Hey folks, looking for some advice. I figure it's about time I pop my rig-building cherry and do it myself. I come before all of you because I have next to no idea what I'm doing, and I figure some old familiar faces might be a tad more adept than I am. I do have a buddy of mine that's going to actually help me put it all together when the time comes, but, as far as the parts go, I wanted to see if I could pick your brains. I'll tell you what I'm going for: -I'm looking to start from scratch. -This is going to be a gaming rig, and a gaming rig alone. I have no intention of doing any rendering, coding, etc. -I don't have any particular ambitions to overclock anything, particularly because I don't know what the hell I'm doing with any of that nonsense. -My goal is not to make the best gaming rig ever, but I want it to be as good as it can be while staying within my budget -My budget is a tad flexible. Ideally I'd like to shoot for $1000-1200 for the build. $1400-1600 would be my absolute max. I would prefer to stay in $1000-1200 range if at all possible, but I could see myself bending a bit on that if needed. I know that the extra cash on the upper end of that could probably go a long way, but I don't need this thing to be top of the line and state of the art. I realize that won't happen on what I'm trying to do it for. I just want it to be as good as it can be without being unnecessarily expensive. -To give you an idea of what I'd like. I would like to be able to play games like BF4 and (eventually) Star Citizen at relatively high settings while maintaining a smooth frame rate. Doesn't need to be the highest settings possible, but as high as I can get them within the budget. That being said, does anyone have any particular recommendations or advice? For example: what components should be prioritized price wise?
I will suggest something close to what I just built: CPU - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116898 Mobo - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130693 memory - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233335 SSD - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA2W00ZD1548 (I would suggest the Kingston HyperX if you can get it on sale) HDD - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA2W00ZD1577 Power Supply - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139011 Video Card - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125475 (AMD) or http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125462 (nVidia) Case - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129021 Total with the ATI card - 1294 before shipping.
Appreciated man, that really helps. That's actually the same processor and mobo I was already looking at.
From what I've looked into so far I think you could shave down cost by going with a hybrid drive vs a dedicated ssd/hd combo. If your old case is already ATX you might be able to skip that as well. A new case always feels nice but isn't really needed in a lot of situations. If you plan on doing a multi card set up at some point that is also something to consider. If so that is probly about the right PS for the job, maybe a touch bigger. If not then you could probly scale back to a 650. Also, if you fancy the idea of useing the onboard over clock from MSI you may also consider a new cpu fan/heatsink. They are a bit of a pain and, if I'm honest, rather ugly but the general conesus is that if you OC at all the stock cooling may cause problems. Your milage will vary. Case fans are also a thing to look in to if you want to quiet things down. My build suffered a bit as I didn't pay close enough attention. You need 4 pin fan conectors to take advantage of the MB's fan controler and only the 4 pin sockets on the board have that function. If hearing the fans dosen't bug ya, which is dosen't a lot of people, then ignore this bit .
Not sure what you are referencing, but the SSD I suggested is not a hybrid to my knowledge, it is a 128GB SSD. DO NOT skimp on the power supply, buy a very good one and buy more then you need... trust me. I am running a 750W with 2 ATI 7950s with no issue. Unfortunately if you are going for overclocking, the haswell is not the chip for you, you should be looking at an Ivy Bridge. But there really is no reason to overclock it as even an overclocked IB is not much better then the haswell. The haswells just do not OC well. The case has manual fan controllers on all of the fans.
I support everything Ghizmo suggests. My build uses the exact same SSDs in RAID 5 and I have had no issues at all with them, I use the AX 850 instead of the HX 850 Corsair power supply and it is very quiet, very stable power, and the modular cables are excellent.
I actually have the tower right now. It's been awesome for me for 6 years. The front 3 bays are modular and can be modified for any set up you want. A guy I work with has it also and he took out the bottom fans and installed water cooling without issue. I can also vouch for Corsair XMS series. I had XMS2 when it was brand new, and JUST got new ram, 6 years later. Very good ram overall. I'll also repeat what ghizmo said, DO NOT skimp on the power supply. Ever! On any build. I didn't know 6 years ago what I know now, and went through two power supplies in that time. My first was a budget supply, I figured there wasn't much they could screw up winding some copper around a magnet. Man I was wrong and when that power supply went it took my GPU with it. The second power supply was a BFG and it lasted longer than it should have since I didn't figure the increased power of a new GPU in and didn't have enough power. But finally it went too, and took my hard drive with it. Get more power than you need, I'd recommend 10% more, and get a good quality brand.
I just wanted to let you know that I read the title of this thread as "looking to build myself a new wig." That being said, I will say what everyone else has said: DO NOT SKIMP ON THE PSU.
