Help On My First Gaming PC

...please tell me you aren't buying this from a computer boutique.

Because you are getting absolutely scammed if you are for that price, and should not buy it. Period.

I strongly, STRONGLY suggest you look at a youtube video of how to build a computer. You can build a computer that runs circles around that one for less money with WAY more reliable parts and not wasting money on stupid things.

Building a computer seriously is not difficult - it's LEGOs for adults, and with the help of a youtube video, can be accomplished by the average 11-year old.

Wow, some of the people here have been pretty mean. Lay off him (or her), it's their first. I recently built my first, and I know what it's like. To start with, you don't need an i7 for gaming (unless you're video editing), get an i5 4670 (not 4670k if you're not overclocking) and use that $100 on a better GPU. A GTX 770 is nice. The rest is fine, but you could save yourself some money by getting a 1600MHz RAM not a 2133MHz. Hope I helped.

Anyways, to further the advice, here's what I would do:

1) Ditch the i7. It gives you no benefit when you're gaming, and even for video editing, is $100 more for a slight reduction in render times. Dovakitty's suggestion of an i5-4670 is a great one if you don't want to overclock, but I would carry it down to an i5-4440, which will perform much the same but is cheaper.

2) This computer doesn't have an SSD, and you'll want one. I would get a 120GB Samsung EVO.

3) Ditch the 2133MHz ram, you aren't going to see much benefit from it. Get 2x4GB of 1600MHz, Cas 9 ram, and you're good to go.

4) That's a somewhat overpriced motherboard, and I don't care for it much. I would suggest the AsRock z87 Extreme 4 if you're interested in overclocking and bought the "k" cpu, or the AsRock H87M Pro4 if you aren't.

5) You need a better video card. That's the bit that baffles me about a lot of prebuilts - you're taking a $320 CPU and pairing it with a GPU that costs half of that at most, and calling it a "Gaming PC!" The rule of thumb is to spend twice on your graphics card what you spend on your CPU.. so I would be looking at Dovahkitty's suggestion of a GTX 770. The other option, if you don't care about running the ultra preset, is a GTX 760, which is still a pretty dang good card.

6) You don't even list what your power supply is. The power supply is THE MOST IMPORTANT part in your computer. If it's something that got cheaped out on (which prebuilt manufacturers do), then it's more likely to fail... and when it does fail, it could light on fire, or fry the entire rest of your computer. Buy a quality power supply so that you don't have to worry about those things. If you get a 770, I would buy at least a 550w unit of very good make; seasonic is always good, antec is nearly always good, everything Corsair except for their CX line is good.


Again, TheJHigg, please go watch a few youtube videos on how to put a computer together. It's really very easy, and it's a far far better idea than buying a prebuilt. That way you aren't given an unbalanced computer that's got cheap parts wherever they could be hidden, all while paying $1-200 just for the convenience of having it built already.

Your first time building a computer, if you watch a youtube video through and then go back and watch it again, pausing it to complete each step, you should be able to build your computer in an afternoon. Surely that's worth being able to put $200 either in your pocket or into better parts for your rig.