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Author Topic: Building a ~1000EUR PC. halp :x  (Read 1072 times)

Dutchling

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Building a ~1000EUR PC. halp :x
« on: February 10, 2014, 10:29:37 am »

So I decided that I'd actually have to play all those games I bought on Steam over the years and to do so I really need a new PC. Using Logical Increments really helped me a lot, but I'm still not sure I did even anything right at all...
(the links are just for informational purposes, I'm not going to order internationally)

Core Parts
Graphics: Sapphire R9 270X 2GB - €175
CPU: AMD FX-6350 - €115
HFS: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO - €28
Motherboard: Asus M5A97 R2.0 - €72
RAM: Kingston 8GB - €46
HDD: Seagate Barracuda 7200.14, 2TB - €74
SSD: Samsung 840 EVO 120GB - €77
Power Supply: Seasonic S12II-Bronze 620W - €60
Case: Corsair Carbide 400R - €87
Other
Screen: Asus VS247H-P - €149
Mouse: Logitech - €29
Keyboard: Logitech - €26
Optical Drive: Samsung SH-224DB - €16
OS
Windows 8.1 - €73

Total €1027

Does this make any sense? Is this really stupid? I do not know >.>
I'm mostly wondering if it'll fit, if the parts are of equal power/whatever (I assume I did that at least that okay, thanks to LI), and if the screen is any good. Screen specs really confuse me o.o. So many screens...

I could possibly spend another €170, but not spending that would of course be ideal.

edit: OK, so the 504 that decided to eat my topic spat it out later on. Sorry for the double thread...
« Last Edit: February 10, 2014, 11:41:54 am by Dutchling »
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gimlet

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Re: Building a ~1000EUR PC. halp :x
« Reply #1 on: February 10, 2014, 12:52:35 pm »

A few initial thoughts - warning this is based on US market/sales frequency/pricing, I know stuff is higher priced/harder to find sales for you guys across the pond so take it with a grain of salt:

Wow to me that's a big % for the case for a "budget" build.  You might consider going *down* the scale on this.  I personally don't care what my pc looks like, I just want a solid reasonably quiet case - if it was me I'd shop around for better options, and ESPECIALLY look for cases on sale, I have gotten awesome cases for $40-50 delivered and decent cases for even less.  Be aware of shipping costs on cases, it's usually better to find a place with free/fixed price shipping and get the case from there even though the list price might be a bit higher.  If you have the time, it's worth looking around in local shops to see if you can find something decent on sale and avoid the shipping cost.  Do check reviews sure the case is big enough to fit the full sized gpu and cpu cooler (the R9-270X is basically a 7950 right?  Those are LONG.  And the Hyper 212 is pretty tall.  I'd assume the ones listed on Logical Increments are big enough to handle them, it would be a good idea to make sure, especially if you consider other cases).  Apply the savings to cpu/gpu.

For gaming, look really really hard at the equivalent or slightly better Intel set up.  The AMD 6350 has 8 cores, and gaming performance is STILL mainly 1-2 cores, although this has begun to change.  So I would try to find a super hot deal on something like a i5-4670k + z87 motherboard, or maybe an i5-3550P or 3570K if the 4670K is too pricey.  Try to find benchmarks for the most demanding games you want to run at the resolution you want (I guess 1920x1080 for that monitor) to see which cpus have acceptable performance and best bang-for-the-buck.   Actually looking at a few comparisons that AMD 6350 competes pretty well, still if it was gonna be my gaming system I'd be looking hard at Intel.

Are you gonna overclock, and are you gonna try to OC a lot?  If not, or if you just want light OC try starting out with just the stock coolers, save that 28 Euros and apply it to get a better base cpu.  I've always been able to do moderate OC with the stock coolers and then you can take some time to wait for a killer sale on the add-on cooler (like I can usually get the Hyper212 Plus for $20 or so, several times a year).   If you're dying to do heavy OC right off the bat, yeah might as well get the cooler now, and don't forget good thermal paste (I usually settle for Arctic Silver 5 but I'm not an OC maniac, search all the reviews if you want to try to cut a few degrees).

GPU - looks reasonable, but you might have trouble finding an AMD GPU in stock at a decent price because of cryptocoin mining - be ready to look for the equivalent or slightly better Nvidia card, you'll probably have better luck.

If you're a student, look for student prices for Windows, you can probably get it for 30%+ off the 73€, apply the savings to cpu/gpu.  Especially if you have any kind of old windows license you can use as a base to get the "upgrade" version instead, if you don't mind the slight hassle of doing it that way.

Good choice for PSU, I like Seasonic.

General shopping tip - If you've got the time, look at combos 1-2 even 3 steps above what you're aiming for and price those out too, looking for hot deals - a LOT of the time you can hit a hot sale and score a more powerful combo for less than you'd pay for non-sale lower performing gear.

Basically your core parts are a pretty solid combo, all I have is the above minor notes/suggestions - good luck!
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Dutchling

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Re: Building a ~1000EUR PC. halp :x
« Reply #2 on: February 10, 2014, 01:11:53 pm »

Thank you for your comments. LI has expensive cases I think because they can last multiple builds, but I guess I can look for a cheaper one if that doesn't really matter. And I am most definitely not going to overclock anything. That'd probably end up in multiple casualties.

I'll try to see if I can find better deals / parts where you suggested.
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Dutchling

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Re: Building a ~1000EUR PC. halp :x
« Reply #3 on: February 10, 2014, 02:07:58 pm »

So I changed some stuff. I can get Windows for €60, drop the fans, and get a cheaper case, spending the rest on (hopefully) better CPU/GPU.

Core Parts
*Graphics: Asus GTX760-DC2OC-2GD5 - €211
*CPU: Intel Core i5 4670 Boxed - €180
*HFS: None - €0
Motherboard: Asus M5A97 R2.0 - €72
RAM: 8GB - €46
HDD: 2TB - €74
SSD: 120GB - €77
Power Supply: Seasonic S12II-Bronze 620W - €60
*Case: Cooler Master Elite 344 USB 3.0 - €34

*Changed

Does that look any good?
This is the same if not slightly cheaper than what I had before. I'm not entirely sure yet if everything can actually fit in the case/motherboard.
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gimlet

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Re: Building a ~1000EUR PC. halp :x
« Reply #4 on: February 10, 2014, 04:20:24 pm »

Cool, but now you need an Intel socket motherboard to go with the Intel cpu - if you're not gonna OC *at all* you can get a cheap B81 board (lowest end "business class"), if you want all the consumer bells & whistles look at Z87s - there are a few listed on LI that look reasonable.  As always check benchmarks and reviews.  The 4670 is a "socket 1150" processor - narrow your search to those.

And as always, look for the "sweet spot" of price performance - there's not much performance difference between adjacent cpu models, like the 4570 and 4670  so see if the incremental difference is worth the price premium.   Look at benchmarks and sites like http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i5-4670-vs-Intel-Core-i5-4570 or http://cpubenchmark.net to get a feel for raw performance diffs.  For example, the i5-4670 benchmarks at 7513 "cpubenches" at $219, the i5-4570 is 7065 for $192 - that's about a 6% performance difference for a 14% price difference - you have to decide if that's worth it (plugging in the prices you can get them for of course).  Or the i7-4770 is 9,969 at $290, 41% performance difference for 52% price difference.  Just be careful, you can upsell yourself into overkill, where you're spending money on the cpu when the gpu will be the bottleneck or vice versa.

Another note - the "K" suffix Intel cpus like the 4570K/4670K have unlocked multipliers for easy overclocking - they're worth a little price premium over the non-K models if you think you'll overclock at all.  Mild overclocking is pretty easy,  you should be able to get a painless 20% or so cpu performance boost just by changing a few settings.  Some motherboards make it as easy as clicking one button, and just as easy to undo.  So if you have a little time to invest it's a nice painless performance boost that's available if you want it.

Here's a decent recent article to read about a similar-price/spec system build - good discussion of the tradeoffs and some gaming benchmarks towards the end:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/build-your-own-gaming-pc-core-i5,3708.html 
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rutsber

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Re: Building a ~1000EUR PC. halp :x
« Reply #5 on: February 10, 2014, 04:28:00 pm »


EDIT: Moved this here because I saw that gimlet didn't mention it: when you look at cases and motherboards, they have a form factor (e.g. atx, micro-atx). The case that you have right now only fits Mini-ITX and Micro-ATX. I would recommend looking for a case that can fit an atx motherboard.

Also, that monitor looks good. I have almost the same one and it works very well.
« Last Edit: February 10, 2014, 04:37:30 pm by rutsber »
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Dutchling

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Re: Building a ~1000EUR PC. halp :x
« Reply #6 on: February 10, 2014, 04:35:14 pm »

Ok, I seemed to have missed that motherboard-GPU thing on LI.

Found a Z87 motherboard for the same price as the other one. It won't fit my case though (ATX is too large for mini-ATX / micro-ATX right? why am I even asking this >.>) so I'll find a new case now too.

I'll post my (hopefully) final build once I think I have stuff that can actually all fit in the case and connect to the motherboard :P
« Last Edit: February 10, 2014, 04:52:30 pm by Dutchling »
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QuakeIV

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Re: Building a ~1000EUR PC. halp :x
« Reply #7 on: February 11, 2014, 03:00:25 pm »

Buy windows 7, not 8.  I have heard amazingly bad things about 8, just... upgrade to 9 later.
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Dutchling

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Re: Building a ~1000EUR PC. halp :x
« Reply #8 on: February 11, 2014, 03:04:53 pm »

I appear to be unable to buy that with (Dutch) student discount, so it's not an option sadly.
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foil

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Re: Building a ~1000EUR PC. halp :x
« Reply #9 on: February 11, 2014, 05:18:31 pm »

Intel is the way to go if spending that much.

Also the Cooler Master N200 is a decent case using newer specs with psu at bottom and not huge, just get a mATX motherboard to suit.

http://www.coolermaster.com/case/mini-tower/n200/
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Dutchling

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Re: Building a ~1000EUR PC. halp :x
« Reply #10 on: February 12, 2014, 10:28:32 am »

Wouldn't it make more sense to match the case to the motherboard, and not the other way around?
Considering the motherboard actually has a direct function.
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Dutchling

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Re: Building a ~1000EUR PC. halp :x
« Reply #11 on: February 12, 2014, 11:20:19 am »

Okay, I changed the motherboard so that it is compatible with the CPU and the case.

Core Parts
Graphics: Asus GTX760-DC2OC-2GD5 - €211
CPU: Intel Core i5 4670K Boxed - €199
HFS: None - €0
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-H87M-D3H - €80
RAM: 8GB - €46
HDD: 2TB - €74
SSD: 120GB - €77
Power Supply: Seasonic S12II-Bronze 620W - €60
Case: Cooler Master N200 Closed - €34

Still something missing? I think I took everyone's advice now :x
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MorleyDev

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Re: Building a ~1000EUR PC. halp :x
« Reply #12 on: February 12, 2014, 12:01:11 pm »

Only real advice I can come up with is for about $200 you could probably pick up a GTX680 nowadays if you're willing to go 2nd hand. Lots of people switched to the 780 so they put the old 680s up on e-bay. Only real advice I can think of, and the 760 is more or less on the tails of the 680 in every benchmark so it may not be worth it.
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Dutchling

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Re: Building a ~1000EUR PC. halp :x
« Reply #13 on: February 12, 2014, 12:51:02 pm »

Thanks for the advice, but I think I want my first proper pc to consist of entirely virginal components :v
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Bouchart

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Re: Building a ~1000EUR PC. halp :x
« Reply #14 on: February 13, 2014, 12:55:50 am »

Okay, I changed the motherboard so that it is compatible with the CPU and the case.

Core Parts
Graphics: Asus GTX760-DC2OC-2GD5 - €211
CPU: Intel Core i5 4670K Boxed - €199
HFS: None - €0
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-H87M-D3H - €80
RAM: 8GB - €46
HDD: 2TB - €74
SSD: 120GB - €77
Power Supply: Seasonic S12II-Bronze 620W - €60
Case: Cooler Master N200 Closed - €34

Still something missing? I think I took everyone's advice now :x

CD drive?
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