Building a PC

[Meeps 298]

Long story short, someone offered to help me build a pc. I'm not a high end gamer, honestly haven't played for a few months, but when I did it was things like League of Legends and a brief stint of WoW. I'd like to be able to play something like Morrowind on at least medium settings, I by no means need top of the line action. I'll mostly be doing simple drawings, managing a few photos, streaming my favorite shows, and casually playing a few games. My budget will be under $500; this is what we came up with. Anyone see any issues? Suggestions? Thanks in advance for anything! 

Also, thanks to those who sent me pms already regarding this 

 

[stripper 252]

League Of Legends has low system demands and Morrowind is an ancient game, so you won't need much either. Same for WOW. I'd recommend an AMD 460/560 or NVidia 1050/1050Ti for gaming. The CPU can be probably anything and 8 GB RAM is enough for most gaming and stuff these days

Edited July 14, 2017 by stripper

[LunarShadow 397]

This is a good, balanced build for $500. It says that the bios may need to be updated on the Mobo to use the Kaby Lake pentium. That may or may not need to be done depending on if the manufacturer updates it for you prior to shipment, if not its not hard to update yourself. 

On a side note the build i posted includes the price of the operating system so technically the build is only $400 dollars. If you have a copy of windows lying around or plan to use say linux, feel free to put that extra money towards a higher end GPU.

Here is an improved $500 budget build if you have a copy of windows lying around or can use linux. It includes a better power supply and motherboard as well as an optical drive and a more powerful GPU.

[Meeps 298]

On 7/14/2017 at 0:17 PM, DayShadow said:

This is a good, balanced build for $500. It says that the bios may need to be updated on the Mobo to use the Kaby Lake pentium. That may or may not need to be done depending on if the manufacturer updates it for you prior to shipment, if not its not hard to update yourself.

On a side note the build i posted includes the price of the operating system so technically the build is only $400 dollars. If you have a copy of windows lying around or plan to use say linux, feel free to put that extra money towards a higher end GPU.

Here is an improved $500 budget build if you have a copy of windows lying around or can use linux. It includes a better power supply and motherboard as well as an optical drive and a more powerful GPU.

I appreciate this very much! thanks for the reply!

[Scrubbed user 3,416]

I seem to have gotten my Cryorig coolers mixed up. I meant the H7, not the C7. The C7 is meant more for SFF builds rather than a tower.

[Meeps 298]

19 hours ago, Vulon Bii said:

I seem to have gotten my Cryorig coolers mixed up. I meant the H7, not the C7. The C7 is meant more for SFF builds rather than a tower.

When I looked at them, my buddy and I were able to figure out that you likely meant the C7 

The crazy part is, I went to buy the parts the night I messaged you, and couldn't find my debit card. Lost out on some sale deals due to it, but hoping to see some items come back on stock in the meanwhile...

[Scrubbed user 3,416]

48 minutes ago, Meeps said:

When I looked at them, my buddy and I were able to figure out that you likely meant the C7 

No, I really did mean the H7 as it has a larger heatsink and fan. It also costs the same as the C7.

[Meeps 298]

2 minutes ago, Vulon Bii said:

No, I really did mean the H7 as it has a larger heatsink and fan. It also costs the same as the C7.

Looks like my memory sucks, because apparently there's a Cooler Master Hyper 212 ECO cooler with a 120mm PWM fan in my shopping cart 

I think I was unable to find the one you told me about (or the one I thought you meant) when I was searching.

[Scrubbed user 3,416]

This is the C7, the one I mistakenly recommended. It is intended for smaller ITX cases where a more traditional tower air cooler won't fit.

Here is the H7. This is the one I meant. This one will actually do a better job than the Hyper 212 Evo.

[Vulcan 3,254]

I'd recommend you replace the 3TB Hitachi with a 250gb ssd from corsair or Kingston.

Less storage, but it will make your system run much faster for your use case and you can still add a hard disk later on. Also SSDs last much much longer. 

That Hitachi brand also feels really really sketchy to me, if not an SSD I'd recommend getting a 1TB WD , it's about the same price with less storage but at least it's a brand that wouldn't up and die on you.  

Edited July 16, 2017 by Vulcan

[Meeps 298]

13 hours ago, Vulcan said:

I'd recommend you replace the 3TB Hitachi with a 250gb ssd from corsair or Kingston.

Less storage, but it will make your system run much faster for your use case and you can still add a hard disk later on. Also SSDs last much much longer. 

That Hitachi brand also feels really really sketchy to me, if not an SSD I'd recommend getting a 1TB WD , it's about the same price with less storage but at least it's a brand that wouldn't up and die on you.  

Thanks for the recommendation, I remember reading something about SSD being better, and I just now looked up why. Sounds like it's definitely worth the investment. Thank you for mentioning this, I wouldn't have thought twice about it otherwise (definitely still learning)!

[RavenholmZombie 1,330]

SSDs are totally worth the investment. I have one in my custom PC and it makes everything run so quickly. But, if you need extra space, I recommend getting an extra 1 TB HDD for mass storage. You can use it to dump your games onto and have the SSD for the operating system and crucial programs that need the extra speed.

[Meeps 298]

8 minutes ago, Lance Shield said:

SSDs are totally worth the investment. I have one in my custom PC and it makes everything run so quickly. But, if you need extra space, I recommend getting an extra 1 TB HDD for mass storage. You can use it to dump your games onto and have the SSD for the operating system and crucial programs that need the extra speed.

Would it likely have to be an external HDD? Thanks for posting, solidifies my choice to go SSD.

[Vulcan 3,254]

On 7/16/2017 at 0:11 PM, Meeps said:

Thanks for the recommendation, I remember reading something about SSD being better, and I just now looked up why. Sounds like it's definitely worth the investment. Thank you for mentioning this, I wouldn't have thought twice about it otherwise (definitely still learning)!

They really are, I've got a hard drive and an SSD for two different machines and the SSD opens to windows screen like you would not believe. It also opens programs in a snap.

From my experience , it takes a hard drive anywhere between 2-5 seconds to open Chrome, whereas SSDs open it almost instantly as if you were just using ram. 

Also just a minor nitpick, 

For your Power Supply, The Seasonic G Series is better in every conceivable way...even price. 

Reviews for Comparison:

http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews&op=Story6&reid=323

http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews&op=Story6&reid=366

 

 

And  if your monitor is a 1920x1080 Model, I suggest swapping your vid card to a GTX 1050 

 

 

 

 

[Meeps 298]

On 7/17/2017 at 10:12 PM, Vulcan said:

They really are, I've got a hard drive and an SSD for two different machines and the SSD opens to windows screen like you would not believe. It also opens programs in a snap.

From my experience , it takes a hard drive anywhere between 2-5 seconds to open Chrome, whereas SSDs open it almost instantly as if you were just using ram. 

Also just a minor nitpick, 

For your Power Supply, The Seasonic G Series is better in every conceivable way...even price. 

Reviews for Comparison:

http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews&op=Story6&reid=323

http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews&op=Story6&reid=366

 

 

And  if your monitor is a 1920x1080 Model, I suggest swapping your vid card to a GTX 1050 

 

 

 

 

My parts list is looking a bit different, but it's mostly on Newegg so I'm not sure how to share it. I ordered about half of the parts so far. I went ahead and went with a Corsair TX-M Series 650W gold Certified Power Supply, there was a rebate that I wanted in on. The video card I have not selected yet, but I'll look into the GTX 1050. I have no idea what the 1050 stands for as of now.

[Vulcan 3,254]

58 minutes ago, Meeps said:

1050 stands for as of now.

It's pretty much it's rank and generation, 10Th Generation of Nvidia with 50 usually being the being the budget oriented line, though don't let that fool you, It's a powerful card for 1080p res Monitors, You could play most modern games on max settings and still have a playable frame rate. 

It's also got better performance than a 460 in most use cases.

Edited July 18, 2017 by Vulcan

[Meeps 298]

20 hours ago, Vulcan said:

It's pretty much it's rank and generation, 10Th Generation of Nvidia with 50 usually being the being the budget oriented line, though don't let that fool you, It's a powerful card for 1080p res Monitors, You could play most modern games on max settings and still have a playable frame rate. 

It's also got better performance than a 460 in most use cases.

That makes sense, thank you. Also, is Nvidia the same as Evga?

[Vulcan 3,254]

48 minutes ago, Meeps said:

That makes sense, thank you. Also, is Nvidia the same as Evga?

EVGA is one of many who sell Nvidia Cards, but they aren't Nvidia, There are other Companies who also sell Nvidia cards like MSI, Asus and Gigabyte.

They differ mainly in design with slight changes in clock speed and fans but nothing really noticeable for your use case.

[Kiri 7,290]

Hiya, @Meeps! Since you are discussing tech, I moved your thread to Media Discussion.  

As a reminder to all, please do not post links to storefronts. Thank you. 

[Meeps 298]

1 hour ago, Lady Kiriness said:

Hiya, @Meeps! Since you are discussing tech, I moved your thread to Media Discussion.  

As a reminder to all, please do not post links to storefronts. Thank you. 

Thanks for the move, wasn't really sure exactly where to put it!

[Celli 4,338]

On 7/15/2017 at 11:38 PM, Vulon Bii said:

This is the C7, the one I mistakenly recommended. It is intended for smaller ITX cases where a more traditional tower air cooler won't fit.

Here is the H7. This is the one I meant. This one will actually do a better job than the Hyper 212 Evo.

I resent that as I have a 212 and it does what I need it to.

Seriously though, you don't need a top of the line cooler.

[Scrubbed user 3,416]

8 hours ago, Celli said:

I resent that as I have a 212 and it does what I need it to.

Seriously though, you don't need a top of the line cooler.

I agree that something like an AIO liquid cooler isn't strictly necessary, and a $30 cooler will be much better than a stock cooler.. But the AIO will outperform the $30 air cooler, but it costs $90-$100 for a good one.

[Celli 4,338]

10 minutes ago, Vulon Bii said:

I agree that something like an AIO liquid cooler isn't strictly necessary, and a $30 cooler will be much better than a stock cooler.. But the AIO will outperform the $30 air cooler, but it costs $90-$100 for a good one.

The 212 cost me only about that. And you don't need a liquid cooler if you're just gaming.

[Scrubbed user 3,416]

Just now, Celli said:

The 212 cost me only about that. And you don't need a liquid cooler if you're just gaming.

You'll be able to achieve a higher overclock and/or lower temps with a good AIO. My H100i V2 (with Noctua NF-F12 Industrial fans on it) will handily beat a Hyper 212 Evo or a Cryorig C7. It'll also run quieter as the fans can slow down.

[Celli 4,338]

3 minutes ago, Vulon Bii said:

You'll be able to achieve a higher overclock and/or lower temps with a good AIO. My H100i V2 (with Noctua NF-F12 Industrial fans on it) will handily beat a Hyper 212 Evo or a Cryorig C7. It'll also run quieter as the fans can slow down.

Well of course it will beat a 212, it's a liquid cooler. But my point stands, and also, you don't need liquid cooling for overclocking. Daring got a stable OC with his air cooler.