New PC

Olleus

Olleus

Deity
Joined
Oct 30, 2005
Messages
6,478
Location
Beyond the Veil
For the last three years I've been gaming exclusively on - dramatic pause - my work mac. It's a decent machine that has served me well, despite all the irritations of being on a mac.
Reasons are varied and diverse, but I'm now looking to get a desktop at home for general and gaming purposes. Partially because Civ6 and No Man's Sky will require it. My budget is about £800 (~ 900€ or $1000) and for that I want something which is future proof for general entertainment home use including gaming for as long as possible. I'm not fussed about playing the latest games at mac spec.

I was thinking of buying something a bit like this. The specs are:
  • i5-6500 Processor. Better than average but not amazing, from what I understand this is not the most important thing for games. Should still be good enough for what I need.
  • 16GB of ram. High end, but not amazing, hopefully should cover me for a long time.
  • gtx 1060 6GB Graphics card. This is the killer. A new card recently released by NVidia, it's the cheapest of their new range. However it's blown away the reviewers and is ranked one of the best in value for money while being one of the top 10 cards in raw power. Can also deal with VR in case that becomes a big thing in the next few years.
  • 1TB + 120GB SSD. I'll be honest the SSD is just a luxury, but one I think I can just squeeze into my budget


Thoughts? Is this good value for money? Am I aiming at the right specs or are my priorities wrong?
 
A good processor is always valuable for this kind of game. It might be benefitial to invest abit more there.
 
Honestly, if it were me I wouldn't make the SSD a luxury, but one of the most essential parts. It just makes such a huge difference for everything, and they have basically crashed in price.

Keep in mind your current monitor as well. That might make as big a difference in your experience as anything else.

I build mine a little more than a year ago so I'm a few generations back, but personally I cut back on the graphics card to overbuy the processor (i7 4970k), figuring it should last a good long time.
 
not sure the price range is able to be 'future proof', but you should be able to get something that will last about 2 years.

if you want 'lasts longer' then the CPU is probably the thing you should focus more on.

16Gb of RAM is nice, but not high end. 8Gb (2 sticks with the mobo having 4 slots) is probably sufficient on that budget, and allows you to get more later if you need it.

don't waste money on a 120Gb SSD. just get a 2TB WD black HDD, it'll be cheaper and last longer.

otherwise the graphics card will outperform the CPU, meaning you won't get full usage out of the GPU -- CPU bottleneck.
 
Yeah I'd agree with that. It seems like they're really not much more (relatively speaking) than the 120s anyhow.
 
Agree with several other posters. Keep in mind a couple of things, Firaxis has announced they rebuilt the engine from scratch to be multi-threaded and 64-bit, so I would look hard at the i7 6700k ($320 vs $205 for i5 6500), which has double the threads and a higher clock. They've also announced they are working with AMD specifically on DX12 and leveraging async compute, meaning this game will probably slightly favor an AMD card. Depending on your monitor, 3GB on the 1060 GPU may hurt you at 1440p. The 4GB AMD 480 for $200-$230, if you can find it in stock, might be preferable for Civ vs 3GB 1060.

With that said, I'd lobby in favor of the Samsung 950 Pro 256GB SSD for $188. The read/write speeds are 2,500 MB/s and 1,500 MB/s vs a regular HD's 200 MB/s. It's a transformational leap in speed and different tech than SSDs from years ago. Think about starting up your system, loading the game, saving, etc.

i7 6700k $320
CPU cooler $30 (if not overclocking)
Z170 motherboard $110
16GB RAM $70
AMD 480 $220
950 Pro 256GB SSD $188
600W Power Supply $60
Total cost ~$998?
 
at a good hardware shop some years ago someone told me it's better to have a smaller HD for your system because they run faster than a bigger one
but it's good also when they are not full.. so yeah 250 SSD sounds perfect
 
When it comes to the cpu if you want something that will last grab an unlocked one with a K at the end. It allows you to overclock it. If you dont do it right away you can try later instead of changing your cpu. You will need probably to buy a 50 to 100$ good air cooler though but thats probably a lot cheaper than a new cpu+mobo. An OC cpu has the potential of lasting at least one additional generation compared to one at stock values.
 
This is all very helpful. I'm ashamed to say I played all of civ 5 with barely minimum specs and the game looked like absolute garbage and buggy the whole time. Put in over 2k hours playing like that. I wanna do civ 6 right since it looks like it'll be a better game.
 
Lord Olleus said:
  • i5-6500 Processor. Better than average but not amazing, from what I understand this is not the most important thing for games. Should still be good enough for what I need.
  • 16GB of ram. High end, but not amazing, hopefully should cover me for a long time.
  • gtx 1060 6GB Graphics card. This is the killer. A new card recently released by NVidia, it's the cheapest of their new range. However it's blown away the reviewers and is ranked one of the best in value for money while being one of the top 10 cards in raw power. Can also deal with VR in case that becomes a big thing in the next few years.
  • 1TB + 120GB SSD. I'll be honest the SSD is just a luxury, but one I think I can just squeeze into my budget


Thoughts? Is this good value for money? Am I aiming at the right specs or are my priorities wrong?
Click to expand...

My input:

I would save a little money on the graphics card in favour of the processor.
Also 8GB would be enough to start with, and can be easily expanded later. And make sure it has the highest frequency your processor/motherboard combination can support.
Yes, definetely get an SSD for the Operating System and your favourite games. BUT, go for the 240GB, not 120GB.
(And a small tip: save your music, videos, in the other drive. You will save a lot of space)

I'm still using my Core2 Duo E8400 processor from 2008 (was mid/high-end at the time).
What I've done is upgrade the RAM once (currently 4GB@1066 Mhz), the Graphics card twice (currently nVidia GTX660 Ti), and of course the HDDs (plus now an SSD).
I have no trouble at all running games like Civilization 5, Crusader Kings 2 and Skyrim on Windows 10.

Cheers!
 
Ok, so the general advice seems to be: getter a better cpu at twice as the SSD at the cost of a lesser graphics card. RAM is good, but make sure there's space for more later if need be.

Any recommendations for what graphics card to go for then? In the past that's always been my bottleneck.
 
graphics card best value for money right now is geforce GTX 1060 apparently but it's completely unnecessary for civ 6 so you can buy cheaper if you don't play much other very recent games that are demanding graphically;
so eg GTX 970 is the same or cheaper can do fine if you only play civ
 
Personally I think getting an SSD big enough to store your OS and game files (I have a 512GB one) will give you the biggest performance boost per $ spent compared to anything else (aside from going from integrated graphics to dedicated obviously).
 
The one you listed actually seems like a pretty fair price, and I'm surprised cus usually pre builts have a 10-20% surcharge on them or they have crappy parts.

Two things that concern me about that pc you linked though:

The mobo appears to be a micro atx one. I would never buy one of those, they typically have no ram expansion slots so you can't upgrade later, and you can barely fit most gpus on them so if you upgrade it you'll have to make sure it fits. They also sometimes have a lot less sata slots for expansion hard drives. If you get a regular atx you won't have any of those issues. It's not worth saving $50-100 and completely limiting your ability to upgrade later.

It doesn't list any psu specs I could see. PSU is a crucial part of any system and prebuilts typically have really underpowered and poor brand name cpus. Underpowered is somewhat ok, but again you limit your gpu upgrade possibilities. And poor brands have much greater potential to die early.

I feel the i5-6500 is plenty fast enough but it's up to you. As an example I have an i5-760 I bought way back in 2010 and it's still totally fine for all games. You'll go through a couple GPU upgrades before you need to up your cpu. GPU I would shoot to stay in that low $200 sweet spot range. That seems to be the best price/performance point. For example would you rather buy a $200 card every 3-4 years or a $500 card every 5? Cus that $500 card usually only gives a 10-20% framerate advantage and won't last you much longer.

Definitely get an ssd if doing a new build, they are so cheap now and it'll be a huge performance boost on a game like civ6.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Tommy Vercetti
Looking for a new graphics card would this one work?
Replies
4
Views
1K
Vuldacon
Vuldacon
E
[BTS] CIV IV BTS using less than 0.1% of CPU capacity - unplayable
Replies
0
Views
341
Escruidin
E
P
curved screens
Replies
6
Views
689
Hull tyyp
H
billby
Why are the time-data stamps on save files wrong?
Replies
1
Views
191
martindo
M
Ita Bear
I honestly think I'm finished with modern gaming
Replies
0
Views
259
Ita Bear
Ita Bear
Top Bottom