1440p gaming rig recommendations

[WashclothRepairman]

So I need a new rig because I just had hardware failure. My target budget is $1300 US, with a limit of around $1500. I do not need a PSU as I have a brand new, never used EVGA 850watt (it was my PSU that failed on my old rig and I bought that to try to resuscitate it unsuccessfully).

I am usually team Blue and Green, but I'm not dead set against AMD. I do not plan to water-cool or significantly overclock (or at all).

I'd like an NVME m.2 SSD for the OS, but would it be better to just get a single large NVME SSD instead of a smaller one plus a second, larger SATA SSD? As for case, I'm interested in ease of installation and maintenance as well as optical drive bays (yes, I still use those occasionally). For aesthetics, I'm less concerned since my main priority is simply getting running again, but I prefer black to other colors and a minimalist design, just a box, and matte finish to shiny. If there are built in lights, which is entirely not necessary, I'd prefer green.

Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thank!

 

[srimasis]

For a 1440p gaming PC, I think this will be a very good option

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD - Ryzen 5 1600 3.2GHz 6-Core Processor ($218.58 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: MSI - B350 TOMAHAWK ATX AM4 Motherboard ($94.99 @ Amazon)
Memory: G.Skill - Ripjaws V Series 16GB (1 x 16GB) DDR4-3200 Memory ($111.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Crucial - MX300 2.0TB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($510.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Video Card: Zotac - GeForce GTX 1070 8GB Mini Video Card ($334.99 @ Amazon)
Case: Raidmax - ATX-502WBG ATX Mid Tower Case ($34.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $1306.53
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-05-28 13:24 EDT-0400

Don't mind the sata SSD, the crucial Mx300 can reach speeds of 2000MBps or beyond when Crucial's Momentum cache is turned on. You can still go for a M2 1TB Samsung 960 pro for the almost same price.

 

[Cdog042501]

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/ymkk3F Here is a very solid build righ around 1300 :note: you can change parts for color such as case mono and gpu

 

[coozie7]

Another Ryzen build, but with a heavy hitting GTX1080 and less SSD spend: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/coozie7/saved/#view=LZhzyc

And an Intel build: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/coozie7/saved/#view=JJhzyc and yes, I've rebalanced the build from Cdog042501 to cram in a GTX1080. 😉

 

[coozie7]

And a few words from my mate Captain Obvious:
Can you check the parts in another system? It seems unlikely a failing PSU will take out an entire system in one go, if you can only salvage a few parts it's money in the bank or the difference between a 512 Gb and, maybe, a 1Tb SSD.

 

[WashclothRepairman]

I also bought a new motherboard (not the same model but its the same socket and chipset) and at first would at least power on but had no mouse or keyboard at the Win7 login screen, and now I don't even get that far, after the brief screen that says press f2 for bios, it just hangs up at a black screen, it doesn't even begin with load windows. I had to take out the video card (GTX 980) too, it wouldn't even power on with it in there, even with the new motherboard. The night it happened, there was a loud pop, the electrical smell and it even flipped the breaker for that part of the house. The system wasn't even under load when it happened, I was just running OpenOffice with some music running in YouTube at the time and there wasn't a thunderstorm or anything.

 

[coozie7]

Ah, perhaps it DID fry the entire system, if it drew enough juice to flip a breaker. 🙁
In the meantime, we've offered a few decent builds for you to think about, but you could still salvage at least the case.
As a side note, while you're waiting you could try: Disconnect everything from the motherboard, HDD, SSD, ODD, all but one RAM module and see if it'll at least allow you to get into the BIOS screen and make changes. If you have a non wired KB/mouse, try to hunt up wired parts, not every BIOS will work out-of-the box with either USB or wireless parts.
If you can at least get there it'll suggest not everything is dead and you can try reconnecting parts to see if you can get it up and running, albeit under the IGP.

 

[WashclothRepairman]

Yup, I think I've got enough to build a pretty decent but still affordable system. Thanks everyone.

 

[WashclothRepairman]

The mouse and keyboard worked in the BIOS of the new motherboard, but still nothing at the login screen. Like I said, I can't even get that far now.

 

[coozie7]

This is off topic, so if you want to PM me to carry on, that's OK with me, if you want to carry on here, in the thread it's also OK with me, if you want to bail out, that's also OK.
Looks like you're going to trash the existing system anyway and build an entire system from scratch, so, purely as an attempt to breathe life into the corpse and save some cash: Try booting with your Windows CD/USB drive in, if you can get to BIOS and force it to boot from the install media try a full reinstall, maybe the system isn't totally beyond saving.

 

[WashclothRepairman]

Alright, after a little research I decided than an NVMe SSD probably isn't enough faster than a standard SSD to justify the cost, so the following should do pretty well but I'd welcome any comments and also to just double check there won't be any conflicts and for ease of installation (my old case is a weird CoolerMaster that's kind of a pain in the ass):

MSI Enthusiastic Gaming M3 Z270
Intel Core i5 7600K + Noctua 14cm U-Series NH-U14S
Corsair Vengeance LPX 8GBx2 C15 DDR4 3000Mhz
Samsung850 EVO 500gb
Asus GTX 1070 STRIX OC
Phanteks Enthoo Pro M

I'll try to use my previous 500gb SSD and 2tb WD Black before buying more storage drives, see if the data cane be saved. I also have a couple 1tb external HDDs lying around if I get really desperate for space in the near future., so for now the one 500gb is enough, I'm really just desperate to get on a gaming rig again.

 

[WashclothRepairman]

Still looking for comments/ confirmatimation that there's no conflicts here. I want to put the order in this afternoon.

 

[srimasis]

Alright, after a little research I decided than an NVMe SSD probably isn't enough faster than a standard SSD to justify the cost, so the following should do pretty well but I'd welcome any comments and also to just double check there won't be any conflicts and for ease of installation (my old case is a weird CoolerMaster that's kind of a pain in the ass):

MSI Enthusiastic Gaming M3 Z270
Intel Core i5 7600K + Noctua 14cm U-Series NH-U14S
Corsair Vengeance LPX 8GBx2 C15 DDR4 3000Mhz
Samsung850 EVO 500gb
Asus GTX 1070 STRIX OC
Phanteks Enthoo Pro M

I'll try to use my previous 500gb SSD and 2tb WD Black before buying more storage drives, see if the data cane be saved. I also have a couple 1tb external HDDs lying around if I get really desperate for space in the near future., so for now the one 500gb is enough, I'm really just desperate to get on a gaming rig again.

Nice build, but I will recommend a Core i7 7700 non K cpu.
i5 7600K + Noctua cooler combo cost equal to i7 7700 non K. And the overclocked i5 7600k also performs equal to i7 7700 non K cpu (benchmark comparision). A core i7 will be much better option in multi threaded applications, and will be more future proof.

 

[WashclothRepairman]

I actually went with a Gigabyte z270x Ultra Gaming motherboard but documentation seems to suggest that for 2 sticks of ram I want the 2nd and 4th slots from the cpu, is that correct?