$1200 Gaming PC Evaluation

Franco-Bazzone

Reputable
May 27, 2014
23
0
4,510
Rate on a Scale of 1-10. Suggestions are appreciated.

CPU - Intel Core i5-6600K

Cooling Solution - Corsair Hydro Series H100i GTX

Graphics Card - EVGA GeForce GTX 970 FTW

RAM - Crucial Ballistix Sport LT 8GB 2 x 4GB DDR4-2400

Mother Board - ASUS Z170-AR LGA 1151 ATX

PSU - Corsair HX Series HX750

HDD - Seagate Barracuda 2TB 7,200 RPM SATA III 6Gb/s

CD/DVD Drive - ASUS DRW-24B1ST

Case - NZXT Phantom 240 (White)

Case Fans - Corsair Air Series AF120 LED Blue x2

NIC Card - TP-LINK TL-WN881ND

OS - Windows 10 Pro (64-Bit)

*A Samsung 850 EVO 500GB SSD will be bought later and the HDD will be duplicated onto the SSD.*
 

XiPH3R

Distinguished
Dec 9, 2014
479
0
18,960
7/10. could have gone with a cheaper cpu like the i5 4590 with the hyper 212 evo, 8gb of ddr3 ram and a little cheaper motherboard and you would have saved enough to afford a much beefier GPU like the r9 fury, which will perform much better in games than your current build
 

Ra_V_en

Honorable
Jan 17, 2014
1,296
0
11,960
8/10 - thats plain personal rate.
2 negative points for:
- HDD i simply hate Seagate due to their failure rate, I'd rather have 128 GB SSD + 1 GB Caviar Blue
- WIFI card... wireless + online gaming looks like trouble with stable connection and low packet loss. Consider cable over wifi at all cost.
There rest is rather fine, I personally would go a bit different way tho... more cores + HT, more RAM, H100i is a waste of cash imo especially for i5.

 

kanchyhemboy

Reputable
Oct 4, 2015
10
0
4,520
What resolution are you looking to play at?
if 1080p, then its a 9/10. Otherwise, it would be wiser to get a better gpu, by minimising in other areas. And, when are you buying? I would say its wiser to wait a month if u can, seeing as how black friday is close
Edit:8/10, seeing the review on the case
 
Here's my suggestion:
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-6600K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor ($259.99 @ B&H)
CPU Cooler: Phanteks PH-TC14PE_BK 78.1 CFM CPU Cooler ($69.99 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: Asus Z170-A ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($153.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-3000 Memory ($64.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($84.89 @ OutletPC)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($52.33 @ OutletPC)
Video Card: MSI Radeon R9 390 8GB Video Card ($313.98 @ Newegg)
Case: Phanteks Enthoo Pro ATX Full Tower Case ($79.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: EVGA 750W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($90.99 @ NCIX US)
Optical Drive: Asus DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS DVD/CD Writer ($17.89 @ OutletPC)
Total: $1189.03
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-10-20 11:39 EDT-0400

I haven't included an OS but you can buy 7, 8, or 10 (pick whatever you can find the cheapest because you can upgrade for free to windows 10).
I chose the r9 390 because: The best price/performance gpu now. Only consumes 40-60w more than a gtx 970 and it is more powerful, especially at higher resolution.
Even if you have a 1080p monitor you can use virtual super resolution to play at 1440p or even 4K on some title so the extra vram will be beneficial
(altough it isn't powerful enough to use 8gb of vram, it can use more than 4gb at 1080p on certain games).
ALSO GCN architecture is more optimised for Directx 12 (right now) because Mantle was used for the development of DX 12
(can use asynchronous compute as opposed to Nvidia, which is not yet optimised for that) But keep in mind that there is no gpu on the market today(maybe next year) that has full DX 12 capability.
P.S. I am building a Skylake pc (but with the i7 and went with the same msi gpu)
The PSU is very high quality (I have the 850w model myself).
I picked high clocked ram because Skylake architecture scales well with faster memory.
The Cpu cooler is very good for the price and you can overclock with no problem (also matches the color of the mobo). I wouldn't get an Closed loop liquid cooler as thay are expensive and have poor performance/noise ratio.
The case I picked is a good choice (usually costs ~100$) and much better quality than your chosen NZXT. Other great choices: Corsair **r series , Fractal Design r4/r5 etc. If you absolutely want an NZXT case pick the Phantom 530.
The 120gb of the Evo does not really worth it (If yoy don't have budget for the ssd then just pick the WD hdd, and get the ssd later). Also, WD10ezex is higher quality than the seagate drive you've picked.
In terms of wifi card (I still recommend to try to use ethernet cable as it's faster and stable) I recommend the TP-Link TL-WDN4800.

In conclusion, this build will perform very good and will last you a good while (also looking good).