FFXI And FFXIV Computer Build Help.

Okay, so I am putting together a computer that will be for gaming only. I want to get back to playing FFXI (no one ever quits) and also be able to play FFXIV once it comes out. Anyone have any suggestions of what I should be getting? This is a list of the parts that I have picked out but I want to know what others think too.


G452-1028 ::Gigabyte 880GMA-UD2H Motherboard - Socket AM3, AMD 880G, MicroATX, USB, HDMI, DVI, PCIe, RAID(3.1 lbs)

A79-1965 ::AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition AM3 CPU HDZ965FBGMBOX - 3.40GHz, Socket AM3, 6MB Cache, 2000MHz (4000 MT/s) FSB, Retail, Processor with Fan(1.15 lbs)

T13-1106 ::Coolmax CUG-950B 950-Watt Power Supply - ATX, SATA-Ready, PCI-E Ready, Modular(6.6 lbs)

ULT40135 A ::Ultra Performance 120mm Case Fan Bundle - Buy One Get One Free(1.96 lbs)

TSD-800AARS ::Western Digital WD8000AARS Caviar Green Hard Drive - 800GB, 3.5", SATA-3G(1 lbs)

P33-7114 ::Patriot PGV34G1333ELK Sector 5 4GB PC10666 RAM - DDR3, 1333MHz, 2x2048MB, 9-9-9-27(0.2 lbs)

P56-9824 ::PNY VCG98GTEE1XPB GeForce 9800 GT EE 1024MB Graphics Card - 1024MB, GDDR3, PCI Express 2.0, SLI Ready, (Dual Link) Dual DVI, Stereo, Dual VGA Support(1.3 lbs)

L12-1312 OEM ::Lite-On IHAS124-04 Internal DVD Writer - DVD+R 24X, DVD-R 24X, DVD+RW 8X, DVD-RW 6X, DVD+R DL 8X, SATA (OEM)(1.85 lbs)

ULT40493 ::Ultra ChillTec Silver CPU Cooler - LGA 775/1366, AM2/AM2+/AM3(3.46 lbs)

C44-3400 ::Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy SE(2.45 lbs)

A406-1115 ::NZXT Zero 2 Craft Series Full Tower Case - Steel Chassis, Quad 120mm Fans, Dual 120mm Exhaust, Top Mounted USB, Audio, eSATA(30 lbs)

You can buy a better gfx card than the 9800 esp with a 950 watt PS lol.

Unless you're on a budget of course ;)

For starters, I'd advise you to avoid Gigabyte motherboards. I know lots of people say good things about them, but my only experience with a Gigabyte board was a nightmare. They advertised the board as supporting up to 4GB of memory at up to DDR 400. So I bought two 500MB DDR 400 modules for use with the motherboard. The system would not boot. After about 2 and a half weeks of troubleshooting and research, I finally got in touch with a tech who knew his stuff at Gigabyte and it turns out the board only supports DDR 400 on modules 250MB or less. So my 500MB DDR 400 modules were worthless, all because of Gigabyte's false advertising and inadequate documentation. The tech himself admitted there is nowhere I could have looked that would have hinted at this limitation. Ever since then, I refuse to buy Gigabyte products. Also, note that the motherboard you chose is a MicroATX, and the tower you chose is full tower which means very large. The MicroATX board will probably mount, but you'll have more room to work with in terms of wiring and such if you go with a full ATX board.

Secondly, 950W is a HUUUGE power supply. I don't know much about AMD systems, but from the equipment you listed I suspect your needs are closer to the 500W range. Of course, having a nice safety margin never hurts, but 950W is overkill unless you got money burning a hole in your pocket. I used a 650W PS in my recent build which I just got done assembling:
-Intel i7-930 (2.8GHz quad core, LGA1336)
-Asus P6X58D Premium mobo (6.4GT/s QPI, DDR3 1600/2000)
-6GB Mushkin Redline DDR3 1600 memory
-PNY GeForce GTX 465 (1GB GDDR5)
-Intel X25-M SSD primary/application drive
-Seagate Barracuda LP media/storage drive

Thirdly, as for actual FF-related advice, I just finished assembling my system and getting things running. It's running Windows 7 Ultimate (x64). So far, FFXI runs like absolute crap (7 FPS in Whitegate), but FFXIV runs like a dream. I'm in the process of trying some older drivers to get FFXI running better, but they don't support newer features like the Aero themes in Windows 7, and I expect I'll lose a lot of performance in newer games such as FFXIV. It seems like owners of GTX 200 and 400 series cards often have similar problems, so your choice of a 9800 may be an exceptionally good one for being able to do both FFXI and FFXIV. For the time being, I have to advise against a GTX 200/400 card for these games. I'm going to do some more fiddling tonight, so if I get better results, I will post my findings here.

Lastly, one thing you should add to your shopping list: Arctic Silver 5. It's pretty much universally accepted as the best thermal paste on the market. I always forget to order this when building new PCs, and it's a show-stopper. Do not use the thermal paste that comes with your CPU cooler, it almost always sucks. Use Arctic Silver, it's tha shiznit.

Well, Bigger PSU's are always better, especially if you build a rig with future expandibility in Mind. Next to dropping a new Motherboard in, PSU upgrades are the second most irritating PC components to upgrade.

In this day and age, I wouldn't put anything smaller than an 850 in any rig built with gaming in mind. But there's also a lot of other things to consider

Efficiency rating is very important, avoid any PSU without an 80% seal (meaning only 20% of power drawn is lost as thermal energy during the AC-DC convert or some ***) which results in a cooler rig, and lower Electricity bills.

I goddamn hate PSU's.

I've had a bad history with PSU's, to the point where I won't buy, or recommend one for any less than $60-70.

Gigabyte is a decent company but like Purgatory said its MicroAtx making it a smaller board i would suggest going full Atx or EAtx if that case can support it, since im sure you will be upgrading your rig in a couple years anyways. A little flexibility never hurts.

If you are looking to run ~max settings on FFXIV i wouldnt shy away from the GTX200/400 series however yes the 200/400 series gets ***fps so the 200/400 series will probly hinder you in FFXI. Sometimes sacrifices need to be made so it is up to you what you want to run in FFXIV between low - max settings.

Your PSU im not sure if I personally trust that company. However if it has a decent efficiency then it should be alright. I suggest Corsair since i love that company and have had 0 issues with their PSU or their RAM (also a bit pricey though im not sure of your budget).

Like most have said dont use that ***thermal paste. Buy essentially anything arctic or i got some ceramic paste i dont remember which company off hand but it works wonderfully.

Would this be an okay motherboard to use in place of the one that I have listed? I didn't even realize that one was a MicroATX.
Asus M4N75TD

And I think I will stick with the 950W PS so I can upgrade in the future without need to worry. Its at $75 right now so I think thats a good deal.

Any other suggestions out there? I'm still a little iffy on if that graphics card will be good enough; maybe getting two of them would be better? I plan on playing some SC2 along with FFXI and FFXIV
GeForce 9800

EDIT: I'm trying to keep my budget under $900.

The 9800 isn't cost effective in the UK on Ebuyer, Not sure about you americans though. You might want to have a look at some benchmarks and decide from there. The 4870 is fairly cheap now, and an excellent card.

Alrighty under 900 is fun, for starters im assuming you are buying everything from tiger direct? If so Tiger direct is normally more expensive than NCIX even if its just a few dollars. However i wont go into that. That board will work with everything you have.

Wow the 9800 is cheap if its under your 900$ cap then yea using those in SLI will increase your performance. Im just calculating your Ccost for parts at the moment searching through both Ncix and tiger direct.

4870

You'll get good performance out of this if it's within budget.

Im a straight Nvidia user but Flion has a good point. I also dont use AMD I run Intel since it was the better processor when i built the computer last year(I7 ftw). So running AMD products with other AMD products might help your pc run smoother in the long run. Since the 9800 is gonna be outdated shortly it might be more cost effective to go with some of the Radeon HD cards instead.

Nvidia are expensive *** with their cards >.<

Well I'm currently @ 4890 with this build, I've been tempted to jump in the Nvidia boat a few times recently because ATI are slow as hell to release fixes.

Probably just going to chuck another 4890 in and run Crossfire though.

Yea Crossfire is nice. Im runnning a GTX 295 atm and it is awesome. Im sure the 400 series is wicked but im gonna wait till next year or the year after to buy the new series since their multi GPUs are starting to blow AMD out the water.

I also just found a slight flaw in your Ram. You may want to upgrade to 6 GB because FFXIV recommended is 4gb ram i believe... and i always like to have that buffer.

EDIT :: BTW you are over your 900 dollar budget =P

I just built this for FFXIV...take from it what you will.

PSU: Thermaltake 1200 Watt Toughpower
CPU: AMD Phenom II x6 3.2GHz 1090T Thuban Black Edition (overclocked to 3.7GHz so far)
GPU: Sapphire Radeon HD 5970 2 GB dual GPU (overclocked 850/1200)
MoBo: Asus M4A89TD Pro / USB 3.0
Ram: Super Talent Chrome Series DDR3-2000 2GBx4 (overclocked)
Case: Antec 1200 (bought another 2 fans separately)

The CPU could be overclocked slightly more with my stock fans, but watercooling will help when I decide to buy it.

My build totaled approximately $2,000 USD.

I just noticed the budget, but intel's i-series is great too and I would suggest a minimum $300 to $400 GPU. The PSU choice seems fine.

Just to be blunt, a $900 budget for making an entire computer isn't going to cut it. The GPU is the most vital part of the computer besides the PSU and after much testing, FFXIV doesn't seem to focus too much on CPU power as much as GPU capability. As previously stated, a minimum $300 GPU would play FFXIV moderately as far as I can tell, but if you are fine with low to mid graphics settings for the game, a slightly cheaper GPU is an option.

I know, just don't tell my wife. =P

If I add more ram I would rather go to 8gb then 6. I'm still torn on what G-card to use.

oh and an fyi, either go 4GB or 8GB due to the dual-channel architecture of the MoBo.
A separate CPU heatsink isn't required since the one sent with the CPU is made for it. That will save you about $50 right off the total. Assuming you have a computer since you are on the internet, why not just take the HDD out of the old computer...unless the wife needs it.
Sound Blaster not required due to on-board sound, which on mine is 8-channel High Definition which is part of the MoBo.

I'm sorry that I can't really be more helpful, but the budgeting of hardware has never been a strong point of mine since I normally just make the list and only attempt to find the cheapest price for it.

Ok i can keep your secret, just dont let her see the packaging slips when the stuff arrives(BURN IT). Also you gotta factor in shipping and such.

TBH Video card wise i would almost say to go with the Radeon however... Tiger direct only carries the 4850 which is essentially the Nvidia 9800 equivalent. If you dont mind shopping around you can pick up the 4870 on Newegg or NCIX for probly around the same price as the 4850 on tiger direct.


EDIT :: Good point i forgot my ram is different channeling so yes 8gb ram would be far better than 6

I'm kinda surprised anyone chooses a Phenom these days, how's she treating you?

The Phenom II X4 is the newer one isnt it? I havnt been up to snuff on the newer releases since i built my machine last year so if not im assuming the Phenom II X4 is the attempted equiv to the i7?

x6 is newer iirc.

I've heard really conflicted stories about the Phenom II x6.

Even though the i7 is technically older tech, it seems to be getting more favourable results.

So far, so good...I'm not trying to run the NASA space program on it and benchmarking is only numbers instead of actual performance...because everyone believes that you can tell the difference between 60 and 70 FPS (sarcasm)...and everyone totally plays games that calculate Pi to the Googleplex digit (sarcasm again).

My Phenom II x6 six-core 3.2GHz Black Edition Thuban is and I'm not going to lie, the Intel i7-930 2.8GHz can supposedly overclock higher than mine can and can outperform it in most benchmarks...and before you ask, they are about the same price.

i7 if i remember correctly was more favourable since it overclocks very well... i still have yet to overclock my 920 but i dont think people like overclocking with the phenoms so i could be wrong.

I dunno, the amount of FPS a human can detect is pretty interchangeable. Though you are correct, there would be no noticeable difference between 60 and 70fps. I'm currently on a Q6600 @ 3.2 and I'm getting pretty good results on most benchmarks.


I'm looking to upgrade sometime later this year, this build can run XIV but I'm not happy about being locked into old tech.

I successfully overclocked my Phenom II x6 to 4.1GHz before I decided that the voltage and heat dissipation wasn't worth it for everyday applications and also since FFXIV isn't out yet.

It is also fan-cooled, nothing more. I figured 2 grand was enough for now.

lol I'm not a fighter pilot either, but you would be correct...some people can see the flicker between frames, but I'm not sure how high.

This was a good website about FPS etc.

Interesting read :D

Clicky

XD Good stuff. Yea when i decide to overclock ill be switching to watercooling but i havnt decided which rads and such i want so for the time being im aircooling with just stock settings even though i could probly overclock with my airplane of a pc blowing around.

OP where'd you go sir! You decide which GPU you wanna use?