1TB Velociraptor and install it in place of the 500GB laptop drive currently in there.

I chose low wattage components to try and keep the heat down inside the case, it stays pretty cool when gaming tbh. There is some scope for upgrading in the future as the motherboard is a pretty low end model, but for now this plays everything I've thrown at it. From Forza 6 Apex Beta to Dead rising 3, it plays everything at high/ultra settings so it should be more than enough to play Shenmue III.

It took almost a full day to sort out the cabling, I basically custom made the cabling from the PSU to reduce the clutter inside the case. It could do with tidying up a bit more tbh, but at least it's a lot better than it was.

Specs:

Digital Storm Bolt case.
500w Sparkle Gold rated U1 PSU
Asus p8h61-1 r2.0
Xeon E3-1240 (3.3Ghz)
Noctua NH-L9i Low profile cooler.
XFX DD R9 380 4GB
16GB Mushkin Blackline (I'm currently lowering the latencies due to it running at 1333Mhz due to the CPU)
256Gb Samsung Pro SSD
500GB WD blue (To be replaced with 1TB WD Velociraptor)
Sony Blu Ray/DVD player

Before:

After:

Cheers.

 

[terminator2k2]

this was mine a few years ago....

it was a 2600k + 2 x 6970s







then with a 7990 which i sold 6 months later with the mining boom.....sold the card for £750