First build in almost ten years

[Michael.R]

Hello Everyone, 

I'm sure you get quite a lot of these sorts of posts so I'll to be concise and simple as possible! So first a bit of background, I built my own pc in early high school just shy of ten years ago and I'm looking to find the right components for my next build. It seems the types of components I need are more or less the same, but just in poking around to get up to speed I'm not surprised to learn I don't really know the industry anymore. My current PC was made for about $700 for what I think was everything but the keyboard, mouse, monitor, OS, and tower so I was hoping to do about that again. I built it with lots of parts that were great when they came out but a tad bit old when I bought them so they were pretty inexpensive. I'm not sure if you can still do that or not but that's somewhat my goal. Below I copied Windspeed36's suggest format to try and cover more specifics. I really need help picking the GPU, monitor, board, CPU, case, possibly heat sink if I need one, and power supply...the general advice for RAM, SSD, and regular hard drive seem straightforward enough. 

1. Budget & Location

Hoping to spend between $500-1000 but that's not rigid.I don't know what's realistic anymore. I'm based out of Midwest United States.

2. Aim

I am a gamer and need a new gaming rig. I'm not really that particular of a gamer though, I play most genres but I'm not picky having played with such an old set up for so long. I've been running games at min graphics sometimes dropping between 20-30 fps and that's mostly okay. Basically I want a rig where 5 years from now I can hopefully still run on min graphics above 30 fps as my baseline goal...anything above that would be nice. I'm assuming I'd need a decent GPU today to get to that point but who knows that far out really. 

3. Monitors

One widescreen monitor and I'd like to eventually move to two but the second one would be exclusively for business-related use to display PDFs and whatnot. 

4. Peripherals

I'll deal with these, unless there are some odd quirks you all know about compatability I should know about. The OS, mouse, keyboard, and speakers I'll figure out. It's mostly the component hardware I'm worried about. The only "Peripheral" I really need help with is the case.

5. Why are you upgrading?
Well, try as it does, my old PC just can't play modern games anymore. In fact, many of them outright crash the computer, which is kind of hilarious in a pathetic sort of way. 

Anyways, if you all have any specific advice about what component series I should be looking at I would really appreciate it! If I didn't paint a clear enough picture of what I'm trying to do let me know, I tried to keep it simple :-) 
 

[suchamoneypit]

Slightly over-budget, but this would be pretty good, definetly will playing games at 1080p 60FPS max graphics. However, for better futureproofing I would suggest getting a 1070 or even 1080, but those are signifcantly more expensive. This build has a good CPU, motherboard, RAM, and storage though, so you won't need to upgrade that.

 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-6500 3.2GHz Quad-Core OEM/Tray Processor  ($192.99 @ SuperBiiz) 
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler  ($24.88 @ OutletPC) 
Motherboard: Asus Z170-A ATX LGA1151 Motherboard  ($149.39 @ B&H) 
Memory: Kingston HyperX Fury Black 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-2133 Memory  ($76.99 @ Newegg) 
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  ($89.39 @ Newegg) 
Storage: Western Digital Blue 2TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($69.88 @ OutletPC) 
Video Card: XFX Radeon RX 480 8GB XXX OC  Video Card  ($259.99 @ SuperBiiz) 
Case: Corsair Vengeance C70 (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case  ($109.99 @ Newegg) 
Power Supply: Corsair RM 750W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply  ($99.99 @ Newegg) 
Total: $1073.49
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-08-09 18:48 EDT-0400

[Blackhole890]

i agree with @suchamoneypit, but ssd is not needed if you're gonna go for gaming only, PSU with bronze certificate is more than ok, and probably, you won't gonna know/use 16gb efficiently (or yes), so with 8gb is enough. 

 

 

PD: I'm telling this because you could save money for future upgrades/another monitor, etc. But if you really want a ssd, then go for maximum 120gb one for your s.o, because your games wont gonna boot faster.

[suchamoneypit]

4 minutes ago, Blackhole890 said:

i agree with @suchamoneypit, but ssd is not needed if you're gonna go for gaming only, PSU with bronze certificate is more than ok, and probably, you won't gonna know/use 16gb efficiently (or yes), so with 8gb is enough. 

 

 

PD: I'm telling this because you could save money for future upgrades/another monitor, etc. But if you really want a ssd, then go for maximum 120gb one for your s.o, because your games wont gonna boot faster.

games will definitely boot faster.

 

Massive decreases in loading times for games such as BF4 and Star Citizen.

[Blackhole890]

2 minutes ago, suchamoneypit said:

games will definitely boot faster.

 

Massive decreases in loading times for games such as BF4 and Star Citizen.

but its not worth, i would rather prefer wait 2 minutes more if is needed. I suggest not getting more than 120gb ssd for s.o, but if you are not patient and wanna waste your money on 240gb ssd? then go for it, its your decision

[suchamoneypit]

9 minutes ago, Blackhole890 said:

but its not worth, i would rather prefer wait 2 minutes more if is needed. I suggest not getting more than 120gb ssd for s.o, but if you are not patient and wanna waste your money on 240gb ssd? then go for it, its your decision

that entirely opinion.

 

I would rather wait 10 seconds versus 2 and a half minutes if it only cost me $60-80. Especially considering you would have to wait this every single day, every single load screen. I overclock a lot, meaning a lot of reboots, my SSD has literally saved me hours of my life just in those load times.

 

And in my opinion the difference and how the OS performs on an SSD is well worth the extra money, and you will then have the extra space leftover to put games on for super fast load times. The difference in performance with the OS and some games on an SSD were enough for me to never consider building or recommending a PC build without at least a 120GB SSD because its simply one of the best and cheapest changes you can do to a PC.