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Gaming build specs

Cylinder

Philosopher
Cylinder
Joined
Jun 10, 2005
Messages
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Location
Arkansas
Long story short, my hellion precious daughter is turning 13 this fall and it's time for her first build. She hinted at a decent gaming system (FPS, RPG, Steam), a bit of bragging and some casual video editing (YouTube, etc...). I guess I'm looking at around $2500 USD plus monitor(s) and gaming software to be contributed by other family members.

I was thinking about building the system around a baseline GeoForce GTX 780.

I haven't done any price shopping, so the quoted costs are all Newegg.

CPU/Board/Memory: ---------------- $750

Intel i7 4770K Haswell 3.5GHz
ASUS Maximus VI Formula Z87 Mainboard
16GB DDR3 (2x8GB DDR3 2133 CL9)

GPU ---------------------------------- $500

GeoForce GTX 780 (3GB)

SSD ---------------------------------- $450

Samsung 840 1TB SATA-III

OPTICAL ----------------------------- $ 60

Generic LG BR-R/DVD-R/CD-R

PSU --------------------------------- $150

Corsair RM850 850W Modular

Windows 8.1 OEM ------------------ $100


CASE --------------------------------$ 70

Corsair Graphite 230T

That has the base system coming in around $2100 USD. I'm guessing the bottleneck such as it is will be the graphics memory. Any comments about value?

I could probably find a bit better value in the mainboard, but I do want this build to be a bit of a showcase.

ADD-ONs/BUDGET BUSTERS:

COOLING -----------------------------------------$ 95

Corsair H80i closed-loop liquid cooler

CABLING KIT -------------------------------------$ 80

Braided cables for modular PSU (red).

LIGHTING/FAN/COOLER CONTROLLER --------- $ 80

Corsair Light and Cooling Kit


$255 for showcase features isn't that bad - a little over 10% of build. I do question the cost of the braided cables considering the case in only 1/4 windowed. What are some good options -- preferably with red as a primary color -- for full-windowed cases under $100? I just can't bring myself to shell out $250 for a case that doesn't house a domain server.

I know the Corsair controller software is buggy as hell on Win 8.1, but I feel I can either get it to work or get it returned. Does anyone have experience with their cooling hardware?
 
First of all, lucky daughter.

Second of all, that's not a decent gaming PC, that is an upper to high end gaming PC.

If you were looking for good value then I would certainly look at a 770 as a gpu (choice of 2 or 4GB memory), and speaking of memory 8GB is more than plenty unless you want to video edit etc.
Could also get a 240GB SSD for the OS and some programs and add in a 2TB hard drive. Steam runs fine off mine.
Everything else looks fine - but hey, if I had set my budget at 2.5k then your build is pretty much spot on what I would have, with the exception of getting a 240GB SSD dedicated to OS and some programs, and a separate SSD (poss 480) for games - depending on your library size of course!
Oh, I also have a version of the H80i - love it :)
 
Seriously, that's a high end system. My build ideas keep coming out at $600 (although that's without storage, monitor, or case because the ones I have now are fine).

That's a lot of computer. Asus is an excellent board choice. Commenting on value, I don't know what features that the Maximus series has that you want but I've seen some Sabertooth deals lately. That's a very good board series as well.

If the 1TB SSD isn't enough or you want to save money, there are some very good hybrid drives now. That and storage storage HDD are getting dirt cheap.
 
That's a very nice system.

Go for the 4790K rather than the 4770K though - it's 500MHz faster and about the same price.
 
PixyMisa said:
That's a very nice system.

Go for the 4790K rather than the 4770K though - it's 500MHz faster and about the same price.
Click to expand...

Good point. Generally when I shop prices I try to break down bundles to see what (if any) value they provide. I'll be sure to check that out.

I'm assuming the 4790K has the same OC potential of the K series.
 
My system is very similar to what you list above, with the exception of the 770 instead of the 780, and I've got a 500GB SSD + 1TB HDD for storage. It's fast. I have yet to run into a game that really presses it, honestly. I'm sure there's something out there that would, but I don't play it. Your daughter should be more than happy.

I've got mine in a Nanoxia Deep Silence case and it's water cooled, so I don't hear it at all except for right at startup.

I also do some video editing and this tears through it.
 
malicus said:
If you were looking for good value then I would certainly look at a 770 as a gpu (choice of 2 or 4GB memory), and speaking of memory 8GB is more than plenty unless you want to video edit etc.
Click to expand...

Along the same line of thought (the value in the top line, last gen hardware) , the new GTX 880/870 series are promised for Christmas which has the potential of making a significant investment in a GPU in early fall a sucker move. How fast do the lastgen cards fall in price on a new release. Since the 880 should be at nearly the same price point (since they're already getting vaguely close to Titan territory) can I expect a $100 drop in price? More? Less?

I guess the 880s could hit around the $750-$850 point and the 870s around a $100 less, but I'm guessing they didn't release the 880 to compete in Titan territory. Too much uncertainty. Maybe she needs a 2-month system burn-in with her onboard GPU. Too bad SLI only works with identical GPUs...

Obviously, I've been buying off-the-shelf for too long. :)


malicus said:
Could also get a 240GB SSD for the OS and some programs and add in a 2TB hard drive. Steam runs fine off mine.
Click to expand...

That was my initial thought as well, but there is a good possibility that there will be some relatively low-end video editing and some music editing on this machine which benefit greatly from bandwidth through the processor, memory and to storage. That's the kind of thing I envision her wanting out of the machine. My philosophy here is it will take her a year to fill a TB drive. If at that point there is a capacity bottleneck, it can be addressed at that time with an SSD which probably has dropped significantly in price.

The same philosophy with the system memory. Max the first channel out so I don't end up having to refill a channel to max the board. If she finds a memory bottleneck, then the price to fill the second channel will be better later.

Part of the reason I'm kind of overthinking this build is because I'm left guessing a bit as to what optimizations to use. Primarily it will be a gaming box. After hearing it repeated by her for the last 6-months or so, it would be nice to provide a decent amateur video editing platform. Though the probabilities plummet, she might decide to do some actual schoolwork at some point. (OK, maybe not.) Those optimizations aren't so far apart (other builders' opinions notwithstanding) that they can't be accommodated with a lot of thought and little extra money. I'm starting to ramble, though...

Back to storage, it probably makes better sense to go with 2x512GB SSD in RAID 0 than 1x1TB, right?.

One trend I've noticed is using the dirt cheap mechanical drive pricing as an internal backup solution, which is something to think about regarding an editing optimization.
 
Cylinder said:
Back to storage, it probably makes better sense to go with 2x512GB SSD in RAID 0 than 1x1TB, right?.
Click to expand...
It would be very fast, but it seems like overkill to me, and for the video editing I don't think SSD over 7200RPM HD would make that much difference given that a) the CPU is where the most stress occurs when encoding/decoding and b) 16GB of RAM means that any storage<>RAM delay while editing would be minimal and probably unnoticeable. I've never heard complaints about HD speed from the folks I've known doing prosumer/professional (in the "getting paid for it" sense) video editing and it sounds like you're planning for something below that level.

Besides, changing out hard drives would be among the easiest changes you could make down the line, and whatever is being replaced would still be useful.

Short version: Enough SSD space to accommodate the OS, the main applications, and 6-12 games should be sufficient. Save the cash and use a regular hard drive for the rest.
 
Babbylonian said:
It would be very fast, but it seems like overkill to me, and for the video editing I don't think SSD over 7200RPM HD would make that much difference given that a) the CPU is where the most stress occurs when encoding/decoding and b) 16GB of RAM means that any storage<>RAM delay while editing would be minimal and probably unnoticeable. I've never heard complaints about HD speed from the folks I've known doing prosumer/professional (in the "getting paid for it" sense) video editing and it sounds like you're planning for something below that level.

Besides, changing out hard drives would be among the easiest changes you could make down the line, and whatever is being replaced would still be useful.

Short version: Enough SSD space to accommodate the OS, the main applications, and 6-12 games should be sufficient. Save the cash and use a regular hard drive for the rest.
Click to expand...

About the only other thing I'd suggest is have two (or more) storage drives in RAID for redundancy and backup. Of course, you should have other backups, but with RAID it's not a huge deal if (or when) a drive fails.
 
Bit of bragging ... eh? I like it!

Dual bootie with OSX. That'll silence all her sniveling Mactard friends.
 
I went with an AMD FX-8350 processor when I rebuild my PC. I work with a lot of A/V editing and Adobe happily uses every core you can throw at it. Coupled with a GTX 760 2 GB card and 16 GB of memory, my machine will run anything I install on it. Though sometime I'd like to get a RAID for my video files.

I have a 120 GB SSD, and that's enough for the OS and my core applications. I use a secondary drive for my games.
 
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