Help building a new computer

Several things I would like to note:

Don't be cheap an the RAM. Go for a reliable manufacturer like Kingston or Crucial, even if it's $30 $15 more for 8GB.
RAM that acts up is one of the nastiest error source in computers, the likelyhood for problems will be higher with "cheap" RAM, especially on brand new boards designs like the ones for Haswell.
One possiblke alternative:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820191517

The video card of your choice seems to be out of stock, and the the only other card available at that price has the standard nVidia cooling system, which will get noisy under load.
It looks like the prices have jumped up, and you won't get a decent 760 under $300 anymore.
There are still several good 660ti cards around $250, with that price difference those are really the more reasonable choice.

Regarding the PSU, your system with a non-overclocked i5 and a GTX760 will have a theoretical maximum power draw of about 300W. This will only be achieves when running specialized software that's designed to stress CPU as well as GPU to the max, at the same time.
Under realistic conditions, i.e. gaming, you are unlikely to get even to 250W peak load.
Most of it on the 12V rail(s)

Any quality PSU rated for 400W or more will be easily enough for that, those will deliver around 30A on 12V .
There's an additional pitfall: Haswell has a newly design voltage regulation, and has some special requirements for using some low-power modes, that may be not fulfilled by all PSU designs. Most recent products from reliable brands (see the logicalincrements list) should work, but to be safe you should chose a PSU that's explicitely "certified for Hasell" by the manufacturer.
E.g.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151124

It's rated "only" for 450W, but with 37A on 12V, it will be at least as capable as lower quality 500-600W units, and has more than enough headroom for your system. As a bonus, its quiet and highly efficient, i.e. won't produce much waste heat by itself.

By the way, those cheap "600W" PSUs that are in reality only 300-400W capable are the reason the video card manufacturers have such outrageous PSU recommendations for their cards.


That Corsair 200R case looks fine. It has very positive user comments and even was the recommendation from our leading PC magazine over here. No need for some fancy $100+case, really.


If you are concerned with heat problems, you might want to look for an aftermarket cooler for the CPU, those Haswell chips are reported to run very hot, to the point that on some bad specimens even the original Intel cooler will have problems, and in any case it will get quite noisy.

http://www.amazon.com/Cooler-Master-Hyper-Plus-RR-B10-212P-G1/dp/B002G1YPH0?tag=logicaincrem-20

appears to be an outstanding cooler for that price, not far away in performance from much more expensive parts, and still with very low noise levels.

And to reiterate, a 660ti will draw about 20% less power than a 760, for about 10% less performance at 1080p, which will help quite a bit in avoiding thermal issues.
And the GPU is the one part you are most likely to upgrade during the lifetime of the system anyway, and with only such a small difference, both of those cards will have gotten "to slow" virtually at the same point in the future.
For now, at 1080p, both are more than fast enough.
If I was in your place, I would be awfully tempted to going down even another notch to a 660 (non-ti), which wil be about 20% slower than a 760, with 30% lower power draw, especially if you can find one for $200:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814162122

and simply live with either upgrading half a year earlier down the road or with slighly lower quality settings for a while before upgrading.

For getting a perspective on how close together the various $200-300 cards are, and how fast those performance differences will be made insignificant by newer models, charts like those here are useful:
http://ht4u.net/reviews/2013/55_directx11_grafikkarten_im_test/index29.php

Even a lowly middle-of-the-road gaming card like the GTX660 is faster than the fastest single-chip card money could buy two generations ago (GTX480), and more than twice as fast as the equivalent card from two generations ago (GTX460 768MB, would be a bit below the 460 1024MB).
 
Ohh, too slow.

And the prices at the newegg page seem to be different if I look them up directly, instead of via your link :rolleyes:

So my price comparisonss might be off.

At about $250 and if you are going overkill with fans anyway that 760 should be a reasonable choice, too.


Regarding your last post, 27" at 1080p is completely pointless, unless you have vision problems, or your sit unusually far away from the display.

You might take a 23" or even 21.5" model instead of 24", those might be a bit less expensive.

Read the reviews before you buy, not every display is suited for gaming, and there might be things you need/want that not every model provides.
 
Whoa... uhh, what's with the prices jumping around? That model GPU was 60 dollars cheaper not even an hour ago...

Good thing I kept that tab open. I managed to add it to my cart at the 259.99 price, so I think I can still get it for cheap.

The PSU you posted, its the same price as the one I had listed, by the same people, but with 200 less wattage.

Er... now it's not the same price, but it's gone up.

Is there a sale ending now, or is it normal for prices to jump this much in the space of 20 minutes?

EDIT: All the prices are jumping up now, this is ridiculous.
 
Ok, I managed to add all the items at the prices I had listed last page to my cart safely... even though their list prices have all gone up by absurd amounts.

Only Newegg seems to have been affected, the price of my SSD on Amazon is unchanged, along with my CPU on TigerDirect.

I'm in a mild panic now, I'm not sure how long my cart will last, and I really don't want to spend more on parts then I need to. I'm also wary of switching stuff out, like for example for the 400 watt PSU because it's more expensive than the 650 one I had tabbed up.

EDIT: Why now of all times? Gah, I'm going to go to bed now, and pray that my either my cart is still working when I get back up, or prices have gone back to normal.
 
Whoa... uhh, what's with the prices jumping around? That model GPU was 60 dollars cheaper not even an hour ago...

Good thing I kept that tab open. I managed to add it to my cart at the 259.99 price, so I think I can still get it for cheap.

OK, so those weird prices wasn't only displaying for me ...
But it looks like the price shown next to the smaller "add to cart" button below the product image was stable.


The PSU you posted, its the same price as the one I had listed, by the same people, but with 200 less wattage.
It has higher quality components, and is more efficient. For me it was priced at $75 compared to $90 for the "bronze" 650W unit.
Both are more than sufficient for your current needs (and any conceivable upgrades during the lifetime of the system), the more efficient 450W unit will safe you a few bucks in electricity cost each year and is likely to last longer.
The 450W will be almost noiseless, while according to the user reviews the 650W not so much. Don't know if that's important for you.
 
Several things I would like to note:

Don't be cheap an the RAM. Go for a reliable manufacturer like Kingston or Crucial, even if it's $30 $15 more for 8GB.
RAM that acts up is one of the nastiest error source in computers, the likelyhood for problems will be higher with "cheap" RAM, especially on brand new boards designs like the ones for Haswell.

I haven't really seen this, in my experience RAM from every brand fails at pretty much an equal rate. Particularly for DDR-1600, they're just taking chips that Samsung/Infineon/Hynix/etc. have already rated for 1600 MHz and slapping a heatsink with their logo on the side.

Not to mention Team is pretty well-known, they've been around for years and are about on par with Kingston and Crucial. I'd probably avoid Lexmark or Cisco just to avoid the hassle of trying to RMA RAM through them.

If you are concerned with heat problems, you might want to look for an aftermarket cooler for the CPU, those Haswell chips are reported to run very hot,

Only if you're overvolting.

But yeah, stock heatsinks are loud, 120mm is pretty much the smallest fan I use for anything now.
 
OK, so those weird prices wasn't only displaying for me ...
But it looks like the price shown next to the smaller "add to cart" button below the product image was stable.



It has higher quality components, and is more efficient. For me it was priced at $75 compared to $90 for the "bronze" 650W unit.
Both are more than sufficient for your current needs (and any conceivable upgrades during the lifetime of the system), the more efficient 450W unit will safe you a few bucks in electricity cost each year and is likely to last longer.
The 450W will be almost noiseless, while according to the user reviews the 650W not so much. Don't know if that's important for you.

Ok yeah, its just a display bug or something, because I added your PSU to my cart and it came out as 74 dollars as opposed to 90.

Hmm, would it be ok if I went with a 550 model by the same company instead of the 650? The version of my graphics card says that it needs 500 watts or more from the PSU, and I"ll feel safer going 50 over rather than 50 under.

EDIT: Seems like the 550 SeaSonic is out of stock. Are there any other reliable brands other than SeaSonic where I can get a 550 from?

I haven't really seen this, in my experience RAM from every brand fails at pretty much an equal rate. Particularly for DDR-1600, they're just taking chips that Samsung/Infineon/Hynix/etc. have already rated for 1600 MHz and slapping a heatsink with their logo on the side.

Not to mention Team is pretty well-known, they've been around for years and are about on par with Kingston and Crucial. I'd probably avoid Lexmark or Cisco just to avoid the hassle of trying to RMA RAM through them.

The only problem I can see with the Team RAM cards is that in the comments people mention it tends to default to 1333 rather than 1600. So maybe I could get a Kingston 1600 for the same price that would be slightly less hassle?


Only if you're overvolting.

But yeah, stock heatsinks are loud, 120mm is pretty much the smallest fan I use for anything now.

Yeah, I don't plan on overclocking my CPU (it can't be overclocked anyways), so I think the stock fan will be fine for cooling. The only part I'm worried about overheating is the GPU, which is why I'm getting the version with 3 fans on it in hopes of mitigating any overheating.

I might even swap out my optical drive in favor of getting another fan for the side of my case, but I think I should wait and test out the build and see if things are overheating first before doing that.
 
Ok, I managed to add all the items at the prices I had listed last page to my cart safely... even though their list prices have all gone up by absurd amounts.

Only Newegg seems to have been affected, the price of my SSD on Amazon is unchanged, along with my CPU on TigerDirect.

I'm in a mild panic now, I'm not sure how long my cart will last, and I really don't want to spend more on parts then I need to. I'm also wary of switching stuff out, like for example for the 400 watt PSU because it's more expensive than the 650 one I had tabbed up.

EDIT: Why now of all times? Gah, I'm going to go to bed now, and pray that my either my cart is still working when I get back up, or prices have gone back to normal.

Prices change daily. Also try Superbiiz and NCIX.

In my quest to fill your brain with useless knowledge, here is a quick and dirty explanation of PSU power efficiency. Tl;DR, I wouldn't worry too much about switching out that Seasonic unless saving a couple bucks on monthly energy bills is a priority for you. Basically, the advantage of paying the same or more for a more efficient but lower wattage PSU is saving on your energy bill. Any PSU will pull more watts from the wall than it needs to drive your system. This is because watts get wasted between the wall and the components. Efficiency simply rates how many watts get wasted. For example a PSU with 75% efficiency will pull 400w from the wall and deliver 300w to your PC. More efficient = less power wasted between wall and components = less money on electricity every month. So with a more efficient Gold or Platinum PSU you are spending more per watt up front but less per month down the line. Also remember that usually a PSU is more efficient above 20% load, i.e. if it is using more of its capacity its efficiency increases. (Bronze certified means 80% efficiency above 20% load. This is why it is not often recommended to buy a huge PSU "just to be safe.")

With that said, the Seasonic unit is more or less a decent unit if you're not concerned with noise. Seasonic is a quality brand and multiple manufacturers share the same internals. Corsair, NZXT, and XFX use the same internals for their TX, Hale82, and Pro lines respectively, and all are the same price on Newegg. Interestingly the TX is also "Haswell certified" so I wouldn't worry about that too much either. You should also be within the efficient range of power draw when gaming with your selected components and that PSU. If you're needing 300w to power your system, for example, you will pull around 375w from the wall with that Seasonic. A "platinum" certified model will be 92% efficient, pulling around 50w less. You can do the math on how much this will cost you on your energy bill if this concerns you.

Just saw your new post. Other reliable brands: FSP, XFX, Seasonic, Corsair, NZXT.
 
Ok, I found a Gold Rated Seasonic 550w PSU on Amazon, and since the 650 I was going to get just went out of stock, I think I'll go with this one. Cheaper, and I guess more efficient due to the Gold Rating. The only problem I can see is that the first couple reviews on Newegg all complain about it breaking pretty quickly, but a majority of other reviews seem fine with it, and the ones on Amazon are all stellar, so I'm not sure what to make of that. Also I'm not sure if its certified Haswell ready, I think the page on Newegg says it is while the one Amazon doesn't mention it.

Here's the link: http://www.amazon.com/SeaSonic-550-Watt-CrossFire-Certified-SSR-550RM/dp/B00918MEZG

Also doing further research, it seems like a lot of people have problems with RAM defaulting to 1333 instead of 1600, and it's motherboard dependant. So I guess I can still go with the Team RAM and if it does default, change it in the BIOS, or whatever they do.
 
Alright, I think I'm pretty much set then. I'm going to use that 24" monitor I listed last page since I like the price and the stats seem to check out for gaming. Also 24 is the sweet spot for 1080 as opposed to 27.

So my final build is this:

-CPU: Intel Core i5-4670 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor – $219.99
-GPU: GTX 760 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130932 - $259.99
-Motherboard: ASRock B85 Pro4 LGA 1150 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157387 - $79.99
-RAM: Team Vulcan 8GB - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820313353 - $68.99
-SSD: Samsung MZ-7TD250BW 840 Series Solid State Drive (SSD) 250 GB Sata 2.5-Inch http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-MZ-7TD250BW-Series-Solid-2-5-Inch/dp/B009NHAEXE/?tag=logicaincrem-20 - $168.77
-PSU: SeaSonic G Series 550-Watt ATX12V/EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS GOLD- http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00918MEZG/ref=ox_sc_act_title_2?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER - $79.99
-Case: Carbide 400R - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811139008 – $89.99
-Monitor: Asus VS247H-P 24-Inch Full-HD LED-Lit Monitor - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005BZNDS0/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER – $167.99

Total cost without shipping: $1135.7

Shipping is only about 19 dollars on Newegg, and I'd assume around the same on Amazon, so I still made it below the $1200 which is awesome. I cut out the optical drive just because I can't seem myself using it anytime soon, and justifying the extra 17 dollars or so. I can always buy one later on if the need becomes pressing.

I think everything is compatible, so unless you have anything less to scrutinize, I'll order it today.

Is there anything else I should be adding to this computer? Or ordering in order to successfully build it? The only extra things I could imagine are a 4th fan for the case, or an extender for the PSU cord (since the reviews say it comes up short for behind the motherboard wiring).

Any last thoughts? Cause I'm pretty proud of this build, I like the way it turned out, and I'm real excited for the upgrade from my current computer.
 
Got a windows license? Do you live near a Microcenter? They sometimes have excellent mobo/CPU combos and usually sell Intel CPUs below retail to get you in the store.
 
The University of Iowa will provide Windows 8 for me (part of my tech fees, I believe, got Windows 7 from them as well), so no need to worry about paying for an OS.

Microcenter? Google says the nearest one is downtown somewhere, a bit too far out of the way. Other than them, the only tech places around the North Shore tend to be Best Buy's, or CompUSA (though I've had a bad experience buying a GPU from them, so I tend to avoid going there).

EDIT: Is there anything else I should buy before ordering them all, anything needed for assembly? Or will my parts ship with everything needed to get them together (besides tools like a screwdriver and what not)?
 
You won't need anything else, unless there is some unforeseen issue with your case like power cords being too short or something. Usually Newegg reviews will clue you in on little things like that.

Enjoy your awesome new computer. :)
 
Yeah, some people complained that the PSU cord was too short to route around back, if it is, I'll just route around front and buy a new cord.

But awesome! Thanks a bunch guys! Wouldn't have been able to do this without you!
 
Microcenter? Google says the nearest one is downtown somewhere, a bit too far out of the way. Other than them, the only tech places around the North Shore tend to be Best Buy's, or CompUSA (though I've had a bad experience buying a GPU from them, so I tend to avoid going there).

Microcenter really is where it's at for computer supplies, though. Best Buy shouldn't even be mentioned in the same paragraph, MicroCenter is so much better. Seriously worth checking out sometime. Not only do they have the best selection of any physical store I've been in, but what illram said is true - they often have very good CPU/Mobo deals. It wouldn't surprise me if you could get the 4670K at MicroCenter for less than what you're paying for the 4670 (without the K) currently.

I haven't been to a CompUSA since most of them, including all the ones near where I lived, went belly-up years ago, but if they're anything like they used to be, they aren't as good as MicroCenter. Though probably still better than Best Buy for computer components.
 
If you like to play console games (such as Xbox 360, PS3, Wii U) I would recommend investing in the nicest monitor you can afford because the same monitor your computer uses can also be used to play video games. I especially say this even more since you pointed out you want the computer for 'gaming purposes'.
 
Isn't that generation limited to 1080p gaming anyway? For the 360 it is difficult to tell the difference between 1080p and 720p, from my experience.

I think a nice monitor is more important for the PC side since that can at least natively bring you higher resolutions in games.
 
Isn't that generation limited to 1080p gaming anyway? For the 360 it is difficult to tell the difference between 1080p and 720p, from my experience.

I think a nice monitor is more important for the PC side since that can at least natively bring you higher resolutions in games.

I was supposing he had at least one of the other ones in my list as well. And with PS4/ One only exclusively working via HDMI cables (meaning a hi-def TV/monitor is needed), supposing he's planning on buying any of these things, he could really knock out two birds with one stone with the right purchase.
 
GRRR

I knew this would happen. I've assembled everything, and I think I've got every plug going where it needs to be. But when I power on the computer, the fans turn on, the LED up front does (the SSD power one turns on for a second before turning off) and everything is whirring, but nothing happens. No beeps from the motherboard (I don't have speakers though, I'm not sure if I need one or if the motherboard can do it itself), nothing displayed on screen.

I have no idea if I mis-plugged something in, or if one of my parts is dead, or if I'm missing a part. What can I do? This is incredibly frustrating.

EDIT: Ok, it boots up when i plug the monitor into my motherboard rather than video card, which makes me think its the video card that's the problem. Is there anyway I can diagnose what's the issue?

EDIT2: Possibly false alarm, it might just be the lack of drivers, or something stupid like that.
 
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