Lotus

I'd get this and just use the integrated GPU right now, which assumes you'll be getting a GPU within the next month or two after purchase, otherwise the build would be different as this is NOT a good gaming build by itself. PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant CPU: Intel Core i5-6500 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor (£163.67 @ Amazon UK) Motherboard: ASRock H110M-HDV Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard (£44.99 @ Amazon UK) Memory: Crucial 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR4-2133 Memory (£23.99 @ Amazon UK) Storage: Sandisk SSD PLUS 120GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£30.00 @ Amazon UK) Case: Zalman Z3 Plus White ATX Mid Tower Case (£28.30 @ CCL Computers) Power Supply: EVGA 500W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply (£41.99 @ Novatech) Monitor: Hannspree HE225DPB 21.5" Monitor (£76.69 @ CCL Computers) Total: £409.63 Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-05-01 02:56 BST+0100 If you're only doing LoL and other low-level stuff, the integrated GPU of Skylake will be fine. It's definitely worth it to go skylake over haswell if you're going to have to live off of the iGPU for a time, and the i5-6500's clock speed bump over the 6400 is definitely worth it. Pop in a GPU when you can for demanding games. The 500W PSU can handle most single GPUs out there, including the R9 380 which is what I'd pair with this system if you were buying all at once.

Don't. Buy all at once or not at all. If you are buying now on a small budget, build the best you can with your budget. 3-4 months is too long a time scale to plan for future updates due to new GPU releases and new CPU architecture.

Modern GPUs have thermal throttling the same way modern CPUs do. It's fine. Also, GCN 1.2 cards on reference coolers are designed to run at a constant 95°C (looking at you hawaii) so you didn't even enter a danger zone.

Neither are acceptable with your motherboard. You can't run an FX-8320 at stock, let alone an FX-8350 overclocked. Your motherboard's VRMs will overheat and throttle during load, and eventually die. Asus at least monitors VRM temps so it won't fail spectacularly, but it will throttle under load. At this point, you should consider a platform change. edit: to be clear, VRM stands for Voltage Regulator Modules, and you've got what appears to be a 4 phase VRM with no heatsink on the mosfets.

Replace it. If you already have DDR3 and want to make the least expensive purchase possible, get an i5-4460, and an LGA1150 board with 4 dimms. Nothing else matters since you aren't going dual GPU, overclocking, or any other feature.

Please don't watch FrankieOnPCin1080p. He's a dirty fucking liar and a cheater. I was introduced to him when he started playing CSGO and his "BHop" vid blew up on the global offensive subreddit. He's hacked in multiple games, including Rust. Dude is a scumbag.

No single GPU can do 1440p 144hz, and not even dual 980tis can max that out on every game. Also, non-overclocked CPUs will struggle to reach 144 fps in demanding games. Some games have certain settings that lower CPU loads so you can play at 144 fps, but some games will simply never play at 144 fps. I don't think your expectations are realistic. Games are geared to work at 1080p 60hz, and their GPU/CPU load is based around that assumption.

It's as future proof as you can get on a consumer socket without resorting to expensive i7 K series overclocking chips on Z chipset motherboards with aftermarket coolers. There is no real future proof, but it's a great CPU if you just want the best you can get for your money without going overboard. It can do everything well.

Depends. Have the leaking caps been replaced? If not, I wouldn't touch it.

Well, the R9 290 actually outperforms the GTX 970 on average now with current drivers. It's a question of overclocks though, and there are some great R9 290s out there. Honestly unless you physically replaced those leaking capacitors, I'd sell it while making sure the buyer knows what they're getting. I wouldn't do anything unethical.

The Sandisk V300 is one of the drives that everyone is up in arms about because they switched the actual contents of it after release. Originally, it was sold with great performing flash memory and a great memory controller, then after release and reviews, they swapped to cheaper memory and a cheaper controller that doesn't perform nearly as well, without changing model number. It was very underhanded as such, Kingston is a brand I like to stay away from because they pulled this shit, with the V300 especially a drive I wouldn't touch.

My mistake.

Like 99% of electronics, brand name means nothing. You have to look at the OEM of the flash memory, and memory controller. All the common brands pull from different OEMs depending on which model # you're looking at, except Crucial which is itself a flash memory OEM. That being said, as long as you don't get one of the faulty TLC NAND drives (840 Evo), it shouldn't be a problem. There are some drives that exhibit less than perfect behavior when full (Crucial BX200), but it's not a deal breaker in my book.

You have 2GB of VRAM. Dual GPU solutions don't add their VRAM together since all information is duplicated on each card. You have double the VRAM, but each 2GB is a mirror of the other one. This may also be a large source of stuttering in-game if you are forcing the GPUs to resort to basically a pagefile on system memory.

Checking your profile, you don't have the GPU setup capable of driving a 1440p display anyway unless you massively turn down VRAM related settings. If you're going to spend $500+ on a monitor, might as well get something that can actually use it. Might be time to switch to red team if you insist on a top quality 1440p 144hz adaptive sync monitor. They're handling the higher resolutions better anyway.

Shit, I had the wrong monitor. It's the MG279Q, not the PB. Whoops. It also has Freesync, but that's not important. Adaptive Sync on 144hz monitors is pointless. Max you're only holding a frame for 1/144th of a second too long, rather than 1/60th of a second too long. The higher the refresh of the panel, the less adaptive sync matters. It's not something I'd ever buy into. Basically, I'm trying to say your experiences on a 60hz panel with adaptive sync are irrelevant on a 144hz panel.

Get the PB279Q, which is a 10-bit 1440p 144hz IPS panel. Fuck GSync and Freesync. In a 144hz panel, they're pretty worthless.

In most cases, just removing the GPU cooler itself will void the warranty.

I could see this easily catching on if they went with something like $1-$2 rentals for a day. Basically a redbox replacement that doesn't rely on you returning the physical DVDs and all the pitfalls that entails. I'd be much more inclined to spend $2 on a rental for a day than $5 on purchasing a movie. I have an ITX rig in my living room as a console replacement, G3258 & R7 260x running windows 10 and boots into steam Big Picture mode. Honestly, if people were smart they'd copy the setup as it does so much for so little. It costs significantly less than a console because I already had a GPU laying around, and plays modern AAA titles better than a console. Played through FO4 and Tomb Raider just recently. I also have every emulator up to the Nintendo Wii on it, hence the CPU choice since that was its primary purpose.

I know CPU encoding is by far the best, but last I checked, haswell quicksync results in better quality per bitrate than Shadowplay does while having absolutely zero impact on CPU and GPU load.

I'd use QuickSync over Shadowplay. I don't believe the other option you described is possible with your setup. Even if it were, I'd still prefer Quicksync. It's one of the things that makes me wonder why people pick NVidia GPUs due to shadowplay, when Quicksync is a better option already available to most people.

The 5820k is just better. Skylake's improvements over haswell were primarily in the chipset with more stuff available, such as more PCIE Gen 3 lanes, etc. However this is only an advantage over consumer Z97 Haswell, as Skylake still only offers 16 direct CPU PCIE lanes. Haswell-E doesn't offer the chipset PCIE lanes, but has 28+ PCIE lanes direct from the CPU. This is superior to the chipset solution Skylake uses, which still relies on that same DMI link which will bottleneck the communications if you try and do too much. As for raw CPU performance, Skylake really didn't improve much of anything. It comes out to barely any difference in per-core performance, but the 5820k has six cores compared to the 6700k's 4. That's a massive difference in the workloads that can take advantage of it, which is going to be more and more stuff over time. Plus, the 5820k isn't even more expensive than the 6700k, so except for a $50 board difference which doesn't exist if you want comparable features in the Z170 board, the cost is the same. I wouldn't ever go for a 6700k system with the current Haswell-E prices. You also forgot to put a "none of the above" option in what CPU do you own at the top. I put 5820k because it most closely matches the last CPU I bought new (i7-920), although I'm currently on an i7-4770k because I got a great deal on it used.

This is what I'd do: PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant CPU: Intel Core i7-5820K 3.3GHz 6-Core Processor ($498.95 @ shopRBC) Motherboard: ASRock X99E-ITX/ac Mini ITX LGA2011-3 Narrow Motherboard ($336.75 @ Vuugo) Memory: Kingston FURY 16GB (1 x 16GB) DDR4-2400 Memory ($98.98 @ Newegg Canada) Storage: Kingston HyperX Fury 240GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($94.99 @ DirectCanada) Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 980 4GB Superclocked ACX 2.0 Video Card (Purchased For $0.00) Case: Fractal Design Core 500 Mini ITX Desktop Case ($69.99 @ Canada Computers) Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA GS 650W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($118.98 @ DirectCanada) Total: $1218.64 Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-04-23 15:11 EDT-0400 If you want this to last, you really want to leave a memory slot open. Also, the 6 core haswell-E will do better long-term thanks to its extra cores, and it still has great single-threaded performance. Plus you mentioned video editing. This should hold up remarkably well in the long haul. I know you said you don't like overclocking, so I didn't bother with a second aftermarket cooler. The board itself comes with a narrow 2011-3 air cooler that works for stock clocks. The case can take pretty much anything, but not all coolers will fit the board. If you did want to overclock, an AIO 240-280mm is your best bet, although you'll have to be picky to get one that fits the mounting bracket included in the motherboard. Also, keyboards really aren't important at all. Just get a cheap USB keyboard. I went from a membrane to cherry mx-red switches, and the only thing I noticed that I enjoy is having a tenkeyless keyboard. Mouse is the peripheral that truly matters.

Are the parts used? It could be a motherboard/ram issue, a bad overclock, bad software install, bad drivers, or any number of things. Is there anything you can do to narrow this down?

Well, doesn't really matter. It's money that's spent. Who cares. That board will work great.