Guild Wars 2

So im a total noob at this whole computer tech stuff. But I need help with this new comp I was trying to build. My budget is 2.4k for everything. It is build around the Acer monitor since its 4k and 4k requires specific things or it doesn’t work. If yall could reduce the price by doing something that would be wonderful.
For gaming I only play Guild Wars 2 and I would love to play it on high graphics everywhere smoothly. Now for WvW zerg and tequ i understand lowering , just everything else high would be lovely. For editing I only use photoshop as of right now with a little Lightroom. So this is why i have the 3 SSDs and 1 HHD.
I would like to know yall thoughts on if this build works well with gaming and editing parts.
Also if i need to buy extra cooling fans or wifi antenna thing or anything else. This is first time building a computer and im a total idiot when comes to this stuff.
Thank you in advance. =D

“http://pcpartpicker.com/p/N6wfjX”!

^no clue if thats how i make that a link … told yall im dumb with this stuff >.<

That looks good, the only thing I’d change is the ram. Id get 1600mhz. I’m personally using HyperX Savage DDR3 1600mhz, i5 4690K, MSI H81M-E34 motherboard. My card is old. Its an 9800GT 1GB, and it runs GW2 well with most on high. I’m planning to change that out for an MSI GTX 960 Gamer 2GB. And i should be able to play with everything on ultra. But yeah you should have no problems at all. Just consider the faster 1600mhz ram.

I would recommend using a Samsung or BenQ monitor that can go to at least 100, and preferably 144 Hz or beyond for gaming, rather than a 4k monitor. With a 60 Hz monitor, any framerate above 60 only causes tearing artifacts and wastes power, so you’d be forced to either VSync (which can lead to pointer lag issues) or tolerate it. Between the monitor refresh rate and the FPS values you get, the lower number is the one you actually see – and between 60 to 144 Hz there is a significant difference in performance. On the other hand 1080p has been an industry standard for gaming for a while so higher resolution like 2160p may simply lead to more pixels being used for the same level of detail. The dark side is that these monitors generally support lower resolutions as a tradeoff. Gaming does better with higher refresh, while image or movie editing does better with higher pixel resolution.

Seconded regarding the RAM. Speeds above 1600 get diminishing returns, but 1333 to 1600 will be noticeable. I’m running a 1866, though frankly for all intents and purposes it’ll likely be fairly similar to the 1600.

Re: Twin 970 SLi, I have the intention to do the same thing to my computer eventually, but unless it’s important to run everything at max resolution NOW on max settings, you might want to postpone the second. Reason being most games are already running at nearly maxed settings at a good resolution on a single 970, and the 970’s price will drop over time. If you’re set on using the 4k monitor however, SLi would, indeed, be necessary from the outset.

Not sure why you would use 3 SSDs and one HDD instead of 1 SSD and 2-3 HDDs since I don’t photoshop.

As for power supply, consider getting silver or gold certified ones if electricity is expensive, otherwise what you have will already work – reason being that sometimes if the prices are close enough, the money you save by having greater power efficiency can be more significant than the money you save by buying a cheaper PSU. And since it’d generate less heat as well, you can save on cooling.

With regards to fans, just make sure you have a filter in front of your intake fans, and that you always have more intake fans than output fans. Positive pressure is important, as it forces dust out of any cracks or gaps your computer case may have (ports, etc) – if it is the other way around, dust will get sucked in instead, which tends to result in dustier components faster.

Looks good for the most part. As others have said, it is best to go for either 1600 or 1866 RAM, and low latency too if its in your budget. G.Skill is, in my opinion, the best brand of RAM out there right now for low latency out of the box. With that processor, you should be able to reduce it to 1t command rate.

A warning about Gigabyte motherboards: their fan controller is crap. Make sure to get PWM fans, or you won’t be able to control the speed at all, unless either using a seperate fan controller or a resistor cable (which will just force it to always run at a lower speed). Also, be sure to update your BIOS first thing because some of their default BIOS will try to fry your processor with much too high voltage.

About the recommendation for a faster display. Don’t listen. Faster panels are generally TN displays, which are terrible for everything other than speed and price. They have bad display colors, horrible viewing angles (color/contrast shifts when not at the perfect viewing spot), bad black levels, etc. Besides, at that resolution, most good (and current) games won’t likely see more than 60fps very much, if you want highest graphics settings. I switched away from cheap TN panels years ago, and will likely never go back to them. My current monitor is a Dell U3014 (2560×1600) – yes, monitors are something Dell actually does well (at least the high end ones anyway).

So far from all the feed back ive been getting ive changed the ram and video card people are telling me that dual 970s would get me Vram issues so i changed to single 980. heres the new list.

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/WHydcf

Tre.9807:

So far from all the feed back ive been getting ive changed the ram and video card people are telling me that dual 970s would get me Vram issues so i changed to single 980. heres the new list.

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/WHydcf

The only other thing I’d mention, is that you need to check and see what speed ram your motherboard will support, otherwise if you don’t overclock the ram it will just switch to the lowest the board will support, most motherboards support 1600mhz out of the box. If you do intend to overclock, make sure your motherboard supports it, and that is user friendly. I’ve found the current MSI motherboards are really user friendly, and even have an auto overclock function. Have a look at the MSI Z97 Gamer boards. I’ve read and heard good things about them. I don’t know anything about asrock boards.

I’m using a Z97 Gaming 5. Works very well.

Also, high-refresh LCD must be TN, because IPS is incapable of reaching high refresh rates. At highest graphics settings you still will be breaching the monitor’s max refresh quite constantly on most games on a single 970, and all the time on all games if you SLi. 2160p requires 4 times the power of 1080p, so none of the high-refresh monitors ever exceed 1600p as no graphics card would be able to drive them to their main selling point.

I can’t speak for the Samsungs because I haven’t tried them, but the viewing angles of the BenQ ones have no visible issues, and no black level issues at all. Display colors won’t and will never reach IPS standards as that is the defining advantage of IPS. You trade framerate for color accuracy.

As tech progresses, IPS have slowly increased their max refresh limits while TN has slowly improved its colour accuracy.

While the difference is significant enough to make a large impact on any form of shooter gaming (60->120 hz increases your reaction speed by 80 ms in a realm where differences between 20 ms ping and 100 ms ping can make or break games), in something far less demanding on reaction speed/camera responsiveness like Guild Wars 2, the main advantages of high framerate apply to jumping puzzles, Player-vs-player, and using full glass builds on high level fractals. It improves the experience for the rest of the game, but not in as performance-critical a way.

Also, there is a vast difference between competition-grade high-refresh TN, and low-budget TN, and it’s not just in the refresh rates alone. To label the entire technology line as inferior is as misguided as labelling all strawberries as sour from tasting only the cheap stuff – because cheap strawberries really ARE terrible.

There are crap IPS panels as well, and the ghosting issues on those are absolutely dreadful, but they in no way represent the standards that IPS can reach.