An artist's depiction of an Extended Unit Death
Completed Build:
Requirements:
- $1200 soft cap, $1500 max budget
- Minimum 8GB RAM
- 500GB+ SSD, no HDD
- Front panel USB 3
- Optimized for gaming
- All parts purchased by December 2015
Example Skylake Path
PCPartPicker part list /
Price breakdown by merchantCPU: Intel Core i5-6600K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor ($279.99 @ B&H)
CPU Cooler: *
CRYORIG M9i 48.4 CFM CPU Cooler ($23.25 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: *
Gigabyte GA-Z170-HD3P ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($89.75 @ OutletPC)
Memory: Crucial 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR4-2133 Memory ($39.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Storage: *
Crucial BX200 480GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($129.99 @ Amazon)
Video Card: *
Zotac GeForce GTX 980 4GB AMP! Edition Video Card ($439.99 @ NCIX US)
Case: Fractal Design Define R5 (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case ($84.99 @ NCIX US)
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA P2 650W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply (Purchased For $79.99)
Total: $1167.94
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available*Lowest price parts chosen from parametric criteriaGenerated by PCPartPicker 2015-12-27 15:52 EST-0500 Example Haswell Path
Calling out everyone who helped with
my previous build: CecilSunkure, ShadowFlare, DevliN, Zycorax, rockz, Aristocrat, Sacrieur, NudeRaider, Excalibur, even Lanthanide and Jack a bit there - thank you all. The computer is still going strong, but I'm giving it away. As a result, I need a new machine. But this time it's going to be a bit different: rather than longevity and future-proofing, I'm looking for a solid rig that I won't feel bad about incrementally upgrading a year or two from now.
This won't strictly be just a "give me a part list" topic (though you're free to do so): as you can see, I have the rest of the year to collect parts, so I'll be scoping out deals as they come by (I have already picked up a PSU, as you can see from the template). This topic is going to be more focused on the foreseeable future in technology, and there are many things I think would be great for the community to discuss in helping me decide what to do.
Some of my rationale is detailed below. Feel free to give your two cents on anything!
(CPU/Mobo/RAM) Skylake vs Haswell As some of you may know by now, Skylake released this week, and
boy oh boy is it something. Looks like Intel spent all of their focus on the integrated graphics, which is pretty worthless for a gaming rig, right? With no serious performance improvements over Haswell, it makes me wonder if the $50 or so more would be worth it for the new gen processer+motherboard. The issue for me actually comes down to RAM.
See, Skylake supports DDR4, the new generation of DRAM, and it's already competitively priced to DDR3. Soon, DDR3 will go the way of the dinosaur. So, this is a great argument for hopping aboard for longevity.
On the other hand, I already have 16GB of DDR3 in my current computer, which I can take 8GB from and pop it into my new machine (see the example Haswell build). Since it's not of the low-voltage variety, I couldn't do this on a Skylake motherboard, but I could for a Haswell setup. This means I'd be saving around $100 by going with Haswell (this is the price difference between an i5 and i7, mind you). As it stands, DDR4 is not faster than DDR3, and with shit like
XPoint in the distant future, who even knows how long the Z170 boards will be relevant?
Now you see my dilemma: this opens up a bunch of possibly starting points for my build. I could go with Skylake for future-proofing the motherboard (some of the Z170 boards come with other goodies like USB Type-C), or I could get a Haswell i7 for future-proofing the CPU,
or I could get a Haswell i5, pocket the $100, and upgrade in the not-too-distant future, maybe even as early as when the AMD Zen chips and Skylake-E are released next year. I'm at a loss here: what would you do?
UPDATE: Found a nice deal on a 4590 at Jet.com, so I picked it up along with a cheap H97 MicroATX motherboard. This is a good price point that will allow me to upgrade without buyer's remorse if the next generation of processors blow Skylake out of the water. Since it's a Haswell board, I can just take 8GB of DDR3 from my old build and pop it in, free of cost.
(HSF) A Cooler Cooler I'm not an overclocking enthusiast. My good ol' Sandy Bridge had an overclock on it for a while, but I've taken it off for a while now and haven't noticed a performance decrease. I'm not doing high-computational work, mind you: I play games and program, mostly. The
Hyper 212 EVO is the go-to budget cooler for people like me, but right around the same price mark are some new contenders, such as the
CRYORIG H7 and the
be quiet! Pure Rock, which
do pretty damn well. So, is the 212 EVO still king, or do you prefer another budget cooler?
UPDATE: The Hyper 212+ went on sale, so I figured I would pick it up for a cool $15. I have one in my old rig, and while I remember it being a huge pain in the ass to mount, it does get me great temps, and at 60% of the 212 EVO's sale price, why would I turn it down?
(SSD) Your Storage Is Bad and You Should Feel Bad Alright, alright, many of you probably want to talk me out of the 1TB SSD. But that's what I want, and it's what I have in my current system. My storage usage is very low, and backups as well as any additional space for media and whatnot will be kept safely on external hard drives, or in the cloud. I could probably get away with a 500GB SSD, honestly, but I'd rather not stress about it, so 1TB it is. Since prices are steadily decreasing on SSDs, I intend on this to be one of the last parts I purchase, so you'll have plenty of time if you want to persuade me otherwise.
I've found
User Benchmark to be the best place to practically compare SSDs. I suppose my personal favorite would have to be the 850 EVO as it well-balances performance with price. That's not to say I'm completely sold on it; the 850 Pro is excellent all around for a slight premium, and Crucial's BX100 is certainly "fast enough" at an often-times lower price point. What SSDs are you keeping an eye on?
UPDATE: The 500GB 850 EVO was on sale for $138 and came with a free copy of Assassin's Creed Syndicate. That's good enough for me, and while I could continue to wait for prices to come down even further, I'd end up waiting in perpetuity when it comes to SSDs.
(GPU) Looks Like We Could Fit a 980Ti Somewhere Here... Yes, my budget can afford me a much better card than the GTX 970. However, I think the 970 is the best choice for my plans (I'd consider the 980 if it weren't so overpriced). Firstly, I'm still on 1080p: I feel like we're just one generation away from making the leap to 4K gaming, and I don't want to pay a hefty price for "almost" when I do make the switch. I fully intend on upgrading my GPU in the future, and so right now I just need one that will handle 1080p gaming effortlessly.
So why the 970, when AMD has better cards for less? Well, as I said earlier, I'm giving away my old rig, which is still capable for high-end gaming with the GTX 770 inside it. For now. When I upgrade my graphics card, I'm going to hand this one down to my old rig, and I don't want to be fronting a higher electric bill in the process; while performance/watt isn't a huge deal for me personally, it likely will matter to the card's future recipient.
So basically, I need an efficient card that will handle 1080p solidly for a good amount of time. I'm aware of a handful of issues with the 970 (effective 3.5GB memory, and some EVGA models have bad heatsinks), but do the cons outweigh the pros? Am I targeting the correct card for my situation?
UPDATE: Grabbed a B-Stock GTX 980 for $375. It's a good price on a killer card, and it should hold me over until I'm ready to move to 4K gaming.
(Case) I Rest My Case There are so many cases out there; I don't know which one is right for me. I like the looks of many of them:
Fractal Design's Define R5 and
NZXT's S340 are two cases I've been keeping an eye on in particular. And I may or may not have been salivating over the
be quiet! Silent Base 800 since it was announced.
There are some things I hold against each one, though: the R5 treats 2.5" drives as second-class citizens, the S340 doesn't have an external 5.25" bay, and the Silent Base is too goddamn expensive. All of these are super minor, however. What cases are worth a gander? Which one would you pick?
On a side note, I really wish USB Type-C was going to make it onto the front panel of cases this year, but that seems incredibly unlikely because no standard has been decided for the motherboard header. I mean, I guess there's always
ASRock's hack if I really want it...
UPDATE: Grabbed a case I hadn't mentioned above, the Enthoo Pro, which went on sale for an all-time low. It's very well-reviewed, and it has a fan hub built into it, which is good because the motherboard I selected only has one spare fan header, and I want to run all my fans through PWM to keep noise levels down.
(PSU) Power Supply'd I found a pretty sweet deal on a PSU, so forgive me if you wanted to make suggestions here. The EVGA 650 P2 is larger than what I need, obviously, but I mean, come on. $80 for a platinum, modular PSU built on Super Flower's Leadex platform with a 10-year warranty - can you really blame me?
I've got to say that I'm very impressed with Super Flower in general. I consider only Seasonic to be a worthy competitor in consistently producing quality PSUs. Are there other OEMs causing a stir that I'm missing out on?
Post has been edited 13 time(s), last time on Dec 27 2015, 8:59 pm by Roy.