My First PC Build

nightsmith97

Know Thyself
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    Hey everyone! I'm hoping to build a high-end gaming computer next year, provided I'm able to receive scholarships from my university's computer science department. This is my first build, and was hoping everything fits together and works well or if it needs some work. I'm relatively new to building PCs, so any help or tips you could offer are much appreciated! :)

    All parts will most likely be purchased from Newegg. Without peripherals, I'm looking at around $1250.

    Case: NZXT S340 Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Case
    Motherboard: ASUS Z97-PRO GAMER LGA 1150 Intel Z97 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
    GPU: MSI GeForce GTX 970 GTX 970 GAMING 4G 4GB 256-Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support G-SYNC Support Video Card
    CPU:Intel Core i7-4790K Devil's Canyon Quad-Core 4.0GHz LGA 1150 BX80646I74790K Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 4600
    RAM: CORSAIR Vengeance Pro 16GB (2 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 2400 (PC3 19200) Desktop Memory Model CMY16GX3M2A2400C11
    Hard Drive Memory: WD BLACK SERIES WD2003FZEX 2TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive
    Cooling: Cooler Master Seidon 120V – Compact All-In-One CPU Liquid Water Cooling System with 120mm Radiator and Fan
    Power Supply:CORSAIR CX series CX750M 750W ATX12V v2.3 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply New 4th Gen CPU Certified

    I opted for the Intel CPU simply because a friend of mine said his AMD overheated quite easily and he told me to just go ahead with the Intel. While that problem was most likely his own mistake, I decided to follow his advice anyways.
     
    nightsmith97 said:
    Hey everyone! I'm hoping to build a high-end gaming computer next year, provided I'm able to receive scholarships from my university's computer science department. This is my first build, and was hoping everything fits together and works well or if it needs some work. I'm relatively new to building PCs, so any help or tips you could offer are much appreciated! :)

    All parts will most likely be purchased from Newegg. Without peripherals, I'm looking at around $1250.

    Case: NZXT S340 Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Case
    Motherboard: ASUS Z97-PRO GAMER LGA 1150 Intel Z97 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
    GPU: MSI GeForce GTX 970 GTX 970 GAMING 4G 4GB 256-Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support G-SYNC Support Video Card
    CPU:Intel Core i7-4790K Devil's Canyon Quad-Core 4.0GHz LGA 1150 BX80646I74790K Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 4600
    RAM: CORSAIR Vengeance Pro 16GB (2 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 2400 (PC3 19200) Desktop Memory Model CMY16GX3M2A2400C11
    Hard Drive Memory: WD BLACK SERIES WD2003FZEX 2TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive
    Cooling: Cooler Master Seidon 120V – Compact All-In-One CPU Liquid Water Cooling System with 120mm Radiator and Fan
    Power Supply:CORSAIR CX series CX750M 750W ATX12V v2.3 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply New 4th Gen CPU Certified

    I opted for the Intel CPU simply because a friend of mine said his AMD overheated quite easily and he told me to just go ahead with the Intel. While that problem was most likely his own mistake, I decided to follow his advice anyways.
    Click to expand...

    Are you sure you can live with the lack of optical drive bays? That's what I'm the most concerned with the case right now. It is nice, but is it worth giving up an entire type of drive bays for? Keep in mind that optical drive bays can be repurposed for other things, such as fan controllers, or adapters for smaller drives. May I put forth a suggestion for the Corsair Carbide 100R instead? In addition to saving cash, you also get some features back while not skimping on the important things - the things that make PC building fun. Don't think it's on Newegg, though, right now, so pick your poison from here.

    The motherboard looks solid. What made you pick this particular motherboard? Do note that it appears to be out of stock right now, so if you couldn't find it, you might also want to consider getting an MSI Z97 Gaming 3 or MSI Z97 Gaming 5 instead. Whichever you choose depends on what kind of extra fluff you intend to have. Keep in mind that the Gaming 3 doesn't support any SLI configuration, but it's also quite a bit cheaper than either two alternatives.

    The graphics card looks fine - and in fact, it'd be a perfect fit for the motherboards I've recommended.

    You probably can get away with "just" DDR3-2133 RAM. You'll also be able to get RAM that stays 1.5 V or lower if you intend to use it on things that aren't designed for high-voltage DDR3 on Haswell or Broadwell, while not losing too much performance compared to DDR3-2400. The more important thing is the access latency - and it appears to be fine in this regard. You might want to go with their red variant, by the way. The colours appear mismatched right now, since it's black and white.

    Great. A WD Black. Even if it's the only drive, it should be more than competent enough. That can't be said for 5400 RPM HDDs, and 7200 RPM HDDs are perfectly usable, even if they're not SSD-lightning-fast. A good SSD that is just 250 GB would cost pretty close to the price of a 2 TB WD Black, so it's kind of a trade-off - but it's not the kind of thing to pick hairs on.

    Is liquid cooling a must? The liquid cooler you've chosen is really low end, all things considered. If you're OK with fan coolers and don't intend to perform aggressive overclocking, try a Cooler Master Hyper TX3. It's really affordable and outperforms the stock cooler by a significant margin. Although the aftermarket cooler should come with its own tube of thermal compound, consider also getting a separately bought thermal compound (Artic Silver, anyone?)

    I'd love to recommend a Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO, but it's also quite large, and definitely won't fit in the case I've recommended. Feel free to browse online reviews and find the cooling solution you want, anyway, but do consider any possible clearance issues around the CPU socket and the case itself.

    I've went and upgraded your power supply into a Corsair RM550. It's much more efficient, should be able to handle higher temperatures, has a longer warranty, is fully modular...the works. It does have a lower maximum continuous output, but it's also a much nicer power supply to deal with - and I prefer having PSUs that I can forget about. Oh, and did I mention it's semi-passive?

    Here's my version of your build. As you can see, it's quite the amount of savings, and you'd be able to either save that cash, or use that saved cash to improve on other things. You really should see if you can get away with ordering parts from more than one source if you intend to save the most cash.

    That's my two cents!

    By the way, when CPUs overheat, they should make the fact really obvious by throttling themselves down. Keep an eye on the performance monitors, and a CPU isn't overheating until it throttles. Most desktop stock coolers should be good enough to make sure the CPUs avoid thermal throttling at stock speeds, if barely. (You might want to keep the temperatures in check if you want the thing to last, though.)
     
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    Wow, I learned a lot from your post! Thank you so much! I appreciate you even went so far as to offer a revised build. I'll take a look at everything and consider my options. Thanks again!

    Also, do you have a certain brand/type of monitor you could recommend? Preferably not something too large, seeing as I would most likely take this computer with me to university. :)
     
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    I don't recommend going multi-GPU unless you really need all the performance you can get, by the way. Most of the time, you're better served by a single powerful video card. It might be more expensive upfront, but you get a more consistent experience, and you also don't need to have a beefy PSU to get things going if you're on the NVIDIA camp.

    I like building PCs with a mind set of performance first, aesthetics second, but never zero. A computer should look nice if it's being paired with a windowed case, and even if it's not windowed, at least the case should look unobtrusive. PC cases that look like cheap science fiction props don't look right to me.

    As for what to with the extra $165 or so, you could try adding an SSD as either the boot drive or the cache drive. You could get another WD Black to do RAID1 (I do not suggest going RAID0), or a larger WD Red for storage needs. Or maybe get a Corsair H80i GT and upgrade your cooling massively. Go with a Blu-ray drive. Or even an i7. Or a GTX 980. The choice is yours.
     
    I also advice you to not use multiple GPUs because crossfire/SLI have some typical issues like stuttering. If you're able to save up some money, invest it in a 980, a big SSD is a gimmick.
     
    I have a 250GB SSD and it's a good size as long as you have a secondary storage drive (which you do). The 850 EVO is a fantastic SSD as well.

    What I do is just have the games I'm currently playing on my SSD, then I use Steam Mover to move them to my secondary HDD once I finish with them. It's a free utility that creates junction points so you can freely move individual games back and forth from your SSD to your HDD whenever you want. Since games are the biggest eaters of disk space (recent releases can use 50GB or more), you should be okay with installing the other applications you use on your SSD. Just don't try to cram every single game you own on your SSD and use Steam Mover to move things to your storage drive when you're not playing them, and you shouldn't have to worry about running out of space.
     
    All other drives tend to have performance degradation over time, and also prove much higher failure rates compared to Intel's SSDs. For reliability, longevity, and consistent performance (if you want to spend a few extra bucks and totally forget about it), get a 530 Series SSD, or a 730 Series SSD.

    I have a 520 Series Cherryville SSD with stellar performance for its voltage. An AnandTech article here goes over a BSOD bug found in SandForce's release of the same controller that wasn't present in Intel's version, if that's any testament to their rigorous product testing.

    Also, a 530 Series is good for most people, but the best SSD you can buy short of (Intel's, heh) 750 Series NVMe SSD is the 730 Series 240/480GB. I'd definitely say a 240GB 530 is worth the extra, what, $30(?) over the 850 EVO.



    If you're building it next year, by golly please wait for Skylake. Haswell in 2016 makes no sense, trust me. It's already out now, and by 2016 a full plethora of 6th generation processors will be available at solid prices, with good motherboard and RAM selections too. Heck, depending on your country you can buy both the Core i5-6600K and the Core i7-6700K right now! Z170 Express chipset motherboards are also in plenty enough stock for the moment.

    By the way, until Zen comes out AMD probably won't be worth the buy. Even if you magically make the performance make sense with them basically being super-hot mini-Xeons, they're too pricey to cool effectively and don't present very useful overclocks. You could get 4.7GHz but it's nowhere near as useful as a 4.7GHz on a 4690K... or even a 2500K. lol

    Your HDD choice is nice and solid. Can't complain.
     
    Skylake out now does not preclude getting a Haswell-based build. Right now, there's just two choices of CPUs to choose from, and the motherboard selection is much larger, but I think we have not seen the whole arsenal yet for the other supporting chipsets.

    Personally, I think I'd rather wait a bit until there are more CPUs and motherboards out there, and perhaps by then, maybe there will be a far more appealing option. As much as I'd love to label myself as an enthusiast, the reality is you can probably get away with pretty much anything on the i5 level, at least for about a console generation's worth of time. Haswell parts should be also cheaper due to them being mature products and easily available.

    Let's hope there won't be availability and late arrival issues that has plagued desktop Broadwell.

    Also, with regard to SSDs, the Samsung SSDs aren't exactly what I'd dismiss right away, even considering the voltage drift issue that was in the early TLC-based drives. I have a 840 EVO in my laptop, and it sure holds up really well all things considered. Besides, the software story of Samsung is also pretty darned compelling, and I like their relatively aggressive pricing compared to Intel. To be honest, when it comes to SSDs, I'd probably just go for Samsung for anyone that doesn't insist on Intel.
     
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