You do sacrifice clock speed to get the extra cores though, so they aren't always faster, and they are more expensive.

For games, clock speed seems to be more important than cores, at least for the moment. Once clock speeds max out, more cores will be the next direction to grow.

But, I'm pretty sure the title for this thread states, "PC for DX development ". Not, "PC for general purpose development/next gen gaming".

Yes, technically speaking the PC is necessary for testing and product evaluation, not development. But since I consider testing part of development....

If you can't even run the code you just wrote on the PC you're using for development to see if its fast enough, and its your only PC, you can't even really do development.

All you can do is churn out untested code that has no syntax errors (IE compiles).

I consider unit, path, and integration testing to be part of the coder's responsibility - apparently unlike many folks.

So the coder must have access to the target platform for testing.

Preferably, they develop on a PC that meets minimum spec,. so they don't have to use a second PC for testing.

Right now the only PC I have is below minimum spec for the games I'm building, and won't even run newer titles at all.

I need a rig that meets minimum specs for my games for testing purposes, and a rig that meets minimum specs of new titles for evaluating the competition.

Would you be happier if I said for DX development and game testing?

This is getting silly mincing over words like this.

Is that all you use that Chevelle for? You seemed to have missed my point entirely.

Its a street rod. A convertible. Setup as a road racer (think: NASCAR at Watkins Glenn - IE you have to turn both left AND right). 16 inch wide tires on all four corners. Eibach springs, Koni shocks, huge sway bars. A high nines car if setup for the quarter mile, and the engine is good for 250MPH top end in a vette body setup for the salt flats. But i use it to power my "self propelled stereo" - 720 clean watts of JBL gear driven by alpine head units and EQs. . The entire rear seat has been replaced with a subwoofer box. So now its a two seat roadster. A high nines car requires a roll cage as safety equipment on most tracks. Since its a convertible street car, I don't want to put a cage in it. Ever seen a convertible with a full cage and the top down? it looks kind of silly. So my street car is "too fast" for the 1/4 mile track - unless i put in a roll cage. And that's why i only use it as a "grocery getter".

But i get you point: no sense in a hi rez card without a high rez monitor to go with it.

You don't need Intel overclock insurance, whatever that is.

Haven't checking into it thoroughly, but it seems to be some sort of insurance from Intel in case you overclock a bad chip and it fries.

If they insure against it, then it must be possible for it to happen. Or maybe its just a variation on the old "extended service plan" scam. IE play us extra in case it fails under normal use during its normal life expectancy. IE in case its junk.

Also your development mouse shouldd not have a scroll wheel because some of your players might not have it as well.

Wow, that's a toughie! A lot of games assume a mouse wheel - and a third mouse button. Caveman 3.0 does. but they can be re-mapped. But i'd sure hate to have to dodge with no middle mouse button. My middle mouse button was broken when I first implemented dodge in Caveman. ALT-WASD (or any key + WASD) is a LOT harder than middle mouse button + WASD.

I think middle mouse button and wheel will have to be assumed, but re-map-able. or have alternate input such as numpad + and -, as well as mouse wheel to zoom.

In the end, you can only go so low before you have to start compromising the design. running on lower end PCs is an admirable goal, as it increases the potential user base. But compromising the game design to reach users with lower end hardware is putting profits before quality (or dollars before art). That's really not the way Rockland does things. Rockland is more about the art and less about the money. I've discovered that if you concentrate on making as good a game as possible first, with all other considerations second, you tend to get better results - and more sales.

Rome was not built in a day.

and

You have to break a few eggs to make a real mayonnaise.

Compromise is against my religion - I'm into having my cake and eating it too. Often times in game development, with a little careful thought, you can find a clever way to accomplish that.

But enough of my philosophy that games should be art first and product second.

Just use PC Partpicker to get a gaming PC config.

That's a name thats popped up on my radar a few times while looking for rigs.

Some of the other ones like iBuyPower and CyberPowerPC offer 2 levels of overclocking as part of the build, and also offer the intel insurance.

I'll add PCPartsPicker to the list of possible vendors.

You don't need 'heat sink glue', also known as TIM (thermal interface material) or thermal paste if you buy a retail CPU as it will come with the OEM CPU cooler with pre-applied

Actually, a number of them offer aftermarket hipo coolers as stock equipment, and the OEM unit is a downgrade option.

consider looking at NVMe drives for your OS/apps drive for the best performance

real time games that page from disk are the only place i really need fast hard drive performance. For everything else its simply nice, but not really that important. Supposedly, SSDs are on the order of 10x the speed of ATAs, which is plenty enough of a speedup for just windows, visual studio, blender, paint.net, audacity, and anvil studio, which are about the only apps I use. Yeah, I'm still developing with free tools. It helps me afford an i7 6700K chip! <g>.

Your Chevelle sounds like lunacy.