Hi Folks, My son't gaming rig is now aged, and his Gigabyte Windforce GTX 970 G1 fans are starting to fail. The one on the inboard end, which is VFD driven; stops and starts, and makes noise when running. I suspect a bearing failure, so as a stop gap we are ordering replacement fans today; which hopefully will provide breathing room until we decide what route to go. The rig is built upon an Asus P8Z68-VLE motherboard, with an Intel I5 2600 CPU, and in its day was decent for his needs. Originally it had a Gigabyte Windforce GTX 770 Graphics card which we upgraded as a Christmas gift to him a couple years ago. The thought then was the motherboard really couldn't use all of the GTX 970 capability (according to the web) but he could upgrade his Rig sometime soon, and gain the full benefit from it. But that never happened... Well, I'm thinking the time is probably upon him (as he's now working full time - so it's not on Dad's dime) to but components for a new decent (not full blown) gaming rig that I'll put together for him. Unlike in years ago, I'm not current in the hardware end, so I'm looking for guidance. The short version is my limited research has the PC gaming world in two streams. One is for those with a 4K Monitor, and other is for those who don't. If you have a 4K monitor, the choice is a Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti; but if you don't it's a Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070. I should advise we've been Nvidia and Intel fans for ages and it'll take something compelling to move us off those OEMs. The present monitor is not 4K but could be in the mix for a new rig. I know Nvidia is just releasing their new RTX 2070 /2080, but I expect their cost to be over the moon initially. Any advice would be appreciated and and motherboard / CPUs as well. Thanks for the assist.
Sounds like you already know what you want, Get the Nvidia 1080ti gpu, the Intel Coffee Lake i5 - 8600K cpu. Motherboard brand names usually go with personal preference but a Z370 board will do what you need with the chip and gpu. 16 gigs of DDR4 memory is what they call the sweet spot for a gaming rig PS. Don't forget to get a Solid State Hard drive (SSD). New Egg had the 500gb Western Digital ssd's on sale for $88.
Thanks. My son advises he'd rather not go all in on 4K so at 1440P, or 1080P a Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 Ti (or without the Ti) will suffice. We will look at a Z370 board and the Intel Coffee Lake i5 - 8600K cpu. 16 gigs of DDR4 memory is what we were thinking as well. Thanks for the post.