I made a thread like a year ago about building a PC, but I never got around to it. I bought a car instead. But this year, I'm going to actually do it. I've never actually built one before, but it seems fairly straight forward.

Here's the case I already own: case

Here's the parts I have specced out:

HD: 1TB
SSD: 128GB
Graphic Card: GTX 760
Power Supply: 700W
RAM: 16GB
Motherboard: Asus
Processor: i7-4770k
Heatsink - ?
Optical Drive - ?
Monitors - dual 24"
Mouse - (current one is great)
Keyboard - ?


I guess my questions are basic. Is my power supply big enough? Will all the components I picked out work together (compatible?), and fit within my case? Did I go overboard on one item, or not enough on another (therefore restricting the potential of another?)? Did I pick any bad brands? Did I forget to pick out anything?

 

What are your goals? What do you want to do with this computer?

For general gaming (as 2x24" monitors indicate), I'd say your SSD is too small, you're processor too fast, still can't really see a use for more than 8gb of ram.

Graphics card wise, Nvidia has just announced their next generation, and ATI just released theirs.

Go with the next gen cards imo, ATI is out, and I've heard good things. Not sure about Nvidia, read up on it.

I love my Filco Majestouch 2 keyboard, check those out. Missing some bells and whistles though.

 

Swap HDD to this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822149407
Swap SSD to this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147248
Swap GPU to this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130932
Swap PSU to this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139027
Swap RAM to this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231528

Why?
1. No reason for a WD Black, save some money AND have more storage. -$15
2. The extra space on the 840 EVO SSD will help you far more than the slightly better performance of the 840 PRO. +$33
3. The graphics card you've chosen has 4GB of VRAM, utterly useless as anything that'll exceed 2GB is going to bring the 760 to its knees anyway so you may as well save some money. -$70
4. A good 500W power supply will handle all single-GPU needs (you can go as low as 350W if you're going bare necessities only and no overclocking) plus extras. Higher efficiency and better brand.
5. Faster RAM at no additional cost. Make sure to enable XMP in the UEFI otherwise it'll run at SPD defaults

Your motherboard and CPU choice will depend entirely on what workloads you're going to apply and what functionality you want out of the motherboard. Without more on what you intend to do with it, I can't give any recommendations.

Heatsink: You can run ANY air heatsink as the HAF X is fucking huge. If you want AIO water cooling, there may not be the mounts for it. Get a cheapie one (around $30 should do it) and it'll cool it down far better than the stock heatsink.

Optical Drive: As The Wizard said, any will do but think long and hard if you really need one. You might be able to get by with a flash drive instead. If you're buying Windows and need to install from CD, make sure to get one.

Other peripherals: Up to you what you want. For monitors, you might want the response times of a TN panel, or maybe you want the vibrant colours and viewing angles of an IPS or VA panel. If your current mouse is great, you can reuse it. As for keyboards, it'll depend on aesthetics and functionality that you want, for example you might want LED backlighting, media keys, mechanical keyswitches, etc.

 

Heatsink: Mine's a modest Cooler Master Hyper 212. It gets the job done, and I get really good temps. I've yet to see my CPU cross 50C (that's while playing extreme games in ultra settings). Given the room temps here are ~30C on average, that's quite good, without getting fancy with liquid cooling and all. Comes in with attachments for an extra fan, but I have a small case, and when I tried it, the extra fan wasn't really providing too much of an advantage so I skipped on it.

Mouse: Buy Deathadder. Even if you don't game, buy it. This thing is so fucking good. You won't regret it.

 

I plan on using the computer for gaming and 3D modeling (solidworks, inventor, etc). Some of the onboard digital and dynamic rendering processes can be quite a handful, but I'm not really doing stuff like heavy video editing (though I would like to be able to edit the video I record off my hpr... but my current laptop does that just fine and it's 7 years old)

I'm not worried about the optical drive, that's why I left it blank. It'll be like $20 probably, but I do need one if I want to play some of my old classic games. Mouse is uneeded since my current one is an awesome corsair mouse. I picked out 2 Asus 24" monitors. I don't need 3D capabilities or any of that gimmicky stuff.

I had trouble finding a heatsink that I liked. Someone recommended a Noctua 6, but it looks ginormous, so I was looking at a Thermaltake one, but I didn't really decide.

I was kind of on the fence with HD sizing. I saw that I could get an internal 3TB HD for around the same price as the 1TB one, but I realized that it really didn't matter. To put things in perspective, my laptop only has 120GB HD, which is smaller than the SSD I picked out, so I've got most of my stuff saved on external harddrives.

-Edit- I guess i'm going to have to put some money aside for the actual operating system... that may be important.

---------- Post automerged 02-22-2014 at 04:21 AM ---------- Previous post was 02-21-2014 at 02:14 PM ----------

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/2XRzK

My new list with some updated suggestions. It's coming in a little steeper than I expected, but I haven't exactly ordered anything yet.

 

An AMD FX 8-core CPU might be better at 3D modeling given the additional cores, though the per core performance is a bit lackluster compared to Intel so gaming performance will go down a bit. You'll also need to change motherboard if you do this.

If you still want to stick with Intel, you can step down to a Core i5 4670K which loses Hyper-Threading (useful for editing) and 100Mhz (not much). In return it costs ~$100 less.

You've still got the WD Black 1TB listed even though the Toshiba 2TB I linked earlier is a little bit cheaper and gives you more storage.

Power Supply is a bit more expensive than the one I recommended.

Check if you actually need a Blu-ray writer, because you can definitely save some money there by sticking to DVD.

Then there's the fact that monitors are being included which is bumping up the total price. If multi-monitor isn't critical, you can always buy one now, then get the second later so the upfront cost isn't as big a hit on the wallet.

In fact, you can forego the cooler, the storage drive and the graphics card as well if you only buy the most critical components. This obviously has the drawback of having to open up the case again and wire it all up (or delaying when you build the computer in its entirety). Your call.

 

The standard Intel heatsinks work just fine. Unless you're going to be overclocking, I'd save the money and put it towards something else, or even just back in you wallet.

 

The computer is primarily going to be for gaming, probably 95%, but given the field that I work in, I'd like to be able to use 3D modeling programs if I have to. 8 cores is definitely overkill. I kept the WD black instead of the one you recommended since it had a lot better reviews (5 star vs 3 star). I don't mind paying for quality. I like the blueray burner, since my 7 year old laptop has one, and I'd rather not downgrade (even if I only use it once or twice a year). In the same vein, I currently use a second monitor with my laptop, so dual monitors is pretty much essential for me. It's only a 20" one though, so it's not what I want for this build.

I'm going to see if I can trim down the graphics card, processor, and mobo, and in doing so, get a smaller powersupply, and probably get by with 8gb of ram (and ditch the heatsink). I'd like to keep the actual computer part of the build under $1k, and then the monitors, keyboard, windows, will be on top of that.

 

Best place to dump cost is your processor and your ram. As you said, just drop down to 8gb. And drop your processor to this. The K version just means you can over clock, which is doesn't really sound like you intend to do. If you do though, it's only $10 more.

Heatsinks are entirely unnecessary. You'll do just fine without one.

Don't skimp on the Graphics card, that's the main bottleneck for games. Keep the one you have, you won't regret it. I'd also keep the same power supply you have, you won't save much by going lower.

I didn't put an optical drive in my build 18months ago, and I have absolutely no regrets. Why not just rely on the one you have in your laptop?

As to Windows, you could always just save the $90 on that too.

 

Technically I can also dress up as a pirate and go rob a Fry's too. It's not really the cost that is bothering me though.

I'm sort of seesawing back and forth. My current laptop cost me over $2000 when I bought it 7 years ago and it's lasted this long, so I don't really mind spending that much. What I do mind is when I realize that I could have gotten all the performance I needed out of a machine half as much, that would last just as long, and if I needed more performance I could always switch stuff out when the time came, instead of buying it all up front.

I just want to make sure I make the right decision, and not buying a bunch of stuff I'm never going to use more than 25% of the capabilities of.

 

You probably don't need a heatsink, but they do make a difference when overclocking and they are quieter. Plus you can get adequate ones for sale for pretty cheap.
This is $10 ater rebate: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=8340648&CatId=493 I'm pretty sure that is the one I have.

Intel will also sell you an extended warranty for overclocking for $25 if you are worried about destroying your cpu. But you really don't need that if you aren't overclocking. http://click.intel.com/tuningplan/purchase-a-plan

Normally 8gb of ram and an i5 would be a great machine for gaming. But you mentioned 3d modeling programs. I'd research what is actually helpful for those programs. But 16gb ram/i7 might be helpful. Your gpu could also affect modeling programs. I'm not too familiar with 3d modeling.

You can also get legitimate Windows keys for $30 or under on http://www.reddit.com/r/softwareswap/. It just depends how comfortable you are with sketchy sellers. The sellers probably are breaking agreements with MS. And there is a chance your license can be invalidated.

 

You can also save some money on the mainboard. You currently have a Z87 board selected, but the only things that make it better than an H87 board is the SLI/Crossfire support, support for higher memory clocks (which you don't need, since almost everything above 1600 is overpriced for the minimal performance gain) and the ability to overclock (which most of the H87 boards have too, despite Intel wanting to only have that functionality on the Z87 boards).

I say go with this board (I personally use it and it runs absolutely fine), and this RAM (Kingston is nice because they give you lifetime warranty). As for the PSU, people really like to overestimate how much wattage their system will need. A system with an i7-4770K@4.4GHz and a GTX 780ti, for example, will only use about 350-400W under load (depending on the reseller of the GPU), so 450-500W would be more than enough for your system with a GTX 760 (just make sure that the PSU has all necessary connectors and at least over 30 ampere on the +12V rail, or if you want it safer for future upgrades at least over 40 ampere on the +12V rail).

 

Build is done. Took me about 6 hours to put together, since I didn't know what I was doing. Booted up on the first try though, installed windows fine, and got everything running. Only thing I can't figure out is that my computer is detecting my 2TB internal, but won't actually do anything with it, it doesn't show up on 'my computer'.

Here's a pic



I should have measured my desk before i picked out the monitors, since the one on the left hangs off by about 6 inches, and my tower is as far to the right as it can go. I'd show a pic of the case, but it's a mess right now, I have to tie off some of the power cables still, but I wanted to make sure it would actually work before doing it.

 

Press the windows key and R at the same time, enter "compmgmt.msc" and press enter, then go to Disk Management which is under Storage. Look if there's anything unallocated (you can ignore it if it's only a few megabyte). If yes, rightklick on the unallocated space and chose "New simple volume" and follow the steps (just make sure that the filesystem is NTFS and not FAT or FAT32 (or if you want to create more than one partition you'll have to adjust the size)).

If there's no unallocated space, then look if the 2TB HDD has a drive letter. If not then rightklick and chose "Change drive letter and paths" and follow the steps.

 

Yeah we figured this out on IRC about 5 minutes after I posted, and it worked fine. Now, a new problem is that I'm not getting any sound from the headphone slots. There's a spot on the mobo where i plug in the led lights, power, and reset button, which i did, but there's also a spot to plug in the headphone jack, but I don't see an actual wire for it. I'll have to look again.

 

If your case has front audio then the connectors should definetly be there. What case do you have? Did you open both sides to look for the connectors?

 

I got the headphone jack to work by plugging it into the right spot, but for some reason the speaker connection doesn't work - the one that's connected right to the motherboard on the back. May be a setting I have to fanagle with, I'm not sure.

 

What kind of audio do you have at the frontpanel? HD audio or AC'97 audio? If it's HD audio then you might have to switch the standard output device in windows depending on if you want to use the front or back.