PC Build Help: Part Choosing

Old Gen Intel is not worth the money after coffee lake. ram too expensive, case and psu are no good. My edits:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD - Ryzen 5 1600 3.2GHz 6-Core Processor ($194.29 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: ASRock - AB350 Pro4 ATX AM4 Motherboard ($73.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill - Ripjaws V Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-3200 Memory ($90.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Toshiba - P300 3TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($79.89 @ OutletPC)
Video Card: MSI - GeForce GTX 1060 6GB 6GB ARMOR OCV1 Video Card ($259.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Fractal Design - Focus G (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case ($39.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: SeaSonic - EVO Edition 620W 80+ Bronze Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($40.98 @ Newegg)
Optical Drive: Lite-On - iHAS124-14 DVD/CD Writer ($10.99 @ Newegg Marketplace)
Operating System: Microsoft - Windows 10 Home OEM 64-bit ($89.89 @ OutletPC)
Monitor: HP - 22cwa 21.5" 1920x1080 60Hz Monitor ($89.99 @ Amazon)
Keyboard: Redragon - S101 Wired Gaming Keyboard w/Optical Mouse ($27.99 @ Amazon)
Headphones: Sades - SA-902-B 7.1 Channel Headset ($71.99 @ Amazon)
Speakers: Logitech - Z200 0W 2ch Speakers ($22.99 @ Best Buy)
Total: $1093.95
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-10-18 23:08 EDT-0400

First of all, you're sacrificing a lot of quality just for the sake of RGB lighting. If you want RGB lighting, buy it. Something like I have in my case, the NZXT Hue+ that comes with two programmable LED strips and a controller, plus the software, for around 55 bucks is a much better way to do RGB if you have to have it. Plus, you can do that later, at any time, without having to make a sacrifice on quality and performance now.

Second, your choice of power supply is not good. Also, that Hyper T2 CPU cooler is a pile. The Gammax 400 I included was reviewed by our native CPU tester Crashman as being one of the best if not THE best budget 120mm air CPU coolers he'd ever tested, especially for the price.

3TB storage space is probably not overkill, at all, considering some games require 80GB or more, each, and a full clean windows install comes in around 40-50Gb after you factor in the paging file, hibernation, updates and system restore files.

16GB of RAM isn't strictly overkill, it's nice to have, but 8GB is fine for a primarily gaming type system. If you were using advanced or professional applications as well, might be a different story.

Don't risk the Lite-on drive. My experience has been, after about ten historical purchases of their optical drives, that about three in ten are bad. LG has a much better track record, even though they still have some rather cheap lower end drives.

I think you would be much happier with something like this and you can choose whatever peripheral accessories you want. Everything I've changed has been changed for a reason or due to quality issues.

Also, that micro-ATX B250 motherboard lacks some features, but more importantly, it's small form factor is going to make it awfully hard to fit a tower cooler, gaming card and RAM, without interference or heat issues from the close proximity. It would work, probably, but using a regular ATX board makes things so much easier on yourself when it comes time to build and anytime you have to get in there to do something. TRUST me on that. micro-ATX and small form factor builds are nice, if you are specifically going for that, but they are a pain to work with or on.

Also, this case is a huge improvement in quality and all the little features you don't notice until you start trying to assemble your build, or once it's running and you realize it sucks and you wish you'd spent a few more dollars. Getting a really crappy case isn't worth saving twenty bucks on. Believe that.

I also added a 120mm case fan for the rear exhaust, which is pretty much required, and I didn't notice any fans in your build. This case comes with two front NZXT fans and the one I added is a Noctua, which is about as high quality as it gets.


PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel - Core i5-7500 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor ($184.69 @ OutletPC)
CPU Cooler: Deepcool - GAMMAXX 400 74.3 CFM CPU Cooler ($23.79 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: Gigabyte - GA-Z270-HD3 ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($105.49 @ SuperBiiz)
Memory: G.Skill - Ripjaws V Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-2400 Memory ($84.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Seagate - Barracuda 3TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($74.82 @ Amazon)
Video Card: EVGA - GeForce GTX 1060 6GB 6GB GAMING Video Card ($259.88 @ OutletPC)
Case: Fractal Design - Focus G ATX Mid Tower Case ($44.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Power Supply: SeaSonic - G 550W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($68.59 @ SuperBiiz)
Optical Drive: LG - GH24NSC0B DVD/CD Writer ($15.49 @ OutletPC)
Case Fan: Noctua - NF-S12B redux-1200 59.1 CFM 120mm Fan ($13.69 @ Newegg)
Total: $876.42
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-10-18 23:33 EDT-0400

Dual fan IS better, but even a single fan 1060 is an aimprovement over the 1050ti you had listed.

If you can expand the budget for the core components by about 200 bucks I could outline a far superior system to the one you originally outlined, improved even over what I listed and way better than any prebuilt you could get for a similar price.

If you want an i7 system, expand the budget by about 3 bones. Knowing what your actual financial limit is for the core system, cpu, motherboard, case, gpu, psu, cooling, memory and storage, would make it much easier to get you where you want to be for the best price.

To begin with, the case fan, of course you NEED one. Every single modern ATX mid to full tower system NEEDS to have at MINIMUM, one intake and one exhaust. Minimum. And that's just because without them them the system will begin immediately experiencing thermal fatigue even with a good CPU cooler and would not last very long at all even if it never did anything except sit at idle. Well, at idle it might be ok for a while.

Anyhow, case fans are terribly important. Your CPU and GPU coolers are just recycling hot air if you don't get plenty of fresh air in and ALL of the hot air out. The more circulation you have the longer everything in your case, RAM, GPU card, CPU, Motherboard, hard drives, are all going to last.

Are you wanting to pull the trigger on this pretty soon or planning this for down the road a little while? The reason I ask is because many of the parts I might suggest, primarily those for the Coffeelake platform, are not currently in stock anywhere but are expected to be at some point.

If you want something immediately available then I'll stick to Kaby lake parts.

So then, for the price range, this would be hard to beat. And when it comes to fans, it's kind of hard to beat Noctua. Cryorig, NZXT, Fractal design, Corsair, Scythe, Thermalright, Noiseblocker, these guys all have some good fans, but not all of their fans are good so you have to pay attention to the fan model and investigate professional reviews on them.

Noctua, well, if they make it, it's good. Period. Pretty much the same with Delta, although Delta mainly makes industrial, OEM and server fans, and doesn't much cater to the enthusiast sector. Everybody else is hit or miss so you have to go strictly by fan model because those other guys all have some pretty terrible fans in addition to some really good ones.

Do you have any particular color scheme preferences you'd like to try to mainly stick with for the whole build, or just whatever performs well for the price?

So, I went with the 8600k because it beats or ties the i7-8700k in most of the gaming benchmarks and is within a few frames in all the rest, but more importantly, it's about a hundred bucks cheaper.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-coffee-lake-core-i5-8600k-cpu,5264-5.html

https://www.techspot.com/review/1505-intel-core-8th-gen-vs-amd-ryzen/

The Gammax cooler is not one of the top coolers out there, but it IS one of the top budget coolers as I mentioned before. It's also a MUCH better cooler than the average stock cooler and of course, these newer processors don't come with a cooler anymore anyhow. Plus, it has blue LEDs, so there you go.

The Gigabyte Z370 HD3 motherboard is not a high end board, but it's plenty good enough for the average gaming rig and much better than some high end boards from only one or two generations ago. It has 4+3 power phase, M.2 storage header, basically a lot of stuff standard that was only found on high end boards with Z97 and Z170.

16GB-DDR4 3000 G.Skill memory. You wanted 16GB, you got it. Plus, G.Skill is almost certainly the best, most reliable memory brand out there. The Trident-Z modules are a bit better than the Ripjaws, but I had to cut something back in the budget somewhere, so I went with these because they're still better than the majority of memory modules out there.

Here's the fun stuff.

I included a Samsung 960 EVO M.2 drive for the operating system and applications. It's only 250GB but that's plenty for the OS and a ton of applications. Here's the thing about M.2 if you are not familiar with the NVME storage speeds on Samsung drives. Generally most regular 2.5" SSDs give you somewhere between 500 and 550MBps sequential read and write speeds with anywhere from 10,000 to 90,000 IOPS random read and write speeds.

This 960 EVO gives you 3200MBps sequential read and 1500MBps sequential write speeds, and up to 330,000 IOPS random read and write speeds.

So this is VERY fast storage for the operating system and applications. At minimum, you're looking at three to five times faster than a standard SSD and in some cases possibly 7-10x faster. VERY fast. This is pretty much the second fastest consumer storage drive on the market and it's not far behind the fastest, which is the 960 Pro.

Also included a 2TB storage drive for games, movies, music, etc.

GTX 1060 6GB dual fan card, because, "I need a good graphics card". This is a good graphics card. At 1080p it outperforms last generations GTX 980 in most titles and at 1140p and 4k, it almost performs as well as the 980TI. For the price, this is an outstanding value considering guys were paying 6-800 dollars for this kind of performance two years ago.

The Enthoo Pro M tempered glass case is a wonder for the price. I haven't worked in THIS specific case, but I have built several systems in the Enthoo Pro and Enthoo Pro M original versions and I can tell you that this case has just about every feature you could ever want and is so much easier to build in than the majority of other cases in this price range that it makes you wonder why anybody even bothers with most of the others. Plus with it's full view tempered glass side panel you won't have to worry about scratches like cases with acrylic windows and it's beautiful to boot.

It also comes with 140mm Phanteks fans. One front intake and one rear exhaust. At some point you might want to add another intake and a top exhaust, but for now that should be just fine. If you ever decide to overclock or if you tend to push the system hard for extended periods, a couple of additional case fans will be a good thing to consider adding. If and when you do I'd suggest adding two more Phanteks fans just like the ones that come with it, or a couple of 140mm Noctua black Chromax fans, which are an even better choice and are probably several decibels quieter.

Had to drop out the Seasonic power supply to try and keep it near the budget you wanted, but this CX 650M is semi-modular and has very good reviews for a somewhat budget power supply. Obviously another twenty bucks would get you a much better quality Gold rated EVGA or Seasonic unit, but for the price this Corsair unit will be just fine and has a five year warranty.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel - Core i5-8600K 3.6GHz 6-Core Processor ($279.89 @ B&H)
CPU Cooler: Deepcool - GAMMAXX 400 74.3 CFM CPU Cooler ($20.89 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: Gigabyte - Z370 HD3 (rev. 1.0) ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($126.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill - Ripjaws V Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3000 Memory ($148.55 @ Newegg Marketplace)
Storage: Samsung - 960 EVO 250GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive ($117.49 @ OutletPC)
Storage: Hitachi - Ultrastar 7K3000 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($56.50 @ Amazon)
Video Card: MSI - GeForce GTX 1060 6GB 6GB ARMOR OCV1 Video Card ($269.86 @ B&H)
Case: Phanteks - Enthoo Pro M Tempered Glass ATX Mid Tower Case ($109.98 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: Corsair - CXM 650W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($59.99 @ Amazon)
Optical Drive: LG - GH24NSC0B DVD/CD Writer ($15.49 @ OutletPC)
Total: $1205.62
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-10-21 22:24 EDT-0400



As I said before, your peripherals and accessories, or any RGB lighting you might want to add can be added at any time. If the budget is a bit stretched right now, don't worry, just add them when you are able to save a few more bucks. Believe me when I say you'll be a lot happier with a long lasting, great performing machine that you can add lighting to later than to skimp on something now just to make some lighting options fit and end up with a system that is not nearly as good as you could have had.

When you DO get ready to add lighting, I highly recommend the NZXT Hue+. This is what I use and it gives you endless options.

No problem. If you ever have questions don't hesitate to ask.

Edited your post. Sorry. Much easier to look at this way.

So, right off the bat I'll offer these observations, and you can take them or leave them, for what they're worth.

I'm not sure the Ryzen 7 is an "upgrade" from the 8700k. Seems that, from the benchmarks I'm seeing, the 8600k either beats or closely ties the Ryzen 7 in almost every game title when choice of CPU makes any difference at all, except for a few that are actually well optimized for a wealth of threads and I promise you that it's the minority of games, still to this day, that do that. But we'll go with AMD if you like that better. Just maybe not THAT model.

The "wraith" cooler that comes with the Ryzen 7, while perfectly capable for mainstream systems, is not at ALL suitable for a gaming machine that is going to live the vast majority of it's life at gaming loads. I can almost guarantee you will have thermal issues at some point with the stock cooler. At the very least I'd like to see a budget aftermarket cooler like the Gammaxx 400 or Cryorig H7 added to the build. Something like the Cryorig H5 or Noctua NH-U12S or U14S would be a lot better, but even one of those two budget coolers would be a big improvement over the stock cooler.

Still not a fan of the Corsair RGB memory. The G.Skill memory, even their Ripjaws lineup, uses better IC memory chips and that's been related to me directly in the past by Tradesman1 who probably knows more about memory modules than 99% of people on this planet. IF you like the RGB factor more than having fast, stable, reliable memory that is less likely to have compatibility issues, ever, then that's fine. Corsair sells some good memory too, primarily their Dominator series, I'm just not a big fan of the Vengeance lineup.

Most important of all though, you've moved from a mediocre mid quality power supply, in the Corsair CXm unit I suggested (Based on price alone. Certainly it's not one of the best units out there, but definitely better than a lot of others in it's class) to a terrible, absolutely terrible EVGA W series unit that is unlikely to make it through the first three months in that build, much less have a long life. That unit is in NO way complementary to the rest of the build and if you make no other changes at all, you definitely need to discard that choice and go with a better unit.

People don't seem to understand, even though we say it over and over and over again, the power supply is the MOST important component in the entire build, because if ANYTHING is not working correctly with that, then NOTHING else in the whole build is going to be working correctly either. Plus, a crappy PSU is highly inclined to either destroy the rest of your build in one fell shot, or slowly decimate your other components over time due to unacceptable levels of noise and ripple.

I don't mean to knock your work that you put in, but it seems to me that once again you've moved backwards on this build for the sake of pretty lights and an overkill GPU card. Nice to have the GTX 1070, but the GTX 1060 will probably max out just about any game title you want to play at 1080p, based on your monitor selection. In my opinion, if you have more to spend than originally thought, then this would be the way to do it.

I promise you that in the end, you'll be a LOT happier with a system that kicks a#$ and keeps doing so for a long time, than one that looks really swell with a bunch of lights and fluff, but doesn't last or simply doesn't work at all because of a couple of poor hardware selections.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD - Ryzen 7 1700X 3.4GHz 8-Core Processor ($299.88 @ OutletPC)
CPU Cooler: CRYORIG - H7 49.0 CFM CPU Cooler ($34.89 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: Asus - PRIME X370-A ATX AM4 Motherboard ($116.88 @ OutletPC)
Memory: G.Skill - Ripjaws V Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3000 Memory ($148.55 @ Newegg Marketplace)
Storage: Western Digital - Blue 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($89.88 @ OutletPC)
Storage: Western Digital - Blue 2TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive ($63.19 @ OutletPC)
Video Card: Gigabyte - GeForce GTX 1070 8GB AORUS Video Card ($474.98 @ Newegg)
Case: Cooler Master - MasterBox Lite 5 RGB ATX Mid Tower Case ($76.98 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: SeaSonic - G 550W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($68.49 @ SuperBiiz)
Monitor: Acer - GN246HL 24.0" 1920x1080 144Hz Monitor ($187.49 @ B&H)
Keyboard: Redragon - S101 Wired Gaming Keyboard w/Optical Mouse ($27.99 @ Amazon)
Headphones: Corsair - Raptor HS40 7.1 Channel Headset ($42.99 @ B&H)
Total: $1632.19
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-10-29 18:24 EDT-0400

OP give this guy a beer.
I think that a RX 580 8gb is cheaper than a GTX 1070 and has similar performance.

Not really. Trident Z uses the very best Samsung memory IC chips, so both are or at least should be equally good.


Yes, that build looks pretty solid now.

If you want to use medium or slightly higher than medium settings, sure. If you want high settings, or ultra, not a chance, not if you want 60fps or higher.

Sounds good. Good luck.