Thoughts on my first gaming PC build? ($1300)

Your better off with this:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-4690K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor ($219.99 @ Micro Center)
Motherboard: MSI Z97 PC MATE ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($80.85 @ OutletPC)
Memory: Kingston HyperX Fury Black 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1866 Memory ($41.99 @ 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: Sapphire Radeon R9 390X 8GB Tri-X Video Card ($408.98 @ Newegg)
Case: NZXT S340 (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case ($59.99 @ Micro Center)
Power Supply: SeaSonic X Series 850W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($130.99 @ Newegg)
Monitor: Acer GN246HL 144Hz 24.0" Monitor ($207.58 @ Newegg)
Total: $1287.59
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-10-25 20:48 EDT-0400

It has a much better GPU and the motherboard and PSU supports another one for crossfire in the future.. You don't need skylake, if you want to pay extra for skylake go ahead, includes 24" 1080p 144 hz monitor in the price, if you remove it you can get skylake + the latest and fastest GPU

if you link the parts to show directly on this site instead of just a partpicker link you may get more feedback.
but noobgamer's setup for you is pretty nice.

I have issues with this build I'm not fond of the reliability of Acer monitors. Same goes for Sapphire Video cards and MSI motherboards.

I like the first build with the 6600k CPU. At least it's the newer socket 1151 and an Asus board board which I prefer.

I'm not a fan of Samsung either due to reliability issues. I like Crucial SSD. They may not be as fast but an SSD is so fast anyways it's like comparing Lambo to Ferrari.

As for power supplies both choices were good but I'm an Antec fan again due to reliability. NZXT cases are nice but there are some quality issues. The few Corsair cases I've worked with have been beautiful. Design isn't everything...quality is a big thing in cases. I don't care how good the look and layout of drive cages are if the quick release tabs are a pain to use and they all break. I want top quality construction when it comes to cases.

I never used an NZXT case and I'll admin the design of them is superb. But I've read some stories about their quality not being up to par with Corsair, Silverstone, Lian Li, Antec, etc....

As for the video card. Get what you can afford. 2GB of onboard video is good enough for 1080p. If you plan on gaming at 1440P or 4K then it's worth paying extra for the 4GB+ models. AMD has eyefinity while NVidia has lower power consumption and access to the shield streaming gaming service if that interests you. I also seem to notice more games performing better or supporting NVidia. That being said I currently use AMD because they are usually a bit better value.

As for video card brands. I prefer Asus and Gigabyte. I've also read great things about HIS and own a couple of them myself with no issues. I've use cheaper brands like Sapphire and Powercolor in the past with reliability issues. I used MSI products years ago and grew to hate them. Not reliable at all. Things may have changed in the past 8 years.

So I guess you didn't like anything mostly because of brand? well.. you're a very picky person, this might not work for you, but it might work for op, I can assure you Sapphire cards and MSI are known to be the best AMD card brands currently with the best cooling, it has three fan coolers to keep the card cool, MSI are good too, but sapphire is better, gigabyte are HORRIBLE, as for the motherboard, this is an all time favorite motherboard for medium budget builds with AMD cards because it supports crossfire, personally I prefer Asus over MSI if I had the choice, but MSI comes second, as for the power supply, I was about to choose evga but then decided to go a bit more premuim and went seasonic and 850w as a future-proof in case OP wants to add another 390x..

For you might think Nvidea always rule, but I say no, Nvidea are ruling on the edge, they are best at low end low budget GPUs (like the gtx 750 ti and gtx 950) and the High End (like the gtx 980 ti and titan x) but since the release of the 300 series from AMD and DX12 (not really a factor but wanted to add that because it's true ) it has been ruling in the mid-(low)high GPUs, for example we all know that the r9 380 beats the gtx 960, and the r9 390 has the same or give or take better performance as the gtx 970, except it has 8gb of vram, for $300-330, and the 390x has the same performance or give and take a bit less performance than the gtx 980, with 8gb BUT it's only $399-409 as oppose to $500 with 4 gb, after that gtx 980 ti wins over the fury x..

About the monitor, Acer is up there with Asus (of course Asus might be better) IDK how to explain it to you, but I guess that's your preference.

About the ssd, really? how did you run into reliability issues worse than crucial with Samsung ssds? were you running raid 0? Sumsung 850 Evos are known to be reliable SSDs, I haven't run into any issues so far..

THe s340 is one of the most famous NZXT cases out there with the NZXT H440, they are only bad when comes to cheap cases like the source 220, but this is very good quality..

Something I might agree on is that OP doesn't need an r9 390x, he could've been fine with an r9 390, but I think he would appreciate the extra performance over a more premium case or brand

The CPU, again you don't NEED the latest Skylake CPU, if he wants to spend the extra money on a "newer" cpu he can go ahead, same goes with everything else, you seem to want the "best of the best" but remember there is a budget and we don't want to sacrifice some performance for it, I could've went with a corsair case + Asus MoBo + Crucial SSD + Antec PSU, but do you really need it? no.


I think things have really changed over those 7 years...

You get my point, have a nice day

P.S. excuse my English if it's all over the place..

I am biased based on many years of selling this stuff. I know which stuff required more RMAs over others. I am also biased based on ease of RMA and length of time to get a replacement.

I also hate when a manufacturer takes forever to get proper drivers and firmware to market. One reason I was always a Crative Labs hater. Lack of drivers. And another reason I never liked Asus for many years. Their website was frequently down and you couldn't get drivers when you needed them. They have improved their act.

I'm going to have to consider NZXT next time. They are getting so much praise it's hard to ignore them.

As for Sapphire. I know they are regarded as the best AMD card but when you go through as many cards as I have it's hard to ignore the high failure rate. Currently Asus seems to give me the lowest failure rate among video cards.

As for the Skylake dabate. If I was purchasing today I would highly consider them. Just to get the Socket 1151. Otherwise I would maybe cheap out and go for an AMD FX 8300 series to hold me over until Zen comes along and prices stabilize. Intel is way overpriced now and it's a bad time to be buying Skylake value wise.

This is also a gaming system, so DirectX 12 will breath some life into the AMD processors. With the 8 cores I think it'll improve their performance a bit. Those FX processors also overclock quite well. You could also go with the 6 cores at incredible prices and overclock and spend the money on a video card.

they're not really that expensive for what they offer. it's really only mid-tier but are deigned pretty nice compared to other $125-150 full ATX versions that came out at the time. i deliberated over one of those or the Corsair 500R that i ended up getting for quite some time. just went with the Corsair for it's slightly more "sleek" design.

pretty good choice system-wide.
only differences i might go for is a 3-fan GPU for a little better temp at higher clocks. and definitely a 390X over a 980 for relative price vs performance. plus the 8GB vs 4GB does make a big deal now with GDDR5 cards and newer games.
maybe a larger sized 1440p monitor. @ 1080p the power of your GPU becomes slight overkill. though if you plan on hitting 120 or 144 fps with every game it may suit.
and if you're considering an SSD, Samsung does make the top rated and most reliable out there.

Nice build. XFX was always considered the Rolls Royce of video cards. A bit more expensive then the rest but with the lifetime warranty. Only problem is tons of horror stories concerning customer support if you do need warranty.

The coolermaster case was once considered one of the best cases going. And you're right, choosing a good case now will mean it'll be with you through many upgrades. It's a one time purchase.

I like the BenQ monitors. I've always enjoyed the ones I used.

And for Samsung SSDs. I'll have to consider them next time. They probably got the controller right this time around. Not too long ago many companies had issues with their controllers and Intel and Crucial were considered the reliable couple. I wonder how Samsung's RMA service is? If they don't hassle RMA I have no issue giving them a shot seeing as how they are the best buy on the market now.

I notice you don't have an SSD listed on your build? Is the money saved from the SSD paying for the extra case, monitor, etc...

Overall a wonderful system and you can save up and get an SSD at any time in the future.