Good Build for 1440p?

jmracerboy

Honorable
Feb 20, 2014
167
0
10,710
Hi,

Will this be sufficient for 1440p gaming at 60fps ultra settings?

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-4790K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor (£227.94 @ Aria PC)
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-D14 65.0 CFM CPU Cooler (£64.98 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z97X-Gaming GT ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (£178.63 @ More Computers)
Memory: Kingston Fury White Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£109.33 @ Aria PC)
Storage: Samsung 840 EVO 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£83.99 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£37.97 @ CCL Computers)
Video Card: Sapphire Radeon R9 290 4GB Tri-X Video Card (2-Way CrossFire) (£277.99 @ Aria PC)
Video Card: Sapphire Radeon R9 290 4GB Tri-X Video Card (2-Way CrossFire) (£277.99 @ Aria PC)
Case: Cooler Master Storm Stryker (White) ATX Full Tower Case (£123.00 @ Scan.co.uk)
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA 1000G2 1000W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply (£138.12 @ Scan.co.uk)
Optical Drive: Samsung SH-224DB/BEBE DVD/CD Writer (£11.05 @ CCL Computers)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8 (OEM) (64-bit) (£72.77 @ Ebuyer)
Monitor: AOC Q2770PQU 60Hz 27.0" Monitor (£355.63 @ Amazon UK)
Wireless Network Adapter: TP-Link TL-WN781ND 802.11b/g/n PCI-Express x1 Wi-Fi Adapter (£7.91 @ Aria PC)
Case Fan: Corsair Air Series SP120 Quiet Edition 37.9 CFM 120mm Fan (£10.94 @ Scan.co.uk)
Keyboard: SHARKOON Skiller Wired Gaming Keyboard (£14.99 @ Aria PC)
Total: £1993.23
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-08-10 11:46 BST+0100
 
Solution
That's enough fans! Great build. Perfect, in my opinion. Nearly exactly what I would have recommended. :)
Enjoy! Those cards work great in Crossfire.
Maybe go for a different case though, like a Corsair 750D or NZXT Phantom 530? :)

Alex Kelly

Honorable
That's enough fans! Great build. Perfect, in my opinion. Nearly exactly what I would have recommended. :)
Enjoy! Those cards work great in Crossfire.
Maybe go for a different case though, like a Corsair 750D or NZXT Phantom 530? :)
 
Solution
I know it's been "solved" but a few points:

1) All the R9-290/290X cards i've been carefully reviewing with customer comments have a lot more problems (likely heat related) than similar NVidia cards.

I started out WANTING to recommend a $400 R9-290 but the only card i even felt comfortable recommending cost $460 or almost the price of an EVGA GTX780 967MHz which has about the best reviews out there.

2) SLI works better than CROSSFIRE:
You can compare a few recent games and it looks like maybe they're similar but overall SLI is better.

*Note that DX9 support for Crossfire still is not working properly. AMD has reported fixing the RUNT issue is still on their "To Do" list. This issue means then 2nd GPU often produces minimal output so FRAPS reports 60FPS when you're seeing 30FPS effectively which is pretty crappy considering how much money you spent.

3) GTX870/880 cards are coming fairly soon.
They will likely beat the current AMD cards in both value and noise. Look at the GTX750Ti and we realize the new Maxwell GPU is very power efficient which translates into far less noise with a similar cooler.

The GTX880 is estimated to cost about $500 USD and perform similar to top-end GTX780Ti. Or perhaps SLI a 2xGTX870 setup...

4) Noctua cooler:
That's a great cooler, just make sure it FITS and doesn't impinge your top PCIe slot or memory. It did on some boards. The Noctua NH-U12S is a great cooler as well. I've tested it on the i7-3770K and i5-4670K at 4.2GHz and it was very quiet.

5) POWER SUPPLY:
As I'm recommending the GTX870/880, you'll be able to get away with far less power needed. Probably 850W will be plenty.

6) Monitor:
Probably a good monitor, just keep in mind that IPS does cause some ghosting. It's a tradeoff between slightly better color and viewing angles versus less ghosting on 1ms TN panels.

Summary:
I'm basically recommending you switch to an SLI setup with the new Maxwell cards. You can still buy the rest of the computer and use the iGPU or a spare video card while you wait.

2560x1440 gaming:
I have a high-res monitor and GTX680 graphics card. While I love it (Dell U2711) gaming at 1440p often doesn't look much different than at 1080p. Games like CRYSIS series for example look almost identical.

Games that DO look noticeably better have small HUD/Text elements and usually these are 3rd person or "god" games such as Torchlight, Diablo 3, Starcraft 2, CIV5 etc and luckily these all tend to work on MAX quality with only a GTX680/770 or less anyway.

*Thus, consider getting a single GTX880 card to start with and see if you really need a better card. Again, just game at 1080p for games you can't max at 2560x1440 60FPS..

NVIDIA:
Aside form G-Sync I forgot to mention:

PHYSX: You're missing out on some extra graphics in several games.

Shadowplay: record gameplay or desktop with minimal FPS impact (same feature also makes streaming gaming like the new Steam feature work better as it does real-time encoding of the video with the same NVENC hardware encoder).

TXAA: better AA when supported by game.