First build, looking for advice on my component selection.....

[ChiefMendez88]

Hi all, first time poster so apologies if I break any rules/miss any info!

 

So this is a first time build for me, my knowledge is somewhat limited but luckily for me I have several friends willing to hold my hand throughout so I should be ok! My components list is below.

 

My aim is to build a gaming rig (sub £1000) that will smash pretty much anything at 1080p on high/ultra settings, with options to upgrade to a second graphics card in SLI in the future for longevity. I also want it to have a solid cpu/mobo for future proofing. Lastly it was important to me to have an SSD for the OS. I do plan on including a 1TB Seagate HDD for all my media/games, but need to find it to post its specs! 

 

 

 

-Corsair Carbide Series Air 540 (CC-9011048-WW) Arctic White Steel ATX Mid Tower Cube Computer Case

-MSI GeForce GTX 970 4GD5T OC

-ASUS Z170-A LGA 1151 Intel Z170 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.1 USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

-Intel Core i5-6600K 6M Skylake Quad-Core 3.5 GHz LGA 1151 91W BX80662I56600K Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 530

-CORSAIR Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 2133 (PC4 17000) Desktop Memory Model CMK16GX4M2A2133C13

-Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive

-Microsoft Windows 8.1 OEM (64-bit)

-EVGA 210-GQ-0850-V1 850W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS GOLD Certified Power Supply

 

Things I observe myself are....... 

 

-I had no idea on power supply so I used a power calculator then guessed a bit ?

-I know the skylake cpu is a little overkill but it's the singular part of this build I never want to have to replace.

-the clock speed of my ram is low, how much does that really impact gaming performance? 

 

Any advice/suggestions help would be much appreciated! 

 

Thanks

Joe

 

 

[Guest]

Power supply is WAYYYY overkill. You could get away with a 430w but i suggest at least a 500w.

[Guest]

 

 

[rtpb5642]

Looks good to me. good PSU but you could go for 650w not 850w.

good build!

[Hackentosher]

If you're going to overclock, get a 600W unit, but everything else looks good. Do you have another mechanical hard drive for my storage? Depending on what you're doing, a 250gb drive is going to fill up pretty quickly.

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, ChiefMendez88 said:

Hi all, first time poster so apologies if I break any rules/miss any info!

 

So this is a first time build for me, my knowledge is somewhat limited but luckily for me I have several friends willing to hold my hand throughout so I should be ok! My components list is below.

 

My aim is to build a gaming rig (sub £1000) that will smash pretty much anything at 1080p on high/ultra settings, with options to upgrade to a second graphics card in SLI in the future for longevity. I also want it to have a solid cpu/mobo for future proofing. Lastly it was important to me to have an SSD for the OS. I do plan on including a 1TB Seagate HDD for all my media/games, but need to find it to post its specs! 

 

 

 

-Corsair Carbide Series Air 540 (CC-9011048-WW) Arctic White Steel ATX Mid Tower Cube Computer Case

-MSI GeForce GTX 970 4GD5T OC

-ASUS Z170-A LGA 1151 Intel Z170 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.1 USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

-Intel Core i5-6600K 6M Skylake Quad-Core 3.5 GHz LGA 1151 91W BX80662I56600K Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 530

-CORSAIR Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 2133 (PC4 17000) Desktop Memory Model CMK16GX4M2A2133C13

-Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive

-Microsoft Windows 8.1 OEM (64-bit)

-EVGA 210-GQ-0850-V1 850W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS GOLD Certified Power Supply

 

Things I observe myself are....... 

 

-I had no idea on power supply so I used a power calculator then guessed a bit ?

-I know the skylake cpu is a little overkill but it's the singular part of this build I never want to have to replace.

-the clock speed of my ram is low, how much does that really impact gaming performance? 

 

Any advice/suggestions help would be much appreciated! 

 

Thanks

Joe

 

 

Ram does not matter if it goes beyond 2000 so unless you are running vms dont worry

digging that 6600k and 970 really good

Overclock if you are getting those components, Asus boards are very good and you have a capable psu.

 

[rtpb5642]

1 minute ago, Bobby_Joe_90 said:

Power supply is WAYYYY overkill. You could get away with a 430w but i suggest at least a 500w.

there is a 970 and an overclockable i5... 430 is not much

[HPWebcamAble]

Welcome to the forums!

 

That build looks pretty good, though though you might want to keep a few things in mind:

• Overall, the R9 390 is better than the GTX 970 (unless you need NVIDIA exclusive features)
• That PSU is way overkill, the current rig would be fine with 550 W. Maybe 650 - 750 W is a good idea, to leave room for future expansion
• Your ram is relatively fast actually, though it won't matter either way in games

[Guest]

Just now, Hackentosher said:

If you're going to overclock, get a 600W unit, but everything else looks good. Do you have another mechanical hard drive for my storage? Depending on what you're doing, a 250gb drive is going to fill up pretty quickly.

I see why he needs 850. he is doing sli in future makes sense to me.

[rtpb5642]

2 minutes ago, Bobby_Joe_90 said:

 

 

thats ddr3, ddr4 runs at much higher speeds so 2133 is great. i have that very RAM from corsair, its good OP made a good choice. its a good price

[Guest]

1 minute ago, HPWebcamAble said:

Welcome to the forums!

 

That build looks pretty good, though though you might want to keep a few things in mind:

• Overall, the R9 390 is better than the GTX 970 (unless you need NVIDIA exclusive features)
• That PSU is way overkill, the current rig would be fine with 550 W. Maybe 650 - 750 W is a good idea, to leave room for future expansion
• Your ram is relatively fast actually, though it won't matter either way in games

I see why he needs that psu, he is going to do sli

 

7 minutes ago, ChiefMendez88 said:

 

My aim is to build a gaming rig (sub £1000) that will smash pretty much anything at 1080p on high/ultra settings, with options to upgrade to a second graphics card in SLI in the future for longevity. I also want it to have a solid cpu/mobo for future proofing. Lastly it was important to me to have an SSD for the OS. I do plan on including

 

see?

[HPWebcamAble]

2 minutes ago, josephaltareb said:

I see why he needs that psu, he is going to do sli

 

see?

Maybe 980's need 800 + Watts for SLI, but 970's do not. 750 watts is fine.

[Shahnewaz]

This is my suggestion, considering everything you asked. Mind you this is a Mini-ITX build, so you can take this as a reference and go with bigger parts if you want.

 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-6700K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor  (£289.98 @ Amazon UK)
CPU Cooler: ARCTIC Freezer i32 CPU Cooler  (£25.49 @ Ebuyer)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z170N-WIFI Mini ITX LGA1151 Motherboard  (£109.99 @ Amazon UK)
Memory: Kingston HyperX Fury Black 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-2133 Memory  (£29.99 @ Ebuyer)
Storage: Samsung 840 EVO 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  (£106.82 @ Misco UK)
Storage: Western Digital BLACK SERIES 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  (£63.38 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: Sapphire Radeon R9 390 8GB Nitro Video Card  (£259.98 @ Ebuyer)
Case: Fractal Design Define Mini MicroATX Mini Tower Case  (£65.66 @ Amazon UK)
Power Supply: Corsair RMx 550W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply  (£74.54 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £1025.83
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-03-23 02:40 GMT+0000

[BurblingBarbacoa]

Ok. I'm going to assume that you are going to be using this for only gaming and general home use. Maybe with the potential for a bit of light 1080p editing. Here are my suggestion based on that assumption 

• Case is good. Cases are a very personal thing. 
• Get a r9390. Same price as the 970 with better preformance and copious amounts more vram. If you do not plan on playing at more than 1080p 60htz then consider the r9 380. If you have aspiration of QHD in the Futu then either keep the 390 or look at at 380x if you want to cut prices a bit. 
• Maybe step the CPU down a bit. Maybe a 6500? I have it and it offers good potential to start doing hevier work such as video editing. 
• That is a very good motherboard. I have it myself. However. You go AMD you can get a cheaper motherboard that still supports two way crossfire. Also if  you go for a non k chip you can cut costs by going for a H170 board. 
• 16gb of ram is not nessisary. If you start doing somthing more demanding than gaming or if you are a total tab whore in chrome then monitor your memory useage and then upgrade if you need to. 
• 850 evo is a solid choice. If you get a hard drive I reccomend a WD Blue over a seagate drive
• That power supply is good. You could get away with less but for 390 crossfire 850 is pretty safe. Although, having said that I reccomend  that you stick with a single 390 for the time being and if you want to go above the resolution and refresh rate of htz maybe look at an upgrade to a better single card then. 
• I would get a cheap copy of Windows ten at kinguin. Why Windows 8.1? 
• The fans that you have with the case are good but you listed no CPU cooler. Regardless of whether you go for an unlocked chip or not, a nice cooler is good for both thermals and silence. 

To to adress your questions: 

• I answered this in the parts reccomendation 
• The 6500 will last just as long a 6600k for gaming. Trying to 'future proof' is a slippery slope that can end up with you buying things that you don't need and will never use. CPUs generally last quite a while. People are still using sandy bridge professors like the i5 2500 today just fine. 
• Nope not really. For ram, a good rule of thumb is that 1600mhz is a good minimum for ddr3 and 2133mhz for ddr4 

hope i I helped and offered good information for change and improvement  

[ChiefMendez88]

Thank you all so much for you're help and advice and it's nice to see that I wasn't way off base with most of it! The time you've all clearly taken to respond to this means a lot to me and it's exactly why I was directed to LTT! 

 

So now to my next phase of questioning! 

 

Where is best for components pricing? And for those of you in the UK are there any stores that sell this stuff where I could get a good price/advice/dodge shipping fees? 

Lastly, has anyone here used Kinguin.com to buy their operating system? It's so cheap I worry it's not legit! But I've seen several reputable you tubers use them etc!? Any thoughts? 

 

Thanks again in advance guys!