computer Potential Build List for Custom PC

[Crimson_Wolf]

Was parting and pricing out potential pieces for a future build I would like to get.

[DiaperPony]

Treat this as an unsubstantiated rumor, but I've heard that some

[Crimson_Wolf]

I used PCpartpicker and yeah some things came out cheaper but some came out more than what was on this list.

[Dirty Diaper/Maxipad Lover]

If you're not building your machine anytime soon, I'd dump the i5 and go with an i7 if at all possible. I'd also consider a SanDisk SSD as I find them to be more reliable than what Samsung offers in the long run. (The 10 year warranty on SanDisk's SSD's is also a reason for me to go with them should I ever need to use it.) As far as your HDD goes, check the reviews on the reliability of the specific model that you're looking at right before you buy it. They tend to fluctuate pretty frequently at the desktop level, and I've started using HGST "Ultrastar" (server-class) drives as they're also a bit more reliable than traditional desktop drives in my experience. Also, as far as your power supply is concerned, Corsair is probably okay, but my recommendation is PC Power & Cooling, as they seem to offer the highest quality power supplies in my experience, and power is the one thing you don't want to skimp on since a cheap supply can destroy an otherwise functional system. (I'm not being hyperbolic, a bad power supply can kill the motherboard and various other components when it goes, and cheap supplies tend to go pretty easily and pretty quickly.) Corsair makes great memory, but I'm not sure that their power supplies are on par with their RAM.

[nites]

I'm not sure what your budget is, but since you mentioned this is a future build, you might want to consider switching from the i5 6600 to the i7 6700K like Dirty Diaper/Maxipad Lover mentioned. I would also change your motherboard out from the H170 to the Z170 because it will allow you to overclock your CPU and has more PCI-E lanes. Other then that good choice of parts!

[DiaperPony]

Good call with pc power and cooling.. I totally forgot to mention PSU! They make pretty much the best power

[Dubious]

35 minutes ago, ConflictedPerson2 said:

It's not as simple as that. There's a more technical explanation that I don't know, but the GTX 970 basically has 3.5GB of fast VRAM and an extra 0.5GB of slower VRAM. It's effectively 4GB of VRAM, but if it goes over 3.5GB the framerate will drop a bit. It's not nearly as serious of a problem as people make it sound like, and it's deliberate, not a defect.

I know people with GTX 970s, and none have noticed a problem with it so far.

Its not a problem as long as you use 1080p

[Diapered Jason]

17 hours ago, Dirty Diaper/Maxipad Lover said:

If you're not building your machine anytime soon, I'd dump the i5 and go with an i7 if at all possible. I'd also consider a SanDisk SSD as I find them to be more reliable than what Samsung offers in the long run. (The 10 year warranty on SanDisk's SSD's is also a reason for me to go with them should I ever need to use it.) As far as your HDD goes, check the reviews on the reliability of the specific model that you're looking at right before you buy it. They tend to fluctuate pretty frequently at the desktop level, and I've started using HGST "Ultrastar" (server-class) drives as they're also a bit more reliable than traditional desktop drives in my experience. Also, as far as your power supply is concerned, Corsair is probably okay, but my recommendation is PC Power & Cooling, as they seem to offer the highest quality power supplies in my experience, and power is the one thing you don't want to skimp on since a cheap supply can destroy an otherwise functional system. (I'm not being hyperbolic, a bad power supply can kill the motherboard and various other components when it goes, and cheap supplies tend to go pretty easily and pretty quickly.) Corsair makes great memory, but I'm not sure that their power supplies are on par with their RAM.

I have had pretty good luck so far with the Corsair Force GS 240 GB SSD that I put in my ASUS laptop. It has enough space for Windows, Solid Works, Matlab, Labview, and most of the games I play. Along with a boot up time of about 5 secs, SSDS have really come a long ways. Reliability is also pretty good so far.

[DirtyDaddy]

For all the people suggesting swapping the i5 for an i7 - why?

[Dirty Diaper/Maxipad Lover]

18 hours ago, DiaperPony said:

Good call with pc power and cooling.. I totally forgot to mention PSU! They make pretty much the best power

[DirtyDaddy]

1 hour ago, Dirty Diaper/Maxipad Lover said:

It might not make a huge performance difference now, but down the road the hyperthreading (and to a much lesser extent, the extra cache,) on the i7 become very noticeable. In real-world performance I've found that the i7 smokes the i5 when I throw large files at it, (on otherwise identical machines,) which is why I can't recommend an i5 when I've gotten such better performance out of the i7. As I mentioned above, I've been pushing my equipment for increasingly longer amounts of time before upgrades, and little spec boosts like this make a world of difference between having to buy a new system one year or being able to hold off until the next when my equipment finally does start to show its age.

Throw large files at it? That doesn't really make sense from a CPU performance perspective, though upgrading to an NVMe drive will help a lot with IO performance. Processing a large image in photoshop or something can use up a lot of CPU - but just loading files from disk into RAM (system startup, loading a new game/level, etc.) hardly touches the CPU, the drive will use DMA to put the data into RAM without the CPUs involvement.

Hyperthreading is typically good for a 10% performance increase in most multi-threaded workloads - it allows the CPU to have a second pool of instructions (second thread) to pull from in order to keep its internal execution units busy. But the i5 and i7 have exactly the same execution units once you get past the scheduler, and for single-threaded tasks having hyperthreading enabled can reduce your performance. Considering both chips are already quad-core and this is for a desktop - the chances that something is really going to take advantage of the extra 4 logical cores provided by hyperthreading is rather slim.

So if you start with the i5 and have $130 to spend..., upgrading to the i7 is going to give you 20%ish better performance in tasks that are CPU limited.

[Dirty Diaper/Maxipad Lover]

Some of the large files I'm referring to are Photoshop files with several layers and resolutions in the 16MP range. I'm also including photo and music libraries with thousands of photos/songs that typically take a bit of extra time to load, even with a decent I/O throughput. I'm also aware of the reduction in single-core performance with hyperthreading enabled, but haven't noticed it the way that I've noticed issues with fewer threads. I typically recommend against splurging on a better GPU early on because I'm more likely to upgrade a GPU somewhere down the road while I'm far less likely to upgrade a CPU without practically rebuilding a machine. While a better GPU should theoretically improve the performance of games, most are frequently designed with 1080p resolutions in mind, (especially console ports,) making the GPU improvements far less significant than they would be otherwise. Although NVMe isn't a bad investment in the long-run, it's something I'd also throw more money into at a later date as drive prices continue to drop. As for 10-GbE, I'd probably just stick to Thunderbolt 2 for household use since it reaches the same speeds and has plenty of support for devices I already own in addition to being a great way to network equipment at 10-GbE speeds. Granted, the next machines I buy will likely have Thunderbolt 3, although I'll still use Ethernet for some things as well.

[WetDad]

If you are using Windows 10, then you should consider an NVMe SSD instead of SATA. The speed increase is quite substantial, far beyond what the simple benchmarks show. If you are doing anything that is disk intensive (like Photoshop) you will appreciate the extra money spent. Don't waste your money on an HDD, just get an SSD big enough for your needs and put everything on there. Get a PCIe card SSD and make certain it is not sharing lanes with anything else.

In order for it all to work right, your BIOS must have EUFI and NVMe boot features. Check your MB vendor of choice on this issue before pulling the trigger.

[Baby Brian]

I'd also say to make sure your 16gb or ram comes in two sticks and that your motherboard is capable of going up to

[AwakenEvil]

Maxing out the ram is always an easy, and cheap solution. I just bought a friend a R9 390x 8GB GPU for 500.00 for Gaming Rig. It ran really well. I plan on buy a new Alienware and using the same gpu in the special port replicator when I want to game.

[Baby Brian]

10 hours ago, AwakenEvil said:

Maxing out the ram is always an easy, and cheap solution. I just bought a friend a R9 390x 8GB GPU for 500.00 for Gaming Rig. It ran really well. I plan on buy a new Alienware and using the same gpu in the special port replicator when I want to game.

That's the problem. It is cheaper to just max it out when you first build it. Really though, wouldn't you want to have the same specs now but with the availability to upgrade it later by being able to add