Need some help with a new PC build

[Drops a Sweet Katana]

I've been looking around PC building websites trying to get handle on what kind of PC I'd want to make and how much it would cost. I've made one build but I'm not sure where I should make improvements. I don't think I need to worry about compatibility since the website I made it on has a filter for it, but I'd like to know where I can cut costs, what is too much and too little for my purposes, and just general improvements.

The build as it stands now: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/bfwK23

This is my first ever build so any and all critique and advice would be highly appreciated.

I'm unsure if the SSD is entirely necessary at this point, considering it hikes the price up above my price range.

 

[Wasted]

You shouldn't need a CPU cooler unless you are planning on overclocking.

I would go with more memory if you have a ton of games. My 1TB hard drive filled up immediately and had to quickly replace it.

You sure your PSU will supply your rig?

Do you need your soundcard for anything specific? Unless you are planning surround sound it shouldn't help you much.

You might want to look at the AMD R9 series cards. If I recall you might get more bang for you pound at that price range.

Otherwise looks like a great budget build.

 

[kurupt87]

GPU is where I'd put any extra cash you have, it's the most important part in a gaming rig. A 680 if you can find one, a 770 or a (AMD) 290X (EDIT: Ooops, meant 280X). Those will be around £200.

Your PSU is also, perhaps, a little weak? Have you worked out the wattage that your computer is going to need and come up with that?? I would've thought something in the region of a 600W PSU to be more likely.

An optional extra is to buy a small (60 -> 100GB) SSD where you can install your OS and drivers. Any spare room can go to a game or two that you play a lot of.

The sound card, unless you plan to use your PC as a serious sound system, is not really needed.

Edit: Also, a quick look at your case and mobo seems to suggest they won't fit together, the case being ATX and the mobo a micro ATX. I'd up the mobo to ATX rather than get a micro case. The case might fit micro ATX, but I didn't download the manual to check.

I'd always recommend ATX over micro ATX though.

And, unless you are planning on using a wired internet connection (which if you play online multiplayer you should), you'll need to buy a wireless adapter.

 

[Drops a Sweet Katana]

You shouldn't need a CPU cooler unless you are planning on overclocking.

I would go with more memory if you have a ton of games. My 1TB hard drive filled up immediately and had to quickly replace it.

You sure your PSU will supply your rig?

Do you need your soundcard for anything specific? Unless you are planning surround sound it shouldn't help you much.

You might want to look at the AMD R9 series cards. If I recall you might get more bang for you pound at that price range.

Otherwise looks like a great budget build.

I wouldn't be surprised if 1TB wasn't enough, but I would likely upgrade it later once I have an idea of how much space I would have.

The whole rig, according to the site, consumes about 375W and the PSU supplies 430W so I would think it would be enough. I could very well be wrong though.

EDIT: Bumped the supply up to 600W

I don't really need the sound card for anything specific, so I'll get rid of it. Shaves off a healthy £21.

I found an R9 270 card for about £5 more than the current card: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/part/xfx-video-card-r9270acdfc
Looking at benchmarks I think it'll be worth it. What's AMD's driver support like?

Also I'm wondering if it's worth getting this SSD to install the OS on: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/part/ocz-internal-hard-drive-oczssd21vtxpl60g
It's £30 and has 60GB of storage. Do you reckon that'll be enough?

Thanks for the feedback. I really appreciate it!

 

[Drops a Sweet Katana]

GPU is where I'd put any extra cash you have, it's the most important part in a gaming rig. A 680 if you can find one, a 770 or a (AMD) 290X. Those will be around £200.

Your PSU is also, perhaps, a little weak? Have you worked out the wattage that your computer is going to need and come up with that?? I would've thought something in the region of a 600W PSU to be more likely.

An optional extra is to buy a small (60 -> 100GB) SSD where you can install your OS and drivers. Any spare room can go to a game or two that you play a lot of.

The sound card, unless you plan to use your PC as a serious sound system, is not really needed.

I would go for a heftier card but I want to keep the build under £600, leaning more towards £500 if possible. I'll have a look at larger PSUs but I'm not sure if I need more power. The whole rig uses about 375W, so it might be worth investing in a bigger supply for safety.

EDIT: Just bumped my supply up to 600W for an extra £8. Probably going to end up being one the better decisions I make.

 

[nesbitto]

For a start, here is a link to pc part picker with all of your parts already selected.
EDIT: link goes to orginal build, needs updating http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/pprn8d
(8th dimensional pprn? Sign me up )

I noticed there are some things that might be missing. You never mention a keyboard and mouse, do you have a pair available? Another thing is connections to the internet. If you're able to use an ethernet cable to connect straight to your router/modem, do that. Otherwise, you're going to have to invest in an ethernet networking card.

Reading up on your case, how many fans does it come with? I can't figure out if it's one or two. If it's only one, you may have to get another, depending on how hot the rig runs. Midi cases are reasonably large (mine certainly is) so temperature shouldn't be a massive factor (again depends on how the rig does run in the end, basing this off of your power consumption.) I'd question how necessary the CPU cooler is. People may disagree with me, but I think stock coolers are fine if you're not OCing or doing super intensive computational work for hours on end. The stock cooler on my AMD FX6350 is a bit loud, but otherwise keeps things in good working order.

Part picker is putting your wattage at 375W and your power supply is rated for 430W. That's fine for now, but you've got to think about future upgrades. I'd probably get a bigger one now (~500W), to avoid having to buy a new one a few years down the line. Don't cheap out on the power supply. It keeps everything alive and if it fucks up, you risk damaging all your parts.

Optical drive? If you use cds and dvds often enough, I guess it's worth a buy. When I built my rig a few months back I thought about getting one, until I realised I hadn't touched a physical CD in years.

Why are you buying a sound card? Your MB has an inbuilt sound card, and unless your producing professional tracks, there's no need to buy an additional one.

OS is what ever you prefer. I got windows 8 for cheap on a student deal. If you ignore the BS tiles thing on the start menu, it's just as good or better than 7.

I'd wholeheartedly suggest getting an SSD. Shit is super fast. Even getting a small one for the OS and programs, and then keeping the rest of your files, music and videos on the HDD is working awesome for me. I've got a 120GB SSD and a 500GB HDD. I've currently got ~>50GB free on the SSD for my next game install. Once I finish with a game, I typically remove it from the SSD and/or move it to the HDD.

A great way I found for designing my rig was to settle on my budget first. I was going to spend X amount and no more. I then found some example builds and split the costs of each component into a percentage of the total cost. That gave me a rough idea of how much I could spend on each part with respect to my budget. You don't need to stick rigidly to this plan, it's just a generally idea.

 

[Timotei]

Get a bigger PSU in the 650-750W margin. Having more headroom with your power supply means you don't have to worry about wattage when upgrading.

Get higher frequency RAM that's under 2000MHz. Higher frequency RAM will improve a system's performance immensely. I have an i7 OC'd to 4.5GHz and a GTX770. When I was upgrading to the 770 from a 660ti, I didn't notice a performance difference on intensive games until I dropped in some 2400MHz RAM up from 1600.

Drop the sound card unless you plan on making music, audio editing, or using your system as an entertainment center.

Save up a bit more for a better Graphics card. Aim for the GTX 700 series. Here's a chart which should give you an idea of cost and performance. [http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html]

 

[Drops a Sweet Katana]

Get a bigger PSU in the 650-750W margin. Having more headroom with your power supply means you don't have to worry about wattage when upgrading.

Get higher frequency RAM that's under 2000MHz. Higher frequency RAM will improve a system's performance immensely. I have an i7 OC'd to 4.5GHz and a GTX770. When I was upgrading to the 770 from a 660ti, I didn't notice a performance difference on intensive games until I dropped in some 2400MHz RAM up from 1600.

Drop the sound card unless you plan on making music, audio editing, or using your system as an entertainment center.

Save up a bit more for a better Graphics card. Aim for the GTX 700 series. Here's a chart which should give you an idea of cost and performance. [http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html]

How much memory would you suggest? I'm looking at 8GB, but getting 8GB of DDR3 2000 hikes the price up significantly. I've ditched the sound card and got a 600W PSU. I didn't realise the MB came with a built-in sound card.

 

[kurupt87]

Made some changes, have a look-see [http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/user/kurupt87/saved/Yw448d].

Other guys poke any holes in it that you see of course.

 

[AWAR]

When I was upgrading to the 770 from a 660ti, I didn't notice a performance difference on intensive games until I dropped in some 2400MHz RAM up from 1600.

That's a bit hard to believe, have you messed with the XMP profiles?

O.T. You should definetely aim for the 4300, even better, try to squeeze in a 6300 amd processor.
The 4130 you've chosen comes with a pretty crappy stock cooler and the first generation buldozzer chips were infamously unstable.

 

[Drops a Sweet Katana]

How important is VRAM? I'm thinking of going to a GTX 750 card with 1GB since it's about half the price of a 7870 with 2GB and I can't find a 7870 with 1GB.

 

[kurupt87]

How important is VRAM? I'm thinking of going to a GTX 750 card with 1GB since it's about half the price of a 7870 with 2GB and I can't find a 7870 with 1GB.

For current release games to look good (and you want that since that is kinda the point of the PC) you want 2GB VRAM. As I said in my original post, the GPU is the most important part of the rig. The thing you want to spend the most on.

A 7870 for £111 or whatever it was is cheap.

A 750 is the most basic current gen card, not something you want in a gaming rig and not at all future proof. It doesn't meet recommended specs for current releases.

--

I know _nothing_ about AMD CPU but if AWAR says there is an issue with the CPU you have chosen then I'd suggest paying attention to him.

 

[Drops a Sweet Katana]

How important is VRAM? I'm thinking of going to a GTX 750 card with 1GB since it's about half the price of a 7870 with 2GB and I can't find a 7870 with 1GB.

For current release games to look good (and you want that since that is kinda the point of the PC) you want 2GB VRAM. As I said in my original post, the GPU is the most important part of the rig. The thing you want to spend the most on.

A 7870 for £111 or whatever it was is cheap.

A 750 is the most basic current gen card, not something you want in a gaming rig and not at all future proof. It doesn't meet recommended specs for current releases.

--

I know _nothing_ about AMD CPU but if AWAR says there is an issue with the CPU you have chosen then I'd suggest paying attention to him.

I've taken his recommendation and gone for the 6300. From what you've said, I'm going to stick with the 7870.

 

[Aramis Night]

How important is VRAM? I'm thinking of going to a GTX 750 card with 1GB since it's about half the price of a 7870 with 2GB and I can't find a 7870 with 1GB.

We'll the amount of video ram is something of a more is better kind of thing. If your only planning on using this on a standard size monitor(17"-23") with a standard 1080 resolution then you can afford to sacrifice some Video Ram if you really have to. If your planning on running multiple monitors or big screen monitors with higher resolutions, or multiple heavy graphic programs simultaneously, you will want the additional video Ram to accommodate them without losing performance.

That said, the performance ceiling of that GTX 750 is much lower than the HD 7870. It will run games fine, But don't expect Ultra settings on anything current. I would actually recommend going with a higher grade older generation card if it helps you save money.