(Need advice) 144 Hz screen for videos & USB vs soundcard audio // Mouse & keyboard

[Deleted]

Hello!

In a few weeks I will be buying a new computer, however since I can't really compare between video and audio I'm looking to you for help to decide what I will buy.

I mostly play World of Warcraft or occasionally Diablo 3.
I also watch a lot of TV-series, movies, youtube videos, streams and anime on my computer.
Would a 144 Hz screen improve my experience in those 2 games (would it look better), and more importantly, would it look better while watching anime & other animated series (Avatar the last airbender/Korra for example), and non-animated videos (youtube, movies, tv-series, GoT for example)?

As for my audio, for a long time I have been using USB headsets now, usually worth between $100-120. Would getting a headset connected with 3.5mm cables to the integrated soundcard worth about $230 sound better than my usual USB headsets? Would it sound better than a pair of equally valued $230 USB headset? If I got a decent dedicated soundcard to go with the non-USB headsets, will it be even better? More importantly, would the sound quality for the games I play, music I listen to (all kinds) and especially anime, videos etc be significantly improved?

Is the sound quality about the same?

Does 144 Hz screens look better outside games as well, or does it look weird for some reason?

Would appreciate as many inputs as possible from people with experience!

I've heard good things about the Sennheiser GAME Zero and is probably the headset I'm most likely to buy right now. Anyone have experience with these and would recommend them too, or perhaps you know of an even better pair.


I'm also looking for new, not too expensive, mouse & keyboard. A friend told me I should get a mechanical keyboard with red switches, and that's about all I know of that. I have previous experience with the Razer Deathadder mouse, I liked it very much and was thinking I should buy it again, it's not too expensive either. Do you guys have suggestion on good but not too expensive keyboards and opinions on the deathadder or a better mouse?

I live in Sweden so it must be purchaseable here, I'd prefer it if I can find it at https://www.inet.se/

Any help is greatly appreciated!

[Thunderball]

1) You need a discrete soundcard for quality headphones to make a difference.
2) No difference outside of games, little difference outside of FPS games. Needs high FPS to make a difference too.

[Sonatine185]

For the monitor part, 144Hz will make games look more fluid visually but you will need the hardware to consistently push 100+ fps. Honestly I don't think it's worth the cost, maybe only for serious fps gamers.

A true stereo headphone will always sound better than usb headsets at the same cost. You pay the premium for the attached mic and convenience. Sennheiser makes good headphones/headsets. But as I mentioned the Sennheiser Game Zero headset and headsets in general are overpriced in terms of value for audio. It cost $200 and it uses the same exact audio drivers and technology as its headphone counterpart, Sennheiser hd 558 which only costs $100. You pay twice as much for the mic. I own the black and beige hd 598 which is the highest tier of that series. I have an external soundcard called a usb/dac for my headphones.

For keyboards, my first mechanical keyboard, CM Storm, which I still have uses red switches. It's up to you but I regret it because these switches are way too sensitive for typing in general. I wish I had gone the brown switch route.

[Deleted]

So the Sennheiser hd 598 has better audío than the hd 558 and the game zero? Would you suggest I go with that instead?

And @Thunderball what exactly do yuio mean with discrete soundcard? Just a dedicated soundcard instead of the integrated one? And I assume the Creative Sound Blaster Z BULK/OEM you had in your list is good enough to make a difference?

[Sonatine185]

So the Sennheiser hd 598 has better audío than the hd 558 and the game zero? Would you suggest I go with that instead?

And @Thunderball what exactly do yuio mean with discrete soundcard? Just a dedicated soundcard instead of the integrated one? And I assume the Creative Sound Blaster Z BULK/OEM you had in your list is good enough to make a difference?

Oh sorry I gave you the wrong info. The Game One headset is based off the hd 558, the Game Zero one is based off the hd 380. But yes, there is the hd 598, 558, 518, highest tier to lowest tier. This is a pretty big deal because the Game One headsets and hd 5xx series are all open back. The Game Zero is closed back. Not sure if you know, but the audio between open and closed back are significant. Open: Balanced airy sound, good soundstage, light bass punch, no sound isolation. Closed: mediocre to poor soundstage, typical V sound signature, good bass oomph, sound isolation.

Overall I would never recommend a headset unless you wanted the convenience of the mic. True stereo headphones give you highest value.

[Deleted]

I watch a lot of anime, so I suppose that's where I want the audio to be best. For that would I want closed back or open back? Also, what features should I look for in a soundcard?

So basically, I'm going with either the hd 598 or the hd 380, in terms of overall quality, which one of these 2 is better? Or are they supposed to be equal, just one is closed and one is open backed? I'm shy so I don't usually talk over a mic so I could go without, but unless the audio quality is better with the headphones then I might as well just get one with a mic for the convenience.

[Sonatine185]

I watch a lot of anime, so I suppose that's where I want the audio to be best. For that would I want closed back or open back? Also, what features should I look for in a soundcard?

So basically, I'm going with either the hd 598 or the hd 380, in terms of overall quality, which one of these 2 is better? Or are they supposed to be equal, just one is closed and one is open backed? I'm shy so I don't usually talk over a mic so I could go without, but unless the audio quality is better with the headphones then I might as well just get one with a mic for the convenience.

Yes I think I can recommend the hd 598 based on your tastes. I also watch a lot of anime and listen to jpop. It's more of a jack of all trade headphone. Does everything perfectly fine, but not amazing at anything. It's mid focused, so vocals in music are the star and dialogue in shows stand out.

For soundcards, I'm not familiar with the typical ones that are installed inside cases. I know ASUS ones are recommended for music and Creative have some good ones for gaming. I use dac/amps which plug into usb or optical and sit on my desk. I have the fiio e10k and a SMSL dac.

[Artorius]

120Hz and 144Hz monitors are better even for 23.976 fps content like Anime/Series/Movies.

Round 23.976 to 24 to make the math easier and then follow this line of thought with me.

Your decoder is receiving 24 images that it has to send to your video renderer and the redenrer has to make a presentation of those frames fit in the monitor's refresh rate in a way that you can perceive it as "motion" right?

Now if we use a 60Hz monitor, what happens? You're getting 60 refreshes per second and your input has 24 frames per second. How do you display 24 frames if you have to refresh 60 times per second? If you display each frame twice you only have 48 refreshes, if you display them three times in a row each then you'd need 72 refreshes but you only have 60.

So how is it done? 3:2 pull-down. The technique is simple: You'll divide the frames in two groups, odd frames and even frames.
You'll be sending your display the same frame 2 times in a row for odd frames and 3 times in a row for even frames.

(2+3)/2 = 5/2 = 2.5
2.5*24=60

Now you have a frame to be displayed in all yours display refreshes! But wait... The source material expects each frame to be displayed for the same amount of time homogeneously but when you do this half of your frames will be being displayed for 50% longer time than the other half. And the effect resulted by it is what we call "judder" . You can easily see for yourself how judder looks in this video.

Now, let's display the same 24fps video in a 120Hz or 144Hz display. Both 120 and 144 are direct multiples of 24 and therefore you only need to repeat the frames 5 and 6 times each respectively without any motion artifacts caused by judder since each of the content's frames will be displayed for the same period. That's what the Plasma TV in the video was doing at 96Hz.

But yeah, you won't get better picture quality, only better presentation.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

If you are really interested in audio I would go with a DAC/AMP that will do a few things (they plug into the wall for power and into USB for PC conductivity -- so power + soundcard more or less). One it will provide more power to high ohm headphones which will give you superior sound quality and it also takes out all the other electronic noise that can be picked up from inside a PC case. But I am going to say that this is also VERY picky levels of sound quality. Your average joe isn't going to notice much of a difference and a good DAC will cost you about a 100-150 bucks and a good set of headphones will run you 200-300 bucks (ON THE CHEAP END OF HIGH END -- 1000$+ is possible here).. so you might end up spending 400-500 bucks for very little difference unless you are a serious audio nerd. A good USB headset will be more than good enough for 95% of people out there.

[Thunderball]

So the Sennheiser hd 598 has better audío than the hd 558 and the game zero? Would you suggest I go with that instead?

And @Thunderball what exactly do yuio mean with discrete soundcard? Just a dedicated soundcard instead of the integrated one? And I assume the Creative Sound Blaster Z BULK/OEM you had in your list is good enough to make a difference?

Yes and yes.

[Deleted]

120Hz and 144Hz monitors are better even for 23.976 fps content like Anime/Series/Movies.

Round 23.976 to 24 to make the math easier and then follow this line of thought with me.

Your decoder is receiving 24 images that it has to send to your video renderer and the redenrer has to make a presentation of those frames fit in the monitor's refresh rate in a way that you can perceive it as "motion" right?

Now if we use a 60Hz monitor, what happens? You're getting 60 refreshes per second and your input has 24 frames per second. How do you display 24 frames if you have to refresh 60 times per second? If you display each frame twice you only have 48 refreshes, if you display them three times in a row each then you'd need 72 refreshes but you only have 60.

So how is it done? 3:2 pull-down. The technique is simple: You'll divide the frames in two groups, odd frames and even frames.
You'll be sending your display the same frame 2 times in a row for odd frames and 3 times in a row for even frames.

(2+3)/2 = 5/2 = 2.5
2.5*24=60

Now you have a frame to be displayed in all yours display refreshes! But wait... The source material expects each frame to be displayed for the same amount of time homogeneously but when you do this half of your frames will be being displayed for 50% longer time than the other half. And the effect resulted by it is what we call "judder" . You can easily see for yourself how judder looks in this video.

Now, let's display the same 24fps video in a 120Hz or 144Hz display. Both 120 and 144 are direct multiples of 24 and therefore you only need to repeat the frames 5 and 6 times each respectively without any motion artifacts caused by judder since each of the content's frames will be displayed for the same period. That's what the Plasma TV in the video was doing at 96Hz.

But yeah, you won't get better picture quality, only better presentation.

So it's worth it to get a 120Hz or 144Hz screen over a 60Hz one? I've got one saying it's not worth it and recommended a 27 inch 60Hz screen in my computer build thread and now you're saying it'll be better.

I never expected the picture quality to get better, but I was definitely hoping for it to get smoother.

[Thunderball]

So it's worth it to get a 120Hz or 144Hz screen over a 60Hz one? I've got one saying it's not worth it and recommended a 27 inch 60Hz screen in my computer build thread and now you're saying it'll be better.

I never expected the picture quality to get better, but I was definitely hoping for it to get smoother.

You wont see any difference in Windows and most games.

[Deleted]

You wont see any difference in Windows and most games.

But what about anime, tv-series, and other videos?

[Thunderball]

But what about anime, tv-series, and other videos?

144Hz TN vs 60Hz IPS = IPS all day. There is some difference but for that application having better image and bigger screen is much more important.

[Denpepe]

You can always go for an 120-144hz IPS/VA type and have both

TN is also not bad as long as you sit straight in front of it. Maybe you can go to a local store and check out some monitors in person to see what you like best?

[Artorius]

So it's worth it to get a 120Hz or 144Hz screen over a 60Hz one? I've got one saying it's not worth it and recommended a 27 inch 60Hz screen in my computer build thread and now you're saying it'll be better.

I never expected the picture quality to get better, but I was definitely hoping for it to get smoother.

But what about anime, tv-series, and other videos?

I explained it to you in my previous post, what you get is a judder free presentation. You can make the judder problem on 60Hz displays less bad if you use some renderer that supports frame blending but doing it at 120Hz or 144Hz will always feel better.

If you really want things to feel even smoother, like a lot smoother, you can always use frame interpolation with SVP and it'll effectively interpolate the framerate of your animes and movies from 24fps to 144fps and then it'll certainly feel way smoother. But you'll get artifacts and some fast paced scenes will feel completely broken.

I don't exactly recommend using it because it inserts some artifacts but you can see how it looks from 24fps to 60fps here:



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And yeah for animes and movies VA is way better than both IPS and TN due to better black levels thus better contrast ratios.

[Tomservo]

1) You need a discrete soundcard for quality headphones to make a difference.
2) No difference outside of games, little difference outside of FPS games. Needs high FPS to make a difference too.

1. No you don't. Also, the HD 558 sounds maybe 3% different from the 598.

[Deleted]

I looked up 144 Hz screen with VA on www.inet.se and there was only one which cost 7500SEK ($900) ish which is far too much for me.

Thunderball clearly wants me to get a 27 inch 60Hz IPS screen over a 144Hz TN screen. Artorius, if you were in my position, you have the same budget and preferences as myself, monitor should cost no more than 3000SEK, if you look at the screens on www.inet.se Which one would you choose?

It feels like I've been asking too many questions after all this explaining, so I'm really sorry for all this trouble, I really do appreciate all the help you've given me so far and hopefully in the future as well.

[Thunderball]

1. No you don't. Also, the HD 558 sounds maybe 3% different from the 598.

1. Yes, you do. 2. I agree, but that doesnt mean 598s are worthless.

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Thunderball clearly wants me to get a 27 inch 60Hz IPS screen over a 144Hz TN screen. Artorius, if you were in my position, you have the same budget and preferences as myself, monitor should cost no more than 3000SEK, if you look at the screens on www.inet.se Which one would you choose?

I dont want you to get anything. You stated your budget and applications, I made out the best for your situation. If you would've stated that you mostly play FPS I would advice on 144Hz screen in a heartbeat because it's the logical thing to do (and that's what actually got myself into purchasing a 144Hz monitor).

[Deleted]

I guess I worded that wrong, I meant that it's what you're recommending me to get based on my prefered activities.