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Building a new computer for my wife need some advice
Hey guys just received this really sexy computer case from new egg and really would love to hear some of your suggestions for a mid price range build here for gaming.
www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811144279
Gonna have to buy everything slowly as money goes to real life issues so fast. I can spend like 80 - 100 bucks a week most weeks to order parts over time. Want a pretty decent system. I wasn't expecting this case to be so BIG! Awesome fans though. Some recommendations would be awesome. Not sure yet if I want to go AMD or Intel. Last time I built a custom rig AMD was on top but these days I hear Intel is the way to go. I imagine intel mobo and processors are more expensive though. Must be a quad core or better and I really am not interested in overclocking anything! Games I want to play with my girl here are most likely EQ Next, TESO, Wildstar perhaps, if I can get her to STOP playing AION first that is. lol.
Thinking around 600 dollars or so ...over time....who knows ??
Comments
If your going to be getting it bit by bit, and cost is an issue, then intel is probably not an option... however, these are some things that you might want to consider;
AMD A10-7700K Black Edition 3.5GHz (Socket FM2+) APU Kaveri Processor - Retail
ASRock FM2A88M Extreme4+ AMD A88X (Socket FM2+) Motherboard
Corsair Vengeance Pro Black 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-17066 2133MHz Dual Channel Kit
Seagate Barracuda 1TB 64MB Cache Hard Drive SATA 6GB/s 8.5ms 7200rpm - OEM
Zalman Z11 Plus Black Tower Case - NO PSU
Corsair Builder Series Modular CX600M - 600 Watt 80 PLUS® Bronze Power Supply
Not sure what sort of price that would be in dollars, as its from a UK supplier, but perhaps the price might be even lower sourced 'locally'
600 dollars hmmm..
AMD overclocked Kaveri
Motherboard http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157517
Processor http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819113359
Ram http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820226345
Power supply http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817152046
SSD http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147247
HDD http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236345
Heatsink http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835103064
2nd fan for heatsink http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811999617
Thermal paste http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835608008
Total cost $587.91 Free shipping on everything.
If you drop the Kaveri overclocking parts and use less expensive components the price goes down to $419.95
Swap the ram for DDR3-2133, Use the PSU from the Intel build, Use MSI A55 Motherboard. Drop the heatsink, The Thermal paste, the extra fan, and the SSD.
Intel I5-4430 Build
Processor http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116895
Motherboard http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130730
Ram http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820313342
GPU http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125514
Power supply http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817438012
HDD http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236345
Total cost $594.94 Free shipping on everything.
Overall the Intel build will likely give the best performance but for your budget would axe the SSD. The intel build with an SSD would drop the HDD to 500GB and lower the GPU to less than Kaveri levels.
The bare Kaveri build will play WoW and most other games pretty well.
The Overclocked Kaveri build will play just about everything very well.
Wait until you have 600 dollars and then buy a bunch of parts all at once. You don't want to buy a part that is dead on arrival, not test it for several weeks, and then by the time you find out it's dead, it's too late to return it for an easy replacement.
I agree, building over time sounds like a good idea, but it's almost always better to just save over time, then buy it all at once.
Totally agree, by saving the money, the chances are that some of the components might have dropped a bit in price too.
Totally agree with this, too. If you build over time then your components are simply going to get dated. Quickly!!
Crazkanuk
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I would agree with the save your money and buy everything at once choice.
However
If your going to piecemeal it then buy it over a short term. That way if somethings wrong with some hardware hopefully your in still in the window for a return if needed.
You are probably fairly safe buying PSU, Case, Optical Drive, HDD / SSD, CPU cooler, CPU separate. I personally would get GPU, Mobo, RAM all at once when you plan on building it.
Just keep in mind you may get a piece of bad hardware. Its easier to get it replaced or refunded if you just bought it than 3 months down the road.
For $600 I would look at an AMD build. And buy depending on what she will be using it for.
Newegg has the 8350 on sale for $159
http://promotions.newegg.com/NEemail/May-0-2014/72Hoursdeals_16/index-landing.html?nm_mc=EMC-IGNEFL051614&cm_mmc=EMC-IGNEFL051614-_-EMC-051614-Index-_-E0-_-PromoWord&et_cid=7780&et_rid=4531064
I would stay far far far away from anything amd. I regret buying a 290x and not a 780gtx. As far as their processors go stay far away. If all you are doing is gaming then a i5 is fine. I still haven't found a game that can use all four cores let alone 8. Intel kills amd on single core performance, which is what matters for gaming. If you want her to be able to play 1080 with a constant 60 fps you will need a big card. My water cooled 290x at 1300 1800 which ranks with a 780 ti can't even play Eso at a constant 60 fps , it sometimes drops to 50. Since you are on a budget though, go to eBay now while the prices are down, and get a 290, I see them go for under 200. I wouldn't worry about getting used these cards are designed to last many many years. No card can compare to a 290 performance at 200 bucks. Just make sure you get a 100 percent feedback eBay seller.
I can't recommend getting a 8350 for 159 that is a rip off, it uses way more power than a i5 and the i5 any generation is faster than a 8350 for gaming. The 8350 can render video faster though if she's into that. Do not get a r7 and expect it to play anything over medium at around 40 fps. I had a r 7 250 and I got 9fps for Eso on max settings. Also if you are gonna go with a low end card there is 0 reason to buy a 600 watt psu. I ran a 7950, and a 290x not over clocked on a junk 650, with 16 amp rails. You could do with any rail Psu 400 watts with a r7 the 250 works on a 300. If you go high end the watts don't matter, the rails do, a 290 if over clocked will draw up to 27 amps. So even if you had a 800 watt psu with 4 16 amp rails it wouldn't work.
The differene between AMD and Intel CPUs
Intel are faster per core, and more power efficient. They are also roughly 2-3x the price, plus the motherboards are more expensive on average.
AMD are slower, run a bit hotter, but --- BUT -- they are ~fast enough~ for gaming. If your on a tight budget, ~fast enough~ for 1/2 to 1/3 the price trumps faster every time.
AMD has the integrated market locked up tight (APUs), and that's very attractive to people on very tight budgets where the price of even an entry level gaming card is hard to swing. Intel integrated graphics aren't even close - and no matter how fast your CPU is if your GPU is junk your stuck on gaming.
AMD video cards verus nVidia -- umm.. PhysX versus Mantle, that's really about the only difference. If either of those mean anything to you, go with it. Aside from that, nVidia is premium-priced at the high end, both are fairly competitive at points through the mid-low end, and there is very little difference between the two apart from that throughout.
On a budget, it's all about making compromises to make the system work as well as you can. You can't afford "the best" for every component. I do recommend Intel over AMD, in general, as well - but I also recognize that AMD does still work, and for a lot less money. Would i regret buying AMD if I had the budget for Intel CPU - yes, probably... but would I have the same regret if that difference also meant running on the integrated graphics of that CPU? No... that would be totally reversed. Of if that price difference meant I went way over budget and couldn't afford food/rent/something else more essential? Again - No. As much as I like my computer, I like food more.
No no no.
if he is willing to take his time he should be buying as items come up on SALE. You will be amazed at how much money you can save if you do that. Nothing like having money and then seeing a great CPU pop up on sale for $100 less than normal...
If you buy the rest of the computer when you find this amazing sale, I agree. Otherwise, no.
When you buy that CPU, and it sits in your closet for 8 months waiting on the rest of the parts, and you find out it's $100 cheaper because the UPS box they were bulk shipped in was dropped off the back of a truck and it doesn't work (or something else similar, this is often why these panic sales happen, after all)... go ahead and try returning that to the guy you bought it from.
Sure, it's possible - it's under warranty from the manufacture for a year (assuming you bought it through a reputable retailer) Warranty service is ~much~ slower (weeks, maybe months) than if your in the window to just return it to the retailer (instant if your local, a few days if your not).
And if you can't get the warranty honored, now your out the price of that cheap CPU, plus the price of another to replace it. Not so cheap now.
You may get lucky, and everything works out great for you. A lot of people do. But there are a lot of parts in a working computer build, and for every part there is a non-zero chance it could need an RMA. It happens a lot when you build a computer. The chance of needing to RMA something is high enough that I would never advise someone to piecemeal parts like this, just because of the RMA concern, and I always encourage people to go through reputable retailers who honor RMAs quickly and easily, even if that means it's not necessarily the cheapest price you can find. RMAs happen a lot on a new build.
There are several problems with that on general principle, even apart from the chance of defective parts:
1) Nearly everything is nearly always on sale at a lot of places. How do you tell a "real" sale from something that is overpriced but merely less overpriced than it has been at some nebulous point in the past? If you can do that, you probably don't need to come here for advice.
2) The price for a given level of performance tends to decline as time passes. A rule of thumb is 20% per year if you're limited by power consumption (e.g., video cards and highly mobile or highly threaded CPUs) or 40% per year if you're limited by die space (e.g., memory and storage). A super awesome deal at one point in time may be unimpressive by the time you finish the computer months later.
3) Constantly checking prices takes a lot of time. How much is your time worth? $10/hour? $20/hour? If you spend a lot of time checking prices, the value of the time you spend may well exceed the savings in dollars.
There's also another problem with your specific example: CPUs very rarely have huge sales. There are only two vendors, and few, long-lived SKUs. Price cuts in CPUs tend to be permanent, so even if you grab something just after a huge price drop, it probably would have been the same price or cheaper months later.
That's valid. The reason that I personally don't do that is because, in upgrading in that fashion, you end up with a lot of spare parts. Computers that are whole and working are usually worth more (either resell on Craigslist/Ebay), still useful as hand-me-downs, or worth a significant amount as a donation for tax purposes. Spare parts - not so much.
It's a minor point, not saying "Your doing it wrong," at least you aren't shooting yourself in the foot like other people have suggested - just something to consider.
Whether that makes sense depends some on how much you're going to replace. If you're replacing everything, then doing it piecemeal means a ton of chances for different components to not play nicely with each other or run into driver problems. If you're replacing one or two parts, that can often make a lot of sense, but I'd call that an upgrade, not buying a new computer piecemeal.
Hey guys, thanks for all the awesome replies. Lot's of options there. Was thinking of a decent AMD build but I know Intel has far better performance. Will definitely buy the mobo and processor at the same time. Can someone narrow it down a bit with a separate build for both Intel AND AMD? 2 lists from which I can compare.
I recently put together/repaired/upgraded my old Gateway case with an AMD build that is running pretty well thanks to you guys' help. AMD-FX 4300 quad core processor, MSI motherboard Cost me about 200 dollars for the processor and mobo, memory thermal paste and win 7 OEM 64 bit operating system. Rest of the parts I already had. I used the old Nvidia GeForce GT 430 I had, not the best card out there by no means. Probably should upgrade that card soon!
Might be able to spend a bit more than the $600 ...hopefully. Wasn't expecting this new case to be this BIG! Would like to fill it with good shit.
Also I want an ATX motherboard, not one of the smaller ones. Is there a performance advantage with using a full size motherboard over a smaller one like a microATX or another? What is a "Flex" board exactly anyways?
Don't really want an SSD unless ...well I guess I COULD get both an SSD and a decent hard drive together...right?
You guys are the most tech savvy folks I know ...btw that old upgrade I speak of was suggested here in another post
Off the subject question: Why can't I use copy+paste on these forums all of a sudden? Cntrl+C and Cntrl+V is not working here like it always has in the past...???
Again, Thanks for the awesome advice. You all rock!
There's no point unless you're ready to buy something now. Prices fluctuate, and a great build today will be outdated next week.
I know prices will always change. What concerns me most I guess is the fear I will buy components that won't work together as well as they should. Motherboard paired with the right processor paired with the right video card. etc...
So many combinations out there. Socket selection for the cpu, graphic card compatibility,...
What is a good mobo and cpu combination? Might have like 200 dollars to spend by the end of the week. I plan to have the cash for the whole system within 6 weeks!
Here is an AMD cpu and MSI mobo combo on newegg for right at $200
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.1624077
For your wife a budget build PC I would go AMD all the way.
Way to go JD nice find. Took your advice last time and my new system is running great!