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Building a PC
ThumbtackJ
Member UncommonPosts: 669
Hey there, I'm trying to help a friend build a new desktop PC. He has a TV he's going to use as a monitor, he has an unused Windows 7 license from his University, and I'm giving him my old Cooler Master ATX Mid Tower Case, and a GTX 460 I had just sitting in the box (due to his budget constraints).
His budget is ~$600. We just did a quick look-through on Newegg and this is what we picked out:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136769 - HDD
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139006 - PSU
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231314 - RAM
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131837 - MOBO
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116504 - CPU
So all that's left as far as I can tell is getting a CD/DVD drive, which are dirt cheap IIRC. All in all, with shipping and the CD/DVD it's around $630 give or take, which is reasonable for him.
If there is anything that should be changed for better price and/or performance let me know.
Thanks very much,
TJ
Comments
I don't know that I can help much here. Maybe Quizzical or someone with a bit more direct hands-on expertise will see this.
My gut feel -- you've probably got too much of a power supply. 750W is extreme, and I don't really see any extreme power drains that would really need that much. And I would suggest looking for a 1 or even 2 TB drive. The 500 GB will disappear alarmingly fast under a barrage of modern MMOs, and if he want's to do anything with pictures or video, the extra storage will be valuable.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
Yeah I figured the 750W may be a bit much, but I figured 650-750 would be good in the event that he upgrades the GPU later down the line when he has more money(as the GTX 460 is getting pretty aged now).
There was a 1TB we were looking at but it was pushing the budget a bit beyond what he's willing to spend.
I think your making some mistakes.
WD Blue drives are fine drives, they are perfect for bulk data where speed, power, and heat are not limiting components. You don't want it as your only hard drive, because mainly speed is not a primary concern on WD Blues.
Get an SSD. Your on a tight budget, but you can still get an SSD in this budget, especially if you fix the power supply mistake. A fast SSD will make a bigger difference that almost anything else in most computer tasks. 120G is big enough for Windows + a few big games, a secondary hard drive is easy to add later on for bulk storage when the budget frees up, and adding an SSD later on it is more difficult because of moving the Windows installation. The 120G range is going for around $1/Gb right now.
Your spending way too much on a power supply. Drop down to around 550-600W, save yourself around $40.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151094
That's probably what I would use in this size system. It has enough wattage to drive all but the top-end single GPU cards (pretty much any current generation card costing under $300 will run fine on this PSU). The 620W version is only about $5 more, and can drive pretty well any video card, including the Titan, so long as you aren't overclocking.
Do you need a K-edition CPU? That's $20 right there if you don't, and that motherboard isn't going to OC much, and that stock heat sink really isn't going to OC much.
DVD-RW should be around $25, your right there, and you can pick anything that matches the case.
Save money on the CPU, save money on the power supply - drop the WD blue and put that money to an SSD. In fact, i would go so far as to say, the SSD is important enough that if you need to drop the CPU further to afford it, do so -- every game is HDD limited in some respect, very few are CPU limited.
Also, on a $600 budget, I wouldn't be surprised if you dropped to an AMD FX6350 or FX6300, you could save a good deal of money (around $100 total once you swap to an equivalent motherboard). That gives you more room for other nice things, like secondary hard drives, good peripherals, a nice monitor (or second monitor), or room to throw at a GPU faster than the 460 (not hard to do, 7790 or R7 260X blows out pretty much every 460 variant for around $125).
That's way too much to spend on a power supply. The only good reasons to get over 650 W are a CrossFire/SLI system, looking for an unreasonably large overclock (e.g., liquid nitrogen), or because a higher wattage version is no more expensive than a 650 W version of the same quality. You can get a plenty nice power supply for much cheaper:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817182263
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151118
Both of those are modular, too.
That's also an awful lot to spend on memory when you can get identical specs for a lot cheaper:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820313342
Storage capacity requirements vary wildly from one person to the next. If you think you need more than 500 GB for games, then maybe you ought to learn how to uninstall games that you don't play anymore. That's perhaps too harsh, as if you bounce back and forth between 50 different games, then you may well need more than that. But most people won't do that.
Thank you Rid and Quiz, it's much appreciated.
I changed the WD Blue to a Mushkin 120GB SSD.
I changed the RAM to the 2x4GB Team Dark Series.
I changed the PSU to the Rosewill Capstone.
What would be good options for the mobo and CPU? I don't think a 'k-edition' is necessary for him, nor does he have a preference between Intel and AMD. So basically just the best price/performance ratio, that'll last a good couple of years before an upgrade would be needed.
That's way too much to spend on an SSD. You can get the same thing in double the capacity for cheaper than that:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820226371
Or you can get essentially the same thing for less than half the price:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820239045
The latter is a short-term "shell shocker" deal, and $80 as of when I posted this.
Also, the CPU is really a question of budget. An FX-6300 is about as fast as a Core i5-3570K in programs that scale well to six cores. But if a six core processor is only about as fast as a quad core even in programs that scale well to six cores, it's going to lose by quite a bit in programs that don't scale past four.
If you want to save some money on the CPU and motherboard, then an AMD FX-series chip is the way to go. The argument against doing this is that with single-threaded performance now increasing at a glacial pace, a CPU that you buy today could last a long, long time. But if you want to save the money, here's you how do it:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819113286
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130637
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827135204 - DVD Drive
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130637 - Mobo
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817182263 - PSU
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820313342 - RAM
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819113286 - CPU
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820226371 - SSD
Total comes to $514.94 with free 3 day shipping. Does this look alright?
That should be good. And 240 GB is enough space on the SSD that he might not need a hard drive for quite some time. Or ever. But it's easy to add a hard drive later if he needs more space.
The remainder of the budget can go into the future video card upgrade fund. For what it's worth, if you wanted to buy a new video card now, the minimum I'd recommend is a $200 Radeon R9 270X, which would roughly double the performance of the old GTX 460. But there's no need to upgrade if he's happy with the performance of the old card.
He went ahead and ordered. Thank you, Quizzical, and everyone else for the help and feedback. It is greatly appreciated. I'll go ahead and post pictures once everything arrives to show I haven't wasted your time (which I know happens, when people come by and ask for help for shits and giggles with no intent of actually making a purchase).
-TJ