Advice on first (time in 10 years) build

[rbryant73]

Hi all,

First-time poster. I bought a really amazing Alienware desktop in 2001 and let me tell you, rarely have I had my mind blown to the degree it was when I saw Giants: Citizen Kabuto running on a GeForce3. Over the next five years I upgraded every component in the system except the case, until I sold the system in 2006, and I've been using take-home work PCs since then.

Now I want a new gaming PC of my own, but the build muscles are a bit rusty. I'd love some advice on the components I've chosen after a few days of research (including reading a ton of reviews and forum posts right here).

Please bear with my terminology; I'm pasting in the full names I found on Newegg. Also, I'm trying to do this relatively cheaply...I don't want shoddy components that will be obsolete in 6 months, but I also don't want to spend much more than a grand in the near term.

• 
  Case: Corsair Carbide Series SPEC-03 Black Steel ATX mid Tower Gaming case ATX (I don't need anything too fancy, but I do want front-mounted USB 3.0)
  PSU: CORSAIR CX series CX750M 750W ATX12V v2.3 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Modular Active PFC
  Mobo: Gigabyte GA-Z97X-UD5H
  CPU: Intel Core i5-4460 (I've read that Core i7 is unnecessary for gaming)
  RAM: 2x 4GB Crucial Ballistix Tactical 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) (Specs seemed decent and the price was great)
  SSD: SAMSUNG 850 EVO MZ-75E500B/AM 2.5" 500GB SATA III 3-D Vertical Internal Solid State Drive

I'm planning to add a GTX 970 or the like in the very near future, but for the moment I want the bare minimum of components I can assemble and power on. I play a lot of old and indie games, so I think I can get by on onboard graphics for a while and wait to go back to Far Cry 4 when I get a video card.

I'm also planning to add a 7200rpm HDD down the road, but for now just the 500GB SSD should get me by. I've rarely filled a drive that big anyway, and I'll hold off on reinstalling Steam games I won't be playing immediately. Also I have an external optical drive if I need to load an old game from CD.

I've never been great at planning ventilation and cooling... I've read good things about the Corsair Hydro Series H100i cooler online, but I'm not sure whether I need that with my components and given I don't intent to overclock at all? If I did, would it fit into the case I selected?

Thanks for reading (big post), any and all input is much appreciated!

Rich

 

[Mattios]

You're completely right about the i7 being unsuitable for gaming.

I have a few suggestions:

- downgrade the SSD. The 850 is great, but in the real world, you will not notice much of a difference between a 'lower grade' SSD, for example an 840 or Kingston HyperX (what I have). You can then use that saved money on a better GPU.
- in terms of cooler, look into the Hyper 212 Evo from Coolermaster. A brilliant air cooler. The 4460 cannot be overclocked - the lack of the letter 'k' after it denotes this. Therefore, you don't need a big cooler like the H100i - the stock cooler would be fine.

 

[blue_smoke]

You WILL notice a LARGE difference between the 840 and ESPECIALLY the new Kingston HyperX ssd. The 850 has 3D NAND, which results in about a 50mb/s difference, which is substantial. The hyperx ssd's switched over to extremely cheap and useless flash ram, which now results in many new purchased ssd's only getting 125mb/s, while the 850 can reach in excess of 450mb/s in both read and write.

I would suggest looking at the 212 as well. Best performing cooler for 30 bucks, hell, it even beats some 50 dollar coolers.

 

[rbryant73]

Thanks for the replies guys! I'll switch to an 850 SSD and order that Hyper 212 cooler.