Is this a good parts list?

Weak1ings

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Nov 2, 2013
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I have assembled a part list for a friend who is looking into buying a non-laptop PC to get excellent performance at a budget and here is what I came up with;
http://pcpartpicker.com/user/Weak1ings/saved/9Rqrxr
The parts I chose are favorites from my favorite brands for the most part and serious research about the performance and particular products and experiences. And yes, I do value the optical drive.
So, what are your opinions and critiques?


Now for a personal build for myself, I wanted to get as much power out of $1000 as I could and here goes;
http://pcpartpicker.com/user/Weak1ings/saved/Qg6NnQ
I do know the Xeon is locked but I think the 4 extra threads will outperform even a 5 Ghz OC in multithreaded apps.
Please refer to this build as #2
What are your thoughts? A few goals I accomplished with this list is;
GTX 970 in < $100 build
Great CPU
Mini-itx?
atleast 1 TB memory and 8 GB of RAM
A Seasonic PSU.
Blu-writer.
 
Solution
No, probably not as games are using LESS RAM in most cases now. Ram use is NOT what is holding games back AT ALL.

8gb RAM is still the sweet spot for gaming and it will be for a long time. 16gb is pointless.
It will be much slower than a normal HDD as it uses "sleep states" which take extra spin up time to awake from. Makes opening things slow. Just get a WD Blue or Seagate Barracuda.

2x4 RAM performs better thann 1x8. Your buddy will not ever need 16gb so get him 2x4gb. For you, if you render or encode, then 16gb might be helpful, otherwise just get and and stick with it.
 

Weak1ings

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Nov 2, 2013
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A question I have is; Will these pitiful consoles finally push devs into making use of more than 4 GB of RAM? If so, I think that 16 GB will be reasonable. compare this to having 4 GB of RAM in 2005.

As for the Hard drive I will change that asap.