First attempt at building a gaming PC

Cheers for such a quick response.

Actually thats one of the areas I started to get more rather than less confuddled about the more I read lol

I started off leaning towards the I3 chips because of the higher single core performance which is mentioned A LOT, but then started seeing loads of people talking about the "phantom cores" (hyperthreading) slowing some games down rather than speeding them up which is why I started to lean more towards the I5 with nothing but "actual" cores. Which I think would apply to games like command and conquer and other strategy type games

Also, would a pair of dimms be better or doesnt the dual channel thing have the same effect on more modern CPUs, or was a single dimm just to keep the cost down for the initial build?

And a last question, is it worth bothering to upgrade the stock CPU coolers? I wont be planning on overclocking whichever CPU I get even if I end up getting a K series CPU as the only appeal they have is being designed to be pushed harder, so running one at its normal speed "should" in theory give it a longer life

So are the stock intel coolers perfectly adequate at the stock speeds?

Also, is DDR4 worth having? I have seen some quite technical posts that went right over my head talking about them having (I think) latency issues which means that just to match high speed OC DDR3 the DDR4 would need to run at 3200 or more, but then others on different threads rave about DDR4s speed so they cant both be right but there doesnt seem to be a clearly definitive answer on that

But I will go have a look at that stuff and variants in the 110 chipset range as I was curious about the mini PCI SSD slots that some mother boards have which are claimed to have some sick transfer speeds and might be a cheaper and/or faster alternative to the evo 850 I was planning to get as the OS boot drive

I took some of the feedback about DDR4 in and reassessed looking at older used systems like I5 2500k based machines

Then found this locally, pre built with all boxes and receipts for £550 although to its detriment its in a nice looking but WHITE case (bleugh)

Intel i5 6600k (skylake)
Asus z170 pro gaming motherboard
16gb kingston hyper x ddr4 ram 2400mhz
Corsair h55 liquid cpu cooler
120 gb kingston ssd
1tb western digital hdd
Corsair 650 psu
Msi gtx970 4gb ddr5
Logitec g303 mouse
Corsair m300 extended mouse pad
Trust keyboard
Spare gaming mouse
And a logitec c270 webcam

Literally everything was bought at the same time brand new just over 3 months ago and he gave me the paperwork with the items and boxes

So I will give the 970 and 950 a whizz, but tbh I think I might sell off the corsair PSU, the 970, maybe the drives too, and the web cam and mouse and put the 950 and golden flower PSU in the case instead and use the money from selling off the other bits to buy an M2 PCIe X4 SSD to go into the slot on the motherboard

I had hoped the ram would be 4x4gb as 8gb would be fine, but I might sell the 16gb too and get 8gb of 3200 ram rather than 16gb of the 2400. but I will go have a nosey about whether that would really give any improvement first

But the M2 PCie SSD should be a HUGE bump over a normal SSD on the 170 chipset from what I have been reading about it

It might not have been the best bargain out there. But the lower power useage struck a chord too. Plus having all the paperwork makes it "almost" as good as buying it new but for a lot less than that would have cost plus its bang up to date kit that (hopefully) should last me a few years

So cheers for the input, you helped steer me away from trying to save money by buying well used outdated stuff which had potentially been overclocked to death and towards something that's almost brand new and will use quite a bit less power when/if I swap the PSU and GPU for the 950 xtreme/golden flower 80+ gold rated PSU

Its not just the normal 950 though its the 950 xtreme so the difference between them isn't quite as large as the OC on the board give it 7gb ram speed but for a noticeably lower power consumption. And at the moment the ONLY things I will be playing on it are World of tanks, command and conquer and "maybe" elite dangerous in 1920x1200 as a maximum resolution

I'm happy enough doing most of my gaming on my xbox 1 so I think the 950 should be "good enough" even though its obviously not going to be as good as the 970 at more intensive games, but I don't actually play anything like modern warfare, and even if I did going from 60 FPS to 65-70 FPS which is the difference according to the in depth comparisons I have watched doesn't really feel like it justifies the extra power consumption

Plus I do really want a gold rated PSU, and would like a 25% or more safety margin on the load VS the rated maximum output. So the 950 might make that easier to achieve on the 550w I already have whereas I might need to get a higher powered gold PSU to have the same overhead with the 970 plus the extra heat and running costs with the higher power consumption and a slightly shorter warranty all just to gain maybe a 10% increase in frame rates on games I don't even play if that makes sense

As for the M2 thing, I went off and did some more looking into that and ended up more confused than when I started, some NVMe drives are listed with dreadfully slow transfer rates much slower than normal sata, and others absolutely fly

I was looking for one that was around the 2gb read/600-1gb write type speed and others listed as NVMe but only being quoted as similar speeds to standard sata versions. I think the only tempting one was a Samsung 128gb M2 that was something like 2gb/600mb transfer

http://www.ebuyer.com/743524-samsung-sm951-128gb-m-2-pcie-gen3-ssd-mzvpv128hdgm-00000?mkwid=s_dc&pcrid=51508054859&pkw=&pmt=&gclid=Cj0KEQjwgJq-BRCFqcLW8_DU9agBEiQAz8Koh_pu6ILaYKMpoPtujFHzBDF4ZvTjbe5cnWwq-GyEyRcaAm4n8P8HAQ

Or this

http://www.ebuyer.com/755709-intel-600p-series-128gb-m-2-2280-ssd-ssdpekkw128g7x1

I can live with the small size as its purely for the OS and I could always leave the existing SSD in there for any games that access the hard drive a lot in the future with standard hard drives for everything else

That said however the 256 version of the IBM drive is only £30 extra for double the capacity which would free up the other 120gb SSD completely.

But I will give it a month or so and check the prices and whats on offer again then before buying anything
but I think I will probably end up doing what you suggested for now and replace the Corsair SSD with an evo 850 for now and watch the prices on the M2, then later I can get an M2 and move the Evo into my laptop or use it for a boot drive in one of my other machines

After all this is already LOADS faster than anything else I currently have without changing anything so putting an M2 drive in is hardly an urgent necessity

So cheers for all the input and help even though I went with a lazy (and safer) router in the end, absolutely amazed at the amount of advice through this site compared to others I have used in the past where a question can sit there for months without a single response

The one I had bought to try and build my own is the Golden flower Golden green HX 550W 80+ gold PSU

But the one that came in the machine I bought is a Corsair

So I will most probably either use the 550w with my GTX 950 xtreme, or if after trying both cards I prefer the GTX 970 I will look at how much power the machine draws and if theres less than 150 watts spare I'll probably get a 650 ish 80+ gold

Either way I would prefer to not use the corsair CX750

But as I just won a 4590k and z97 motherboard on ebay the CX750 and whichever video card I don't use can go in a case with those and I can cobble a semi decent gaming PC together and sell it rather than having to sell a pile of individual bits

Its ridiculously ironic that after weeks of bidding on and losing auctions on ebay the moment I actually get a PC I start winning them lol

Sods law

I hadn't heard of them either tbh, and the name sounds like some cheap and cheerful Chinese brand like "super happy big brand shiney colour monitor" lol

But it turns out they are actually a primo quality make on a par with companies like seasonic, go figure eh?

And yeah selling the CX was the plan, either as part of a system cobbled out of spare bits probably with an I5 4790k/z97 Mbd combo or just separately as its only 3 months old and came with the box and receipt