Guild Wars 2

Good afternoon ladies and gents. Been looking to pick up a desktop to play GW2 on now that I’m back stateside for good. Been gaming on my ASUS G73JH notebook the last few years while I was overseas, but now it’s time to upgrade.

I’d like to be able to play on higher graphics settings if possible (and I don’t do much WvW overall so not counting that at all). I won’t need to buy a monitor or mouse, probably not a keyboard either unless I find one that is just cool haha.

Price range I’d prefer about $1000 but small adjustments either way are reasonable.

The bad thing is I don’t know how to build my own. My last PC I bought a fairly basic setup (I think around $500 computer) and just put a much better graphics card in it, and some RAM, and it worked very well for a few years, looking to do something similar again.

One of our medics was coming to Colorado and was going to teach me how to build mine but got sent to GA at the last minute so I’m pretty out of luck there.

I appreciate your guys’ time, wish I knew more about this stuff.

i5 3570K, and any cooler if you want one (optional, 3570K ships with one)
If you don’t plan on overclocking, then you could use a non-overclockable processor like an i5 3470 or even 3450. That may bring the price down by maybe 30 or 40. I haven’t checked the prices in a while
A gigabyte Z77 motherboard or other brand equivalent, like MSi or Asus, etc.
8 GB DDR3 1333 or 1600 whichever, or even 6 GB. that could take an extra 20 bucks off.
GTX 660Ti or equivalent
650 watt PSU Corsair or equivalent,
regular case and chassis to carry it
DVD drive if desired (Woo, 20-30 dollars for an extremely common model)
And of course, Windows 7 or Windows 8, unless you have product key ready to go.

This is about the usual build I commonly hear about people having. If it’s not a GTX 660 Ti though, it’s like a Radeon HD 7770 or 7790 or 7850.

This’ll play the game very good and should be around 1,000 to 1,200.

I can’t argue with those specs but I’d like to add that some o/c-ing might be an idea. There’s no guaranties with that though.

Chances are if he isnt secure about building his own rig, he wont be OC’ing

So yea i would advise same as above however if u don want a Nvidia 660ti the equivalent AMD is a 7870XT/LE, anything lower and its a downgrade form a 660ti.

CPU wise ur other option is the newer 4670k, which uses a LGA Z87 type board. Try get a Gigabyte or Asus motherboard, they are really good and i can personaly vouch for them, im running a Z87 Gigabyte board rig and a Z79 Asus board rig.
DO get a aftermarket cooler, comthing cheap and commonly used liek the Coolermaster 212 Evo would be a great choice, the stock coolers are absolute pants :P

RAM wise get CL9 1600mhz or even 1866mhz as they are coming down in price now that the newer 2600mhz + RAM is becoming more available.

Go to youtube and look for building guides, putting a rig together is like grown up lego, everything has its own place so its very hard to go wrong. only thing u need to take care to avoid is static electricity.

SolarNova.1052:

So yea i would advise same as above however if u don want a Nvidia 660ti the equivalent AMD is a 7870XT/LE, anything lower and its a downgrade form a 660ti.

Pretty sure the 660 Ti equivalent from AMD is a 7870 GHz Edition. 7870 XT is Tahiti material from the 7900 series.

The 7870XT can match a 7950, which in turn is roughly a 660ti.
Theres a steady performance line from lower models of both manufacturers up to the GTX 770, the only major jump is from the gtx 770 to the 780.

For general gaming a good place to be however is ‘around’ the 660ti/760/7870XT/7950 kind of area in terms of performance.

At this point in time there is no reason to get a 660ti when a 760 costs the same. Ofc if you can find a deal then there is an exception.

Having just build 3 PCs recently, I highly recommend the ASRock Z77 Extreme 4 motherboard. Pretty cheap and very awesome.

Also, any SSD to put your OS and GW2 on will speed up loading times greatly.

Here’s the somewhat cheaper side of what I’d probably build: http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/PublicWishDetail.aspx?WishListNumber=23664166

Obviously, any case/keyboard/monitor will work. If you want to pour more money into it, I’d go ahead and get a 256GB 840 pro SSD.

When on a tight budget an SSD is a big no no. Its just a drain on ur wallet. the money spent on an SSD would be much better spent ,with a budget like this, on a better GPU or CPU.

Spend money on things that give a high performance boosts 1st.

Talindra.4958:

I was pretty proud of myself to assembled my second desktop
Following is my current setup.
Intel core i7 4770k Haswell
Asus Maximus VI hero z87
Corsair 16GB (2×8GB) vengeance ddr3 1600Mhz
Antec 620W PSU
Antec 1100 case
128GB SSD
Western digi 3T Sata HD
corsair Hydro H60 cpu cooler (love it & its really easy to install n look cool for me xD)

It cost me at that time Australian$1600ish it should be cheaper now

Nice cabling job, very professional looking.

SolarNova.1052
When on a tight budget an SSD is a big no no. Its just a drain on ur wallet. the money spent on an SSD would be much better spent ,with a budget like this, on a better GPU or CPU.

Spend money on things that give a high performance boosts 1st.

man i kindly disagree with this.
a faster cpu would make your pc better only in certain situation, a better gpu will make your pc faster in even less situation, beside gaming.
i’m pretty sure that if you build a pc you don’t want to use it only for gw2 and an ssd is by far the best upgrade you can make on a pc, boot time is way shorter, programs starts b4 u realize u made the 2 click!
think of it, anything that is saved on a disk needs to be put in ram memory to beused.
sure, ram is dam fast memory, but the bottleneks is the hdd in this case (ram speed is to be considered also when comunicating withthe cpu).
when you open gw and load a map (i guess!!!!!!) is loaded into ram, so the total max speed achivable is your hdd speed.
an ssd in general would make a loading screen like 5 time faster (for offline games i guess), even tho is true that network has a role for mmo.
ssd are dam cheap compared to 2-5 years ago, and have different ranges and models.
for 200$ you get 5x better performance (hdd average 100MB/s ssd 500MB/s) 80% of the time you use a pc.
no compare this to an upgrade from latest i5 to latest i7 “extreme”, 250$ to 1k$ and i’m not sure you get that multiplier even in benchmarks!

oloap.9765:

SolarNova.1052
When on a tight budget an SSD is a big no no. Its just a drain on ur wallet. the money spent on an SSD would be much better spent ,with a budget like this, on a better GPU or CPU.

Spend money on things that give a high performance boosts 1st.

man i kindly disagree with this.
a faster cpu would make your pc better only in certain situation, a better gpu will make your pc faster in even less situation, beside gaming.
i’m pretty sure that if you build a pc you don’t want to use it only for gw2 and an ssd is by far the best upgrade you can make on a pc, boot time is way shorter, programs starts b4 u realize u made the 2 click!
think of it, anything that is saved on a disk needs to be put in ram memory to beused.
sure, ram is dam fast memory, but the bottleneks is the hdd in this case (ram speed is to be considered also when comunicating withthe cpu).
when you open gw and load a map (i guess!!!!!!) is loaded into ram, so the total max speed achivable is your hdd speed.
an ssd in general would make a loading screen like 5 time faster (for offline games i guess), even tho is true that network has a role for mmo.
ssd are dam cheap compared to 2-5 years ago, and have different ranges and models.
for 200$ you get 5x better performance (hdd average 100MB/s ssd 500MB/s) 80% of the time you use a pc.
no compare this to an upgrade from latest i5 to latest i7 “extreme”, 250$ to 1k$ and i’m not sure you get that multiplier even in benchmarks!

I like this, good points 4 sure. If the consumer isn’t just going for GAMING then this is some sound advice. I like the other point earlier in thread as well just depends on what the consumer wants.

An SSD doesn not increase ingame performance whilst playing.
Load times yes, but that matters not. SSD’s do not increase FPS.

They may not be as expensive as they used ot be but that 200$ u could upgrade a GTX 760 to a 770 for example, a much better investment. Or a 3570k to a 3770k. Or buy top end AIO water cooler so you can OC.

now if ur not gaming and ur doing other things with alot of storage activty and loading times..then yes an SSD is great. .but this is the GW2 forums, this thread is “PC for GW2” :P

SolarNova.1052:

The 7870XT can match a 7950

They use exactly the same chipset, which is why you can CrossfireX them. Crossfiring families of chipsets that weren’t alike in the not-so-distant past was forbidden, you just couldn’t do it.. but the XT/Boost series 78xx cards are using the same chipset as the model up (79xx).

More food for though if you want xtra-purdy graphics.

I can’t speak for SolarNova but if the choice is including an SSD but weaker graphics, CPU and no normal HD is straight up dumb choice. SSDs are budget busters.

Same with just going with one over a HD. At 8x the cost per GB you are going to either spend a whole lot more and/or end up with a whole lot less storage. I’m not saying you shouldn’t get an SSD, just get one to supplement a HD not replace it. And if it’s a budget issue, leave it out.

If you had $50 more would you swap out your 500GB HD for a 120GB SSD or upgrade your build from a GTX 660 to a GTX 760? Remember, the OS is going to chew up 35-40GB on it’s own. Could your gaming habits survive in only 80GB?

Behellagh.1468:

Could your gaming habits survive in only 80GB?

Mine did, way back in the days where games were only 2-6 GB! I had a 90 GB HDD.

Same here. If you are a big retrogaming fan then 80GB should be plenty. But with modern games and MMOs routinely topping 10GB each, that’s not a lot of variety.

Winslow forbid if you have a Steam habit.

I stick with my advice to get an SSD actually. I’ve got a GTX 560ti, and my wife has a GTX 460, and we both get completely smooth FPS in maxed out settings 1080p even in the craziest huge boss or WvW fights. Upgrading our GPUs would give us absolutely nothing as far as playing GW2. Upgrading our SSDs, however, made a massive difference. No — you don’t get any FPS boost or any better in-game performance. But loading times is actually a pretty big deal.

Depending on how tight the budget is, a small SSD with just the OS and GW2 on it would probably not damage your wallet as much as you think. There are many models that are constantly going on sale. Boot times alone, I won’t go back to a standard HDD for the OS but then again I am spoiled :P

An SSD doesn’t have much of an impact on GW2 really (I have tried it on and off an SSD). The difference in load times etc is very marginal. But it’s still worth it just to put the OS on.

Also I wouldn’t bother with an i7 for gaming, get an i5 and save money. The only reason you would need an i7 is for vmware/hyperv or other apps that use hyper-threading and make use of the logical cores. No games do so you won’t see any benefit.

Some games do use hyper-threaded cores in games, a notable one is Battlefield 3 and Crysis 3. With the new console systems coming out, devs will be using that hardware to their advantage which will translate into PC games in the very near future using those extra cores(threads).

Avelos.6798:

Behellagh.1468:

Could your gaming habits survive in only 80GB?

Mine did, way back in the days where games were only 2-6 GB! I had a 90 GB HDD.

Pfft, kids these days. 2GB hard drive and Fifa 97 taking up 110MB of that were the real golden age!

The new consols (PS4, Xbone) use 8core AMD systems. Each individual core is extremly week, the game developers will have no choice but to highly thread optimise their games. So expect future games, specialy those ported to and from the Consols, to have better performance in i7’s.

Just food for thought. ATM an i5 is usualy enough. GW2 in some csituations can benefit from an i7, but its not a must have.

SolarNova.1052:

The new consols (PS4, Xbone) use 8core AMD systems. Each individual core is extremly week,

nooooooooooooooooope. That’s an understatement. They maybe somewhat weaker than the intel counterparts but they’re not in the extreme zone

Avelos.6798:

SolarNova.1052:

The new consols (PS4, Xbone) use 8core AMD systems. Each individual core is extremly week,

nooooooooooooooooope. That’s an understatement. They maybe somewhat weaker than the intel counterparts but they’re not in the extreme zone

Your wrong Avelos. The Jaguar core is an updated Bobcat core found the the C and E-series of low power mobile AMD CPUs, the ones originally designed for netbooks and now tablets, inexpensive laptops and with the occasional “sucker” desktops. The 1.7GHz E2-1800 has a single/dual core Passmark of 446/847. The mobile 1.6GHz Celeron 1017u (dual core similar wattage) score is 869/1547.

Now Jaguar is suppose to be 15% faster per clock so that would put a PS4 or XBox One core at 2GHz (a guess), a single core Passmark of roughly 600 (a guesstimate). So yes SolarNova is right, the next gen consoles will have 8 “weak” cores.

Oh then I must have been thinking AMD FX there