New computer!

[Prtmotorsport]

Another thread guys for a new sim setup. I am asking for your help. My friend ordered a new podium dd1 along with the fanatec rig and my mission is to help him with the computer hardware and monitors.
He will be using 3 monitors and so it should be able to handle that. Also i would like a recommendation for the monitors. I think it would be better if they are 144mhz an 27 inch. I appreciate any insight and help!

 

[Miguel Batista]

Is he set on 3 screens? The new 49" ultra wide displays are really good with almost the same fov and much less fussiness.

Hard to recommend a computer without the budget.

 

[Prtmotorsport]

Budget should not be a problem.. But it would be only for sim. So we dont need 9900k and 2080ti i hope.

 

[RasmusP]

Look around through my posts about hardware. Simple answer, best simracing build without much fuzzing around, low input lag, no stutter etc: You definitely want g-sync or freesync!

- i5 9600k (6 cores are currently enough, best single thread performance alongside i7 8700k, 9700k and i9 9900k but a lot cheaper)

- vega 64 (freesync) or GTX 1080 ti or GTX 2080 (the more the better for latest games like DR 2.0, ACC)

- Samsung CGH90 (g-sync compatible according to lots of forum posts)

- 240mm corsair AiO cooler

- DDR4 16GB 3200 MHz (around 3000 MHz should it be. Normally there's a price gap at some point. Take the highest one before the big step)

- Asus Mainboard around 200€ for nice features (solid auto boost etc), good overclocking if needed in the future etc

- PSU should be a solid brand and about 650-750W. Be quiet straight power, the more expensive corsair series, seasonic, enermax

 

[Prtmotorsport]

Thank you for the prompt reply. I will also try to chexk your answers in other posts. And when i have something in more details i will ask aga2if necessary. Thank you!

 

[Miguel Batista]

If you can afford it then the RTX 2080 or the Radeon VII would be the way to go unless you find a deal on the Vega 64 or 1080ti. The i5 is enough and ram aim for 16 GB of DDR4 3k MHz up.

Something like this (went for Vega VII because reasons):
https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/yCWkYT

 

[RasmusP]

If you can afford it then the RTX 2080 or the Radeon VII would be the way to go unless you find a deal on the Vega 64 or 1080ti. The i5 is enough and ram aim for 16 GB of DDR4 3k MHz up.

Something like this (went for Vega VII because reasons):
https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/yCWkYT

If I may ask, how hot does your 9600k become during a stresstest (benchmark, intel burn test, prime95, msi kombustor cpu burner, whatever)?
And how high does it clock when becoming the hottest?
My friends and I don't have the best cases regarding air flow and while they have coolers similar to the 212 evo, their CPUs (ivy and haswell i5) all go beyond 80°C if they overclock them beyond 4.0 GHz.
I have an i7 2600k @ 4.4 GHz with the Le Grand Macho (fattest single fan air cooler) and it's going up to 75°C.

I simply can't imagine the 9600k to run up to around 4.8 or 4.9 GHz with such a small cooler without getting close to 90°C.
I can't find any tests on this though...

I often read posts like "I have a cheap cooler and my CPU stays below 60°C. Got an i7 3770k and awesome fps...". Then it turns out they barely have 60 fps and and their i7 k is only running at 3.6 GHz. If I downclock mine to 3.6 GHz my temps are that low too.

Would be thankful for some actual data, if you could be bothered. Of course the 9600k will give enough fps at the moment but I'd like to know how high you can go with that cooler and at what temperatures

 

[Prtmotorsport]

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/yPR7V6
How about something like this? Do i miss something?

 

[David Turnbull]

If I may ask, how hot does your 9600k become during a stresstest (benchmark, intel burn test, prime95, msi kombustor cpu burner, whatever)?
And how high does it clock when becoming the hottest?
My friends and I don't have the best cases regarding air flow and while they have coolers similar to the 212 evo, their CPUs (ivy and haswell i5) all go beyond 80°C if they overclock them beyond 4.0 GHz.
I have an i7 2600k @ 4.4 GHz with the Le Grand Macho (fattest single fan air cooler) and it's going up to 75°C.

I simply can't imagine the 9600k to run up to around 4.8 or 4.9 GHz with such a small cooler without getting close to 90°C.
I can't find any tests on this though...

I often read posts like "I have a cheap cooler and my CPU stays below 60°C. Got an i7 3770k and awesome fps...". Then it turns out they barely have 60 fps and and their i7 k is only running at 3.6 GHz. If I downclock mine to 3.6 GHz my temps are that low too.

Would be thankful for some actual data, if you could be bothered. Of course the 9600k will give enough fps at the moment but I'd like to know how high you can go with that cooler and at what temperatures

my 9600k runs at 4.8ghz on all cores and under load in intel xtu or aida64 stress tests it gets to 60 degrees max this is with a corsair h100i pro cooler.

 

[RasmusP]

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/yPR7V6
How about something like this? Do i miss something?

Looks good for me
How much would be the 9600k or 9700k for you? Here in Germany the 8700k is ridiculously expensive in comparison to its performance!

What games does he wanna play btw? Because for games that don't support true triples, the mega wide Samsung will be a lot nicer.
Acc and dirt aren't supporting triples for example. Acc might do in the future but unsure.
Also: does he really need the slightly increased sharpness and less pixel crawl aliasing from 1440p? I know I did when buying a new monitor in December '18 but with triples it's a lot more pixels to push!
I mainly needed it for officice stuff. Not so much for gaming.

For comparison:
3x 1440p = 7680x1440 = 11 Mio.
3x 1080p = 5760x1080 = 6.2 Mio.
4k monitor = 3840x2160 = 8.2 Mio.
Samsung 49" 1080p= 3840x1080 = 4.1 Mio.
Samsung new 49" 1440p = 5120x1440 = 7.4 Mio.

Looking at this, I'm sure the resolution of 3x 1440p is worth the need to lower the eye candy settings. Look for benchmarks of the vega 7 or 1080ti for the resolutions. 4k is doable but in acc for example the cards are dying at higher fps.
And more fps (with freesync or gsync) is just more awesomeness. Due to my cpu I can't run multiplayer races at more than 60 fps but the few times I wanted to see how more fps would be I went into single player and unlocked the fps.
I have a 120 Hz gsync uwqhd monitor and it's a lot more awesome!

Difficult decision though...

 

[Miguel Batista]

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/yPR7V6
How about something like this? Do i miss something?

I have that case and I regret it. You have lots of space but it is noisy and it gets dirty real quick... and massive, really massive.

Otherwise it looks fine. As others said, the i5 9600k performs almost the same and it is much cheaper generally.

 

[Turk]

Budget should not be a problem.. But it would be only for sim. So we dont need 9900k and 2080ti i hope.

That all depends on what sim you plan on running. ACC is probably the most current sim and it's a bit of a hog. There are new head sets and high end monitors coming out all the time pushing hardware to the limit.

If you were only playing on a single screen I'd say don't worry about it, but once you start looking at triples or VR hardware matters much more.

 

[maelstrom]

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/yPR7V6
How about something like this? Do i miss something?

Not the latest model, but if you don't mind a big case (generally cooler and easier to work in), I'd take a look at the Phanteks Enthoo Pro TG: https://thinkcomputers.org/phanteks-enthoo-pro-tempered-glass-case-review/. I have the original Enthoo Pro and couldn't be happier with it. Unlike most cases, It's screwed together rather than being riveted or welded so it's fully customisable and has excellent cooling options.

I'd also go for the RTX 2080 rather than the Radeon VII. You can get the 2080 for just a little more money and it generally performs better than the Radeon VII plus you get the option of raytracing in games which support it (ACC in the future?).

 

[RasmusP]

I'd also go for the RTX 2080 rather than the Radeon VII. You can get the 2080 for just a little more money and it generally performs better than the Radeon VII plus you get the option of raytracing in games which support it (ACC in the future?).

I agree but then he needs to get g-sync compatible monitors for a really good experience. I only got a g-sync monitor in December and the difference for me is night and day regarding input lag and smoothness.

 

[maelstrom]

but then he needs to get g-sync compatible monitors

Or Freesync with the latest NVIDIA drivers (most new monitors seem to be compatible).

 

[RasmusP]

Or Freesync with the latest NVIDIA drivers (most new monitors seem to be compatible).

I agree but I've seen plenty of videos where it wouldn't work

 

[Miguel Batista]

Not the latest model, but if you don't mind a big case (generally cooler and easier to work in), I'd take a look at the Phanteks Enthoo Pro TG: https://thinkcomputers.org/phanteks-enthoo-pro-tempered-glass-case-review/. I have the original Enthoo Pro and couldn't be happier with it. Unlike most cases, It's screwed together rather than being riveted or welded so it's fully customisable and has excellent cooling options.

I'd also go for the RTX 2080 rather than the Radeon VII. You can get the 2080 for just a little more money and it generally performs better than the Radeon VII plus you get the option of raytracing in games which support it (ACC in the future?).

Kind of. The radeon vii has a lot more overhead which makes it perform betterwith low level APIs like Vulkan and when thedrivers mature a bit more it should have more performance. It also supports ray tracing though itnis not as efficient as the tensor cores in the nvidia cards, they are better than the cuda cores. But the vega 64 might be the better choice due to how cheap they are right now. Again, better overhead than the nvidia counterparts just not there yet.

 

[RCHeliguy]

Do you mind if I piggy back on this thread and ask a few questions?

A comment was made that 6 cores is enough.
What if you have SimHub running tactile, NLRv3 software running in the background, have separate USB devices for pedals, sequential shifter, hand brake, wheelbase, and NLRv3 motion unit.
and you are running in VR.

I'm looking at a partial update since I already have a Fractal Designs Define R6, Corsair 1200W PS and 1080Ti, and I also have 2 external SSD's. However I am finding that I am now completely pegging all 4 cores on my fairly dated i5-4690.

I was thinking i7-9700K, NH-D15 cooler, 4 x 8Gb DRAM so it can fully run across all 4 banks of memory.
I want M.2 capability for the future, but ideally would just like to swap out the motherboard and use what I have without skipping a beat.

I have a Valve Index on the way and I don't want a CPU bottleneck which I already have with my Rift. I'll evaluate the GPU after the headset arrives.

Thoughts?

 

[RasmusP]

Do you mind if I piggy back on this thread and ask a few questions?

A comment was made that 6 cores is enough.
What if you have SimHub running tactile, NLRv3 software running in the background, have separate USB devices for pedals, sequential shifter, hand brake, wheelbase, and NLRv3 motion unit.
and you are running in VR.

I'm looking at a partial update since I already have a Fractal Designs Define R6, Corsair 1200W PS and 1080Ti, and I also have 2 external SSD's. However I am finding that I am now completely pegging all 4 cores on my fairly dated i5-4690.

I was thinking i7-9700K, NH-D15 cooler, 4 x 8Gb DRAM so it can fully run across all 4 banks of memory.
I want M.2 capability for the future, but ideally would just like to swap out the motherboard and use what I have without skipping a beat.

I have a Valve Index on the way and I don't want a CPU bottleneck which I already have with my Rift. I'll evaluate the GPU after the headset arrives.

Thoughts?

Do you really hit 95+ percent overall cpu load?
As far as my knowledge goes there are only two possible limits:
- single thread limit
- full maximum limit

Single thread limit is the same with 9600k/9700k, full maximum limit is of course different.
So are you hitting full load with your cpu? And how constantly is it hitting this limit? 6 cores will give you 50% more headroom. Do you really need doubled the headroom for the side-stuff?
The main problem right now is that VR and the game thread are one unit so it's running straight into the single thread limit.

If you're not constantly hitting 100% overall cpu load, there's no reason to get 8 cores!

 

[RCHeliguy]

Interesting...
Did you know that both Unity and Real Engine have both become very multi-core friendly? That seems like it would end up distributing the load out as software titles adapt. I know companies are starting to build that into their software and it is really speeding things up.

I looked at the MB chosen above which looks good. I'm also considering the Gigabyte Z390 Designare.
Tom's hardware gave it a good review. 10 USB ports on the back and more from the header. The two look pretty similar and I'm not sure what a review in Tom's hardware is worth these days.

I've had really good luck with ASRock over the last decade, but I'm considering trying something else this time around.

I hate to say it, but I almost feel like I'm going to end up in the just to be safe category and do the following:
i9-9900K
Gigabyte Z390 Designare
4 x 8Gb DRAM so I can use the full bandwidth.
I'm feeling itchy today...