Building a system advice

[kalmarjan]

Hello all. I'm not sure if this is in the right place. I'm looking for advice on a system that I'll use to both play FG, and light mapping. Ideally, I'd like to have 3 displays, (24 to 27 inch each...) but I am not looking to have a gaming system, as probably FG will be all that I use. I currently use a laptop with Photoshop, and FG.

I considered going to an imac, and I prefer a desktop. I live in Canada, so there is that problem too. (I can't ship electronics from the states here, I have to buy the parts from Canada.)

[damned]

The size of the displays doesnt matter - the resolution does though.
An i5 with 8GB of RAM (and not a Mac) should be ample gruntwise but you need to make sure whatever display card you are using can support the monitors.
You may need more than one display card - you may even use a USB display port to drive one or both of the extra monitors.

Unity may have (eventually) higher demands on CPU with 3d mapping and stuff.... but that is all pretty much unknown today.

[LordEntrails]

I had an IT friend recomend https://pcpartpicker.com/ and I used it to build a gaming system for my son over the holidays. Very happy with the system and the website.

I agree with damned on the i5 and 8GB ram. Graphics card is the critical thing though. But you don't need a high end one. Note that if the card only supports 2 displays you can run a third off the onboard graphics or via a USB port.

Let us know what other questions you have.

[Kanbie]

Go for at least one high resolution monitor if you plan on having more than one app open at a time. I use a 2560x1440p monitor for FG and a 1080p monitor for map editing software and internet browsing.

[damned]

Go for at least one high resolution monitor if you plan on having more than one app open at a time. I use a 2560x1440p monitor for FG and a 1080p monitor for map editing software and internet browsing.

A lot of that will also depend on how good your eyes are... a lot of us are getting quite old now and eyes are one of those things that often deteriorate... :( make sure you test a higher resolution monitor out in store before buying. On the big screen it should be fine but test it first.

[kalmarjan]

I currently have a 32 inch Samsung TV as a monitor, and it is not very nice for text, but maps are okay. Would a 27" 4K monitor look alright?

[damned]

Sometimes bigger isnt better. Bigger screen and sitting slow to it means you are more likely to see the pixels. It also may mean you have ti move your head left and right to see everything. At the other end higher resolution makes all the pixels smaller potentially making it harder for your eyes to see finer detail or smaller text. You will have to go and see these screens in action and stand the same distance from them as you would sit. Then try and get some small text on the screen and see how it feels on your eyes and your neck.

[seycyrus]

I currently have a 32 inch Samsung TV as a monitor, and it is not very nice for text, but maps are okay. Would a 27" 4K monitor look alright?

Woah! Not sure why you would want to go to 4K. 1440 should be plenty. Going to 4K means you will likely have to adjust your icon size and other stuff on your desktop, browser windows etc. You might have to do the same for 1440, but not as much.

Another thing to note, unless all your screens are the same resolution, there will be a discontinuity if you drag a window across multiple screens. I have a fancy 27" Asus 1440 and a pair of Samsung 1200s on the sides. The nice thing about the setup is that the physical height of all 3 monitors are the same, so it looks good aesthetically, but there is still the discontinuity to contend with if I drag a window across multiple screens. I'm almost consider getting a pair of 24" 1440s, but I'm married now.

[Ken L]

I used to use a triple monitor setup until I threw my mouse and broke one of them (damn you overwatch).

I thought of buying a replacement when I realized I don't really use my third monitor for much (diminishing returns). Two monitors is ideal, I have twin 27" monitors, my next upgrade is likely to be a twin set of 4k screens.

I'd suggest 2x 1080p setups to start with 8gb ram on the latest i5. You won't need an i7; also a nvidia GTX 1070 to run them. There's also the AMD offerings but I'm not familiar with them. That should cover your video needs; the 1070GTX might seem overkill, but it will allow you to dabble in PC gaming should you wish as well as allow you to dabble in VR when the kit costs come down. If you ever need more video power, then you can buy another 1070 and hook them in SLI on the cheap compared to getting a newer video card.

[Myrdin Potter]

I like three screens and I own a VR headset, so I bought the fastest i7 and a 1070.

For what the OP says, 2-3 23" screens powered by an i5 and a nvidia 1060 or AMD 460 should be fine. You sit so close to the screen that 1080 is ok with me, but I am 50 and my eyes are going. Just make sure there are enough ports on the back of the graphics card and that you know what those ports are (more and more are DisplayPort and you will need a special cable if no DisplayPort on the monitor.

[kalmarjan]

Great advice so far. Two more questions:

If I want to stream my games and map making to Twitch, will the specs written here work?

What about backup? I'd like to have multiple hard drives, and maybe an SSD (I'm not so sure about those just yet) I work a lot with PDF and Photoshop, so will need to work with scratch disks...

[LordEntrails]

Regarding SSD's. Use one for your boot drive. Install all your apps on a traditional HDD (RAID or otherwise).

My son's gaming computer we just build (i5 3.5GHz, 16GB DDR3, MSI 1070) boots in about 5 seconds. You don't want to use the SSD for things like cache or lots of read/writes, but they are incredibly fast for boot drives.

[Ken L]

The 1070 is more than you need to stream for twitch; I mean you can run full resolution VR with low latency on it at 90hz. The reason I suggested it is that it's at a sweet spot where it's not as pricy as a 1080, and you get a considerable amount of power per dollar.

SSDs are always good for fast booting and storage but it's prohibitively more expensive per gigabyte. It really depends on your price point. A 1 TB SSD drive will cost about the same as your 1070 video card. SSDs do last longer due its lack of mechanical parts so there's less points for failure. Samsung SSDs are my go-to.

[JohnD]

You can get the same parts in Canada as you can in the US.

[Ken L]

...You don't want to use the SSD for things like cache or lots of read/writes, but they are incredibly fast for boot drives.

SSDs are actually great for large amounts of access (read) operations so they're great for databases that have a low mutation factor. They have a limited number of write operations however but they've run failure tests and it has gotten quite better from the earlier days. I recall reading a journal on how a 250gb or something SSD was subjected to 320GB writes and reads every day, constantly and it took a year and a half to get bad sectors.

[Mirloc]

It's nice to get a brand-spanking new computer - but (and I'm fairly blunt about this) Fantasy Grounds currently isn't exactly a drain on anything made in the last 6-8 years.

I have one of my players playing on a Compaq TC1000 computer. (For those who don't know, the TC1000 was the first commercially successful 'tablet pc' however it used a digitizer pen). I've seen this run FG, and somehow he managed to shoehorn Windows 7 onto the thing. It works, but it's a bit small for my eyes. ;)

That being said the biggest bang for your buck on a computer for design is memory (to a point), memory has diminishing returns pretty fast after 8gb. After RAM, hard drives are your next major bottleneck. My laptop I use for GMing boots off of a 256gb M.2 drive (it's kind of like an oversized SD card without the plastic case). The second drive (replacing the original internal drive) is a 500GB SSD, and the 3rd drive (replacing the CD-ROM drive) is a 1tb SATA III hybrid drive. The laptop in question is a Dell Latitude E6540 that I picked up off eBay relatively cheaply and added the drives on myself. There's no software made for playing RPGs this laptop can't handle.

The primary display in the laptop is perfect for anything I need to do and I got a docking station and attached a pair of 24" Viewsonic monitors to it. Honestly I don't even use my desktop computer anymore. I've used Photoshop CS (something, I just can't remember the version), AutoRealm, Campaign Cartographer 3, and Fractal Mapper with ease. Plus for the most part I only use the two monitors, but I can use the laptop as a third monitor.

[Maleioch]

I'm building two new systems this weekend. One for me and one for my son.
We both play FG as well as other games. I haven't updated our systems for 4 years. We built for the foreseeable future.
I went with an i7 6700k, 32gb ram and a 1070 video card.
My son went with an i5 6600k, 16gb ram and a 1060 video card. He also needed a new case and power supply so the budget for his was around $900 us dollars. I ordered everything through Newegg.
I would suggest you go the i5 route with a 1060 card minimum (1070 if you can afford it) to handle the various things you'd like to do PLUS be ready for FG Unity.

[Mirloc]

Ken, I remember reading an article earlier this year about the MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure) on several SSD brands (Intel, Kinston, Crucial, and some other no-name brand). The drives were set up in a RAID5 setup with 5 of each drive making up the RAID. The test lab pushed the SSDs until failure and the number of writes was (if I am remembering right) in the trillions. Some of the drives have lasted far beyond the expected lifespan based on read/write.

The only really reliable data on SSDs comes from Google itself. Their conclusions (which match up with mechanical and hybrid drives) all state pretty much the same thing: Solid state, just like mechanical, drives failure is based on age, not usage. They also confirm that there is no significant differences between "Enterprise" SSDs and "Consumer" SSDs. (This also follows in the mechanical world too, most "consumer" drives are just as good as SAS and fiber-channel drives in the enterprise.

With that being said, I DO keep all of my critical data on a hybrid drive - and I back up anything I can't replace quickly primarily using One Drive and Google Drive storage.