Building a desktop after 6 years with a laptop

Jordan5_0 · January 13, 2019

I bought through Origin a custom laptop MSI GT 60 with 680M and 3740QM back in the winter of 2012.

However, after 6 years now my needs have changed and sadly its unable to keep up with it.

I am budgeting 2,500$-3,000 CAD all in (taxes+Shipping). I plan on using it at home.

I plan on building a desktop and have experience with building it so I do not need to buy a prebuilt unless its a good deal of course.

The aim is to have it be a family computer: Note the main OS will be Windows 10

- Be a plex server (usually streaming 2-3 videos at 1080P). (will be plugged into the router, does not need wireless)

- Be able to also use vmware and run a second OS (windows 10) for running microsoft office and surfing the web. The goal is instead of having 2 desktops, instead to be able to allow someone else to use the vmware OS with a separate monitor, mouse, keyboard to do work, while someone else can use the main OS for gaming or whatever else.
- The third is of course to play games (i do not need 4K 60FPS, but 1080P 60 FPS is a goal for any of the triple A games).

There will be 2 1080P monitors hooked up plus the additional 1600x900 for the vmware OS so 3 monitors in total.

I have a dell xps 13 from 2017 and usually use teamviewer to remote in to my laptop (which will be the desktop from now on) since I do sometimes have to go away for work for a week or so. Thus, the computer will have long up-times.

As you can tell my laptop just isn't able to keep up without having the fan noise on the extreme (despite cleaning it), and just not being able to keep up with my changing demands.

I have 2 ASUS VG245H Black 24" monitors so I do not need that. I also have a ROCCAT and Razer mouse so I do not need that, and have a used monitor (1600x900) and logitech keyboard and mouse for the VMware machine. I also already own 2 windows licenses so I do not need any of that. Generally I do not need any peripherals.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

Type	Item	Price
CPU	Intel - Core i7-8700K 3.7 GHz 6-Core Processor	$489.99 @ Powertop
CPU Cooler	Cooler Master - MasterLiquid ML240L RGB 66.7 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler	$87.99 @ PC-Canada
Motherboard	Asus - ROG STRIX Z370-E GAMING ATX LGA1151 Motherboard	$259.88 @ Canada Computers
Memory	Corsair - Vengeance LPX 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-2666 Memory	$289.00 @ Canada Computers
Storage	Samsung - 970 Evo 500 GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive	$199.99 @ Canada Computers
Storage	Seagate - Barracuda 2 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive	$61.99 @ Powertop
Video Card	EVGA - GeForce GTX 1080 Ti 11 GB SC2 Video Card	$998.20 @ Newegg Canada Marketplace
Case	Corsair - SPEC-OMEGA RGB ATX Mid Tower Case	$179.99 @ Canada Computers
Power Supply	EVGA - SuperNOVA G3 650 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply	$117.50 @ Vuugo
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	$2684.53
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-01-13 17:01 EST-0500

These are some of the parts I picked out and was wondering if they are good enough for what I need, or if they're overkill and can scale back a bit.

I chose Intel since I heard the most about them, but either AMD or intel is fine. It just needs to be able to do the job.

Any help is appreciated.

Thank you

name1 · January 13, 2019

2 minutes ago, Jordan5_0 said:

I bought through Origin a custom laptop MSI GT 60 with 680M and 3740QM back in the winter of 2012.

However, after 6 years now my needs have changed and sadly its unable to keep up with it.

I am budgeting 2,500$-3,000 CAD all in (taxes+Shipping). I plan on using it at home.

I plan on building a desktop and have experience with building it so I do not need to buy a prebuilt unless its a good deal of course.

The aim is to have it be a family computer: Note the main OS will be Windows 10

- Be a plex server (usually streaming 2-3 videos at 1080P). (will be plugged into the router, does not need wireless)

- Be able to also use vmware and run a second OS (windows 10) for running microsoft office and surfing the web. The goal is instead of having 2 desktops, instead to be able to allow someone else to use the vmware OS with a separate monitor, mouse, keyboard to do work, while someone else can use the main OS for gaming or whatever else.
- The third is of course to play games (i do not need 4K 60FPS, but 1080P 60 FPS is a goal for any of the triple A games).

There will be 2 1080P monitors hooked up plus the additional 1600x900 for the vmware OS so 3 monitors in total.

I have a dell xps 13 from 2017 and usually use teamviewer to remote in to my laptop (which will be the desktop from now on) since I do sometimes have to go away for work for a week or so. Thus, the computer will have long up-times.

As you can tell my laptop just isn't able to keep up without having the fan noise on the extreme (despite cleaning it), and just not being able to keep up with my changing demands.

I have 2 ASUS VG245H Black 24" monitors so I do not need that. I also have a ROCCAT and Razer mouse so I do not need that, and have a used monitor (1600x900) and logitech keyboard and mouse for the VMware machine. I also already own 2 windows licenses so I do not need any of that. Generally I do not need any peripherals.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant
Type Item Price
CPU Intel - Core i7-8700K 3.7 GHz 6-Core Processor $489.99 @ Powertop
CPU Cooler Cooler Master - MasterLiquid ML240L RGB 66.7 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler $87.99 @ PC-Canada
Motherboard Asus - ROG STRIX Z370-E GAMING ATX LGA1151 Motherboard $259.88 @ Canada Computers
Memory Corsair - Vengeance LPX 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-2666 Memory $289.00 @ Canada Computers
Storage Samsung - 970 Evo 500 GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive $199.99 @ Canada Computers
Storage Seagate - Barracuda 2 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive $61.99 @ Powertop
Video Card EVGA - GeForce GTX 1080 Ti 11 GB SC2 Video Card $998.20 @ Newegg Canada Marketplace
Case Corsair - SPEC-OMEGA RGB ATX Mid Tower Case $179.99 @ Canada Computers
Power Supply EVGA - SuperNOVA G3 650 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply $117.50 @ Vuugo
Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
Total $2684.53
Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-01-13 17:01 EST-0500

These are some of the parts I picked out and was wondering if they are good enough for what I need, or if they're overkill and can scale back a bit.

Any help is appreciated.

Thank you

You wanna game 1080p, stream, surf web all at once? (if you do) Then I'd recommend a much more hefty processor, 8 cores if you want a smooth experience.