1st Time PC build

Matthew Nguyen

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Hi, I am currently a freshman in high school and I recently found interest in building a computer. I am on an extreme budget due to my parents and I was wondering if this system is capable of playing casual games like league of legends or smite at max settings. If you can elaborate on this build please do so. (budget is max 450$)

I also already have a monitor, keyboard, and mouse so these peripherals are not needed.
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/FRDZHx
 
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The anti-static wrist band is more likely to snag on a part and knock it to the floor while you're working on the build than protect anything from a static shock. I wouldn't bother. There are ways to deal with static build up while building a computer that are acceptable compromises that don't involve wearing a leash.

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Personally I would only build a rig with the 860K if I intended to overclock it. Assuming this is for gaming, the 860K is going to need to be overclocked to the neighborhood of 4.4ghz+ to be competitive with an i3-4150. That would require a beefier motherboard and possibly a beefier HSF than the TX3... By the time we make the adjustment to support that the i3 is suddenly looking like the better value and...

mdocod

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The anti-static wrist band is more likely to snag on a part and knock it to the floor while you're working on the build than protect anything from a static shock. I wouldn't bother. There are ways to deal with static build up while building a computer that are acceptable compromises that don't involve wearing a leash.

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Personally I would only build a rig with the 860K if I intended to overclock it. Assuming this is for gaming, the 860K is going to need to be overclocked to the neighborhood of 4.4ghz+ to be competitive with an i3-4150. That would require a beefier motherboard and possibly a beefier HSF than the TX3... By the time we make the adjustment to support that the i3 is suddenly looking like the better value and we realize that the AMD option when used for gaming is more of a novelty than a better value. I'd probably build the novelty myself, because I'm like that, but I wouldn't advise it as a first choice to others. The i3-4150 has a known, awesome upgrade path, the 860K does not. The i3-4150 will run games as well as an overclocked 860K with a lower implementation cost.

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When building on budget boards with only 2 DIMM slots, you can start off with 1x8GB stick instead of 2x4GB so that you have a non-destructive upgrade path to 16GB. On paper it seems logical that "dual channel" would be a huge advantage (double the bandwidth), but it's more complicated than that. The bottleneck rarely lands squarely on memory bandwidth. Often, it is the access latency that becomes a larger component in the bottleneck with memory access. A single 8GB stick will be configured dual rank and allow the memory controller to operate in rank interleave mode, which improves access latency. In fact, in many workloads, especially on budget CPUs, the advantage of running rank interleave is comparable to the advantage of running channel interleave. Most 4GB DIMMs these days are being configured single rank to reduce cost.

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I notice the build is full of MIRs. MIRs are going to be the last thing you want to mess with when you start building the computer. Normally I would advise finding good deals that include shipping costs and don't involve having to fill out an MIR and hope it comes back. The build you have linked there is actually like $450 to the door....

I would advise something more like this:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i3-4150 3.5GHz Dual-Core Processor ($105.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: Biostar Hi-Fi H81S2 ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($52.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($73.08 @ Amazon)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($53.99 @ Directron)
Case: Cougar MX300 ATX Mid Tower Case ($39.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: Rosewill Capstone 450W 80+ Gold Certified ATX Power Supply ($59.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $386.02
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-01-14 08:19 EST-0500

I left the GPU out of it, as that's the one component where there's a lot to potentially gain by searching used, refurb, clearance, open-box, or filling out the one big fat MIR (like on the HD7770 you found).

The HD7770 is equivalent to the R7 250X. Not a bad card for gaming at 720P. It can do 1080P gaming with low visual quality settings in modern games. I think you would be well off to look for a used GTX660 or HD7870 for <$100.
 
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Matthew Nguyen

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Wow, I am definitely leaning towards your build as it looks much more reliable. I noticed that the case has USB 3.0 ports but the motherboard does not have USB 3.0 headers. Can I still use the port on the case?
Also, would an SSD be a worthy upgrade?

Thank you very much! You have fixed many of my confusions!
 

Wizard Bear

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There's nothing you can really do about not having on-board 3.0 headers, though you can easily buy a card. The ports on the case can't be used, so if that bothers you you may think about changing the board or case. As for an SSD, there's no reason to get one, especially because you're on such a tight budget. And I totally agree, i3 over the 860k.
 

mdocod

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Hi Matthew,

The MX300 has both a USB 2.0 and 3.0 port on the front, so you can use the 2.0 with the board I have there in the build commendation, the 3.0 "port" would remain "dead." Wizard makes a good point though, USB cards are an easy way to solve that later on (if you find yourself needing USB 3 for something, I have never used it personally, I don't own a single device that takes advantage of 3.0).

An SSD is always awesome. Makes for very zippy booting and loading and can be nice. I'm not sure how "tight" the budget really is here, or how much hard drive space you might need... I would only advise dropping the mechanical in favor of an SSD if you could afford to get a decent quality ~250GB size SSD instead (~$100), and if that was not going to compromise your CPU or GPU to an undesirably poor level. If you can manage to get an i3 haswell, GTX660 or HD7870 (or similar), and a ~250GB SSD all in there, then that would be really pretty nice. On the other hand, if getting that SSD means dropping the GPU down to that HD7770 or similar, then most people would probably tell you it's not worth it.
 

Matthew Nguyen

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Thank you :)
What is a decent graphics card under 200$ that can run League of Legends with ease on max settings?
I want the most out of money and I don't want any parts to disappoint me because I won't be getting any new parts for a while.
The amount of graphics cards is so much I do not know what to choose.
 

Matthew Nguyen

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Yeah I guess I will hold off the SSD for a year or so.
Will the i3 still perform tasks like internet browsing and documents at the same time very well? It has 2 cores and my uncle has 4 cores in his.
Sorry for the barrage of questions! :p
 

Matthew Nguyen

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The guy in the video said having extra cores is more effective. That means the X4 860k is better at computing right?
 

mdocod

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That only applies if you're comparing cores within the same architecture. In the case of the 860k vs i3, they have similar total execution resources, arranged differently. The arrangement of execution resources in the i3 provides better performance scaling in real-time workloads than the 860K.
 

Wizard Bear

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You're gonna want a good gpu, so I'm not sure what you were going to get prior to the budget increase. Go for an i5 if you can, but get a nicer motherboard with it(ASrock are nice and generally cheap),
 

mdocod

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If I'm understanding correctly, the budget is more like $650 now....

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PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-4460 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor ($179.99 @ NCIX US)
Motherboard: ASRock H97M PRO4 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($81.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: Mushkin Stealth 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($74.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($53.99 @ Directron)
Video Card: HIS Radeon R9 270X 2GB IceQ X² Video Card ($162.98 @ Newegg)
Case: Cooler Master N200 MicroATX Mid Tower Case ($39.99 @ NCIX US)
Power Supply: XFX TS 550W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($50.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $644.91
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-01-15 21:54 EST-0500

The above is what most people would advise. (skip the SSD)....

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Might be able to cram an SSD into it:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-4440 3.1GHz Quad-Core Processor ($174.99 @ NCIX US)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-B85M-D3H Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($74.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: Kingston Fury Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($66.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: OCZ ARC 100 240GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($99.29 @ Amazon)
Video Card: HIS Radeon R9 270X 2GB IceQ X² Video Card ($162.98 @ Newegg)
Case: Cooler Master N200 MicroATX Mid Tower Case ($39.99 @ NCIX US)
Power Supply: XFX TS 550W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($50.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $670.21
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-01-15 22:37 EST-0500

Would be $645 after that MIR on the PSU.