- Aug 2, 2015
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Hello everyone,
I've been thinking of building a PC for a while, and after looking at a lot of stuff, I've come up with a preliminary build. However, I wanted to get other people's opinions and suggestions because I'm not terribly knowledgeable on most of the parts and I still have a lot of questions. It'd be super helpful if anyone has any suggestions on a part that I've picked that I should not get, or if there's recommendations for other parts.
The main point of building the pc is for gaming - I want to be able to play all the new and upcoming games without a problem. I also would like dual monitors (and possibly even triple in the future) so I want to make sure that won't be a problem. I'm going for either a red/black or white/black build, so I've picked parts with those considerations in mind as well. As for price range, I'd like it to stay around $2000, but could stretch to $2500 or even beyond if I felt it was a good investment.
Here's the list First Build! , and I will go into some detail about my decisions so far.
CPU - I was told that for just gaming, an i5 4690k would be good enough, but I figured it's not much more expensive for an i7 and I might do some Photoshop or video editing at times so better safe than sorry.
CPU Cooler - I don't know if it's even necessary if I don't plan on overclocking (and also, is there any point to overclocking if the CPU can handle whatever I'm doing??) but this Corsair one seemed really easy to install and I like the minimal look so I picked it.
Motherboard - I was deciding between the Hero and the Asus Z97 Pro Gamer but then I thought this one looked cooler (I would do the MSI Z97 SLI Krait Edition if I went with the black/white theme but I'm not sure about the quality of that MOBO - this is really one of the biggest things that has me hinging on black/white or black/red).
RAM - It seems like there wouldn't be much difference in terms of brands, so I picked Kingston HyperX Fury because it just aesthetically appealed to me the most and I went with 16GB instead of 8GB because again, not too much more expensive and better safe than sorry.
Storage - 500GB SSD and 1TB HDD, Samsung and WD seemed to be well regarded. I feel like this should be enough storage, but if for some reason I actually fill it up, would it be the same to just get another 1TB HDD later and add it on or should I just get a 2TB HDD now?
Video Card - Seems like the most important aspect in terms of running games, so I didn't want to skimp on this one. I read that the 980 TI will perform better than most SLI's and I didn't want to deal with SLI so I thought this would be good enough especially to support multiple monitors. As for the brand, I was deciding between EVGA and Gigabyte but for now I like how the Gigabyte one looks better and I've read the cooling is better. My only concern is that it's a bit big and I might have problems with it fitting in my mid tower case, but I've seen someone else do it with the same case so I think it should be alright.
Case - NZXT H440, seeing someone's build with the white H440 case is what really made me want to build my own, but if I'm going with the red/black theme I'll probably use the red/black case.
PSU - At first I picked a 650W one, but then this EVGA one was the highest rated on PCPartPicker and I figured I couldn't go wrong with more power just in case. Seems like it's pretty cheap too.
Case Fans - Not sure if I need to get my own fans because I think the case comes with them, but is there any reason I might want to upgrade from the default fans? I want to replace the 140mm one because it's visible, but the three fans on the front will be covered so if it won't make a big difference I'd just leave it.
Monitor - So right now, I don't know if I want to get a better monitor now and just have one, or get a cheaper one so I can get dual monitors right off the bat. As for the resolution, is there a really noticeable difference between 1080 and 1440 or 60hz and 144hz (as numbers, it really don't mean that much to me since 1080p already seems like it's good quality)? I could probably afford two other monitors for the price of a higher quality monitor, so this is really up in the air for me. However, I feel like since I'm getting this expensive video card, it'd be a waste to underutilize it with a 1080p monitor if it can support 1440 or even 4k (although obviously I'm not going to try to run that). I kind of want to have the same monitors if I get multiple ones because I think it'd be cool to run games across two or three screens although I don't know if my build would even be able to handle that. If I do settle on a ~$400 monitor, I'd probably just get one for now and get another one in a month, and another one in the future.
Anyway, this is what I'm thinking about so far - I'm not in a rush to buy the parts and build it. The next step for me is to finalize some of these parts and save up money, and then start purchasing parts over the span of a month or two to see if anything goes on sale. Any comments would be really appreciated!! And big thanks to everyone who's even reading this whole thing - I know it's a bit long
I've been thinking of building a PC for a while, and after looking at a lot of stuff, I've come up with a preliminary build. However, I wanted to get other people's opinions and suggestions because I'm not terribly knowledgeable on most of the parts and I still have a lot of questions. It'd be super helpful if anyone has any suggestions on a part that I've picked that I should not get, or if there's recommendations for other parts.
The main point of building the pc is for gaming - I want to be able to play all the new and upcoming games without a problem. I also would like dual monitors (and possibly even triple in the future) so I want to make sure that won't be a problem. I'm going for either a red/black or white/black build, so I've picked parts with those considerations in mind as well. As for price range, I'd like it to stay around $2000, but could stretch to $2500 or even beyond if I felt it was a good investment.
Here's the list First Build! , and I will go into some detail about my decisions so far.
CPU - I was told that for just gaming, an i5 4690k would be good enough, but I figured it's not much more expensive for an i7 and I might do some Photoshop or video editing at times so better safe than sorry.
CPU Cooler - I don't know if it's even necessary if I don't plan on overclocking (and also, is there any point to overclocking if the CPU can handle whatever I'm doing??) but this Corsair one seemed really easy to install and I like the minimal look so I picked it.
Motherboard - I was deciding between the Hero and the Asus Z97 Pro Gamer but then I thought this one looked cooler (I would do the MSI Z97 SLI Krait Edition if I went with the black/white theme but I'm not sure about the quality of that MOBO - this is really one of the biggest things that has me hinging on black/white or black/red).
RAM - It seems like there wouldn't be much difference in terms of brands, so I picked Kingston HyperX Fury because it just aesthetically appealed to me the most and I went with 16GB instead of 8GB because again, not too much more expensive and better safe than sorry.
Storage - 500GB SSD and 1TB HDD, Samsung and WD seemed to be well regarded. I feel like this should be enough storage, but if for some reason I actually fill it up, would it be the same to just get another 1TB HDD later and add it on or should I just get a 2TB HDD now?
Video Card - Seems like the most important aspect in terms of running games, so I didn't want to skimp on this one. I read that the 980 TI will perform better than most SLI's and I didn't want to deal with SLI so I thought this would be good enough especially to support multiple monitors. As for the brand, I was deciding between EVGA and Gigabyte but for now I like how the Gigabyte one looks better and I've read the cooling is better. My only concern is that it's a bit big and I might have problems with it fitting in my mid tower case, but I've seen someone else do it with the same case so I think it should be alright.
Case - NZXT H440, seeing someone's build with the white H440 case is what really made me want to build my own, but if I'm going with the red/black theme I'll probably use the red/black case.
PSU - At first I picked a 650W one, but then this EVGA one was the highest rated on PCPartPicker and I figured I couldn't go wrong with more power just in case. Seems like it's pretty cheap too.
Case Fans - Not sure if I need to get my own fans because I think the case comes with them, but is there any reason I might want to upgrade from the default fans? I want to replace the 140mm one because it's visible, but the three fans on the front will be covered so if it won't make a big difference I'd just leave it.
Monitor - So right now, I don't know if I want to get a better monitor now and just have one, or get a cheaper one so I can get dual monitors right off the bat. As for the resolution, is there a really noticeable difference between 1080 and 1440 or 60hz and 144hz (as numbers, it really don't mean that much to me since 1080p already seems like it's good quality)? I could probably afford two other monitors for the price of a higher quality monitor, so this is really up in the air for me. However, I feel like since I'm getting this expensive video card, it'd be a waste to underutilize it with a 1080p monitor if it can support 1440 or even 4k (although obviously I'm not going to try to run that). I kind of want to have the same monitors if I get multiple ones because I think it'd be cool to run games across two or three screens although I don't know if my build would even be able to handle that. If I do settle on a ~$400 monitor, I'd probably just get one for now and get another one in a month, and another one in the future.
Anyway, this is what I'm thinking about so far - I'm not in a rush to buy the parts and build it. The next step for me is to finalize some of these parts and save up money, and then start purchasing parts over the span of a month or two to see if anything goes on sale. Any comments would be really appreciated!! And big thanks to everyone who's even reading this whole thing - I know it's a bit long
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