zoeyalexa

Update: the fucking motherboard is DOA. Build is, obviously, delayed until I get a replacement from newegg. Ugh.

I ended up buying this: PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant CPU: AMD - Ryzen 5 1600X 3.6GHz 6-Core Processor (Purchased For $220.00) CPU Cooler: Deepcool - CAPTAIN 120 EX 76.5 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler (Purchased For $79.99) Motherboard: Gigabyte - GA-AB350N-Gaming WIFI (rev. 1.0) Mini ITX AM4 Motherboard (Purchased For $104.99) Memory: Team - Vulcan 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3000 Memory (Purchased For $176.99) Storage: Samsung - 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (Purchased For $89.99) Storage: Seagate - Constellation ES.2 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (Purchased For $45.99) Video Card: EVGA - GeForce GTX 1060 6GB 6GB SSC GAMING Video Card (Purchased For $299.99) Case: BitFenix - Portal (Black/Windowed) Mini ITX Tower Case (Purchased For $116.97) Power Supply: Corsair - SF 450W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular SFX Power Supply (Purchased For $89.99) Operating System: Microsoft - Windows 10 Pro OEM 64-bit ($25.00) Total: $1249.90 Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-12-10 19:09 EST-0500 I'll update with some pics and screenshots of benchmarks once I'm done building if anyone is looking to do a similar build and would like to know how it comes out -- UPS keeps delaying the main package including the case so I haven't been able to start the build yet. Thanks so much to everyone who gave their input in the thread!!

Huh. Is it only 3200 specifically, or does 3000 have similar gains? If only 3200, I'll switch to these: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820313847 If 3000 has similar gains, I can actually get them cheaper than the 2400s with these: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820313778 Thanks for all your help, btw.

Well the price difference for the 1600X is also only like, $20, so it's not a huge leap. That RAM kit was just a random DDR4-2400 16GB kit which seemed to be at a similar price point to most of the others, and I know G.Skill is decent. Did I miss something obvious with the RAM? Alright I just did a quick check and see that there are a few DDR4 3000MHz kits for around the same price point, some because of sales -- I hadn't bothered checking for that. There aren't huge gains in going above 2400 in my experience so I had just specifically searched for 2400. Most of them are from names I don't recognize, though. Hm. I... don't actually know much of the real-world differences of SSD performance from tier to tier. In the past I've opted for just getting the best or second best available, as I usually overbuild -- my personal setup has a 500GB 960 EVO M.2 as the boot drive with some important applications, for example -- so, limiting the budget to this range is a bit out of my depth. For 6GB versions of the 1060, I found that to be well within the standard price range, if on the higher side. I could save ~$15 here or there by changing brands but it would not make a huge difference in the end, yeah?

There's very, very little noticeable difference from 2400 to ... anything above 2400, in my experience. I never buy more than that unless there's a freak sale that makes 3000 cheaper than 2400. RAM prices in general are insane right now for unknown reasons, either because several RAM factories caught on fire or because the handful of manufacturers stopped competing with eachother to drive prices up. The 32GB G.Skill RGB kit I bought 5 months ago for $250 now costs $444...

@seon123 Okay, apparently the i5-8400 is impossible to find literally anywhere, including several sites that claim it's in stock but then admit at the last moment during checkout that it's actually back-ordered. I've switched the build to AMD -- with the $ saved from the cheaper Gigabyte mobo I opted for the Ryzen 1600X instead of 1600. Does this seem reasonable? The TDP of the 1600X is 95W, instead of 65W on the 1500, but since I'm using an AIO and not stock it should still be fine despite the unique case. I'm still not sure exactly what storage configuration I want to go with -- I may change the SSD for an M.2 variant, depending on what prices I can find. I'm also planning on lining the edges of the gfx card window with a magnetic RGB strip because, as we all know, the more RGB in your build the better your benchmarks. Anyway, the list: PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant CPU: AMD - Ryzen 5 1600X 3.6GHz 6-Core Processor ($219.58 @ OutletPC) CPU Cooler: Deepcool - CAPTAIN 120 EX 76.5 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler ($79.89 @ OutletPC) Motherboard: Gigabyte - GA-AB350N-Gaming WIFI (rev. 1.0) Mini ITX AM4 Motherboard ($113.75 @ OutletPC) Memory: G.Skill - Ripjaws V Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-2400 Memory ($190.99 @ Newegg) Storage: Samsung - 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($84.99 @ B&H) Storage: Hitachi - Deskstar 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($44.95 @ Newegg Marketplace) Video Card: EVGA - GeForce GTX 1060 6GB 6GB SSC GAMING Video Card ($299.99 @ B&H) Case: BitFenix - Portal (Black/Windowed) Mini ITX Tower Case ($106.99 @ SuperBiiz) Power Supply: Corsair - SF 450W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular SFX Power Supply ($89.99 @ Amazon) Operating System: Microsoft - Windows 10 Pro OEM 64-bit ($25.00) Total: $1256.12 Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-12-04 00:39 EST-0500

The window just shows off the gfx card, would be better if I was rocking a gfx card with LEDs, but that's neither here nor there. i7 is way overboard for this build though -- the i5-8400 is barely outperformed by my own i7-7700K, and her machine does not need to be as high performance as mine based on her usage -- not to mention that i7s run hotter than i5s. At least 1TB of storage is pretty much required, though, and I'm not super worried about the heat output of an HDD.

Yeah, there's... not really a lot of places to add fans. I'm considering taking a drill to the back of the case -- there's room for, like... 1 and 4/5th 80mm fans. It's so close to fitting two 80mm fans that every reviewer was puzzled by the design, and drilling a couple of screw holes above the existing ones should allow an extra fan there. Aside from that theres... really not much room. The front of the case should have had some kind of intake vent, but doesn't, and most airflow comes in through the corners of the case. I recognize that I'm crippling my options by sticking with a sub-optimal case like this, but she'll love the thing. I found an i5-8400 here: http://www.nextwarehouse.com/item/?2786461_g10e The updated build would look something like this, with +/- ~$80 based on whether I use the AIO or stock, +/- $40 whether I switch to M2 for the boot drive which I'm considering, and +/- ~$30-50 whether I drop the mobo to a cheaper alternative: PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant CPU: Intel - Core i5-8400 2.8GHz 6-Core Processor ($199.89 @ B&H) CPU Cooler: Deepcool - CAPTAIN 120 EX 76.5 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler ($79.89 @ OutletPC) Motherboard: Asus - ROG Strix Z370-I Gaming Mini ITX LGA1151 Motherboard ($183.89 @ OutletPC) Memory: G.Skill - Ripjaws V Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-2400 Memory ($190.99 @ Newegg) Storage: Samsung - 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($84.99 @ B&H) Storage: Hitachi - Deskstar 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($44.95 @ Newegg Marketplace) Video Card: EVGA - GeForce GTX 1060 6GB 6GB SSC GAMING Video Card ($299.99 @ B&H) Case: BitFenix - Portal (Black/Windowed) Mini ITX Tower Case ($106.99 @ SuperBiiz) Power Supply: Corsair - SF 450W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular SFX Power Supply ($89.99 @ Amazon) Total: $1281.57 Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-12-03 17:21 EST-0500

Thank you, this is helpful. I was concerned about using stock cooler / air coolers in general on the CPU however, as the airflow in this tiny mITX case isn't great -- a few reviews of the case advised specifically to use a small AIO attached to the front of the case for this reason. Yeah RAM... I don't understand what's going on with RAM prices right now. I overpaid for RAM on my personal build (rainbow LEDs lol), but the exact same 32GB RAM kit I bought 5 or 6 months ago has jumped from $250 to $444... Did several major RAM factories catch on fire?

Yeah, I'd like to keep the case -- it's adorable, tbh. From a quick google, it looks like Ryzen 1600 / i5 8400 are both the same price or actually more expensive than the last-gen i5 I've currently got listed in the build. Is there a reason to switch to these? Like I said, i have very little experience with AMD so I know almost nothing in this area.

cooler is limited because of the case -- there's no room for a beefy air cooler, only 125mm clearance, the only place for an AIO is the 120mm at the front of the case and, based on reviews of the case, I pretty much have to go with AIO because of the airflow in the case. thankfully, the video card at the top mostly avoids the stream of hot air below.

hi! I'm trying to build a small, last-gen gaming PC for my girlfriend for xmas this year, but I'm used to going overboard and building expensive futurecubes for myself so I'm having trouble knowing where the bottlenecks are in this build. I'd also maybe consider switching to AMD and/or Radeon instead of intel / nvidia, but I've never had any experience with either AMD or radeon so I wouldn't be comfortable or even know where to begin with that... Here's the current build: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/zolexic/saved/6f8zMp I'd wanted to keep the price around $1000-$1200, but as you can see i've failed in that goal. If the current build is perfectly balanced (i.e. there isn't an expensive part being wasted because other parts are the bottleneck) I can afford to go with this, I'd just rather shave a few hundred bucks off it if possible. Any general advice would also be helpful as I haven't really kept up with PC hardware lately. for reference of what I'm used to building, this is the build I did for myself half a year ago that I'm comparing the new build to: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/zolexic/saved/ntC7P6 Any advice would be very appreciated! ~Z