Advice needed for a console alternative.

McGibblets

Honorable
Sep 8, 2013
3
0
10,510
Hi all.
After owning consoles ever since my Atari in the 90's, I'm finally considering the step-up to a PC.
I love the idea of building it myself, but am obviously concerned about making dumb mistakes with compatibility/omissions/over-kill.

Any help would be much appreciated.

At this stage I'm looking at:

CPU
Intel Core i5-4670K 3.4GHz Quad-Core

CPU Cooler
Corsair H60 54.0 CFM Liquid

Motherboard
Asus GRYPHON Z87 Micro ATX LGA1150

Memory
Corsair Vengeance Pro 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1866

Storage
Western Digital WD Green 2TB 3.5" 5400RPM

Video Card
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 770 2GB

Case
Fractal Design Define R4 (Black Pearl) ATX Mid Tower

Power Supply
Corsair 750W ATX12V / EPS12V

Operating System
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 (OEM) (64-bit)

http://au.pcpartpicker.com/user/McGibblets/saved/2mfn

It will be a lounge room PC that I'll be hooking up to my Samsung TV, and at this stage will only be used for gaming.
My main issues are:
-Will it all fit in the fractal r4 (anything bigger will probably lead to a divorce!),
-will this smash a ps4/xb1 for months/years/+5years without upgrades? I realize that you can't see into the future, but you're guess would be much better than mine, and I don't want to need upgrades every year or two (again - divorce!),
-Is 8GB of RAM enough, and is 2x4GB better than 1x8GB?
-If I eventually upgrade (hopefully waaay down the track), would this motherboard handle two of these graphics cards? Would that in turn cause bottlenecks elsewhere?
-I'm planning on using my xbox360 controller, but if you have any advice on mouse/keyboard alternatives that would be great.
-Is an optical drive essential?

I'm completely new to this, so if there's anything else glaring, please don't go easy on me!

Cheers.
 
Solution
-Will it all fit in the fractal r4 (anything bigger will probably lead to a divorce!),
-will this smash a ps4/xb1 for months/years/+5years without upgrades? I realize that you can't see into the future, but you're guess would be much better than mine, and I don't want to need upgrades every year or two (again - divorce!),
-Is 8GB of RAM enough, and is 2x4GB better than 1x8GB?
-If I eventually upgrade (hopefully waaay down the track), would this motherboard handle two of these graphics cards? Would that in turn cause bottlenecks elsewhere?
-I'm planning on using my xbox360 controller, but if you have any advice on mouse/keyboard alternatives that would be great.
-Is an optical drive essential?

1. Yes.
2. Hell *****ing yes...
My main issues are:
-Will it all fit in the fractal r4 (anything bigger will probably lead to a divorce!),
-will this smash a ps4/xb1 for months/years/+5years without upgrades? I realize that you can't see into the future, but you're guess would be much better than mine, and I don't want to need upgrades every year or two (again - divorce!),
😀:lol::pt1cable: So buy this now and get it over with in hurry.. I mean divorce. What point to be together if there is happening divorce if you uppgrade a PC?!?
Get this and say this is best case for future water cooling build.
http://pcpartpicker.com/part/rosewill-case-blackhawkultra
Or then if you have more money this is really good case. Yhe best.
http://pcpartpicker.com/part/silverstone-case-sstft02busb30
-Is 8GB of RAM enough, and is 2x4GB better than 1x8GB?
Yes. Mobo or cpu will have two chanel memory controller so two sticks is better.
-If I eventually upgrade (hopefully waaay down the track), would this motherboard handle two of these graphics cards? Would that in turn cause bottlenecks elsewhere?
Get gigabyte X-D3H good price / quality , best price for quality mobo.
http://pcpartpicker.com/part/gigabyte-motherboard-gaz87mxd3h

I'm completely new to this, so if there's anything else glaring, please don't go easy on me!

WD green is not best OS drive. Id get seagate barracuda or WD blue + SSD.
Or keep that green drive and put OS to SSD. This is good way to go.
Good SSD is samsun pro or sandisk ultra plus. Sandisk is cheap and really fast.
Get 256GB drive. http://pcpartpicker.com/part/sandisk-internal-hard-drive-sdssdhp256gg25

And for HDD this is cheap and good. Heve 1TB more room.
http://pcpartpicker.com/part/seagate-internal-hard-drive-st3000dm001

Corsair is not bad PSU. But seasonic is way much better and rosewill.
750w this is good cheap choice now. http://pcpartpicker.com/part/seasonic-power-supply-ss750am

If you want better then take seasonic x 750 or this.
http://pcpartpicker.com/part/rosewill-power-supply-tachyon750
G is goos too. http://pcpartpicker.com/part/seasonic-power-supply-ssr750rm
But X is the best. here is only 850. http://pcpartpicker.com/part/seasonic-power-supply-x850

Hope I did help to make divorce happen soon as possible :) Good luck with this build :)



 
Thanks for the reply Axl,

Some great tips there.

I didn't know anything about HDDs or SDDs until you got me interested. Now I've done some reading, but a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing, so now I have another series of questions!
-I'll only be using the PC for gaming and the OS, so would it be alright to only use a single SanDisk Ultra Plus 256GB SSD as my only hard drive?
-I figure this would be plenty of storage, as I hardly ever replay a game once I'm done with it, and am I right in thinking that I'd be able to reinstall a game later anyway from steam/origin if I delete it from the SSD?
-I gather the longevity of SSDs has improved heaps, is this true for gaming use?

-With the case, I appreciate the recommendations you gave, but I'm pretty keen on the fractal r4 due to price, size, noise levels, and looks. Do you reckon it would suit my hardware even though it may be limited regarding water cooling?

Thanks again.
 
hehe it is better ask than be sorry later :)

-I'll only be using the PC for gaming and the OS, so would it be alright to only use a single SanDisk Ultra Plus 256GB SSD as my only hard drive?
Yes. Absulutely if you do not need more storage that is best and fastest way to go.
Then you do not have any slow hard drives in your system.

-I figure this would be plenty of storage, as I hardly ever replay a game once I'm done with it, and am I right in thinking that I'd be able to reinstall a game later anyway from steam/origin

In SSD is good to keep about 20% free space. If it gets too full it slows it down really fast.
-I gather the longevity of SSDs has improved heaps, is this true for gaming use?

I think all programs will run faster and dowload speeds are faster. What is benefit on games.You do not need wait long load times.

[-With the case, I appreciate the recommendations you gave, but I'm pretty keen on the fractal r4 due to price, size, noise levels, and looks. Do you reckon it would suit my hardware even though it may be limited regarding water cooling?/quote]

Fractal is good case for air cooled pc. It good build quality case. Silent. Then comes big but. If you plan on water cooling build. Fractal is not so good in that.

Look this video. Then you konow why :) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asc9YA32rBc
 
-Will it all fit in the fractal r4 (anything bigger will probably lead to a divorce!),
-will this smash a ps4/xb1 for months/years/+5years without upgrades? I realize that you can't see into the future, but you're guess would be much better than mine, and I don't want to need upgrades every year or two (again - divorce!),
-Is 8GB of RAM enough, and is 2x4GB better than 1x8GB?
-If I eventually upgrade (hopefully waaay down the track), would this motherboard handle two of these graphics cards? Would that in turn cause bottlenecks elsewhere?
-I'm planning on using my xbox360 controller, but if you have any advice on mouse/keyboard alternatives that would be great.
-Is an optical drive essential?

1. Yes.
2. Hell *****ing yes!!!! Consoles =/= PCs in terms of sheer graphics and processing power. Consoles are appliances for the sole purpose of playing games. If you want good frame rates and high graphics quality, be prepared to fork it over. :lol:
3. 8GB of RAM is plenty, and 2 x 4GB is definitely better than 1 x 8GB.
4. Yes but you'd better grab that second GPU while you can. If you wait too long it will be discontinued and you'll have a hard time finding one without going to eBay.
5. If you can find some money later on get yourself a mechanical keyboard and a high end mouse like a Roccat Kone or a Thermaltake Level 10 (I have both and I vastly prefer the Level 10 over the Roccat).
6. You can live without one but personally I wouldn't because they have far more uses than just watching movies - you can use them for backups and installing Windows and drivers.

I didn't know anything about HDDs or SDDs until you got me interested. Now I've done some reading, but a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing, so now I have another series of questions!
-I'll only be using the PC for gaming and the OS, so would it be alright to only use a single SanDisk Ultra Plus 256GB SSD as my only hard drive?
-I figure this would be plenty of storage, as I hardly ever replay a game once I'm done with it, and am I right in thinking that I'd be able to reinstall a game later anyway from steam/origin if I delete it from the SSD?
-I gather the longevity of SSDs has improved heaps, is this true for gaming use?

1. SanDisk makes drives that are either excellent or crappy, there seems to be no in between. The Extreme II (which I have) are better than the Ultra Plus which are better than the Ultra. The Samsung 840 Pro and OCZ Vector are better than those.
2. Yes - Steam is cloud computing based (just like iTunes, Hulu, Netflix, etc etc). Once you buy something from Steam it's there forever and you can download as many times as you like on as many devices as you have.
3. Yes. But SSDs do slow down drastically in terms of read - write capacities when you load them over 80% capacity. Which is why it's never recommended that you dump a whole Steam folder on them. Get a 1 or 2 TB HD for mass storage and you can store as much as you want without having to worry.
 
Solution