Power Supply, Case, And SSD
PSU: Rosewill HIVE-750
I don’t often get time to read reviews elsewhere. But the moderators of Tom's Hardware's community do a great job of staying up to date. How else would I have learned that Newegg’s house brand, Rosewill, is a distributor of high-end Sirtec-made 750 W power supplies?
Read Customer Reviews of Rosewill Hive-750 PSU
This might not be one of the most talked-about PSUs out there, but anything close to the top is tempting when you're on a constrained budget. And that’s what this 80 PLUS Bronze-rated model is supposed to be, saving us $50 compared to the 80 PLUS Gold-rated unit we used last time.
Case: Cooler Master Storm Scout 2 Advanced
Cooler Master’s Storm Scout 2 Advanced received an honorable mention in our 11-way shoot-out as a top gaming case, coming up shy of the competition because it didn't have the eight expansion cut-outs needed for high-end graphics in a motherboard's bottom PCIe slot. Also, it wasn't selling at the lowest price given its performance level.
Read Customer Reviews of Cooler Master's Storm Scout 2 Advanced Case
The bottom PCIe slot of Asus' Z97-A isn't ideal for high-end graphics cards, so that didn't turn me off of Cooler Master's Storm Scout 2 Advanced. I instead noticed that the case was slightly less expensive than the winner of my round-up. Also, I remembered this enclosure being fairly sturdy. And I considered the practicality of a top-mounted carrying handle.
SSD: Samsung 840 EVO 250 GB
Samsung’s EVO drives earned our value award a year ago, and the 250 GB model continues to pop up in our Best SSDs For The Money column. Who am I to argue?
Read Customer Reviews of Samsung's 840 EVO 250 GB SSD
Besides being fast and cheap, the 250 GB 840 EVO is also the perfect capacity SSD for our test suite, which includes tens of gigabytes of work files and several large game installations.