My hard work paid off, I will receive 5k in bonuses in 1k increments over the next 5 months. Not only is this very much deserved, it's also very much needed. Once I take care of a few car issues I have, I'll be looking to buy and build a new PC. I'm a little out of the game considering the only one I had any part in building I really just watched and that was almost 4 years ago. So if anyone has any suggestions or tips, feel free to let me know. So far a buddy of mine helped me get together a PC Part Picker list. I have a budget of $600 and the list is currently sitting at about $900. I'm ok with it because I plan on buying as much as I can during Black Friday Cyber Monday sales, thus dropping the price quite a bit. However considering I'm only getting 1k increments of my bonus, I probably won't be able to buy it all at once due to other things I need to take care of as well (damn responsibilities). I really need guides and assistance on how to build a rig from scratch. What extras do I need to buy? Case Fans? Thermal Paste? Heatsinks? What kind of CPU cooler do I need? I need a new mouse but my keyboard, sound system, and monitors are all fine. I'd rather go with simplicity rather than a complex system. Any help will be appreciated. Notes: I plan to get the 1050 Ti if the benchmark is good. The 1060 is a placeholder until I find out. I might get an i5 instead of an i3 if there are any good deals for it on Black Friday. Looking at reviews for the motherboard my friend chose, I will probably be choosing a different one. Edit: A lot has changed since I set out on this journey. I spent a little more than I thought I would but I got a nice build in return. Here is the final list. Price doesn't include $80 worth of MIR, which I'll be using to buy one more stick of ram and an aftermarket cooler. PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant CPU: Intel Core i5-6400 2.7GHz Quad-Core Processor (Purchased For $182.99) Motherboard: ASRock Z170 Pro4S ATX LGA1151 Motherboard (Purchased For $59.99) Memory: Crucial Ballistix Sport LT 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR4-2400 Memory (Purchased For $48.99) Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (Purchased For $89.99) Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (Purchased For $49.99) Video Card: Asus GeForce GTX 1060 3GB 3GB Dual Video Card (Purchased For $169.99) Case: Rosewill BlackHawk ATX Mid Tower Case (Purchased For $39.99) Power Supply: EVGA 450W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply (Purchased For $39.99) Optical Drive: Asus DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS DVD/CD Writer (Purchased For $19.99) Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Home OEM 64-bit (Purchased For $90.00) Keyboard: Thermaltake CHALLENGER PRIME Wired Gaming Keyboard (Purchased For $19.99) Mouse: Logitech G502 Wired Optical Mouse (Purchased For $49.99) Total: $861.89 Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-12-16 23:26 EST-0500
Don't use CPU Fan Cooler, they're a pain to get rid of dust (have to unhook, dust and repaste). I suggest getting a corsair since they have already provided paste & distilled water. You don't have to use water cooler but I personally think its best, only takes about a year for radiator to fill up (relatively easy to clean) and noise reduction of course.
I built my first rig a few years back without hassle. Aside from primary components the motherboard usually comes with thermal paste, screws, and whatnot that you'll need for installing it. The case will generally come with enough fans too. I highly recommend a Hypermaster CPU Cooler rather than the stock CPU fan based on experience though. It's not necessary, but it's relatively cheap and it would be a pain to reinstall the stock fan once you slap it on. Otherwise just be sure to have some basic tools beforehand, and you should be good to go. Assembling the PC is really a lot more simple than it sounds. Watch some videos ahead of time so you know what to look out for. It's really just matching up cords with ports on your motherboard, so you'd have to muff pretty bad to worry about it. A LEGO set is arguably more difficult. The GTX 1060 is probably an ideal video card for your budget, and you can't go wrong with an Intel CPU from my perspective. I have an i5 with aftermarket cooler in my main rig, and an i3 with stock cooler in my HTPC. Both run solid with no noticeable difference between them during gaming. However, the i5 definitely packs more punch if you do any intensive stuff like rendering videos. Spoiler: P.S Get a mid range motherboard. It's a vital component, and cheaper motherboards will be less likely to come with all the bells and whistles.
I'm sure it will be pretty simple. I know the basics, I just don't want to forget something and mess up. That CPU cooler you posted seems to be quite large. did you have any issues with it not fitting or anything? As I stated in my post I may go with an i5 if there are any good deals on black friday, if not then I'll just go with an i3. Not looking to run everything on max settings, but if there is a good deal then it will be a nice boost. Are there any tools in that tool set that would be unique to building a rig? I have a bunch of tool, most that seem to be in that set you posted, but some I do not recognize. @CounterCraftz I've dealt with cleaning my cooler on my current rig and while it is a pain, at least I'm familiar with how to do it.
If you're on a budget, decrease that ram to 8 gigs and throw the extra monry into your CPU. At the current day and age, only a few high demanding games would exceed 8 gigs. You can easily purchase another 8 gigs down the road and throw it into your PC. You should also get a better CPU than an i3 if you plan to stay with that card. When I began upgrading my PC I purchased a 960 while I still had a dual core CPU. What I noticed was that my CPU bottlenecked my card majorly. I was able to set my graphics settings to what the card would normally be able to handle, however things were still very chopy as the CPU was pulling the card behind. I know an i3 is hyper threaded and has an overall better structure than a dual core, but you'll definitely notice a huge bottleneck. Lastly, don't go overkill on a CPU cooler. Keeping your cpu cool will lower the wear and tear put on your CPU, increasing its lifetime. However, this isn't a brand new CPU model that will stay relevant for a long time. I'm sure you'll end up upgrading your CPU before you'll even have to worry about it breaking. A simple $20 one would do. Then again, the stock wouldn't do too bad of a job anyways.
Agreed. Thats the problem with my current build is the CPU drastically bottlenecks the GPU. But it's still all old enough to warrant a new build. Thanks for the info.
Abit late, but I'd recommend this: http://pcpartpicker.com/list/fhcc4C It's a biiit over your budget but man you get a good pc. Discussed this list with a friend and he agrees that this is a really good build for the money. Also included a mouse, can never go wrong with logitech when it comes to peripherals in terms of support and build quality.
I'll look at it again once the Cyber Monday previews start showing up. Those discounts will be the deciding factor on what I end up getting. Right now after viewing the benchmarks for it, the 1050 Ti seems to be about what I'm wanting in regards to a GPU. The price is to good for what I'm getting. I'm still on the ben with an i3 or i5 processor. But again this could all change if there are some really good Cyber deals.
I don't know how reliable Seagate is these days, but from my experience from 4+ years ago, go with Western Digital (WD) for hard drives. At least a WD blue will do. I don't think you need all those tools Bayrock suggested. All I needed was a Phillips screwdriver for my build. Also this Fan Grille reduced dust intake by like 90% on my computer and I love it. Just place it in front of the front intake fan. Spoiler Look at all this dust collected in a year. :O
Definitely get an i5, probably one of the best budget choices for gaming, also I would say go for a GTX 950 2GB if you want to go for a budget gaming pc, you can overclock it with no problem and it will run games like Arma 50-60 FPS high settings, but it depends if what kind of games you play.
I can confirm that an i3 won't bottleneck your gaming experience. I've been on an i3-4150 daily for the past 6 months or so. I streamed Twitch on this PC for many of my Audiosurf hours with no change in my performance; even in comparison to my i5-4670k. So, get an i5 for the processing power if you want, but not for 'better gaming.' Better safe than sorry. I have the same set, and for $20 the screwdriver with interchangeable bits has been a lifesaver.
Yeah, I would suggest an i5 anyway as long as it fits your budget. My only point is it's unlikely the CPU would bottleneck you.
One of the main things I'm looking forward to is playing GTA V. I looked up the benchmark for GTA V with the i3 and it's not very good.
Modern games probably are more CPU intensive. I never had an issue playing GTA V on my i3 with my GTX 760. I don't play those games often enough to judge though.
Yeah and thats the thing is there aren't many modern games that I'll be playing. GTA V is probably the most modern of them all. But as I said, If I get an i5, it will be a lot longer before I have to upgrade.
I spent some time and tweaked my part list. Went ahead and bought the motherboard, GPU, and the case since they were all on sale and had a mail in rebate. Here's the updated list: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/hCPWBP Decided to go with the GTX 1060 3GB since it's nearly double the performance of the 1050 Ti at only a little bit more $. I also reduced my Power supply from a 600W to a 450W since I'm running less than 300W. Looking like I won't be able to get the rest of my parts until next month. Had to use the rest of my $ for this month on gifts for other people.
Pros and cons on getting a SSD vs getting a regular HDD? Other than boot speed and a slightly smaller size, what's the difference?
Edited first post with the final build purchase list (minus aftermarket cooler and 1 more stick of ram). Still waiting on all the parts. Should be done before end of the year.
