Finally gonna build my own system

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Vagenius

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Alright so I need a new pc and me and my husband would rather build it. I'll probably be working with around $900, maybe a bit more. I'm here for advice cause all the advice I've gotten here in the past has always been wonderful. I mostly game on my computer, of course web surfing and occasionally watch tv/movies. This is mostly for gaming though.

What I need to know is, what can I keep out of my current pc(I've made upgrades in the past to it) and what will I need to buy. I know I'll have to start with a motherboard/cpu/graphics/new ram. What about my power supply/fans/after market cooler/hard drive? Can I move those over? The motherboard is going to have to be AM3+ cause well this is the main reason I'm building new cause mine now is AM3 and I can't go forward with a good cpu.

The games I play
World of Warcraft
SWTOR
The Sims(2-4)
Cities: Skylines(which is pretty difficult on my computer now)
Skyrim
Dragon Age Inquisition
etc
Nothing crazy really, so I don't need some crazy machine, just something middle of the line for the times cause my phenom x4 955 is really outdated and I can't upgrade with my motherboard.

Am I going to have to take a lot of measurements of my tower? It's a mid tower(I believe anyways), it has 3 fans in it right now and one dust collector type weird thing. Are the fans going to work with a new motherboard? Are they usually pretty universal or are there a lot of different sockets for motherboards? The motherboard in it now is a Biostar A880G+ so I'm not sure if that's a normal size motherboard or like one of those micro motherboards. I have a 650w power supply and a 1tb hard drive(not sure about speed or anything.)

The Tower I have is 8in width, 17in height, 19 in length. Should I get a new tower?

My dvd player Lite-On Super AllWrite 24X SATA DVD+/-RW Dual Layer Drive - Bulk - IHAS124-04 (Black)

My hard drive WD WD10EZEX 1TB Desktop Hard Disk Drive - 7200 RPM SATA 6 Gb/s 64MB Cache 3.5-Inch, Blue

Can't find my power supply in my old order history on amazon but I know it's 650 watt.

I'm mostly interested in keeping those 3 things, anything else can be replaced, fans are cheap so that's not a big deal. If anyone can give me a run down on what exactly I will need to build a new pc and if my tower/dvd player/hd and power supply will be able to be recycled into a new machine I'd really appreciate it. Hoping to start the new project this weekend so any advice is appreciated.

I was thinking about this tower though http://www.amazon.com/Apevia-X-SNIPER2-GN-Gaming-Tinted-Window/dp/B00EF9QEZC/ref=sr_1_1?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1462906295&sr=1-1&keywords=computer+tower

Is that decent or should I go with something better?
 
Solution
Eximo
That is a standard Micro ATX motherboard. This is a common size amongst OEM systems. I generally go with the larger ATX boards, but I like to have several expansion cards. If this will only have a single GPU and not much else it will be okay to keep the case.

There are two main types of case fans. 3-pin and 4-pin PWM. In general there will be room to plug even a 4-pin fan into a 3-pin connector. Only premium fans will be PWM which allows for easy software control of fan speeds. 3-pin fans generally just return an RPM, though some 3-pin motherboards can control fans by regulating the voltage.

Power supply should be okay, though depending on its age, you may want to replace it. Newer Intel systems run on very little power at startup and...
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Eximo

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That is a standard Micro ATX motherboard. This is a common size amongst OEM systems. I generally go with the larger ATX boards, but I like to have several expansion cards. If this will only have a single GPU and not much else it will be okay to keep the case.

There are two main types of case fans. 3-pin and 4-pin PWM. In general there will be room to plug even a 4-pin fan into a 3-pin connector. Only premium fans will be PWM which allows for easy software control of fan speeds. 3-pin fans generally just return an RPM, though some 3-pin motherboards can control fans by regulating the voltage.

Power supply should be okay, though depending on its age, you may want to replace it. Newer Intel systems run on very little power at startup and some older supplies do not like this.
 
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Eximo

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GTX970 is a placeholder. GTX1070 should be available at the end of the month.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-6500 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor ($194.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-H170M-DS3H Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($76.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Memory: Kingston HyperX Fury Black 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-2133 Memory ($63.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO 250GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive ($94.99 @ B&H)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 970 4GB Superclocked+ ACX 2.0 Video Card ($299.99 @ Amazon)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Home OEM (64-bit) ($84.99 @ NCIX US)
Total: $815.94
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-05-10 15:05 EDT-0400
 
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2Be_or_Not2Be

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With $900 or more available, you can easily purchase all new parts. In fact, I would recommend it just so that you know the parts are all roughly at the same "age" and relative life expectancy. Sure, you can salvage some items (DVD, 1TB HDD maybe as secondary storage), but for everything else, I'd purchase new. Also, part of the fun is assembling all those new parts together! :)

The biggest item in terms of cost will be your graphics card. As a gamer, it will have the greatest impact. If you can wait until the GTX 1080/1070 are actually available to purchase (maybe early June), you should be able to buy some decent power as likely other high-powered graphics cards will drop in price. One that should last a while will probably cost $300+.

Next is the CPU. You'll want a new motherboard & RAM along with it, so plan on spending ~$300-400 there for something like an i5-6500 on a Z170/H170 board w/16GB DDR4 RAM.

For storage, I'd recommend a SSD of at least 240GB. Samsung 850 Pro/EVO and Sandisk Extreme Pro would be the brands I'd recommend.

Finally, get a new case w/a new PSU. The old one may be ready to die on you, you never know. Also, it may not supply enough clean power on the main rails for the new graphic card. The new case will also give you USB 3.0 ports on the front which your old one may not have had.

If you get everything, then before you assembling the new one and eventually recycle your old one, make sure you get the Windows key from any sticker on it. It also might be on printed materials as well. That will save you $100+ as you could use it to get the free Win10 upgrade.
 
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Vagenius

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Ok thanks 2Be. I'm actually starting to think that I am just gonna go all new because in reality my computer now is in really good shape, I clean it often, take really good care of it and it would kind of be a waste to just toss and pick apart. My husband is only interested in console gaming but who knows maybe he can take over my computer and get back into some of the older games he use to play, plus we'd still be able to play games like WoW or SWTOR together in that case.

I'll go all new then. I'd have to get a new Windows but that's not a big deal. I guess now it's just figuring out the best motherboard/cpu/graphics and matching those with the best hd/psu etc. Alright so I have tons of research to do now. Thanks for the help though guys.
 
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Eximo

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The FX line up has failed to compete well for the last several revisions of it. Only on heavily threaded workloads does it offer a cheaper alternative to Intel. In general, they consume more power and have a lot less single core performance then Intel, which is exactly what games need. The motherboards also lack a lot of the new I/O that Intel offers, such as NVMe, USB 3.1, Thunderbolt, etc...

If you don't mind waiting, AMD should have a new socket release on a new process node towards the end of the year. That would get you a contemporary architecture, DDR4, and some future upgradeability.

You do have enough budget for a whole system. But if you have no use for the old system then you can keep some of the parts.

AMD FX Bulldozer (28nm) released in 2012
Intel Skylake (14nm) late 2015 release
 
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Eximo

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A complete build. R9-380 will play the games you want now. Still recommend holding off and waiting for Nvidia's or AMD's GPU releases in the coming weeks.

The Intel HD 530 graphics on the CPU is equivalent to about a GT730 or R7-240 so a good chunk of your game list should run okay.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-6500 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor ($194.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-H170M-DS3H Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($76.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Memory: Kingston HyperX Fury Black 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-2133 Memory ($63.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO 250GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive ($94.99 @ B&H)
Video Card: Sapphire Radeon R9 380 4GB NITRO Dual-X OC Video Card ($194.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Corsair Carbide SPEC-M2 MicroATX Mid Tower Case ($54.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA GS 550W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($71.49 @ Newegg)
Optical Drive: Samsung SH-224DB/BEBE DVD/CD Writer ($16.89 @ OutletPC)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Home OEM (64-bit) ($84.99 @ NCIX US)
Total: $854.31
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-05-10 15:31 EDT-0400
 
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Vagenius

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I am confused about one thing though and maybe someone can clear it up. When I look at graphics cards and ram and all that, there is ddr3 and ddr5. What is the difference and is there any sort of matching up that I need to do when it comes to ddr? I guess I just don't really understand the whole ddr thing.
 
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2Be_or_Not2Be

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Agreed - I like AMD & have owned several of their CPUs over the years, but currently, they just aren't directly competitive against Intel in gaming (besides price).
 
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Vagenius

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I'll take that into consideration Eximo, maybe it would be best for me to go with intel from the information you're giving me. I guess I shouldn't be habitual when it comes to the quality of what I want.
 
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2Be_or_Not2Be

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Simple way to think of it - GDDR5 & GDDR5X is just a special type of faster RAM for graphics (graphics = the "g" in front of DDR).

DDR3 & DDR4 are system RAM, and the higher the number, the newer the type of RAM. Virtually all new motherboards take DDR4.
 
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Eximo

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Intel has two sockets that support DDR4. LGA2011v3 and LGA1151, so I am not sure how that includes virtually all new motherboards. LGA1151 also supports DDR3L.

All other desktop 'new' sockets take DDR3. LGA1150 (Haswell),FM2+, and AM3+. These are all still readily available.

DDR3 is found on low-end GPUs. Any that offer that would not be needed in a late model Intel build, the onboard graphics equal all but the most expensive DDR3 GPUs.

Your use case of Skyrim basically means that you really shouldn't be looking at anything lower then a GTX950 or R7-370.

R9-380 was an attempt at giving the PC some longevity. That is a competent performer at 1080p.

 
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