Need HELP building a gaming PC!

Ditch the Toughpower grand. Also, you have NO need for an 850w unit unless you are for some off the wall reason planning to run a second graphics card, which is NOT recommended. Less so in fact than in years past. For a single 1080TI you only need, at most, a very good 600-750w unit and could probably get by with an exceptional 550w unit, but I would recommend staying in the 600-750w range.

This would be a better power supply than that Thermaltake, and is a less expensive as well.


PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

Power Supply: SeaSonic - FOCUS Plus Gold 650W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($83.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Total: $83.99
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-02-01 13:33 EST-0500


The rest of the system looks pretty good, and for gaming, there is no NEED for an i7, although it certainly won't hurt and might actually offer a small advantage in some few games that are well optimized for more than six cores or threads. Not many are.

Ditch Samsung 950 Evo SSD 500GB + Western Digital 1TB 64MB cache, 7200 RPM HDD

And replace it with a 2TB Firecuda Gaming SATA 6GB/s 64MB Cache 2.5-Inch Internal Solid-State Hybrid Drive $94

http://www.macmall.com/p/Seagate-Internal-Hard-Drives/product~DPNo~40279879~pdp.bbaabbac?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&adpos=1o2&source=MWBGOOGLEBASE&gclid=CjwKCAiAksvTBRBFEiwADSBZfKDWxePXjhk4X1BYLgEVzU1lJ4ZCvA65UiOrpyQQ9oRQhnCSiY5QchoC7XYQAvD_BwE

^^^Probably not bad advice either. There is very little to compel anybody to use a second, older NVME drive unless you are performing high end graphics or 3D modeling and have a need for a secondary, very fast drive, as a scratch disk. Even if that was the case, a much smaller, less expensive drive could be used for that without issue.

Plus, the cost of the 950 EVO versus newer, faster M.2 PCI devices makes it a distasteful option anyhow. If you ARE going to use two NVME M.2 drives, you wouldn't want to purposely downgrade your performance by using that older, much slower drive.

A couple issues with the advice given:

-For starters yes the 8600k is plenty for gaming, the 8700k will be very slightly better, emphasis on very, but for productivity work will actually be a large improvement.

-Board is fantastic, hard to find a better board out there for that price. Don't get BS'd into getting a cheaper MB, that board wins tons of awards every iteration for a very good reason.. it's one of the best there is.

-The NHD15 is the best air cooler there is, cools about 10C more than an H7, would be a very big help in overclocking as the 8600k runs hot as well. However, the NH-D15 has RAM clearance issues. I would recommend going with an AIO cooler, or going with an NH-U14S. Most AIO Coolers are very good and mostly perform very similarly. Do some research beforehand though. Not all are great or even good.

-It is debatable wether faster RAM or lower latency is better for gaming. The overall speed is extremely slightly different. In my experience at similar latencies faster speeds do help a little. With the RAM CAS being 10 it is not certain if it would be faster than say 3466MHz C16 RAM. It's up to you if you are willing to try it out. That RAM is not "cheap" by any stretch of the word. Last I checked that RAM was almost twice the cost of more or less stock speed RAM. Still a risk though, as it is not proven that lower latencies are better for gaming. Theoretically that RAM is EXTREMELY fast, though.

-Definitely ditch the 950 evo. If this were my rig I would go for the 960 Pro 256GB, an 850 Evo 1TB, and the 1TB WD drive. For starters the 850 Evo and Pro are very very close to the same performance so go for more capacity. The 960 Evo and Pro are not. I have a 960 Pro 1TB and for most of my games load times are non-existent, and for most they are very fast, but again for gaming there's not much of a difference. If you really want a M.2 I would just make it the boot drive and the 1 or 2 games you play absolutely the most and leave it pretty much at that (for load times). The warranties are also much much better on the Pro's. However at the end of the day only you can justify the cost.

-EVGA's are great and the FTW3 looks good. However it is pretty pricey, especially now. I would find what is at a reasonable price and go with that. I personally have a Zotac AMP! Extreme. It has one of the highest OC's of any 1080 Ti, it sucks a lot of juice but it cools very well, is very quiet, and imo is by far the best looking card on the market. 1080 Ti will run hot at 144Hz. Don't get a cheap heat sink, stick with something that is known to cool well or your thermals will be higher.

-A case is a case for the most part, Just make sure it has decent airflow or your CPU and GPU temps may rise. Corsair makes great stuff. Half my build is Corsair for that reason.

-I would go for a higher end PSU. No sense putting a mediocre PSU into a high-end rig. I really like Seasonic Prime PSU's they are great, highly efficient, dead silent, and look great. Pricey though. i would also stick with 650W. Only reason I have an 850W is because I wanted the option to do SLI if I wanted to.

-For the price of that monitor I would go for something like an Acer Predator or Asus ROG Swift.

I take it none have used a SSHD before? Great replacement over a traditional hard drive. Unless your a game horder or use the system for other things 2 SSD's especially 1.5 Tb worth is a overkill and a SSHD is a great alternative to save a bit of money with RAM and GPU prices being stupid.

Torture Comparison:

Manual: http://dlcdnet.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/LGA1151/ROG_MAXIMUS_X_HERO/E13645_ROG_MAXIMUS_X_HERO_UM_V2_WEB.pdf?_ga=2.128000588.1123870817.1517523754-1178114679.1505315261
says: 4133 (OC)/.../3200(OC)/.../2666/2400/2133 DDR4
Means 2666 is guaranteed, but 3000+ depends on motherboard and ram compatibility. Intel is not as picky as Ryzen, so any brand 3200 should work fine. Why 3200? See: https://www.reddit.com/r/intel/comments/75sg9m/coffee_lake_benefits_greatly_from_faster_ram/

I will recommend this for the price point:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

Memory: G.Skill - Ripjaws V Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3200 Memory ($182.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $182.99
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-02-01 17:27 EST-0500

It has similar model but black for several bucks more if you prefer black color.

NVME vs SATA SSD win10 booting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0u2jbvmX_8
watch 6:54
Guess what booting difference between 960 evo NVME and Crucial MX300 SATA? no spoiler

An 850 EVO is never really a bad choice. They are fast, they are reliable and they have good longevity. For most random operations you'll never see the kind of speeds that MOST current M.2 PCIe drives offer anyhow. If it's a drive that will be used for a lot of large file transfers, sequential type transfers, and really fast speed is absolutely essential, then the PCIe drive might make sense so long as you understand it will shorten it's life but so too will doing so on a standard SSD like the 850 EVO.

Anytime a drive is to be used for a LOT of really big files, and will be written and re-written to frequently, I'd say a spinning drive or a hybrid drive should be used for that.

Otherwise, the type of drive really needs to be based on need, strictly from what that drive will be primarily used for.

As for Vapour, you need to stop trying to moderate threads. Notifying a moderator is sufficient. You are not a mod. Stop trying to be one.

Epicfailjon, you need to seriously reduce your tone against other users, or stop posting. You are on the radar, as you were told before in other threads. Telling people to shut up is just not acceptable and can't happen.

You would both do well to at least listen when Delaro suggests something. He is not a prolific poster, so you won't see him at the top of any charts unlike some people that post hundreds of times a day but actually know very little in reality, but when he does you can be sure that there is a reason for it and that the offered advise is probably good.

Enough said.

Never a fan of SSHD, due to too small ssd contained in sshd.
For a budget build and I do want fast booting time and 2gb storage for <$100, I will consider. However for your budget, ssd+hdd or ssd only is best choice.

There is some fairly good information from JackNaylorPE, who is no longer with us due to behavior issues and HE was an extremely knowledgeable member who unfortunately had a tendency to be less than cordial to other members, something that maybe some other members MIGHT want to keep in mind, that should be helpful on the subject of SSD vs SSHD vs HDD.

http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-2609681/sshd-hdd-ssd.html

Crucial MX300 are my favorite recommendations for SSD's. They tend to have a bit better price/GB cost and the real world difference between it and the 850 evo are minimal. I have an 850 in my laptop, and it is great, but buying today, I would go with crucial.

I have a 480gb Ultra II in my desktop.