EA’s fan favourite racing gaming is back and with it, so are the cops! The November 2019 release will come to PC in the form of an Origin store download. Of course as with most major EA titles there will be a standard and deluxe version and pre-order bonuses.
The last Need for Speed release was in 2017 with Payback but fans were mostly disappointed. The open world had a 24 hour day-night cycle and three playable characters but reviewers were not overly positive. Citing the ‘free-roam’ aspect as unengaging and the ‘missions’ as repetitive the average review on metacritic landing around 6/10.
You have to go back to 2013 before the franchise had a positively reviewed release with ‘Rivals’, the first to allow playable control of the police and only one year after the fan favourite ‘Most Wanted’. Will Heat deliver for the fans who have been holding out for 6 years?
What is NFS : Heat
Not a lot is know this early, but here is what we do know.
Set in ‘Palm’ city, the locale seems to be a fictional version of Miami, much like GTA’s Vice City, complete with wide open freeways lined palm trees and plenty of neon purple.
Car modification is of course a staple of the franchise and still is for NFS Heat. Hopefully the aesthetics (paint jobs, decals, giant oversized spoilers etc) aren’t monetised or loot boxed, but with EA’s track record it’s always possible.
The trailer suggests the game play will be split between track and street races, the later taking place at night and involving cop chases, with the former in broad daylight without them.
Checkout the Trailer.
The Cars
From the trailer alone we know the Polestar 1, BMW i8 Coupe and Mercedes C63 AMG are all in the mix. We also spotted a Chevy Corvette Grand Sport, Nissan GT-R and Mitsubishi Lancer Evo X. There will be plenty more to add to the roster but we’ll have to wait for future announcements for that.
System Requirements
EA and Origin haven’t yet published official PC hardware systems requirements for the game at this stage but as soon as they do we’ll be updating this post.
Do we think it will it have real time ray tracing (RTX) support? The emphasis on the street light reflections on the wet street in the trailer seem to suggest it might! Let’s hope it does as most of us of us sunk hundreds in to our new RTX GPUs finished Metro Exodus a while ago.
When will we know more?
Gamescom is right around the corner. We expect a few more details to be flushed out at the show with the rest to come in bite sized chunks evenly spread out between now and the release.
JB HIFI / Officeworks / Good Guys / Bing Lee VS Evatech
It pays to shop around, especially on big ticket items like gaming PCs! This isn’t news, but what happens when you compare an Evatech custom built to order gaming PC with an off the shelf pre-assembled in china option? The results might surprise you.
We get it. Custom built in Australia sounds expensive right? Logic says that should be true, but when you do your homework it’s a very different story. To illustrate this, we’ve done a little experiment. With $2,000 to spend we visited JB HiFi, Bing Lee & Officeworks to see how much bang for our buck we could get, then compared it to an Evatech custom gaming PC for the same price.
Initial Observations
The first thing we noticed when doing our comparison is that there wasn’t a lot of options to choose from when it came to a gaming desktop PCs. The second thing we noticed is that there were no options with ‘current-gen’ hardware! Several months after the launch of the 9th-gen Intel CPUs and RTX series GPUs, they were nowhere to be found.
Last but not least, we noticed a disturbing trend of only 12 month manufacturer warranties. Under Australian consumer rights laws this probably isn’t even legal but we think we know why they do it. We suspect it’s help the retailers push their ‘extended’ warranties. Essentially scaring you in to spending more money on something the law entitles you to anyway.
Setting the Rules
To make this as fair as possible we set of very basic ground rules.
We couldn’t exceed our $2000 budget
We had to choose the best value for money gaming PC without exception
All pricing and specifications were recorded on the same day (15/03/2019)
All options must be stand alone PCs, not bundled with peripherals or a monitor.
Initially this was done to try and ensure the fairest possible comparison and minimise subjectivity but it turned out none of the competitors offered such a bundle in this price range anyway.
The Comparison Chart
Officeworks (HP Omen i7)
JB HiFi (Acer Nitro N50 i5)
Bing Lee (Acer Nitro N50 i7)
Evatech (Custom PCID 138234)
CPU
Officeworks (HP Omen i7)
8th Gen 6-Core 8700 4.6GHz
JB HiFi (Acer Nitro N50 i5)
8th Gen 6-Core 8400 4.0GHz
Bing Lee (Acer Nitro N50 i7)
8th Gen 6-Core 8700 4.6GHz
Evatech (Custom PCID 138234)
9th Gen 6-Core 9600K 4.6GHz
RAM
Officeworks (HP Omen i7)
16GB DDR4
JB HiFi (Acer Nitro N50 i5)
8GB DDR4
Bing Lee (Acer Nitro N50 i7)
16GB DDR4
Evatech (Custom PCID 138234)
16GB DDR4
Video Card
Officeworks (HP Omen i7)
NVIDIA GTX 1060 3GB
JB HiFi (Acer Nitro N50 i5)
NVIDIA GTX 1060 6GB
Bing Lee (Acer Nitro N50 i7)
NVIDIA GTX 1060 6GB
Evatech (Custom PCID 138234)
NVIDIA RTX 2060 6G
(Up to 40% Faster than a GTX1060!)
SSD
Officeworks (HP Omen i7)
128GB
JB HiFi (Acer Nitro N50 i5)
128GB
Bing Lee (Acer Nitro N50 i7)
256GB
Evatech (Custom PCID 138234)
500GB
Hard Drive
Officeworks (HP Omen i7)
2TB
JB HiFi (Acer Nitro N50 i5)
1TB
Bing Lee (Acer Nitro N50 i7)
1TB
Evatech (Custom PCID 138234)
2TB
Operating System
Officeworks (HP Omen i7)
Windows 10 OEM
JB HiFi (Acer Nitro N50 i5)
Windows 10 OEM
Bing Lee (Acer Nitro N50 i7)
Windows 10 OEM
Evatech (Custom PCID 138234)
Windows 10 Full Retail Licence
(Transferred)
WiFi
Officeworks (HP Omen i7)
JB HiFi (Acer Nitro N50 i5)
Bing Lee (Acer Nitro N50 i7)
Evatech (Custom PCID 138234)
Warranty
Officeworks (HP Omen i7)
1 Year
JB HiFi (Acer Nitro N50 i5)
1 Year
Bing Lee (Acer Nitro N50 i7)
1 Year
Evatech (Custom PCID 138234)
3 Years (Extendable to 5!)
Upgradable / Customisable?
Officeworks (HP Omen i7)
JB HiFi (Acer Nitro N50 i5)
Bing Lee (Acer Nitro N50 i7)
Evatech (Custom PCID 138234)
Price
Officeworks (HP Omen i7)
$1888
JB HiFi (Acer Nitro N50 i5)
$1999
Bing Lee (Acer Nitro N50 i7)
$1999
Evatech (Custom PCID 138234)
$1999
The Results
For the tech savvy among you who understand what you’re looking at on the chart above, the results are pretty clear. For the sake of those who might not have a full understanding of what exactly they are looking at in the chart, we’ll break it down for you.
A crash course in PC gaming hardware metrics.
When it comes to gaming performance, they key contributor is the graphics card, as long as the CPU and RAM are not a bottleneck. The best way to compare graphics card performance is with a real world benchmark result. There are thousands of these available online, some from more reputable sources than others. We would recommend using well known and trusted independent hardware review websites like GamersNexus.net, TweakTown.com and Techspot.com
Here’s an example.
In modern gaming systems, 8GB of RAM is considered entry level, 16GB plenty and 32GB overkill. As for the CPU in a gaming PC, low end systems will get by with an i3, while mid range systems should ideally be paired with an i5 and only the highest end systems would need to bother with an i7 or i9.
There is a commonly held misconception when it comes to CPUs that higher “GHz” means more performance or that more cores means more performance. Both of which are both true in a way, but mostly false. “GHz” is a measurement of the CPU’s clock speed or ‘tick’ rate. 4GHz means the CPU cycles through a set of ‘instructions’ 4000000000 times a second. This doesn’t account for the number of instructions per cycle it can handle, also known as “IPC”. A CPU with a higher IPC and lower clock speed can outperform a lower IPC, higher clock rate competitor.
Furthermore, cores are something that will only contribute to performance if the application or game you are running actually utilises them. Most modern game engines really only make full use of the first 4 to 6 cores (sometimes less). This means in most games, a 4 core CPU and 6 or 8 core CPU with the same IPC and clock rate will perform practically the same when compared side by side.
Of course this is a very generalised guide and dependence will vary from game to game. That being said, for the vast majority of modern games, this is the widely accepted best practice.
Gaming Performance
First Place : Evatech (40+% Higher than 2nd Place) This was an easy win, with second place not even coming close. The Evatech configuration blows the competition out of the water with it’s significantly higher performing GPU (video card). You can see one such example in Battlefield V with the benchmark chart shown above. It also has the highest performing gaming CPU of the bunch with the highest IPC.
Last Place : Officeworks (with JB HiFi not far behind) With the slowest GPU (video card) in the pack, the Officeworks PC would perform the worse in most titles. The only exceptions being for the most RAM hungry or CPU dependant games like the Total War series or Civilisation in which the JB HiFi model would lose it’s much lower RAM capacity and lower end CPU.
Storage Capacity
A secondary consideration when it comes a gaming PC but an important one none the less. Each system being compared today comes with a primary SSD and secondary regular hard drive. For those of you unfamiliar with the difference SSDs are Solid State Drives. They are significantly higher performing when it comes to boot and load times, but don’t effect in game performance much. Hard drives are spinning mechanical platter storage devices that have are cheaper GB but much slower. Bare in mind that it’s not uncommon for sames to reach 60-70GBs once installed and patched these days, plus Windows itself will eat up 10GB+.
First Place: Evatech (2-4x more SSD storage capacity than the competition) With 500GB of SSD storage you have plenty of storage space to install a bunch of all your favourite games without the need to uninstall others or resort to using the slower hard drive. Still not enough? Well there’s an extra 2TB of space for you to install your less frequently played games and applications on the secondary drive.
Last Place: JB Hi Fi Sporting only 128GB on the primary drive (much of which will be already eaten up by the operating system and bloatware rubbish that will come pre-installed), you’ll have room for 1 or two big AAA games before you run out of space. This is something that the Officeworks system also suffers from but with double the secondary hard drive storage capacity it edges out the JB Hi Fi system to avoid a last place tie.
Warranty & Upgradability.
First Place : Evatech Pretty clearly the winner in this category with the only system that allows upgrades and comes as standard with much more generous warranty policy than the competition. Free troubleshooting assistance from professionals who actually know what they are talking about. Much much longer warranty period and very reasonable out of warranty repair pricing. Everything you would expect and more, for a $2,000 investment.
Last Place : JB Hi-Fi, Officeworks, Bing Lee (3 way tie) Is it because they use such lower end hardware that they can’t offer more than 12 months warranty? Is it all a scam to to try and rip you off further and help the big box retailers push their extremely pricey and often useless extended warranties? We suspect it’s mostly the latter, but there is also no doubt the hardware you get in an Evatech PC is far superior. Oh, want to upgrade in the future and keep your expensive investment up to date long term? Don’t even think about it, just buy a whole new one. Not only will attempting upgrades void your warranty but in a lot of cases you just simply can’t because they use non-standard hardware that’s simply not compatible with off the shelf gear.
In Summary (TLDR;)
Evatech
Far superior gaming performance
Higher quality latest-gen hardware
Upgradable
Much better warranty
Way better support
100% customizable
Bing Lee, Office Works & JB-Hi Fi
None of the above
Overpriced
Lacklustre performance
Old last-gen hardware
Not custom or upgradable
Short warranty
Are we biased? Of course we are. But are we wrong? Well everything we mentioned above is true, verifiable and we stand by it 100%. The rest is up to you to decide. Bare in mind we specialise specifically in custom computers and have done so since our inception in 2013. The competition peddle their so called ‘gaming PCs’ next to staplers, toaster ovens and refrigerators. So is it really that big of a surprise that we would offer better quality, service and value? We don’t think so.
Not convinced? Give our store website a try at www.evatech.com.au and customise a PC today. It’s quick, easy, powerful, great value and packed with the latest hardware. All you have to do is lock in your order and our team builds, tests, setup and deliver your system to your door in a matter of days while you sit back and save time & money. What more could you want?
With 4K monitors becoming more and more affordable, 4K gaming is spreading through the ranks of high end PC gaming fast, but what does it really take to push that many pixels? We take a look at a few of the most demanding PC games out right now to find out.
Pre-ample : We’ll be focusing on the graphics card. Why? Well it’s almost always the choke point in gaming performance when you reach 4K. This is of course assuming the CPU and RAM are not bottle-necking it. For the results discussed below we would recommend 16GB of RAM and paring an RTX2070 with a i5 8600K or higher, the RTX2080 with a i5 9600K or higher and RTX2080 TI and any modern i7.
The RTX2070
The 4K Entry Level GPU
4K is a LOT of pixels on the screen and rendering them takes a toll on the GPU. Even Nvidia’s latest generation RTX line up can struggle at times depending on the game and in game settings. Thankfully PC games comes with a lot of in-game graphics settings that all can be adjusted independently. This means with a bit of time tinkering with these options you can often find a sweet spot where performance reaches your target and the game still looks great.
With the RTX 2070, 16GB or RAM and a mid-range i5 you can expect 4K to playable at 60FPS or more in games like Far-Cry 5, Assassins Creed Origins, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, GTA V, PUBG, Destiny 2 and Battlefield V, but don’t expect it at ultra. That being said, making the comprises to in game graphics settings in the right way and the visuals will still look great. Take the time to mess around in the settings and give the game a try each time you make an adjustment. It may take a while it’s definitely worth your while.
What can the RTX2070 play at 4K / Ultra settings? Well there’s quite a lot actually.
Overwatch
Doom
F1 2018
Fortnite
Counter Strike Global Offensive : (CS:GO)
Hitman
Sniper Elite 4
Forza 7
Wolfenstien : The New Colossus.
Note to mention the still very popular but older or less demanding games like World of Warcarft, Leage of Legends, Starcraft and DOTA 2.
The RTX2080
4K with less compromise.
Paired with 16GB or RAM and a high end i5 CPU you can expect somewhere in the realm of a 10-25% boost in performance (depending on the game in question) over the RTX2070. This is enough to push those games that might have been playable at medium settings / 4K on the RTX2070 up to the high presets with approximately the same frame rates.
What can the RTX2080 play at 4K / Ultra settings? Well in addition to the RTX2070 list above, you can add;
Strange Brigade
The Division
Call of Duty : WWII
Star Wars : Battlefront 2
Prey
Just Cause 3
Battlefield 1
GTA V
The RTX2080 TI
The single most powerful gaming GPU on the market today.
Paired with 16GB or RAM and a modern i7 CPU the RTX2080TI delivers frame rates in the range of . This is enough to push those games that might have been playable at medium settings / 4K on the RTX2070 up to the high presets with approximately the same frame rates.
What can the RTX2080 TI play at 4K / Ultra settings? Well in addition to the RTX2080 list above, you can add;
For Honor
Middle Earth : Shadow of War
Assassins Creed Origins
The Crew 2
Shadow of the Tomb Raider (RTX OFF)
Battlefield 1
Battlefield V (RTX OFF)
Ashes of the Singularity
PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG)
Far Cry 5
4K Gaming with RTX / DLSS
With the additional GPU overhead that RTX or real time ray tracing places on the GPU, it’s little wonder that even the RTX2080 TI struggles to put up respectable frame rates at 4K in the few games that support RTX when it’s enabled. However with it still being a very new technology, the game developers with the help of Nvidia are constantly making improvements.
DLSS or deep learning super-sampling is an ingenious technology designed to use artificial intelligence to scale lower resolution rendering up to higher ones with minimal loss of detail and big gains in performance. Once we start to see a few more performance patches, updated drivers and games start to launch with DLSS and RTX both built in, it may be a very different story.
Battlefield V will be the first to market with this DLSS and RTX combination with RTX being implemented already but DLSS on the way in an upcoming patch. Nvidia boasts enabling DLSS with RTX turned on will result in very similar performance to having RTX off all together which, if true, is fantastic news for 4K gamers.
Customizing a Gaming PC for 4K Gaming
Well now you have everything you need to know, you can jump right in to our custom gaming PC builder (linked here) and get started. Just bare in mind the recommended CPU and RAM pairings with each GPU, don’t forget to set aside some of your budget for the 4K monitor. As for the other components, our custom PC builder page is pretty good at guiding you through the options so you don’t need to worry too much. A lot of the options are mostly based on personal preferences and come down to aesthetic choice, or how much storage capacity you think you’ll need. If you have any questions before you place your order feel free to shoot us an email at any time and we’ll get back to you ASAP.
Choosing the Right 4K Gaming Ready Monitor
As you would probably expect, 4K monitors are not exactly ‘cheap’. Acer, Asus, Samsung and Philips all have 4K monitors at various different physical formats from 27″ to 40″ and they start from around the $900 mark. You can checkout our monitor range by (clicking here) or visiting our online store at www.evatech.com.au
Monitors are something that are frequently updated with new models, so if you’re reading this a few months or more after this article was originally posted, pricing and availability may have changed. That being said, the industry trend is heading towards more options at better pricing so unless something terrible has happened, the options will only be better.
Fans of the series probably are already keenly aware that the next installment in the critically acclaimed Metro series is only just over a month away. However there are probably a lot of you out there who might not have tried the previous games and are hungry for some proper post-apocalyptic single player action after the flop that was Fallout-76.
Based on a series of novels, the Metro world is a dark and gritty survival story of a group of Russians exiled to the metro subway tunnels in a bid to escape the radiation and wasteland horrors above. The series is best know for it’s atmosphere and is easily one of the most eerie and unnerving experiences you can find a video game.
Playing this game like a run & gun arena shooter (eg, Doom or Quake) is simply not going to work. Ammo is scarce, environments are dark and getting hit my enemies is devastating and unforgiving. While it may not be everyone’s cup of tea, this is a game that rewards stealth & patience for those with a high tolerance for the creepy and unsettling, not just shock and gore.
What you need to know,
Landing February 15th on Steam and PC game retailers.
Exodus will be the first in the series to really focus on larger scale open outdoor environments with the player traversing the wasteland between levels in an above ground train.
The game is staying true to it’s roots and fan base with a purely single player story driven experience. No multiplayer, no battle-royal, no paid hats, loot boxes or weapon skins.
The game will be among the first to have a full and proper RTX real time ray tracing integration for gamers with RTX series video cards.
The seasons will change as the game progresses with the story taking place over a year and within each level there are full day/night cycles.
Weapon customization has been expanded and optimized.
Official PC system hardware requirements have not yet been published but expect to need a pretty beefy high end system if you want to crank the settings up to high and take advantage of RTX. We would recommend an modern i5 CPU, a RTX2070 GPU and 16GB of DDR4 system memory.
Still not convinced? Check out the Trailer.
Time for a new Metro ready gaming PC?
Head on over to our custom gaming PC store page and checkout the full range. As mentioned above, at the time of writing this article the official hardware specifications haven’t been released but common sense says if you go with an i5 or Ryzen 7 CPU, RTX 2070 and 16GB of RAM in your system, you’ll be ready.
It’s no secret that while the Division 1 had some great concepts and potential, it failed to live up to the hype and turned out to be a pretty average game at best.
That’s what makes Division 2 so exciting. Ubisoft has the chance to take what it learned the first time around and actually deliver on the potential.
It might have an uphill battle in convincing players of the first installment to give it another try, but there was enough done right in first game that we feel the majority will pick up #2 for a try.
The Official Hardware Requirements
Straight from the Ubisoft’s website, the following are the game publishers recommendations for each performance tier. This level of detail is something we rarely see from game publishers and their official hardware specifications and it’s great to see. Hopefully this is the begging of a trend so gamers really know what soft of performance they can expect before they buy.
Minimum – 1080p | 30 FPS
OS: Windows 7 | 8 | 10
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 2600 | Intel Core I5-8400
RAM: 8 GB
Nvidia Geforce GTX 1060 3G or Equal
VRAM: 2 GB
DIRECT X: DirectX 11 | 12
Recommended – 1080p | 60 FPS
OS: Windows 7 | 8 | 10
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 2600 | Intel Core i5-8500
RAM: 8 GB
GPU: Nvidia Geforce GTX 1060 6G or Equal
VRAM: 4 GB
DIRECT X: DirectX 11 | 12
High – 1440p | 60 FPS
OS: Windows 7 | 8 | 10
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 2700 | Intel Core i7-8700
RAM: 16 GB
GPU: Nvidia Geforce RTX 2060
VRAM: 8 GB
DIRECT X: DirectX 11 | 12
Elite – 4K | 60 FPS
OS: Windows 7 | 8 | 10
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 2700X | Intel Core I7-9700K
RAM: 16 GB
GPU: Nvidia Geforce RTX 2080 TI
VRAM: 11 GB
DIRECT X: DirectX 11 | 12
Now you know what soft of hardware you need, if you don’t think your current gaming PC is up to the task, you can head on over to our custom PC builder store page and start customizing your next dream custom PC. Order soon and get it delivered and ready to go before launch!
The Release Date
The Division 2 is currently slated for release on the 15th of May. It will be available for download via the Epic Games Store and of course the Ubisoft Store (uPlay).
PC, The Definitive Version, As Expected.
While it’s par for the course for big budget action games to get higher fidelity and better graphics settings on PC, Ubisoft are going all out this time around with a myriad to PC optimized features and functionality.
With Battlefield V’s Tides of War Chapter 2 update being released next week and the RTX2060 to follow soon after we’re decided it would be a great time to jump in and review what sort of gaming PC it requires to play Battlefield V with RTX on (Ray Tracing) at 1080P / 1440P and 4K.
We’ll be doing this with a focus on the RAM, CPU and most importantly the video card (GPU) as these are key components that contribute to performance. All other components do not directly contribute to in game performance so you can pick and choose your favorites based on personal preferences, aesthetics and functionality requirements.
New RTX Tech (DLSS)
When Battlefield first got it’s original RTX enabling update it only enabled real time ray tracing which arguably is one of the most impressive features of the latest generation of RTX series graphics cards. However it did not initially get DLSS, aka Deep Learning Super Sampling. For those unfamiliar with the concept, this technology is essentially a ‘smarter’ way of handling AA (anti-aliasing), the togglable option in most modern PC games that essentially smooths out rough edges.
At Nvidia’s latest press conference at the 2019 CES show in Las Vegas, they showed off performance charts that indicated enabling DLSS would not only make the game look that much better, but actually boost your in game performance when ray tracing is enabled. Now this isn’t something that’s been guaranteed to be included in the big upcoming patch but Nvidia and Dice have promised to deliver it ‘soon’.
A Closer Look at the RTX 2060
Nvidia’s newest GPU to hit the market in the wake of the RTX 2080, then 2080 TI and 2070. As the name suggests the price and performance of this card is expected to land a touch below the RTX 2070 offering the latest RTX enabled tech like ray tracing and DLSS at a new lower price point. These cards are set for release on January 15th however initial price and availability is still TBD. For more details on the upcoming RTX 2060 reach out to us or stay tuned to our website.
The Specifications
6GB of GDDR6 14Gbps Memory
240 Tensor Cores
37 RTX Ops
1680MHz Boost Clock (-/+ depending on model)
160w TDP
Now you can compare these against the RTX 2070 to get an idea of the overall performance.
If you want to play along at home and while you read this article also begin customizing your next dream custom gaming PC for Battlefield V on our website simply head on over to our store page (by clicking the link here). It’s quick, easy and with a click of a button you can upgrade, downgrade, remove or add a massive range of the latest PC hardware to your build, then with a click of a button save it for later or order it online!
What you need to play at 1080P with RTX & DLSS ON
Based on the independent third party performance testing of Battlefield V coupled with Nvidia’s CES press conference data, we would recommend the following specification. Of course this doesn’t take in to account various other in game settings that can effect performance but we would base this on the high graphics pre-sets with the possibility of some minor tweaks.
Intel i5 8400 or Equivalent
16GB of DDR4 RAM
RTX2060 6G Video Card
Recommended pairing with the other non-performance delivering components for the best balance ‘bang-for-buck’ value.
B360M Gaming Edition Motherboard
250G/500G SATA SSD Primary Drive
A mid range Mid-Tower chassis with decent airflow A mid range Mid-Tower chassis with decent airflow
eg, Corsair Carbide Spec series, Carbide 270R, Fractal Design Focus G or Meshify C
550W Gold PSU
Windows 10 Home Edition
WiFi & additional hard drives if needed.
What you need to play at 1440P with RTX & DLSS ON
Scaling up from our 1080P recommendation would push the video card and CPU up a notch but keep the RAM at 16GB. RAM is something that doesn’t necessarily add anything in terms of performance simply by having more of it than you need nor is more necessarily required when you increase your resolution, frame rate or graphics settings. As a result, with 16GB being the sweet spot for value for any performance in PC gaming right now, it will be the same across all our recommendations.
Intel i5 8600 or Equivalent
16GB of DDR4 RAM
RTX2070 8G Video Card
Again, here’s a recommended set of accompanying components to fill out the rest of your build for the best ‘bang-for-buck’ value and performance when pairing with the CPU, GPU and RAM listed above.
B360M Gaming Edition Motherboard
250G/500G SATA SSD or NVMe M.2 Primary Drive
A mid range Mid-Tower chassis with decent air flo
eg, Corsair Carbide Spec series, Carbide 270R, Fractal Design Focus G or Meshify C
550W Gold PSU
Windows 10 Home Edition
WiFi & additional hard drives if needed.
What you need to play at 4K with RTX & DLSS ON
4K is a very very high resolution for gaming. To play at 4K you are essentially asking your video card to render 4x as much in terms of pixels on the screen when compared to a regular 1080P display. Does this mean you need 4x the amount of GPU horsepower to achieve it? Not quiet, but don’t expect to get there on a budget. This is why the RTX2080 TI exists with it’s enormous amount of GPU compute power, and the price tag to match. This is an extreme GPU for an extreme level of fidelity in game. You will also need a 4K monitor which don’t come cheap, and even, you may need to scale back some of the other in game settings slightly to keep the dips above 60+ FPS.
Intel i7 9700 or Equivalent
16GB of DDR4 RAM
RTX2080TI 11G Video Card
Last but not least, here is the hardware we would recommend pairing with this CPU, GPU and RAM. Of course this is just a guide and you can by all means make any adjustments or choose any other hardware you wish. Our custom PC builder has built in error detection so you don’t need to worry about compatibility issues. If you wanted to get our option and some recommendations on your configuration after you’ve saved in on our website just shoot us an email with the PCID number!
Z390 Gaming Edition Motherboard
120mm Tower Air CPU or Liquid Cooler
250G/500G NVMe M.2 Primary Drive
A mid to high end Mid-Tower chassis with good air flow
eg, NZXT H500 or H700, Corsair Spec Omega or Carbide Air 540 and the Fractal Design Focus G or Meshify C
Avoid low airflow chassis like the MSI MAG or InWin 805C and 303
750W Gold PSU
Windows 10 Home Edition
WiFi & additional hard drives if needed.
Limited Time Bonus : Get Battlefield V Free
Nvidia is also offering both Battlefield V or Anthem free with any purchase of an RTX series card from selector vendors. This offer is also included when purchasing an RTX powered custom gaming PC from our store at www.evatech.com.au. This offer is valid for a limited time only, see our site for details.
Battle Royale games have been all the rage since PUBG burst on to the scene and took the PC gamer world by storm. Yes there as a lot of similar open world survival games but the addition of an ever shrinking map and no respawns really set it apart.
Now there is a ton of copy cat’s, most notably Fortnite, the up coming Call of Duty Black Ops game and even possibility a Battlefield V game mode. Any why not right? It’s hugely popular, undeniably fun and every game is going to deviate slightly to try and deliver a slightly new experience.
Well flying under the radar of big up coming game releases, the developers of Dying Light have been working on a new free to play addition to the genre coming out in just under a month from today! The best part is, it’s not your typical Battle Royal clone.
So what is it exactly?
At the start of the round you get dropped off by a helicopter to random point on the map and that’s almost where the similarities end.
Instead of an ever shrinking playable area and only other players on the prowl, bad blood pits you against hordes or Zombies as well and makes you scavenge the map to collect samples from hives. For every sample they collect they level up and get bonus attributes like health, speed and damage.
Once any player reaches the top level, they can call in an escape chopper. Of course in doing so you alert every player still alive to the chopper’s landing position and the round culminates in a mad dash to the chopper to escape where the last player left standing in the pickup zone after it arrives wins.
Sounds like fun right? But wait, there’s more. The game is running in the same gorgeous game engine as the previous Dying light games with a huge array of different Zombie types and weapons. Just as with the previous games in the series, there is a big focus on melee weapons and a very well polished fluid parkour system allowing the player to traverse the map quickly and efficiently ‘mirror’s edge’ style.
Weapons include grenades, molotovs, bow and arrows plus a host of blunt and bladed melee weapons, all with different attack speeds and damage ratings.
Checkout this 12 minute play through with Ian from Eurogamer at this weeks GamesCom event in Germany.
The Take Away
Free to Play
Stand alone, early access coming to Steam in September
12 Player PVP + PVE (Zombies)
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With a PC release date of November 13th creeping up fast, the team at IO Interactive have released a new trailer for latest Hitman game titled ‘How to Hitman, part 1’. With a name like that, we can expect a few more.
Boasting a bigger better larger scale version of the previous Hitman game, fans of the genre will very familiar with the word shown off in the latest video, with the level on display looking like a Formula 1 race track where a driver is your target.
Scale a drainage pipe to slap a guy in the face with a fish after kicking his buddy off the roof? Yep, Agent 47 is back.
If you missed the previous Hitman game from 2016 you can now play 2 full story mode missions for FREE on Steam before you decide if you want to buy the whole thing or just cherry pick episode packs for $6.99 each to get your fill while you wait for Hitman 2.
While we expect the game to be running in an upgraded and tweaked version of the original engine, the increase in scale suggests an increase in the hardware requirements you’ll need to keep a smooth frame rate up in large crowds. If your gaming rig is getting a little old and could use an upgrade checkout our custom gaming PC range at our store pay today and get one delivered before it’s too late!
Gamescom kicks off next week in Cologne, Germany and a few games have already dropped new trailers just ahead of the show. Alongside Hitman 2, Tropico 6, a new Rainbow Six Siege operator trailer and a handful of indie games came a new Battlefield V trailer titled ‘Devastation of Rotterdam.
We are expecting a lot more of the feature and game-play specifics to be confirmed during the show but the trailer shows off a few snippets in-game footage to give you an idea of the look and feel of the game as well as plenty of montages showing off the planes, tanks, APCs, destruction and scale of the maps.
Right at the very end, a ring of fire is shown engulfing a a village with a tank and soldiers all running towards the middle in what a lot of people are speculating is a teasers for a PUBG’esc battle royal mode to compete with the already official ‘Blackout’ mode of the same vein. Take a look for yourself.
Battlefield V for PC is due out October 19th with an open beta for pre-order’ers kicking off on the 11th. Is your PC ready to crank the settings up to max and dive in? If not, checkout our custom gaming PC range today at our store page to get one delivered to your door.
Quakecon 2018 is underway in Texas and with it came some big announcements from the teams at Bethesda and ID Tech. As well as an extensive Rage 2 game-play trailer the keynote included an announcement that Quake Champions will be permanently free to play and of course a long awaited in-game demo of the long awaited followup to the 2016 Doom remake, Doom Eternal.
From the rather extensive trailer it looks as though the development team are sticking to the fast paced run & gun action with plenty of gore and heavy metal formula of it’s predecessor, with a few refinements and additions. This means if you were a fan of the 2016 game you’ll be in for a treat but you were hoping for a return the slower paced horror / jump scare Doom games like the 2004 release, you might be disappointed. Here is a run down of what we’ve learned so far;
No release date just yet but the game looks pretty far along so hopefully it makes it in time for Christmas this year.
Plenty of new weapons including a shotgun mounted grappling hook to latch on to and propel yourself towards enemies across the environment.
Multiplayer will be a bigger focus than the original and completely developed in house by the primary team.
The game will simultaneous release on all three major consoles (including switch) along side the lead platform PC edition where the Doom legacy started, will offer the highest fidelity graphics and of course where the obviously superior control method of mouse & keyboard is the only way to REALY play the game.
So without further a’do here’s the trailer.
Don’t forget the season of big game releases is fast approaching! Is your gaming rig ready to take on Doom Eternal, Rage 2, Battlefield V, Call of Duty Black Ops 4, Fallout 76, Just Cause 4, Darksides III, Total War Thrones of Britannia, Hitman 2, MechWarrior 5, Escape from Tarkov and much much more? If your answer is no, maybe you should checkout our custom gaming PC range today and make you get your order in quick so we can build, test and deliver to your door before it’s too late!
