Advice Required r.e Gaming PC for a Specific MMO

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Reggie256

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Jul 5, 2016
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Hi all - looking for advice if possible. My laptop, mostly used for playing a particular MMO game and browsing, is now five years old and struggling to run very efficiently. To be fair it wasn't purchased with gaming in mind - I discovered the MMO I play not too long after I purchased the laptop; it has done well but it is beginning to reflect its age and I suspect that the old Nvidia GT640 within it is beginning to struggle.

I am therefore looking to purchase an actual gaming desktop PC now, with the fact that the primary use will be playing the MMO Star Trek Online. I will however admit that my knowledge of PC's is pretty much limited to having some knowledge regarding which processors and GPUs are any good; so with the PC’s primary use in mind I have, so far, viewed these two options:

PC Specialist Custom Build:
Case
InWIN 703 MID TOWER GAMING CASE (BLACK/RED)

Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i5 Quad Core Processor i5-6600 (3.3GHz) 6MB Cache

Motherboard
ASUS® H110M-D D3: Micro-ATX, LG1151, USB 3.0, SATA 6GBs

Memory (RAM)
8GB HyperX FURY DUAL-DDR3 1600MHz (1 x 8GB)

Graphics Card
2GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 960 - DVI, HDMI, 3 x DP (Special!!)

1st Hard Disk
240GB KINGSTON UV400 2.5" SSD, SATA 6 Gb (550MB/R, 490MB/W)

2nd Hard Disk
1TB SATA-III 3.5" HDD, 6GB/s, 7200RPM, 32MB CACHE

1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM

Power Supply
CORSAIR 450W VS SERIES™ VS-450 POWER SUPPLY

Processor Cooling
CoolerMaster Hyper 212 EVO (120mm) Fan CPU Cooler (£29)

Thermal Paste
STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING

Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)

Wireless/Wired Networking
10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT (Wi-Fi NOT INCLUDED)

USB Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS

Power Cable
1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)



Second Option:

Alienware Alpha R2:
Intel® Core™ i5 6400T (Quad-Core, 6MB Cache, up to 2.8GHz w/ Turbo Boost)

Windows 10 Home English

NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX960 GPU 4GB GDDR5

8GB (1x8G) 2133MHz DDR4 Memory

512GB M.2 PCIe Solid State Drive

My budget is £750 and whilst the Alienware Alpha goes very slightly above that, at £765, the PC Specialist build came to £720.
So could anyone please kindly advise me which would be better, or offer advice regarding alternatives?
 
Solution
jpatrick2


I would probably go with the first one you posted then.
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jpatrick2

jpatrick2

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May 4, 2016
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have you thought of building your own PC? You could have a much better PC for that price. Some of the parts included with the lists you posted are not great, you could get better for the same money.
 
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Anarkie13

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Jun 30, 2015
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I've shifted a few things and got the following:

The reasoning is simple, the i5 and 960 is overkill. I'd rather go pure SSD in that case, for total system speed. Not needed (a 7200 RMP HDD will run what you need) but it's fun to have near zero load times. The Skylake 6100 and 950 will be more than enough for that and many other games.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i3-6100 3.7GHz Dual-Core Processor (£98.99 @ Novatech)
Motherboard: Asus H110M-A Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard (£50.99 @ Ebuyer)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-2133 Memory (£32.99 @ Novatech)
Storage: Mushkin Reactor 1TB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£239.53 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 950 2GB Superclocked+ ACX 2.0 Video Card (£134.99 @ Overclockers.co.uk)
Case: Thermaltake Versa H22 ATX Mid Tower Case (£31.11 @ CCL Computers)
Power Supply: SeaSonic S12II 620W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply (£61.75 @ CCL Computers)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Home OEM 64-bit (£71.98 @ CCL Computers)
Total: £722.33
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-07-05 15:53 BST+0100
 
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Reggie256

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Jul 5, 2016
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To be honest I'm not confident about building my own, which was one of the reasons I was looking at PC Specialist. I may have another look on their website and see if can put a slightly cheaper build together.
 
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jpatrick2

jpatrick2

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Simon is right, that game doesn't require much in terms of power. If you ever plan to play anything else though, you might want a better PC. Building yourself is not all that hard, watch some YouTube videos. Here's what I would look to get:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-6600K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor (£194.99 @ Ebuyer)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler (£27.98 @ Novatech)
Motherboard: ASRock Fatal1ty Z170 Gaming K4 ATX LGA1151 Motherboard (£95.84 @ CCL Computers)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR4-2400 Memory (£26.49 @ Ebuyer)
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£69.99 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: XFX Radeon RX 480 8GB XXX OC Video Card (£218.99 @ Ebuyer)
Case: Phanteks ECLIPSE P400 ATX Mid Tower Case (£51.86 @ CCL Computers)
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA G2 650W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply (£74.99 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £761.13
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-07-05 16:05 BST+0100

This build is as future-proof as you can get with 750 Euro. You would have a Z170 motherboard with a skylake i5 that you can overclock, plenty of upgrade options later if you want to add more ram or storage or even crossfire later down the line.
 
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Reggie256

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Jul 5, 2016
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Thanks again; still not confident about attempting to build a PC myself though.

And I can't see myself playing anything else anytime soon to be honest; my online time is limited and I've been playing STO for the past five years.
 
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jpatrick2

jpatrick2

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May 4, 2016
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I would probably go with the first one you posted then.
 
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Reggie256

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Jul 5, 2016
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Well, I guess I could tweak that first build; if you say the GTX960 is overkill perhaps it might be worth making a saving and selecting the GTX950 instead?

Edit: Saying that, PCS have a 'special' on the 960 at the moment and there is only a £9 price difference between the 950 & 960.
 
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jpatrick2

jpatrick2

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If STO is the only game you will be playing EVER, then yeah just save yourself some money. If you think you'll want to play other games eventually, you might not have enough juice - especially if it's a newer game.
 
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Reggie256

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Can't see myself playing anything else to be honest.

Although guess it might be worth shopping around for pre-built PC's, in view of the advice given in this thread.
 
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jaguarskx

jaguarskx

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Hi Reggie256, it seems like you are getting answers to your post.

If you are looking to cut cost out of your PC build, then you can begin with the SSD. It's a lot faster than a hard drive, but if you have been living out a SSD for all this time, then you have nothing to worry about. The thing about load times in STO and other MMOs is the lag when your PC is waiting for a response from the game server. It does not matter if data is read / written at faster than the speed of light. If the game is waiting on some type of response from the server to load up a map, then you are basically stuck.

While you can definitely play STO with a GTX 950, the GTX 960 is a better option if you want more eye candy. However, there are some people that complained STO has too many special effects during space combat see what is happening / keep track of what abilities are being activated.

If you like eye candy, then remember that STO will be getting some graphics updates later this year or perhaps early next year. The improved graphics is mostly lighting I believe and only comes into be play when you using one of the higher graphic settings. The devs stated the intent is not to have any impact on low spec machines (basically those relying on integrated graphics).
 
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Reggie256

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Jul 5, 2016
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Thanks for the reply. Still have mixed feelings about where to do with this. The PCS build seems better and would presumably be more 'future proof' than the Alienware Alpha R2.

I guess the PCS build I posted is the best option; it is within budget and PCS have a special offer on the GTX960 which makes it only £9 more expensive than the 950. Only problem is, as per an earlier reply, the build is overkill for STO.
 
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jaguarskx

jaguarskx

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Both PCS and Alienware PCs allows for some upgrades. From the specs you listed the PCS has:

1. A more powerful CPU. The difference is not huge, but and extra 500MHz can come in handy when doing something that is CPU intensive.
2. Both a SSD and standard HDD and overall higher storage capacity.


As for the Alienware you get:

1. 4GB of dedicated VRAM for the GTX 960 as opposed to only 2GB of VRAM for the GTX 960 in the PCS option. For STO, the difference in the amount of VRAM does not mean much since the game does not have ultra quality textures which can take up a lot of VRAM.
2. 512GB SSD compared to only 240GB SSD. SSDs are nice since they allow programs to launch faster and make the PC feel more responsive, but they are not absolutely necessary. Still, 512GB of SSD storage is nice, but the Alienware has more storage capacity because of the 1TB HDD.
3. DDR4 RAM. Sure DDR4 RAM is faster than DDR3 RAM, but the actual difference in terms of average usage is extremely minimal.


Both PCs will allow you to upgrade the components. However, the Alienware will likely limit you only to other "T" model Intel CPUs that have a TDP of 35w. The i5-6600 CPU has a TDP of 65w. Generally, speaking, TDP generally refers to how much heat the CPU generates (and indirectly how much power it can draw). The Alpha is a small PC which means there is not a lot of room for cooling.

It comes down to aesthetics, the Alpha's smaller size means you have more options to place it where you want and is less likely to stick out like a sore thumb. The PCS is more of a traditional looking PC.
 
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Reggie256

Commendable
Jul 5, 2016
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Thanks for the reply - have to say, the Alienware Alpha R2 is beginning to look like the better option to be honest.

Though one thing I am not clear on - you refer to a TB HDD, which I'm not sure the alienware had?
 
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Reggie256

Commendable
Jul 5, 2016
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Well, as I haven't yet purchased a new PC I thought I'd resurrect this query - there are obviously quite a few new GPU's on the market now, so could anyone advise me further with that in mind please?
 
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jaguarskx

jaguarskx

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There's the nVidia Pascal family of GPUs which are in the "GTX 10" series like the 1060, 1070 and 1080.

Not sure if and when the GTX 1080 Ti will come out. But the GTX 1080 is about 70% more powerful than the GTX 980 and around 35% more powerful than thr GTX 980 Ti.

AMD has nothing to compete with on the high end. Then against most of the revenue for dedicated GPU are from mainstream GPUs.


Intel's 7th generation Kaby Lake CPU should be released in Q4 2016. However, the performance boost for games would to negligible.
 
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Reggie256

Commendable
Jul 5, 2016
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Well, opted for the following build from PC Specialist in the end:

Intel® Core™i5 Quad Core Processor i5-6600 (3.3GHz) 6MB Cache

Motherboard
ASUS® H110M-R: Micro-ATX, DDR4, LG1151, USB 3.0, SATA 6GBs

Memory (RAM)
16GB HyperX FURY DDR4 2133MHz (2 x 8GB)

Graphics Card
3GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 1060 - DVI, HDMI, 3 x DP

1st Hard Disk
250GB Samsung 850 2.5" EVO SSD, SATA 6Gb/s (upto 540MB/sR | 520MB/sW)

2nd Hard Disk 1TB SATA-III 3.5" HDD, 6GB/s, 7200RPM, 32MB CACHE

1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM

Power Supply
CORSAIR 450W VS SERIES™ VS-450 POWER SUPPLY

Power Cable
1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)

Processor Cooling
Super Quiet Titan DragonFly Heatpipe Intel CPU Cooler

Thermal Paste
STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING

Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)

Wireless/Wired Networking
10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT (Wi-Fi NOT INCLUDED)

USB Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS

Operating System
Genuine Windows 10 Home 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence

Thanks to everyone who offerred advice :)
 
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