So, my laptop that I have been using for the past 3 years has finally died, sort of. It still kinda works but it definitely has problems and it isn't reliable any more and I wanted to use this opportunity to finally get myself a new Desktop PC to use as my main device. Am not really all that knowledgeable on the PC buyers market though and which parts are good and which are not.

I won't be doing any fancy editing, art, programming or graphics work on it, so, my main three uses for a PC are gaming, writing and browsing the Internet, reading fanfics, tumblr and whatnot. The price range I would spent for this would be between 700 - 900 €, maybe even with a new monitor. Still, I wanted a device which is able to handle new games as they come out for a while, and run them on high at least for the next 2 years and maybe be upgradeable in the long run.

The thing is, I live in Germany, and if someone knows a site, a platform or a shop which is in Germany or at least ships their parts cheaply there, I would appreciate it.

What would your recommendation be?

Thanks for the help in advance.

 

Mindfactory is pretty good.

Mainboard/Alternative if you don't plan on ever using more than one GPU
CPU
RAM
SSD
PSU
HDD
GPU

That would be 704,23€ (or 690,92€ if you chose the Asrock mainboard) without shipping (shipping depends on you payment method - here's a list. They also have "Midnight Shopping" - if you order between 12-6 AM you don't pay for shipping). The only things missing now are a case (which you should chose since it's personal preference) and the OS (since I didn't know if you already have one lying around). Depending on what kind of case you chose, and if you already have windows lying around, you can definetly also get a nice 24" monitor and stay within 900€. Also be aware that mindfactory likes to place their "Service level gold" automatically in your cart - remove it (or take it if you like what it offers for 4,90€).

Edit: I thought about it a bit more, and considering that you want to play on high for at least 2 years, maybe taking a 770 for about 60€ more would be better, but of course that could mean no new monitor if you want to stay within 900€.

 

There is also Caseking.de.

 

Indeed, and also Alternate.de, but those two are more expensive than Mindfactory, which is why I recommended it.

 

Can't help with a good German site, but for your GPU you should look into the Nvidia GTX 760 Hawk. It's the 760 superclocked so it's between the 2 Sacro suggested.

Built my new desktop last December and went with the normal 760 only to see the Hawk version on sale for $10 more a couple weeks later. Remember seeing a performance comparison between the three so I'll see if I can find that again and edit in a link.

Other thing I'd suggest is going with 2TB over 1TB. Don't know how much space you need, but the HDD I picked up was a jump from $60 to $90 for the extra TB so I figured better to be safe than sorry. 1.4 TB later, I don't regret it at all. Especially important if you plan to keep downloading Steam games and don't want to keep deleting things to add more.

 

Thanks for the suggestions, guys. I appreciate your help. = D

Going to post once I get further in this.

 

Okay, have also consulted a friend, looked a bit myself and do have a bit more money to draw from, so, I should be fine as long as it is within 1000€ give or take 50€.

This is roughly the pc that I think about purchasing. Of course the selected parts are not set in stone, since I am not sure whether they are compatible, so, I wanted to ask you guys again if this was feasible. At the very least, it should make clear which direction I want to go.

If you guys know of a part which is just as good/better for the same/less money, I am naturally open to suggestions.

Blue Ray Player 52,95€
Big Tower Case 82,99€
Mainboard 81,73€
GPU 192,00€
CPU 271,94€
RAM 147,72€
SSD 71,90€
HDD 77,93€
PSU 53,44€

Clocks around 1032, 59 €. Going to wait on the monitor for a bit, the old I have should make due for a while, so, I would rather spend the money on the parts for now.

Not sure if something is missing. I have windows, so, that shouldn't be needed. Not certain about a cooler either or if the on-board ones are enough.

So yeah, is this feasible? Pretty sure I messed up somewhere.

Thanks again. Really appreciate the help.

 

Above all else I would advise you to wait at least 2 more weeks, because Microsoft will present DirectX 12 at the GDC. There might also be some information about what GPU's will support it and when they come out, so like I said, you should probably wait.

As for the build, you don't need an i7 or 16GB of RAM unless you plan to do video editing. That i7 also come without a cooler and doesn't fit on the mainboard. So, exchange the i7 for the i5 4670 (or the 4670k if you plan to overclock in the future) and drop down to 8GB RAM (or if you really want to keep 16GB take this Kingston RAM because of the lifetime warranty).

Also, exchange the PSU for this, since you have chosen a big/full-tower as your case and I think the cables of the E9 are longer, which is pretty important when dealing with big/full-towers. And as for the mainboard, you can exchange the Asus for this Asrock. Like I said earlier in this thread the only difference between the two are that the Asus supports multi GPU (Crossfire) and the Asrock doesn't, so if you don't plan on running Crossfire the Asrock is fine.

As for the GPU, like I said at the start you should wait with that until after the GDC because of the DirectX 12 announcement.

 

Thank you very much for the help, Sacro. With the changes, the build should look something like this, with the graphic card still uncertain due to the direct x issue. Will wait two weeks for that.

Blue Ray Player 52,95€
Big Tower Case 82,99€
Mainboard 61,50€
GPU 192,00€
CPU 189,84€
RAM 138,30€
SSD 71,90€
HDD 77,93€
PSU 79,75€

Makes this 947,16€.

Not sure on the case, don't really care much for the appearance, only function and price. Is there a case that is particularly well suited?

CPU = I just think that, in the long run, it would probably be better to get as good of a CPU right now, since replacing that one is harder, I think. I mean, i7 is not actually going to be a disadvantage, right?

And about the mainboard, I don't intend to crossfire, but I also want one that works well with future upgrades, or is that not an issue?

Cooler isn't needed, right?

Anything else I should keep in mind?

Oh, as a complete noob, is it feasible that I can build this myself or should l let mindfactory assemble it? Since I think it would be smarter to let someone who knows this.

 

Not really, like I said it mostly comes down to personal preference. The only thing to really watch out for is that the GPU (and CPU cooler if you plan to get one) will fit, and that'll never be a problem with a big tower. Although you might want to look for one that has a turned HDD-cage like this one. As you can see on the second picture, the HDD-cage is turned by 90 degrees which makes it much mor accessible in my opinion. Also, you can put the HDD's in so that the cables are at the back, where they won't get in the way and are practically invisible.

But like I said, that's pretty much personal preference. If you want to look for another case you should do that on Caseking.de and then look if the case you picked is available on mindfactory. The reason is that caseking has much more information and pictures on each case (sometimes even a video) than mindcaftory (which is one of the negative points of mindfactory - the information that they have is pretty lacking most of the time)

Apart from the crossfire support the Asus and Asrock boards are identical apart from small things (for example, the Asrock board supports DDR3 modules with up to 16GB while the Asus only supports modules with up to 8GB - both of those things won't really matter to you).

If you don't plan on overclocking then not really, no.

Download all the drivers from the homepages of the manufacturers (don't use the ones from the cd's - they are mostly out of date) in advance and put them on a USB-stick/CD/DVD/external HDD or similar in case your windows doesn't have built in drivers for the Intel ethernet adapter. That way you won't have to get another pc if you don't immediately have internet. Also, remember mindfactory's midnight shopping so that you don't pay for shipping.

You can definetly build it yourself. Looking at a few tutorials on youtube should be enough to get you all the knowledge you need about putting a pc together. The hardest part, I would say, are the connectors from the case that you'll have to put on the mainboard, and even that is pretty easy. Also, I personally think that the 100€ that mindfactory wants are far to much for the assembly, since that can be done in about 30 min or so by an experienced person. So definetly go and look at some tutorials and then decide for yourself if you think that you can do it or not.

 

So the DX 12 announcement is out. It turns out that, unlike DX 11, DX 12 won't need new Hardware but will be supported by the GTX 480 and above or for ATI the HD7000 and above (if you want to read about it yourself here you go (it's in german)).

Getting back to the GPU, I would say that you go up one model and get either the R9 280X or the GTX 770. Both have about the same performance, but that varies from game to game (here are some game benchmarks). As you can see, the 280X gives more FPS in Anno 2070 than the GTX 770 but likewise the GTX 770 gives more FPS in Assassin's Creed 3. My point with that is that there's no optimal GPU but it's rather depending on the game.

Unfortunately it appears that mindfactory currently doesn't have many 280X GPUs in stock and the MSI one (which I would reccomend) doesn't seem to get restocked soon. It looks like you could order it anyways, but the shipping time would be up to 10 days. If you want to go for the GTX 770 instead of the 280X, I would also reccomend the MSI one.

Personally I would go with the GTX 770, but then again I've been using nvidia GPUs for about 10 years now, so I might be somewhat biased. If you have some games (that are already released) that you want to play in the immediate future, you should probably look around for benchmarks to see which of the two GPUs is better for those games and decide based on that.

Coming back to the CPU, since I forgot to answer your question about that last time. Of course an i7 wouldn't really be a disadvantage in terms of performance. The thing is that it's about 100€ more expensive because of features like Hyper Threading, but Hyper Threading doesn't give you more performance in games - it really only helps with video editing and the like. So in the end all you have is basically a higher clock which, for the Haswell CPU's, would only be 100 MHz higher than the i5 4670K.

So buying an i7 isn't really worth it. There's also DirectX 12 which should come out at the end of 2015. One of the features is less CPU overhead, meaning that DirectX 12 will (or rather is supposed to) use the GPU much more than the CPU unlike DX 11, which is build upon the old DX that was designed with the CPU as the most important part in mind. So because of DX 12, you should rather invest in a more powerful GPU than CPU, since the GPU will become even more important with DX 12.

 

Thanks, man.

Okay, will stick to the i5 then.

Sorry for the incoming question in advance: how is it that the 280X and the GTX770 are roughly equal if there is a ca 1000MB difference between the two or is that just not that significant?

A buddy of mine said that Radeon GPUs are better suited for gaming overall, so, I think I would gravitate more towards the Radeon at this point. However, Tomb Raider, the game I am more likely to play at this point than AC3 (although AC is one of the series I am playing, no interest in ANNO) seems to not be that well suited to either GPU.

Am also uncertain about the mainboard. It seems odd that it is so cheap, always thought that the solid ones would be more expensive.

 

The 1GB more VRAM only matters if a game goes above 2GB - and that doesn't really happen with any game at the moment, as long as you don't add pretty heavy graphic-mods.

Well, you're gonna hear the same thing about Nvidia depending on who you ask, which is why I suggested looking at benchmark for games revelant to you - after all benchmarks are objective.

AC3 and Anno 2070 were just used as examples, and I picked them because they were the first two games in the benchmark that showed larger differences than 2-3 fps between the two cards. As for both cards not being that well suited for Tomb Raider, they bove actually look pretty good for that in the computerbase benchmark if you look at the first one with FXAA and not the second one with SSAA, and SSAA isn't really worth it. And of course those benchmarks are done with max settings.

That depends on what features you want/the board has. For example, the Asus H87-Plus that you linked earlier would cost about the same as the Asrock if you would take away the Crossfire support. The most expensive standard ATX H87 board is also only 88€, and that's again because of Crossfire support. The reason that boards with the H87 chipset are so cheap is because they don't have Intel-certified overclocking, since that is reserverd for the Z87 chipset. And of course most manufacturers are also focusing on Z87 because more people will buy them, even if they don't need it, since it's the "best" chipset for the 1150 socket which also drops the price of the H87 boards due to less demand.

 

Okay, so, time has passed and I was rather busy with essays and whatnot, so, I didn't have time for the pc thing, since my laptop worked for the most part, minus gaming. Hence me dragging my feet on this.

Right now, I have a bit of time, so, decided to get back to this buying a new PC thing. The positive side to this is, that I have a bit more money saved that I can spend. The bad side is, a few things that I had previously marked are no longer there, like the kingston RAM, or got a bit more expensive.

So, here is the build that I am currently considering. Overall, it is similar to the old one, only one or two changes:

Blue Ray Player 65, 68€
Big Tower Case 83, 59€
Mainboard 61, 58€ (Alternative could be this for 92,45 €, but not necessary)
CPU 192, 80€ (Alternative could be this for 271, 95 €, but doesn't seem worth it)
GPU 268, 59 €
RAM 123,99€
SSD 65,97€
HDD 74,46€
PSU 79,23€

Total on mindfactory would be 1.015,89€

Going to install Windows 7 on this, and I think then, this should be ready to go, or is there something I should reconsider?

 

Only 120GB of SSD? Is it enough for system and normal documents?

Blue Ray Player - can it play CD? DVD are mentioned but I see nothing about CD.

 

It plays CD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW, DVD+R, DVD+R DL, DVD+RW, DVD-ROM, DVD-R, DVD-R DL, DVD-RW, DVD-RAM, BD-ROM, BD-ROM DL, BD-R, BD-R DL, BD-RE, BD-RE DL

Technische Daten has the details.


There is this SSD for 88,83 €, but it seems worse in most aspects except that it is twice the size. I figured I just install windows and the game I am currently playing on the SSD and everything else comes on the HDD.

 

Looks pretty good. You might want to buy a few 120mm fans since the case comes with none (which is rather unusual). Also, your windows is 64-bit, right?

Edit: 120GB should be enough. Windows is about 20-30, which leaves 90-100 for programs, games etc. Oh and something else, since I don't know if you are aware of it: don't defrag SSD's. You should disable the windows defrag for the SSD after you've installed it.

 

Windows is 64, just not sure whether to go Ultimate or Professional yet.

Thanks for mentioning that, since I didn't know xD

A buddy of mine recommended Gigabyte mainboards, so, am looking into those atm, like this or this

 

Ultimate is overkill. It most likely doesn't add anything you would need - see here for a comparison of the versions. I heard about a BIOS bug that was affecting Gigabyte motherboards a few months back. Don't know if it's fixed yet, and what models were affected by it, but you might want to google a bit to make sure none of those two are affected.

Apart from that they look ok, although the price of the first one is so high because it apparently has a Crative soundcard, and of course SLI/Crossfire.

 

Professional it is, then.

Am curious, as to why the Gigabyte MBs are supposedly better though. The ASROCK seems to be just as good, it only lacks the support to as many RAM types and maybe one less USB slot but for that, supports 7.1 sound.