Is there anything horribly wrong with this PC build? (NEW AND IMPROVED.)

[Zhukov]

I find myself in the market for a new PC, given that my current one is woefully obsolete in gaming terms and in the process of vigorously shitting itself to death.

So I went to a local computer store that came recommended and asked for a quote on a gaming PC. Nothing too cutting edge, just sufficient to run current-gen games at respectable settings.

They offered me the following build:

- Intel i5 4690 Processor, 3.5GHZ, Quad Core.
- ASUS Z97-L Motherboard.
- Coolermaster N500 Tower case.
- ASUS GTX-770 Graphics Card.
- Corsair 650W PSU
- (Plus HDD, RAM, monitor, etc etc)

I'm a total noob when it comes to the nitty-gritty of PC builds, so I just wanted to hear from the local experts. Is there anything terribly lacking in this build? Any notoriously dodgy components? If I could throw a few hundred more dollars at it, what would be the best thing to bump up?

(Also, yes, before anyone mentions it, I know I could build it myself for the comparatively low price of the loose change I found under the couch and an enthusiastic handjob, but knowing myself I'm not about to try that. I want something nice and prebuilt that works out of the box. Maybe I'll cut my teeth by upgrading it myself.)

 

[DOOM GUY]

It seems decent, a 970 may be better though (despite the whole VRAM issue)

I'd need to do more research on some of the specific things, such as the PSU, but that's a competent build. One question though, did they mention how much RAM it's going to have? You're probably gonna wanna go for at least 6-8 GB of RAM.

 

[sanquin]

It depends on the amount of RAM you want to put in. 8 GB I presume? Anyway, from my research the GTX-770 seems a bit expensive for it's performance. But that's about it.

And don't worry about people complaining about 'building it yourself', imo. When you're new to PC gaming you don't know how it all fits together yet. I did almost the same for my first PC. Bought components, then had a store put it all together for a cheap price. My advice, though, is to take some time to look at the inside of your PC once you have it. Look at what goes where, so next time you will be able to do it yourself.

 

[Zhukov]

One question though, did they mention how much RAM it's going to have? You're probably gonna wanna go for at least 6-8 GB of RAM.

It'll have 8GB of RAM, with a couple of spare slots if I need to add more

 

[sanquin]

That's perfect then. 8 GB is sufficient right now, though some people with high-end PC's are already switching to higher. You'll be able to upgrade to, say, 16 GB later on like this. If you can afford a bit of extra cash I recommend buying a Solid State Drive. (SSD) Doesn't have to have a lot of storage if you just put windows and such on it. And it'll help your PC boot up a -lot- faster. If you have more cash to spare...games on SSD's will boot/load faster too of course. But they're still expensive.

 

[Zhukov]

If you can afford a bit of extra cash I recommend buying a Solid State Drive. (SSD) Doesn't have to have a lot of storage if you just put windows and such on it. And it'll help your PC boot up a -lot- faster. If you have more cash to spare...games on SSD's will boot/load faster too of course. But they're still expensive.

Oh, it comes with one of those too.

Although I'm not entirely sure what it does.

(I was actually considering asking the computer guys if they could leave it out.)

 

[DOOM GUY]

snip

An SSD is a Hard Drive with no moving parts, it's much faster than a traditional HDD, but also more expensive.

 

[Zhukov]

snip

An SSD is a Hard Drive with no moving parts, it's much faster than a traditional HDD, but also more expensive.

Ahh, ok.

This thing comes with a conventional 2TB HDD and a 250GB SSD.

So... I'm guessing the idea is that I install the OS and games on the SSD and dump everything else on the HDD?

 

[DOOM GUY]

So... I'm guessing the idea is that I install the OS and games on the SSD and dump everything else on the HDD?

Yes, exactly.

Your stuff will load much faster if it's on the SSD.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

i5-4690 is a locked CPU, yet the motherboard is Z97 which offers overclocking features. You either want an unlocked CPU (i5-4690k) or an H97 motherboard. There's no reason to get a Z97 with a locked CPU.
The thing is, if you don't know how to overclock then you have no use for unlocked CPU or a motherboard with OC features. And the performance difference between the i5-4690 and i5-4570 is marginal, yet the price difference is about $40. That $40 could be spent to add a better GPU or more RAM or improve something else. Hell, some PC cases go for $40.

As for the GPU, AMD R9 290 is better and I think it's about the same price as the GTX 770. Price to performance, R9 290 is the best 1440p/4k card on the market right now. It comes with 4Gb of VRAM.

You don't need to build your own PC. Just tell someone the exact specs you want for the budget that is available to you and let them assemble it.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

i5-4690 is a locked CPU, yet the motherboard is Z97 which offers overclocking features. You either want an unlocked CPU (i5-4690k) or an H97 motherboard. There's no reason to get a Z97 with a locked CPU.
The thing is, if you don't know how to overclock then you have no use for unlocked CPU or a motherboard with OC features. And the performance difference between the i5-4690 and i5-4570 is marginal, yet the price difference is about $40. That $40 could be spent to add a better GPU or more RAM or improve something else. Hell, some PC cases go for $40.

As for the GPU, AMD R9 290 is better and I think it's about the same price as the GTX 770. Price to performance, R9 290 is the best 1440p/4k card on the market right now. It comes with 4Gb of VRAM.

You don't need to build your own PC. Just tell someone the exact specs you want for the budget that is available to you and let them assemble it.

coming in to say exactly this. those 20-40 dollar differences in parts really adds up when you get to buying the GPU (potentially the most important part when it comes to gaming.)

it's better to have an average build with a kickass GPU then to have an average on everything because they didn't pick the correct parts efficiently.

otherwise zhukov that's a solid enough build to last you a while.

now you do live in australia so I don't know your prices down yonder, so you're welcome to research yourself or ask someone more local if the price differences are the same there.

edit:

apparently pcpartpicker also works for australia, so this is a great website to compare prices on parts and to see what's out there in your area.

http://au.pcpartpicker.com/

 

[deleted139124]

DELETED

 

[Morgoth780]

Yeah, I wouldn't recommend a GTX 770. An r9 290 or GTX 970 are much better choices in my opinion since they both have more than 2gb of VRAM. A 280x is a decent option as well, but it's quite a bit weaker than the other two cards I mentioned

 

[Zhukov]

If you don't mind me asking, what are your current PC specs? I'd just like to know exactly WHAT you're upgrading from and whether it's worth your money.

I've, umm... actually been using a 2009 iMac this whole time. Got Windows installed on a partitioned hard drive for gaming.

*dodges tomatoes*

It has an Intel i7 2.8GHZ Quad Core, 8GB of RAM and a poor, long-suffering Radeon HD 4850 GPU.

That poor little GPU got me through all of last gen. Although by 2011 I was having to turn down settings and drop the resolutions from 1440 to 1080. However, it just plain doesn't run current gen stuff.

 

[laggyteabag]

Didn't they phase out the 770 just after the 970 came out? That could mean that you could get a pretty good deal on one. The 770 is a very good GPU, and it will get you places, buuuuuuuut, if you were willing to spend a little more money, I second the comment about getting a 970. It is a very good card for it's price, and quite the powerhouse.

 

[TheYellowCellPhone]

It's a pretty good rig, you'll probably be running most of the games that come at max settings for a few years.

The only thing I'd suggest getting is an i7 Processor. A 770 GTX is enough, even though there are beefy things like the 870 TI (which I have) and Titan Black.

Oh, it comes with one of those too.

Although I'm not entirely sure what it does.

Another thing to note about SSDs is that they're usually pretty small capacity. Depending on your game library and the ease of redownloading, you might want to consider getting a traditional HDD that can have usually ten times more capacity for a similar price. You'll be hard-pressed to find an SSD with more than 256GB at a reasonable price, but 1TB+ hard drives are getting pretty common and rather cheap. (A quick Google search shows that a 1TB HDD is around half the price of a 256GB SSD). If you play the same three games, it's fine, but if you're a game-a-week player or your games average 20+GB or your Internet connection takes forever to redownload games, then you might find an HDD to be better. And SSDs should not be filled to 100% capacity else they start to slow down, a general rule of thumb is to try to keep it below 90%.

Most of the advantage with an SSD is faster bootup times (like 'your monitor takes longer to turn on than your OS' fast), faster load times on games (especially noticeable on multiplayer matches), and it has better security because you can potentially nuke it so the information is completely unusable, unlike HDDs where information can be scraped together no matter how trashed it is.

 

[TheYellowCellPhone]

Didn't they phase out the 770 just after the 970 came out? That could mean that you could get a pretty good deal on one. The 770 is a very good GPU, and it will get you places, buuuuuuuut, if you were willing to spend a little more money, I second the comment about getting a 970. It is a very good card for it's price, and quite the powerhouse.

The Internet disagrees. The butthurt people have for NVIDIA against the 970 is hilarious. I can't say from experience because I don't own one, but the card starts to shit the bed when using 4GB of VRAM, and seems to be capped at 3.5GB of VRAM.

Relevant video:

 

[zumbledum]

(Also, yes, before anyone mentions it, I know I could build it myself for the comparatively low price of the loose change I found under the couch and an enthusiastic handjob, but knowing myself I'm not about to try that. I want something nice and prebuilt that works out of the box. Maybe I'll cut my teeth by upgrading it myself.)

Self buildings for try hards! used to do it 20 years ago but havent for ages , its just not worth the time with how little it costs to get it done (and my place stress tests the system before shipping so you know its all working fine out of the box) its the little things like them having all the right clips and cable lengths to make it a neat and tidy build.

one thing you might want to check out (though it may have gone away it was over a year ago now) when i got my last build with windows on the SSD it wasnt picking up or showing the normal HDD, now a quick google of the problem allowed me to self fix (it wasn't formatted) but if your really new to it all might be a bit scary formatting drives so could be something to ask them about and get them to do. but SSd's were quite uncommon back then might not even be an issue now.

 

[Strelok]

One question though, did they mention how much RAM it's going to have? You're probably gonna wanna go for at least 6-8 GB of RAM.

That's perfect then. 8 GB is sufficient right now, though some people with high-end PC's are already switching to higher. You'll be able to upgrade to, say, 16 GB later on like this.

Why? RAM has little to no effect on gaming for PCs, RAM is the least of the concerns with this build.
http://www.pcreview.co.uk/articles/Hardware/How_much_RAM_do_I_really_need_for_gaming/

The price is way to high for that performance.
http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=GeForce+GTX+770&id=2531#price

 

[Zhukov]

Oh, it comes with one of those too.

Although I'm not entirely sure what it does.

Another thing to note about SSDs is that they're usually pretty small capacity. Depending on your game library and the ease of redownloading, you might want to consider getting a traditional HDD that can have usually ten times more capacity for a similar price. You'll be hard-pressed to find an SSD with more than 256GB at a reasonable price, but 1TB+ hard drives are getting pretty common and rather cheap. (A quick Google search shows that a 1TB HDD is around half the price of a 256GB SSD). If you play the same three games, it's fine, but if you're a game-a-week player or your games average 20+GB or your Internet connection takes forever to redownload games, then you might find an HDD to be better. And SSDs should not be filled to 100% capacity else they start to slow down, a general rule of thumb is to try to keep it below 90%.

It comes with a 2TB conventional HDD as well.

The SSD they offered me was 250GB.

I've been happily juggling all my games on a 350GB partition for years now, so I'm sure I can happily make do with 250GB if I keep everything else on the HDD. My internet speed and download cap, while far from phenomenal, are good enough that I can uninstall and reinstall Steam games with relative freedom.