PC Build Advice

[Scrustle]

For a while now I've been toying with the idea of getting a PC for games, but if there's one thing I've found it's that this kind of thing is never straightforward, so I was wondering if anyone here could give me a bit of advice. My plan is to put this PC through a TV, since I don't really have room for a monitor, and also because I think I might be able to save some money there by only aiming to build something that can look good at 1080p, instead of the higher resolutions you sometimes see with high-end gaming PCs. I also had similar thoughts about only aiming for 60fps, because of the refresh rates of TVs, but that's something which I might change on, which I'll get to later.

Anyway, I came across a website where you just enter your budget and it gives you the best build possible for that price, supposedly. I don't really know what I'm looking at here, so I was wondering if this build is actually any good, and what I'll be able to get out of it:

http://choosemypc.net/uk/?budget=700&oc ... ions=os,od

But part of my plan of running this through a TV would mean that I would need to get a new one, since the one I have wouldn't really be up to the task. Currently I only have a 28" LCD which can put out 720p. Or 1080i, but screw that. So I was looking at what TVs are out there, and something like this seemed to be what I'm looking for:

http://www.johnlewis.com/samsung-ue40h5 ... d/p1451118

But as I've looked closer at the specs for that TV, I see that is has a 100Hz refresh rate. That kind of goes against my target of 60fps, since I was only aiming for that because I assumed that most TVs only go up to 60Hz. If that goes to 100Hz, does that mean I could potentially go up to 100fps, if I can actually run it? If so, would that PC build be able to go to 1080p at 100fps with still good graphical settings? If I can't, that's not a big deal, but I still might change my plan.

And when I talk about "good" graphical settings, I know this is a massive oversimplification of things, but what I mean is that I want something that counts as "high" settings, i.e reasonably above "medium", but I'm not necessarily bothered about going for the highest possible settings for every game out there. I just think that if I'm getting a PC for gaming, it should be something that takes advantage of being a PC, but I want that to include graphical fidelity as well as frame rate. But at the same time I'm okay if I can't have 8x anti-aliasing, or whatever all those crazy specs are.

Also, I'm a bit concerned about putting all this stuff together. I've heard people say that building a PC is much easier than it used to be, and it's relatively simple, but as I said earlier, I've always found this kind of stuff is never as simple as people make it out to be. Is it something I should be worried about? Should I just pay the extra for a pre-built PC instead?

[countstex]

Will take a look at the build later but you can usually fix a card to set fps, so you could fix it to 50 at half the 100 of the TV and get a solid tear free view.

[Scrustle]

Hmm. I know it's not exactly a big difference, but I really don't want to have to go below 60fps. That's kind of the gold standard I'm going for. I was wondering if 100Hz would make that a problem. Is screen tearing really that much of a problem? What about Vsync? I hear that's something which can be quite taxing on hardware. Could I get 60fps with Vsync with that setup? Or would I need to add more power?

[countstex]

The problem will be that if the TV has no native 60Hz mode then running at anything that isn't a clean division or multiple of that 100 will tear. So you can happily run at 25, 50, 100 or 200. So worth researching. A lot of modern TVs support many modes such as 24Hz for blueray movies.
The graphics cards will do whatever so it's always the display that dictates what works best.

I often fix games to 30 fps if they can't hold a steady 60 on my 60 Hz monitor. Unless it's a racing game or a fighter like Street Fighter it's fine. In fact many action games feel better at 30 than 60 to me. The characters have more 'weight' to their movements. Admittedly that due to us watching films at 24 for the past 100 years

[magicjoef]

I haven't looked in close up detail at the build, but I presume that site only puts parts together that are compatible? The spec looks nice. It is similar to mine, but a bit newer and therefore a bit more powerful, and I run my PC exactly the way you describe, through an HD TV at 1920 x 1080. (I have an i5 and an Nvidia 670.)

I can't always lock at 60 frames, but very close and always feel like things are running smoothly, so with the slightly better / newer components I think you'll be fine. I don't try and v-sync anything anymore, as I don't find tearing as much of an issue as five or ten years ago. I don't know if engines are better at coping these days?

Like Stex suggests, I would be tempted to track down the pdf manual of whichever TV you want to go for and look at the native refresh rates it supports. I think most will support 50hz and 60hz even if they are 100hz max.

Here's a review of the Radeon card, and Nvidia equivalent, both get a good write up and report back on Crysis and Crysis 3 benchmarks.
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/graphics ... ce-gtx-770

Some considerations:

Physical space - always nice to double check you have enough space for video card. You should be able to track down card length and case specifications from manufacturer's site.

Cooler - stock cooler will prevent anything bad happening (and you can always set up a safety net in your bios), but for gaming PCs that run under stress for a few hours at a time, you might want a basic aftermarket cooler with a chunky heat sink on (again consider pysical space)

PSU - 500w Bronze rating seems like it should do the job, modern GPUs are pretty efficient. Would possibly just go through a calculator for piece of mind: http://extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp - also the one listed isn't modular, which doesn't matter unless you're a neat freak (you only attach the cables you need). It's a small detail but I kind of wish I had gone modular when I'm poking around inside mine!

[Scrustle]

I managed to find a pdf of the manual for that TV, and it does speak about refresh rates with a computer, but I'm not sure exactly what it all means. I think it's trying to say that when a computer is connected, and it's displaying a 1920x1080 picture, it either automatically limits itself to 60Hz, or you have to set it manually to that.

I can't seem to paste a direct link to the manual pdf, so it seems the only way to get to it is from the product page on Samsung's own site. It's on this page, under the Support section, starting at page 232 of the manual:

http://www.samsung.com/uk/consumer/tv-a ... H5500AKXXU

[magicjoef]

Looks to me like when you plug in and set it to 1920 x 1080 it'll default to 60hz, but you can double check that in windows to make sure you're sending 60.

[Scrustle]

Not sure if anyone actually cares to hear about this, but I'll talk about it anyway if there's any interest.

I went ahead and got that TV, and honestly I'm not very impressed with it. A major part of it is simply down to my own poor judgement though, because the biggest problem is the thing is just too damn large. It's always kind of hard to judge size of stuff comparing it to how it looks in the shop and in your home. Although it physically fits in my room, just, I find it kind of overwhelming. It's hard to focus on and playing on it for any kind of extended period is kind of tiring and even gives me a slight headache.

The other problem is that I'm not really sure on the picture quality. How the blacks looks, specifically. Maybe it's just because I'm used to my old TV, but the blacks make things look kind of ugly when playing a game. They're super dark inky blacks, so much so that it look unnatural. Looks kind of blotchy and jarring. It's distracting. I also swear that it messes with the surrounding colours too. In a picture with a lot of dark areas, it makes colours around the black just look really dull and dank. It drowns out some of the detail too.

It also makes all the little flaws in games that I never saw before painfully obvious. Dark Souls especially is just hideous. Obviously Dark Souls isn't a great looking game to begin with, but this TV just makes it look a sloppy mess. It loses that feeling that the rough graphics make sense, in that it gives the world that dirty and foreboding feeling. I can see pixelation everywhere, and some textures look like they're simply glitching out. Muramasa had some really annoying blurriness too. While it's not an HD game, I had a real problem with how blurry the foreground looked as you were running through environments. I'm also seeing some distracting pop-in in Forza Horizon 2, which was kind of a shock.

So yeah, not having a great time with it. I'm going to get rid of it, but I'm not sure how yet. If I replace it, I'm definitely going for something downsized. Probably 32" instead. Not sure I'll go for Samsung again though.

And as for the actual PC stuff, I decided to change that build a little. Get a better power supply, and a different motherboard with USBs in the front.

Although, that said, I'm kind of reconsidering this whole thing. It's all extremely expensive, and so far it hasn't been particularly successful.

[ratsoalbion]

It's an interesting discussion, the idea that beyond a certain size can be too large to show off current or last gen games at their best, even at 720p (which you could now argue is sub-standard def as we move towards 900p/1080p for most games, as well as Blu-rays).

I have a 37" Toshiba which is about six and a half years old now. It's a bit thicker than the 40" model (also Tosh) we have in the lounge - a larger room than my office/games room - but I still love it.

They've probably improved LCD blacks a fair bit further since 2008 but overall my set gives me what I'd call - as a non AV expert - a pristine (up to) 1920x1080 image on PS3, 360, PS4, XO, Wii U and PC.

I do find it too big for general PC use though, so I only activate it when I'm playing a joypad-compatible (no comfy way to set up mouse and keys facing the screen) game on that particular format.

I must admit that I find 32" a little cramped having got used to a larger image, but I could almost certainly readjust. I mean, I watch movies on my iPhone...

[Scrustle]

With how close I am to my TV, I think 32" is probably going to be sufficient. It seems rather difficult to get anything between 32 and 40 though. Your options are very limited nowadays if you want something in that range.

And talking about standards of resolution, that's something I was thinking about. The only SD game I tried was Muramasa, but I was thinking that playing an older game with resolution I find distracting on my old TV would just be impossible to even look at on 40". Muramasa didn't look too bad though. It was a bit pixelated, but not distractingly so. It was mostly the blurriness that was putting me off. It was like a blurry slideshow.

And something I forgot to mention earlier is that I tried Bayonetta 2, and it looked pretty good. I believe that runs in 720p natively, but I didn't even notice it apart from very specific situations, like when Bayonetta herself was standing still and I could see a little bit of jaggies on the rims of her glasses. Didn't notice any resolution problem at all in normal gameplay.

And talking about blacks, I was thinking that it seems that is the metric of "good" TVs these days is how dark the blacks are. To the point that it's ridiculous and unrealistic it seems. I never had a problem with the blacks on my old TV.

[magicjoef]

Sorry to hear it hasn't all gone smoothly

So you're still deciding about the PC? Definitely makes sense to get a screen you're happy with first.

I use a 32" as my monitor for my PC, but I have a big enough desk that it is a couple of feet away. Sitting close to a big screen will start to show the older consoles resolution up, but if you think the general quality is shaky to start off with, even playing things in proper 1080 through PC will probably still leave some niggles.

Weird thing happened with my TV was that it all looked a bit blurry when I first plugged in the PC, but there was a hidden setting for PC mode in one of the menus.

Is it possible to return the TV, saying it isn't up to standard?

[Scrustle]

Yes, luckily since I haven't had it long, I am able to get a full refund even though I've opened it. Richer Sound definitely have good customer service if nothing else.

I'm not sure on going ahead with the PC thing still. If I do, I'm definitely getting a TV first though. I did a quick look today, and it seems that it's somewhat hard to find a 32" TV that's full HD. I thought that was kind of strange for 2014. You can still buy TVs that are merely "HD ready" in this day and age apparently.

[Scrustle]

This may be a bit of an odd question, but it's related to getting in to PC gaming, so I thought I would pose it here.

I like my physical copies of games. I like to have the tangibility of the box, and I'm also quite put off by the idea of DRM that we're seeing everywhere now. So I was intending on buying physical copies of games if I was to get in to PC gaming, for the games I really care about at least. But I understand that isn't really a thing people do any more when it comes to that platform, so I was wondering how exactly that kind of thing works nowadays.

Is it just like putting a disc in to a console? Obviously I expect I'd be installing it on the hard drive instead of running it off the disc, but is there anything else to it? Is there some kind of DRM thing I should know about? I know with certain games that will be the case, like if I get an Ubisoft game, or if what people say about Lords of the Fallen is true, but what about other stuff? Is that kind of sneaky DRM the norm with physical copies?

[DarthCuddles]

from my experience the disc is basically just a decoration, it'll come with a code that you plug into steam, Origin or whatever else and it'll download from there, you're probably able to install from the disc but you'll never need to use it post installation you'll just boot through the client of choice

[ratsoalbion]

Exactly. So really all you're getting is a few slivers of plastic and paper worth literally pennies and an unnecessarily large carbon footprint!

[Scrustle]

Avoiding the client is part of why I want physical anyway though. I mean, I know if I install it off a disc, it won't actually run the game off that. But will it work like installed disc games on consoles? Where putting the disc in is basically just to confirm you actually own the thing, instead of having to sign in to some online DRM service.

Oh, and if anyone's interested, I went with a 32" Sony Bravia for my TV choice. It's definitely a better choice than the Samsung. Better picture, better blacks, better audio, and with 4 HDMI ports too.

[DarthCuddles]

You won't be able to avoid clients, even if you insert the disc and boot from there it'll start the client, be it steam or Uplay or Origin, only games i can think of that MIGHT work like you want are the Witcher Series, they are the only game i can think of that is big enough to come on disc but the dev/publisher don't go in for any DRM unless you choose to buy it through steam etc

[magicjoef]

Oh, and if anyone's interested, I went with a 32" Sony Bravia for my TV choice. It's definitely a better choice than the Samsung. Better picture, better blacks, better audio, and with 4 HDMI ports too.

Nice one! Glad you've resolved the screen issues.

Yeah, everything looks for a client these days. I sometimes buy on disc for the better price, but most of them launch Steam and install through it.

On the plus side it means you don't have to find the disc to play it. It also adds it to your Steam account so you could download it in future if you couldn't find the disc.
Unfortunately it means you have to be online to play them, and Steam could close down and you won't have a PC collection anymore. That won't happen though, right guys? Right? Guys? Oh my god.

[Scrustle]

Exactly. Steam has been handed too much power. I really don't like the idea that my entire game collection is subject to the whims of a profit-driven company, whose servers I have to rely on simply to access my own purchases, and who can cut off access at any point without any say in the matter. Sure, they may give you good deal, and they say they would remove all their DRM from their games if they went under, but you just don't know for sure.

I've never bought the argument that not having to use the disc is a plus either. Is it really so hard to simply get up for a second and put a disc in a tray? Is it worth handing away all that control simply for that? And anyway, I kind of like the ritual of putting the disc in. It adds something to the experience. It doesn't feel as special when you're just clicking on an icon.

[magicjoef]

I had my tongue in my cheek a little, as I do appreciate how Steam has brought together the PC gaming community, but it really could be a crazy situation in the future. I kind of figure that if it ever went down then 'the internet' would have a work around of some kind, but maybe only for the games you had downloaded? I guess I haven't been much of a collector of games in the past, so the price and convenience of Steam feels worth it, but would be a bit stunned if I logged in one day and couldn't access my library :S