Looking to buy new PC, what do you think about this setup?

richaxes

Honorable
Apr 20, 2012
8
0
10,510
Hello guys,

In a month I'll be able to buy a new PC and I'd like the best possible solution for my money. I live in Hungary so it's a little hard to assess the prices and availability of certain products of certain brands, but this what I've come up with:

Mainboard: Asus Maximus VI Hero

CPU: i7-4770k

CPU Cooling: THERMALTAKE Water 3.0 Extreme and ARCTIC COOLING MX-4 (20g) thermal compund

RAM: CORSAIR 16GB Vengeance DDR3 1600MHz CL10 kit (as per mainboard QVL)

Video: GIGABYTE GV-N770OC-4GD GTX770 4GB or GIGABYTE GV-N770WF3-4GD GTX770 * 2 in SLI configuration (my biggest dilemma is whether I should get a 770 SLI setup or a single 780 Ti but considering how requirements are increasing 3 GB of VRAM might get just a little obsolete in the next few years, so I don't know)

SSD/HDD: Samsung 840 Pro 256 GB plus WD 2TB Caviar Black 7200rpm 64MB SATA3

PSU: SEASONIC M12 II 750W

Case: FRACTAL DESIGN Core 3000

DVD-RW (just to have something in it): ASUS DRW-24F1ST

Mouse: Razer Abyssus, I'll get a better Razer keyboard later

What do you guys think? It would be useless to mark a budget because Hungarian prices are very different from US or even UK prices.
Please keep in mind, that I only have a verry narrow margin on my expenditures so the config above is really stretching it to the max I can afford.

Cheers!
 
Solution
The build looks good but you could save some money in a few places.

-SSD- get the Samsung 840 evo, it is usually quite a bit cheaper and you wouldn't even notice the difference.
-Ram- you could probably find a cheaper ram set, also try to find one that is CL 9 at 1600 mHz
-GPU- If you are playing on a 1080p monitor I would just get a single gtx 780, the TI only gains something like 12% performance for an additional 30% price. You could save the money for a GPU upgrade in the future or SLI the 780.

numanator

Honorable
The build looks good but you could save some money in a few places.

-SSD- get the Samsung 840 evo, it is usually quite a bit cheaper and you wouldn't even notice the difference.
-Ram- you could probably find a cheaper ram set, also try to find one that is CL 9 at 1600 mHz
-GPU- If you are playing on a 1080p monitor I would just get a single gtx 780, the TI only gains something like 12% performance for an additional 30% price. You could save the money for a GPU upgrade in the future or SLI the 780.
 
Solution

richaxes

Honorable
Apr 20, 2012
8
0
10,510


Thank you!

-Very little price difference between the Evo and the Pro so I guess the Pro would be better to get in this case?
-I'll look up a CL 9 ram set, thanks!
-I'm still not sure about the GPU, because I'm trying to think forward for at least 4-5 years...
 
What exactly are you doing with this computer?

If it's just for gaming, then you're far better off with a lot of changes.

1) An i5-4670k will perform pretty much exactly the same as an i7-4770k. In the US, it's $100 cheaper - I don't know if it's a large difference in Hungary, but there's no reason to spend the money for an i7 unless you're doing video editing or rendering in which time matters.

2) You don't need such an expensive motherboard - something like an AsRock z87 Extreme 4 will be MORE than capable of handling any overclock that all-in-one watercooler can give you.

3) 16GB of ram is a waste of money - 8GB is enough to SIMULTANEOUSLY run battlefield 3, photoshop, AND 30 tabs in chrome... all at once, all very ram-heavy applications.

4) Get a single 780ti and don't worry about SLI and its scaling and drivers. As for the VRAM, seriously, not going to be an issue unless something very strange happens. That being said, it all depends on your monitor. If you get a 120Hz monitor, go with the 780ti, if you have a 1080p, 60hz monitor, a single 780 will max games for a long time.

5) Ditch the 256GB expensive SSD for a 120GB Samsung EVO. Yes, even if you can afford the larger SSD, there's going to be no use for it. Remember that most games gain absolutely no benefit other than a slightly faster initial load from being on an SSD. The only ones you want to consider putting on an SSD are MMORPGs to get rid of the loading screens, and games like half-life or skyrim for the same reason. Then consider that the 120GB drive still gives you about 60GB after installing windows 7, or 80GB after installing windows 8, and you're covered. (Also remember that dual-booting windows 7 and 8 from the same drive is going to give you huge corruption issues if you can even get it to install, so if that's what you're thinking, you need two drives.)

6) With a 780 ti, you only need a 650w unit, and that's a very pricey unit. I highly suggest the Seasonic X-650, which is a very good PSU at a very reasonable price.

7) You have all these incredibly expensive parts, and then a relatively cheap case. Either get a Fractal Design R4, which is soundproofed, or consider building with the micro-ATX form factor to have a smaller computer. (remember you would then need a m-ATX motherboard, as well.)

8) Don't get a razor keyboard, they aren't built particularly well. Get an actual branded mechanical keyboard. It will last you forever and a day, and it feels like typing on a cloud of boobs.
 


That's a very bad way to approach things, sorry...

Future proofing doesn't exist, period. Think about how fast technology evolves, and think about where it might be in 5 years. Think about what graphics cards we had five years ago. (The flagship was the GTX 295.)

You are far, far better off both money-wise and performance wise buying a graphics card that meets your expectations now, and then selling & upgrading it in the future, rather than spending big on, say, two 770s when you aren't going to need anything close to their performance and will then be stuck with a pair of five year old cards.
 

richaxes

Honorable
Apr 20, 2012
8
0
10,510
Thank you guys! In the meantime a friend of mine came up with something interesting:

ASUS SABERTOOTH X79
INTEL Core i7-4930K
Noctua NH-D15 (available in a month hopefully)
CORSAIR 16GB Vengeance Pro DDR3 1600MHz CL9 KIT
ASUS POSEIDON-GTX780-P-3GD5 (later upgradable to watercooling)
WD 1TB Caviar Blue 7200rpm 64MB SATA3 WD10EZEX
SAMSUNG 120GB SATA3 2.5" 840 EVO x2
CORSAIR Obsidian Series 750D
FSP AURUM 92+ 650 v. COOLERMASTER V850

What do you think? I know that an X79 setup would be much better right now if I want to think ahead but this is just a little bit over my price range...
 

richaxes

Honorable
Apr 20, 2012
8
0
10,510


Thank you for the toughtful post!

I'm going to reconsider my build along your guidelines and see what I can come up with.
 

richaxes

Honorable
Apr 20, 2012
8
0
10,510


I get you, and it totally makes sense, so I'm not going to go the SLI way then.
 


That's an interesting build, but again, it matters what you're doing with it. Certain parts, such as the case, power supply, watercooling, are wonderful places to put money in, because you can keep using them over time. As the computer industry is evolving, the CPU and motherboard are rapidly becoming long-term parts as well... an i5-2600k from three years ago is still more than capable of handling any modern game with no more than a tiny overclock.

The interesting thing is that the LGA 2011 sets don't keep up with this. That means that right now, a Haswell chip is faster than an i7-3930k when it comes to single-threaded performance, AND overclocks better.

The extreme chips have the advantage of having two extra cores plus more lanes of PCIe bandwidth, but the desktop chips are soon going to have DDR4 and PCIe 4.0, which will take a while for the extreme chips to catch up on. On top of that, they have worse single threaded performance and produce much more heat.

It's up to you, but I would personally go for the value of the i5s over the extreme i7s... the only time I would change that would be if you had an application that you relied on that was able to take good advantage of the 6 cores available to it.
 

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