I can't say I've ever had a faulty memory stick in over 20 years and many system builds (now I've jinxed it!), but it's a good point as it can happen.
Other Building a PC?
- Thread starter Earthquake
- Start date
Same here. Only thing I've ever had die on me are PSU's and AMD CPUs/boards (in the early 00s). The first PSU I lost was due to a power surge which also took my old CRT monitor out (used surge protectors on everything since), and the second PSU I lost was a Corsair RM850 which took my GTX780 with it
Had a replacement card from the store in 4 days though, so that wasn't too bad.But yeah, no faulty memory, drives (surprisingly), intel CPUs, GPUs
Lucky me, I guess.Bethesda have released the system requirements for Fallout 4.
Recommended
Windows 7/8/10 (64-bit OS required)
Intel Core i7 4790 3.6 GHz/AMD FX-9590 4.7 GHz or equivalent
8 GB RAM
30 GB free HDD space
NVIDIA GTX 780 3GB/AMD Radeon R9 290X 4GB or equivalent
That's a bit more expensive than what I was looking for.
Recommended
Windows 7/8/10 (64-bit OS required)
Intel Core i7 4790 3.6 GHz/AMD FX-9590 4.7 GHz or equivalent
8 GB RAM
30 GB free HDD space
NVIDIA GTX 780 3GB/AMD Radeon R9 290X 4GB or equivalent
That's a bit more expensive than what I was looking for.
that is bs , requirements are usually blown out of proportion to be 'sure'
I paid £440 in April for a 4790k, 8GB DDR3 2400 and an MSi Gaming 7. Add £200 for the GPU and then some sundry parts - it's not too bad? You can probably reuse a case or something?
i7 and R9? 
I mean I know it's going to be bugged as hell, but hopefully the port isn't that fecking bad!
(and yes, obviously the rec' specs are usually overplayed, but they don't like to too much as not to hurt sales).
I mean I know it's going to be bugged as hell, but hopefully the port isn't that fecking bad!
(and yes, obviously the rec' specs are usually overplayed, but they don't like to too much as not to hurt sales).
What do you reckon then, @Redlambs? Stick with the build I posted yesterday or move towards the recommended specs a bit? I mean, I don't think I can afford to go the whole hog, but I might be able to increase the budget if I hook it up to my TV rather than buy a monitor.
This is insane (same for The Witcher 3 and new Battlefield). How many people are able to play these games in recommended settings? Not many, I would guess.
Also, is there any laptop (including Alienwares which cost a fortune) which are able to run this? @Redlambs
It's total bullshit to cover their arses, that's all. I haven't encountered a PC game my 970 can't max out yet and that's with a PC that's over two years old.
I tried the Battlefront beta last night and my GTX460 (which was a low end card four years ago) ran it well enough on medium settings. Do I wander into conspiracy theory territory if I say they publish insanely high system specs to whip up hardware sales?
Why would software developers care about that?
Dunno. They're reptilians, probably.
Witcher 3 & Battlefront have visuals to justify such specs.
Fallout 4 doesn't... A GTX780 to play that ugly brown thing? Alright.
You'll be fine. Again though, I would reccomend 16gb as it will make a difference for this and future games, if budget is tight I'd drop the ssd as you can always add that in later. Just my opinion though!
As for rec' specs, I can confirm that Nvidia and the likes do like the specs released higher to push sales, however it's a balancing act as too high can slow sales. But they cover those potential losses up to a degree. Also bare in mind this will likely run like crap at the start anyway.
However, you can nearly always go well under specs if you have a clean and well set up system. People would be surprised just how low you can go and still run games to at least the XBone level.
Was thinking the same. A friend of mine played Witcher 3 without problems despite that it was way below recommended settings. My GPU is 630M which nowadays means awful and still was able to run it. It looked shit though, so I decided to not play it until I get a new PC.
Laptops aren't really my thing mate, but I'd be really surprised if there aren't many that can play it. After all, as I always say, the XB1/PS4 are closer to laptops than desktops in terms of power for what's in them.
Because all they major ones are associated with either nVidia or AMD nowadays so they post specs that'll encourage you to get their new cards.
You've seen those Nvidia or AMD logos as games start, or got a few free games with a graphics card.
Like I said above, they can't overdo it because it'll hurt sales too much, but it's a balancing act. However factor in the fact the engine is broken or it being a shit port, and they have to try to cover their bases. It's basically all bollocks, always treat recommended specs as top whack and minimum as recommended and you'll be fine
Like I say, my mate still uses my old E6600 dual core pentium from around 2005 as his cpu in his rig, and even with an R7 (1gb to boot) he has had no problems playing any current gen games to an acceptable level.
In fact, speaking of that, the video memory needed is the most fudged number! And why more system memory is what I recommend, because that can and will cover the slack when needed.
I've got a 960 in a 4 year old setup and it's chewing up everything I've thrown at it so far. It's so, so obvious that consoles are holding back PC gaming.
The PS4 is just about 2 years old now itself, positively ancient if we use the same scale of judgement as we used to concerning Gaming PC's but they're still being marketed as new technology and games are going to be optimized for them for at least the next 2 or 3 years.
It's a shame but PC gaming is a niche market and isn't big enough to justify the budget for PC optimized games that consoles would struggle with because lets face it, not enough people have a PC that could run them. We're probably idiots for it and other people won't understand why we prefer to spend the price of a console on a GPU and tripe or quadruple that on the rest of the system.
Well my system has worked out much cheaper in both hardware and software over the last 3 generations than console gaming.
It's a complete myth it has to cost more.
And yes, since the middle years of the 360/PS3 consoles have drastically held back PC graphics and graphic capabilities in general. We should be well ahead of where we are now, but thanks to idiots like Sony, MS and EA throwing ridiculous budgets and teams at everything in those early days then stringing out the generation to make money back, we are now stuck with a budget generation where for the first time in history you could build a low-mid end PC for pretty much the same price as a launch console that would match it. But I guess at least we are still getting hardware, when it all goes cloud/streaming, we are going to be longing for these days back in no time
It's a complete myth it has to cost more.
And yes, since the middle years of the 360/PS3 consoles have drastically held back PC graphics and graphic capabilities in general. We should be well ahead of where we are now, but thanks to idiots like Sony, MS and EA throwing ridiculous budgets and teams at everything in those early days then stringing out the generation to make money back, we are now stuck with a budget generation where for the first time in history you could build a low-mid end PC for pretty much the same price as a launch console that would match it. But I guess at least we are still getting hardware, when it all goes cloud/streaming, we are going to be longing for these days back in no time
Amen.Well my system has worked out much cheaper in both hardware and software over the last 3 generations than console gaming.
It's a complete myth it has to cost more.
And yes, since the middle years of the 360/PS3 consoles have drastically held back PC graphics and graphic capabilities in general. We should be well ahead of where we are now, but thanks to idiots like Sony, MS and EA throwing ridiculous budgets and teams at everything in those early days then stringing out the generation to make money back, we are now stuck with a budget generation where for the first time in history you could build a low-mid end PC for pretty much the same price as a launch console that would match it. But I guess at least we are still getting hardware, when it all goes cloud/streaming, we are going to be longing for these days back in no time
As my PC is 4 years old, I've been considering upgrading for a while and really enjoyed figuring out what sort of stuff I could upgrade to and wondering how far I should stretch. I was looking at some OC'd Mobo/CPU/RAM bundles that were anywhere between £300 and £500 and wondering how much I could sell my old setup for if I put my old 560ti back in it as a very very budget games machine...
Then realised there is absolutely no point whatsoever in me doing this right now other than for the enjoyment of building it and that initial buzz of benchmarking.
My PC bricked a few weeks a go.
It had been intermittently losing signal to the monitor and then started to reset itself. One night it shut down and won't boot now.
Any suggestions as to what it could be @Redlambs?
It had been intermittently losing signal to the monitor and then started to reset itself. One night it shut down and won't boot now.
Any suggestions as to what it could be @Redlambs?
Maybe you'd like to buy a 4 year old but still very competent gaming PC?
Haha, I might have to. I really can't be bothered troubleshooting it.
I think it's the graphics card.
Define "max." 1080p/1440p/2160p? 16:10? 30, 60, 90, 120+ fps? 2xFXAA or 8xMSAA? That's why these recommended settings are pretty much useless, and independent tech review sites rule the roost.
The computer doesn't boot at all? No hdd action?
It does actually sound like it could be the graphics card, but the mobo might be fried.
Yeah, max settings are rarely even the max. Especially, if like me, the first thing you do with new games is check out the .ini files
I can hear the PSU start and all the LEDs light up. I can't remember if I get the beep from the Mobo. If i don't get the beep can I assume it's the Mobo?
I might be wrong but do modern motherboards still come with those old style piezo beepy PC speakers? If you aren't hearing anything, it might just mean your PC doesn't have that particular speaker or it's disabled in some way.
It does have one.
Quick update, guys. I've purchased all the components from my list, I've added another 8GB of RAM (cheers @Redlambs), and everything should arrive tomorrow. Now all I need are a monitor and an OS. What do people recommend? Budget for the monitor will be about £150, but I'm willing to move on that if the consensus is that you wouldn't get a good monitor for that price.
Update on my bricked rig.
Me and a friend managed to get it to boot after removing the CMOS battery and we got about 10mins out of it before it shut down again.
We then thought the CPU may have been overheating, so thought it'd be a good idea to remove it and rehouse it and the fan. However after a few beers lining up a CPU isn't easy and we bent loads of the pins. But I'm fairly certain the CPU was overheating and that's what caused the issues. Would you agree @Redlambs
Me and a friend managed to get it to boot after removing the CMOS battery and we got about 10mins out of it before it shut down again.
We then thought the CPU may have been overheating, so thought it'd be a good idea to remove it and rehouse it and the fan. However after a few beers lining up a CPU isn't easy and we bent loads of the pins. But I'm fairly certain the CPU was overheating and that's what caused the issues. Would you agree @Redlambs
I've experienced similar to what you're describing and in my case it was the CPU overheating. The locks of the CPU cooler were a little busted so the cooler wasn't pressed as tight against the CPU as it should've been, so the heat wasn't transmitted properly through the thermal paste anymore. If your PC boots for a short time after a prolonged period of rest and doesn't respond anymore immediately afterwards, that's typically an overheating problem somewhere.
Yes, it could well be. To be honest without the system infront of you it's hard to diagnose as all sorts of problems cause the same symptoms. How badly are the pins bent on the cpu? You can VERY carefully bend them back.
When reseating the heatsink it's vitual to get all the old paste off first. You can get cleaner and replacement thermal paste (arctic silver usually) easily enough and it isn't a tough job, you just need to take care. That may well be all you need to cool to cpu again (assuming it isn't borked, though I've seen them survive plenty of times).
I had a laptop that used to shut down all the time due to over heating, I stripped it down and cleaned the CPU with aftershave ( not joking ) and cotton wool buds, cleaned all the dust out and it worked a treat after that.
The hardest part was getting the back of the laptop and the million screws in it.
The hardest part was getting the back of the laptop and the million screws in it.
Have to let me know how it goes, I might build it too. Fancy a new PC.
We tried to fix it but I think we made it worse. I'm just going to buy a new CPU, and maybe a proper cooling system rather than just the stock fan. I may have to wait until new year though. I'm just glad we did get it to boot, albeit only once. My worry was it was the gfx because that would have cost the most to replace.
You can get cpus with proper cooling attached these days. Worth doing for the joint warranty alone.
Hopefully the gfx is fine, it should be mate.
Will do!
I've always wanted to try out PC gaming, but always ignored it, as it just seems very expensive and not very future proof
(I know that is probably a negative way to look at it)
I've been playing fallout 3 on my laptop though, and for some reason, I've just enjoyed it, so it's kinda making me want to get one.
So my 2 questions are:
1. If I spent £1000 on a pc lets say, using a custom build, how long would it last, playing games at a very high level
2. What amazing games are there that would benefit me getting one over my Xbox one
PS. I cant imagine I'd ever K/B Mouse game, I'd plug in my xbox controller
(I know that is probably a negative way to look at it)
I've been playing fallout 3 on my laptop though, and for some reason, I've just enjoyed it, so it's kinda making me want to get one.
So my 2 questions are:
1. If I spent £1000 on a pc lets say, using a custom build, how long would it last, playing games at a very high level
2. What amazing games are there that would benefit me getting one over my Xbox one
PS. I cant imagine I'd ever K/B Mouse game, I'd plug in my xbox controller