TechPowerUp 120 Hz Build Guide

[btarunr]

Gaming at a refresh rate of 120 Hz can be as much of a revelation as 60 Hz is, to people moving from 24-30 Hz consoles. We will piece together a kickass 120 Hz, 1440p gaming desktop with adaptive-sync technology.

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[chlamchowder]

Wow, my barely adequate 4k build is rather close in terms of part selection (i5-6600k, 980 Ti). So this build will probably have no problems pushing 40-50 fps @ 4K.

I'd spend a little less on the motherboard (my Z170-HD3 is working fine) and PSU. I also went for a lower end SSD (BX100), though I went for the 1 TB model so I could fit everything on it.

 

[nickbaldwin86]

@ 2560x1440 @ 144hz

but 120hz is a good start

 

[caleb]

screw 144hz strobe backling 120hz ftw

 

[btarunr]

Next week: Mini-ITX high-end gaming build.

 

[mauriek]

any alternative option for the monitor?

 

[btarunr]

any alternative option for the monitor?

There's Acer XB270HU. Same specs, but $50 costlier, and vanilla looks.

 

[Jetster]

Nice

 

[SmokingCrop]

There's Acer XB270HU. Same specs, but $50 costlier, and vanilla looks.

The XB270HU is IPS though.

 

[Saidrex]

120 Hz? But human eye can't see past 2000$!

 

[RejZoR]

screw 144hz strobe backling 120hz ftw

I've tried it and I'm not sure if it's that superior. Could be that I have most monitor settings locked out when using strobe mode, but normal 144Hz with Adaptive V-Sync is perfectly fine, super responsive image with minimal blur.

 

[geon2k2]

I don't know, I don't like TN monitors. At some point ~year 2000, GPU industry worked hard to bring 32 bit color, some company even went bankrupt for sticking with 16 bit (3dfx) and now 15 years later we go back to ... 18 bit this time.

At home I have a pretty old by now Dell IPS monitor and every time i come from office where I have TN monitor I'm like wow, colors are really beautiful and viewing angles amazing.

So I'd rather go with something like this: https://www.asus.com/us/Monitors/MG279Q/overview/ , which is both 100+ US$ cheaper and it has IPS screen, but yeah its freesync, not gsync ...

 

[RejZoR]

You clearly don't understand how colors work. Desktop bit depth is one thing and display bit depth is another. And we are getting to the audiophiles territory here if we are truly honest...

 

[Uplink10]

Seagate Barracuda 7200.14 is a mistake, remember the high failure rates charts from Backblaze? This HDD was the cause of them.

TOSHIBA DT01ACA300 3TB 7200 RPM is a better option.

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-reliability-q3-2015/

 

[rooivalk]

Current 2-3TB Barracudas have high failure rate. 4TB one (the 5900rpm one) seems better.
I own two of them and yea... RMAed twice in a year.

 

[geon2k2]

You clearly don't understand how colors work. Desktop bit depth is one thing and display bit depth is another. And we are getting to the audiophiles territory here if we are truly honest...

I don't understand why you need to attack me personally? I only stated that IPS display produce better color than TN and it will be really nice if you could enlighten us on why this is not true in your perspective.

PS: I did not ask about gpu bit depth or display bit depth. Its clear they are different, but the image quality is dictated by the lowest of them, so even if current GPU render 32 bit, on a typical TN monitor you will see (6 bit * RGB) 18 bit, with some clever dithering to make it look like it has more colors. On typical IPS, you see (8 bit * RGB) 24 bit which is significantly better.

Quote from wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thin-film-transistor_liquid-crystal_display

"Also, most TN panels represent colors using only six bits per RGB color, or 18 bit in total, and are unable to display the 16.7 million color shades (24-bit truecolor) that are available from graphics cards. Instead, these panels display interpolated 24-bit color using a dithering method that combines adjacent pixels to simulate the desired shade."

 

[RejZoR]

I'm not attacking anyone personally, simply stating facts.

 

[Kanan]

Good build, but Fury X or Fury Tri-X with the Asus MG279Q monitor would be an alternative - IPS + Freesync.

 

[thevoiceofreason]

There's Acer XB270HU. Same specs, but $50 costlier, and vanilla looks.

In 120Hz territory you'd need to be more careful than ever about input/display lag. Is it comparable to ROG? IPS hints that it isn't.

 

[silapakorn]

Been using Acer XB270HU for two months. I'm impressed with 144hz, input lag, response time and G-sync. It excels in these categories.

What I'm not impressed so far:
- IPS glow, which makes black rather grey. Watching dark scenes in games/movies becomes less enjoyable for me.
- Acer's QC (3 dead pixels emerging after purchase).
- Only one DP connector. You can't use it with anything else.

My old monitor is Samsung s27a750d 120hz (TN), and I have to say that IPS' color is NO DIFFERENT than TN's whatsoever.
In fact, I prefer TN's ability to produce deeper & darker black as dark scenes in games/movies look better on my Samsung.

 

[Athlonite]

this sounds like an ad for nVidia and gstink and intel no sign of AMD alternates if you don't like nVidia

 

[RejZoR]

Good thing of having high refresh screens is that you'll hardly ever reach its image tearing threshold. I mean, you can, but if configuration mostly outputs up to 100fps, you'll not even experience image tearing, at least not to extent to be super annoying (there are cases where flickering in-game lights may cause image tearing on that particular part of image, have experienced that in F3AR).

Or, if you have GeForce, you can use Adaptive V-Sync which works incredibly well. Not sure if AMD has anything similar. I have it on and the games are as smooth and responsive as without V-Sync, but I haven't seen ANY kind of image tearing anywhere. Which is great.

 

[olstyle]

Maybe you could add a PSU alternative for European users.
Rosewill doesn't seem to sell here (not that I would buy a PSU that even tomshardware classifies as quite loud).

Some candidates:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151119
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA68V21E0644

They are both also available in Europe, cheaper, offer enough power and at least the beQuiet is guaranteed to be quieter.