Help building a new computer

[Joecoolyo]

Well, since I didn't get an answer in the computer questions thread, I assume right now the time is better than ever to begin choosing parts and looking at prices for a new computer I'm going to build in about a month.

Problem is, I know little to nothing about a majority of the parts needed, nor which ones would be best for my price range and whatnot. Just looking at the sheer amount of choices on sites like PC part picker, or logical increments, its a bit overwhelming to begin diving in and finding which parts will suit my needs the best for my price range.

This is my situation right now. Come mid-August, I'm going to have saved up around 1000 dollars or so, possibly 1200 or 1400 with added gifts from the family and what not. This is the budget I'm going to be setting aside for my computer, so nothing more expensive than 1200-1400 dollars at this point. This computer of course will be geared towards gaming, so I assume I'll put the most emphasis money-wise into a GPU and CPU. GPU's I know a little bit about, since I've replaced mine several times, but most other parts I'm lost on.

Stuff that I won't need to buy with the above money are a mouse and keyboard, monitor, speakers, and an OS (thanks Iowa!). I also have a terabyte external hard drive where I dump all my documents, pictures, etc., so space isn't an issue. The above can easily save me a bunch of money, and allow me to dedicate more towards the actual parts in the computer.

Basically, I need a little help getting off the ground, and I trust you guys a lot. Where should I start?

 

[Zelig]

Well, logicalincrements is pretty good. If you take their "Excellent" $1066 build, I'd probably up the SSD to 256GB depending on how much stuff you plan on installing, which will run around $1150 total.

Otherwise it depends what your priorities are. Need more space for TV shows? Get bigger hard drives. Want a quiet PC? Get quieter parts. And so on.

Is your monitor at least 1080p? If not, that GPU is going to be wasted, and your actual usage experience is going to be worse than if you had a 1080p monitor. If you don't have a 1080p monitor currently, knock $150 off your budget to get one, and run dual monitors with whatever you have now.

 

[Joecoolyo]

My priority will be gaming, plain and simple. So space isn't much of an issue (or noise for that matter) since I'll only ever have a couple games installed at once.

How would I know if my monitor is 1080p or not? Its dimensions are 1280 x 1024, and it has a refresh rate of 75, but that's about all I know.

 

[bhsup]

It's not, then. 1920x1080 resolution.

 

[Joecoolyo]

Oh, ok. Then I guess I'll add in a new monitor then, providing I can find one cheap enough (around 100 dollars, if that's possible). If not, I can save money I guess through combo deals and other junk like that.

I'll mess around with the logical increments build, and see what I can come up with, then I'll bump this thread for scrutiny and what not.

 

[tokala]

Do you want to overclock the CPU? If yes, how far do you want to push it?
Depending on the answers, you can save a bit on the CPU, mainboard and PSU.

A $80 mainboard, a 350-450 W PSU (reasonable quality, like those SeaSonics) and a non-K CPU might do as well.

Get a SSD large enough to fit Windows and your regularly used stuff, with some spare room.

 

[Joecoolyo]

I never really got into overclocking, and I fear breaking things due to my lack of knowledge, so I think I'm going to shy away from that.

An i5 CPU from Intel is still good right? That's what the Logical Increments build recommends, but the games I want to play seem to be really CPU intensive, like Planetside 2. I don't want to buy into a CPU that might not be able to handle that type of stress, but it seems like i7's (or whatever is regarded as the high quality CPU right now) are pretty expensive.

 

[tokala]

I never really got into overclocking, and I fear breaking things due to my lack of knowledge, so I think I'm going to shy away from that.

An i5 CPU from Intel is still good right? That's what the Logical Increments build recommends, but the games I want to play seem to be really CPU intensive, like Planetside 2. I don't want to buy into a CPU that might not be able to handle that type of stress, but it seems like i7's (or whatever is regarded as the high quality CPU right now) are pretty expensive.

Almost no current game will utilize an i7 to good effect. It's only better than an i5 when it gets fed the right kind of work.

For a $1000 gaming PC, an i5 is the best choice.

 

[Joecoolyo]

Awesome. And yeah, I did some research on the CPU and GPU from the LI build and they both seem really good. Especially the GPU for its price. So I think I'm going to stick to those instead of branching out.

The next most important thing to look at is probably the motherboard. I could easily just go with the reccomended by LI, but I'd rather put some research into it myself and since how things stack up before defaulting to his. What should I be looking for in a motherboard? Slots for the RAM, GPU, and CPU seem like the most basic thing to look for (as well as room for expansion), but is there anything else? What else does a motherboard do besides connecting everything together?

 

[tokala]

Instead of the GTX 760, you might want to consider a 660Ti instead.
The 660Ti is only minimally slower, has exactly the same feature set and draws significantly less power. This lower power draw will have several advantages, in my opinion more than compensating for the miniscule performance hit. In some rare cases the 660Ti might even be minimally faster.
A 660Ti with a good custom cooling solution can be had for the same price as a basic 760:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121656


These days pretty much anything the average consumer needs in already integrated into even the most inexpensive mainboards.

The more expensive boards have stuff like better multi-GPU support (no one needs that, untill nVidia and AMD get that microstuttering problem sorted out, and it doesn't look like it), more bells and whistles like >6 SATA ports, legacy connectivity like firewire and eSATA that's pretty much obsoleted by USB 3.0, and better support for overclocking.

In theory the more expensive boards should have more durable components, but unless you overclock and/or have unhealthily high case temperatures, this is unlikely to affect you during the lifetime of that system.

For your profile, you certainly do not need something above $100.


Make sure your case has 2 USB 3.0 front ports and maybe another 2 with 2.0, then any board will provide 4 USB 3.0 connectors and 2-6 USB 2.0 connectors. This should be more than sufficient.

Personally I do not like µATX boards with their cramped layout, but if you don't need many add-on cards, won't have a super-sized heat-sink/fan on either CPU or GPU and are unlikely to fiddle much with your system than there's nothing wrong with a µATX board.
4 RAM slots are nice-to-have, but not really needed for a gaming PC.

On the other hand, if you are building a $1000 system anyway and intend to keep it for several years, paying the $10-30 more for a normal sized board with some more connectors just in case won't hurt all that much.
Just in case, you might want to have a PCIex4 slot (electrically), if some "must have" high-bandwidth stuff comes around in a few years.
Some boards only have PCIex1 slots in addition to the main x16 slot for the video card.
A PCI slot might be a good idea, too, just in case.

All that can be had for $80 already, e.g.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157387

 

[Joecoolyo]

I think I'm going to stick with the 760, the power difference doesn't seem to be all the great, while I like the slightly increased performance. I want to try and get the most kick out of this system possible.

As for the board, I do intend for this build to last quite a bit, so I can imagine upgrading things in the future. A bigger more roomy board might be better then. That being said, I'm going to quickly look into that 80 dollar board (is it one of the "normal sized ones) and see if it works with all my parts. Cause that could save me a good 80 dollars or so I can instead spend on a new monitor, or something of the like.

 

[illram]

If you're not overclocking, won't be using double GPUs, and don't anticipate using RAID or lots of storage or caring about advanced fan controls or any of that, you can get a very cheap motherboard. If you don't need the additional bells and whistles don't spend more $$ for them. A B- or H- chipset board will do just fine and any ATX mobo should be plenty roomy for you. (Really, any micro-ATX should be fine too. ITX is when it starts getting really small.)

 

[Joecoolyo]

How cheap can it get without it being junk? I want a board that will fit my parts, and work with future expansion/replacement since I intend to keep this build around for quite a few years. If I buy a new GPU, or CPU in the future, I don't want to have to get a whole new mobo.

Also, do motherboards have any affect on speed? I don't want to buy a cheap motherboard, only for it to slow down my other more pricey parts, like the i5 or the 760.

 

[illram]

Motherboards have minimal to no effect on speed at all. The only exception is if the motherboard does not handle all the PCI lanes it needs to for dual card configurations but this is really an issue with the chipset. For a single card configuration, any new LGA 1150 mobo will be fine for you as far as speed and proper PCI lanes for a single card configuration. For example, in that ASRock mobo, it advertises two PCI-e "16x" sized lanes, but if you actually read the details, the 2.0 slot cannot run the full 16x lanes that a GPU card is capable of, so a dual slot config in this mobo will not be optimum. The 3.0 one runs with full 16x, so for a single card config this motherboard is fine. I believe this is a continuing limitation of the chipset architecture as LGA 1155 was limited to 16 lanes from the GPU to the CPU; I cannot find info quickly on google about the new number of lanes for Haswell (LGA 1150) but really, you don't need to worry about this stuff. If you want to really dive into this though read this article which explains it all.

As far as manufacturers, there are certain brands that are more "trusted" than others, sometimes on Newegg you can spot a lemon with a bunch of bad reviews complaining about the same thing, but they are mostly interchangeable these days. Some people swear by Asus or Gigabyte boards for example. Personally I go for whatever brand is priced right with the features I need. Some quick research on a particular model you like can tell you if there is anything glaringly wrong or incompatible. (E.g., a motherboard with stuff behind the socket that cannot accept aftermarket CPU cooler backplates, or some funky BIOS issue with default RAM speeds that you don't want to bother with, or something like that.) I personally have never had an issue with an ASRock board and they seem to hit the right price point/features ratio for every model they put out. Sometimes they chince out on the audio controller but unless you plan on doing some major audiophile 7.1 channel stuff that is not something you need to worry about either. It is overclockers that need to worry about board reliability and that usually has to do with the quality of components and their cooling abilities; again, you don't need to go there.

If you buy an 1150 chipset board (Haswell) you will be fine for the foreseeable future as far as upgrading. Any LGA 1155 or LGA 1150 board with PCI 3.0/2.0 will handle any GPU for the next 5 to 6 years at least. As far as upgrading your CPU, as pointed out in another thread the utility of upgrading Intel chips, due to the progression of Intel chipsets and the way they are marketed, is debatable. These days you may be better off getting a good chip, like a new i5, and calling it a day (or, in this case, 3 or 4 years.) For example I am currently typing this on a 6.5 year old Core2Duo E6600 chip I bought thinking "oh I can upgrade this" and of course I never did, because it is usually a waste of time. If you want extra speed down the line get a K series with a Z- mobo and perhaps do some overclocking in a few years, which can sometimes get you the same speed (roughly) as a single incremental step up to the new chip model.

 

[tokala]

But then again overclocking on Haswell chips appears to be fairly pointless, unless you get really lucky.

Most appear to top out around 4.2 GHz, which in games will yield only about a 10% performace increase versus a stock 4570.

By the way, you don't even need a Z mobo for Haswell overclocking, most board manufacturers have unlocked multiplier overclocking even on their B and H boards.


And yes, forget about CPU upgrading, it's not even a given that the next generation of Intel desktop CPUs will use socket 1150.

 

[Joecoolyo]

Awesome, thanks again for the juicy info! I did a bit of looking around last night, and tokala's 80 dollar ASRock seems spot on in terms of price and for containing all my parts. Also, its good to hear about CPU upgrading; CPU's tend to be expensive, so if I can have one that will last the entirety of the build then I can save more for upgrading my GPU and other stuff.

Alright, so far, this is what my build will look like:

CPU: Intel Core i5-4670 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor
GPU: GTX 760
Motherboard: ASRock B85 Pro4 LGA 1150

So most of all the hard decisions are out of the way, now just comes the mop up.

I found some pretty cheap RAM on newegg, Kingston HyperX Blu 8GB (2 x 4GB). The only question I have about it is the number after the DDR3. The above RAM has a "1333", while the ASRock motherboard can handle "1600" from the RAM slot. What are these numbers, and are they of any significance, or can I safely ignore them for a better price? Logical Increments answered this for me, the difference is little to none, so I think I'll go with that really good price.

I assume the other stuff I'll need to find are a SSD drive, a power supply, a monitor, and then a case. After that, I'll post the results and whatever other quickie questions I have about other parts to get.

Thanks a bunch guys for helping me with this!

 

[Zelig]

Get DDR-1600, it's basically the same price: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820313353

 

[Joecoolyo]

Eh, why not, I'll go with that one then.

Alright, after researching all afternoon, this is the build I've come to:

CPU: Intel Core i5-4670 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor - $214.99
GPU: EVGA SuperClocked 02G-P4-2765-KR GeForce GTX 760 - $259.99
Motherboard: ASRock B85 Pro4 LGA 1150 - $79.99
RAM: Team Vulcan 8GB - $68.99
SSD: Samsung MZ-7TD250BW 840 Series 250 GB - $168.77
PSU: Seasonic M12II-650 BRONZE ATX 650 Power Supply - $89.99

This comes to $882.72, which isn't actually all that bad and more or less on track.

Some things to note though:

I went with a version of the GPU that's 10 dollars more, I think it's clocked higher than the standard variant, and it comes with two fans, so I think the price might be worth it.

I have no idea if the PSU I chose will provide enough power, or if I'm overpaying for more power than I need. I know my video card recommends 500w or more, with 30 or so on a 12 rail thing (?). But I'm not sure how much power my other parts require in total, and those calculators that people seem to link to weren't all too helpful (they don't even list my GPU). Is 650 too much? Not enough? The one I chose was the Logical Increments rec.

With the above more or less set, I only have two things left to find, and that's the case and the monitor. Monitor I'm not too worried about, but the case I am. I've started researching, and I'm really lost. There are so many choices, and so many features, that I honestly have no idea where or what to look for.

I'm partial to defaulting to the In-Win BUC case from Logical Increments, but I'm not sure if I'm overpaying or not. I mean, from a review I read, it seems like everything would fit just fine, including my video card (and I think it even has a slot for a 2.5 inch SSD, so I won't have to buy a brace). But some reviewers had some small issues with it, and I'm not sure if its worth the 100 dollars.

The one thing I'm really looking for in a case is just airflow and keeping things cool. My current computer loves to constantly overheat (especially the video card), which ruins my ability to use it for long stints of time playing intense games. So with this build, I want a computer with enough fans and airflow so that I can run my games for hours on end without fear of my video card overheating. I'm thinking besides fans on just the video card (or CPU, I think the CPU linked above comes with a fan, not just a heatsink) the case plays an important role in keeping hot air moving out and cool air moving in.

The In-Win case I think has multiple fans, and it seems roomy enough, but I can never tell if it will truly keep things cool. Or, if it even comes with fans or not. If I need to buy more fans to keep my case cool, I will, but I'd rather them come with the case in the first place so I can save money for a better monitor and such.

 

[illram]

Check out the Carbide 200R. Cheap and well reviewed. Also not hideous looking.

PSU choice is fine. Seasonic is a good brand. Might be able to get away with less power but that's a good price even for a lower wattage quality PSU.

 

[Joecoolyo]

I think I'm going to go with the Carbide 400R, actually. I like the way it looks, the size, and the amount of fans/cooling possibilities. Having 3 fans from the get go, as well possible room for more is very nice. And to top it off its supposed to be pretty user friendly for easy installation.

So to tack it onto my build, this is it more or less:

CPU: Intel Core i5-4670 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor - $214.99
GPU: GIGABYTE GV-N760OC-2GD REV2.0 GeForce GTX 760 - $259.99 (slightly faster than the one I had in my previous post, also it has 3 fans as opposed to 2 for the same price)
Motherboard: ASRock B85 Pro4 LGA 1150 - $79.99
RAM: Team Vulcan 8GB - $68.99
SSD: Samsung MZ-7TD250BW 840 Series 250 GB - $168.77
PSU: Seasonic M12II-650 BRONZE ATX 650 Power Supply - $89.99
Case: Corsair Carbide Series 400R - $89.99
Optical Drive (just in case?): LG 24X DVD Burner - $17.99, 18" SATA cord - $0.57

Total Cost: $991.27

I looked up an optical drive really quick just because I wasn't sure if I'm going to need one or not. The only time I can imagine myself actually using discs is for playing an older game, or maybe watching a DVD as opposed to streaming. You guys think its worth the extra 20 dollars, or should I scratch it?

The last thing to buy is a monitor, and boy, are they expensive. I'm deciding between getting a cheaper 24" model, or a slightly more expensive 27".

Here's a 24" one I found: Asus VS247H-P 24-Inch Full-HD LED-Lit Monitor - $167.99
Here's a 27" one: I-INC IL272DPB 27" Widescreen LED Monitor - $219.99
And here's a refurbished 27" monitor that's slightly cheaper: SAMSUNG T27B350ND R Rose Black 27" - $189.99

Is going refurbished worth the risk for 27"? Or is 27" unnecessary in size? I've heard that 24" is the sweet spot for 1920 x 1080, but you never know. What do you guys think?