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So, I decided I would like to switch away from traditional consoles and stick to PC gaming, since PCs have such better quality and can do more. Problem is, I hate sitting in front of my PC to play games since I sit at a desk in front of another PC all day at work, and I prefer to game on my comfy sofa. I decided I’m going to build my very own “Console Killer” PC, to run the latest and greatest games. To save come cash, I plan to take the Nvidia 1070 card out of my current PC and that will just become development/ graphic design system using onboard video. That’s all I really use it for these days anyway. My budget is to spend $1000 and be nearly 4K ready with that 1070 card. But I don’t have a 4K TV in the man cave, so this should be great for regular HD.

First, I need a good case. I’m going to wait for this one by Phanteks that will be coming out in September. It’s about the same size as my home theater receiver so it’ll fit good in my TV rack (very important). I think I read it will cost $129 or around there. Most HTPC cases look dumb and boring to me. For the guts I’m going to use an AMD Ryzen 5, Mini ITX motherboard, 16 GB of RAM, a 650 watt power supply and a 1 TB M.2 drive that will have both the OS and store all my games. I hate the idea of having extra drive cables inside, and I think 1TB will be more than enough for me, so the M.2 will keep things nice and clean. Since it’s a PC, I can always add to that later if I want. This all comes out to around $800 on PC part picker. I already have a bluetooth keyboard and mouse that I’ll be using to set it up, but I’m going to run Steam in big picture mode, so I will be controlling and navigating everything wth my xbox gamepad. I personally hate using the keyboard & mouse for gaming, so it’s gonna be all gamepad gaming. I know the keyboard/mouse gives you better control, but I just prefer the comfort of a gamepad.

So, $1000 for a “console” that I can easily upgrade over time and will have better performance than any normal console. I think the only downside is I may miss some console exclusives, but that’s nowhere near a deal breaker for me. Is $1000 too much for a system like this? I thought building myself would be a good way to save a bit, since off the shelf console PCs seem to have lower tech guts inside. Just curious, would you want a system like this? Or do you prefer gaming on a normal PC or normal console?

Pretty much anything you buy from components will crush a console - they just aren't that good. What they do good is to get a lot of ok components together at an acceptable price point.

I too have got the PC in the living room with most games being played from the couch. But I like ARPGs, so don't need incredible twitch responses from mouse and keyboard.

Mine came to about £800 when built in Jan 2016. That included a graphics card and OS, so you're probably looking good for the price range. I always buy for future proofing without spending bonkers money - my last pc lasted 8 years by shopping that way and only needed a graphics card upgrade once in that time. I expect this one to be the same.

If you've got some spare cash lying around, treat yourself to some off the shelf water cooling.

One thing I've been considering is getting a Steam games pad. It can fully replace mouse and keyboard so from the moment you turn on the computer it's the only control device that you need. Apparently you can play Total War games with it, so I'm gonna give it a go when I can find one going cheap.

hmm, I didn't think of the steam gamepad. I got a newer white Xbox One bluetooth controller that I use for my PC now, so I was just going to use that. Maybe I'll look into the Steam one.

I was planning to just get a CPU with a stock cooler so I can just plug it in and not worry about it anymore. I'm too afraid of overheating to ever try overclocking. Maybe I can look into a liquid cooler though, but I do want to stay below $1000. And then maybe just upgrade the video card later on. One concern though is I'm hoping to get a 4K TV soon, maybe this xmas, so I don't think that 1070 card will be able to do 4k so good. But I'll see how it goes. I don't need ZOMG frame rates but I just want the games to look great and play smooth. Our living room TV can upscale HDTV cable shows pretty good, so hopefully it will be good for games too till I can afford a better card. In fact maybe waiting a year or so for a better card will bring the prices down more.

Depending on the video card you get, look for a dual-slot motherboard.
When I upgrade my GPU, the Wife's PC get the hand-me-down. Her old card goes back into mine as a 2nd card, to handle the physics processing.
The 1070 should be fine for 4k, I thought. My 1080 runs 5040x1050 (1/3 4k?) while I have the Oculus Rift running.

Can't decide between GTX 1070 and GTX 1080? The MSI GeForce GTX 1070 Gaming X 8G may be the best graphics card for you.

http://www.techadvisor.co.uk/review/graphics-cards/msi-geforce-gtx-1070-gaming-x-8g-review-3642990/

Hmm.. well the case I'm getting will only take an ITX motherboard. So there's only gonna be the 1 slot for a graphics card. I've seen some HTPC cases that can fit a normal sized motherboard but I was afraid they would be too big, or too ugly. I was originally going to go with this case but I decided I want to wait for that newer cooler Phanteks one. But, I do kinda like this one that takes an ATX board. Has a nice home theater component look to it.

So how does that whole physics thing work? Does it just increase your FPS? if I kept my 1070 and then put in a 1080 a year from now, how do I use the 1070 to handle the physics? Or would I need 2 of the exact same card? Never got the whole 2 card thing, always seems way too expensive and not worth it to me.

A GeForce card will take the physics processing onto one of its GPU cores, offload it to a 2nd card, or drop it onto the CPU (a bad thing). This is handled by the control panel screen loaded with the drivers, which handles everything to do with the graphics card/s. It is just like changing the resolution, but on a different tab.
With a single card, that card will handle all graphics processing and physics, and spread it around the GPU cores. By having them all free to handle the graphics, the FPS goes to the max it can manage. By using a core for physics, that FPS drops a bit.
Old style SLI card configs allowed 2 cards to share the load between their cores. They had a special cable between them, keeping the card-to-card traffic off the motherboard buses. I used to need 2 cards to run my 3-way screen setup, with 2x screens max per card. Now though, with 3x + 1x + 1x outputs, 1 card handles all that. The 2nd card can be far smaller and cheaper, not the same as the main card, and takes the physics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PhysX

If your main card is good enough, just use 1.
I like to put old kit back into use. It makes my numbers for Folding@Home much better, too

hmm .. so, I could keep my 1070 and add in a 1050 for the PhysX? or would the whole system end up running at the 1050 speed? Would there be a big jump in FPS doing that? Or is it more like for if you want to max out all of your details? Right now I have an ultradewide screen that's something like 3000+x1440 resolution and I was able to play The Division and ME:A with everything maxed and an average of 40-45 fps, which was fine for me.

And I guess that only works for nvidia? I was wondering if since I'm going with an AMD CPU maybe it might be good to keep it in the family and get one of their new Vega cards when they come out soon.

Adding a slow card is unlikely to affect the main card at all, so it won't slow it down. The OS will work out what load to drop onto the various xPUs, whether fast GPU, slow GPU or CPU.
If you turn up the PhysX settings in a game that uses it a lot, offloading it could make a difference. Think of it as a page file. Having a fast dedicated hard drive for the swap file can make the main hard drive work so much better, and it doesn't have to be big or expensive.

I'll think about it if I decide to go for that bigger case. Or would I be better off keeping my 1070 for PhysX, and still upgrading to a 1080 in 6 months to a year or so? Since I do want to get a 4K tv eventually too, I want to make sure I can play smoothly and crank up my graphic settings too. I'm also going to have to check out a lot of 4K reviews and make sure I get a TV that will give good performance for a PC. I've been reading some are much better than others.

https://www.reddit.com/r/PCMasterRace/wiki/builds

 Necros wrote:
Problem is, I hate sitting in front of my PC to play games since I sit at a desk in front of another PC all day at work, and I prefer to game on my comfy sofa.

Have you considered Steam's Controller and Link combo?

http://store.steampowered.com/bundle/789/Steam_Controller_and_Link/

It's not the only one on the market, but with Steam being the biggest venue for purchasing PC games right now, it's a solid choice for linking a desktop PC with a TV, and being able to play with a reliable controller.

I looked into the steam streaming and I don't think that's really what I want. I would have gone for the controller though, but I already have a blutetooth xbox one controller I'm gonna use. I'd rather just have it like a dedicated machine.

 Necros wrote:
Problem is, I hate sitting in front of my PC to play games since I sit at a desk in front of another PC all day at work, and I prefer to game on my comfy sofa.

You do realise you can connect your PC to a TV in the living room, right? And set it up so you can control the mouse with an XBone or PS4 controller? Or use Steam Big Picture Mode.

Yeah, but my main PC isn't close enough for a cable, and I don't think Wifi will be goo enough especially at 4k. Plus I just like the idea of having 2 separate systems.. one for my work and general use, and then another dedicated gaming machine

 Necros wrote:
Yeah, but my main PC isn't close enough for a cable, and I don't think Wifi will be goo enough especially at 4k.

Yes it is:
http://www.newsshooter.com/2017/03/06/wireless-4k-at-last-lancerlink-show-first-uhd-video-transmitter-at-bve/
But not at a viable price yet.

Others:
https://www.bestadvisor.com/wireless-hdmi

 Necros wrote:
Yeah, but my main PC isn't close enough for a cable, and I don't think Wifi will be goo enough especially at 4k. Plus I just like the idea of having 2 separate systems.. one for my work and general use, and then another dedicated gaming machine

So put the gaming PC next to the tv like you would a console?

Cool, but yeah too expensive. not worth it IMO but hopefully those prices will come down in a few years.

For me I think it would be better to just have a dedicated system. That case I want won't be out till September so I have some time to plan (and save)

Just checking, that you've seen this streaming, instead of the Steam one:
https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/shield/games/

The redesigned NVIDIA GameStream technology makes the experience of playing your PC games faster and smoother--all with amazing 60 FPS gaming at up to 4K HDR.

 Necros wrote:
Cool, but yeah too expensive. not worth it IMO but hopefully those prices will come down in a few years.

For me I think it would be better to just have a dedicated system. That case I want won't be out till September so I have some time to plan (and save)

I'm confused. You want a separate machine, but say it's too expensive, which suggests you think a console wouldn't be as expensive?

And unless your PC is in literally another house, you'll be able to get an HDMI or w/e cable long enough to run along the skirting.

No I just wanted to have a separate dedicated machine, and I can afford $1000 so I want to try and get the best performance I can for that price.

But now I'm starting to wonder about streaming.. is the nvidia one a better option than steam's? Or are they pretty much the same?