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Build Advice Appreciated
Hello,
Time for an upgrade (7 years since last). In Canada. Only need the Case and everything inside. Keeping my peripherals as they have been updated over the years. Main uses are gaming (AOC, SWTOR, Neverwinter) and work (mostly just Office Suite, some CADD, Adobe Suite etc). I plan on doing minor OC (like 4.0).
I guess my biggest concerns are me missing something with this build and wasting money. Trying to keep it under 2,500. So:
Case: http://www.ncix.com/detail/fractal-design-define-mini-matx-05-58474-1114.htm
CPU: http://www.ncix.com/detail/intel-core-i7-4770k-unlocked-14-81325.htm
MB: http://www.ncix.com/detail/asus-gryphon-z87-matx-lga1150-26-84499-1069.htm
Power: http://www.ncix.com/detail/seasonic-g-series-650w-atx-70-76943.htm
Memory: http://www.ncix.com/detail/g-skill-ripjawsx-f3-1866c9d-16gxm-16gb-2x8gb-77-78208.htm
HD: http://www.ncix.com/detail/seagate-barracuda-2tb-7200rpm-sata3-ab-66010-1069.htm
SSD: http://www.ncix.com/detail/crucial-m500-ct240m500ssd1-2-5in-240gb-d4-81655-1069.htm
Cooler: http://www.ncix.com/detail/corsair-cooling-hydro-series-h75-2e-91607.htm
DVD: http://www.ncix.com/detail/asus-drw-24f1st-24x-sata-dvd-6a-82953.htm
GPU: http://www.ncix.com/detail/asus-geforce-gtx-780-oc-af-88434-1069.htm
Windows: http://www.ncix.com/detail/microsoft-windows-8-1-64bit-english-dd-91219-1382.htm
Build is now 2,327. Very nice.
Any advice and recommendations you can provide would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for your time and expertise.
Cheers,
Seamus
Comments
Cutting that price tag down quite a bit should be pretty easy.
For only a mild CPU overclock, there's no need for a $100 CPU liquid cooler. You could probably get a plenty good enough air cooler for $30-$40 or so.
You're paying a large price premium for a premium motherboard. I'd recommend avoiding the very low end motherboards, but you should be able to get something plenty nice in the ballpark of $150. Still, your choice of a case that is big enough to support a full ATX motherboard but only actually supports Micro ATX limits your motherboard options substantially.
On the power supply, you're looking too much at wattage and not enough at quality. Corsair's TX V2 series is nice enough, but you can get something considerably better for a lot cheaper:
http://www.ncix.com/detail/seasonic-g-series-650w-atx-70-76943.htm
Even that is more than enough wattage for a single GPU system--and if you want to go CrossFire/SLI in the future, I'd highly recommend a full ATX motherboard to spread the cards out more.
You're paying a considerable premium for 1866 MHz memory, and the performance difference between that and 1600 MHz doesn't even matter unless you need to feed integrated graphics from it--which you don't.
You can get a nice SSD of essentially the same capacity for much cheaper than that:
http://www.ncix.com/detail/crucial-m500-ct240m500ssd1-2-5in-240gb-d4-81655-1069.htm
For a hard drive, do you really need 3 TB? Maybe you do, but most people don't need anywhere near that.
3 TB is a hell of a lot, plus agree with quizz on most of it.
Originally posted by laokoko
"if you want to be a game designer, you should sell your house and fund your game. Since if you won't even fund your own game, no one will".
Get a better PSU for sure. The one Quiz linked should also come in 750+watt, if you just feel the need. The 650 will be plenty for a single GPU.
If you are going to or thinking about SLI / Xfire get a bigger case with more cooling and an ATX mobo. If a single card solution is what your going for and will stay with then the Case and mobo should be fine. You can cut some cost and go with a cheaper mid range mobo which will work just fine for a mild OC and a single gpu.
They make some very good air coolers that you can get for $50 ( or less) that will work just as well for the OC your planning.
Buy 1600 mhz RAM, cheaper and will do everything you need it to and more.
But overall the parts you listed would work great, ( better PSU tho IMO is needed). You can shave a few dollars if you wanted, but what you listed would make for a very nice PC.
Edit: 3 TB is a lot of space, However I have 4 TB of HDD storage in my PC and have just over 3 TB full. I keep movies, music, photos, Old games, ect on mine. I personally like having that much storage. Many people do not keep stuff or need that much. If you need it buy it, IMO always better to have more than you need than less. And on the budget you listed why not
It is? You can't have too much hardrive space, modern games take up a lot, then add music, movies series and software.
I have around 12 TB plus another few I can slot in if I need it.
I agree with Quizz as well, good advices but people who doesn't stream so much uses a lot of space and it isn't that much money. Then again, harddrive space is easy to add later.
In my PC I keep 128G SSD + 1T backup drive - both drives around 60% full.
My older laptop had a 128G SSD, and apart from virtual machines that get juggled for work, I use maybe 40G. My newer laptop has 250G SSD, and apart from virtual machines that get juggled for work, I use maybe 40G of it - it's nice not having to juggle VMs as often, but they still have to get juggled from time to time.
Apart from that, I have an NAS. It used to be 2T, then 4T, and I just recently upgraded it to 8T. It's sitting just shy of 5G being used.
Space is easy to add, especially if you go external to your build. I know some people at work that just stopped buying physical drives and have moved most everything out into cloud storage - it's very cheap compared even to traditional HDDs, and often comes with uptime and reliability garantees that traditional storage devices won't even touch. It's possible to lease petabytes of storage through easily accessibly cloud services, and that many drives in a home is pretty much unthinkable. I don't necessarily recommend this, but it's also an option that a lot of people overlook.
That being said, space requirements vary wildly from person to person. The price varies wildly as well - depending mainly on the level of reliability and speed of the device.
I think the best advice really is just to provide the options, and let the buyer decide what they really need and how much they are really willing to pay for that.
Thank you for the suggestions and overall critique.
A: You can always buy another hard drive.
B: No point in crossfire/SLI besides microstuttering and tearing your hair out. Get a 290X aftermarket card and OC it. Freesync will be worth it later this year. Save money on your build and get one of the new monitors comming out soon with Display Port 1.2A
C: Your case is going to sit under a table or desk with you staring at the monitor 99% of the time. Get a big inexpensive case with high quality silent fans. Make sure it has dust filters.
E: Unless you are shooting for a liquid nitrogen overclocking record just get a newer high end Asrock or something similar. You don't need a monster motherboard.
F: Get a high end tower heatsink with dual silent fans. Same cooling as water and probably more reliable since it has 2 fans.
G: For SSD get the least expensive one with acceptable MTBF and both Read/Write near 500 mbps. Look them up on Newegg and pick one with great reviews.
H: As Quiz said. for a quad core there is no point in going above DDR-3 1600. If you want speed get tighter timings.
The TUF thing is mostly marketing. Any case ventilation should be more than enough to keep those (mostly) decorative heatsinks cool.
I'm not a big fan of dust filters. They either don't work and let dust through, or they work and you have to clean them often. If you think you need them, it shouldn't be hard to find dust filters that you can add to any case. Doing so would open your options up for cases.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811988015
Cleaning a dust filter periodically is better than opening up your case and dusting out the heat sink.
And yes they do work. They greatly minimize dust build up in both CPU heatsink and more importantly GPU.
IMO If you are going to buy a case then buy one that will protect the components inside.
6 one 1/2 dozen tne other. Currently I rely on compressed air cans but if I could go back in time I would have bought a better case that had dust filters.
You live in a cleaner room than most.
My PCs get a cleaning every 3-4 months. They aren't filty horrible in 3-4 months, but there's definitely a bit of dust there. My servers at work, in a dedicated server room, get blown out once a year, and they are much cleaner than my home PC (with dogs/cats/kids running around). The servers would probably be fine for 3-4 years, but why risk it when it only takes a few minutes to blow them out. My home PCs... they may make it 1-2 years before I'd totally clog something up.
They have filters. The filters help, but you have to remember to clean them.
In my opinion, the filters are only more convenient if they are in a spot where you don't have to pull your PC out to get to them. My PC it's easier to pull the side off the case than it is to pull it out from under the desk to get the filters to slide out the top.. so in that case the filters are actually a nuisance. It depends greatly on where you are going to place the case, and where the filters are inside the case, as to if filters will do you any good or not.
Filters do no mean you get to clean your PC any less frequently. It just means you clean the filter instead (or in addition to) of the rest of the PC.