After years of playing RoR and BeamNG on a semi-crappy laptop, I'm finally thinking about building myself a computer, as I will soon be able to afford it. I think this is a great time for that, because both AMD and Nvidia released two great high/midrange cards for a sensible price : the RX480 and the GTX 1060. I also know I need a good CPU for Beamng, so I picked a recent good i5 (K or non K). For the rest of the parts, I had little clue of what I should pick. What I aim for is solid midrange gaming (not AAA titles, but at least beamng with medium-high settings) at 50-60 fps at 1440p, and high-end gaming at 60 fps at 1080p. I built two setups around each GPU on pcpartpicker : - The first is my ideal build : GTX 1060, 1440p, overclockable i5, reasonably good gaming hardware, with quiet case and fans (I make music on my computer, so quieter is better) http://pcpartpicker.com/list/ZG7HBP The 1060 is cheaper than I expected, but the quiet case and the 1440p monitor add quite a lot to the price -The second is the build I can afford : RX480, non-OC i5, cheap hardware and case, 1080p (to upgrade to 1440p later) http://pcpartpicker.com/list/jwxjpb A 4GB RX480 would be cheaper, but I think 8GB is a safer pick for later What I would need is something between those two. Are the parts I picked reasonable for my goal, overkill, or not enough ? Should I pick something better ? Or cheaper ? Is it possible to cut the price of the first build to about 1300 $ ? If I overclock my parts, would the cheaper build be powerful and reliable enough ? Should I make a separate OC build ? Thanks in advance for the answers
http://pcpartpicker.com/list/ppbf9W I changed out your case from a Base 600 to a Phanteks p400 (Still a great case) I changed your ram from 16GB to 8GB. You don't need 16GB to play games. I changed your CPU cooler to water-cooling for better cooling capabilities. Your motherboard you chose was a H170. You can't overclock on a H170, only a Z170 chip set. So I changed that as well. If you want to save more money, then switch out your SSD to a smaller amount as I don't see you NEEDING it at all.
Get a cheaper SSD, 250GB should be fine. You'll only really want one as a boot drive. Ditch the ODD unless you really need it, they're practically useless. Stick with a 212 Evo for cooling, it's great and you can replace the fans later for even better performance. You'll need a Z170 board for OC, so either go for one or save money and get a non-K i5. As for the GPU, the 1060 is slightly more powerful and performs better in DX11/OGL, but the 480 is better in DX12 and Vulkan titles with Async support making it the more future proof card. http://pcpartpicker.com/list/6yxQqk
Great advice from everyone, thanks ! Ok for the case, but the goal here was to have a more silent rig. Should I buy some custom fans for that ? (are fans included with the cases good enough ?) Thanks for ram and motherboard advice. Ok, so air cooling is enough. Do you know a quieter alternative to the hyper 212 Evo besides the bequiet I found ? Well if I want the rig to be cheap enough, I'll have to ditch the quiet fans and coolers anyway. Too costly I guess. I have a 256Gig SSD in my laptop and I love it. The thing is I use it for games that take a lot of loading time, like Skyrim and GTA 5, and I want to keep it this way. The ssd in my laptop is already quite full and I have to put a lot of my games on my HDD. So, the big 500Gig SSD is a priority for me, as I want to have some space for more fast games. Yep, I have seen the same comparison around the 480 and 1060. Initially, I was settled on the RX480 as it is cheaper, and better in dx12 and vulkan (which will be implemented in BeamNG at some point). But the aftermarket 1060's are quite cheaper than the founders edition, and there is the possibility that the 1060 catches up on dx12 and Vulkan with driver updates. Here is the updated rig http://pcpartpicker.com/list/g8mHBP Not quite 1200 $ yet, but approaching. Not bad, considering this includes the 1440p monitor. Would getting a cheaper i5 K to overclock it be cheaper and as good as this ?
Get an EVGA PSU. 80+ Bronze is fine, still much better than a Gold Thermaltake. Also, Pascal still doesn't support proper async compute - like Maxwell, it relies on raw power to do well in next gen APIs. The gap between the 1060 and 480 is small enough for the latter to outperform the 1060 in both DX12 and Vulkan. Since both consoles run AMD hardware which will benefit greatly from Async compute you can expect most upcoming AAA titles to support it. All this considered the 480 is the better buy, even if the 1060 is faster in today's games. Overclocking your CPU won't make a huge difference since most games are GPU bound - might extend its lifetime, but you're also paying more. TBH the only reason I've overclocked my CPU is, well, because I can. Slightly better performance in BeamNG but I still wouldn't drop below 60 at stock clocks and I'm still GPU bound. An overclockable CPU is more of a luxury than a necessity.
I'm going to second this build. An AIO cooler is always great for OCing, and you won't have any issues. 16gb isn't needed, and if you are going with an unlocked CPU, there is no point in getting another other than a Z170 board.
H50 is outperformed by the cheaper and more reliable 212 Evo. PSU is rubbish. And it's still $200 over OP's budget.
Cut the SSD, take a Hyper 212 Evo and Corsair CX550M instead. Problem solved. --- Post updated --- Also I can recommend the Cooler Master N400. --- Post updated --- http://pcpartpicker.com/user/aRNik/saved/#view=CDBfrH
Ok, I got a better PSU. EVGA and Corsair both are good makers, I believe, and there was a combo for the Corsair one. They are about the same price anyway. I'll stick with the RX480 since it should be far better in the future. Thanks for explaining me that. Considering the price, I'll go with the non-OC build. I can take the tray version of the i5 as I won't be using the stock cooler. Any good cheap case will do. I'll do some research to see which budget case and its included fans are the quietest. Now, about storage. I love the SSD speed and I really really want to have my favorite games on the SSD. 256 Gb won't be enough for that. So, I chose to have only the 500GB SSD. I have a 1TB external HDD that is enough for storage and other games, and I can upgrade that in the future. But I changed the SSD nonetheless. There is sandisk M.2 512Gb SSD that is cheaper than the Samsung 850 SATA, and is much faster because M.2. Seems an awfully good deal to me. The motherboard supports M.2, so I'll go with that. Finally, the big load on the price here is the 1440p monitor, and I can't really cut on that. So, It will be more costly than I expected (my goal was 1000 euros, the build is about 1060 euros). Still not too much. I'll just have to spare a little bit more. Here is the final build : http://pcpartpicker.com/list/jQdhgL EDIT : I ignored the fact that I live in Europe. Prices are going to be different, perhaps also some shipping costs. Well, I'll find another way to have the best prices where I live, but that shouldn't be too much more.
Oh I hate that mentality. Fanboyism is the worst. Preferences, yea, I get, but fanboyism, oh no. May I ask why? Have you ever tried an Nvidia GPU? Have you ever tried an Intel CPU? They aren't more reliable, some of them aren't faster, both sides are basically equal. Fanboyism in the PC component world is like modern day feminism. Fanboyism in general is like modern day feminism.
