Guild Wars 2

Well, I am getting older and the crappy FPS I am getting with my All in One Dell just isn’t cutting it anymore. I have never built a PC before, but it doesn’t seem to difficult. I have tackled a great many, more challenging tasks, so I know I can do it.

My question is, I don’t want to overbuy for minimal gain, but I don’t want to hamstring myself with a weak system that will need upgrading a year from now. I am looking for good performance/price ratios.

The PC will be used primarily for MMOs, and some web browsing. I don’t care for FPSs, so I don’t need it to provide insane FPS for Crysis. I would like to get 60+ for Guild Wars 2, other than the occasional stutter in massive zerg settings. I just can’t handle 18 FPS any more. It is killing my eyes.

So the goal is to play GW2 on ultra/high setting 90% of the time, understanding that the rig probably doesn’t exist that can run it 100% of the time.

I just want to see the game look pretty.

So I was looking at www. logicalincrements.com at the Excellent level. I am budgeting about $1100 for the tower including windows whatever, but I need a good monitor also. Haven’t researched them at all.

I realize there are all sorts of trade offs here. Has someone here sort of done this before, specifically concerning GW2?

Thank you!

I meant to add I have been looking at www. logicalincrements. com

I recently bought parts to make my little brother a computer for Christmas. I also built it w GW2 in mind.

Below are choices you can make:

Motherboard: H97 or Z97
CPU: i3 4360, i5 4590, or i7 4790k
RAM: G. Skill or Corsair Vengenace (get at least 8 gb)
GPU: R9 380, R9 390, GTX 970, or GTX 980 ti
PSU: Corsair 650
HDD: Anything above 1 TB
SSD: I recommend Samsung… get at least 120 gb
Cooling system: Coolermaster or Corsair H55, H80, H90, H100, or H110i
Optical drive: Anything unless you want blu ray

With any of that you shouldn’t have to upgrade for a while unless you want to

Oh, for monitors if all you want is to see the game at 60 FPS you can buy one that’s 1080p with a refresh rate of 60hz.

Dell, ASUS, Benq, etc. will work

OP – Something like this will get you good frame rates at 1080p

http://pcpartpicker.com/user/sirsquishy/saved/#view=TW2MnQ

@OP- Here’s a list http://pcpartpicker.com/user/Beefjus/saved/zXVp99

Issue 1: no need to plug in the USB3 headers, since there are already USB ports in the rear IO.
Issue 2: The CM HAF 912’s drive cages can be removed.

I decided to go with the new socket so that you have more headroom in the future.

EDIT:

If you want to spend a bit more money for wider upgrade headroom for the future, then you can use this list: http://pcpartpicker.com/user/Beefjus/saved/nNYj4D

I was going to make some suggestions, but I’ll just second beefjus’s choices.

Pretty much right on the mark for cost/performance without going into ‘diminishing returns’. I have basically the same system from three years ago, and it’s still going strong. (i5-3570, 8 Gigs, GTX660)

Check out pcrival.com

Go with Beefjus’s but get a 390 instead of a 970. It’s a better card and will cost less.

Or, if you’re only really going to play GW2, get a 380(x). A 390 is far above what you need to run GW2 on ultra/1080P

I built a new PC a few months ago with GW2 the only game I really play.

Now if you want good bang for your buck and don’t want to brake the bank as you go. Here’s what I recommend.

CPU: i5 4690/4690K(The have a look at the K as when I got mine, it was cheaper than the locked 4690 by £5, always better to have the option to overclock even if you don’t want to later on.

GPU: MSI GTX 960 Gaming 2GB (More than enough to run GW2 on full settings.)

RAM: 8GB DDR3 HyperX Savage 1600mHz. (Great RAM with heat sinks and a good price.)

Motherboard: MSI H81M-E34 (A small motherboard so it will fit into just about any case, and it have overclocking capability’s.)

PSU: Seasonic 650W. (always better to have more than you need, incase you want to add a new GPU or more HDD later on.)

HDD: 1TB or bigger if you can afford it. (SSD’s are not worth the money IHO, sure the PC will boot faster, But a good HHD will boot almost as fast. I really don’t see the cost benefits for a few seconds faster load times)

Case: One with plenty of room, but also make sure it can fit where you need it too. there are loads and loads out there.

Cooling: if your case can accommodate more fans, then add them, the mother board I listed have 2 fan sockets, but you can use splitters and run 2 fans on one socket. As far as an after market CPU cooler. Only get one if you are going to Over clock. if not, the stock one is more than good enough(if the CPU you buy comes with one.) put the money you would spend on one towards another part, or to just keep the cost down.

OS: If you can, reuse your current OS, if it’s a 64 bit OS that is. If not, I’d recommend buying a new one, or the 8GB of ram you may have bought will be a waste of money, as a 32 bit OS will only see half.

My PC cost me between £500-£600. I reused both HHD’s in my PC as they where both only a year old, I also reused my OS so that helped keep the costs down.

It is worth mentioning, that the game will not stay at 60+ FPS at all times, it just wont. Even if you have the best parts money can buy, you will have FPS drops. I have yet to notice any drops, so the rate will stay at a playable level at all times. With that said, every system performs differently, even one that are near identical.

I agree mostly with mrauls.

Best performance/price items
CPU: I7 4790k/5820k
Gpu: Spend as much as you can afford. I don’t think you’d need the 980 ti or similar just for gw2. *
Ram: Corsair Vengeance.
Storage: Samsung evo 250gb
Psu: Corsair 750/800w, RMi is a good series from what I’ve seen.
Case: you’ll want a big open case for nice airflow. Most of corsair cases will get you that.
Cooler: Corsair h100iGtx I believe is the one you want.
Mobo: Asus Hero VII is a nice one.
Monitor, Asus monitors are generally nice. Get a 1080/1440p 60/120refreah rate monitor.

• the higher the gpu the better the performance. With one of the two CPUs you can handle any high end gpu, without bottlenecking. Sadly I do have a mint condition 390x to sell but I probably couldn’t get it to you haha. But anything from AMD above 390x should do it. And anything from Nvidia above 970 should do it in my opinion. If you want future proof. NVIDIA 980ti and i7 6700k with a 1000watt psu.
  When PC building you want to get the best price for performance on everything then spend everything else you saved on a Gpu.

Also as a disclaimer, this is all based on my opinion. And I do indeed love corsair.

just avoid an AMD procesor and you are fine

michelada.2947:

just avoid an AMD procesor and you are fine

this.

gw2 isn’t optimized for multi cores and likewise for some other games. so u will need a high single core performance processor to run them which in this case is intel. unless u wanna wait for next year Q4 and see if amd makes any major breakthrough with their new zen processor

monitor wise, it depends on how big you want the monitor to be….
basic specs will be IPS LED, max refresh 60,

As you are not a “I want the best” but a “I want the best reasonable choice that is good enough for my needs” person I have to disagree with spending as much money as possible on the GPU. From a certain level of performance on, it just does not benefit you any more if you play in FullHD resolution.

A GTX960 is good enough for playing GW2 on FullHD, as well as any other MMO, it uses very little power and there are multiple cards which will not even spin up their fans while operating the PC in 2D mode, lowering the noise your PC will make (I have one of those in my own PC I built this year). You will not find this feature in the more powerful cards which inevitably use more electricity, or in a comparable Radeon card.

Also, spending more money here would only benefit you if you go to resolutions higher than 1920×1080 and dish out the money for the needed monitor for that.

In that light, I suggest staying reasonably modest with the graphics cards and instead choose the fastest reasonable CPU for your PC. GW2 speed depends a lot on CPU and not that much on GPU power anyway.

Also, in my opinion SSD is not wasted money and will speed up your system in general as well as the game. (I had to remove the “a” before “SSD” because of stupid/thoughtless forum censoring logic).

Riku.4821:

Best performance/price items
CPU: I7 4790k/5820k

This would be an i5, especially for games and especially for GW2. Quickly looking at prices a 4690k would be the best bang for your buck by a long shot.

Riku.4821:

Ram: Corsair Vengeance

Just get the cheapest 1600 MHz CL9 ram you can, you don’t see worthwhile gains going above that.

Riku.4821:

Cooler: Corsair h100iGtx I believe is the one you want.

This is overkill, get a 212 Evo or similar unless you’re pushing for a super high OC. A Noctua DH-15 is generally a better deal anyways iirc

Riku.4821:

Monitor, Asus monitors are generally nice. Get a 1080/1440p 60/120refreah rate monitor.

Just note that their stands are absolute garbage, my monitor wobbled all over the place until I put some books under both sides.

Riku.4821:

• the higher the gpu the better the performance. With one of the two CPUs you can handle any high end gpu, without bottlenecking. Sadly I do have a mint condition 390x to sell but I probably couldn’t get it to you haha. But anything from AMD above 390x should do it.

Really? Anything above a 390x is way too much for 99.99% of people. Hell, even a 390 is more then most people need. Realistically a 380 or a 960 is going to be more then enough for the TC.

Riku.4821:

And anything from Nvidia above 970 should do it in my opinion. If you want future proof. NVIDIA 980ti and i7 6700k with a 1000watt psu.

It’s interesting that you said that the minimum for AMD is a more powerful card then what you suggested for nVidia. Also, a 1000W PSU is ridiculously more then you could ever need; even a Fury X with a high-end i7 tops out under 500W.

Riku.4821:

When PC building you want to get the best price for performance on everything then spend everything else you saved on a Gpu.

I’d say that you’re better off with a good CPU+everything else and a slightly more meh GPU then a high-end GPU and a lower end CPU since a CPU will realistically last you longer then a GPU. My friend is a good example of this, he just upgraded his 6950 to a 390 while his 3570k is still more then ample.

You’re suggesting a good computer, but it’s just multiple steps above what most people these days would want or need. You don’t even see a gain from going to an i5 to an i7 in 99% of games these days.

Personally, I’d go with what Belial said, although a basic Z97 mobo would probably be a good buy if you really want to overclock, and I’d take a look at R9 380s- it’s slightly below a 960 but you might be able to get one a good step cheaper.

On another note, it might be worth considering some used hardware. My computer was $575 (not counting OS because I never should’ve paid full price for it), and the CPU+mobo+GPU were purchased used; something new but roughly similar (weaker GPU, smaller HDD) runs ~$690:

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/gx38pg

Even if you can grab a used GPU you can get a long more bang for your buck; my 280x was $120. You really can’t argue with that sort of deal.

That being said, the part list above would be my recommendation. The PSU is total overkill but it’s a high quality unit, which is one of the most important things to consider. A 960 would be a bit more powerful for ~$15 more but it’ll be a reference model and you won’t really need the additional power. If you’re not planning on overclocking, get an MSI H81M-E33 or one of the equivalent boards (They’ve got basically the same name), get rid of the 212 Evo, and swap to a non-K CPU:

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/CvJk23

I would suggest the 380x above the 960, as its beats it in nearly every benchmark, and can be found for the same price, the next up would be either a 970 or 390. You do not need a 390x for this game unless you were running 4k resolutions.

http://www.gamersnexus.net/hwreviews/2193-amd-r9-380x-review-and-fps-benchmark/Page-2

Fermi.2409:

Snip…

I’d like to say that I view it more for cheapest best pc for longevity, and not cheap throw together to save money. But to be fair, this is a PC to play mainly gw2, I play gw2, and games like the witcher 3 and skyrim maxed out and graphical mods while maintaining stable 60fps.

I am sure some other brands are cheaper than corsair, but I have never been let down from corsair and the extra pay is enough for the service and efficiency in my opinion.

For a gw2 only PC I guess what I said is a bit to over priced. But it is indeed future proof.

Lastly on terms of the 390x better than the 970, my justification is that the r9 200 series doesn’t exist in my opinion as they are just terrible. I am glad I got rid of my 290x, and now I have a 980 ti and spare 390x still in the box.

Riku.4821:

I’d like to say that I view it more for cheapest best pc for longevity

The thing is, there’s literally nothing “cheapest” about what you recommended. Seriously, a 5820k? Cheapest best PC for longevity has an i5 and a midrange GPU you can upgrade in 2-3 years.

Riku.4821:

and not cheap throw together to save money. But to be fair, this is a PC to play mainly gw2, I play gw2, and games like the witcher 3 and skyrim maxed out and graphical mods while maintaining stable 60fps.

Well of course. If your build is like what you recommended it’s well into the high-end computer realm. Not one part you recommended is even slightly below the top end.

Riku.4821:

Lastly on terms of the 390x better than the 970, my justification is that the r9 200 series doesn’t exist in my opinion as they are just terrible. I am glad I got rid of my 290x, and now I have a 980 ti and spare 390x still in the box.

What? The R9 series is great. In general they give you way more GPU for your dollar, not to mention some of the scummy stuff that’s been happening with nVidia lately.

Not to mention, if you hate AMD so much why did you even buy a 390x? That sounds super dumb.

Fermi.2409:

Go with Beefjus’s but get a 390 instead of a 970. It’s a better card and will cost less.

Or, if you’re only really going to play GW2, get a 380(x). A 390 is far above what you need to run GW2 on ultra/1080P

I would have suggested a 380x cause it’s a 1080p monster, but I didn’t want the OP to suffer on nvidia optimised games like Witcher 3, etc…

Fermi.2409:

snip…

Again, future proof. If you don’t want to spend alot often, you spend it all up front.

Also $1100 or so isn’t low end budget.

I didn’t buy the 390x msi gave it to me for free because my 290x was almost capping at 100c within 5 minutes of Turing a game on, and 70c at idle.
And no, not much was wrong with the card, it was just a really hot card to start with and probably burnt away the cooling compound.

I don’t hate AMD, I went from a 6950 to a 7970 to a 290x to a 980ti and have finally felt like I got my moneys worth.
I love AMD designs, but now I realize design means nothing as third party cards all look the same. And I am sick of bad drivers and lower performance for a still high price.

Hard to believe the i5 6600k is so much more expensive than the 4xxx-gen CPUs from Intel, considering the relatively small performance upgrade.

I would suggest nvidia’s gtx 960/970. The 960 isn’t perfect, but it’s a lot cheaper and the performance difference isn’t massive. The 970 is certainly no compromise, however.

Riku.4821:

Again, future proof. If you don’t want to spend alot often, you spend it all up front.

You can still spend a bit every couple years and come out ahead, though, with a medium investment. Not that you can ever really futureproof a computer, though.

Riku.4821:

Also $1100 or so isn’t low end budget

I never said it was. $1100 for a tower actually starts breaking into the higher end.

Riku.4821:

And I am sick of bad drivers and lower performance for a still high price.

Oh come on. AMD’s drivers are fine these days and they have objectively better cards at many/most price points.

beefjus.9347:

I would have suggested a 380x cause it’s a 1080p monster, but I didn’t want the OP to suffer on nvidia optimised games like Witcher 3, etc…

I mean the 380x is a great card but if you’re going for something 970 level I was just pointing out that a 390 is generally a better buy.

It is a better performing card, especially once you consider the performance/dollar. I’ll edit my first list to reflect this.

I was actually going to suggest a GTX980, but it might be way out of his budget.

Riku.4821:

And I am sick of bad drivers and lower performance for a still high price.

that is not true.
it depends when you buy the graphic cards and what graphic cards you have bought
ati price/performance beat nvidia at similar launch date until nvidia do a price slash. it really depends on the market and time when you purchase the graphic cards.

ati new driver is pretty smooth,. according to some netizen and articles, ati driver is more matured than nvidia but nvidia beat ati by optimising the hardware to perform well in specific area. to do so, naturally nvidia enhanced something while reducing something from the hardware to maintain the pricing.

SkyShroud.2865:

Riku.4821:

And I am sick of bad drivers and lower performance for a still high price.

that is not true.
it depends when you buy the graphic cards and what graphic cards you have bought
ati price/performance beat nvidia at similar launch date until nvidia do a price slash. it really depends on the market and time when you purchase the graphic cards.

ati new driver is pretty smooth,. according to some netizen and articles, ati driver is more matured than nvidia but nvidia beat ati by optimising the hardware to perform well in specific area. to do so, naturally nvidia enhanced something while reducing something from the hardware to maintain the pricing.

Yeah .. and all the optimizing from NVidia breaks other things with other games
all day long .. just look at the tech froums and see how many problems there in
the end are related to NVidia drivers .. and NVidia has a loooong history with that.
Heck even in Diablo 2 already most problems were related to NVidia.

Fermi.2409:

Riku.4821:

Again, future proof. If you don’t want to spend alot often, you spend it all up front.

You can still spend a bit every couple years and come out ahead, though, with a medium investment. Not that you can ever really futureproof a computer, though.

Riku.4821:

Also $1100 or so isn’t low end budget

I never said it was. $1100 for a tower actually starts breaking into the higher end.

Riku.4821:

And I am sick of bad drivers and lower performance for a still high price.

Oh come on. AMD’s drivers are fine these days and they have objectively better cards at many/most price points.

beefjus.9347:

I would have suggested a 380x cause it’s a 1080p monster, but I didn’t want the OP to suffer on nvidia optimised games like Witcher 3, etc…

I mean the 380x is a great card but if you’re going for something 970 level I was just pointing out that a 390 is generally a better buy.

Really don’t feel like removing all the quotes within quotes this time lol. Really annoying on a phone.

The thread owner said his budget is $1100 or so. Which is high end.
Their drivers have been bad since I had the 6950 at least. And this continued all the way until the end of the 390×. Even if their drivers are catching up with Nvidia, it wont help much. NVIDIA has hands in so many companies engines that they are all optimized purely for Nvidia and you’ll lose performance for not having Nvidia.

1. Intel i7
2. Nvidia Geforce
3. Newegg
4. Teh Win

Riku.4821:

The thread owner said his budget is $1100 or so. Which is high end.

He also wants Windows and a Monitor .. so its more like $700-800 for the PC itself.

I just had someone build one for me with gw2 in mind as that is really the only thing I play. I ended up getting the i7 6700K skylake with a nvidia GeForce 970. Waited a bit then picked up the 28" samsung 4K monitor. Had to wait a bit longer as I didn’t have the property displayport adapter for the monitor but finally got that too.

Set-up runs beautifully but cost about $2700 in total (That is in Canadian mind you)

DeadlySynz.3471:

I just had someone build one for me with gw2 in mind as that is really the only thing I play. I ended up getting the i7 6700K skylake with a nvidia GeForce 970. Waited a bit then picked up the 28" samsung 4K monitor. Had to wait a bit longer as I didn’t have the property displayport adapter for the monitor but finally got that too.

Set-up runs beautifully but cost about $2700 in total (That is in Canadian mind you)

They didn’t have GW2 in mind…maybe Witcher 3/ Dragon Age Inquisition/etc…

Riku.4821:

Their drivers have been bad since I had the 6950 at least. And this continued all the way until the end of the 390×. Even if their drivers are catching up with Nvidia, it wont help much. NVIDIA has hands in so many companies engines that they are all optimized purely for Nvidia and you’ll lose performance for not having Nvidia.

All right this is getting ridiculous but you’re just 100% wrong here on so many levels, especially when it comes to performance. Since you seem convinced of that I’m not going to keep going but the AMD’s performance is fine and beats nVidia at the same price point pretty much across the board, not to mention the fact that their drivers have been fine since the late 5000 series.

with all due respect, Nvidia vs ATI discussions are irrelevant at 1080p… either brand will do the job just fine.

as for the budget… $1100 doesn’t even qualify as an “entry level” system. ask any enthusiast who spends triple that on custom water cooling parts alone. (forget about those $150 corsair water-cooling kits for high-end rigs) a serious competitor in the PC world buys motherboards that can handle cold bootups with LN2, which typically run 400$ and up. and they typically run 3 or more top-of-the-line video cards. which typically run $600 and up. a typical “high end” machine will run you a good $7000 minimum for the parts.

the truth about high end rigs though, is that the are built for OTHER things than just gaming, like setting world records on synthetic benchmarks, video editing and compression, protein folding research, or gaming at super high pixel resolutions across multiple 4k monitors. Basically, what most people would call “Overkill.”

my own rig is built from an i7-4930k, Rampage IV black, 32G ripjawZ 2400 DDR3, samsung 840PRO SSD, Win10 64b pro, 2GTX 670 in SLI (i don’t feel the need to upgrade my video cards yet @ 2560×1600 resultion on a 30" monitor), Cosmos II case, with various 2T HDDs and a silverstone 1500 PSU (has really high efficiency at 750 watt load, and 8 12v rails for overload protection, and operates just fine at extemely hot temperatures if needed) i had a custom water loop in it, but decided the case made maintenance of the loop more difficult than it needed to be, so i reverted back to air cooling. the hex core runs everything just fine at a moderate 3.9GHz (i didn’t feel like pushing it to 4.4 or higher. default is 3.4)

but of course, this isn’t about “high end” competitive rigs. this is about a budget $1100 gaming PC.

my friend has a i-5 3590k, 16G DDR3 2400 RAM, and GTX 970 and is pulling 60fps (GW2) on a 1080p monitor just fine.

as for CPUs, when it comes to gaming, an intel Sandybridge i7-2500 games just as good as a skylake i7-6700k. the difference in benchmarks in games like Crysis, is maybe 2-5 frames per second (assuming same video card, OS, RAM speed, etc) (DDR4 2400 RAM performs worse than DDR3 2400 RAM due to looser timings). and when you’re talking about current generation video cards can run Crysis at 90 frames per second. those extra 2-5 frames don’t matter, unless you’re competing on the pro circuit, which means that an $1100 PC isn’t going to cut it…

for GW2, $1100 PC is just fine.

BrotherBelial.3094:

HDD: 1TB or bigger if you can afford it. (SSD’s are not worth the money IHO, sure the PC will boot faster, But a good HHD will boot almost as fast. I really don’t see the cost benefits for a few seconds faster load times)

Um, faster map loading, able to spin around without the game freezing to load in resources. Having the computer start up faster is more desirable than you might think. I went from your thinking to now, because I have been on both sides of the fence. Also prices of an SSD these days has gone way down, and affording one is reasonable. If not now to afford, can later on, then mirror over the OS to the new drive.

Forgotten Legend.9281:

as for the budget… $1100 doesn’t even qualify as an “entry level” system. ask any enthusiast who spends triple that on custom water cooling parts alone. (forget about those $150 corsair water-cooling kits for high-end rigs) a serious competitor in the PC world buys motherboards that can handle cold bootups with LN2, which typically run 400$ and up. and they typically run 3 or more top-of-the-line video cards. which typically run $600 and up. a typical “high end” machine will run you a good $7000 minimum for the parts.

Are you serious? $1100 is well into the high-end gaming PC budget level. We’re not talking about kitten measuring machines, we’re talking about reasonable computers. Claiming that $1100 isn’t even “entry level” is absolutely laughable.

Forgotten Legend.9281:

but of course, this isn’t about “high end” competitive rigs. this is about a budget $1100 gaming PC.

Budget PC level is like $350-550 lmao, $1100 is nowhere close to budget

Fermi.2409:

Forgotten Legend.9281:

as for the budget… $1100 doesn’t even qualify as an “entry level” system. ask any enthusiast who spends triple that on custom water cooling parts alone. (forget about those $150 corsair water-cooling kits for high-end rigs) a serious competitor in the PC world buys motherboards that can handle cold bootups with LN2, which typically run 400$ and up. and they typically run 3 or more top-of-the-line video cards. which typically run $600 and up. a typical “high end” machine will run you a good $7000 minimum for the parts.

Are you serious? $1100 is well into the high-end gaming PC budget level. We’re not talking about kitten measuring machines, we’re talking about reasonable computers. Claiming that $1100 isn’t even “entry level” is absolutely laughable.

Forgotten Legend.9281:

but of course, this isn’t about “high end” competitive rigs. this is about a budget $1100 gaming PC.

Budget PC level is like $350-550 lmao, $1100 is nowhere close to budget

$350? My processor alone cost that much.

Agemnon.4608:

Fermi.2409:

Forgotten Legend.9281:

as for the budget… $1100 doesn’t even qualify as an “entry level” system. ask any enthusiast who spends triple that on custom water cooling parts alone. (forget about those $150 corsair water-cooling kits for high-end rigs) a serious competitor in the PC world buys motherboards that can handle cold bootups with LN2, which typically run 400$ and up. and they typically run 3 or more top-of-the-line video cards. which typically run $600 and up. a typical “high end” machine will run you a good $7000 minimum for the parts.

Are you serious? $1100 is well into the high-end gaming PC budget level. We’re not talking about kitten measuring machines, we’re talking about reasonable computers. Claiming that $1100 isn’t even “entry level” is absolutely laughable.

Forgotten Legend.9281:

but of course, this isn’t about “high end” competitive rigs. this is about a budget $1100 gaming PC.

Budget PC level is like $350-550 lmao, $1100 is nowhere close to budget

$350? My processor alone cost that much.

I agree that $350 is low end for a “budget” PC, but you don’t go putting an i7-4790k in a budget PC either.

$500-1000 is what I would consider a budget PC in today’s market. Granted, a $500 PC isn’t going to be much of a gaming rig, but it might handle a game like GW2 on low settings.

Got some time so decided to reply properly.
Seeing that you talking about price/ratio and so on, I think you are conscious about $$. So, I guess you want a DIY that can last you for awhile and at the same time, if require to, upgrade part by part for future need.

Casing: Fractal Design R5 – $110~
You can get cheaper casing but personally, I like silent casing and also prefer casing that will last for long term. My current casing is like 10 years already. This casing is good and has a lot of room to play around, I think lasting 10 or even 20 years is possible.

PSU: Seasonic X650 – $110~
Good PSU, you wouldn’t want a PSU that goes boom, right? I also doubt you are gonna OC or have dual gfx, so 650 is more than enough. If all goes well, this PSU should last you for 10 years. Warranty 7 years iirc.

RAM: DDR4 16gb (2×8gb) – $75~
Games are demanding more memory as years go by, 16gb should be good for now and couple of years. With 16gb, you can turn off your virtual memory as well. As usual, limited lifetime warranty.

Motherboard: MSI H170 Gaming Pro – $120~
“H” if you not OCing or using dual GFX. “Z” for otherwise.

Processor: i5-6600 – $220~

Cooler: Coolermaster Hyper T2 – $18~
You can buy water cooler as well but then again, if you are gonna need water cooling which often to do some crazy OC, you should be knowledgeable enough to seek advise in a more tech geek forums.

SSD: Samsumg 850 Pro 256gb – $140~
850 pro seems to be pretty great in the benchmark and comes with 10 years warranty. Some people might argue SSD is unnecessary but screw that, your daily PC experience will be so much better with SSD.

HDD: Western Digital Black 2TB – $120~
For storage need like videos, songs, work files, download folders etc. Only put applications in SSD while all other craps in storage drive because SSD lifespan will drop if too much writing going on. 5 years warranty iirc.

Graphic: Radeon R9 380 – $210~

Monitor: DELL IPS LED 23" or 24" – $170~

CD/DvD Drive: $13~

Total: $1300~ (Excluding any additional casing fans)

It is over your budget by $200 which if you want to, you can cut cost here and there. PSU can easily cut by half but it is very important not to buy completely crap PSU that only provide very basic safety circuitry and may not be suitable for gaming rig. You can buy a cheaper SSD but this one is 10 years wararnty, think about it. You can buy a cheaper motherboard, can cut about almost half there. You can buy a 1TB instead of 2TB storage. You can cut the casing cost but risk giving up future expansion. Also, depending where you buying from, they might bundle up processor and motherboard so you might get a cheaper deal.

EDIT: I just re-read your requirements. You need a windows too and 90% running at 60fps of the time which means you will need an i7. i7 and a window will go way out of your budget.

Agemnon.4608:

$350? My processor alone cost that much.

$350 can get you a computer that can match/beat the current gen consoles, actually. It’s not the greatest, but for $350 you can’t expect too much:

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/BjY2vK

My brother basically had this for a year or two and it was a pretty solid machine for the price. It should even run GW2 at Med/high/1080P/60FPS once you OC the CPU a bit.

Quarktastic.1027:

$500-1000 is what I would consider a budget PC in today’s market. Granted, a $500 PC isn’t going to be much of a gaming rig, but it might handle a game like GW2 on low settings.

Again, you’d be surprised. $500 can do GW2 on high settings just fine. It could actually run most games out on high settings (no AA) and still get solid framerates:

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/7sHnP6

If you’re willing to buy used parts, $500 will go even further:

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/swtN8d

Even just getting a used GPU can get you a lot more bang for your buck on a budget.

So yeah, $350-550 is budget PC range. Once you get into the $600+ range you’re pretty solidly at the midrange level (assuming all new parts) since you can get an i5+a solid GPU.

SkyShroud.2865:

…

You had a solid setup overall, a bit pricey imo (I don’t think Skylake is really worth the price increase, especially if you’re going for a locked CPU) but there are a couple of gripes I have:

-That SSD price; a 250 GB 850 Evo will run you $70-75 on sale pretty often these days.
-16 GB of ram is also excessive, 8 is fine, but if you use Chrome and want to have 3-4 tabs open 16 GB could be a solid choice.
-You can save on that PSU and still get a quality unit; for example, the PSU I have is in the $55-60 after MIR range. It’s not Seasonic, but it’s still high quality
-$50 1 TB WD Blue over a $120 2 TB WD Black

Edit: Oh, you addressed most of this already. I have no idea how I missed that but I’ll leave all of this in anyways

SkyShroud.2865:

EDIT: I just re-read your requirements. You need a windows too and 90% running at 60fps of the time which means you will need an i7. i7 and a window will go way out of your budget.

For GW2 (and most games) you don’t need an i7 at all; you don’t really get any performance benefit over an equivalent i5 at the same clockspeed. You’re much better off investing in a better CPU cooler over spending the extra ~$100 for an i7.

Fermi.2409:

Riku.4821:

Their drivers have been bad since I had the 6950 at least. And this continued all the way until the end of the 390×. Even if their drivers are catching up with Nvidia, it wont help much. NVIDIA has hands in so many companies engines that they are all optimized purely for Nvidia and you’ll lose performance for not having Nvidia.

All right this is getting ridiculous but you’re just 100% wrong here on so many levels, especially when it comes to performance. Since you seem convinced of that I’m not going to keep going but the AMD’s performance is fine and beats nVidia at the same price point pretty much across the board, not to mention the fact that their drivers have been fine since the late 5000 series.

You really like to argue for the point of arguing don’t you?
It has been said again and again, NVIDIA has better drivers than AMD. And again, games themselves are optimized to play on NVIDIA.
I really don’t see why you come back here just to argue AMD over Nvidia, and argue what a budget is.
It has been proven that “across the board” NVIDIA has won. R9 fury x, the top AMD card doesn’t beat 980 to and they are the same price.

So let us keep the opinions to ourselves and help the poor thread owner who has to scroll past your massive quote walls and other massive amounts of texts to find his answers for his $1100 budget PC for guild wars and the like.

Riku.4821:

You really like to argue for the point of arguing don’t you?

Not really. I just don’t like it when people try to pass off falsehoods as facts, for example this:

Riku.4821:

It has been said again and again, NVIDIA has better drivers than AMD. And again, games themselves are optimized to play on NVIDIA.

No matter how many times you say it doesn’t make it correct. Games are not “optimized to play on nVidia”; some games tend to favor nVidia, sure, but other games favor AMD. It’s basically a wash. Not to mention that trying to claim that AMD has bad drivers these days is like trying to claim that nVidia cards run hot because Fermi ran hot.

Riku.4821:

I really don’t see why you come back here just to argue AMD over Nvidia

Because people generally want to get the most out of their money?

Riku.4821:

and argue what a budget is.

That was sort of argument for the sake of argument, I guess.

Riku.4821:

It has been proven that “across the board” NVIDIA has won. R9 fury x, the top AMD card doesn’t beat 980 to and they are the same price.

This is why I continue to argue. It hasn’t been proven that nVidia wins across the board; benchmarks back up AMD winning in the majority of cases, with the 750ti and 980ti being the two notable exceptions and the 950 sometimes being competitive depending on the sale.

Riku.4821:

So let us keep the opinions to ourselves and help the poor thread owner who has to scroll past your massive quote walls and other massive amounts of texts to find his answers for his $1100 budget PC for guild wars and the like.

Sadly a lot of discussion can come into what the best pick for a PC is at a given price point

What about the new Skylake? Isn’t that a pretty good investment at this time?

Painless.6149:

What about the new Skylake? Isn’t that a pretty good investment at this time?

At this time? Not really.
It is WAY more expensive for the improvement they give, and the small performance is counting with the DDR4 sticks, which aren’t that cheap either.

So what upgrade would you recommend from an i5 3470? Specifically for GW2.

Painless.6149:

So what upgrade would you recommend from an i5 3470? Specifically for GW2.

Sincerely? None.
i5 3470 performance is very good, so if you really want to upgrade, then I suggest getting a i7 3770k and a good CPU cooler and OC that beauty, you’ll be able to keep every other part you have in your PC and get the best performance you can have in GW2.

If you’re mostly playing games an i5-3570k is a better buy them an i7, especially if you mostly play GW2. Most games aren’t multithreaded enough to take advantage of the i7 and an i5 should be much much cheaper then an i7 (~$130, $185-200 if you also need a motherboard. If you don’t have a Z77 motherboard it mount be worth going work something newer then Ivy Bridge, though)

Painless.6149:

So what upgrade would you recommend from an i5 3470? Specifically for GW2.

For Gw2 it would be an overclocked skylake + fast ddr4 (+3000MHz). You can get a non k i5 and overclock it to 4.4-4.6GHz with a z170.
Another option would be an overclocked broadwell i5 5675c with a Z97.

after you get a decent i7, dont kill yourself with $$$ on the rest of the parts like GPU, and crazy expensive ram.

i did put a little bit more into my PC, for photoshop and other things. but i play gw2 with

i7-4790k (330ish$)set to performance which runs at 4.6ghz (not overclocked)
16gb ram (85$)(was 8gb(50$), no diff in performance on gw2)
asus z97a mobo ,(90ish$)
rosewill challenger case (50$)(recently upgraded to thermaltake mk2 (100$)full tower for the lulz room and expandablility)
Sapphire Radeon HD 7850 1GB 256bit bus GPU<———- not a high end card. 100$ish now
250gb samsung SSD 850 evo (90$)i think with 1TB HDD (50$)for storage

i play on a 55inch TV at 1080P via HDMI, and the game is beautiful. i only turn reflections to terrain and sky, and i think character distance models to medium. i notice no difference either way on the model distance.

50ish FPS in LA, 60+ everywhere else (60hz refresh on display means u wont see anything above 60fps anyway, but FRAPS, and ingame options FPS match , shows up to 100fps alot of times.

unless your going 1440p or 4k monitors that require 500$GPU, spend ur cash on a nice CPU.

You got some very good advice already on the parts, so I’ll add to what people forgot to say.

PC is one of the most passionate communities there is, that means where ever you ask for help, someone will come, USE THAT.
If you’ve never built a PC you cannot watch too many YouTube videos about it, so watch them.

Make sure you get thinks like thermal compound right, get it a little bit wrong and it make a HUGE (negative) difference, check out on YouTube a few videos on how to remove and apply it, again CHECK A FEW, never go with just 1 on these things, there isn’t a “right way” to do it, so look for opinions.
If you want mine, use the pea method.

Also, if you’re buying a bare bones case and you need to add the fans yourself, remember some have to intake air and others exhaust it.

Lastly DON’T forget to map the fans speed on your BIOS.
That’s because software you might for windows might just control system fans and ignore CPU and GPU ones.
My latest build ran with the fans locked at 32% all the time because the mainboard came like that from the factory and I didn’t thought about checking it for a week, so DO CHECK IT and do remember you have system fans, CPU fan, GPU fans, all 3 are controlled independently.
Set the CPU and System fans map on the bios, and use the software of which ever graphic card you get to set the GPU ones.

You should make the system fans specially aggressive, because even if you break them with over use (something extremely rare) they’re super cheap and easy to replace.
Think about it, if you have to choose running the fans faster to safe guard the chips, run the fans faster.
The CPU one as well because there’s also available after market coolers on the odd chance you’ll break it by over use, but like I said, that doesn’t really happen, you have a better chance of winning the lottery than breaking a fan with “over use”.

Having that said don’t set them to run at 100% all the time, that is just dull.

If you need to OC your system to play GW2, you are doing something wrong.

If you need to OC your system, then you are doing something wrong.