New PC Build

arazmatron · February 6, 2016

Hi so I definately need to build a new PC. Right now I am using a late 2009 MBP (I know don't kill me for using a mac) which is on its last legs.

I currently have a budget of £750 - £800, but I need to be building this soon so I don't have time to save a bit more to buy better parts or wait for new hardware.

The use of the gomputer will be gaming on 1 1080p monitor, possibly 1440 in the future, and office/ poducyivity work on initially 1, but later 2 1080p monitors ( I will need the screen space of 2 monitors for work, but prefer to game on 1 monitor not 2.)

I also edit video as a hobby, but not professionally, and not particularly regularly and only ever at 1080p or lower.

My current planned build is

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-4690K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor (£178.23 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z97X-Gaming 5 ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (£115.46 @ Dabs)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LP 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£33.38 @ Ebuyer)
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£65.99 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: MSI Radeon R9 380 4GB Video Card (£156.99 @ Amazon UK)
Case: NZXT S340 (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case (£59.99 @ Novatech)
Power Supply: Corsair CX 750W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply (£69.99 @ Amazon UK)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8.1 OEM (64-bit) (£59.99 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £740.02
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-02-06 20:42 GMT+0000

Ok. I will try to explain my rational.

I would love the 4790k but it is over £100 pounds more expensive, but i do have it as a possible upgrade path. Haswell is still cheaper than skylake at the moment, even with the price drop of DDR4, and with the rate of growth of CPU's not being what it used to be I don't see the top end of skylake being sufficiently higher than the 4790k to warrant the increased cost of the system, particularly as I don't need the improved igpu and will be starting with the stock cooler.

I will be starting with the stock cooler and upgrading, probably in a couple of months, to an aio water cooler. I know that an aio water cooler is probably more than i need but with the case having a windowed side panel I want something that looks better, and I really like the look of an aio cooler. I will probably be going for the nzxt x61. I have put this as an upgrade because I need to do it to get it when building the computer, and will keep my initial budget down but i will almost certainly do it in the future.

For the MOBO, I know it is a bit overkill for what i need, but it will allow me to do some OC'ing once I upgrade my cooler. It also has crossfire support, which I will talk more about later when I talk about my GPU choice. Finally it has the black/red colour scheme that I am going for with this build and gigabyte has a good reputation for quality boards.

For ram, I wen with a single stick of 8gb ddr3 in red, not much to say her except easy to upgrade later to 16gb or 32gb and keeps with the colour scheme.

For storage I went with a toshiba 250gb 850 evo series drive. Whilst not huge it is good enough for a boot drive, and as my initial storge drive. I also like the tosiba magician software for optimising the drive which is a plus. This is also another category where there will be a certain upgrade. I will be installing either i 1tb or 2tb seagate barracuda drive drive maybe more if i need them. but I am saving money on the origional build as the 250gb SSD is a must for a system of this cost for a boot drive and the size will be enough for a couple of months.

For the GPU i went with the R9 380 (Please don't start an AMD vs NVidia fanboy war). I would have liked the r9 390 but it pushes the budget up by over £120 ($150) because amazon are selling the MSI r9 380 really cheap t the moment. The MSI one againg had the red/black colour scheme and also has the twin frozer cooling blades, which should help on a hot card like this. This is another category where I have the potential to do further updgrades if I wish, allow for a Crossfire set up (with 2 380 currently costing the same as 1 390 on amazon).

For the case I decided that I wanted a windowed case, and the psu and cable sheild/ guard thingy will make the cabling look nice. I will actually be getting the red/black case rather than the black case for two reasons. I will add more red for my colour scheme, and I also prefer the all matte finish. I only put it as black on pcpartpicker as they dont have a price in the uk for the red/black one despite amazon selling it for almost the same price.

For PSU. I know I know. If you just read the part list the first thing anyone will say is that the PSU is overkill. but where as with other compants i have a starting point ant then a plan to expand and upgrade I cant do that with a PSU. The PSU will have to be big enough for potentially 2 hot AMD 3-4 storage drives and although intel cpu's are cooler than AMD's I will also be have a reletively high end cpu with an aio watercooler hopefully witha decent Overclook, by which point a 750w power supply would seen right.

So what do you think. Is my rational right, or is it floored. and do you have any other suggestions/ ideas that I might have overlooked/ ignored.

Streetguru · February 6, 2016

5 minutes ago, arazmatron said:

Hi so I definately need to build a new PC. Right now I am using a late 2009 MBP (I know don't kill me for using a mac) which

You should change out the CPU for the Xeon 1231v3 it has twice the cores and should last longer

And 240gbs is going to run out very fast, should just grab a 1TB drive and get an SSD later.

otherwise swap out the PSU for this one

https://pcpartpicker.com/part/xfx-power-supply-p1750gts3x