obobski

I'm not sure what Fallout 4 looks like "under the hood" (and the GECK is not out yet, so that's a limitation on making many types of mods), but if it follows anything like the last few games from Bethesda (from Oblivion forward) there will be degrees of similarity in terms of how the GECK/CK works, and what kinds of things you can and cannot easily do. You might consider, if you own one of the older games (like Fallout 3), playing around in their GECK/CK just to get a feel for it. You can do *a lot* with just the Bethesda resources (e.g. making new NPCs, entire quests or questlines, adding new locations, etc), but being able to do your own model making and such lets you create your own resources that can further extend "what you can do" (e.g. you could make your own armor models from the ground up).

You can do the same in (most of) Fallout 3, Morrowind, and Oblivion as far as I know. I think "the rot" stemming out of Oblivion was in response to some radiant NPCs (remember that Oblivion's big selling point, or one of them, was that the NPCs went about daily routines instead of just standing at a fixed point waiting for you to interact with them) getting themselves killed and it breaking the game, in some cases with the player NEVER being aware (that orc in Skingrad is a popular example, walking himself off a bridge and breaking a few quests in the process, and the player can have no control over it - some of the merchants in Fallout 3 can die with the player never knowing/finding them either). So the idea of essential NPCs "makes sense" there, but on the other hand, I still remember the first time I played Oblivion and ended up in a fight with the imperial guard in the IC, and figured okay I'll just hew them down and escape, and then that went to I'll just escape, and then that went to quit and reload because they're basically Agent Smith - they will just spawn wherever you are, follow you to the ends of the earth, and many of them can't die. Of course you can go in and remove all of this quite easily with the console or with mods, and it may or may not break stuff to an irrevocable way for your specific playthrough. That said, this isn't unique to Bethesda, or a "new" thing, as Vagrant0 points out - I'm remembering Diablo not letting you even draw weapons "in town," and the same being true of every BioWare game I can think of, and many turn-based games its just not even an option - you only get to have combat when the game says you get to have combat. I think its a "fine line" for real-time, action-based games like Fallout to walk where the player doesn't have their movement restricted, but the game still has to have rules. If you're just after mindlessly slaughtering everything that moves, there's always Doom. This isn't meant to impugn Doom or Doom players - its just something different with a different goal.

Good to hear its working, and hopefully it keeps working!

Are you talking about the Asus 980 or 980 Ti? Because they have about 150 euro difference in pricing. And there is a limit on my budget :blush: The performance gain is not high enough to justify the extra money and as i said before, i have a wife that needs to agree with me spending on the PC :laugh: @Mark5916, unfortunaly i can't find a shop here that can get me that card, so that will be not an option, but thanks for looking into it for me :thumbsup: Are you talking about the Asus 980 or 980 Ti? Because they have about 150 euro difference in pricing. And there is a limit on my budget :blush: The performance gain is not high enough to justify the extra money and as i said before, i have a wife that needs to agree with me spending on the PC :laugh: @Mark5916, unfortunaly i can't find a shop here that can get me that card, so that will be not an option, but thanks for looking into it for me :thumbsup: Hmm, OK. You can get this with a rebate. End price: $429.99 - I thing that's a very good price for an MSI GTX 980 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00OD38516?keywords=GTX%20980&qid=1449491197&ref_=sr_1_2&s=pc&sr=1-2 Just thing about it... :wink: (it's 90 bucks more (only) than the MSI GTX 970) I think my point is if you are going to buy a card my advice is to start at a gtx 980 as a starting point. As it has been pointed out, it is not that much more money but in the long term you will be happier. Your wife will be happier and after you buy it for yourself I also recommend you work some overtime to buy her something special, like a spa gift card so you can play on your new video card while she bathes in mud and gets a pedicure :wink: If you were to ask me 2 years ago I would be saying buy a 970 as it really was the best bang for your buck but I am telling you that in a couple of years those 970s will be huffing and puffing. A 980 gtx will soon be minimum specs. The new generation of gaming computers are being made and parts are just now being released.Nvidia's newest GTX is so crazy that the existing motherboards are not even able to take full advantage. The next few years will be a giant leap forward in PC gaming technology so that is why I am advising you to start at a gtx 980 minimum! Seriously, save your money until you can afford it. Spendinding all that money on a new rig with a 970 in it... you'll regret it in a few years when you can't play the new games. Titan Z is older than the 900 series - its based on Kepler, and is roughly a dual-GPU GTX 780 board. It is hilariously over-priced (at $2999 original MSRP - its something of a limited edition card) relative to its performance (similar to SLI 780 or Ti). As far as "980 will be the minimum in a few years" - recent history (say from 2008 to present) would counter-indicate this, as high-end graphics cards even from a few years ago are still very competent by modern standards; the need to constantly upgrade every 6 months just isn't as strong as it once was (say back in 2003). Even by historic standards, however, the TOTL graphics cards are never the best buy though, because the "killer next gen" card usually offered features and capabilities that the older cards lacked; sticking to the mid-range to upper-mid-range is the best value-for-money and long-game strategy, as you end up spending $200-300 every 2-3 years as opposed to $500-900 every 3-4 years. There's very little overall difference between the 970 and 980, and if something were released that 970 were incompatible with, 980 won't be far behind - it is only slightly faster (and before anyone jumps on me "but man, its like 30% faster!!!" -> I'm talking orders of magnitude difference here, and that simply doesn't exist between those cards, or last gen's top cards, or the gen before that's top cards; this is due both to rebranding and overall stagnation in performance increases for computing (which is true of both CPU and GPU - I'm not at all seeing "giant leap forward in the next few years" by any stretch of the imagination - Intel has "wowed" us with SIX generations of equivalent performance, AMD hasn't released new CPUs in almost as long, nVidia has been slowly re-packing and re-releasing largely the same hardware with minor improvements (and tons of driver lockouts to deliniate their product lines), and ATi has been slowly refining and polishing largely the same hardware over the last 3-4 years; the only "big gains" I've noticed are with regard to integrated graphics and the new generation of game consoles (which are already ~2 years old!)). Finally, looking at historic examples (even if we go back to the much faster moving early 2000s), game developers do not target the top 1% of users - they try to target the widest range of users, and the range of hardware that even "system killer" games would run on is extremely large. Ignoring horribly optimized port nightmares, there has not been a time since the late 1990s where a gaming computer absolutely required having all TOTL parts to play contemporaneous games, and in recent years (last ~8 years) the stagnation has led to a situation where upgrades are largely unimportant from "generation" to "generation" as very little (if anything) is improved to any significant degree. That said, if "future proof" is a big concern (personally I'd throw this entire concept out the window - its a myth you can spend a heap of money trying to chase, and end up with very little to show for it), I'd completely write-off the GTX 900 series as it has recently come out that in addition to the memory bug on the GTX 970, nVidia lied about full DX12 support (and attempted to coerce/bribe benchmark makers to cover it up). Currently, GCN is the only platform with complete DX12 support, but with no real-world DX12 games available it is impossible to say if current GCN parts (e.g. 290/390X) will be competent for future games (e.g. lets hypothetically say Fallout 5 comes out in 2018, and is DX12, would the 290X be able to run it at a good level, just because it supports the feature-set? it may or it may not; first-gen DX10 and (especially) 11 cards aged very well as DX10 games began to come to the market (e.g. Radeon 4870 and GeForce 480 are still competent for many modern games, at least those they support), but first-gen DX9 cards aged very poorly as DX9 games began to come to the market (anyone remember GeForce FX?)). Price-to-performance is also better on the Radeon, especially with the Fury at ~$500 being competitive not only with the 980/980 Ti but also the Titan X in many benchmarks. I'm not at all trying to be a "Radeon fanboy" - I preference whatever gives the best performance for the money, and has the best feature support. Currently that's Radeon. In the past it has been GeForce, Radeon, Voodoo, etc. In the future it may be GeForce again, or it may be Radeon, or it may be Intel, who knows - let tomorrow worry about itself.

Then I'd guess it isn't the audio hardware; it would be "all or nothing." And it isn't overheating due to being over-worked (modern game audio is software based anyways), but due to the computer itself warming up and the hardware warming. Yeah, it can be. It isn't a "new" thing either - IME it is/was more of an issue for stand-alone soundcards, especially if placed closely next to (or between) hot-running GPUs and/or in a system with poor ventilation. IME it isn't the most common of problems, but it came to mind when thinking about random audio clicks/pops while gaming.

Can you elaborate on "highly modified"? Do you have drivers installed, and reasonably updated, for your graphics card? What resolution are you attempting to run? 280X should be able to run the vanilla game on Ultra at 1080p - I'm not sure with or without AA; my GTX 660 can do Ultra @ 1080p/2K with only FXAA, my 290X can do Ultra @ 1080p/2K with FXAA + 8x AA (both will run a very comfortable 60FPS+). The 280X is somewhere between those two, performance-wise, so I'd expect it to work nicely enough. No idea if Windows 10 may be a problem child here or not though - all of my experience with this is under Windows XP or Windows 7.

Something more generic (I'm not at all challenging Windows 10 being a bug-ridden mess), but audio pops/clicks can sometimes be indicative of the audio hardware itself overheating. If this were the problem, you could reasonably expect the same behavior in other games/applications that heavily load the system (and thus produce more heat). Just something to think about more than anything else. This would not explain the stutters or lag ofc.

Does your motherboard need a BIOS update for that CPU? Check this against the ASRock site ("it boots so no" is not a valid response - many boards may boot with an incompatible BIOS/CPU combo and you get very unpredictable results). Is the PSU sufficient to power everything you have hooked up? Are you running a bunch of mods? Does the vanilla game work okay? Does a new game work okay?

We can keep arguing about this back and forth in an attempt to be "more right on the Internet" but the bottom line is that nowhere near sufficient information was provided to have any form of meaningful discussion about this system or Skyrim install ("near 50 mods" could mean anything, no monitor/resolution/settings/etc were specified, the nature of the mods was not specified, etc), and OP has not posted anything in almost a week.

Yet another mythical claim of drivers magically killing GPUs right and left by somehow overriding hardware protection interlocks that specifically prevent this kind of problem (and the linked article cites "a single reddit user who claims they got 'burned'" and describes the "genuineness" of such a claim as "up in the air"). :psyduck: If one is experiencing this, I'd just roll drivers back (Windows 10 does allow this for updates that've been installed and found not to work well), as opposed to re-applying a settings-change (the article does not link to a "hotfix" it links to a reddit post which in turn links-thru to an imgur post describing how to change fan settings - and of course it doesn't cite or attribute what its stealing at all) every time the machine boots; this is similar to the original 4870X2 power management "trick" which gets tedious to keep up with. And of course, without information about what is or isn't working, what the problem is, etc its impossible (at least from my POV) to provide a diagnosis or solution for said problem. :whistling: This is a bit optimistic - it will depend on what resolution, IQ-enhancements, mods, etc that you're after. Yes, all R9-series (and honestly all other DirectX 9c compatible GPUs for that matter; this even includes the GeForce 6800 from way back in 2004) are capable of *running* Skyrim, but just running the base game is very different from running the game on Ultra at 4K with ENB and 4K textures everywhere and 5000 additional NPCs added to the game. Without knowing more about the specific problem being encountered it is impossible to speculate as to what is, or is not, going to solve or explain that problem. :unsure:

A) "200 Series" is too vague - which R9 do you specifically have? B) What is happening, or not happening, thats leading you to question - "do I need better hardware?" Bad performance? Crashes? etc

Looks very good - I'd double-check that 650W is an appropriate PSU size for that system (it will work, but what I mean is, generally speaking the "best case" for a PSU is to be loaded around 40-60% of its maximum output, instead of 100% load, wrt efficiency and heat - 650W is probably close, if not bang-on, for that but I haven't run the #s to e certain), also do note you've got TWO hard-drives selected, and I don't see a mouse. I don't see any reason to buy a pre-pack water cooler - the performance is often no better than quality air cooling, and in general I'm not a fan of water cooling due to the added complexity and potentials for problems (e.g. leaks). The 4690 is also not a CPU that requires liquid cooling to work (like the dual-core G5 or the FX-9590) - the sink you picked should do very well. As far as the case cooling, what does the case include with it? Also I'll throw in that I'm not a fan of that style of case - the front fans will be nearly worthless (they blow into an almost solid "wall" if you look at the pictures), Ditto for having a bottom-mounted PSU with a bottom-mounted fan of its own trying to pull air thru the bottom panel. Intel didn't make a mistake when they proposed ATX, and I see no good reason to challenge that; it isn't "trendy" but it works very well. Finally, you've selected a 4K monitor - running many games at native resolution will be a struggle even with the Fury, and the pixel pitch will be very fine/small even compared to your iMac.

If you do "progressive updates" on the machine you may be able to spread that "$3000 every few years" out more often, for example if you swap the graphics card a year or two down the line, and the motherboard/CPU after that, and so forth versus buying a whole new AIO every few years. But either way it will end up being expensive. If that's a real problem, fiscally, you might consider an Xbox One or PlayStation 4 instead (I have no experience with PS4, but I'm quite happy with the XB1) - no need for upgrades or what-have-you as time goes on, but they do come with their own pros/cons versus a gaming PC. On the Mac - I didn't know they had "older" cards like that; I thought all of the 27" models were newer. I can see how the 6970M would be a problem with some newer games. Understood on the resolution - still not a problem for your budget. You could get a 4K monitor (go take a look at Dell Ultrasharps as an example) - you'll probably want to set games at a lower resolution for that kind of monitor (4K is very demanding), but if you need the high resolution for non-gaming work it'd be useful. WRT Windows: Windows 8.0 is no longer supported, so if you're going with Win8 you should strongly consider the update to 8.1 to keep it supported.

- My 290X has no issues with Skyrim either, even with mods, but its really tough to nail down wrt modding. I'm thinking of Oblivion in the past when I say this; I built a machine in 2008 with a 4870X2 that could run base Oblivion at 2560x1600 and still achieve 60+ FPS, but with the "right" cocktail of mods, it could drop down to under 20 FPS at 1080p - nothing to do with the base game or a deficiency in the hardware as much as overwhelming what the engine can do. I haven't seen that with Skyrim personally, but I'm sure such a thing is still plausible. - On the IPS vs TN - 1ms is EXCEPTIONAL for any monitor, and should not be considered typical (#s from manufacturers are always pure lies) - most modern monitors are achieving (real world) 5-8ms, and very high end/high speed (>120Hz) TN panels can get into that 1-2ms range (but that isn't common - TOTL BenQ XL-series can hit around 2ms, which is not "typical" or "standard" of "TN monitors"). Contemporary IPS panels do no worse than average-cabbage TN in terms of being fast enough not to ghost/blur (again the myth of IPS being "dog slow" is outdated, as I'm sure you can probably attest to from personal experience) - viewing angle is not universally awful on TN, again older monitors have it worse than newer ones. Like I said previously, I'm not advocating one or the other, because both have improved significantly since the myth-making period of the late 1990s (but the myths largely refuse to die). I would just get whatever suits your resolution/size/budget from a decent manufacturer, and if you want higher refresh rates that's also a consideration (Skyrim will not run nicely >60 FPS though, so bear that in mind too). - As far as "can tell the difference" - there's a subtle difference on my BenQ running at 144Hz + backlight strobe vs "conventional" 60Hz in terms of how fluid/clean motion is; if you've ever gamed on a CRT vs your LCD its kind of like that. There's just a "sharpness" to movement. It isn't worth getting in a fight over or anything. Let's not misappropriate biomedical concepts (e.g. "placebo") to the discussion. As far as Acer's customer service, they will very likely just hang up on you and/or not take your calls (based on my experience) - the class action lawsuits haven't happened arbitrarily and such. I would largely agree with the 980 being overpriced/not worth it in the grand scheme of things too, but if that's the card you wanted, that's why I'd wait. As far as the 900 series in general, in addition to the memory bug, you might also want to read about nVidia's lies about DX12 support (again, I'm not trying to take one side or the other, I'm trying to advocate for informed decision-making). It's a mess, to say the least. As far as the monitor goes - I haven't bought an HP monitor in probably 15 years, but the last one I bought still works, for whatever that's worth. :). Again I'm not trying to "steer" you into IPS or TN; get whatever is the best for your overall applications vs fixating on a single variable is my only point. On the CPU cooler - the stock cooler can generally "get by" but given the price and performance of even a midling aftermarket cooler, I'd say its worth the $20-30 to both quiet the machine down and run the CPU cooler. Depending on how good/bad your case's airflow and ventilation is (this doesn't just mean "oh I have 7 fans its perfect" - intelligent placement of 2 good fans can best poor placement of 10 cheap fans), the stock cooler may fare better or worse than "get by" but keep in mind any better sink will experience the same benefits but perform better in either case (if that makes sense). Essentially I wouldn't regard a quality cooler here as an "extra" especially if you're after lots of long gaming sessions.

The i3 in the Alienware is clocked fairly high, and should do well with Skyrim and a lot of other games - it will do worse with more multi-threaded stuff but a lot of older games (this includes Skyrim) are heavily dependant on single-thread/single-core performance. The GTX 745 is a step down from the 750 Ti or 950/960 though, so that's a concern.

What do you mean by "new tomorrow"? Intel has not allowed for in-place CPU upgrades on a common platform for years (and is not "bringing it back" with Skylake; Kaby Lake will require all new motherboards too), and there's no significant appreciable performance gain for Skylake to justify the added expense. When "the next gen" of Intel CPUs comes out, they'll require new motherboards either way, and given how stagnant Skylake's performance is, I'd say save your money and go with Haswell and DDR3, and if Kaby Lake is a nice performance gain, you can always upgrade then, or continue to wait until they release something worthwhile (e.g. Cannonlake or beyond).

I'm not sure if I asked this before, but do you have Alienware in the UK? The X51 isn't a bad machine, can be configured to be quite powerful, and should be around your budget. I think Dell also offers financing :).

I'll try to run through your post with bullet points, hopefully this will help: - Building the machine yourself will likely get you better bang-for-buck if you do it smartly, but that doesn't mean its a magic bullet that will negate upgrades or buying a new machine every 4-5 years. That's just life. If you want top of the line full-max-ultra performance from a gaming PC, expect to be spending a few thousand dollars every few years (if not every year) - again, that's just life. You can build that machine yourself, or your can buy it from Alienware; neither has a magical "future proof" button. In general 4-5 years is a pretty long life for a gaming machine, especially if we're using history as an example. - Fallout 4 is basically going to drive the specification requirements for your new build here, but I'd remind you that driver and game updates will have an impact on performance, and we're nowhere near "the end" of those kinds of updates. Without knowing about what's inside your mac, its hard to say if it may even be reasonable to expect some driver updates there (doesn't the 27" imac have something like a GTX 780 in it?). - Performance cannot be guaranteed with mods. Full stop. It is entirely possible to load enough mods to grind even the most absurd machine to a halt even with a game as old as Morrowind - again, that's life. - The monitor(s) you want are no problem for your budget, and there's tons of options out there. I'd take a look at BenQ, Asus, and ViewSonic, and perhaps consider others as well. When you mention "a 27" monitor" I'm curious though - do you mean 2560x1440, or just a large display? This makes a difference wrt performance requirements of the machine (e.g. if you just want a big display, go get a 40" 1080p HDTV and be done with it). - You can use your Apple peripherals with a Windows machine if you like, or buy a new set of them for the new build. The Magic Trackpad isn't perfectly supported (it does work but it won't work as cleanly as it does in OS X), but the mouse and keyboard work as standard USB devices (just like non-Apple keyboard/mouse work on your Mac). - No problems with getting 2TB or more of storage - if that's a lot of videos and photos and such that you care about, I'd strongly encourage you to consider a good back-up scheme, which your budget entirely supports. - Let's not even try to talk about Elder Scrolls 6 or other unreleased, unannounced, mythical, etc games - there is no future proof, there is no crystal ball, and its impossible to predict or assume what will or won't work in a year, five years, etc. If you're after high end PC gaming, you WILL be upgrading, including entirely new builds, in response to new games - that's just part of it. It can get very expensive. None of this is meant to be doom-and-gloom - just reality. To the specific task at hand: - A higher-spec Core i5 (e.g. 4670/4690) is basically as good as you're gonna get, CPU performance wise, for gaming, today. If you feel the need to spend more money, the i7 brothers (4770/4790) will accomplish that, get you nothing better for gaming performance, but will be cheaper than Broadwell/Skylake (which also offer nothing better for gaming performance). Sources: http://www.anandtech.com/show/9483/intel-skylake-review-6700k-6600k-ddr4-ddr3-ipc-6th-generation/16 http://www.anandtech.com/show/9320/intel-broadwell-review-i7-5775c-i5-5675c/9 http://www.anandtech.com/show/7963/the-intel-haswell-refresh-review-core-i7-4790-i5-4690-and-i3-4360-tested/9 So why go for any of the more expensive CPUs? The i7s make sense if you have something that can derive some benefit from Hyperthreading (video encoding is an example), Broadwell makes sense if you need the IGP (but for the price delta, you can get Haswell and a nice graphics card that will do better than the IGP anyways), and Skylake if you just want to have the newest thing for the sake of having the newest thing. Personally I'd say save your money, get a high-spec i5 (e.g. 4670/4690), and a Z97x motherboard, and be done with it. - On the graphics card, I've recently been suggesting Maxwell (nvidia) or GCN (AMD) parts, but after doing further reading on the DX12 scandal for Maxwell, I'm just going to suggest GCN (especially since you care about forwards compatibility, where DX12 support may matter (and the fact is, Maxwell doesn't support all of DX12 in hardware - nvidia lied and paid off/pressured benchmark makers to cover it up at launch, but its coming out now (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_900_series#Limited_DirectX_12_support)). The R9 290/390 (they're basically the same thing, but 390s are more likely to have 8GB of RAM (nothing needs it but price no difference, I'd go for it) - get whatever is cheaper (and that may mean you get 8GB of RAM)). Fury is more powerful, and since you have a big budget you might consider that too. Multi-card is largely more headache than its worth IME, and never worth the price - you could spend $1000+ on a pair of 290s or Furys today, or buy a single card for $300-500 and then in a year or two buy another single card for $300-500 as an upgrade, and probably have better performance in the future, and not have spent all the money at once (if that makes sense). - So now we're basically talking a high-spec i5, or one of the Haswell i7s if you need HT (e.g. you do a lot of video encoding (e.g. you make "lets plays")), a higher-end AMD card (if you must go nVidia for some reason, the GTX 980 isn't a bad performer - I'd pass on the 970 due to the memory bugs, and the 960 because it probably won't live up to your performance goals)), and a Z97 or Z97x motherboard, along with your hard-drive setup to get you to 2TB or greater (you can do all of that on a single disk if you want, or you can do multiple disks that will add up to it - really its whatever you like; I'll make a separate item point for storage too). I'd say 16GB of RAM is a good place to be - nothing (at least gaming-wise) will need more than that, and you could upgrade in the future (and memory just gets cheaper per capacity as time goes on, and 16GB is currently the sweet spot, price wise). - What about storage? A lot of people like SSDs, the reason being they offer higher throughput than some other storage systems, and it lets disk-related tasks complete fast. The most oft-cited is "Windows starts up so fast!" - personally I don't (and never have, and never will) get the appeal of that as a marketing item, but to some people its important. The biggest (only?) improvement for gaming is level loads tend to be faster when run from faster storage, but it will do nothing for computationally-bound tasks (e.g. it won't help frame-rate, it won't let you run more mods, it won't let you run ENB, etc). You have a big budget and could easily have an SSD or two in this machine, but what you need to keep in mind is they only benefit data stored on them - so if you buy a small one and throw Windows on it, and then get a big 2TB hard drive and install all your games there, it will do nothing at all for your games because they're coming off that big 2TB hard drive. My advice? If this is something you care about, and since you have a big budget, you could get a moderately large SSD to throw Windows and your games on, and a big 2TB hard drive for all of your movies/music/photos/etc ("bulk data storage") assuming thats what your storage needs look like. It'd improve load times for your games, but save you money for storing "bulk" stuff. That said, if your 2TB of storage need is for all applications (I can't imagine what could use that, but who knows), unless you feel like spending more I'd probably just go with a 2TB hard-drive and be done with it. To put this into some perspective for you, a 1TB SSD is like $300-400, while a 1TB mechanical hard drive ("conventional hard drive") is like $50. Given your budget you could go all SSD, but you'd probably end up spending nearly a thousand dollars to do it (if you wanted multiple TB of SSD storage), and if most of that storage capacity is needed for storing photos, music, etc it simply is not worth it (because even older mechanical hard-drives are more than fast enough to keep up with the requirements of multimedia usage). - On the case, I'd look at Lian-Li. The PC-7 is my recent favorite, and they tend to go on sale quite frequently. They have tons of other cases though, so I'd give a look around their website and see if something else strikes you. Some of their larger cases can get very expensive ($400-500), but overall the pricing isn't too bad ($100-150 is pretty reasonable for a quality case). You might also consider Silverstone, Antec, and Cooler Master if you want to see some other options. - You should put a quality PSU into this as well; I'd take the lazy route and just pop over to jonnyguru and read a few reviews for PSUs in the capacity range you'll need (use this calculator: http://outervision.com/power-supply-calculator) and pick something that reviewed very well. Usually that will mean Corsair, Antec, PC Power & Cooling, Silverstone, Enermax, etc. - You'll probably want an optical drive for compatibility's sake, and they're super-duper cheap anyways (like $10-20) for a DVD+/-RW. All of the above will probably run around $1500 for the tower, and then throw the monitors and other stuff on top, and you should come in under budget. I'd advise you to at least take a look at Apple's current offerings and see if they have anything that can touch your price-point. Just a quick look and you could get, for your ~$3000 budget, the top of the line 5K 27" iMac with Core i5 (I'm guessing its a 4690 but they don't), Radeon M390, and a 2TB Fusion drive (its a hybrid SSD + mechanical drive; they never really took off for PCs, but Apple embraced them a few years ago, the new Xbox One Elite uses such a drive too). That won't be as fast as the machine proposed above (its no slouch though), but if you want the all-in-one thing and want to keep OS X and such, its at least worth considering. Just food for thought more than anything else - iMac is a nice machine, but so would be something like what I proposed above. Some other stuff to consider: - Which version of Windows are you getting? Windows 10 has a number of "gotchas" associated with it, like the undocumented snooping, forced updates, removed DVD playback support (Win8 has this too), and tie-ins to your Microsoft account (may or may not be a help or a hindrance depending on what you do); Windows 8 has the Metro UI that people seem to hate or love, the lack of DVD playback, and (like Win10 and anything else later than 8) gimped DDI8/DirectDraw (and lower) support (what does this mean? more performance/compatibility issues with old games); Windows 7 uses a much more familiar UI (Win10 is largely similar too), includes the DVD codec packages (you may be wondering: does this mean 8/10 can never play DVDs? no. it just means you have to buy third-party software to enable it, while 7 just supports it out of the box (like OS X)), has better DDI8 (and lower) support, but lifecycle support ends sooner (2020 for 7, 2023 for 8, and iirc 2025 for 10), and there's no DX12 (which currently nothing uses, but you're worried about future-compatibility). My point is none of them are perfect - personally I'd probably vote for 7 or 8 depending on how you feel about legacy support, Metro, etc and let Microsoft work out whatever they're going to do with 10 on their own (my biggest complaints being the random snooping and, more immediately, forced driver updates that can bring the system down). - Do you want a stand-alone soundcard? It really isn't required these days, since modern games do all their audio in software, but it can still be a nice extra, especially if you're looking for features like headphone amplification, more inputs, post-processing effects, etc. Asus and Creative are the most popular choices. - Some sort of back-up device - an external hard-drive is the easiest solution, just copy your files/data onto it and then stick it in a closet or something, and remember to periodically refresh it as needed. That way its largely "free" of any problems with the computer (e.g. you get a virus, you break something, etc) and your data is kept in another location, it also can make it easy if you get a new computer to transfer stuff over because you already have it good to go on an external hard-drive. - Given your budget, you *could* go a bit wilder and step up to something like the X99 platform (LGA 2011-3). This wouldn't make a lot of sense for pure gaming, but if you're doing a lot of modeling, video encoding, rendering, etc the extra CPU cores will likely be useful. This would cost more, so that's worth considering too. I'd probably consider the 4770/4790 as a good intermediate step here, especially if you're just doing that stuff as a hobbyist (so "speed" is really just about personal usability, not "I need this done to make a deadline to get paid"). - Given your budget, you could consider multi-monitor gaming via Eyefinity (nVidia has a competing solution that they've renamed a few times, I think its called GeForce Surround currently, and there's also always the Matrox TripleHead) - it's a neat novelty if you can get over the divided display, and have space on your desk for 3+ monitors. Given how cheap monitors can be had today, it'd at least be worth taking ten minutes and looking at imho. I don't know about Fallout 4, but I know Skyrim, FO3/NV, and Oblivion are decently enough supported (and moddable) for multi-monitor, and many shooters support it as well. You may also consider, even if you don't go this route for gaming, a mutli-monitor mount or something similar that would let you have the iMac and the Windows PC side-by-side for "multiboxing" (e.g. you could be playing Skyrim on the new Windows PC, and browse the web or watch a movie on the Mac at the same time). This is mostly just coming up with a potential use for the iMac than anything else, since its probably still a very competent machine, gaming aside.

Too much has been made of "for gaming" in marketing hardware in recent years - there is no such thing as a motherboard that's "built for gaming" vs "built for some other purpose" - point being I wouldn't get too sucked into that. On the GeForce, if you're going to buy a 980 down the line, I'd save the money and buy it all right now - it is NOT worth the $500-$1000 upgrade over the 970 performance-wise; I'm not saying 980 is bad I'm saying it makes no fiscal sense to buy the 970 with the intention of buying the next-up model in a month or three for all that extra dough. Just save your ~$300-400 (that you'd spend on the 970) and go after the 980. I'd also strongly suggest looking at AMD, like the R9 290/390 series, which don't have a memory bug. I wouldn't at all get worked up over "IPS vs TN" - again it's worrying about a single-variable minituae and trying to extrapolate that to define everything about a monitor's capabilities. TN does not mean "fast" nor does IPS mean "slow" nor do either of them, by themselves, mean "good visuals" or "bad visuals." 15-20 years ago this very broadly (in an over-generalized manner) made sense as early Hitachi IPS panels were among the first 8-bit LCDs on the market, but usually had response times in the 50-60ms range, while early TN panels were often 6-bit LCDs but offered somewhat better response times (still awful by modern standards but "better"). Modern TN mointors are 8-bit, just like their IPS counterparts, and its safe to assume 1000:1 contrast is pretty much standard (any claims of billion-to-one is generally pure nonsense), and modern IPS panels have much better response times. It's far too over-generalized to say "oh well I need TN I play Battlefield" vs "oh well I play Skyrim I need IPS" - of course marketeers will tell you otherwise. I'd still suggest going with another manufacturer than Acer. The CPU cooler point isn't just about noise, its also about cooling performance; honestly I'd give a look at third-party coolers, you might be surprised how affordable an upgrade actually is.

Thanks!

Performance differences between Windows XP thru Windows 8 should be largely insignificant for Skyrim (I'dve included "and Windows 10" but I haven't seen benchmarks to actually confirm or deny that, and Windows 2000 should generally be included too but it has enough quirks and sometimes one of them will jump up and bite you on the tookis) - there's no issue with any of them from a performance standpoint for any DirectX 9 game. Windows 8 (and later) have significantly rewokred how DDI8 and lower are handled, which can impact performance heavily (this matters if you play older games, like Morrowind), and Windows XP (and older) of course don't support DirectX 10 and above (and are fully EOL and don't receive security updates, so I wouldn't suggest them for a machine that's web-connected (I still have an XP machine that lives, quite happily, offline though)). As far as support in terms of drivers and software, Vista and later are still current - Vista's support (from Microsoft) will end in 2017, with Windows 7 following in 2020, and Windows 8 in 2023. It will be interesting to see how "hard" of an end that is for Vista though - its so similar to Windows 7/8 internally that it may just continue plodding along (like Windows 2000 largely did alongside XP). Same goes for 7/8 with one another (and then there's always the possibility that Microsoft can kick those deadlines out, like they did for 2000 and XP, although that seems less likely). I'm not really advocating for or against Vista, 7, or 8 - they're all equally capable of performing the same role today. The biggest questions are how you feel about Internet Explorer (since Vista is explicitly blocked from receiving IE updates, but you can still use Firefox or Chrome or whatever (and I assume most people do)), and Aero (Vista/7) vs Metro (8) for UI. They all support DX11 and are still covered for driver and platform updates though. WRT the parts combo you requested, I'll go back to Core i3/i5 and a decent graphics card (e.g. GeForce 960, Radeon R9 280) - that should be perfectly doable within your budget. No guarantees on mods and performance (too many variables at play), but the vanilla game shouldn't have any trouble running on Ultra at 1080p on such a machine (my older Core 2 Quad and GeForce 660 can do that - this isn't a horribly demanding game by modern standards). On the headset/headphones: noise cancelling, as in ANC, is something I'm generally leery of as many manufacturers do such an awful job of attempting to implement it (usually it doesn't do much of anything but add noise to the signal). Unpopular as it may be among would-be audiophiles, Bose is still the industry leader when it comes to ANC, but a pair of QuietComfort headphones is around $300. That said, there are plenty of closed-back headphones that cost a lot less than that and can provide excellent sound and good isolation, and if you need serious isolation from sporadic noises (e.g. dogs barking, kid sister screaming, etc) ANC would be the wrong choice anyways (it really only works well with continuous noise, like HVAC or airplane engine noise) - IEMs would be the ideal choice there, or just go with a closed-back monitor headphone (which will do no better or worse than the QuietComfort).

I wouldn't bother with Skylake - it's not worth the extra cost, especially for gaming (where performance differences can amount to a BLISTERING 1% - http://www.anandtech.com/show/9483/intel-skylake-review-6700k-6600k-ddr4-ddr3-ipc-6th-generation/16). As far as the build as proposed in the first post: overall not a bad machine, spec-wise. I'm not a fan of MSI motherboards (their warranty/support policies in my experience are draconian and reliability is not best-ever IME) - personally I'd go with Asus or ASRock, but if you're more comfortable with MSI, go with MSI. The GTX 970 has the memory bug, so you should at least be cognizant of that; personally I wouldn't "vote with my wallet" for a gimped product. EVGA would be my first choice for a GeForce card though. I'd also dump the Acer monitor - again, support/warranty being the biggest problem, and I'd instead go Asus, NEC, Hannstar, LG, BenQ, etc (basically anything not Acer Group and all of their hard-earned class action lawsuits). On the PSU, it did decently for JonnyGuru reviews: http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews&op=Story&reid=366 you may look around at competitors though, perhaps you can do better price-wise (I honestly don't know - I haven't kept up on the latest-and-greatest in mid-range PSUs in years). I'd also step up to the i5-4690 and end the discussion on CPU performance (http://www.anandtech.com/show/7963/the-intel-haswell-refresh-review-core-i7-4790-i5-4690-and-i3-4360-tested/9), and throw an after-market CPU cooler on there (because the Intel one will get noisy and I don't like that - Thermalright is always my first choice, but considering budget I'd look at Zalman (they've had some awesome deals on Newegg recently), Cooler Master, and Arctic). Otherwise pretty solid build, and it should do fine with many games. I don't think you'll get anyone to swear to "run at full max ultra at 9999999 FPS with 200+ mods and ENB in Skyrim" though - that's way too variable and unpredictable. I *can* tell you that my Core 2 Quad Q9550 (which is slower than any CPU discussed here) and GTX 660SC (which is slower than the 970) will run vanilla (at least mostly, as far as graphics go) Skyrim on Ultra with FXAA (turning on MSAA will incur some lagginess at a few parts), so I don't think you'd have any problems with a newer CPU and a newer GPU running the vanilla game on Ultra, but when you're talking "and like 200 mods and ENB" that's another story entirely. You may grind the game to a halt with all of that, no matter *what* computer its run on, or it may work perfectly. There are no guarantees there. As far as "other games" I think you'd be mostly fine as well (again, that C2Q/GTX 660 system being a pretty versatile setup even with newer DX10/11 games, and what you're proposing here is capable of besting it). My biggest piece of advice here is to learn to accept lowering settings off of "full max ultra at 4K with 50,000 mods and ENBs forcing 8K textures for everything all the time at at least 62,000 FPS" - you'll save yourself a lot of money and hassle over time. That said, with a more recent machine (even the Core 2 Quad I've mentioned), you shouldn't have trouble running many newer games (and tons of older games) on (or near) max settings at 1080p or lower, but again I wouldn't take this as a guarantee across the board "it will always be consistent like this" - if you want that surety, buy an Xbox.

You can get a 1080p monitor for around that price, and without DVI/HDMI (with HDCP) you may run into issues with some streaming formats and HD disc playback (because of the lack of HDCP support over VGA). As far as VGA output, AMD no longer offers analog outputs on their recent cards (but offers DisplayPort which can be converted, that's extra money (DP adapter + that monitor would probably cost the same or more than a 1080p monitor with digital inputs)), nVidia offers a single VGA output on some newer cards. I haven't tried DP to VGA adapters, but the VGA output quality on modern nVidia cards is abysmal compared to what was standard just a few years ago, so I'd certainly preference a digital connection between a modern graphics card and monitor(s).

There's no measurable benefit to Skylake and DDR4 for gaming, at least presently, but there's a significant performance cost to the FX CPU vs any of the last few generations of Intel chips. Going with SLI or CrossFire with modern cards and the FX is not the best possible configuration, even at 1080p, when considering many games, and that situation isn't going to improve as time goes on. This isn't meant to beat up your rig or anything, but if you're building a new system I'd say the CPU/platform should be seriously considered alongside the graphics.

"Decent headphones" can also blow your budget - I'm really not trying to be a doomsayer, but if you're after top of the line peripherals your budget will present a problem. On the monitors - finding a 1366x768 display will be relatively obtuse these days; 1080p monitors are around $100 and there's a load of options. Honestly I would suggest you take some time and look up actual pricing on the components you want (e.g. just price out all of your peripherals). WRT "Windows 7 is outdated" - based on what? 7 vs 8 is largely a question of UI preference more than anything else; 10 is another matter altogether. All three will continue to receive support for many years to come. I really only bring this up because I've started seeing that rumor/myth of "Windows 7 is outdated and antique" starting to surface, and it's simply not true - even Vista is still supported (and will be for another two years) and up to the task of running a modern gaming system [and is itself not very different from 7 and 8].