Looking for input on budget build

[Joe.Bonar]

So, here's the build I have so far:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i3-6100 3.7GHz Dual-Core Processor  ($127.94 @ Amazon) 
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-B150M-D3H Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard  ($85.00 @ Amazon) 
Memory: Crucial 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-2133 Memory 
Storage: Kingston SSDNow V300 Series 240GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  ($76.99 @ Amazon) 
Video Card: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 950 2GB Dual WindForce Video Card 
Case: Rosewill RANGER-M MicroATX Mini Tower Case  ($34.99 @ Amazon) 
Power Supply: EVGA 500W 80+ Certified ATX Power Supply  ($34.99 @ Amazon) 
Total: $359.91
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-02-04 02:06 EST-0500

Sooo, here's my reasoning on why I went with what:

I3-6100, LGA 1151 socket, cheap, middling benchmark processor uses a socket that will likely see future use, so, good potential for future upgrade. Difference between this and I5-6500 on userbenchmarks was 1% for gaming, which is my primary goal, so, I figured save ~80. Plus, it uses DDR4, which will likely become more common, and cheaper in the future, at least, I think, I don't really know, hence why I'm here. I mean, for all I know DDR5 could become standard and then I'm stuck a generation of ram behind again.

 

The B150M-D3H mobo was a tossup between this, and, basically, the $50 little brother that had one less PICex16 socket, two less ram sockets, and over-all, less features, and less room for upgrade. I figured throw another 35$ at the heart of the machine for better upgrade potential, and therefor longevity.

 

The 16gb ram kit I am thinking about was originally for the other mobo, thinking I'd effectively cap the ram right out of the gate and not have to worry about it until games start requiring 32gb ram, which, I mean, most is 8 right now, so, who knows when that will be. If I remember from the specs of the mobo, 32 is the cap on it, so I can, at some future point, basically buy the same kit later on and finish the system off as far as ram is concerned at some later point. But I figured this would be fine for now because the mobo only supports dual-channel anyway.

 

As far as SSD is concerned, I have that one sitting around, I figured I'd just throw it in there for a reference point. Honestly, when I benchmarked it, the tool said it was running suboptimally, so, I'm going to upgrade to a better one at some future point, but that is what I have now. However, as far as I understand, this would only affect load times, not frame rates, but I could be wrong.

 

Now, the GTX 950. So, I was on userbenchmarks, and I was going back and forth looking at GPUs based on value, price, and effective speed. I like nVidia, it's what I'm used to as far as tools are concerned, and when I tried to find comparably priced AMD cards with similar performance, I really couldn't find anything. Originally, I was gonna slap another GT 610 generic corporate stable with 2g vram in it, because I have a diablotek DA 400, and that card runs on a stock dell 300w PSU no problem, but I was comparing its benchmarks, and I was like, zomg, this is terrible. So, I started looking at a 750 Ti, because it also doesn't require a PICe power cable, but it's benchmarks were also crap, so I started looking at cards in a similar price range of both nVidia and AMD, but they all required power, so I was like, to heck with it, I'm just gonna get a PSU and just get something that will tide me over for a while, and the 950 was right in that spot where it's price and bechmarks were acceptable. I know, I know, for $30 more I can get a 960 that benchmarks WAAAAY better, but then I gotta change PSUs too (all the 960s I saw required two 6-pins, or an 8 and a 6, or some other unholy configuration my inexperienced mind cannot fathom, I just, my head, argh) and I just don't even know what I'm looking for really. The AMD cards I looked at were, and this is going to sound crazy, pricey for the performance.

 

The PSU; it was cheap, had the connections I needed for the mobo I chose, again, no clue what I'm looking for here. The build tool said I need 210w, I got a 500w so that I could reasonably begin doing upgrades without having to also immediately buy another PSU.

 

Lastly, the case. I like it, it's cheap, comes with two fans, mobo has 3 fan headers, 1 for CPU, 2 for case, seems legit. PC part picker build tool cited an incompatibility; my mobo has a USB 3.0 header, but my case only has USB 2.0, so I was thinking I'd either go ahead and let is be 2.0, or, install this front bay USB 3.0 hub with card-reader (2 USB 3.0 and 1 USB 2.0, and 1 multi-format card reader, installs in a 3 or 5 inch bay, connects either to a USB 3 port in the back, or, the header on my motherboard and uses either SATA or molex power) thing. Looking at the case, I feel like I'd rather just let the ports be USB 2.0, but, I don't know. Input would be appreciated. Note: I really like the blue LEDs, yes, it's superficial, but, I mean, c'mon.

 

Basically, I'm looking to maximize my investment, and I feel like I have a solid build here, that will last me a long, long time, considering that I can upgrade it due to it's taking advantage of a new socket type that has much better processors available, but are currently out of my price-range, with more options to come (kaby processors?), and it's use of DDR4 ram, plenty of ports for expansion, etc. Components on userbenchmarks says it's at a 41% (Speedboat) (if I did get the i5-6500 this score improves to 42%, so, I mean, y'know) in the gaming category, which, I mean, yeah, that's a failing grade, I'll grant you, but I'm rocking a 12% (Tree Trunk) gaming on my current rig which is a Dell Dimension 9200 (yeah, it's an XPS something mobo, it's a 9200) and I've capped it's mobo (q6700, 8gb ram, ssd, etc.) and it's utility to me has died, I'm roughly quadrupling my current gaming performance, more than doubling my desktop performance, and increasing my workstation performance by over 50%. Obviously, with my budget, I can't exactly get away with a lot, but I just want to know if I can do better for the money I'm spending (current build, from amzon because I have prime, so when I order it, it will, basically, all show up a couple days later) will cost me just under $500 ($497.90 to be precice). I'm not expecting to hear "ZOMG great build!" or "Dude, you can totally get UFO with $500" I'm just wanting people's input on the build, to see if there's anything I over-looked as far as savings are concerned (I mean, I'd like to get all this for a lot cheaper, so then I could buy a decent size hdtv to use as a monitor, but, I have monitors, so, that's not even a concern).

 

1. Budget & Location

$550 USD, central united states, no major PC retailers within 2 hours driving distance, so, I'm shopping mostly amazon and newegg. I have zero confidence in eBay, and zero interest in buying used, yeah, I know, better deals, don't care, I want new.

2. Aim

My aim is to build a cheap, upgradable gaming pc, that will play fallout 4 at medium or higher settings with a stable 50-60 FPS at roughly 720p quality, and maybe do some very, very light video editing (I don't want to make music videos, or rip my dvd library, just for family stuff like slideshows and compilations, maybe edit sets of videos together taken from phones), I really like retro gaming and modding (<.< I kind of love GZDooM) so low-poly 3D modeling and texture editing, a bit of photomanip and web-design (GiMP and KomPozer), not planning on hosting a server, but I occasionally turn on my HTTP host to share files to guests because windows networking can be stupid sometimes. I mean, I mess around on my computer and do random things, but it's mostly about being able to play games at stable frame-rates. I don't need to be able to do the other stuff great, it's just a nice extra to take advantage of when you're bored and have nothing better to do at 2 in the morning...

3. Monitors

Possibly two, older monitors, 1680x1050 (Dell monitors, I do basic maintenance and data destruction for an insurance office, so I get old crap when they upgrade, because I like to see how far I can push old crap, I mean, c'mon, it's free, why not?).

4. Peripherals

I have a keyboard and mouse, and monitor, I also have a Windows 7 Pro N 64-bit license.

5. Why are you upgrading?

Dell Dimension 9200 upgraded, basically, to it's maximum potential (motherboard "maxed" at 8gb ram (no overclock), an intel Q6700 bulk cpu (no overclock), some off brand GT610 with 2GB vram low power corporate stable no fan (no overclock, obviously), 240 gb ssd (Kingston V300), bunch of sata hdds for other storage (one for music, one for games, one for videos, and one more partitioned for temporary files, downloads, documents, pictures, productivity and utilities each one is a 320 gb, except for videos which is 500 gb). I'm going to hand this computer over to my wife, since it adequately handles dual-monitor, HD video, browsing, any game she would be interested in playing, and all the crap she would need to do for her school and work. I, however, can squeeze no more modern gaming out of it, since, with many, many mods and ini tweaks, I can barely crack 40 fps in fallout in less than low settings at an unsupported lowered resolution (800x600 windowed, shadowmap resolution of 8 with a draw distance of 0, NPCs pop in at less range than ironsight, I literally cannot shoot until I see the whites of their eyes :P, etc. etc.), and that's in the glowing sea where the geometry is not at all complex (the gpu can handle most of the effects, but it has to handle so much for the cpu that it gets overloaded in areas where there are lots of npcs or animations, shadows, and/or dynamic lights).

 

Sorry for the massive wall of text, but I figured explaining what and why clearly and accurately was important.

[Bogdan_Dirlosan]

should swap that I3 for an I5 6400 or 6300

 

4 physical cores beat 2 physisical 4 logical.

[Guuhan]

1. Most games nowadays doesn't even use 8GB of ram. And on top of that. Your budget is very limited so I think 8GB would be just fine.

 

2. If you want the SSD temporary, be my guest. I rather buy an ADATA Premier SP550 240gb instead of that. It's cheaper, performs as an SSD and better in some ways.

 

3. what @Bogdan_Dirlosan said.

 

 

[Joe.Bonar]

The issue I have with those processors is cost vs performance, the i3-6300 performs only marginally better on benchmarks, and is $30 more, and the 6400 performs terribly on benchmarks and is $70 more. I've been doing a fair bit of research on this, and from what I've read and watched, the hyperthreaded dual core is roughly equivalent in most real-world applications. Since I don't intend to data mine or perform intensive calculations (regularly at least), I feel like this would be unnecessary cost addition at the present time.

 

Cost efficiency is the issue with ram, 8gb of ram is like $35-ish, whereas this 16gb kit is $65, and since my mobo is dual-channel, I figured I'd just spring for the extra stick. I want to, while I have a little bit of extra money, have some modicum of future proofing.

 

Isn't the SP550 an SSD? I'm confused when you say it performs "as an SSD", when the product page labels it as an SSD. Are you saying it's a better quality SSD? I hadn't run across it in my looking, but I wasn't really looking at getting one yet, but I will keep it in mind for the future, because that sucker is cheap.

[LawrenceBarnes2013]

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i3-6100 3.7GHz Dual-Core Processor  ($124.89 @ OutletPC) 
Motherboard: ASRock H170M Pro4 Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard  ($84.99 @ Amazon) 
Memory: G.Skill NT Series 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR4-2400 Memory  ($34.99 @ Newegg) 
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($46.89 @ OutletPC) 
Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 960 2GB Video Card  ($189.01 @ B&H) 
Case: DIYPC Solo-T1-BK ATX Mid Tower Case  ($29.89 @ Newegg) 
Power Supply: SeaSonic 450W 80+ Gold Certified ATX Power Supply  ($59.16 @ SuperBiiz) 
Total: $569.82
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-02-04 03:33 EST-0500

[Joe.Bonar]

I like that case, and thank you for the suggestion, and also for finding a power supply that would allow me to upgrade to the 960!

 

I'm curious why the switch to an ASRock H170M vs the B150M. Are there any specific reasons you suggested that board, aside from the m2 port for those cool little SSDs?

 

Edit: Changed setup to 8gb ram, GTX 960, the ASRock H170M (yay future m2 SSD), and picked up an extra blue LED case fan, because, still under budget

[Joe.Bonar]

Soooooo, I ended up going with 16 gb ram, stuck with the b150m, went with the VIVO V-01 case, got an m.2 sata SSD, totally didn't work. The mobo was doa as well, but Amazon return policies for the win. Ended up with a 120 gb adata SP550 ssd, and a 320 gb seagate something or other laptop hard drive (had good benchmarks, so, I was like, yeah, why not, use my other two WD Blue WD3200BPVT through a usb 3.0 enclosure (transfer files quickly between tower, for example, fallout 4 to download? like, 2 days (the switch to my apartment can only handle 3 mbps, and not very well, cable is significantly more expensive, so I stick with DSL), to transfer via hdd enclosure? an hour, not to mention music, emulator libraries, videos, etc.), and, of course, I stuck with the i3-6100, because I can always upgrade it later. Went with the 960, had a little more money to spend so I got some other crap like headphones, a decent mic (mostly for fantasy grounds, I don't really online game too much), and of course the enclosure and a couple usb sticks to install OS and drivers from because of no optical drive.

 

So, getting this new skylake motherboard up and running was a pain. Bake in the usb drivers via gigabyte's tool so I could install windows 7 via usb on the updated hardware, the m.2 took to it fine at first, two reboots from driver installs and windows update nonsense later, and dwm.exe crashed and then, disappeared? black desktop, no windows, just a cursor with no response to any keypresses, even alt+ctrl+del, so I was like, meh, something happened, got corrupted, whatever, reinstall. Yeah no. Ok, got a windows 8.1 key from my brother who works in IT (volume licenses are lovely), tried to install that, yeah no. Requires active internet connection, no drivers for new intel ethernet card, didn't buy wifi, I'm boned. Google help! Yay notepad! Got it to start the install, got to "Personalizing your computer" and it hangs. An hour later, still personalizing. Yeah no, reboot. Reinsta-- nope. Get called in to work. Fume at both work and not working, expensive brick that won't take windows and I don't have linux drivers for the nic. Get off work, driving home, smoking a cigarette. Hmm, I wonder if it's the m.2? Diskpart does NOT like the m.2. Pull it. Install to adata ssd. Bamf, perfect, fantastic. Interesting note: Ram slots, apparently not labeled correctly? Sata ports? Also not labeled correctly? Bios reads them differently than board markings. Meh, don't care, runs fallout great, plays GTAV like a champ (zomg love that game), everything else I play is old af anyways, (emulators mostly), so I call this a success!

 

<.< Building up the courage to reinstall the m.2. I want it to work sofa king bad.

 

Thanks to all of you guys for suggestions. I really did consider what you guys said, I just had a particular goal in mind, and I feel like I met it. I have plenty of room to upgrade (to an i5 or i7, another 16 gb of dual channel ddr4 to be thrown in, can go the SLI route, or just upgrade to a better GPU (since the psu suggested has two 6+2 pin PCIE plugs) and I get fairly solid performance in the games I play (fallout 4 dips into the low 40s every now and again, but on ultra settings with godrays, at my monitors native resolution of 1680x1050, I'm pretty freaking happy) and any my older games are still playing just as well as they did on my other box, only with better settings.

 

I do play rocket league every now and again I suppose... Maybe I'll talk my wife into letting me upgrade internets at some point. Kind of doubt it. Whatevs.

 

Thanks again! I really do appreciate the quick responses and suggestions!