Hardware & Technical First time builder, is this build ok? (AMD+)

[Articice]

Hi there everyone,
After putting this off far far too long I’m planning to build my own computer for the first time. Of course this also means that I’m also really nervous about messing something up, so would it be possible for you all to have a look at the below link and tell me if anything is wrong with them? or any tips that may be helpful?
Im trying to stick to a £500 build if i can.

http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/PXFDHx

i used https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ayQUwofWxE as a base and sort of customised it from There but im not totally sure that this build will work or not. O'h and if anyone could recommend me a better case i would appreciate it!

Thank you for your time.

 

[Surfinjo]

If I may, I think you're approaching this all wrong.

The first thing you need is a motherboard that will not break or become obsolete next year.

Look at this site: https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/

It's aimed at Asus, because I prefer that brand. If you like other, still start there, to get your thoughts in order.

You like AMD, Tick that. Do you want a gaming machine, if so, tick ROG. Don't tick TUF. They are excellent, but aimed at military and those with dreams of being Rambo.

Next, think about your video needs. Both have advantages and disadvantages. But you go for one or the other: http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/sli-vs-crossfire/ At this point, its about the interface, you generally buy the cars separatly.

The form factor is very important. It's essentially the size of the board. A small board will be much more compact, often use smaller components. For a desk top, ATX is by far the most popular. I will be upgrading soon. My current machine was bought in 2007. I will most likely keep my current case and start by buying a modern board. Because I intend to play with mine, not look at it.

The technologies are more aimed at ASUS. If you don't intend using ASUS, look at them anyway to get an idea of what's around.

That will give you a start pn what you need to be thinking about. From there, you can have a clearer idea of what you can afford and what you really want.

If you're upgrading, how much of what you have can you re-use, even in the short term. I bought my current PSU a few months ago. As I did with my video card. They will be reused. But don't sink the ship for a ha'pen'th worth o' tar.

If your current drives are disc, then think about buying a couple of new SSD. You won't regret it. http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00S9Q9VS4/ref=pe_385721_37986871_TE_item

I know sound is a big deal for many and since I don't have brilliant hearing anymore, (after a career of ear abuse starting with listening to Tubular Bell on Headphones back in 1972), but it isn't the most essential item. You can get that all singing, super cool sounds card later. Use your money now on getting what you must.

And that's my twa pen'th worth.

 

[Articice]

Ironically enough its the motherboard that im having the most trouble with, maybe i dont know enough about them but finding a good one for a decent price seems to be strangly hard. (on advice i decided to go to the Intell I5 CPU, but of course this means i now have to look at motherboards again.)

 

[Cody]

You're looking at £90-100 for a decent 1150 mobo.

 

[Surfinjo]

Ironically enough its the motherboard that im having the most trouble with, maybe i dont know enough about them but finding a good one for a decent price seems to be strangly hard. (on advice i decided to go to the Intell I5 CPU, but of course this means i now have to look at motherboards again.)

I'm assuming you're in the UK.

Have a look at these: http://www.novatech.co.uk/products/...am3plus/990fxchipset/crosshairvformula-z.html

http://www.novatech.co.uk/products/...am3plus/990fxchipset/sabertooth990fxr2.0.html

Not intended to be specific recommendations, just to push you in the right direction.

The point is, you need information. The only way to get that is with research.

You like AMD for some reason, OK from the ASUS site, tick the AMD box. Then the ROG box to specify gaming MBs. Look through each of the categories and decide which you like and which you want to avoid. For that, you need research.

There are two AMD platforms, tick both.

Do you like crossfire or SLI. Research to find out the difference. Tick the appropriate box.

Gradually, you are down to a few and you can look at the specs, how much the CPU will cost and so on.

Suddenly you ahve your new machine.

 

[adoredtv]

Jo that's horrible advice on mobos. Nobody buying a £500 PC needs to spend £180+ on ROG motherboards. I'd go as far as saying he's already spending too much on that Gigabyte one. Otherwise the build looks fine and with DX12 coming soon AMD CPUs won't be nearly so gimp compared Intel.

 

[Surfinjo]

Jo that's horrible advice on mobos. Nobody buying a £500 PC needs to spend £180+ on ROG motherboards. I'd go as far as saying he's already spending too much on that Gigabyte one. Otherwise the build looks fine and with DX12 coming soon AMD CPUs won't be nearly so gimp compared Intel.

I disagree to be honest. The MB is the most important part. £200 out of a £500 budget is excellent.

But it isn't my intention to suggest he should buy one or the other. Rather that he should do research first.

His intention is to build himself. That is excellent. But for that, he needs to know what he is doing. There are literally hundreds of MB out there. The only way to find the one you want is to whittle down by category.

For my own part, I would start with ASUS because they are, in my opinion, the best. I wouldn't thank you for a Gigabyte.

 

[adoredtv]

What could you possibly get from a £200 mobo that would make it worth more than a £50 mobo to a budget PC build? It offers no improvement in frame-rate. All that would do is leave you with a slow pc with an overly expensive motherboard.

Look at his numbers, what does he drop to get a £200 mobo in there? Gotta find around £150 from somewhere? The CPU is only £79 and even the graphics card is £120 so I dunno where the savings can be made?

 

[Surfinjo]

What could you possibly get from a £200 mobo that would make it worth more than a £50 mobo to a budget PC build? It offers no improvement in frame-rate. All that would do is leave you with a slow pc with an overly expensive motherboard.

Look at his numbers, what does he drop to get a £200 mobo in there? Gotta find around £150 from somewhere? The CPU is only £79 and even the graphics card is £120 so I dunno where the savings can be made?

Once again, I didn't say he should.

But having said that, I would.

I have a rather ageing machine, but the PSU and Graphics card were both replaced earlier this year. So I can reuse those and my case/

What he or anyone else does is up to them. But I suggest, buy the best you can. Especially the MB.

 

[adoredtv]

A current-gen £30 mobo will probably have more advanced features than the £300 range-topper of 5 years ago, ie SATA 3, USB 3 etc, simply because those features weren't available back then. Chances are yours is DDR or DDR2, meaning the memory might be a bottleneck even with newer graphics cards.

The only stuff that never really obsoletes are PSUs and Hard Drives (though they might get too small to be useful, ie 80GB now is really low). Mobos are imo, better off treated as a commodity, cheap as you can buy.

 

[Surfinjo]

A current-gen £30 mobo will probably have more advanced features than the £300 range-topper of 5 years ago, ie SATA 3, USB 3 etc, simply because those features weren't available back then. Chances are yours is DDR or DDR2, meaning the memory might be a bottleneck even with newer graphics cards.

The only stuff that never really obsoletes are PSUs and Hard Drives (though they might get too small to be useful, ie 80GB now is really low). Mobos are imo, better off treated as a commodity, cheap as you can buy.

That's good.

I personally disagree and would like one using DDR4 if I can. http://www.corsair.com/en/landing/ddr4 Bit pricey right now, but hopefully will come down in a few months.

But different approaches.

Either way, research is a must. whittle down your choices until you are left with a small number then find the one you want.

 

[adoredtv]

Yeah the price of DDR4 is really quite prohibitive just now. Also it'll likely fall foul of what normally happens, ie DDR3 1066...nobody uses that. Ditto DDR3 1333. You really end up paying the early adopter premium and then regretting it down the line.

Still for a gaming PC at 500 quid I'd just stick with the bog standard DDR3 for now. No real option tbh as a DDR4 setup would take you well over £500 right now anyway.

 

[Porina]

Coincidentally I was pricing up my Haswell based box for sale, as that was only temporary until I get my Skylake box running. I think we're in a similar budget wise.

Pricing below is what's on ebuyer at the moment, except for the case which isn't listed any more and I think I paid £20 for it. Other similar cases are available.

£159 i5-4570S
£44 Asus H81M-Plus (note limited upgrade capability - you will want to fill both ram slots for dual channel performance but wont have upgrade potential beyond swapping them later. Also single PCIe 16x slot means one GPU is all you're going to fit)
£19 Cooler Master Hyper 103 (makes a significant difference to cooling/noise compared to the standard intel bundled thing. But any uprated cooler should do well, not just this specific one)
£34 2x4GB DDR3 1600 ram (any major brand)
£64 Kingston 240GB SSD V300 (I had seen it as low as £60 on Amazon so great value)
£20 Gigabyte GZ-MA03 case (or any other cheap generic case)
£177 Asus Strix GTX960 (I like Asus ok? Cheaper alternatives available)

Total: £517, and I haven't included a PSU (doesn't come with case) nor upgraded thermal compound. Swap the GTX960 with the R7 370 and ebuyer do the Gigabyte Windforce version for £115, so that would bring the total (ex PSU) to £455 which should allow a decent PSU to be added but we might break budget going for a 2nd storage drive too. Note I added a bigger SSD above, as I think 120GB can be quickly filled even if you have a secondary storage drive. You will end up deciding what needs more performance and get installed where. You could drop the CPU model some more. The cheaper entry level i5-4440 is higher base clocked but lower turbo clock, and not as power efficient as the S suffixed model I went for above. It depends on the use but at least in ED the game is not CPU intensive and you wouldn't notice a difference between them.

Right now, on a budget I'd stick to DDR3. Basic DDR4 is only a slight bump in bandwidth and most things aren't very sensitive to it. The only good reason for going DDR4 is if you want to go significantly higher bandwidth than DDR3. I just got some DDR4 3333 today, and at over double the bandwidth of DDR3 1600 I'm hoping for some gains in compute applications once I have time to do the build. I don't think for a second it'll make any detectable difference to ED.

 

[Patrick_68000]

For the price, this is a good computer. If you can spend more, then see for I5 and a more powerful graphics card. In all case good luck for mounting. Do it with patience and methodology