Looking to Build a Desktop

Not putting an SSD in that machine would be a travesty.
Even if all you load on the SSD is the operating system, you'll see a huge improvement in speed and overall responsiveness.

Oh? It seriously makes that much of a difference?

Boot times are somewhere between 10x and 20x faster in my experience, and the time taken to launch programs stored on SSD sees similar improvements.
For cost reasons, I don't store everything on SSD, but putting the OS and frequently used programs on one has made a huge difference.
Music, movies, ROMs, and backup files obviously don't need to be on an SSD, and storing really big games on SSD is just impractical for most people.

I'm also in the upgrade market. Any CPU/motherboard/graphics card recommendations cheerfully accepted.

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Originally Posted by Dolemite

Looking into either buying a good gaming PC or even building one for the first time (I hear it's easier than ever these days and I have people that may be able to assist when the time comes) and I'm hoping you darlings can offer some advice. Pls bear in mind that I know very little about hardware but I've been doing research and am learning the basics, but at the moment I know just enough to know that I don't know nearly enough. Hold my hand, sweethearts...I'm tender.

Here's a PC I'm kinda looking at: http://www.microcenter.com/product/4...sktop_Computer

I know the graphics card is sorta crap and eventually plan on swapping it for the above-mentioned 970 (it would fit, right?), but with the loadout I'm looking for in a system (a good i7, at least a 2TB HD, probably 16GB DDR4 RAM) and the price of that PC (whose GPU I would have to swap), would it be more economical to just build a PC with everything I'm looking for instead? Could I do a lot better?

Note: I don't really care about having a SSD, unless someone feels passionately that I should have one and that it will provide a drastic improvement overall. If so, please explain why.

Currently I'm using an i3 laptop with integrated graphics that is surprisingly decent on all but the most demanding games (for example, it runs BioShock Infinite smoothly, albeit on lowest settings, although I understand that's not the most demanding game in the universe). I'm really not interested in gaming above 1920 x 1080 (hell, 1366 x 768 still looks pretty good to me), so I don't need something that can run Crysis 3 at 4K at 400 fps or something. But I want to be able to play pretty much any modern game at 1080 smoothly, and have some small degree of future proofing for at least a week or two.

My overall budget is around $1000 or so, more or less (not including a monitor). Please take a gander at the specs of the PC I linked to above and tell me if I'm on the right track or out of my mind, and/or if there's a better processor or whatever I should be looking for.

By all accounts in the reviews that I've read, however, the 970 will probably give me the best bang for my buck in terms of a GPU within my price range, but there's so much to account for when selecting the right parts for everything and, as I already stated, I'm pretty new to this.

Any help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks, kids.

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That's a pretty good deal for the parts that you are getting, but I don't like the power supply. The PSU is rated at 460 watts and only has 25A available on the +5 rail. The GTX 970 would eventually eat that PSU.

Here's a build I've put together using Microcenter. It totals $921 before tax, but without an operating system. It will offer a pretty good gaming experience, until you can afford a better graphics card later on. You can always substitute the SSD for a 1TB HDD to save about $50. I didn't include an optical drive, but you can get a cheap DVD drive for about $15.


i7-4790k $250

http://www.microcenter.com/product/4...oxed_Processor

MSI Z97S Krait Edition $115/ $99 after rebate

http://www.microcenter.com/product/4...el_Motherboard

Crucial 16GB DDR3-1600 $78

http://www.microcenter.com/product/3...Memory_Modules)

Crucial BX200 480GB SSD $129

http://www.microcenter.com/product/4..._CT480BX200SSD

EVGA 500B 500 Watt PSU $60/$50 after rebate

http://www.microcenter.com/product/4...X_Power_Supply

Corsair Carbide Mid-tower case $45/ $35 after rebate

http://www.microcenter.com/product/4..._Computer_Case

EVGA GTX 960 SC $204/ $185 after rebate
http://www.microcenter.com/product/4...Silent_Cooling

Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo $35/$30 after rebate (CPU cooler)

http://www.microcenter.com/product/3...sal_CPU_Cooler




The 6700K really doesn't have much of an advantage for gaming, over the previous generation Intel CPUs. The 6700K does offer USB 3.1, but the system you have in the link only has USB 3.0 headers.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOh19-No2Nwa

Wow, that's a hell of a reply. Thanks.

One advantage I read that the 6700K has is that it's compatible with DDR4 RAM, whereas the 4790K can only use DDR3. Is that correct, and if so, does that make that much of a difference in gaming/real world performance?

Great point about the power supply, BTW. The fact that the one that comes with that tower might not pump out enough juice for GTX 970 didn't even occur to me.

I like your rig. If I followed your blueprint but used the 970 instead would it work well with that setup? Microcenter has the 970 for $294.99 (after rebate).

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Originally Posted by Dolemite

Wow, that's a hell of a reply. Thanks.

One advantage I read that the 6700K has is that it's compatible with DDR4 RAM, whereas the 4790K can only use DDR3. Is that correct, and if so, does that make that much of a difference in gaming/real world performance?

Great point about the power supply, BTW. The fact that the one that comes with that tower might not pump out enough juice for GTX 970 didn't even occur to me.

I like your rig. If I followed your blueprint but used the 970 instead would it work well with that setup? Microcenter has the 970 for $294.99 (after rebate).

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RAM speed does not have a substantial impact on gaming. The video I linked at the bottom, shows that the 2 rigs using DDR4 RAM did not see a significant gain in gaming performance.

Here's my 4790k rig with an EVGA GTX 780 Classified running The Witcher 3 on very high settings. It runs very well. You should see very similar performance with a GTX 970.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgTErZ7GzPM

I recommend copying and pasting that link through google. The video quality will be much better.

You know, that post from gamevet makes me wish we had "What's a Sweet Machine" posts that were kept up to date from time to time by you guys who know what you're talking about. It would be really convenient to just pop in here and look at the list of what the best CPU/Motherboard etc is from people I know and trust rather than a bunch of yahoos elsewhere.

I agree completely. I'm aiming my new PC towards powering a Rift/Vive, and that's going to require some muscle. A thread of PC parts recommendations updated every now and then would be very helpful. Being able to ask, instead of leafing through PC update guides from six months ago from a random gaming site, is always nice.

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Originally Posted by Error

You know, that post from gamevet makes me wish we had "What's a Sweet Machine" posts that were kept up to date from time to time by you guys who know what you're talking about. It would be really convenient to just pop in here and look at the list of what the best CPU/Motherboard etc is from people I know and trust rather than a bunch of yahoos elsewhere.

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Yeah, it takes a lot of homework. I had bought a pre-built PC back in 2002 with a 2 Ghz Celeron processor, and did not know that the motherboard did not have an AGP slot for a GPU. I ended up buying PCI slot graphics cards for the computer, but I'd always felt that the PC was held back by using PCI based GPUs. I also ended up replacing the factory PSU, which was pretty much the bare minimum.

I later bought a pre-built PC back in 2009, that did have a PCI-E x16 slot, but ended up discovering that the PSU was not good enough for a decent GPU. My 1st baby step to building my own computer was replacing the E6300 (dual-core @ 2.83 Ghz) with an Intel Q9650 (C2Q @ 3 Ghz), and once I was comfortable with that, I ended up buying a new case, motherboard, PSU and RAM to put the Q9650 in.

I did not have resources like Youtube to provide good information about building a PC back in 2002. Now, you have places like youtube, and other websites with countless information that can provide a solid base for how to build a good gaming PC, at an affordable price.