Help me build a gaming rig!

[Arcanum]

Alternate title #1: Tell me all my choices are terrible.

Alternate title #2: OH GOD WHAT DO ALL THE NUMBERS MEAN.

Alternate title #3: I've never had so many tabs open at once before in my life.

So I'm building a new rig, and it's my first time doing so. The current desktop I'm using isn't really mine (it's my family's) so it stays here when I go back to Toronto for school. It's also getting pretty outdated, so I wouldn't want to bring it anyway. I've got a nice summer job now so I will have enough money to pay for next year's tuition as well as buy a new computer.

Unfortunately the new job is 10 hour shifts 5 days a week so I don't have much time to research computer parts. I've been using this site as a guide and then doing my own research based on my price range (which is somewhere around $1300-1400, not including monitor and keyboard, and with plenty of wiggle room). So here's what I have so far:

CPU: i5 4670K

Cooling: Haven't looked at fans yet. I'm not really planning on overclocking (maybe just a little) but I don't know of stock fans will suffice. If I do need to buy something I'd prefer it to be on the quiet side. I saw Noctua was recommended in the thread Menarker made, but haven't had a chance to look into them.

Mobo: Gigabyte z87X UD3H

GPU: GTX 780 (this one or this one. PC part picker says the EVGA one has a higher core clock speed by like 10 MHz but that seems like it would be insignificant but I have no idea what I'm doing)

RAM: 8GB (2x4GB). Looking at G.Skill's stuff but I can't tell what the difference is between the Ripjaw X and the Sniper, other than aesthetics.

Storage: At least a TB, though might go with 2TB since I tend to not uninstall games. Haven't really looked at hard drives yet. I'm also not too picky on load times, so I doubt I'll grab an SSD, or if I do it will only be like 120ish GB so I can install whatever game I feel needs to load slightly faster.

Power Supply: No idea, since I haven't finalized all my other parts yet, but shouldn't be too hard to figure out once that's done.

Case: Again, planning on looking at cases once I have all the components sorted out. Not that case choice is that big of a deal.

So yeah, any advice would be appreciated.

[Bells]

You are doing good picks there. It's actually somewhat similaa to my rig and i'm super satisfied with it.

For Fans, go Noctua. Cooler for the Processor too if you can. Can't go wrong with Noctua.

For Supply i went with a Seasonic Gold. From everwhere i saw, Seasonic was Highly recommended across the board. It's super good!

[Azisien]

Yes sir okay!

Firstly, PCPartPickerCanada is your friend. You can pick the parts you want, filter them how you want, and the website will point out compatibility problems for you. And you can toggle what websites you want to order from, taxes, etc.

CPU: Only get a K-series CPU if you're sure you want to overclock. That's what the K-series is for, overclocking. It's cheaper to get the non-K variant but you won't be able to overclock it (Or maybe you'll get 100Mhz out of it, tops).

On the other hand, overclocking is very easy nowadays, software that comes with your mobo will likely do it for you, and tutorials are easy to find. Will overclocking help? It won't hurt. I'm assuming this is for gaming, and high end Intel CPUs aren't throttled* by games and won't be for years, that's the graphics department.

*I should add that it's probably not a big deal, I hope, but Watch Dogs did set a disturbing precendent in this department for all PC gamers. In theory, because the Next Gen consoles have 8-core CPUs and unified memory, that we could see some throttling when the PC ports come along because the most popular gaming CPU, the i5-4670K, has only 4 cores. I leave this as an asterisk because the sample size of this phenomenon is currently one, Watch Dogs, and let's not base models on Watch Dogs because it is poorly optimized.

Next query, when are you building this PC? The Haswell Refresh is just around the corner, launching most likely on paper in June and in reality 1-3 months later. Then you could get the i5-4690K, it'll be a little faster and so it is claimed, a little cooler.

If you are not going to overclock: Intel i5-4690
If you are going to overclock: Intel i5-4670K or Intel i5-4690K

Cooling

If you are only going to overclock a little bit, you can probably do it on the stock cooler. A lot of this is situational. Like, does your PC case generally have room to breathe in its location, or is it constrained? A lot of cases cool really damn well, I have the Antec Twelve Hundred with no additional fans and I overclock my CPU and GPU with stock coolers on air (3 years CPU and 2 years GPU with no issues).

Cooling is great but if you're not an overclocker and just want to game, all that cooling gear is money better spent on, say, a nicer graphics card or monitor.

I will absolutely second Bells, Noctua is kicking ass in the cooling department right now. The Noctua DH-15 is pretty much the undisputed heavyweight champion of air cooling. It's huge, though. Keep in mind you may need Low Profile RAM if you get a giant CPU heatsink.

Motherboard: Your choice is fine, lots of USB 3 ports which is nice. I would have recommended the Asus Z87-A, it's a little more modest, a little cheaper, less USB 3 ports but serves your needs fine. All is well.

RAM: Ripjaw X and Sniper are identical, save for looks. PC Builders gotta match those colours, yo! RAM has a whole lot of technical specifications to it and it's vital to a computer, but in 2014 RAM is already really really fast in its purpose, and for your use case it all doesn't really matter. The only thing that matters is capacity. 8GB is fine, I personally recommend 16GB to people building these days, but it's fine.

The only recommend I made was getting the 1866 Mhz sticks over the 1600 Mhz sticks, because it's like $3 difference in price.

[B]Storage[B]: Grab an SSD. It's not really for gaming, but for everything else. Games MAY load faster on an SSD but it's no guarantee. Game loading is a nebulous thing that requires multiple components, from hard drives, to CPU, to GPU, and it varies in every game. Most game loading is CPU intensive, and your CPU is good. Your games will load very fast on SSD or HDD. But SSDs are great for loading Windows, and generally making Windows hella responsive, as well as any core applications you like to use.

Video Card: The EVGA Superclocked is a good card. Basically it's just factory overclocked, which can be a good thing because you still get the warranty. You could get a cheaper reference card and overclock it yourself, but it voids the warranty. I like warranties myself, though I also overclocked my GTX680 and haven't had any problems.

Case: A typical pick, but only because Fractal Design is excellent, I recommend the Fractal Design R4. Whether you want a window or not, what colour you want, etc, up to you. They have excellent build quality, and they're sound proofed.

Power Supply: You have plenty of choice here, I recommend the Corsair HX650. Your rig will probably run around 500W at peak, so this gives you headroom to double RAM, add fans, add hard drives, upgrade video cards, etc. It won't be enough for SLI.

Here's a PCPartPicker list I put together based on this thread and my recommendations.

If you got a bunch of high end cooling stuff, that's going to add to the price tag, so much so that you could probably forego them and get a GTX780Ti instead.

Display: I always have to ask this, what's your display setup? The 780 series card is going to obliterate anything in 1080p.

[Arcanum]

I'm planning on buying everything this week or next, it depends on how patient I am to see if things get thrown on sale (also a lot of the mail in rebates lost their validity yesterday so I'm also waiting on them to update them for this month). I also probably will end up overclocking eventually, so I'll stick with the 4670k.

As for cooling, my rig will be pretty out in the open, and since I won't be overclocking immediately, I'll probably stick with stock fans. Worst case scenario, if the temps are getting too high, I can buy a fan.

With RAM, I like the look of the Sniper better, so I'll grab the 1866 versions of that. Gonna stick with 8GB though, I can't really justify the cost increase to get 16GB.

For GPU, honestly it seems like the difference between versions is so minimal. I'll see if any of the 780s go on sale this week, if not I'll probably get the EVGA one.

As for monitor, I'm currently using my brother's 1680x1050, so getting a 1920x1080 will feel like a solid upgrade to me. The Asus VG248QE that Menarker went for in his thread looks pretty solid to me.

---------- Post added at 03:24 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:05 PM ----------

For PSU, the Rosewill Capstone 750m is only like $4 more than the 650 Corsair you put in there. Would it be worth getting the Rosewill so I'll have the option to SLI later on?

Actually... according to PC Part Picker, adding the Noctua DH14 and another 780 for SLI will bring the wattage up to 698W, which seems a little close for comfort. I think I'll stick with a 650.

---------- Post added at 03:49 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:24 PM ----------

Also, the R4 case only comes with 2 fans. Will that be enough, or should I just go ahead and grab a Noctua to be safe?

[Azisien]

The Asus VG248QE is pretty much the best 1080p monitor available, and since it can go up to 144Hz, you will actually use the frames your GPU can put out. Silky smooth!

My recommendation, unless money is of no object, is to never SLI. Games tend to have shitty SLI profile support in general (most recent example, when Watch Dogs first launched, it did not recognize SLI, so only one GPU was used). It's far from the only example, though, it happened to me in Total War Shogun 2 when I had SLI. NVIDIA's recent SLI drivers were awesome, but alas. I think what you're doing is the best path. Get one powerful, single card. Instead of SLI in the future, sell the 780 and get the 880 or 980 or what have you. Not only are they powerful, they get the best driver support, and the focus of game development.

There's definitely leeway in your PSU choices though. I've never owned a Rosewill but I have nothing against them. I have nothing but good experiences with the HX Pro series. Corsair warranty was also awesome to me when one of my PSUs failed, they sent me the next model up in their replacement. Not that I have the hardware to use up 1200w, but still...

I highly doubt you're going to run into heating issue. Haswell chips do run hot, but that's more of a complaint during extreme overclocking. Running at stock, they're fine.

The R4 does have lesser airflow, if it has anything compared to bigger cases. But I seriously doubt you'll have an issue with no initial overclocking. If you want more beastly cases, check out stuff like Antec Nine Hundred, Corsair 500R, etc.

[Arcanum]

I really like the look of the R4. Sound dampening is a nice addition, but also the ease of which I'll be able to clean the fans is a huge plus. It's also one of the cheaper options it seems.

Here's a PC Part Picker list of everything so far. I'm rather content with it, although with the monitor it's a bit pricey. I'm also going to have to look at mechanical keyboards. Time to wait for sales.

[Osterbaum]

well shiiiiit, didn't even need to make my own thread for this begging for help when I can just copy the specs from arcs build here and go with it

A few questions immediately arise though:

Originally Posted by Azis

Display: I always have to ask this, what's your display setup? The 780 series card is going to obliterate anything in 1080p.

So would my Acer X243WBD screen work with this build...?

I'm also not sure about my (Anec Sonata III 500) case, though seeing it only has one mediocre fan it seems like I might have to get another case just for the additional cooling power...

keyboards, mouse, speakers I have will suffice for now, maybe I'll get around to upgrading them when/if I have more money

e: so the local place I'd like to order from don't have any Samsung 840 EVO 120GB SSDs in stock. Any recomendations for an alternative?

[Azisien]

Originally Posted by Osterbaum

So would my Acer X243WBD screen work with this build...?

It will work fine, the GTX780 cards have a DVI input, which is what that monitor uses (the card also has HDMI and DisplayPort inputs). Rant time!

Monitor Rant

Oster's is a case where the GTX780 might not be worth it, but I'll try to explain why instead of just saying so. For any game that's out right now, and probably a good chunk of future games for a few years to come, the GTX780 is going to be outputting more than 60 frames per second at 1920x1080 resolution.

If your monitor is 60Hz, then it will just show those 60 frames and never more. If the 780 is giving your monitor 120 FPS, those extra 60 frames are just tossed away. Arcanum won't have that wastage because he'll have a 144Hz cap to work with.

So it becomes a question of how future proofed, or how graphically intense you run your games. The only games I can think of that will dip under 60FPS on a GTX780 at 1920x1080 resolution (all graphics settings maxed out) are Metro Last Light, Total War games, and probably Watch Dogs. This is also just counting the reference (non-overclocked) 780 too, the one Arcanum is getting is even better than that by a decent chunk.

So, Oster, you COULD consider getting a GTX770 and save a little bit of change. It's also a sweet video card and I'm sure there's some overclocked variant out there that's very close to a standard GTX780 anyway.

I'm also not sure about my (Anec Sonata III 500) case, though seeing it only has one mediocre fan it seems like I might have to get another case just for the additional cooling power...

Again, if we're talking non-overclocking, PC parts don't run all that hot anymore, that case should be fine. The entry I looked up for the Sonata III 500 had a built in power supply, would you be removing that and replacing it with a new one? Arcanum's build peak wattage is around 440W but it could be a little higher, plus accounting for peripherals, you're getting into the uncomfortable range of a 500W power supply.

e: so the local place I'd like to order from don't have any Samsung 840 EVO 120GB SSDs in stock. Any recomendations for an alternative?

Oh, there's lots. The EVO is just phenomenal in price and performance. What do they have in stock? The Samsung Pro Series is a little more expensive, a little better performance, but very similar.

The Corsair M series are fantastically priced (ex: Crucial M4 128GB), but they have mediocre write speeds. Intel SSDs are pretty much all excellent, but pricey. I confess I have no hands-on experience with Kingston SSDs. Don't buy OCZ SSDs for now, because they went under recently.

[Osterbaum]

Monitor Rant

I'd rather not get a new monitor right now simply for the added cost. I might very well upgrade my monitor before I upgrade my computer again though.

However I'm considering going for the 770 instead, if the price difference is worth it.

Again, if we're talking non-overclocking, PC parts don't run all that hot anymore, that case should be fine. The entry I looked up for the Sonata III 500 had a built in power supply, would you be removing that and replacing it with a new one? Arcanum's build peak wattage is around 440W but it could be a little higher, plus accounting for peripherals, you're getting into the uncomfortable range of a 500W power supply.

I don't really have any plans to overlock anything. I'll have to check if the built-in power source can be easily removed, I have no idea. If yes then I'll stick with this case I think. Think I'll also keep the DVD drive I have attached to it. Those seem like the only parts I'll be able to recycle though. I guess maybe the 500GB harddrive in addition to the 1TB one I was going to get. Does anyone ever buy any used hardware? Seems a bit of a shame to just have to throw everything in the trash.

[Azisien]

There is definitely a second-hand economy for PC hardware, though hard drives in particular are fairly disposable and/or lose value quickly because of the rate of capacity advancement (3TB or 4TB is now regular, so selling a 500GB might be difficult or won't net much).

I usually trickle down my hardware to friends/family before trying to sell, there is always someone running a 10 year old machine that needs an update.