Gatsu

Thanks Cereal5. The PSU is a Corsair RM 850. So no need to upgrade that. It's got juice to spare. Yeah I figured a ultra-wide would probably be beyond budget. But a boy can dream can't he? Ah well. It'd probably be better to just save a little more and buy 2 of the same monitor so I know color and performance is at least consistent.

In 2016 I posted a finished build here called the White Box and got some good feedback. Now after 2 years I'm reaching out to the LTT community again for their wisdom and tech knowledge. Originally the white box was just meant to be a gaming rig, and it did its job beautifully. I had a 2nd system off to the side dedicated to heavy graphic design & video editing work. But that machine died recently, so I need a rig that'll handle adobe-based graphic design work, gaming at 1440p on a 144hz monitor, with some light 1080p video editing occasionally and streaming gameplay @1080p. Games: Warframe, Doom, Tomb Raider, Gears of War 4, Witcher 3, Forza Horizon 4, possibly Battlefield. The Division 2, Cyberpunk and Doom Eternal in the future. Emulators....etc. Graphics Programs: Adobe Everything, Sony Vegas. Budget: $1850 USD. Location: South Eastern United States Currently the White Box rig has a i5-6600K, 16gb of 2400 DDR4 ram and a Gigabyte gtx 980ti. Which was fine for when I first built it, and is still ok for 1080p gaming, but it's not great for heavy photoshop or Illustrator use, and I don't think suited for 1440p 144hz gaming on the lastest triple aaaaaayyeeeeeee titles. If I'm wrong, let me know. So my goal with this upgrade/overhaul is to hit these key notes: 1.) Decent performance using multiple adobe programs and light 1080p video editing. By decent, I don't mean rendering 4K projects at lightspeed. I just need something that's not gonna take half a day to render a 15 minute 1080p video, or can run Photoshop & Illustrator at the same time and not bog down if I run Spotify or something else in the background. 2.) Gaming at high frame rates (80-90+) for 1440p on a 144hz monitor, and 1080p for streaming. I don't mind dropping down to 1080p if need be. I'm honestly more concerned with having a high refresh rate and high frame rate. But I'd like a little eye candy if budget will allow. 3.) Capable of streaming games @1080p to Twitch & Youtube. 4.) A panel that will handle 1440p @ 144hz and 1080p @ 144hz if I need to drop down the graphics settings to get a better frame rate. Out of the old White Box build, I want to keep the case, power supply, hard drives and AIO cooler. I'm sure they are sufficient to keep. Old build parts list link: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/dwsLm8 Here are the two parts lists I put together, one for Intel and one for AMD. I'm fine with either brand. Ryzen 2700X Build: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/h6H7Hh Intel i7-8700K Build: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/qj9wZR They are pretty much identical except for the CPU & Motherboard choices obviously. I tried to find a similarly spec'd motherboard that kept the same visual aesthetic as well for both CPUs, and honestly ASUS is the only brand preference I really have. As for video card, and monitor choices, this is difficult. Currently I'm running a 2-monitor setup. One to handle games and the main artboards in Photoshop/etc, the 2nd monitor to hold all the tool panels, browser windows and whatever else I'm not needing on the primary monitor when Im working. If budget allows, would it be possible or worth while to consolidate down to a single ultra-wide that still hits the visual notes I want and stay in budget? If not then I'll stick with a 2 monitor setup. It's not a huge deal. Just curious. For the video card I'm leaning towards a RTX 2080 so I know it'll hold me over for a few years (hopefully). I was originally looking at the 1080 ti, but with it going out of production, only used stock will be available and so they may not be readily available by tax time next year when I plan on ordering these parts. The monitor I'm looking at is the Pixio PX276. It's gotten a lot of good reviews, has a nice slim bezel and handles the visual notes I want to hit, it looks like anyway, and it's under $400 with amazon prime. Amazon doesn't mention anything about its capabilities @1080p. So I don't know about that. Hopefully this is enough info so anyone reading will have a good idea of what I'd like to accomplish with this build. If you have any questions, let me know. Thank you in advance for any feedback and helpful info.

Thanks! I plan on adding some LED's to brighten up the inside more. Over time I'll keep adding to it to push it to pimp level extreme. lol.

Thanks paddy-stone. My problem was the cable wouldn't flex properly and it was putting a lot of strain on the port on the motherboard. Hopefully this will remedy that. Thanks for posting that.

I know. I plan on upgrading to a Samsung down the road. But it tide me over until then. I wanted to keep the price under $1500 and thought I had hit that mark, then some unexpected shipping charges popped up for some of the parts that put me over. So I had to cut back on the SSD. Mainly just using it for the OS for now.

That's good to know. Is it easy to refill them later on? Yeah I plan on wrapping the SSD in white & black vinyl, and add a NZXT Hue at some point. It IS an eyesore. But I will remedy that soon.

Holy crap! That build is so shmexy! Great work!

Completed this build yesterday and thankfully it posted on first boot. I was admittedly nervous because I had never dealt with a liquid cooler before. Thankfully the Corsair H100i GTX was pretty easy to install. But liquid cooling has always made me a tad nervous. The thought of it leaking and destroying expensive parts. The NXZT S340 was pretty nice to build in. Had a couple of problems with the motherboard standoffs but managed to get that sorted out, and the thumbscrews holding the side panels on were kind of hard to get threaded properly. Had to work them in and out a couple of times to open the channel a little more. Cable management was a breeze for the most part, though the USB 3.0 front panel cable wouldn't cooperate. So I had to route it through a different hole...which makes it looks less clean than I'd like. Are there USB 3.0 front panel cable extensions? Yes it bothers me that much. lol. I was worried the video card wouldn't fit in the case a long with the cooler because that gigabyte g1 980ti is a ridiculously long card. But it fit. Big relief. That's what she said... After getting everything assembled and powering it up for the first time, I decided to slap the custom decal on it. Had a friend make it for me. Turned out really nice looking. Let me know what you guys think. Specs: PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant CPU: Intel Core i5-6600K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor ($245.99 @ SuperBiiz) CPU Cooler: Corsair H100i GTX 70.7 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler ($109.88 @ OutletPC) Motherboard: Asus Z170-A ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($153.99 @ SuperBiiz) Memory: Crucial Ballistix Sport LT 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-2400 Memory ($79.95 @ Adorama) Storage: Kingston SSDNow V300 Series 120GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($41.88 @ OutletPC) Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($49.89 @ OutletPC) Video Card: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB Video Card ($649.99 @ Amazon) Case: NZXT S340 (White) ATX Mid Tower Case ($63.99 @ SuperBiiz) Power Supply: Corsair RM 850W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($89.99 @ Newegg) Total: $1485.55 Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-03-05 18:03 EST-0500 And finally...pics.

What are you going to be using the rig for primarily? Gaming, video editing...etc.

Yeah I would have gone with a Samsung, but I didn't want to cut down on any of the other parts. I'll upgrade to a samsung 500gb eventually.

Ah sorry. I clicked the link and it showed my part list.

Yes. Sorry. I guess I need to make that more prominent in the original message.

Been debating for a long time about building a new dedicated gaming rig. So after finding and watching a lot of the LinusTechTips vids & other tech-oriented channels on Youtube, I started researching parts for a new build. I took my time because I really wasn't in a good enough financial situation to start buying parts. But once tax time hit and I learned what I'd be getting for a refund, I knew I could start really nailing down some specific parts. Here's my PC Partpicker Link for this build: i5 Skylake Gaming Rig. I've already ordered the parts and have most of them at the ready. Just waiting on the Ram and one of the hard drives and I can finally start building this bad boy. I'm excited because I have not ever really had a dedicated gaming pc. I've always used my rig for either video editing, gaming and other production oriented tasks. Let me know what you guys think. I wanted to keep the build as close to $1500 as possible without going over, and keep a white & black aesthetic.

I'd love to replace my Zboard with one of the Excalibur v2 keyboards. I've needed to upgrade for so long.