Potential Build - Prepare for nooby questions

[AlexIsFail]

Hi all, 

I'm planning a build in the coming months, and wanted to get the opinions of some established PC enthusiasts, such as yourselves. My (potential) build is as follows, and I'm happy to listen to any replacements or anything that might make it a little more viable.

 

• Processor - Intel 4790K Devil's Canyon (4.0ghz)
• MOBO - MSI Z97 Gaming 5 
• RAM - Kingston HyperX Beast 16GB (1866mhz)
• Power Supply - Corsair RM Series+ 650w
• Grafix - EVGA GTX780ti SC (with the AC cooler)
• Hard Drive - (edit) Intel 730 240gb SDD + WD Black 1TB 
• Case - Corsair 760T
• CPU Cooler - Corsair H110 280mm 
• (edit) DVD - Some form of Blu-Ray Combo drive, probably LG.

 

Am I missing anything? One of the main things I needed an opinion on was fans... Are there any brands that you guys and gals particularly like? I might be partial to going SLI on the 780ti at some point, so how much of a bigger power supply would I need? 

 

 

Thanks,

Alex

[Hum]

no DVD drive ?

 

You may need to install something, like an operating system.

[AlexIsFail]

That was the one thing I forgot to add... Thanks for reminding me!  :laugh:

[tsupersonic]

no DVD drive ?

 

You may need to install something, like an operating system.

Have you been living under a rock? :P You can use USB flash drives to install Windows, Mac, or Linux...

 

Looks good. I'm a big fan of Noctua fans, quiet and efficient, but pricey. I tend to go overboard with the PSU - learned my lesson from the last build where it took out all the major components. 

[Brandon H Supervisor]

no DVD drive ?

 

You may need to install something, like an operating system.

who needs a dvd drive. we got flash-drives for that now

 

anyway. that looks like a nice build. what's the price estimate on it?

the only thing i'd change is the ram, but that's because i'm partial to GSkill and Corsair ram

[Phouchg]

If going for SLI later is a definite, it might be pushing that 650W, so I'd up it a notch.

Otherwise, might do with going down a notch, too.

[Astra.Xtreme]

If it was my choice, I'd replace the SSD with this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147248

and the CPU cooler with this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835181030&cm_re=corsair_hydro-_-35-181-030-_-Product

 

I'm also not a fan of anything MSI, but it'll probably be fine.

[AlexIsFail]

I'm going for roughly ?1500, as it's a first build. I'd like to say money isn't an issue, but I wanted some change from ?1500 so that I can pre-order some stuff to run on it. A 780ti is going to munch anything, from what I've read, so I'm looking forward to it. 

 

Is having a higher wattage PSU than needed going to murder my components? :(

[Brandon H Supervisor]

Is having a higher wattage PSU than needed going to murder my components?

no, all it does is give you breathing room for if you ever want to add more. (only what is needed will be used on the PSU)

[Boo Berry]

+1 for the EVO recommendation.

[imachip]

Ideally you'll want to use the SSD for games & OS which quickly gobbles up a lot of space.  It's up to you, but since there is little difference between the i5 and i7 for gaming personally I'd save the extra monies and buy a bigger SSD.

[AlexIsFail]

If it was my choice, I'd replace the SSD with this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147248

and the CPU cooler with this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835181030&cm_re=corsair_hydro-_-35-181-030-_-Product

 

I'm also not a fan of anything MSI, but it'll probably be fine.

 

Motherboard wise, what would you go with as opposed to the MSI? I'm pretty open to anything, as long as it's sub ?120. Also, what's the difference between the H110 and the H50? Surely bigger is better when it comes to radiators?

[Brandon H Supervisor]

Motherboard wise, what would you go with as opposed to the MSI? I'm pretty open to anything, as long as it's sub ?120. Also, what's the difference between the H110 and the H50? Surely bigger is better when it comes to radiators?

i have a MSI mobo so i can personally say they make good boards. if i had to choose an alt brand though it would be Asus

 

as for the radiators H50 will be plenty for most, you only really need bigger/better if you plan to heavily overclock

[AlexIsFail]

That was one thing I didn't mention. I did plan to over clock at some point, not dramatically, but still. I might try to get up to around 4.3-4.4ghz, as well as try and squeeze a little more oomph out of the card. Is there anything i'm going to need to make sure that doesn't burn any of my stuff out?

[Phouchg]

It's actually really hard to literally burn something these days... at least at this particular level of quality components.

[Brandon H Supervisor]

That was one thing I didn't mention. I did plan to over clock at some point, not dramatically, but still. I might try to get up to around 4.3-4.4ghz, as well as try and squeeze a little more oomph out of the card. Is there anything i'm going to need to make sure that doesn't burn any of my stuff out?

nope, you should be fine for overclocking of that amount w/ the H50. just remember to take small steps till you find your stable point on your cpu. follow pretty much any guide out there and you should be fine

 

chances of burning out your hardware now a days is very low. there are plenty of safety features built into the board and cpu to shut down the pc if it goes to unstable or hot

[Astra.Xtreme]

Motherboard wise, what would you go with as opposed to the MSI? I'm pretty open to anything, as long as it's sub ?120. Also, what's the difference between the H110 and the H50? Surely bigger is better when it comes to radiators?

I personally prefer Asus.  They provide great firmware support and their BIOS/UEFI is really really nice.  Overclocking is a piece of cake with their presets.

 

I don't think you need to go as crazy as a H110.  It'll just end up adding fan noise. The H60 or H50 would be fine.

 

It actually looks like the H50 pushes more air and is lower RPM, so I'd recommend that one:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835181010

 

I had an older version of the H50 for a while and I was able to overclock my i7 to 4.5GHz with no problem.

[AlexIsFail]

It's actually really hard to literally burn something these days... at least at this particular level of quality components.

 

Okay, when I say burn, I probably mean damage! Would OC'ing a graphics card on a 4 fan set up be okay? Or would some water-cooling have to be stuck in there (which I really would rather not do because the blocks are expensive as hell)?

[Phouchg]

These days firmware won't let you go outside certain thermal and, more importantly, power target. Reaching either of these, it will ignore your settings and throttle down, to a ridiculously low setting to "catch some breath", so to speak.

Don't know about 760T for overclocking graphics card, though. Without any mount points for fans on that stylish side door it isn't exactly bad, but it is... suboptimal.

[AlexIsFail]

So maybe dump it for something a little more functional if I'm looking for dirty clock speeds?

[Jones111]

If it was my choice, I'd replace the SSD with this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147248

and the CPU cooler with this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835181030&cm_re=corsair_hydro-_-35-181-030-_-Product

 

I'm also not a fan of anything MSI, but it'll probably be fine.

 

I'd also recommend Samsung for the SSD drive, but better choose the 850 Pro. It has the new 3D vnand technologie. Samsung adds an extended warranty for 10 years to that drive as it's very reliable. It can only fail if you write more than 40GBs per day.

[ToneKnee]

I wouldn't bother with SLi, not all games scale well and by the time you've hit the limit with your current GPU you may as well upgrade to whatever nVidia/AMD are offering at the time.

[Ambroos]

1. Don't spend too much money on RAM. Tweakers.net (Dutch tech website) did benchmarks and the performance impact of different RAM (speeds and timings) is nearly nothing as long as you're in dual channel mode.

 

2. Don't buy a way too expensive CPU. Once you're at a certain point you'll pay double the price for 10% extra performance. The i5 4690K will probably perform about the same (especially if you'll be overclocking) and costs much less. Also consider if overclocking your CPU is really important to you. Once you're in the high-end GPU class it'd surprise me if a few extra Mhz will make a difference in games. You probably don't need that CPU cooler and the money spent on that and an i7 is, I think, better spent on a faster GPU. Or simply go with the i7 you picked, but don't bother overclocking it. I've looked up the benchmarks and there is pretty much nothing to gain in games by overclocking it.

 

3. Don't bother with Intel SSD's, they're really overpriced. If you want value, go for the Crucial MX100. You can get a 512GB MX100 without breaking the bank, and the performance is right up with the best. Also a good purchase is the Samsung 840 EVO (although I personally think the price difference isn't worth the absolutely minimal performance gain).

 

4. Do you really need a DVD or BluRay-drive? I can't remember the last time I used mine.

 

5. Don't overdo the mainboard fancyness. If it has all the features you need you're set, don't be fooled by "gaming" in the model name. That MSI doesn't look too bad though. Personally I'm not a fan of MSI, I've had way too many issues with them. ASUS and Gigabyte may be more reliable.

 

 

In short: Cheaper CPU, ditch the special expensive liquid cooler, cheaper RAM, better GPU, better+bigger SSD, ditch the optical drive. 

 

You'll save money and end up with better performance in games and hardly any different performance outside games.

[Astra.Xtreme]

I'd also recommend Samsung for the SSD drive, but better choose the 850 Pro. It has the new 3D vnand technologie. Samsung adds an extended warranty for 10 years to that drive as it's very reliable. It can only fail if you write more than 40GBs per day.

Good call.  I didn't realize those were released yesterday (I believe).  They're a little more expensive, but they perform pretty damn well.

[Sikh]

Have you been living under a rock? :p You can use USB flash drives to install Windows, Mac, or Linux...

 

Looks good. I'm a big fan of Noctua fans, quiet and efficient, but pricey. I tend to go overboard with the PSU - learned my lesson from the last build where it took out all the major components. 

 

I second Noctua. My current build was built Oct 2013 and I used 10 Noctua Fans. First time using Noctua but heard nothing but good stories. Well, I believe all of them now. Best fans I've ever used. Definitely cost more then a "normal" fan would, but definitely worth it. So I second Noctua.

 

I also agree with the PSU comment. Ive always been 100-200 watts above because I tend to keep my builds for a long time and upgrade GPU. So my last build was 7 years old and I went from a 260 to a 580. That 200 watt difference I had came in handy when I added more drives and went to the 580. At the end I was like +/- 50 watts so I was quite happy. So, I always buy over and it doesnt cost too much more. So I second going overboard on a PSU.

 

Always buy a name brand and trust PSU, a cheap one no matter what the wattage, will fry your system faster then a name brand. Also look a efficiency. I prefer Corsair myself. Strong PSUs. I know friends that went cheaper like Ultra, Enermax, etc who have not only had the PSU's fried, but also most of their systems.