First (Personal) PC Build

[dan13sar]

I'm finally in a position that i can buy the part for my pc. It's taken years to get to this point and it's a huge investment for me so i'm putting it up here to make sure there aren't any huge over sights and for general reassurance that i'm doing the right thing.

So here is some context. I’m A-Level Student currently in my second year of 6^th form (Senior Year in high school in the states I think) I’m Studying Math, Physics, Music Technology and Media. I will probably go down the academic route at Uni because it is a safe bet but i don’t want to let go of music and media creation. It’s actually what I want to do for a job. So to keep it going I want to build myself a content creation PC. I’m not new to building PC’s but im new to this level of hardware. (I did maintenance  of PC at my old schools It department but that was all ancient tech like IDE instead of SATA. I’m just about able to use Photoshop and lightroom on my laptop but heavily rely on school Mac to edit and video and use Logic Pro X.

I’m not a huge gamer, I pretty much play FIFA 14 on Xbox 360 every weekend for a while but that it, but I would be using this to start PC gaming

Sorry for the large context paragraph, I thought some of the parts below might not make sense if i didn’t state this.

My budget £1600  ( For the Start of summer) I’ll have more cash by the end for peripherals a NAS and monitors and more equipment for my setup. For now it’s just the core of the PC tower.

The first thing that cannot be changed is that I am building a hackintosh I need to use Logic Pro X and this is on available on Mac os

 

 

Here is a PC part picker list , (Ignore the GTX 970, It is only there to hold value)....  http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/kdbfr7

Part	Name	Price
Boot Drive	500GB Samsung 850 EVO                       (2)	£213.30
PSU	EVGA SuperNova P2 850 W	£123.21
CASE	Phanteks evolv ATX Glass	£154.99
RAM	32GB (2x16GB) Corsair DDR4 Vengeance LPX Black	£101.60
Mother Board	Gigabyte GA-Z170X-UD5 TH	£149.45
Graphics Card	GTX 1070	£339.00
CPU	Core i7-6700K 4.0GHz	£276.00
Cooler	Hydro Series H110i GTX	£94.99
OS	Windows 10 OEM	£52.49
OS	OSX EL Capitan	free
Secondary GPU	GPU (opp) For os X EVGA NVIDIA GT 740 SC Graphics Card (I doubt there will be drivers for Pascal any time soon so this is cheap and on takes up on slot)	£73.298

 

Total Price: £1,578.33

Just a brake down of why I chose each part to help you with and suggestion you may have.

Boot drive: 500GB Samsung 850 EVO

I chose this because it is popular it has value and the review i read didn’t raise any alarms I also already have a SanDisk 120GB SSD to but current project on. Two SSD’s because one is for OSX, One for Windows. I probably won’t bother with raid until the NAS.

PSU: EVGA SuperNova P2 850 W

Very Good PSU all black cables Fully modular Platinum rated. I can add a second GTX 1070

CASE: Phanteks evolv ATX Glass

For the last year my choice has been the Phanteks enthoo pro. But this looks way to good and pretty much has everything I could need.

MotherBoard: Gigabyte GA-Z170X-UD5 TH

Main reason is because it is the cheapest way to get thunderbolt. Problem is Apple doesn’t support thunderbolt 3 yet. I’m betting on them adding it the machines soon considering their inclusion of the one usb 1 port on the MacBook. Some audio interfaces make use of Thuderbolt...

GPU: GTX 1070 + GTX 740 SC

The GTX 1070 offers the most cuda cores for the money which adobe applications make use of.

OS X only has support for the Nvidia cards so that takes out all the AMD cards. The is no support for Pascal yet in OSx hence the GTX 740SC It is more of a just in case purchase.

The pricing isn’t available is I’m basing it of a straight currency conversion plus a £40 premuim that usually happens with electronics.

CPU: i7 6700k

It seems like a good choice, The 6800k has just been released, the motherboards are supported on OS X, not sure the CPU will be plus its like £100 more, probably not worth it right.

Cooler: Hydro Series H110i GTX

Some of the best temps for a AIO CPU cooler. Should be able to reach 4.5Gz easily on the cpu with this and the motherboard.

OS: WINDOWS 10 and OS X

I’ve only used Premier Pro on Windows 7, Is there something I should know or keep in mind? Photo shop works fine on my Windows 10 laptop. OS X is literally just so I can use Logic pro X.

RAM: 32GB (2x16GB) Corsair DDR4 Vengeance LPX Black

 

32 GB because i can just about afford it. It will let me upgrade to 64GB if I ever need to. The RAM adobe applications can get the better

You might be wondering why I don’t just buy a Mac. Sometimes i think that to myself as well.

Firstly, I want to build it myself, I don’t know why I’m just a DIY kind of guy.

Secondly, I won’t getting a new Computer for quit a considerable amount of time, A self built PC will let me make small improvements to it while the Imacs are locked down

Thirdly, Money, I can make i bit of a saving (i think) by buying the part myself, It is hard to do a price comparison because spec for spec Imacs don’t exist plus they all come with very good displays and are hard to give an exact value.

If you have just read all that, thank you very much, What do you think? Is there anything I should change.

I’ll be purchasing all my component after the 24^th june (my last exam) So I have time to change things do a complete overhaul if i need to. Plus more detailed reviews on the GTX 1070 and new IntelCPU’s will be out by then. And maybe even a significant price drop on the GTX 9xx series.

There is an Excel document attached with a break down of my parts and retailers ETC ( I probably won't opt for the credit option)

Pc Build 2016.xlsx

[TheRandomness]

http://pcpartpicker.com/ is much better for making lists.

[dan13sar]

1 minute ago, TheRandomness said:

http://pcpartpicker.com/ is much better for making lists.

Yeah I know, I have a link i can post but some of the vendors aren't in the PC Part picker Data base, i'll post the link now anyway if it helps.

[Himommies]

Maybe get a Sound card

 

[DioOmicida]

Looks good to me. 

[dan13sar]

3 minutes ago, Himommies said:

Maybe get a Sound card

 

Yeah though about that, i was looking at external interface istead as i do a lot live recording somthing like the Focusright Scarlet focusrite scarlett 2i4 would do and it would drive monitors like the Yamaha HS5 fine

[darkoj1]

All looks good, and agree it would take a considerable price drop in the GTX 9xx series for me to not want to upgrade to the 1070!

[Starelementpoke]

32 minutes ago, dan13sar said:

I'm finally in a position that i can buy the part for my pc. It's taken years to get to this point and it's a huge investment for me so i'm putting it up here to make sure there aren't any huge over sights and for general reassurance that i'm doing the right thing.

So here is some context. I’m A-Level Student currently in my second year of 6^th form (Senior Year in high school in the states I think) I’m Studying Math, Physics, Music Technology and Media. I will probably go down the academic route at Uni because it is a safe bet but i don’t want to let go of music and media creation. It’s actually what I want to do for a job. So to keep it going I want to build myself a content creation PC. I’m not new to building PC’s but im new to this level of hardware. (I did maintenance  of PC at my old schools It department but that was all ancient tech like IDE instead of SATA. I’m just about able to use Photoshop and lightroom on my laptop but heavily rely on school Mac to edit and video and use Logic Pro X.

I’m not a huge gamer, I pretty much play FIFA 14 on Xbox 360 every weekend for a while but that it, but I would be using this to start PC gaming

Sorry for the large context paragraph, I thought some of the parts below might not make sense if i didn’t state this.

My budget £1600  ( For the Start of summer) I’ll have more cash by the end for peripherals a NAS and monitors and more equipment for my setup. For now it’s just the core of the PC tower.

The first thing that cannot be changed is that I am building a hackintosh I need to use Logic Pro X and this is on available on Mac os

 

 

Here is a PC part picker list , (Ignore the GTX 970, It is only there to hold value)....  http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/kdbfr7

Part	Name	Price
Boot Drive	500GB Samsung 850 EVO                       (2)	£213.30
PSU	EVGA SuperNova P2 850 W	£123.21
CASE	Phanteks evolv ATX Glass	£154.99
RAM	32GB (2x16GB) Corsair DDR4 Vengeance LPX Black	£101.60
Mother Board	Gigabyte GA-Z170X-UD5 TH	£149.45
Graphics Card	GTX 1070	£339.00
CPU	Core i7-6700K 4.0GHz	£276.00
Cooler	Hydro Series H110i GTX	£94.99
OS	Windows 10 OEM	£52.49
OS	OSX EL Capitan	free
Secondary GPU	GPU (opp) For os X EVGA NVIDIA GT 740 SC Graphics Card (I doubt there will be drivers for Pascal any time soon so this is cheap and on takes up on slot)	£73.298

 

Total Price: £1,578.33

Just a brake down of why I chose each part to help you with and suggestion you may have.

Boot drive: 500GB Samsung 850 EVO

I chose this because it is popular it has value and the review i read didn’t raise any alarms I also already have a SanDisk 120GB SSD to but current project on. Two SSD’s because one is for OSX, One for Windows. I probably won’t bother with raid until the NAS.

PSU: EVGA SuperNova P2 850 W

Very Good PSU all black cables Fully modular Platinum rated. I can add a second GTX 1070

CASE: Phanteks evolv ATX Glass

For the last year my choice has been the Phanteks enthoo pro. But this looks way to good and pretty much has everything I could need.

MotherBoard: Gigabyte GA-Z170X-UD5 TH

Main reason is because it is the cheapest way to get thunderbolt. Problem is Apple doesn’t support thunderbolt 3 yet. I’m betting on them adding it the machines soon considering their inclusion of the one usb 1 port on the MacBook. Some audio interfaces make use of Thuderbolt...

GPU: GTX 1070 + GTX 740 SC

The GTX 1070 offers the most cuda cores for the money which adobe applications make use of.

OS X only has support for the Nvidia cards so that takes out all the AMD cards. The is no support for Pascal yet in OSx hence the GTX 740SC It is more of a just in case purchase.

The pricing isn’t available is I’m basing it of a straight currency conversion plus a £40 premuim that usually happens with electronics.

CPU: i7 6700k

It seems like a good choice, The 6800k has just been released, the motherboards are supported on OS X, not sure the CPU will be plus its like £100 more, probably not worth it right.

Cooler: Hydro Series H110i GTX

Some of the best temps for a AIO CPU cooler. Should be able to reach 4.5Gz easily on the cpu with this and the motherboard.

OS: WINDOWS 10 and OS X

I’ve only used Premier Pro on Windows 7, Is there something I should know or keep in mind? Photo shop works fine on my Windows 10 laptop. OS X is literally just so I can use Logic pro X.

RAM: 32GB (2x16GB) Corsair DDR4 Vengeance LPX Black

 

32 GB because i can just about afford it. It will let me upgrade to 64GB if I ever need to. The RAM adobe applications can get the better

You might be wondering why I don’t just buy a Mac. Sometimes i think that to myself as well.

Firstly, I want to build it myself, I don’t know why I’m just a DIY kind of guy.

Secondly, I won’t getting a new Computer for quit a considerable amount of time, A self built PC will let me make small improvements to it while the Imacs are locked down

Thirdly, Money, I can make i bit of a saving (i think) by buying the part myself, It is hard to do a price comparison because spec for spec Imacs don’t exist plus they all come with very good displays and are hard to give an exact value.

If you have just read all that, thank you very much, What do you think? Is there anything I should change.

I’ll be purchasing all my component after the 24^th june (my last exam) So I have time to change things do a complete overhaul if i need to. Plus more detailed reviews on the GTX 1070 and new IntelCPU’s will be out by then. And maybe even a significant price drop on the GTX 9xx series.

There is an Excel document attached with a break down of my parts and retailers ETC ( I probably won't opt for the credit option)

Pc Build 2016.xlsx

Wait, OSX only has support for Nvidia cards? Why do MacPros have FirePro cards in them?

[Dzzope]

With that budget and considering you might need to move a bit.. try this... Consider swapping board and to the new 6930k chip for content creation.. little, quiet, powerful and good looking

 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-5930K 3.5GHz 6-Core OEM/Tray Processor  (£469.99 @ Overclockers.co.uk) 
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-U9DXi4 37.8 CFM CPU Cooler  (£44.49 @ Amazon UK) 
Motherboard: ASRock X99E-ITX/ac Mini ITX LGA2011-3 Narrow Motherboard  (£229.99 @ Overclockers.co.uk) 
Memory: Kingston FURY 32GB (2 x 16GB) DDR4-2133 Memory  (£97.86 @ Novatech) 
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 500GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  (£105.39 @ Amazon UK) 
Video Card: GALAX GeForce GTX 970 4GB HOF Video Card  (£319.99 @ Amazon UK) 
Case: Phanteks Enthoo EVOLV ITX Mini ITX Tower Case  (£49.93 @ CCL Computers) 
Power Supply: Antec EarthWatts Platinum 550W 80+ Platinum Certified ATX Power Supply  (£72.95 @ Overclockers.co.uk) 
Total: £1390.59
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-05-31 20:10 BST+0100

 

I've seen posts of people going out to buy 6800's today, so it'a available. The 2 extra cores are great for you so it is worth it. Though with some of the choices I made and from what you want it would cost more to go ATX again.

Ohh and check out making a Hackintosh.. it's much easier these days.

Ohh and get windows 10 from somewher else.. you can get it for as little as $15-20 on reddit/r/microsofsoftwareexchange or other discount key sites.

 

Shout if you want me to look at an ATX build in that price point to leave possibility of SLI.

[Zeinone]

22 minutes ago, Dzzope said:

With that budget and considering you might need to move a bit.. try this... Consider swapping board and to the new 6930k chip for content creation.. little, quiet, powerful and good looking

 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-5930K 3.5GHz 6-Core OEM/Tray Processor  (£469.99 @ Overclockers.co.uk) 
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-U9DXi4 37.8 CFM CPU Cooler  (£44.49 @ Amazon UK) 
Motherboard: ASRock X99E-ITX/ac Mini ITX LGA2011-3 Narrow Motherboard  (£229.99 @ Overclockers.co.uk) 
Memory: Kingston FURY 32GB (2 x 16GB) DDR4-2133 Memory  (£97.86 @ Novatech) 
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 500GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  (£105.39 @ Amazon UK) 
Video Card: GALAX GeForce GTX 970 4GB HOF Video Card  (£319.99 @ Amazon UK) 
Case: Phanteks Enthoo EVOLV ITX Mini ITX Tower Case  (£49.93 @ CCL Computers) 
Power Supply: Antec EarthWatts Platinum 550W 80+ Platinum Certified ATX Power Supply  (£72.95 @ Overclockers.co.uk) 
Total: £1390.59
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-05-31 20:10 BST+0100

 

 

Ohh and check out making a Hackintosh.. it's much easier these days.

Ohh and get windows 10 from somewher else.. you can get it for as little as $15-20 on reddit/r/microsofsoftwareexchange or other discount key sites.

Just drop the 5930k to 5820k, the difference won't be noticeable here with only 1 gpu.... go for 4x8 ram for quad channel if you're gonna switch to an x99 platform

[dan13sar]

1 hour ago, Starelementpoke said:

Wait, OSX only has support for Nvidia cards? Why do MacPros have FirePro cards in them?

Now that is a good question, On tony mac x86 the only Gpu's in the parts list were Nvidia (So i assumed that AMD was not Supported) i knew the mac pros used AMD cards though but i thought they were some sort of special propritary card... After looking further into it i 've found this http://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/radeon-compatibility-guide-ati-amd-graphics-cards.171291/ So i'll be spending tonight looking at compatible AMD cards, Not sure any will compete with the pascal just yet so we'll have to wait for Polaris and see.

[dan13sar]

2 hours ago, Dzzope said:

With that budget and considering you might need to move a bit.. try this... Consider swapping board and to the new 6930k chip for content creation.. little, quiet, powerful and good looking

 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-5930K 3.5GHz 6-Core OEM/Tray Processor  (£469.99 @ Overclockers.co.uk) 
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-U9DXi4 37.8 CFM CPU Cooler  (£44.49 @ Amazon UK) 
Motherboard: ASRock X99E-ITX/ac Mini ITX LGA2011-3 Narrow Motherboard  (£229.99 @ Overclockers.co.uk) 
Memory: Kingston FURY 32GB (2 x 16GB) DDR4-2133 Memory  (£97.86 @ Novatech) 
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 500GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  (£105.39 @ Amazon UK) 
Video Card: GALAX GeForce GTX 970 4GB HOF Video Card  (£319.99 @ Amazon UK) 
Case: Phanteks Enthoo EVOLV ITX Mini ITX Tower Case  (£49.93 @ CCL Computers) 
Power Supply: Antec EarthWatts Platinum 550W 80+ Platinum Certified ATX Power Supply  (£72.95 @ Overclockers.co.uk) 
Total: £1390.59
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-05-31 20:10 BST+0100

 

I've seen posts of people going out to buy 6800's today, so it'a available. The 2 extra cores are great for you so it is worth it. Though with some of the choices I made and from what you want it would cost more to go ATX again.

Ohh and check out making a Hackintosh.. it's much easier these days.

Ohh and get windows 10 from somewher else.. you can get it for as little as $15-20 on reddit/r/microsofsoftwareexchange or other discount key sites.

 

Shout if you want me to look at an ATX build in that price point to leave possibility of SLI.

Thanks, Especially for the Windows 10 purchase tip. I'll spend sometime tomorrow looking at compatibilty will x99 and OS X El Capitan. I'm not sure slighlty faster render times will be worth it for me. I'll chaeck out what the difference is while editing. I never took the x99 platform into account as i assumed it would completly blow my budget

[Dzzope]

Did what it was supposed to then... Some parts could be better for you but a hackintosh should be possible (do lots of reading on supported parts)

 

And that motherboard was cos it was the only mitx board on uk pcpartpicker.

[dan13sar]

On 31/05/2016 at 8:11 PM, Dzzope said:

With that budget and considering you might need to move a bit.. try this... Consider swapping board and to the new 6930k chip for content creation.. little, quiet, powerful and good looking

 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-5930K 3.5GHz 6-Core OEM/Tray Processor  (£469.99 @ Overclockers.co.uk) 
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-U9DXi4 37.8 CFM CPU Cooler  (£44.49 @ Amazon UK) 
Motherboard: ASRock X99E-ITX/ac Mini ITX LGA2011-3 Narrow Motherboard  (£229.99 @ Overclockers.co.uk) 
Memory: Kingston FURY 32GB (2 x 16GB) DDR4-2133 Memory  (£97.86 @ Novatech) 
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 500GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  (£105.39 @ Amazon UK) 
Video Card: GALAX GeForce GTX 970 4GB HOF Video Card  (£319.99 @ Amazon UK) 
Case: Phanteks Enthoo EVOLV ITX Mini ITX Tower Case  (£49.93 @ CCL Computers) 
Power Supply: Antec EarthWatts Platinum 550W 80+ Platinum Certified ATX Power Supply  (£72.95 @ Overclockers.co.uk) 
Total: £1390.59
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-05-31 20:10 BST+0100

 

I've seen posts of people going out to buy 6800's today, so it'a available. The 2 extra cores are great for you so it is worth it. Though with some of the choices I made and from what you want it would cost more to go ATX again.

Ohh and check out making a Hackintosh.. it's much easier these days.

Ohh and get windows 10 from somewher else.. you can get it for as little as $15-20 on reddit/r/microsofsoftwareexchange or other discount key sites.

 

Shout if you want me to look at an ATX build in that price point to leave possibility of SLI.

This is the build i came up with, just over budget but its not a big deal... http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/NtrFf8

 Did some more research, i think i will go with the x99 platform, i found a guy that managed to get it woking on tonymacx86 with this motherboad and CPU.

I can imagine getting a second 1070 in a year probably if i reallyget into gaming. I just hope my estimate for the price is realistic haha

I won't risk getting the new intel cpu's one just incase...

Thanks for the suggestions though, im happy i asked or i would have been stuck with 4 cores and no posibillity of upgrading

[Dzzope]

Yup, just be aware of the limitations of x99 (it's aging a bit and not as up to date as z170 for features)

 

But if your doing creation and can use the extra cores / pci-e lanes (eg sli with pci-e SSD).. it's the way to go.