PC Advice

[BuckoA51]

That should be true. Unfortunately, I have some shoddy ports that use the SSD and 1080 as a crutch.

Any specific title?

My most recently played title was Titanfall 2, didn't have any issues running from mechanical drive. At least Steam now supports installing games to different locations, meaning you can put your most demanding (or shoddiest ports) to SSD, while keeping older and less demanding titles on a separate drive if necessary.

[Thamiel]

Witcher 3 loading times are brutal on mechanical drives. That game is generally taxing on hardware though.

Sent from my SM-G950F using Tapatalk

[orange808]

That should be true. Unfortunately, I have some shoddy ports that use the SSD and 1080 as a crutch.

Any specific title?

My most recently played title was Titanfall 2, didn't have any issues running from mechanical drive. At least Steam now supports installing games to different locations, meaning you can put your most demanding (or shoddiest ports) to SSD, while keeping older and less demanding titles on a separate drive if necessary.

I had to move Dishonored 2 to my SSD. Fallout 4 also had some hiccups on the HDD, but I hear it may be patched up now.

Last I heard, Arkham Knight also required SSD to avoid hiccups.

Overall, I still agree with you; I don't see a reason to pay for a large SSD. It's great for Windows, Office, Photoshop, and Visual Studio, but properly developed video games shouldn't be intermittently freezing up during gameplay to load. I don't mind a few seconds of load screens for video games. It's a game, not work.

[evil_ash_xero]

I have a 1TB Crucial SSD on the way. This computer can hold up to 3 drives (I opened it up). I'll install the second drive, and put the games on it.

That should work OK, right?

Also, I'd like to point out that it is kind of surprising to play Dark Souls III without the frame pacing issues.

[BuckoA51]

Will work fine, non-steam games will ask you where you want to install. You can create a "Games" or "Program Files" folder on your second drive and pop them in there.

Steam games used to be limited to the same drive as Steam but now you can choose the location for the install when you buy or download them. Just choose "Create new steam library on" whatever drive it is.

Windows store games have supported installing to secondary drives for some time now too, but it's so long since I tried I can't remember exactly how.

[TestType]

CPU:
Ryzen is definitely cost/performance best deal around for gaming; 1600 is great, there's obviously a price but the 1800 seems particularly well placed for a bit more cash. I'd tend to spend more on cpu for price difference than gfx card if looking to longevity since that tends to dictate specifics on motherboard+ram+hassle. But obviously don't go mad on either unless you don't really care for cash. Whilst you could survive on a 4 core for quite some time I'd tend to look at 6 cores (or more) myself if looking at longevity, games these days will take advantage of it.

RAM:
16gb... should see you safe for games for a while. Don't worry about brands or super fast speeds, but worth asking if you get a smaller company to put this together, otherwise can probably just trust the builder. Although fastest in your price bracket is a nice detail to check if you can be arsed. Is a fairly easy upgrade later down the line.

Actually, if you're going Ryzen it is very important to go with fast memory. There is a significant difference in game framerates on the same Ryzen processor with different speeds of RAM. Go with 3000mhz bare minimum.

As for hard drives, I'm a bit baffled by many people's instance in this thread to run games off an SSD. Pretty much only open world games see any reduction in loading times from an SSD and even then it's mostly Bethesda games because of how old their engine is. The loading for most games is not reliant on hard drive speed, but rather processor speed.
I think having an SSD with space for a select few games that can actually use it is nice, but wanting to store most of your games on one is a huge waste of money with no noticeable improvement in my opinion.

[ZellSF]

As for hard drives, I'm a bit baffled by many people's instance in this thread to run games off an SSD. Pretty much only open world games see any reduction in loading times from an SSD and even then it's mostly Bethesda games because of how old their engine is. The loading for most games is not reliant on hard drive speed, but rather processor speed.
I think having an SSD with space for a select few games that can actually use it is nice, but wanting to store most of your games on one is a huge waste of money with no noticeable improvement in my opinion.

Oh only open world games see an reduction. Most of the AAA games are turning into open world games and you prefix that with "only"? Not that it's even remotely true that only open world games see benefit in the first place...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQpiZ44GyYU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dEsTiOeMQ4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCItBX8288Y

Nor is loading times the only reason to play from SSDs, streaming asset games can get frametime issues or blurry textures if storage can't keep up.

[Thomago]

streaming asset games can get frametime issues or blurry textures if storage can't keep up.

This is essential!

[BuckoA51]

Definitely a significant speed up of loading times, but doesn't seem like it's very often that a mechanical drive can't keep up spooling new textures etc in or makes a difference to FPS (disclaimer, didn't watch every video all the way through).

Unreal Engine 3 games, Skyrim/Fallout, ARMA and DOOM (the new one obviously) are quoted around the net as examples of games that can see benefits above and beyond just improved loading times. I played through Doom recently and didn't see any texture issues whatsoever though. I must point out though my GPU is rather overpowered for 1080p play which is what I'm limited to with my TV at the moment, perhaps if VRAM was more limited in my system I'd be seeing more texture streaming issues.

Seems if you have the money for a good, large capacity SSD it's a good investment, but don't loose too much sleep over it if you have to rely on a mechanical drive a little longer.

[bobrocks95]

With Doom I haven't noticed any texture pop-in or stutter mid-level, BUT I do have the virtual texture paging setting at Nightmare, so all the level's textures are probably just sitting in my VRAM the whole time.

Throwing powerful hardware at a problem to make up for shoddy port-work is a valid argument, and it's a great idea to have an SSD as a boot drive with programs and problem games on it, but getting a 1TB+ one so you can cram every game you own onto it still sounds ridiculous to me. Right now the money's better invested in other areas of the build.

[speedlolita]

I have a 250GB Samsung 850 Pro and have games on it.

I can easily shove an MMO client to my external HDD (unplugged usually) when I'm not playing that game so much. Never felt it to be limiting.

My previous SSDs were 32 and 64GB - things were a stretch there.

Have been half considering a NVMe Samsung 960 Pro recently... would be like 5x faster than my existing SSD. Yum.

[BuckoA51]

Remember you'd need a motherboard capable of supporting it too, not all M.2 connectors are equal.

[ZellSF]

Throwing powerful hardware at a problem to make up for shoddy port-work is a valid argument, and it's a great idea to have an SSD as a boot drive with programs and problem games on it

So you should Google each game you want to play beforehand to see if it's a "problem" game? That sounds tedious as hell to me

[bobrocks95]

Throwing powerful hardware at a problem to make up for shoddy port-work is a valid argument, and it's a great idea to have an SSD as a boot drive with programs and problem games on it

So you should Google each game you want to play beforehand to see if it's a "problem" game? That sounds tedious as hell to me

No, if the load times are horrible and bothering you move it over.

It's PC gaming anyway, you act like there aren't already a dozen things you have to configure or fix before you start a game. It's infinitely more tedious than playing on a console.

[Lord of Pirates]

Throwing powerful hardware at a problem to make up for shoddy port-work is a valid argument, and it's a great idea to have an SSD as a boot drive with programs and problem games on it

So you should Google each game you want to play beforehand to see if it's a "problem" game? That sounds tedious as hell to me

It's not like it would take very long to reinstall on an SSD.

[speedlolita]

Remember you'd need a motherboard capable of supporting it too, not all M.2 connectors are equal.

Upgraded to a Z270 board and an i7 7700K last month so I'm set, I think.

[ZellSF]

Throwing powerful hardware at a problem to make up for shoddy port-work is a valid argument, and it's a great idea to have an SSD as a boot drive with programs and problem games on it

So you should Google each game you want to play beforehand to see if it's a "problem" game? That sounds tedious as hell to me

No, if the load times are horrible and bothering you move it over.

How would you know the long loading times are because of slow storage without looking it up? If you find loading times immersion breaking, how does exiting the game and waiting a few minutes to move it to another drive compare?

It's PC gaming anyway, you act like there aren't already a dozen things you have to configure or fix before you start a game.

I can't remember any game where I had to configure or fix dozen things. You know that dozen means twelve, right? Even if you just meant many then I still can't remember any modern game where that was the case. And even then, why would I needlessly add more things to configure or fix in my free time where I'm supposed to have fun in order to save a few bucks?

[Wolf_]

My advice: get your system from newegg and they'll put it together for you and you'll save a few hundred dollars from whatever alienware charges and get the same specs.

[bobrocks95]

So you should Google each game you want to play beforehand to see if it's a "problem" game? That sounds tedious as hell to me

No, if the load times are horrible and bothering you move it over.

How would you know the long loading times are because of slow storage without looking it up? If you find loading times immersion breaking, how does exiting the game and waiting a few minutes to move it to another drive compare?

I fundamentally don't understand how a person could be that bothered by loading times. If you're playing an open-world game that has frequent loading screens, throw it on your SSD. For everything else, keep it on the mechanical and you won't notice a difference unless you want to sit there with a stopwatch.

It's PC gaming anyway, you act like there aren't already a dozen things you have to configure or fix before you start a game.

I can't remember any game where I had to configure or fix dozen things. You know that dozen means twelve, right? Even if you just meant many then I still can't remember any modern game where that was the case.

You've never had to seek out driver updates to fix a game? Never had to navigate to an odd folder to change settings that are only in an .ini file? Never forced anisotropic filtering because a game doesn't support it? Never looked up new AA types a game offers because most of them excessively blur textures? Never had to check which settings have a big performance impact to get a game running well/consistently? Never played a botched port like Nier: Automata or Dark Souls where they don't render at the resolution you tell them to, and you had to download a third-party tool to fix them? Never had crashing that you had to google? Never ran into controller configuration issues because a game isn't using XInput?

Yesterday I had to download a program to cap freaking Sonic CD's framerate to 60FPS because it was running faster than it should. Doom, which has been running flawlessly, was crashing in one room every time I entered it and the solution was extremely esoteric (set the game to windowed).

I could come up with plenty more examples of issues unique to PC gaming if I put some more thought into it. A dozen was an obvious exaggeration by the way, I guess I should have kept the 100 I originally typed.

And even then, why would I needlessly add more things to configure or fix in my free time where I'm supposed to have fun in order to save a few bucks?

A few hundred bucks. Which you're welcome to spend if you really feel like it.


Apologies to OP I hope your system build went well.

[Wolf_]

It is pretty easy to just get a 240gb ssd for your os + active games and have an incredibly affordable hdd that is however big you want for games you aren't actively playing, pictures, music, videos, ect. It is a basic staple of budgeting a computer.

[ZellSF]

I fundamentally don't understand how a person could be that bothered by loading times.

If you can't fundamentally understand why loading times bother people, why on earth would you get into an argument about it?

For everything else, keep it on the mechanical and you won't notice a difference unless you want to sit there with a stopwatch.

You sound exactly like someone saying the only reason people notice the difference between 30 and 60 FPS is because they look at framerate counters. Some people are, believe it or not, capable of telling that time passes without looking at a watch. They will notice that loading times are slow.

I could come up with plenty more examples of issues unique to PC gaming if I put some more thought into it. A dozen was an obvious exaggeration by the way, I guess I should have kept the 100 I originally typed.

I thought you meant a dozen per game (which again would be utter bullshit), are you saying you've had pick from a pool of 100 fixes for all the games you've played? Maybe but you still have to do very few of them per game (pretty frequently none at all).

A few hundred bucks. Which you're welcome to spend if you really feel like it.

100$ to go from 256GB to 500GB which is the minimum I recommended and another 100$ to go to 1TB for maximal comfort. I think "few" should only be used to talk about numbers greater than 2.

[orange808]

$200 to go from 256gb SSD to a 1tb SSD..

or..

$200 to go from GTX 1070 to GTX 1080 ti?

Oops. The SSD just lost. Hands down and almost universally. Additionally, the GTX 1080 ti will have resale value. I always resell my card before it loses its value for my next upgrade.

There's no doubt here about what's important and smart. The big SSD is dead last on the priority list.

[ZellSF]

$200 to go from 256gb SSD to a 1tb SSD..

or..

$200 to go from GTX 1070 to GTX 1080 ti?

Oops. The SSD just lost. Hands down and almost universally.

Uh the SSD decreases loading speeds. The GPU increases framerates. They do different things. This is like comparing apples and oranges when OP has specified he has enough money for both.

Whether or not recommending a 1080 ti makes sense depends a bit on his screen resolution. 4K? 1080 ti is essential. 1440p@120hz? Nice but sort of uneconomic. 1080p? Don't get a 1080 ti.

[bobrocks95]

You very clearly don't understand the basic argument we're making, so I'm over it, other than taking a moment to point out that "few" refers to any small set (typically 2-5), and you don't get to arbitrarily decide what words mean.

[Keade]

Games loading times are unfortunately bound by many things other than storage access time and transfer speed.
Getting an SSD with the expectation of loading times be much faster is a sure way to get disappointed. They will be a bit faster, but don't expect that much of a difference (Google it up, there are plenty of benchmarks out there).
SSDs are great but pretty much useless for games.

What you generally want to spend the most money on for a gaming rig is the GPU hands down.

[ZellSF]

Games loading times are unfortunately bound by many things other than storage access time and transfer speed.
Getting an SSD with the expectation of loading times be much faster is a sure way to get disappointed. They will be a bit faster, but don't expect that much of a difference (Google it up, there are plenty of benchmarks out there).
SSDs are great but pretty much useless for games.

Uh, Googling brings up the Youtube videos I linked earlier, that shows quite a few games loading twice as fast. Isn't twice as fast much faster?

[Keade]

Twice as fast is very good indeed but is likely the best case (rare), one of the video you linked shows around 15-20% improvement on average, which I do consider disappointing considering how much faster (and expensive) SSDs are overall.
Besides, unless you are playing something like 5 pretty big AAA titles simultaneously, even a 256GB SSD should provide enough space. Whatever.

[BuckoA51]

Whether or not recommending a 1080 ti makes sense depends a bit on his screen resolution. 4K? 1080 ti is essential. 1440p@120hz? Nice but sort of uneconomic. 1080p? Don't get a 1080 ti.

It is kinda overkill for 1080p gaming but some emulators can take advantage of the extra grunt, like Dolphin for instance, so might not be entirely redundant.

[Guspaz]

Even at 1080p, a 1080 ti will get you a better quality image (still not fast enough for 4x supersampling at 1080p60 on highest game settings in some modern games), a better guarantee of never dropping below 60 FPS (assuming a 60Hz display), and is going to last longer in the future as game requirements continue to rise.

[ApolloBoy]

Uh the SSD decreases loading speeds.

???