Help with customization for desktop for two kids

Piedmontprep · Jun 22, 2014

I am customizing a computer for my 2 children and I am way out of my depth.
Could anyone please tell me if this configuration will suffice?
I have a NZXT phantom 410 case filled with;
an internal bluetooth/wireless N module (or would it be better to have external dongles? The wifi is 150mbps and I could buy a 900mbps dongle instead),
Intel Core i7-4790 Processor,
Liquid CPU Cooling System [SOCKET-1150] with the ARC silent high performance fan,
8gb Corsair Vengeance (is the G.Skill Ripjaws better though?),
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 (2GB),
Gigabyte GA-Z97-D3H (there are over 20 mobo options and I have no clue, this one was checked already),
700W OCZ ModXStream Pro - 80 PLUS power supply,
128 GB SanDisk SATA III 6.0Gb/s SSD (Primary hard drive),
1 TB HARD DRIVE -- 32M Cache, 7200 RPM, 6.0Gb/s (Data hard drive),
24x Dual Format/Double Layer DVD±R/±RW + CD-R/RW Drive.
I also have the option of having Tuniq TX-2 High Performance Thermal Compound being used for a small extra fee.
My kids are taking coding and game design classes. My son, 11, is using Unity, Python, etc. and wants to build 3D first person shooter games (of course). My daughter, 7, is using Scratch only at the moment. They play MineCraft and love Pixelmods. They will not be playing WoW, Battlefield or Crysis or any other M-rated game that my son actually wants to play anytime soon lol. They have an xbox 360 and a ps3 and iPads to play most games on. Anyway, their instructor recommended the i7 processor and the Nvidia 760 (at least) to me and I built from there. Right now the computer stands at $1224.00. Will this computer be sufficient for them for a couple of years? Thank you so much!

13thmonkey · Jun 22, 2014

it would help if you told us three things:
what they/you want to do with it
what you've picked so far
what your budget is

Piedmontprep · Jun 22, 2014

13thmonkey :

Sorry! For some reason my post got truncated. I fixed it. Thank you so much!

13thmonkey · Jun 22, 2014

that'll be as good as it gets basically and will last as well as anything might.

The 760 is a reasonable card, from a coding point of view any modern card would do just as well, but the 760 is just below 'enthusiast' grade and so you are getting a decent amount of bang for buck.

The i7 i'm a little surprised at its not necessary for coding an i5 would be perfectly fine.

With regards to the build:
The PSU is too big - would be better to go for 600W ish
You don't need liquid cooling, something like a hyper 212 would be cheaper and just as cool, but quieter.
Get 16gb of ram, if they are coding then they may want to create virtual machines, they eat RAM and hence more is better. Ram is basically all the same so any 1600/1866 ram will do for your purposes.
Consider not getting the 4790k, I say this because the k series processors lose some of the advanced virtualisation features that the non-k's do have, in normal circumstances k is great, here maybe not so if they are serious about coding.
All mobo's are basically the same unless you are seriously overclocking, or need two GPU's working together or want some particular options, so here 2nd or 3rd from the bottom in price from gigabyte/asus or asrock would be good.

Be aware that in the PC universe things can move quickly, you have a near top of range i7 (the non k is also near top of range) the i5 is also near top of range apart from for certain application types (video encoding for instance). So in 2-3 years you might need to incrementally add to the machine, the most likely culprit would be to replace the 760. with a 960 or whatever is out at that time. This is inevitable - Just trying to set your expectations here. But you'll have a good core of a machine that might survive 1-2 GPU upgrades.

Piedmontprep · Jun 22, 2014

13thmonkey :

that'll be as good as it gets basically and will last as well as anything might.

The 760 is a reasonable card, from a coding point of view any modern card would do just as well, but the 760 is just below 'enthusiast' grade and so you are getting a decent amount of bang for buck.

The i7 i'm a little surprised at its not necessary for coding an i5 would be perfectly fine.

With regards to the build:
The PSU is too big - would be better to go for 600W ish
You don't need liquid cooling, something like a hyper 212 would be cheaper and just as cool, but quieter.
Get 16gb of ram, if they are coding then they may want to create virtual machines, they eat RAM and hence more is better. Ram is basically all the same so any 1600/1866 ram will do for your purposes.
Consider not getting the 4790k, I say this because the k series processors lose some of the advanced virtualisation features that the non-k's do have, in normal circumstances k is great, here maybe not so if they are serious about coding.
All mobo's are basically the same unless you are seriously overclocking, or need two GPU's working together or want some particular options, so here 2nd or 3rd from the bottom in price from gigabyte/asus or asrock would be good.

Be aware that in the PC universe things can move quickly, you have a near top of range i7 (the non k is also near top of range) the i5 is also near top of range apart from for certain application types (video encoding for instance). So in 2-3 years you might need to incrementally add to the machine, the most likely culprit would be to replace the 760. with a 960 or whatever is out at that time. This is inevitable - Just trying to set your expectations here. But you'll have a good core of a machine that might survive 1-2 GPU upgrades.

I just checked on the website and the only other option from the liquid cooling is a standard cup fan and heatsink. Is that sufficient? Also can the RAM be upgraded at a later date to 32gb? I've upgraded RAM in a desktop before but that was nearly 20 years ago lol. Thank you so very much for all of your time. I appreciate it.

13thmonkey · Jun 22, 2014

you are unlikely to need 32GB, and some versions of windows won't support it, and it requires a move from a more standard 4x4GB to 4x8GB, if you specified 16GB as 2x8 then yes you can but there may be compatability issues further down the line, additionally in 2 years time, DDR4 will be more common and DDR3 might be getting expensive and rare, like DDR2 is now.

A stock fan will be fine if you are not overclocking, and the 4790 (if you go for it) runs cooler than the 4770. Fans are easy enough to replace. The point of mentioning the HS fan is that you may think you are getting more than you are actually getting and i was trying to save some cost for you. If they only do water (at what price) or stock (which should be free) then I'd ask if they are really a good shop, as they are not offering a middle ground, only expensive options.

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Help with customization for desktop for two kids

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