$1500 gaming pc, first build

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I would go with an ATX case. (Mid size tower) ATX is a standard size for the majority of motherboards. Mini ITX boards are less prevalent and may limit your options. Mine is the Antec 300 and I love it. The price for the Antec 300 would save you about $40 - $50.

Also, bump up the power supply to 600W. At that level you can add pretty much any single video card you want, even the big power hungry ones. Personally I'm a fan of "PC Power and Cooling" and Antec power supplies. Also, the one you chose is an ATX size power supply and may not fit into the mini ITX case you chose.

The liquid cooler you chose...
The power supply is a little light . You need 600 watts + for that build .
The Z97 motherboard can OC , but the processor can not . If you dont want to OC then use an H97 mb [ if they are available ]

The H60 cpu cooler is not a great cooler . I suggest you search for some reviews .

Use a dual channel kit of RAM . 2 x4 gig for better performance . Yes I know you plan to add more later .

Personally I would use the slightly larger Prodigy M case . And a m-ATX motherboard . That would give you a lot of other expansion options and you stop having to make compromises like one stick of RAM
 

Dovahkitty

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Dec 19, 2013
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Hello.
Just a few minor tweaks:
I would go with an i5 4690k instead, and your motherboard will still be compatible. Rather than the H60, an H80i might be better. It's a better CPU cooler - and the 4690k is overclockable, and is fine for gaming - the i7 is overkill. Hyperthreading is totally unnecessary.
:) hope I helped.
 


I would go with an ATX case. (Mid size tower) ATX is a standard size for the majority of motherboards. Mini ITX boards are less prevalent and may limit your options. Mine is the Antec 300 and I love it. The price for the Antec 300 would save you about $40 - $50.

Also, bump up the power supply to 600W. At that level you can add pretty much any single video card you want, even the big power hungry ones. Personally I'm a fan of "PC Power and Cooling" and Antec power supplies. Also, the one you chose is an ATX size power supply and may not fit into the mini ITX case you chose.

The liquid cooler you chose really isn't that great. Big air cooling is often better and cheaper than liquid cooling unless it's a fairly large liquid cooling system then liquid cooling is king. But the bigger liquid cooling systems are typically much more expensive. The Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus is fairly cheap and would do a better job. Typically big air cooling is defined by tower coolers with 120mm fans or bigger. To get that kind of cooling from a liquid cooling system the cost can get kinda high, so personally I stick with airflow. Which for my case 2x 120mm fans on the front, 1x 120mm fan on the side (near the video card, 1x 120mm fan in the back (included with the Antec 300) and 1x 140mm fan on the top (included with the Antec 300) means lots of airflow and no temp issues even when highly overclocked.

Spend more and get two sticks of that memory because then it will run in dual channel mode. (much faster)

If you absolutely must keep the mini ITX size then just make sure that power supply will fit. Also that video card might be too big to fit as well. Do the dual channel memory regardless of what you decide.

The rest is fine but I would save money by getting a Core i5 instead... The i7 doesn't offer much of an advantage unless you consider a higher price an advantage! LOL Take a look at the article here on Tomshardware.com that comes out monthly called "Best Gaming CPU's for the Money". Go ahead and trust their recommendations depending on how much you want to spend.
 
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6londie

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Aug 1, 2014
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Thanks for all of the feedback!
I went with the prodigy because I liked the small compact design. I also wanted a brightly colored case. I was also planning to upgrade to 16 gb of ram sooner down the road. I chose the i7 because I am planning to do some recording of videos while gaming, but if it is overkill, then I could change it.
 

Teemi

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Aug 22, 2014
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If it's your first time building, I would seriously reconsider the case. I know you like a compact design, but if you look at the compatibility notes, it's not even certain that the case can fit everything you want. Also it's more likely that a smaller case will have more airflow issues and issues with upgrades.
 

Teemi

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Aug 22, 2014
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The case is better, but I don't understand why you have two video cards and 4 sticks of ram. Why do you have two solid state drives? Just get one sdd and 1 tb hdd.

Edit: That's a lot of space to take up. I would stick with one stronger video card and 2 sticks of ram 8 gbs each. I am not sure about the wireless adapter. With these small cases you have to be creative about how you arrange things. You might have to take out drive bays etc.