Buying/Building a gaming desktop based around running Rift on Ultra - Help ?

[Khajonian]

Last year myself and my mate decided to give Rift: Planes of Telara a try and found out the hard way that an All-In-One PC with Integrated graphics is forced to run the game on Low Quality Render.. -Shudders- Needless to say, my mate stopped playing the game, because experiencing a graphical marvel in paper mache mode just wasn't cutting it.. After a nice long year of WoW we have decided to move back to the realms of Telara for a while, but before out adventure can continue, my mate is going to need a rig that can run the game on Ultra..

We both live apart, she is in the states, while I live in Canada.. This makes shopping together impossible. Although I could probably build a beautiful Frankenstein's monster out of the best and cheapest parts out there, but knowing that she has little experience in building a computer, we have both agreed that such is not an option, or at least the last way she wants to do it.. She has said that her budget would be 1200$ as where I believe that she can probably find a more than adequate rig for around 500-650$

My own machine (ASUStek P5Q Pro Turbo, Intel2 Q8200, 8.00 DDR2, Nvidia Geforce 560 Ti) while not state of the art seems to run the game just fine on High and Ultra settings with only a slight frame dip here and there. It cost me around 550$ all together, I have had it since 2010 and have slowly been upgrading it. I was wondering, realistically, where we might find a gaming machine that could do what she wants at a reasonable price. At the moment I have asked her to check out Best Buy and Staples, but I have a feeling that those machines will barely be able to run Half-Life 2 and WoW on Ultra, let alone Rift. (I could be wrong ?) If anyone feels like tossing out their opinions and ideas it would be of great help to us. She hopes to be playing Rift by Mid-July, if not sooner, (hopefully sooner)

My thanks to anyone to takes the time to read this.

[Tarien]

The best advice I can give: Shop online (newegg.com I think is super cheap in the USA?) and build it yourself!

Many people are terrified of building PCs but honestly they are practically plug and play these days, and if your friend lacks the confidence to do this get her to find a friend/relative that will for $30 or something, because even spending that much for what is essentially an hour or so's work still works out cheaper and will perform better than some ready made piece of shit from the likes of Dell etc.

Beyond that, buy intel and nvidia over amd/ati (RIFT just seems to work better on those chips), with intel try to get one of the newer chips like an i5-2500k or i5-3570k, and aim for any nVidia Geforce gfx card that ends in 60 or more, ie 460, 560, 570, 680, etc. Those will be your biggest expenses, but after that you can cut corners on most of everything else.

[Lypo]

You could have her buy all the parts online and get them shipped to you. You put it together, wrap it up nice and tight, and ship it to her. Even with the shipping costs, it should be cheaper than buying a pre-made. Of course, I could be way off since I've never shipped across the US/Canada border.

[Acquiesce of Telara]

What Tarien said.

Computers are ridiculously easy to put together these days. The most 'difficult' part would be properly seating a quality heatsink on the CPU. If you've been upgrading your own system piece by piece, there's little-to-no reason why you can't walk her through the setup of a quality computer. It'll take longer to install and update your operating system than to build a rig from the ground up.

Check out a site like tomshardware.com for suggested builds for various prices/purposes and cross reference the parts with Newegg

[Khelendros]

What Tarien said.

Computers are ridiculously easy to put together these days. The most 'difficult' part would be properly seating a quality heatsink on the CPU. If you've been upgrading your own system piece by piece, there's little-to-no reason why you can't walk her through the setup of a quality computer. It'll take longer to install and update your operating system than to build a rig from the ground up.

Check out a site like tomshardware.com for suggested builds for various prices/purposes and cross reference the parts with Newegg

Totally true. Putting the heatsink on my new cpu/motherboard was the biggest pain in building my new rig (which can not only run Rift on Ultra, but can stream it via twich in hd. As far as the heatsink goes though I do highly recommend it. I got the Coolermaster. There are other options. but I find the stock heatsinks to be inadequate. Especially if there is a chance you mght be overlocking to eek out better performance.

Necessities: I7-2600 (Sandy Bridge) or better, 560TI or better (honestly I'd go 570, I regret not spending the extra few bucks to get a solid 50+ FPS on ultra. I usually hold at around 35ish while streaming. And 40ish while not. Motherboard wise you just have to make sure it matches up and has good Video card support as well as support for hyper threading. SLI/Crossfire isn't really a necessity IMO. At least 8 gigs ram, 16 is best. The other important thing is to get a nice LED monitor. Rift is a great looking game. Thats one area where I wish I had spent more money. I got a moderately priced LED but I regret not getting at least a Samsung LED monitor. But for me it was a matter of having to buy TWO, so I went with less cost. I also personally feel that a Naga and Black Widow are necessities (or something like). Get a nice case with quality circulation and enough space. I think you can easily build the rig I described for 900 or so.

[Lypo]

I would disagree about the i7. I'd say i5 2500 is perfectly fine. Also, it really depends on what he means by Ultra. If he wants AA maxed too, then ya, a 570 or similar (I'd actually suggest 670) would be best, but without it, my 6870 ran the game on Ultra just fine. I don't have any FPS numbers, since as long as it was smooth I wasn't too worried about specifics.

As for monitor, I actually just got 2 Samsung LEDs. These ones. Though I ordered them last week, when they were on sale, on top of the combo deal for 2 of them, I got both of them for a total of $308, instead of the $400 they're going for now.

If she orders today, she can get a 120GB Vertex 3 SSD from Newegg for $80, which is simply amazingly low. I got the same SSD in January for $130, and it was a great deal back then. I've heard OCZ has high failure rates, but mine has been going strong since January, and I recently added a SanDisk 120GB SSD that uses the same controller as the Vertex 3, and it's been working fine for about 3 months.

[Fluffygong]

Personally I'd ask this question over in the Computers section of the forum and I imagine a mod will move it when they say it. But yeah, if you're only going get an I5 and use the money you save on improved graphics card. The main(only?) difference between the i5 and i7 is that the i7 series has hyperthreading which isn't used in Rift.

[Khelendros]

Personally I'd ask this question over in the Computers section of the forum and I imagine a mod will move it when they say it. But yeah, if you're only going get an I5 and use the money you save on improved graphics card. The main(only?) difference between the i5 and i7 is that the i7 series has hyperthreading which isn't used in Rift.

Common misconception. It does, it just doesn't do it very well at all.

[Fencers]

I have come to believe that no PC on earth can run 60fps in Rift at ultra settings during a water raid rift.

Nothing is more ego shattering than those water rifts. ffffffffffff

[Azuri]

Personally I'd ask this question over in the Computers section of the forum and I imagine a mod will move it when they say it.

No point moving the thread or I'm not going to anyways. I think Rift players who are computer savy can answer this just as good as people in the computer sub-forums. Yes I5 is fine if your primary function is to game. The extra 4 cores the I7 has will be no advantage for gaming. Rift is very CPU demanding so get an I5 that you can OC with a good GPU and you're set for Rift and any other current game for a good while.

[Khelendros]

The primary reason I got the I7 was because I knew I would be doing alot of streaming. The IP has enough power to handle the actual game just the same as the I7 does. What's more you can get a faster I5 for less. The graphic's card seems to make the most impact for the game though. When I upgraded the graphic's card is what made the huge difference in my framerate on ultra. I do wish I had sprung for the 570 at least, if not the 580.

[Fluffygong]

Something like this should be sufficient:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i5-2500K 3.3GHz Quad-Core Processor ($169.99 @ Microcenter)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus 76.8 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler ($22.99 @ NCIX US)
Motherboard: ASRock P67 PRO3 SE ATX LGA1155 Motherboard ($102.55 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($46.99 @ Newegg)
Hard Drive: Western Digital Caviar Blue 320GB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($64.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Video Card: Asus Radeon HD 6850 1GB Video Card ($129.99 @ NCIX US)
Case: Antec Three Hundred ATX Mid Tower Case ($39.99 @ NCIX US)
Power Supply: Corsair 650W ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply ($79.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $657.48
(Prices include shipping and discounts when available.)

Few things that can be changed around to save money/improve a few things, I'm no expert so of course others may have some better ideas. I also left out peripherals and operating system, if you want to use your old hard drive and any other parts you can save some money there.
The hard drive can of course be improved or you can add an SSD.
The graphics card can be changed around to be improved/swap to nVidia.
You can upgrade the i5 to one of the new chips, don't think this is that expensive at all and of course you can also change the motherboard around.

That site is very good for putting your parts together and you can post them here to get peoples opinions/suggestions on builds. It will also find the cheapest parts for you if you're going to custom build. Even if you're not going to custom build it can give you an idea of which parts to get and how much a build will cost you.

You'll find some good suggestion builds here which you can pick from for your budget, http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...-Sample-Builds

[Lypo]

Good build. Only changes I'd recommend would be adding an SSD and changing the video card. OP says his friend has a $1200 budget, so I personally would put a GTX 670 in there, that would run the game on Ultra without breaking a sweat, and then you'd be fine for if they make any graphics improvements with the expansion. However, that would cost $400 alone, so a 7850 for closer to $250 might work better. It's similar performance to GTX560 and HD6970, but it's cheaper than either option.

And a 120GB or higher SSD for Windows + Rift. SSD really is the most noticeable upgrade you can make these days, makes everything load much much faster (my Windows doesn't even have time to finish it's initial animation where the lights turn into the Windows logo before it's done loading).

[Fluffygong]

What he said, 100% agree on the SSD. Also about the whole she didn't want to make it herself, that's fine. I'm sure if your friend has a local computer repair shop they'll be happy to put it together for her for a small fee, check this before hand so it can be budgetted for and check how much they'd charge for overclocking.

[Khajonian]

I would like to thank everyone who participated in assisting me with my Tech-Noob questions. This has definitely given me an insight of what she is going to need on a realistic basis. Also, since it was asked twice I believe, I simply mean the default Ultra with AA turned off. Also, realize that this game can go beyond Ultra and that sliders can be turned up ridiculously high. I just meant running the game at the default Ultra setting smoothly, even if it isn't a constant 60 fps. Once again, thank you all so much. I am am much less nervous now. Rift is so a poorly optimized game, but we both loved our experience with it, and if a little research can ensure she runs it better, then so be it.