Holiday 2014 Buyer's Guide - Full Component List

[ShadowCaptain]

As far as I know the way to fix it is to change the text coloring to automatic, which I've already done... Anything else that needs to be adjusted?

 

If you use chrome you can copy and paste the text then right click and use "paste as plain text" to get rid of any formatting

[Some Tech Nub]

meh.

 

V300 and WD Green?  Not great.

 

Source 210 usually has trouble housing a Hyper 212.  

 

Z87-A?  Price difference shouldn't be that much different than a Z97-A, and Z97 boards will ensure that you don't need a UEFI update.

 

I like LTT, but this video was a bit disappointing.

[dragoon20005]

Pentium Build

 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Pentium G3258 3.2GHz Dual-Core Processor  ($69.99 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: Asus H81M-E Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard  ($57.00 @ Amazon)
Memory: Kingston Fury Series 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1866 Memory  ($69.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Kingston SSDNow V300 Series 120GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  ($76.66 @ Amazon)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Green 1TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($53.00 @ Amazon)
Video Card: Asus Radeon R7 260X 2GB Video Card  ($119.99 @ Amazon)
Case: Cooler Master Elite 342 (Black) MicroATX Mini Tower Case w/400W Power Supply  ($49.99 @ NCIX US)
Total: $496.62
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-11-14 06:42 EST-0500

 

Athlon 860K Build @ $700+ dollars

 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD Athlon X4 860K 3.7GHz Quad-Core Processor  ($89.99 @ Amazon)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler  ($31.99 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: ASRock FM2A88X Extreme4+ ATX FM2+ Motherboard  ($75.99 @ Amazon)
Memory: Kingston Fury Series 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1866 Memory  ($69.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Sandisk Ultra II 120GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  ($74.96 @ Amazon)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($54.99 @ Amazon)
Video Card: PowerColor Radeon R9 285 2GB TurboDuo Video Card  ($194.99 @ NCIX US)
Case: Cooler Master N400 ATX Mid Tower Case  ($59.99 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: EVGA 600B 600W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply  ($34.99 @ NCIX US)
Total: $687.88
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-11-14 06:49 EST-0500

 

Intel i5 4460 Build @ $950+

 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-4460 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor  ($189.77 @ NCIX US)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler  ($31.99 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: MSI Z97 PC MATE ATX LGA1150 Motherboard  ($99.79 @ Amazon)
Memory: Kingston Fury Series 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1866 Memory  ($69.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Sandisk Ultra II 120GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  ($74.96 @ Amazon)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($54.99 @ Amazon)
Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 970 4GB Video Card  ($339.98 @ NCIX US)
Case: Cooler Master N400 ATX Mid Tower Case  ($59.99 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: EVGA 600B 600W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply  ($34.99 @ NCIX US)
Total: $956.45
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-11-14 06:53 EST-0500

 

Intel i5 4690K build @ $1700

 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-4690K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor  ($214.29 @ Amazon)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Nepton 240M 76.0 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler  ($139.98 @ NCIX US)
Motherboard: Asus Z97-A ATX LGA1150 Motherboard  ($139.99 @ Amazon)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory  ($135.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Samsung 840 EVO 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  ($149.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($54.99 @ Amazon)
Video Card: Zotac GeForce GTX 980 4GB AMP! Extreme Edition Video Card  ($609.95 @ NCIX US)
Case: Cooler Master N600 Windowed ATX Mid Tower Case  ($103.90 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: Cooler Master VSM 750W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply  ($119.99 @ NCIX US)
Total: $1669.07
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-11-14 06:58 EST-0500

 

 

The above are the builds which can be considered and all using PCPartPicker with NCIX USA and Amazon as the retailers

 

@nicklmg and @LinusTech

 

please do add theses builds in your first post

[s3ns3]

THIS WAS EXTREMELY DISSAPOINTING.

 

even the first build was meh. all are very unbalanced and biased . the first one is not that ok since the amd option has a new 860K cpu. the 750K should not have been mentioned. and why the WD green drive? the seagate barracuda 7200rpm is at the same price and its better even than the WD caviar blue. having games on a wd green is.... and i would not call the kingston v300 a SSD with those speeds.

 

at the second build you really lost it. what with this overclocking thing? yes intel does not offer unlocked cpus at this price but well...you don`t need overclocking. with the money saved from the cpu cooler which is not needed+a less expensive intel mobo and only a 2gb HDD(which again is WD green,REALLY?) the budget can easily fit the i5 4460 which absolutely destroys the fx 6300 in everything. heck even the i3 4150 is better and no OC is needed

 

and whats the reason for using only corsair PSU's? HX750... just lol

[Tech_Dreamer]

As far as the video quality good job with that, Some may disagree with the pick & choose but i think it's a 'default' best parts choosing from your hand for that price range where everything is balance for different workloads without having to deal with the glitch when switching to a different application, face it, it's not "just" for gaming...i think you were targeting efficiency with the build, which was nice & what matters for a regular chap focusing on a good build, instead of sticking to 'a' brand push to have some extra horse power you rarely never use ... So Kudos, i think it was a fair choice of picks for a good build..

[Lord_Kitty]

Linus, I don't think it is right to recommend 16GB of RAM. Firefox barely uses any RAM, even with many tabs open. It isn't right to recommend 16GB based on your experience with Chrome. Firefox is just as good and doesn't use that much RAM.

 

Also, there's quite a few quirks here and there. For example, for the second build, by the storage a notch and maybe also the CPU cooler and the excess RAM, you could easily fit a locked i5 in there. Also, the guys at r/buildapc are doing a really great job of fitting the best hardware for a price point. Since they are also your audience, I expect you'll get a lot of flak for these decisions. Your builds a little imbalanced compared to what they are doing. There's some stuff that really good though, like the 970 in the second one.

 

Sorry if this sound bad but LTT is now huge. A lot of people, new to PC gaming, may want to build a PC to exactly what you recommend. I don't feel its right for these guys that you cut corners on some parts to fit some excessive stuff in other places.

 

EDIT: I was a bit quick to post, but I see now your reasoning behind the 3TB drive. Valid, but I still feel its not the right thing to do at this price point. If you fit a 1TB drive in there and go with the i5, the overall performance of the system will be better. Plus, its much easier to add a new hard disk down the road than doing a complete system rebuild because the CPU is limiting the graphics card.

 

EDIT 2: I opened 20 tabs in Firefox, some of which were content heavy, others not. The firefox.exe process was using around 600MB of memory. Overall system memory usage was around 2GB. I opened almost exactly the same thing in Chrome and the memory usage jumped to 3.15GB. Chrome used almost twice as much memory for the same thing.

[WestcoastPCBuilder]

Is this video brought to us by Kingston, WD, Intel, Corsair, Coolermaster and Asus by any chance ?

[Rennan24]

I have a question since I'm planning to build a new PC soon, should I buy the parts now or are the prices going to be cut down even more in the future? Because sometimes on amazon it looks like something is on sale, but in reality its not. At least that's what it looks like to me.

[dragoon20005]

I have a question since I'm planning to build a new PC soon, should I buy the parts now or are the prices going to be cut down even more in the future? Because sometimes on amazon it looks like something is on sale, but in reality its not. At least that's what it looks like to me.

i will suggest check the price periodically

 

Xmas sale will be the time to get items which some retailers will try to get rid before the next annual stock take

[Eudude]

Is the following build worth for about 660 US dollars?
Intel Core i3-4130 3.4GHz Dual-Core
ASUS H81M-E

Crucial Ballistix Sport XT 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory
Sandisk Ultra Plus 128GB 2.5" Solid State Drive
Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM
XFX Radeon R9 280 3GB Double Dissipation
NOX COOLBAY SX RED DEVIL 3.0
EVGA 500W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX

Would really aprecciate the help, please pardoun my grammar mistakes, and in case I should replace any of the parts please tell me why so I can learn not to make mistakes Thank you

 

[dragoon20005]

Is the following build worth for about 700 something dollars?

Intel Core i3-4130 3.4GHz Dual-Core

ASUS H81M-E

Crucial Ballistix Sport XT 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory

Sandisk Ultra Plus 128GB 2.5" Solid State Drive

Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM

XFX Radeon R9 280 3GB Double Dissipation

NOX COOLBAY SX RED DEVIL 3.0

EVGA 500W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX

Would really aprecciate the help, please pardoun my grammar mistakes, and in case I should replace any of the parts please tell me why so I can learn not to make mistakes Thank you

 

its a good start

 

if you can stretch the budget

 

get a cheap Z97 board or H97 series board for future upgrades to BroadWell CPU and with the Z97 you can OC the CPU too with the K series CPU

[IdortMasterRace]

Well that was poor.

• You chose a Z87 board for the i5 4690K, when you'd need a Z97 board. That immediately makes the entire build unusable out of the box. That's a pretty huge error there.
• Slow WD Greens instead of faster WD Blues? They're exactly same price.
• Intel 530 240GB instead of the much faster Samsung EVO 250GB for the same price?
• A single 8GB stick is silly - this is the lowest tier, I don't think anyone building this needs to upgrade to 16GB any time soon. 2x4 would be much more ideal, and cheaper.
• Intel 730 480GB for $285 instead of the much faster Samsung EVO 500GB for a much cheaper $239?
• 16GB RAM? Seriously? I wouldn't even recommend that on the $2k build, never mind the $1k one.
• An AMD FX-6300 with a GTX 970?
• An almost pointless optical drive for $20 when the CPU needs that money even more?
• Why in the second build did you include a $20 CD drive, then in the last build choose a $20 Asus DVD drive? They are the same price, surely the latter is better? Why wasn't that selected for the second build?
• The case and PSU bundles are almost always poor quality power supplies. You didn't list what power supply it even was - I personally wouldn't skimp there in the slightest.

Also as a very minor point, the editing in the video looked rush, looked a little shoddy. Some nitpicks: at 3:34, half the components disappear during the transition. At 10:37, the GPUs and SSD fade in at the same time (and the GPUs already faded to begin with, they didn't need to fade in again).

[Lotus]

Rather disappointed. While WD Green drives are GREAT secondary, the Kingston V300 is an absolutely SHITTY SSD, and I would personally not go for a luxury item like an SSD until you get to the $1000+ range. If your HDD is your primary, I'd stick to Blue/Black/Barracuda. Also, going for a GTX 970 in an FX-6300 build will lead to a CPU bottleneck in many single-threaded favored games, and even not in those, unless you have a monitor with a higher resolution than 1080p and/or higher framerate than 60hz, you wont be able to get the full performance from a GTX 970 anyway. It's usually a waste because not many people have the monitor necessary to make use of it. And lastly, the FX-6300? In a 1k build? Really? That may have been a good decision at some point, but with the huge price drops to locked i5 CPUs it's a crappy choice now. True you can't overclock, but better performance > worse performance even if it's non-overclocked to overclocked, and you can fit in an i5-4690k in that price range anyway if you had gone for an R9 290 (which I would have done anyway since many use only 1080p panels). Overall, I really wasn't impressed.

 

As far as the Z87 for haswell refresh, that really wasn't a bad choice. That MoBo supports CPU-less Bios reflashing so there is no problem even if it comes with the old bios.

[IdortMasterRace]

As far as the Z87 for haswell refresh, that really wasn't a bad choice. That MoBo supports CPU-less Bios reflashing so there is no problem even if it comes with the old bios.

 

Even then, that's a pretty big detail that should have been included. Some users might not want to flash their BIOS.

[Lotus]

Even then, that's a pretty big detail that should have been included. Some users might not want to flash their BIOS.

I really don't mind it. Performance per dollar is always king, and you're already building your own computer. We're all competent users here. A bios reflash isn't a problem unless you somehow lose power halfway through.

 

That being said, SSDs really don't belong in cheap builds. In the $500 build, he could have actually afforded a good case/PSU (as opposed to that shitty included one) if he hadn't gone for the SSD, or Evo 212 + R9 270 for better CPU/GPU performance, or maybe even i3 + R9 270. Really that money would have been better spent on CPU/GPU in that price range (or PSU depending on the quality of that included one). SSDs are luxury items at best. In the $1k build he definitely could have put that money to get an overclocking intel setp. I can't believe he didn't get an i5-4690k + Z97 (or Z87 with CPU-less bios reflashing) + 212 Evo at $1k. That's so easy to fit in.

[MrSuperb]

The FX-6300 in the $1000 build most be a joke. It bottlnecks the GTX 970 already.

Even the Pentium K would have been a better choice in MANY modern games.

[s3ns3]

The FX-6300 in the $1000 build most be a joke. It bottlnecks the GTX 970 already.

Even the Pentium K would have been a better choice in MANY modern games.

all those builds are a joke

[IdortMasterRace]

I really don't mind it. Performance per dollar is always king, and you're already building your own computer. We're all competent users here. A bios reflash isn't a problem unless you somehow lose power halfway through. That being said, SSDs really don't belong. In the $500 build, he could have actually afford a good case/PSU (as opposed to that shitty included one) if he hadn't gone for the SSD, or Evo 212 + R9 270 for better CPU/GPU performance, or maybe even i3 + R9 270. Really that money would have been better spent on CPU/GPU in that price range. SSDs are luxury items at best. In the $1k build he definitely could have put that money to get an overclocking intel setp. I can't believe he didn't get an i5-4690k + Z97 (or Z87 with CPU-less bios reflashing) + 212 Evo at $1k. That's so easy to fit in.

 

Right, but not all his YouTube viewers are competent enough to flash their BIOS. This video is clearly for the less 'in-the-know' of users to begin with.

 

In fact, he's going to have people that know nothing about flashing BIOS searching YouTube for build guides, and if they just buy that stuff without knowing they'd have to do that, they'd have a couple of issues.

[Jumper118]

i think i would have done these slightly differently. there is a serious lack of decent motherboard in these builds i think the $1000 dollar build took a serious hit by having a 970 but its annoying that the 960 hasn't come out. didnt like the 16gb of ram either and even though you said games are 50gb+ i think most people uninstall huge games like that when they have finished with them. i wouldn't keep more than 2 or three huge games on a hdd. also wd greens are really really really slow. a seagate barracuda is normally cheaper and they are a hell of a lot faster.

[MuffinTopMike]

The $500 system was great and including an SSD is the build was awesome. The $1000, I wouldn't have gone with that CPU, I could see a bit of bottleneck going on there, but you are right Intel doesn't really sell anything good at that price point. The $2000 system seems a little off to me, that is a decent amount of money and if I was spending that much I wouldn't settle for an i5. I would get rid of the 6TB HDD, maybe get a 3TB instead, and use the $100-150 you save on buying a 4790K. Also WD greens are kind of slow, a faster drive probably would have been better.

[DDT2005]

For the $500 rig, ASUS H81M-E - Is this motherboard G3258 ready out of the box, or do I need a Haswell part to upgrade the BIOS?  I went with a MSI Z97 PC Mate so I don't need to worry about that.

AMD R7 260X - GTX750TI is better IMHO

 

For the $2000 rig I would have not have chosen the Z87 motherboard for the same reason as above.  Needs to be guaranteed to be ready out of the box.  Get a Z97 from Asus instead.  And I would spend the extra $100 and get the i7-4790K.

[kahiong]

corsair cx 430 on fx6300 +gtx970? is that psu enough?

i got cx500, can it power i5 4460 + gtx980?

[alexyy]

Awfully unbalanced systems... 

 

Quite disappointed Linus.  

[Snadzies]

The "Game Now" and "Game On" builds look really imbalanced, getting cheaper components where it maters and getting more expensive components where it doesn't matter as much.

People have mentioned most everything that seems off already but, unless I missed it, I didn't see anyone mention the CX430 power supply.

Unless there was a revision that I am not aware of, the CX430 only has a single PCIE 6+2 cable.

Some 970's only need a single 8 pin but many do not and while using the molex to PCIE cable is fine it really seems like a complete bare minimum option for a budget that shouldn't require bare minimum components.

At the very least I'd get the CX500m as that has 2 PCIE 6+2 cables and leaves more head room for upgrade potential in the future.

 

 

Ninja'd by Kahoing.

[jonn.]

I thought you would need to update your bios to run any devil canyon CPUs on a z87 chipset board? How do you do that when you're buying all the parts new and separate?