First pc build (looking for help/suggestions)

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geofelt
Build looks good and appropriate.
Second the cryorig H7 cooler.

FWIW.
I will never again build without a ssd for the "C" drive. It makes everything you do much quicker.
120gb is minimum, it will hold the os and a handful of games. If you can go 240gb, you may never need a hard drive.

I would defer on the hard drive unless you need to store large files such as video's.
It is easy to add a hard drive later.
Samsung EVO is a good choice.

Some first time tips:

Buy yourself a #2 magnetic tip Philips head screwdriver for assembly.

While waiting for delivery, download and read the motherboard and case manuals cover to cover.

Parts are keyed and will fit only one way. Do not force anything.

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turkey3_scratch

turkey3_scratch

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Jul 15, 2014
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Get a Hyper 212 EVO instead of the water cooler:
7850K_OC.png

INTEL_NOISE.png


Or, preferably, get a Cryorig H7 cooler.
 
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geofelt

geofelt

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Oct 9, 2006
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Build looks good and appropriate.
Second the cryorig H7 cooler.

FWIW.
I will never again build without a ssd for the "C" drive. It makes everything you do much quicker.
120gb is minimum, it will hold the os and a handful of games. If you can go 240gb, you may never need a hard drive.

I would defer on the hard drive unless you need to store large files such as video's.
It is easy to add a hard drive later.
Samsung EVO is a good choice.

Some first time tips:

Buy yourself a #2 magnetic tip Philips head screwdriver for assembly.

While waiting for delivery, download and read the motherboard and case manuals cover to cover.

Parts are keyed and will fit only one way. Do not force anything.

 
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Solution
G

gondo

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Apr 20, 2004
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SSD is a must. It's a given nowadays. 256Gb minimum. I like Crucial for reliability, Samsung for horsepower, and Intel for overpriced overall greatness.

I agree a good heatsink is cheaper, works better than a bad liquid cooler, and is more reliable. The Cryorig is the best value, the Coolermaster 212 very good and easier to find, and the Noctuas are the cadillac of coolers although huge and overpriced. I'd go liquid before dropping a mortgage on a Noctua heatsink.

With liquid AIO is the best value and easy to install. Enermax, Fractal Designs, NZXT, Corsair are my preferences in that order. A step up is EKWB and Swiftech if you have the cash.

I prefer the Asus motherboards over Gigabyte, but as long as it has the features you need and it works, they are all the same I guess. I just had better luck with Asus overall over any other brand.
 
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J

Jonty123

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Mar 11, 2016
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Thanks for the advice one final question then, do you think the radeon R9 8GB is the better choice of graphic card over the GTX 970 4GB. The price was roughly the same and I was torn between the two.
 
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geofelt

geofelt

Titan
Oct 9, 2006
54,374
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Today, I would pick the GTX970.
It is a more efficient card and needs some 75w less power.
It will run cooler in your case.
Usually, the EVGA cards are well priced, at least in the USA.
One can not compare specs such as vram directly.

VRAM has become a marketing issue.
My understanding is that vram is more of a performance issue than a functional issue.
A game needs to have most of the data in vram that it uses most of the time.
Somewhat like real ram.
If a game needs something not in vram, it needs to get it across the pcie boundary
hopefully from real ram and hopefully not from a hard drive.
It is not informative to know to what level the available vram is filled.
Possibly much of what is there is not needed.
What is not known is the rate of vram exchange.
Vram is managed by the Graphics card driver, and by the game. There may be differences in effectiveness between amd and nvidia cards.
And differences between games.
Here is an older performance test comparing 2gb with 4gb vram.
http://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Video-Card-Performance-2GB-vs-4GB-Memory-154/
Spoiler... not a significant difference.
A more current set of tests shows the same results:
http://www.techspot.com/review/1114-vram-comparison-test/page5.html

And... no game maker wants to limit their market by
requiring huge amounts of vram. The vram you see will be appropriate to the particular card.

I have a method to pick between equally performing products.
Go to Newegg and find the candidates.
Filter on the reviews by verified buyers.
Then look at what percent of the reviews have zero or one eggs indicating some sort of a problem.
In particular, look at the reasons for a bad review. Some are not very valid, so exclude those.

 
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G

gondo

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The 390 has 8GB of ram so is better at 1440p, however it's just not powerful enough for 1440p to begin with at high settings.

The 970 is a very powerful card and pretty much on par with the 390, just a hair slower. You would usually want to step up to the 390x is you want to max frame rates at 1080p and even handle 1440p easily\, or the Geforce 980..

The choice between the 2 depends on if you have a monitor with either G-Sync or Freesync. And it usually boils down to which company you're a fanboy of. The decline of AMD CPUs popularity has lead many to jump ship over to NVidia, but that doesn't deny the fact that Radeon is a better value today. NVidia also supports PhysX if that's something you're interested in.

Also AMD has been problematic with drivers and Nvidia just has better drivers, software, and uses less power. Many people flocked to NVidia. AMD was forced to drop pricing to compete just like with their CPUs.

In your case however the 390 is the faster card.
 
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