Building a new PC

[None]

Hey everyone

I want to be able to play Skyrim with full ENB as well as load it up with every last graphics mod possible. Also I would like to be able to do the same with Fallout 4 and have a wonderful frame rate. Any idea what graphics card and CPU I should buy?

[Aspect of Sorrow]

This entirely depends on your budget.

Intel i7 - Sandy Bridge or newer
nV 750 Ti and above, no reference work beneath the x50s or
AMD R9 on the upper echelon since their fillrate is a bit questionable on Skyrim ENB.

[NeOmega]

LoL I thought you meant "player chracter"

[Hawke]

Well, Fallout 4 used low rez environment so everyone could play....

It's like Bethesda hasn't heard of video settings for a PC before


What is your budget? That determines all.

[Passiflora]

I bought a 1000$ MSI laptop last year, and I can do all what you just said. So don't be a fool and don't spend 2000$ in a PC.

[Thorsson]

1. The very first question should be at what resolution do you want to play; as you mention graphics card and CPU I take that as meaning you are using an existing monitor. What resolution is it? That will largely determine what video card you need. If you have a 1080p monitor then a GTX960 is as much as you need.

2. CPU doesn't have that much of an effect and Skyrim isn't new; just about any Quad core would cope. The question is do you also need a new motherboard or are you reusing an existing one? AFAIK Skyrim isn't multi-threaded so an i5 would give you better bang for buck than an i7, but i7s are the future.

[Aspect of Sorrow]

It is not economically sound to build with a "catch up" mentality.

AI based mods adds to computational complexity, 7zip decompression from NWN2, steam file decompression for updates, built in GZip browser compression to minimize network latency, the computer is not a single process console.

[Thorsson]

It is not economically sound to build with a "catch up" mentality.

AI based mods adds to computational complexity, 7zip decompression from NWN2, steam file decompression for updates, built in GZip browser compression to minimize network latency, the computer is not a single process console.

Yeah, that's why buying a Ti750 isn't advisable...

[Aspect of Sorrow]

Yeah, that's why buying a Ti750 isn't advisable...

The cheapest upgrade path on it is in it's SLi. The GPU will in two years be at a lower price point than trying to refit a CPU when the former i5 cannot be used in the build.

[Thorsson]

Yeah, that's why buying a Ti750 isn't advisable...

The cheapest upgrade path on it is in it's SLi. The GPU will in two years be at a lower price point than trying to refit a CPU when the former i5 cannot be used in the build.

If that had been written in English I'd try to answer, but I don't know what you;re saying, except that an out of date card x 2 is somehow a good investment. Which seems to be the absolute opposite of what you're saying on CPUs...

Basically, tech it up however you like; with games you're better off spending more on the GPU and less on the CPU.

[Aspect of Sorrow]

If that had been written in English I'd try to answer, but I don't know what you;re saying, except that an out of date card x 2 is somehow a good investment. Which seems to be the absolute opposite of what you're saying on CPUs...

The basic fundamental benefit of the personal computer is it's variable options and especially in upgrades, but due to architectural limitations some components will need to adhere to the architecture of another. Thus, the mainboard and CPU are our first consideration. Knowing that the video component interface allows for the entire swath of newer cards we can select something that isn't quite bleeding edge (nominal ~10%'ish range) from the CPU/Mainboard versus the latest out there to save a few dollars, thus, the Sandy Bridge Intel line is my recommendation. Instead of purchasing cheaply into the CPU while expending the remainder of the amount of the budget into the GPU, the CPU historically has a slower, and albeit smaller drop in it's market value over time than the top end GPU of the same era, in addition there is for most non SMP x86 mainboards, a single CPU socket. When you purchase a component for the PC, you want it to be a bit more future proof, in that it's usable for years to come, particularly in the base architecture / socket design. When you purchase a top end GPU, say a 980GTX for ~$550, and you come upon a few years down the line that your CPU just isn't cutting it for that new video game, you're now looking at having to either replace the CPU with the one that should have been purchased closer to the top end of the CPU spectrum, or replacing both the CPU and mainboard. The cost sunk into a now unused CPU is gone. Poof. Your total cost of ownership just raised.

Enter the SLi / Crossfire.

+90% of games since 2009 support SLi configurations with their own custom stack or better driver handling (with exception of the Linux AMD crossfire drivers), and most ATX mainboards support multiple PCI lanes with physical and electrical characteristics to enable SLi/Crossfire. That single nV750Ti will net the request of Skyrim ENB now with a ~$130 price point, and when the user wishes to upgrade their existing system that adds to performance without taking away economically with an unusable component, can later purchase the same card which, in approximately two years will be beneath the $80 price point for nearly 1.6x the performance upgrade, edging out that extra performance especially for 4K fillrate (if the monitor supports it, otherwise it's a waste to try building for a resolution you won't take advantage of in the near future).

Basically, tech it up however you like; with games you're better off spending more on the GPU and less on the CPU.

This is a broad assumption of how game engines operate, if erroneous.

The GPU is the bottleneck of the renderer pipeline for most video games, so you're correct, but that's only one part of the equation given the GPU operates best at predictable mathematics.

Planetside 2 Devel CPU bottleneck reservation on PS4, as an example.
Planetside 2 for the longest time offloaded it's shadow calculations to the CPU than allowing the renderer push to the GPU.
Non PhysX / hardware optimized physics calculations (I'm looking at you 'Bullet' API)
Computationally heavy RTS and DX9 Games (Civ V comes to mind)
Source Engine (especially noticed in Garrys Mod)
Minecraft and it's similar iterations
Bootcamp / Cider Mac layers for gaming

I'm not recommending the bleeding edge CPU on the market, but at least go for the top echelon of an architecture a few iterations back because the processor and mainboard combination is not what you want to be swapping out because you chose to skimp on it when GPU expanded options exist. The 750Ti is a recommendation at the lowest end of the 1080p spectrum for appropriately performing Skyrim ENB.

[None]

I was thinking around 1200$ price range. I was thinking of a 970 gtx graphics card?

[Thorsson]

The question is what do you need to get with that $1200, None? If you want a new CPU that usually means a new motherboard and RAM as well and maybe a new cooler; but are you also thinking of replacing other components, e.g. the monitor, the PSU, or the Hard Disk?

If it was a complete system then you can get a decent 1080p setup for that, and for 1080p gaming the 970GTX is what I'd recommend; the alternative is the AMD R9 390. The 970 is lower power and so is less noisy and generates less heat, plus it's a good overclocker; it's also a smaller card. The AMD card is better for 1440p and is more future proof as it has 8Gb RAM. If you don't care about the heat and are likely to keep the card for 3 years +, then it would probably be the better choice.

These would take just over 25% of your budget (around $300-350), based on Newegg prices. On your budget I would go Skylake; that is an LGA 1151 socket motherboard and an i5 Quad core. Something like the Gigabyte Z170-HD3 costs around $100 and a decent Quad Core would be another $200. With current RAM prices ($75) I'd suggest 2x 8Gb DDR4 2133s, although you could get away with ones half the size ($45).

That's about $700. So it then depends on what else you need.

[Eclypticon]

Maybe this is something of what you are looking for: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/Eclypticon/saved/8g96Mp

[ITankCrits]

get a playstation.