At long last, though, I'm starting to get pretty burnt out from playing it so much, and tonight especially since I got a pretty bad headache, so I decided to write for a change. I'm thinking of throwing up two posts here: first, this post talking about my new computer and my experience with it and stuff. Then my next post will be a quickie on my thoughts about WoW and Legion and stuff (by the way I am super hyped). But without further digression, let's jump right into my computer.
Before this semester started, I was really looking into putting together a nice computer. I was getting fed up with the performance issues I was having on my laptop, and there were points where I was getting performance that was even pettier than what these "next-gen" consoles offer. So for some reason, my school decided I was worthy of receiving a grant over the summer. This money turned out to be far much more than I needed to even pay off the rest of my tuition, so I was able to split it up and buy an awesome PC with the leftovers. At first, I looked into this by going to TigerDirect and checking out what the top-end stuff would total out to be. My calculations brought me to well over a thousand, which was way out of my budget (I was hoping no more than eight-hundred USD), and thus I went home depressed and thinking maybe it really did cost that much to put together a great computer that would leave consoles in the dust. I knew that, for the same price as a console, I could build a PC that could somewhat outperform consoles, but that's on the same settings as to what games are locked to on those systems. What I wanted was near, if not complete max settings, on 1080p, at sixty frames per second. After spending the day at TigerDirect that day, my dreams seemed shattered... and then, I went on the PCMasterRace subreddit. God bless that place.
On the PCMR sub, I found a build that did exactly what I wanted for a hundred dollars under the budget I had set out. I didn't want to mess around and do my own thing too much, partially for fear of fucking up the computer, but also for fear of not being too savvy with shopping for parts as evidenced by my trip to TigerDirect, but I did switch out some of the things that were listed for a couple of better parts (which were, granted, also suggested on the thing but hey I was bold enough to make changes for myself!). I will upload some pictures soon, but for now here is the list of parts I put together!
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant
| Type | Item | Price |
|---|---|---|
| CPU | Intel Core i5-4460 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor | $172.89 @ OutletPC |
| Motherboard | Asus Z97-E ATX LGA1150 Motherboard | $86.98 @ Newegg |
| Memory | Kingston HyperX Fury Blue 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1866 Memory | $38.43 @ SuperBiiz |
| Storage | Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive | $44.89 @ OutletPC |
| Video Card | Sapphire Radeon R9 290 4GB Vapor-X Video Card | |
| Case | Fractal Design Core 2300 ATX Mid Tower Case | $55.99 @ SuperBiiz |
| Power Supply | EVGA 850W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply | $64.99 @ NCIX US |
| Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts | ||
| Total (before mail-in rebates) | $514.17 | |
| Mail-in rebates | -$50.00 | |
| Total | $464.17 | |
| Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-11-14 06:13 EST-0500 |
And my goodness, those prices dropped so much in just a few months! Although in actuality, for some reason the video card (which is probably the most critical component for my gaming experience) doesn't have a price listed (it might still be trying to get a price from Newegg, which is the retailer I bought it from, and Newegg might not have that card anymore, I don't know), so the price would probably be another couple hundred dollars. Maybe less, since apparently now the R9 390 is around the same price I got my 290 for. I feel a little bad about it, partially because I've had to really cut down on spending in pretty much all other facets of my life, but also because now, so soon after I bought my computer, there are better parts for about the same price. But I guess that's just the way it's going to always be with computers. I feel like things move just so fast, all I can really do is find what will certainly last and be relevant for a few years before I have to upgrade. And my R9 290 is still quite a damn good card. I think the processor could stand for an upgrade already, but first of all things, I need to get an SSD, an actual mouse, and an actual keyboard (my mouse and keyboard are spare parts I bummed from my dad and my friend). And I could probably stand to get some speakers, although I am fairly certain I have a pair already. Then there are all these games that I want and ugh! Dude, there are like far too many games that I want. There's Metal Gear Solid V, Fallout 4, No Man's Sky, the Legion expansion, to an extent I want Overwatch, I want some of the Hearthstone adventure stuff so that I can put together a good deck, I want Fire Emblem Fates (not PC I know but still), I want Star Wars: Battlefront (but this I can literally wait a year for if need be)... the list goes on and on. So many possibilities are now open with this lovely computer! And that's the thing that really brings me satisfaction with this rig. For too long have I dealt with low performance and the mindset of, "If I can play it, I'll be okay." Ever since my roommate in my sophomore year introduced me to the whole PC Master Race "movement"(?), I've dreamed of one day getting to put together a computer that would render consoles obsolete, and that I can pretty much say I've achieved.
So yeah, that's my build. Not very original but it's still damn good nonetheless. I actually pretty much put it together by myself. My friends helped me just a teeny bit. The rest I figured out for myself, and I was pretty OCD about the whole thing, I'll admit. I used an anti-static mat (I mean come on, my entire apartment is covered with carpet), I was super nervous about forcing things, I was super nervous about pressing the cables into their places (forcing things) and putting them in the wrong places, and to make matters worse my case has a really weird hard-drive bay where it's more like a wall and you hang the hard drives off the side. When I finally put the whole thing together, I was certain I had fucked something up. When I turned on my computer, everything sounded like it was turning on, but I was getting a really strange clicking sound, and there was no video coming up on my monitor (I had used a monitor that only supported a VGA connection for a while).
I panicked and was convinced I had fucked something up. In my frantic breakdown, I called a friend and told him what happened and almost broke down into tears. He then asked me if I put in the video card. I said yes. He asked if I had it connected to an HDMI monitor. I said no. He said, Yeah, go do that. So I plugged it into the HD TV in my apartment's living room, the only HD anything I had in this place, and it worked! Very few times in my life had I felt such an overwhelming sense of relief. So I got my computer set up, eventually managed to save up for an actual HD monitor with HDMI support, and now here I am today, enjoying BioShock Infinite on complete max settings, 1080p, and running at over eighty frames per second (although I only see sixty because my monitor is 60Hz, but it's nice to know my PC can run it an extra twenty frames than what I was aiming for)! The only game I've been weary with has been World of Warcraft. Sometimes, my framerate in certain places would drop to the thirties and forties. The game's recommendations for my settings are on the High preset, but I can set almost everything to max (SSAO needs to be on high and not on the nVidia setting aka Sabotage AMD Card Setting, and the anti-aliasing has to be brought down to MSAA x8 but even that's still pretty damn good).
What a lot of stuff I've read seems to be indicating though is that the CPU is really what's bottlenecking the game for me, not the graphics card. It's a bit of a shame but it's not a huge deal. I rarely have performance issues in raids (in which I have the settings lowered anyway), 99% of the places I've been to in the open world run pretty much over sixty frames per second, and dungeons are pretty much where the glory is (I can keep things max settings and still be well over sixty frames since it's not as straining on my CPU, I guess?). And this is fairly much limited to WoW. Now granted, I haven't really played that many other games on my desktop, but I have played The Talos Principal's demo, and even on the maximum settings, I still get over ninety frames per second in the benchmark, which completely blows my mind.
That's all I've got to really say for now. It's so amazing to be finally living the dream with this computer, and I look forward to playing all these "next-gen" games on it!
