New Rig $2,000 budget.

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
Nonpossible

Nonpossible

Distinguished
Jan 3, 2015
467
0
18,960
Recently came into some money and wanted to splurge a little on my next rig. Budget is 2k, I'm thinking skylake for the CPU but am unsure of how to make the best of 2 thousand dollars.

Looking to game at 1080p or higher and 60FPS. I also do a bit of programming in JAVA and run some VMs and server software. (So maybe i7 would be best?)

Not needed in the budget:

Operating System
Keyboard/Mouse
Headset
 
Solution
James Mason
This is a bit under 2k, too give you some room for taxes. But it can do 1080p gaming at 144+FPS, and 1440p at 60+FPS. 4k is still not really easy to do without spending too much money or making too many trade offs. Games won't use more than 16GBs and 16GBs should give you plenty of room for not super intensive VM/server software work. The ram is also a pretty good speed, so that will speed up any memory intensive applications. The motherboard also has Wireless AC, so if you want to use wireless you can (assuming you also have an wireless AC router) of speeds up to 1.3 Gigabits (or 166 Megabytes) per second.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-6700K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor...
Sort by date Sort by votes
James Mason

James Mason

Titan
Jan 2, 2014
13,553
7
74,965
This is a bit under 2k, too give you some room for taxes. But it can do 1080p gaming at 144+FPS, and 1440p at 60+FPS. 4k is still not really easy to do without spending too much money or making too many trade offs. Games won't use more than 16GBs and 16GBs should give you plenty of room for not super intensive VM/server software work. The ram is also a pretty good speed, so that will speed up any memory intensive applications. The motherboard also has Wireless AC, so if you want to use wireless you can (assuming you also have an wireless AC router) of speeds up to 1.3 Gigabits (or 166 Megabytes) per second.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-6700K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor ($419.50 @ Newegg)
CPU Cooler: NZXT Kraken X61 106.1 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler ($128.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: MSI Z170A Tomahawk AC ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($149.99 @ Amazon)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3000 Memory ($99.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 500GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($159.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Western Digital BLACK SERIES 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($119.75 @ OutletPC)
Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB Video Card ($649.99 @ B&H)
Case: Phanteks Enthoo Pro ATX Full Tower Case ($109.99 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA GS 650W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($89.98 @ Mac Mall)
Total: $1918.17
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-01-13 13:11 EST-0500
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Solution
Nonpossible

Nonpossible

Distinguished
Jan 3, 2015
467
0
18,960


Thanks for the suggestion, looks like a pretty good build!
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
kwa-e

kwa-e

Admirable
Mar 1, 2015
2,835
0
7,460


What do you think of using a 5820K instead?, You can probably run the VM on the last two cores while you leave the first four cores for gaming at the same time.

And the 980ti seems pretty overkill, though it should last a long time at 1080P
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
James Mason

James Mason

Titan
Jan 2, 2014
13,553
7
74,965


I did think about that, but I figured the higher clock speed as well as lower power consumption and thus heat generation of the skylake would win out. A VM probably doesn't need more than 1 thread anyways, and you don't need more than 4 threads for gaming anyways.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
king3pj

king3pj

Distinguished
Feb 19, 2013
1,638
0
20,460


I don't think a 980Ti is overkill. If you are going to spend $2000 on a gaming PC I think that card is pretty much a requirement.

To the OP, since you were interested in maybe going higher than 1080p I recommend a 2560x1440 monitor. I got one a couple weeks ago as an upgrade from 1080p and I'm actually surprised how much of a difference it made. I also went from a 22" 1080p monitor to a 25" 1440p monitor so the size increase may have contributed to the major visual improvement I am seeing as well. I got this Acer from Amazon for about $250 so it's not even a particularly high end monitor and I still love it.

http://www.amazon.com/Acer-G257HU-smidpx-25-Inch-Widescreen/dp/B00QS0AKVK/ref=sr_1_1?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1452796262&sr=1-1&keywords=1440p+monitor

My PC has 2 GTX 970s in SLI which is pretty similar to a single 980Ti in terms of performance. My setup has handled 2560x1440 at 60 FPS in all the games I have thrown at it so I would say a 980Ti would be a great card for that resolution.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Nonpossible

Nonpossible

Distinguished
Jan 3, 2015
467
0
18,960

I should have mentioned I needed a monitor included int he 2k budget. Thanks for your suggestions, looks great!
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Nonpossible

Nonpossible

Distinguished
Jan 3, 2015
467
0
18,960


I kind of had my heart set on Skylake, but I will explore the 5820k option as well.

 
Upvote 0 Downvote
James Mason

James Mason

Titan
Jan 2, 2014
13,553
7
74,965
Yeah, it's not that hard to fit a 1440p monitor into the budget either, just cut back on storage and cooling a little is all.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-6700K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor ($418.57 @ OutletPC)
CPU Cooler: NZXT Kraken X41 106.1 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler ($99.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: MSI Z170A Tomahawk AC ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($149.99 @ Amazon)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3000 Memory ($99.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($89.88 @ OutletPC)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($49.98 @ OutletPC)
Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB Video Card ($649.99 @ B&H)
Case: Phanteks Enthoo Pro ATX Full Tower Case ($107.99 @ NCIX US)
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA GS 650W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($87.34 @ Amazon)
Monitor: Acer G257HU smidpx 60Hz 25.0" Monitor ($254.10 @ B&H)
Total: $2007.82
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-01-14 15:08 EST-0500

Unless you're a serious overclocker or have a ton of big data items you'll be fine.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Nonpossible

Nonpossible

Distinguished
Jan 3, 2015
467
0
18,960

I do plan on doing a modest overclock, and I have about 4Tb of data on a LaCie external HDD that I will be backing up eventually.

 
Upvote 0 Downvote
king3pj

king3pj

Distinguished
Feb 19, 2013
1,638
0
20,460
I strongly prefer 1440p to 144Hz for about the same price as the monitor you selected but that is definitely a personal preference choice. I just think that higher resolution is a more noticeable difference than framerates above 60.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom