New PC for 2014
 

As my computer currently stands, I'm in no shape to do much of anything.

So I'm looking to jump up to this before the end of the year and I'm curious as what your opinions are of my parts I've selected.

CPU: Intel Core i7-4770K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor ($334.98 @ SuperBiiz)
CPU Cooler: Corsair H100i 77.0 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler ($94.99 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z87X-UD4H ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($183.98 @ SuperBiiz)
Memory: G.Skill Trident X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-2400 Memory ($109.94 @ Amazon)
Storage: PNY XLR8 240GB 2.5" Solid State Disk ($129.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Toshiba 3TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($117.95 @ Amazon)
Storage: Toshiba 3TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($117.95 @ Amazon)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 660 Ti 2GB Video Card (Purchased For $0.00)
Case: Corsair 750D ATX Full Tower Case ($159.99 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: Corsair Gaming 600W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply (Purchased For $0.00)
Total: $1239.79
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)

I should have some leg room for overclocking, SSD for some nice performance and possible raid 0 with the dual Toshibas.

Your proposed components look very good. Just one question, if I may: why bother with the platter hard drive? Why not get a second solid state, or put the cost of the platter into a larger solid state? I get that 250GB isn't large by today's standards, even if it is large by SSD standards.

Do you have enough movies, songs, games, and other software that you will run out of room on 250GB and you absolutely, positively, must have 6TB of slow hard drive space?

This reminds me on TESO. The system requirements state a minimum of 60 GB storage space. :)

Are the two identical 3TB hard disks planed as a redundant storage solution?
I'm not really up to date with the SSD technology. As far as I can rember SSD is not the technology of choice for redundant storage solutions (failures, robustness, number of read/write operations, etc.).

Looks nice.I do have a comment on the CPU.


If its a pure gaming rig then I think an i7 may be a bit over the top.
I run an i7 and at the time of this writing I'm running 2x WoW clients, Browser with 6 tabs open, skype, mumble, utorrent, steam and a mod manager for Skyrim.
My CPU is only utilizing 4 cores, sometimes a 5th does 5% load.


Depending of how many new games you plan to play I might upgrade the graphics card.


Regarding the storage, that is entirely up to your personal needs what you might want.
I think 250GB SSD is enough for games and programs.
Once you start needing to store images and videos it can skyrocket fast.
We've switched to NAS in our family to preserve things like that.

OWWWWW. Probably worth it, however. Still won't dent 250GB enough, even with WoW, Windows, and some apps, there is still room. Add a few movies, and then start to worry. That still illustrates that having a second or larger primary SSD would be a better choice.

I'm not sure either. I do know that SSDs have gotten much better, but like you, I can't/won't confirm.

I respectably disagree, based on going from an i5 2.4GHz to i7 3.5GHz. I very visibly noticed a massive bump in overall smoothness in Rift, Diablo III, and WoW. Since I also have nVidia's 3D solution, I can tell you the i5 could not handle that, but the i7 does it with flair.

Granted, not everybody uses 3D, streams, etc, but even without those CPU hogs, the bump was worth it.

Sure from 2.4GHz to 3.5GHz there's quite a difference.But having an i5 4670K 3.4GHz clocked at 4.2GHz with an H100 and my i7 3770K 3.5GHz clocked at 4.2GHz with the same kind cooler gives absolutely no difference in any game we have installed, WoW, D3, Skyrim, ArmA3 and SWTOR.

Both computers have 16GB of RAM.
The i5 has a GTX770 and the i7 a GTX680.

The only time I really appreciate my i7 is when I start using Photoshop and Premiere. Those a massive hogs.


I've never used 3D and rarely watch streams, so can't say if those things require that much more CPU.

I just did a quick lookup on it, and I think my concerns regarding Raids and SSDs are actually outdated.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIM_%28computing%29
But please don't nail me down on it. ;)

As far as I heared EQNext would be another good candidate for it. The voxel technology needs a lot of cpu processing power.

Why on earth would you store movies on an ssd?

Just wanted to add my .02 to the whole SSD discussion. I've been running a pair of (albeit small) Corsair Force Series 3 60 gig SSD's in RAID 0 for almost 2 years now, and while the performance for boot up and program loading is great, using them for anything other than programs, apps, and windows is a waste. I haven't had any stability issues since I installed them and I've tried watching movies from them and from my spinners. There really is no notable improvement in the video quality or loading. I don't use a RAID array for my spinners, but the OS side functions are enough faster that my rig still loads anything from them faster than it did when I was running strictly spinners.

IMHO a 256gb SSD is about the right size for running windows and games from. However if you have a huge Steam library you might want to consider keeping it on a spinner or getting a bigger SSD.

The reason for the i7 4770k in particular is mostly for streaming capabilities, high end video encoding and heavy multitasking. Overclocking on it will also have is advantages.

A second SSD would not be necessary as only my essential games /programs wound be stored there with the OS.

The power supply and graphics card are being carried over till an upgrade is due.

Your graphicscard has a hardware-level encoder that you can utilize while streaming, properitary nVidia software is doing exactly that, and I expect other streaming/recording/encoding software to start doing the same.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...k,3161-16.html
https://developer.nvidia.com/nvidia-video-codec-sdk

As such, having a 4770K over a 4670K if you don't intend to do heavy photo/video-editing (as they are the only ones that can really utilize a i7's hyperthreading) is overkill and a waste of money imo.

Edit: actually, streaming software already support NVENC as of last sunday :p:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1LMp5JotVE

Honestly if that hard drive is only used for music and videos and other files that aren't actively used then why waste the money on an ssd?

I have 300GB+ in music alone. I currently have 4TB total HDD capacity in my home computer (Windows and important programs are running on a 120GB SSD) and it's pretty much maxed out, to the extent that I recently bought the hardware to set up a dedicated media server (though I haven't set it up yet, because I'm lazy) because there are no more HDD slots in my case and I'm tired of having to delete things in order to download new things.

On the other hand, I also know people who just stream everything instead of downloading it in glorious HD, and they will never use 250GB in their lives, so it really depends on your needs... I'd guess someone planning to buy 6TB of HDD space probably needs it. :p

I find it interesting that you consider your current computer not in much shape to do anything. I see it is lacking video ram of any consequence, but it can still do many things, maybe not at top speed. :)

I do like your choice of upgrades though.

Phanx, build your home system. ;)

I'm an avid photoshop user and I've been dying to get back into my Premiere work. Most of that 6gigs will end up being raw HD footage.

I'm also quite the audiophile and have well over 400 gigs of pure flac goodness. As my current setup stands right now, I'm unable to even listen to my music while in-game without stuttering.

I don't think that has to do anything with your hardware, most likely some codec/driver issue or your windows install is just way too old/messed up. I'm running a dual core **** and i can flawlessly multitask, just way slower then it should be.

Not necessarily the audio having issues with playback, just fps drop or performance hits.

I've changed up my build slightly and I'll explain my choices:

http://pcpartpicker.com/user/suicidalkatt/saved/3FZo

CPU: Intel Core i7-4770K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor ($249.99 @ Microcenter)
CPU Cooler: Swiftech H220 55.0 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler (Purchased For $99.00)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z87X-UD4H ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($159.99 @ Microcenter)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws Z Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-2133 Memory ($169.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Samsung 840 EVO 250GB 2.5" Solid State Disk (Purchased For $145.00)
Storage: Toshiba 3TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($99.99 @ Microcenter)
Storage: Toshiba 3TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($99.99 @ Microcenter)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 660 Ti 2GB Video Card (Purchased For $0.00)
Case: Corsair 750D ATX Full Tower Case (Purchased For $159.99)
Power Supply: Corsair Gaming 600W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply (Purchased For $0.00)
Total: $1123.94
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)

Parts that I've changed:

• CPU Cooler - H220 recently just became available and I just had to get my hands on one. (Price just skyrocketed up to $135 * dusts shoulders *)
• RAM - The RAM I had previously was a bit high on voltage which I felt wouldn't work well with the Haswell chip and overclocking would be a bit of trouble.
• SSD - Changed to the Samsung 840 Evo due to its amazing performance and its currently very close in price to the PNY I had listed previously.

Ever thought about looking into the Socket 2011's for motherboards? Or is the price point just too high?