Advice on 1440p gaming rig

carbonara83

New member
Hi,

About to put in an order and I had two questions for you lovely people:

(1) Any tweaks/changes you may suggest? The intended use is 1440p gaming,I love FPS games, especially multiplayer competitive ones, but I'm a sucker for a good cinematic single player experiences too, so high framerates and good graphics are essential.

(2) Is there any point in holding out making the order until Black Friday/Cyber Monday? I know the sales usually refer to featured pre-built systems, but just wondering if we can expect deals on hardware too?


THERMALTAKE V200 TEMPERED GLASS RGB EDITION GAMING CASE (Special Offer)
Intel® Core™ i7 Eight Core Processor i7-9700K (3.6GHz) 12MB Cache
Gigabyte Z390 AORUS PRO: ATX, LG1151, USB 3.1, SATA 6GBs - RGB Ready
16GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR4 2666MHz (2 x 8GB)
8GB NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 2070 SUPER - HDMI, 3x DP GeForce - RTX VR Ready!
1TB SEAGATE BARRACUDA 2.5" SSD, (upto 560MB/sR | 540MB/sW)
CORSAIR 550W VS SERIES™ VS-550 POWER SUPPLY
PCS FrostFlow 240 Series RGB High Performance Liquid Cooler
COOLER MASTER MASTERGEL MAKER THERMAL COMPOUND

Price (plus some peripherals minus monitor) is £1,636.00

For the monitor, I am torn between ASUS ROG Swift PG278QR and the AOC AGON AG273QCG, but either way, planning on getting that elsewhere since I have some Amazon vouchers to spend.

Thanks so much!
 
Last edited:

Oussebon

Multiverse Poster
I'd get faster RAM, a different case (iCUE 220T for better airflow), the SX6000 SSD from the M.2 Menu, and a TXm PSU.

Sometimes PCS do a discount code for like £20 - though it's possible the general spec price will go up (or down) by that much due to general pricing fluctuations anyway in that time.

And they do sometime wheel out some new pre-built deals.

On which subject, did you see the Vulcan PBA?


Kind of similar to your spec, but pre-OCed and with most of the tweaks I'd suggest applied. £1649 fixed price
 

Oussebon

Multiverse Poster
As for the monitor, if it's literally just between those 2, then the Asus because the AOC is out of stock on Amazon :p

The drawback of the Asus (and also that out of stock AOC) is that it's Gsync only. Which means when you come to upgrade your GPU, you're locked to Nvidia if you want to keep adaptive sync. Given how well AMD have done with Navi, that's probably not a position you ideally want to be in.

The MG278Q is Freesync and certified gsync compatible, and £100 cheaper than the PG278QR to boot.

Or the Dell S2716DGF which is less expensive still, and goes to 155hz. And being Freesync you can use it with your Nvidia GPU or a future AMD one.
 

carbonara83

New member
Thank you so much for your help! I really appreciate it.

I've made all the changes you suggested, I didn't initially realise the difference between PSUs and also M.2 SSD's are new to me.

I've heard that gsync compatibility can be an issue though and not work as well with nivida gpu's? Granted, I heard that in the context of the MSI Optix gsync compatible monitors, so perhaps not a more general issue? Saving a hundred would be pretty nice since everything else on the ASUS models looks the same.
 

Oussebon

Multiverse Poster
There is Freesync / adptive sync, which means it has adaptive sync.

There is Gsync (and Gsync Ultimate) which means it has the special Nvidia hardware module to do the Nvidia branded version of adaptive sync

There is gsync compatible which means it has adaptive sync, and Nvidia have confirmed it works properly without any flicker etc.

The Asus MG278Q is on Nvidia's official list of monitors they have certified as absolutely totally gsync compatible.



It used to be that you couldn't use Freesync at all on Nvidia GPUs. Freesync being pretty much AMD's branding of Adaptive Sync, which is an open standard. And, well, free. Since Jan 2019, Nvidia let you manually turn on adaptive sync with any monitor that has it - as long as you have a 1000 series or newer GPU, and are using a DP connection (which you're going to be for 1440p 144hz anyway).

Nvidia don't want to lose face (or more revenue than they have to) over this, so they introduced something called "gsync compatible" and then produced a load of scare stories about how adaptive sync on monitors wouldn't work with nvidia GPUs unless the monitors were officially declared "gsync compatible" by Nvidia.

1) Reviewers and the general public quickly found this scheme to be largely or entirely baloney - nearly all monitors work fine, without tweaking.

2) MSI actually came out and published their own list of their monitors which they say are gsync compatible:

3) Monitors not on Nvidia's list don't mean their Freesync doesn't work with Nvidia GPUs, it just means Nvidia say they didn't match their criteria. Considering Nvidia have a 2,4:1 ratio as a minimum, that means nearly every lower spec freesync monitor fails automatically.
But, my monitor (which fails validation on that criterion, its native range being 48-75hz) actually works with gsync with a minor tweak, and can even be made to support LFC.
I suspect MSI's monitors not being on the list is because MSI decided 'stuff this, it's adaptive sync, we're not paying Nvidia to confirm our monitors work with adaptive sync - we know they do and will test it for ourselves.' A bit like you wouldn't pay someone to confirm grass is green.

4) Just because something is official Gsync (and I don't mean gsync compatible, I mean full gsync) doesn't mean it works properly. I've seen full gsync give terrible stutter in all Far Cry games. Some people report microstutter in Witcher 3. A quick google will doubtless turn up many more horror stories.

And there's the thing were if you have SLI GPUs and you use gsync, it actually reduces performance, sometimes quite significantly. You don't have SLI so that's not a problem for you - my point is that it's an example of one Nvidia technology actually conflicting with another one of their own technologies.
 
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