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My Personal Tax Time Build
Hey guys, Just to get this out of the way I have never built my own compute but having bought 2 computers from site such as cyber & ibuypower an the computer falling off 2years later I'm ready to build my own. I really wanted to use this thread to post what I'm looking at buying for my build & using you guys imput (since you guys seem far better then me). Lets go.
My budget: Is a budget. Honestly though I want to get away with power for cheap.
Windows 8.1 64 bit. blah blah blah
AMD A8-6600K ($99.99 + 5% discount + $10 promo code = $84.99)
ASUS A88X-PRO ($128.99 + 10% discount + $25 rebate = $93.99)
Crucial Ballistix Sport XT ($89.99 + 24% off = $67.99)
GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 750 ($119.99 + 20% discount + $20 rebate = $79.99)
WD Black Series 2003FZEX 159.99 + 17% off + $8 promo code = $124.00)
Corsair CX750 $99.99 + 20% discount + 10% promo code + $20 rebate = $51.99)
This is what I've been able to come up with. With just a few google searches & looking to see whats on sale/ has ok reviews. I did leave out a few things cause I'm not sure what to be looking for in them & that is:
Tower Case & Monitor.
So I guess the idea is. Do you guys see something other then whats above thats around the same price or lower and/or better?
Comments
No SSD. You need an SSD.
No really, you NEED one.
The Deep Web is sca-ry.
Im confused by the notion that people NEED SSDs. care to explain?
And I'm not being mean I really want to know why so many people believe this?
Your CPU is an APU, it has a graphics card built in. If you use an AMD GPU instead of an Nvidia one, it will use both.
http://www.amd.com/en-us/innovations/software-technologies/technologies-gaming/dual-graphics#overview
Not going to pretend i knew that lol. However, Is the built in graphics card really going to make much of a difference? I've never used duel crad systems (SLI, CrossFire) So I really dont know how 2 graphics cards can work from each other on a performance standpoint.
Am looking into a graphics card on the same level as the Nividia I have listed thou.
Here is the difference, Dual Graphics will engage both GPU, this won't happen with an Nvidia GPU.
I can't say what you should pick, maybe you like nvidia, you know.
Just gonna say, i just built a system, and only issue i had was i got a mid tower case.
It has less room to work around inside, and you need to plan out ahead of time what to put in when, or you end up taking parts in and out to get others to go in and fit.
Unless you need a smaller case i would suggest getting a full tower, they are mostly around the same cost and well worth it to get a full. I would if i had to do it again.
On the SSD issue. it is a huge difference in load times for everything on the SSD. Games,browsers,windows, and really makes the windows updates go fast as well.
If you want to spend less time waiting on all the above to load and finish..then SSD is a great thing to have. Not a must for everyone. But i like my time spent in games and such not waiting on loads. It really does add up over time for all the waiting.
A budget is a budget though...so if you must wait, ok. Just they really will make you never go without a SSD after you use one.
I would have never gone for a small case as I have air flow ODC. But i do think i will go for a full case now that you mention it. Thank you. Still looking at cases.
SSD would make sense if he wasn't on a budget, which he clearly is.
Also, I still don't trust a SSD for my data storage, I would stay with the HDD, that's a good HDD.
You don't NEED one but it will make loading and installations times much faster. For example in Dark Souls 2 and Skyrim I never have time to read any of the loading screen text. And I can't remember exactly but when I installed windows on my sdd it only took ~10 min. Boot time is only a few seconds.
I have no idea what prices you're looking at for some of those things, but they're not the ones listed on the links.
Try this for a CPU/motherboard/memory combo deal:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.2144980
Yes, that is the rare three item combo deal that isn't junk. That gets you six CPU cores instead of four, a nice motherboard, and comparable memory without the bad "it didn't work" reviews, all for cheaper.
And then let's get you a much faster video card for the same price:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202081
Nvidia has some nice cards, but they're rarely competitive on a price/performance basis below about $150.
The power supply you picked isn't terrible, but it's not exactly good, either. And you want something good. For example:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371071
At $60 before a $20 rebate, that's practically stealing. Massively better than what you picked, and cheaper, too.
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I'm not sure what to make of your hard drive choice. Few people actually need anywhere near 2 GB for consumer use. Most people would be better off getting a smaller SSD like this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820721108
If you do actually need a ton of space, then add a hard drive--but pick one that is cheap for the capacity rather than paying a large price premium for the minor speed advantage of a WD Black.
Why do you "need" an SSD? Basically, any computer that doesn't have an SSD is slow. Period. No matter what else it has. That won't stop games from being playable, but it will mean you have to constantly--and unnecessarily--wait on your computer.
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You didn't link a case or optical drive at all. Nor a CPU cooler, though you can just use the stock cooler that comes with the CPU. There are ways to get around not having an optical drive, but you really need a case. If you're going to reuse an old case, it would be good to tell us what it is.
Asymmetric CrossFire isn't the single dumbest idea to hit the market in the last several years, but it's up there. He's got the budget to get a discrete card massively faster than a four year old Radeon HD 6670 that cost $70 way back then, even.
Intel's higher end CPUs are a lot better than anything AMD has to offer. But they're also a lot more expensive and don't fit the budget unless the original poster is willing to spend a lot more than he's letting on. My usual recommendation is that if you can't get at least a Core i5-4690, then save some money and go AMD.
I have an i7-2600, not overclocked, and I totally overbought. Nothing today, short of cad, needs that kind of processing power.
Ok, after it being explained I do like the idea of an SSD. And Your right my hard drive choice was poor is probly 98% more then what i would ever use.
And I would not be using an old case or anything. I've been looking at cases trying to decided what would be best for me. Nothing fancy as the tower is always hidden anyhow.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811147107
80bucks. & fans out the waaazoo. Hows this?
If you're not sure how much space you personally need, look at how much you're actually using in your previous computer. If you never bother to uninstall stuff, you might need to change that if you go SSD only. But I don't think "I haven't played this game in three months and will never play it again, so I'm going to uninstall it now" is that big of a burden.
Personally, I've been SSD-only since 2009. I had 120 GB for four years, then upgraded to 240 GB. If you try to go SSD-only and then later decide that you need more space, it's easy to add another drive later.
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I don't see any need for a full tower case. Full tower adds to the cost of production, and that gets passed on to you. Maybe if you wanted to handle multiple high-end GPUs or a huge liquid cooling setup or something. But mid-tower is plenty of space for most people. This is decent, and very cheap at the moment:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129191
$40 before a $15 rebate. I wouldn't be surprised if that price doesn't last long, though.
You're probably already convinced, but I want to throw more fuel on the fire for SSDs.
Hard drives have been a bottleneck in performance since the 2000s for me. They were slow in the 1990s, but everything was relatively slow back then. Before SSDs were affordable, RAID0 on two Western Digital Raptors could help a bit for read speeds and seek times.
Now, SSDs are affordable for gaming purposes. They aren't quite there for mass-storage of media files, but that's what mechanical drives are good at.
What do you gain by switching to a SSD? First, Windows will start up faster. With a mechanical drive, typical boot sequences involve turning the computer on then getting a cup a coffee and coming back to watch the computer load for five more minutes. With a SSD, the computer is ready to be used before you can put the filter in the coffee machine. Not only does a typical SSD computer boot in a minute or so, but you can also launch programs right away and actually use it instead of staring at the desktop for a few more minutes.
So you saved time booting, but games are what we care about if you just leave your computer on all the time. For every loading screen you see on a hard drive, you have plenty of time to read the loading screen tips a few times. A two-minute loading screen every 15 minutes gets annoying. Use a SSD instead and that loading screen will go by in ten seconds or so and you won't know how to do certain things in the game because you don't have time to read the loading screen tips. I actually had this happen. Over the course of a year, shaving two minutes off a loading screen 4 times per hour for an average of 4 hours of gaming per day can add up to over 8 days saved of not staring at loading screens.