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Advice for Building a Gaming Computer


Zenophilious

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To be frank, your i5-k processor is too much for a gaming rig. The normal i5 processor will suffice because Haswell doesn't really have much leeway for overclocking (it heats up quickly compared to ivy bridge). Also, watercoolers are noisy, bulky, and somewhat difficult to setup compared to heatsinks so I advice against it. Intel CPUs have low TDP (heat) anyways. For RAM, bandwidth (like 1600,1866,2100MHz) is not the only factor in performance. Check the CAS Latency or CL rating of the RAM and make sure to pick CL8 and below, its also much better if it supports XMP profiles. For the motherboard, I recommend getting a H87 chipset board instead of Z87 since the only difference between the two is overclocking, you'll save money that way. For the PSU, as much as possible get the 80+ Gold or Platinum rated ones and even better if its modular (makes cabling really tidy =D).

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Guest loppez
something quite cheap i think.
 
$239.99   Intel Core i5-4670K
$85.74  ASRock Fatal1ty H87 
$249.99 Palit GeForce GTX760 or MSI GeForce GTX 760 OC
$19.99  Samsung SH-224DB/BEBE
$79.12 Crucial Ballistix 8 GB (2 × 4 GB) DDR3 1600 MHz
$74.99 Crucial M500 120 GB
about 55.99  Zalman Z3 Plus  
 
about $800 with no monitor, keyboard, psu, mouse and hard drive.
ssd is here and the best would be to just add hard drive but if you want save some money just switch it. with those parts you don't need additional cpu cooling system. if you want to overclock cpu, you might add SilentiumPC Fera 2 HE1224 later on. it's cheap and good. 
 
monitor.. hmm if you don't need 120hz then dell U2412M is quite cheap and good. Eizo FORIS FS2333 is not as cheap but people say it is good for players who dosn't need 120hz. also another difference is 16:10 and 16:9.
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1080p monitor, IPS panel for true-er colors. Can recommend Dell too (don't be fooled by 5ms GTG times). Personally I'd never want to play without 120hz ever again, but it's still way too expensive.

 

Also, scratch the water cooler - I've used it for my ITX setup and it was a lifesaver there, but it's too much for a casual gaming system.

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According to partpicker.com both motherboards are incompatible with the CPU. You might want to go there (I think you might need to make an account) and once you pick your CPU incompatible motherboards will be automatically filtered out.

Really?  Wow, I'm terrible at determining compatibility from specs, then.  Thanks for the suggestion.

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Okay, I followed Flutterz's advice and used PC Part Picker.  Still not 100% sure if what I picked is good or works together; I'd very much appreciate it if someone could look over it and tell me what they think.  If at all possible, I'd like to trim a bit off the price, as $1,500 is pushing it a little for my budget.

 

Here's the PC Part Picker list, in case you missed it in my original post: http://pcpartpicker.com/user/Zenophilious/saved/46pG

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The only wired connection we have is downstairs, and there's not much room for another computer there; I also have no choice but to put it in my room, and to get a wired connection I'd have to pitch in to have another phone jack activated.  I also don't have a phone jack in my room, so that's pretty much impossible.  I have to have WiFi or I don't get an internet connection.

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Okay, managed to find a highly rated WiFi card for ~$20, and went for a 1TB HDD instead of a 2TB HDD.  I realized it would be a waste of money, for me at least, because besides gaming, I won't be doing anything that'll eat up 1 TB of storage.  It cut the price down to ~$1,350, which is a lot more manageable.  If I need a bigger HDD, I guess I can just get one sometime in the future and just make do with the 1TB HDD.  I also switched the video card to the Asus GeForce 720.

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Guest loppez

why the hell you want to buy so expensive motherboard... $179.99? 

 

why not ASRock Fatal1ty H87? it works with your cpu and graphic card. 

 
for ssd take Crucial M500 120 GB (about $70) instead of $114.99. you won't feel any difference.
 
money you save, you can put into better monitor or something else.
 
$100 for a case? lol. you really like spending money on useless things but that's not my buisness. your call.
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why the hell you want to buy so expensive motherboard... $179.99? 

 

why not ASRock Fatal1ty H87? it works with your cpu and graphic card. 

 
for ssd take Crucial M500 120 GB (about $70) instead of $114.99. you won't feel any difference.
 
money you save, you can put into better monitor or something else.
 
$100 for a case? lol. you really like spending money on useless things but that's not my buisness. your call.

 

Thanks for the suggestions.  If you're wondering why I didn't pick those in the first place, frankly, it's because I don't know jack about building computers.  Everything I know, little that I do know, I learned from my friends and the internet.  I pretty much just sorted through the ones in the highest rating sections until I found a good price range for the ones that I had no idea about.

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I disagree that spending 100 bucks on a case is necessarily a bad investment (not that I've looked too much into the whole thing; I got lazy and just took a recommendation for a HAF case). You'll likely use that case for your future builds as well, so it'll stick around for quite a long while.

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You'll likely use that case for your future builds as well, so it'll stick around for quite a long while.

 

Yep, pretty much, you keep the case and just exchange the parts, having a good case with good cooling and air flow is always good.

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Well, I think I've pretty much got all the parts decided on.  I bought the monitor yesterday, since I wasn't sure how long they were gonna knock $40 off the price, but I've yet to buy the other parts yet, so if anyone has any last suggestions, now would be the time to do it.

 

I know I've said this several times now, but really, I greatly appreciate all the advice and help you guys gave me.  My friends definitely don't know as much as you guys do, and I'd have been fairly lost without your help.

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Good luck on building your gaming rig. Be wise, check your use case, and buy parts that fit your (or friend's) needs.

 

for an average user "Too much power is just wasted power" (and electricity) - quote by me

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Bought all the parts!  :D  Got two free games, too.  I got Total War: Rome II with the Intel Core i5-4670K processor, and I got Daylight with the ASUS GeForce GTX 770 graphics card.  Spent about $50-$70 more than I planned, but I didn't want to use the site that sold the HDD for the cheapest.  Oh well, wasn't too bad.

 

One last question that I can think of: do you generally have to buy additional cords to hook everything up with, or do all of the components come with the proper cords?

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Bought all the parts!  :D  Got two free games, too.  I got Total War: Rome II with the Intel Core i5-4670K processor, and I got Daylight with the ASUS GeForce GTX 770 graphics card.  Spent about $50-$70 more than I planned, but I didn't want to use the site that sold the HDD for the cheapest.  Oh well, wasn't too bad.

 

One last question that I can think of: do you generally have to buy additional cords to hook everything up with, or do all of the components come with the proper cords?

The only cords you'll need to connect are ones from the PSU, the HDD and SSD and things like the power button on your case, and all of them should already be there.

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Really?  Awesome.  I saw stuff about HDMI connectivity/ports, so I wasn't sure if I needed HDMI cords or not.  I'm assuming that they're optional purchases if I want things to look and sound extra crisp, right?

Oh, crap, you mean the ones for connecting stuff to the computer, rather than inside the computer. Those might not be included, so you should check the parts you ordered to see if you have something to connect your monitor to your GPU with - most likely either an HDMI cable, a mini-HDMI cable, a VGA cable or a DVI cable, and if they aren't included get one yourself. Just be sure to check that both the GPU and monitor have the same slot. Quality-wise all of them are more or less equivalent, but HDMI and mini-HDMI transmit audio in addition to video, so if your monitor has built-in speakers and you're planning to use them it'd be easier to use one of those rather than VGA/DVI with a separate cable for sound.

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Crap.  Well, it says that the monitor has D-Sub, DVI-D, and HDMI connectors, with one of each, but I'm not sure about the GPU.  All I could find was that it has "Virtualization Technology Support".  This is my GPU on Newegg, and this is it on the Intel site.  Would you mind checking for me?  Sorry to be asking you to do something else for me, but I'm clueless about what to look for.

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That's your CPU, your GPU is your Graphics Processing Unit, your graphics card. :P

So according to the specs of your card http://www.asus.com/Graphics_Cards/GTX770DC2OC2GD5/#specifications

It has 2 DVI ports (not sure about the difference between DVI-D and DVI-I I'm afraid, but it has both so one is bound to work, especially if your monitor has DVI-D) and an HDMI port.

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That's your CPU, your GPU is your Graphics Processing Unit, your graphics card. :P

So according to the specs of your card http://www.asus.com/Graphics_Cards/GTX770DC2OC2GD5/#specifications

It has 2 DVI ports (not sure about the difference between DVI-D and DVI-I I'm afraid, but it has both so one is bound to work, especially if your monitor has DVI-D) and an HDMI port.

Wow, I'm sorry, I'm currently trying to multitask, and I was getting mildly worried about the future of my computer  lol  I derped so hard I herped.

 

So, at the least, I should get an HDMI cord?  I think my monitor came with some type of DVI cord.

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Wow, I'm sorry, I'm currently trying to multitask, and I was getting mildly worried about the future of my computer  lol  I derped so hard I herped.

 

So, at the least, I should get an HDMI cord?  I think my monitor came with some type of DVI cord.

Apparently DVI-D is the more basic version, so the DVI cable should work just fine, unless your monitor has built-in speakers, in that case you should get an HDMI.

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