After waiting almost 5 years and being very patient after seeing many popular PC games being released, I decided that it was finally time to upgrade. With more promising modern PC games coming out this year featuring the latest generation of graphics such as The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, I could not wait any longer. Technology will always improve, but sometimes when opportunities present themselves, you just have to seize them.
I had been planning my new build for about a month but had always been checking PC gaming hardware sites every once in a while to keep informed about the latest tech. I've made certain decisions like getting an Intel CPU and NVidia graphics card this time around compared to my previous AMD CPU and graphics card. According to most benchmark tests from notable PC enthusiast sites, NVidia seemed to be doing better than AMD right now when it came to running most modern games, especially Witcher 3. I also wanted to see just how much faster an i7 CPU would be compared to my old CPU. I have yet to fully test my PC as I've only been using my finished build for about a week, but so far in Witcher 3, I can definitely max out the game on ultra settings at 60 FPS and 1080p. I'm confident that this GTX 980 Ti card should also max it out at 1440p, if and when I choose to upgrade my monitor. I've done a lot of thinking, like convincing myself if I really need to upgrade, or if I can wait another year, but I didn't want to miss the chance to enjoy the full potential of a modern game like Witcher 3, since I've only stuck to games like League of Legends with lower requirements. I was getting bored of LoL anyway and needed something new. I also wanted to build the PC to look just as I wanted and spent a great deal of time managing the cables so the side of the computer would look as aesthetic as possible. Needless to say, it's been worth it, and Witcher 3 so far is excellent in terms of gameplay, atmosphere and story, and it runs and looks spectacular. The game really sets a new bar for modern RPGs. I should try my hand at reviewing PC games actually, seeing as I've grown up playing PC games for over 20 years.
But getting a new beastly PC just for games would be a quite an expensive purchase. Since I have been working from home for at least a few years professionally to create both 2D and 3D graphics, a new PC with this kind of hardware would help significantly with the efficiency of my work and be worth spending a lot of money on. I hope to see much faster response times in everything I do in my creative apps, and be able to open up my browser with dozens of tabs, while having multiple programs running in the background without choking. I also plan to use this PC for another few years before having to upgrade anything but the monitor (and possibly storage if I need more space to store all of my work).
My goal would be unfinished if I did not try overclocking however. I am glad to say that for the first time ever, I've successfully overclocked this i7-5820K CPU from a base clock of 3.3 GHz (at 0.993v) to a stable 4.5 GHz (at 1.24v). Overclocking was something that I had been nervous about for the past several years so I left my old PC on auto-overclock, but after finding out that it was really easy and simple to do, it would be a shame to leave my new PC on base settings. I had to overcome this barrier in my life if I was to call myself a PC gaming enthusiast. I already picked one of the best performance water coolers and memory cards for the job. All I had to do was change two things in the BIOS: the CPU multiplier and the core voltage. Then run some stress tests using Intel Burn Test to check if the system was stable. Basically it is all about balancing both values while trying to get as high of a clock speed as possible, and as low of a voltage as possible. It's a bit of a mini-game actually, if the multiplier setting is too high for the available voltage, then the system will be less stable and more prone to freezing, crashing, giving blue screens, etc. But if the voltage is too high, then during stress tests or intense system processes, the CPU will get too hot and will reduce the life of the chip. I have since dialed back the clock speed to 4.2 GHz (at 1.2v) for a more reliable long-term setting. The CPU temps are usually under 40 C, and during the stress test was under safe limits (about 85 C). The graphics card I have left alone since this non-reference version has already been overclocked. It actually gets quite hot on its own when running Witcher 3.
Here is a link to my build: https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/b/DnVYcf
I had been planning my new build for about a month but had always been checking PC gaming hardware sites every once in a while to keep informed about the latest tech. I've made certain decisions like getting an Intel CPU and NVidia graphics card this time around compared to my previous AMD CPU and graphics card. According to most benchmark tests from notable PC enthusiast sites, NVidia seemed to be doing better than AMD right now when it came to running most modern games, especially Witcher 3. I also wanted to see just how much faster an i7 CPU would be compared to my old CPU. I have yet to fully test my PC as I've only been using my finished build for about a week, but so far in Witcher 3, I can definitely max out the game on ultra settings at 60 FPS and 1080p. I'm confident that this GTX 980 Ti card should also max it out at 1440p, if and when I choose to upgrade my monitor. I've done a lot of thinking, like convincing myself if I really need to upgrade, or if I can wait another year, but I didn't want to miss the chance to enjoy the full potential of a modern game like Witcher 3, since I've only stuck to games like League of Legends with lower requirements. I was getting bored of LoL anyway and needed something new. I also wanted to build the PC to look just as I wanted and spent a great deal of time managing the cables so the side of the computer would look as aesthetic as possible. Needless to say, it's been worth it, and Witcher 3 so far is excellent in terms of gameplay, atmosphere and story, and it runs and looks spectacular. The game really sets a new bar for modern RPGs. I should try my hand at reviewing PC games actually, seeing as I've grown up playing PC games for over 20 years.
But getting a new beastly PC just for games would be a quite an expensive purchase. Since I have been working from home for at least a few years professionally to create both 2D and 3D graphics, a new PC with this kind of hardware would help significantly with the efficiency of my work and be worth spending a lot of money on. I hope to see much faster response times in everything I do in my creative apps, and be able to open up my browser with dozens of tabs, while having multiple programs running in the background without choking. I also plan to use this PC for another few years before having to upgrade anything but the monitor (and possibly storage if I need more space to store all of my work).
My goal would be unfinished if I did not try overclocking however. I am glad to say that for the first time ever, I've successfully overclocked this i7-5820K CPU from a base clock of 3.3 GHz (at 0.993v) to a stable 4.5 GHz (at 1.24v). Overclocking was something that I had been nervous about for the past several years so I left my old PC on auto-overclock, but after finding out that it was really easy and simple to do, it would be a shame to leave my new PC on base settings. I had to overcome this barrier in my life if I was to call myself a PC gaming enthusiast. I already picked one of the best performance water coolers and memory cards for the job. All I had to do was change two things in the BIOS: the CPU multiplier and the core voltage. Then run some stress tests using Intel Burn Test to check if the system was stable. Basically it is all about balancing both values while trying to get as high of a clock speed as possible, and as low of a voltage as possible. It's a bit of a mini-game actually, if the multiplier setting is too high for the available voltage, then the system will be less stable and more prone to freezing, crashing, giving blue screens, etc. But if the voltage is too high, then during stress tests or intense system processes, the CPU will get too hot and will reduce the life of the chip. I have since dialed back the clock speed to 4.2 GHz (at 1.2v) for a more reliable long-term setting. The CPU temps are usually under 40 C, and during the stress test was under safe limits (about 85 C). The graphics card I have left alone since this non-reference version has already been overclocked. It actually gets quite hot on its own when running Witcher 3.
Here is a link to my build: https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/b/DnVYcf