There’s something vaguely appealing about a totally over the top, ultra-high-end PC. Like this:
For a lot of PC gamers, the rig-building and overclocking are just as much hobbies as the gaming itself. And if you’re one of those people who’s really into the hobby aspect of PC gaming, there’s nothing wrong with that. You can’t really put a price tag on the value of creating your own work of technological art.
It’s also tempting to dive into all the latest greatest components, many times with the idea that you’re going to ‘future proof’ your rig. And what PC gamer wouldn’t be just a little bit tempted by ads like this:
But here’s the thing: most of the time, the ultra-high-end components don’t actually translate to real-world performance. If you’re getting ready to put together a system, you can save hundreds by avoiding superfluous purchases and instead focusing on what will give you tangible performance gains. So here are six things you don’t need to spend money on when you’re building your next rig.
1. High-performance RAM
High-end memory can get really expensive, with some sets costing anywhere from $500 all the way up to and over a cool grand. But what memory manufacturers don’t want you to know is that in test after test after test, high-performance memory adds virtually no performance improvements over standard memory. The vast majority of reviews for high-performance memory rely heavily on synthetic benchmarks, and in games reviewers will often turn graphics settings down to ‘low’ so as not to bottleneck with the graphics card. But of course if you’re a gamer, the whole point is to bottleneck with the graphics card. If you’re doing lots of video transcoding, you might care about high-end memory. Otherwise, save your money.
What to buy: DDR3 1333 or 1600 is fine. Tighter latency timings may provide a negligible performance improvement, but mostly you’ll see the best performance by adding more memory, not wasting money on faster memory.
2. Oversized power supplies
If I were running a tri- or quad-SLI system with lots of hard drives and gobs of overclocking, I might want to think about buying a 1000w+ power supply. But for most of us, there’s absolutely no reason to buy those monstrous PSUs. I read an interesting post in the LinusTechTips forums recently in which a user looked at the power usage of two R9 290s, cards that are notoriously power-hungry. It was interesting to note that only extreme overvolting of the cards — likely only possible because the user was water-cooling the cards — pushed the total system power over 900w. If you’re running an air-cooled rig and don’t plan on trying to squeeze every ounce of power out of your system, or if you simply don’t have such massively power-hungry cards (nVidia’s new Maxwell cards draw less than half the power of the 290s), then there’s simply no reason to buy a giant power supply. It’s usually wise to err on the side of caution and go a little bigger with wattage, but there’s no point in spending gobs of money on a 1200w or 1500w PSU in all but the most extreme circumstances.
What to buy: For a single-GPU rig, somewhere around 500w-600w will be more than enough; if you plan on adding a second card and/or doing some serious overclocking, stepping up into the 700w-800w range won’t hurt.
3. Ultra-premium motherboards
There’s some value in not scraping the bottom of the barrel with motherboards. You want quality components and useful features. But you can usually score a very nice board for somewhere in the $120-$170 range, and ‘upgrading’ to the ultra-high-end boards that push $300-$400 will not guarantee better performance or better overclocking results. When looking at boards, it’s wise to be feature-minded: what do I really need? For example, lots of higher-end boards come with high-end audio chipsets. That’s cool and all, but you can just run HDMI out of your nVidia or ATI card; or, you could simply add in a sound card that suits your needs and, in most cases, still end up paying less than you’d pay for a high-end board.
Midrange boards still offer a wealth of expansion options, great cooling, power efficiency, software tuning, and overclocking potential. I’ve seen too many midrange boards overclock i5 or i7 chips close to the 5.0ghz mark to think that a more expensive board would translate to any meaningful performance improvements. Some high-end boards have features like built-in liquid cooling blocks, which will be of use only to extreme liquid-cooling enthusiasts.
What to buy: Get a board that has the features you need, and nothing more. Don’t pay for onboard sound or liquid cooling that you won’t use. If you’re planning on some bigtime overclocking and you think there’s value in springing for something like MSI’s burned-in boards (they test the boards with highly overclocked CPUs), go for it — but keep in mind that overclocking processors to extreme speeds won’t necessarily translate to real-world performance gains. For the most part, stick to buying only what you need.
4. Exotic cooling solutions
I’m a big fan of tower coolers and AIO (all-in-one) liquid coolers because they provide great cooling and are dramatically quieter than notoriously whiny stock processor fans. But once again, the ultra-high end of cooling is for people who are willing to pay top dollar to squeeze every inch of performance out of their system. That includes the top-end towers and AIOs, as well as the motherload: custom liquid cooling loops.
The reality is that most Core i5 and i7 processors can easily overclock to around 4.5ghz, give or take a few hundred mhz. At that kind of speed, your processor is way, way past being a bottleneck for your system. A hobbyist might feel a sense of pride in tweaking their processor up to 4.9ghz, but there are unlikely to be real-world performance gains, especially in games. Generally, Intel processors in particular are so efficient and fast that even without manual overclocking, the included “turbo boost” feature is likely to give you more than enough speed for gaming.
Then there’s liquid cooling for graphics cards. Holy moly… You can expect to pay over $100 just for a full-cover water block, and another $30 or so if you want a back plate. I once spec’d out a liquid cooling system, one that I’d consider midrange (I didn’t pick the craziest high-end parts), just to cool a processor and graphics card. The total was around $600. For that cost, you could add a second high-end graphics card to your rig. And while liquid cooling a graphics card might help you overclock it a little more — especially on power-hungry cards like the R9 290 — in most cases you won’t get substantially more of an overclock than you would with a nice air cooler, and the extra mhz are unlikely to turn into a dramatic real-world performance enhancement; certainly nowhere near simply adding another graphics card to your rig.
What to get: CPUs have a wide range of great coolers available. Get something that looks nice, fits your case, and provides solid cooling at a reasonable cost. Never sweat over a few degrees in temperature; it’s unlikely to affect your overclocks, and even less likely to affect real-world performance. Modern GPUs also come with a variety of nice third-party coolers. If you’re looking to do some more substantial overclocking, consider something like the NZXT Kraken G10, which works in tandem with an AIO CPU cooler.
5. High-end graphics cards
I know, I know. It seems intuitive that if you’re saving all this money elsewhere in your rig, you should pour it into a massively fast and expensive graphics card. In the last couple of years I’ve seen the nVidia Titan hit over $1,000 at retail; their current flagship easily hits the $600 mark among most manufacturers. But you gotta pay for top-end performance, right?
Well, kinda. The thing is, most of the time AMD and nVidia release two cards to introduce a new series: the high-end flagship, and the “more affordable” high-midrange card, often separated by some $250 in price. But the price-to-performance ratio for these cards gets way off, especially as manufacturers introduce their own non-reference cards. AMD’s R9 290, for example, is the high-midgrange sibling of the ‘high-end’ 290X, but offers 97% of its bigger brother’s performance; nVidia’s GTX 970 offers 85% of the performance of it’s bigger brother, the GTX 980, despite the latter costing some $200-$250 more in most cases.
This is why I love dual-card configurations, particularly if you have your ear to the ground for open-box deals and refurbs. Often, you can buy two high-midrange cards for the same, or only a slight bit more, of what a single high-end card costs. Two 970s together will absolutely trounce a single 980, and two brand new 970s can be had for $660. That’s a lot, sure, but with a single GTX 980 coming in no lower than about $550, that’s $110 more for performance that will absolutely destroy the single high-end card.
What to get: In most cases, a high-midrange card is going to give you a great performance value and is more than enough for modern games at 1080p. You probably won’t miss the 15% (or, in AMD’s case, 3%) performance difference, especially if you overclock. And if you really want top-end performance, consider grabbing two of those midrange cards. You’ll likely pay a bit more than you would for the single card, but you’ll get vastly superior performance.
6. Big cases
Cases can get pretty expensive, especially for full-tower chassis. But it’s always wise to ask yourself how much of that space you really need. I mentioned in my article on small-form-factor systems that most people don’t use or need tons of hard drives, and 5.25″ disk drives are on their way to obsolescence (and you could always buy an external one if you’ll only need it occasionally). Most users don’t need RAID cards, Wifi cards, or sound cards anymore, meaning that in lots of instances a Micro-ATX or even Mini-ITX board will get the job done. It’s more important that a case be flexible and easy to work in.
What to get: Go for looks, ease of use, and utility. Even if you don’t need something extravagantly tech-sexy, it’s nice to have an attractive desktop. Make sure there are things like removable drive bays, dust filters, thumb screws, and holes for cable routing. There’s nothing wrong with buying a larger case if you like the design and feature set, but think hard about whether you really care about having space for 4 radiators, 8 hard drives, four graphics cards, and four 5.25″ disk drives before you splurge on an expensive case.
PC Gaming Are Yes! 