$1500 Five-Year Desktop Refresh Build - Sanity Checking and Cheapness-ing

Phoxtane

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Oct 3, 2014
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I'm going to be getting a new PC to replace my current desktop PC, which was built four and a half years ago with an AMD 9750 2.4gHz quad-core, 4 gigabytes of DDR2 RAM, and a GeForce GT220 GPU. Since this has to last me through at least college, it's gotta be good! The added benefit of running games beyond 480p is nice too.

Approximate Purchase Date: Black Friday & Cyber Monday, or whenever a good deal may pop up between now and then (PC Part Picker emails me price drops once a day).

Budget Range: ~$1500, give or take $100 - after rebates and deals but before shipping.

System Usage from Most to Least Important: Gaming, Photoshop and other Adobe programs, various engineering programs such as Autodesk programs as I am in an engineering course and may need to use these things outside of times the computer labs are open. (Word processing and internet browsing are a bit redundant of things to ask for, based on where this system ought to perform to!)

Are you buying a monitor: Nope!

Parts to Upgrade: N/A - this is ground-up new, since it'll be in a whole other league compared to the current desktop.

Do you need to buy OS: No, I'll be getting it free through the university.

Preferred Website(s) for Parts: Newegg, TigerDirect, and Amazon are the three places that I have selected in PC Part Picker, as I know these are places that I can trust - unless you can convince me otherwise on other good places?

Location: Laramie, Wyoming, USA. It is highly unlikely the Wal-Mart or Staples has what I need. For a college town this place has nothing.

Parts Preferences: Definitely going with a Haswell-E and all the various things that go with that, as well as a NVidia GTX970 graphics card.

Overclocking: Maybe, likely Yes to extend the lifespan.

SLI/Crossfire: Maybe, but not as likely to keep things within the budget.

Your Monitor Resolution: Planning to have either 2 or 3x 1920x1080; currently it's one 1920x1080 and one aging 1280x1024

Additional Comments: I have a parts list that I'll link here. I have all the components I'd like, but I'm more concerned about the model numbers and the reliability than I am the brand. For example, I don't care what brand of GTX970 I get as long as it performs to what it should be and isn't going to break or take down the build.

And Most Importantly, Why Are You Upgrading: Too many reasons to count... does $600 in 5-year-old parts really hold up in today's world of games and software? The answer is a solid "lolno".

Here's the parts list:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-5820K 3.3GHz 6-Core Processor ($388.59 @ Amazon)
CPU Cooler: Corsair H100i 77.0 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler ($89.99 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: MSI X99S SLI Plus ATX LGA2011-3 Motherboard ($224.99 @ Amazon)
Memory: Crucial 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-2133 Memory ($202.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Crucial MX100 128GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($74.24 @ Amazon)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($53.99 @ Amazon)
Video Card: Asus GeForce GTX 970 4GB STRIX Video Card ($349.99 @ Amazon)
Case: *NZXT Phantom (Black/Orange) ATX Full Tower Case ($132.98 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: Thermaltake 550W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($59.99 @ Newegg)
Case Fan: NZXT FZ-200mm LED 103.0 CFM 200mm Fan ($21.27 @ Amazon)
Total: $1599.02
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
*Lowest price parts chosen from parametric criteria
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-10-03 02:12 EDT-0400
 
Solution
how "big" are the autodesk programs. because I think that CPU is a bit overkill. unless your assemblys are enormous. same with the adobe programs. you should be good with a i5 4970k. you can also get some 1866MHz or 1600MHz ddr3 RAM. you wont notice the difference much.
 
I would consider a larger HDD for all of your stuff, at the very least 2TB. You don't need the extra case fan. This is just brand choice but I would go with G Skill RipJaws X DDR4-2133 or DDR4-2400. They will benefit in the software you intend to use, but you do pay more for it as apposed to going with the LGA 1150 platform with DDR3 RAM. The GTX 970 is a solid graphics card and I read that with some overclocking you should be able to attain GTX 980 speeds.
 


the RAM will only be beneficial in "extreme" use of those programs. I'm an engineering student and the autodesk design we have to make dont require that RAM speed. if you're talking about industrial assemblies. then yes the RAM will be beneficial. but 1600 or 1866 is more then good enough for his usage. if my guess is correct
 
cut the price a bit. The rest seems good to go imo...
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-5820K 3.3GHz 6-Core Processor ($384.94 @ OutletPC)
CPU Cooler: Corsair H100i 77.0 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler ($89.99 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: MSI X99S SLI Plus ATX LGA2011-3 Motherboard ($224.99 @ Amazon)
Memory: Crucial 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-2133 Memory ($194.99 @ Adorama)
Storage: Kingston SSDNow V300 Series 120GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($58.99 @ NCIX US)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($53.98 @ OutletPC)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 970 4GB ACX Video Card ($329.98 @ NCIX US)
Case: *NZXT Phantom (Black/Orange) ATX Full Tower Case ($132.98 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: Thermaltake 550W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($59.99 @ Newegg)
Case Fan: NZXT FZ-200mm LED 103.0 CFM 200mm Fan ($20.98 @ SuperBiiz)
Total: $1551.81
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
*Lowest price parts chosen from parametric criteria
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-10-03 08:54 EDT-0400
 


if that evga card isnt a revisioned?? version. then the card has faulty cooling. and then again. better go for gigabyte or msi as they have the best performance atm, they're also more silent.
 


Actually the fastest gtx 970 is this one: http://pcpartpicker.com/part/evga-video-card-04gp42975kr

I haven't heard of any issues with evga 970's since they upgraded to ACX 2.0. I'm going to get 2 of them myself :)
 
Solution
Oh dear, I went away and built the computer while forgetting I had even made this post.

Here's the results: I basically went and asked everybody how I should do this, and then threw all that information away and did it my way anyway.

CPU: Intel Core i5-4690K
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z97X-UD5H
Memory: 2x Kingston Fury Black Series 16GB DDR3-1866 (HX318C10FBK2/16)
Storage: 1x Crucial MX100 SSD (256 GB), 1x Seagate Barracuda 3TB HDD (ST3000DM001)
GPU: Asus GeForce GTX970 (4GB Strix edition)
Case: NZXT Phantom (Black/Orange)
Power Supply: SeaSonic SSR-550RM (550W)