Need help building my first gaming pc

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s3lin1

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Sep 17, 2015
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It's my first time building a GAMING pc and my old one is 10y + old so i find it a bit difficult with all these items to choose from.

I am thinking of buying:
1)i5 4690k (which i will OC)
2)cryorig H7 or 212 evo for cpu cooler (not good options?)
3)Fractal Design define S case (not good option ? i like it though and has a lot of space and spots for fans)
4)Gtx 970 g1
5)motherboard ?
6)psu ?

But the problem is that i can't decide on which Z97 motherboard to pick and which PSU unit.
i checked both http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/id-2383187/motherboard-tier-list-z97-chipset.html and http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/id-2547993/psu-tier-list.html
but can't figure it out..

I am not planning to SLI cause gtx 970 is alrdy too much for my budget but i red a few articles and noticed that i need a good mobo for a good OCed system so which one should i choose ? i don't need it to be expensive and i won't have SSD for now. Just one HDD.

For the PSU do i need more than 600 watts? and which one should i choose ? cause i am tight on my budget ...

Thanks a lot

My budget is not fixed and i didn't provide you all with my budget since i live in Greece and the prices have a huge difference (e.g. gtx 970 g1 in greece costs around 490 euro) so giving advice just based on prices won't help me much.
 
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That's a really good start. To answer your initial questions, both of those CPU coolers would be good for OCing. The Define S is a great case. If you can find a good one the Asus Z97-E is a great budget option with everything you need for OCing. PSU I would recommend the EVGA B2 750W. Gives you plenty of head room and the ability to SLi, when you have the money. A 600/650 would be fine though.

Due to your location, I would recommend this one for you: Power Supply: XFX TS 650W 80+ Gold Certified ATX Power Supply (€82.57 @ Amazon Italia)
That'll be enough power for you, even if you throw in a second 970 at some point. And it's quality.
 
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i just updated the thread. btw i mentioned that it is a gaming pc and i will OC .
thanks
 
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PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-4690K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor (£167.94 @ Aria PC)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler (£24.95 @ Aria PC)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z97X-SLI ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (£89.99 @ Novatech)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£35.98 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£34.74 @ Aria PC)
Video Card: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 970 4GB WINDFORCE Video Card (£263.94 @ Aria PC)
Case: Fractal Design Define S ATX Mid Tower Case (£59.90 @ CCL Computers)
Power Supply: XFX 550W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply (£48.06 @ CCL Computers)
Total: £725.50
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-09-18 19:55 BST+0100
Not sure if all these parts are available in Greece, or of the pricing, but a build like this seems good to me.
With a 212 EVO and a mid range z97 board, overclocking is possible but only by a small increase (probably around 0.5GHz for a perfectly stable but not too hot CPU). If you wanna do any serious overclocking then you'll have to spend more on a motherboard and better cooling, at which point you're ruining your price😛erformance ratio.
 
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This is what I built up for you:
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-4690K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor (€239.90 @ Amazon Italia)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler (€108.84 @ Amazon Italia)
Motherboard: MSI Z97M-G43 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (€96.93 @ Amazon Italia)
Memory: Kingston HyperX Fury Blue 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1866 Memory (€54.26 @ Amazon Italia)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (€50.90 @ Amazon Italia)
Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 970 4GB Video Card (€339.29 @ Amazon Italia)
Case: Fractal Design Define S w/Window ATX Mid Tower Case
Power Supply: XFX TS 650W 80+ Gold Certified ATX Power Supply (€82.57 @ Amazon Italia)
Total: €972.69
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-09-18 21:01 CEST+0200

I think you could also add in an SSD for a little more.
 
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Thanks a lot for your fast response guys,i will consider everything you said but i need a bit more enlightment on the motherboard choice (besides the price)

MSI Z97-GAMING 5
Gigabyte GA-Z97X-UD3H-BK
Gigabyte GA-G1.SNIPER Z97
Gigabyte GA-Z97X-Gaming 5
Gigabyte GA-Z97X-Gaming 3
ASRock Fatal1ty Z97 Killer
ASRock Z97 PRO3
ASRock Z97 EXTREME4
ASRock Z97 PRO4
ASRock Fatal1ty Z97X Killer

some mobos I found doing a little research , any other recommendations would be welcomed
 
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i am not looking at a local store. these are some mobos i came up with while i was trying some builds on pcpartpicker.com that are compatible with the other components i want . and some of these were also mentioned on a lot of topics on tom's hardware threads or other articles. that's why i'm so confused
 
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I understand your confusion, there's a lot of choice out there. Basically you need to look at a few things:
- What's the max speed of RAM your mobo can handle.
- How much RAM can it handle
- How many PICe 3.0 slots it has
- How many lanes each PCIe slot can handle
- Chipset
- OC utilities

Any of the boards you are looking at will handle 1 video card no problem. So I guess I'm wondering if you were looking to SLi either now or on this build in the future? If you were looking to SLi, but not on this build, don't worry about SLi compatibility.

Other than that, most mobos you will be looking at will handle up to 2400MHz or higher RAM. However you really don't need this speed for gaming, so you won't need to worry about that for your purposes.

Chipset, you'll be going for a Z97 chipset.

OC utilities are up to you. Most people recommend OC manually. This allows you much more control and you can fine tune your OC to be stable and fit exactly what you want to do.
 
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doing some more research and comparing everything to the motherboard tier list i figured i will probably have to choose one of these mobos :
msi gaming 5
asrock fatality z97x killer
asrock extreme 4
gigabyte z97x gaming 5
gigabyte UD3H
gigabyte z97x gaming 3
asus z97 A
asus z97 E

so i think now i just need to have a good mobo for OC (manually) and i don't think i will go for 2nd VGA anytime soon (maybe after 2-3 years) and i also will have just 1 HDD and maybe later i will get one SSD.

so one affordable and really good for OC mobo is what i need i think
 
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In that case I would go with either of the gaming 5's or either of the Asus boards. I have a Z97-E and I love it. I haven't OCed the processor (it's locked), but I have OCed the RAM and it was a really easy process. Also I really like the BIOS. It's clean and easy to navigate, but I don't have all that much experience with BIOSes.
 
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If they are the same price then go for whichever one you think has the better feature set to match what you're doing. Go to their respective websites and look at the specs on each and just compare them side-by-side to see which one will be best for you.
 
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