considering getting gaming pc

Is this good? It will cost $1,215 and comes pre-made. I plan on only playing at 1080p and not overclocking anything. A 512GB SSD instead of the one in there would cost $195 more. Should I get a i5-4690k to save $110 or is the i7 worth it?

SYBER VAPOR PC Gaming Console Chassis

CPU: Intel® Core™ i7-4790K 4.0 GHz 8MB Intel Smart Cache LGA1150

CPU / Processor Cooling Fan: Intel Certified CPU Fan & Heatsink

Motherboard: ASRock H81m-ITX Wi-Fi 802.11 w/ USB 3+ SATA 6GB/s GbLAN, 1 Gen3 PCIe x16

RAM / System Memory: 8GB (4GBx2) DDR3/1600MHz Dual Channel Memory (Corsair or Major Brand)

Video Card: EVGA Superclocked ACX 2.0 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 4GB GDDR5 PCIe 3.0 x16

Power Supply: 450 Watts - SilverStone ST45SF-G SFX12V 80 PLUS GOLD ACTIVE PFC Power Supply

Hard Drive: 1 TB 7200RPM SATA300 Hard Drive

Operating System: Microsoft® Windows 8.1 (64-bit Edition)

i7 is def worth it

is a 450 watt PSU really enough these days? I haven't built one in a while.

I'd be worried running that system with a 450 watt power supply.

Yeah, the GTX 970 recommends a 500 watt PSU minimum. I personally like a little more headroom, so I'd opt for a 600 watt. You can find some very good ones in the $60 range (Corsair or EVGA).

A 512GB SSD will be fast as hell, but if you start to accumulate games, you may find it get a little tight on space. I have a 512GB velociraptor and I'm constantly removing older games to make room which I'm finding annoying. You may consider a 256GB SSD for your operating system and then get a 1+ TB spinner for storage.

Price-wise, it's not a horrible deal and will definitely run everything out there now in ultra at 1080p. The 970 is a beast of a card... however, I will say that if you bought the parts separately, you could build it cheaper by probably a couple hundred $$$. That may or may not be worth it to you.

That seems like a lot of money considering what you're getting. As someone else said, 450W seems way too low for that setup. I am guessing that you're not really familiar with PCs otherwise I would say build it yourself. You pay a lot for the convenience, and if you're willing to pay it I can totally see why. Not going to act all superior. It's just... a lot of money. You could get an Xbox One and PS4 for the that price. You have to consider your needs.

I say that as someone who, in the last 6 months, bought a PS4, Xbox One and $300 card (same one you're getting). So take zero financial advice from me.

Wait until Intel releases SkyLake later this year, with DDR4, and USB 3.1 and both new 14nm process and architecture it won't look like ancient garbage half a year later. The current generation went on for too long, almost two years without ever declining in price. It's also running terribly hot and was generally and widely considered a total shit-show for Intel, due to marginal performance improvements, sloppy heat spreader design and the decision to forgo Indium-based solder in favor of a cheap thermal interface material.

You should totally get one, but don't take anything im saying seriously,i have no idea what im talking about. :D

@mr_misery: An i7 is probably not worth it if you're looking for a gaming build. The main advantage of i7s over i5s (hyperthreading) is negligible when it comes to gaming.

You have an overclocking (-k) chip, but a non-overclocking (H81) motherboard there in any case. I do know of a few people who have bought the 4790k without looking to OC it because the stock clock (4.0Ghz) is already so high for an intel chip, but seeing as the i7 is probably not for you anyway, you might want to reconsider that. That motherboard is pretty low quality too. The solid choice for a non-overclocking intel mobo is an H97 series.

450W is definitely enough for a haswell cpu and maxwell gpu. In recent years the performance per watt of Intel and Nvidia chips has improved drastically, and yet for some reason people are insistent on buying wattages they don't even remotely need. When Nvidia say that 500W is the minimum wattage they recommend for a 970, they are covering their ass. 500W is far more than you'd need for a build with a haswell chip and a good PSU brand, but if, along with your GPU, you're running a higher end AMD chip off a shitty PSU built in a sweatshop and held together with glue and prayers, then the 500 watts gives you (and Nvidia, in terms of liability) a bit of breathing room. See here for the actual wattage you ought to be looking at (spoilers: it's comfortably below 450).

Like others have said, too, building your own is a much better option. It would likely be cheaper, and you won't be intimidated by upgrades or repairs in the long run. It's also fun!

@eurobum: I don't think waiting nearly a year for Skylake and DDR4 is great advice to someone interested in getting a PC now. If you were constantly waiting for the Next Big Thing in PCs, you would literally never buy anything. And if you're looking for a massive generational leap with Skylake, I'm going to bet you'll be disappointed again, because there is basically zero impetus for intel to make much progress in desktop performance. The lion's share of the market is in mobile nowadays, and the only competition on the desktop front is from AMD, who are literally years behind.

It's not like the incremental pace of improvement is particularly recent anyway. An i5-2500k with a decent overclock can pretty much perform just as well as a 4690k at stock, for example, and that's a 4 year old chip. If you go back to, say, 2005, the idea that a chip from 2001 could still be as useful as a current chip would've been mad. The reality of the market has altered drastically this past decade. Whether it's the lack of competition, the focus on mobile, the potential winding down of moore's law, or a combination of all three is hard to say exactly, but the long term trend seems to suggest that expecting a sudden leap any time soon isn't realistic.

Also, intel's chips never decrease in price, no matter how long generations go on, as a matter of policy. It's intended to stop people from waiting until the next generation's released to pick up an older chip for cheap. It's kind of shitty, but it's nothing new.

And forgoing the solder on Haswell was necessary because of architectural difficulties with the smaller die sizes, it wasn't intel cheaping out.

I'm only on my second fully custom PC now, but my first had an AsRock mobo, and I had nothing but problems. I think it was an isolated model issue, but I just wanted to throw that out there. It was an m-ITX one also.

I'd build my own; it's very easy nowadays! And with the internet, you're never alone in your building adventures. It's not like it was back in 2000, when we were taking #2 pencils to our CPUs, bridging traces to unlock features!

Tested.com has a few PC building videos you might want to check out.

Also, I'd ditch the 4790k since you don't want to overclock for a 4790. You can lop off $30 for a feature you're not going to use. Even if you bought the 4790k and wanted to overclock in the future, you'd need to buy a whole new motherboard. Yes, prices on those go down over time. Until they spike up.

You're also probably paying a premium for the M-ITX form factor. If you ever want to upgrade to a bigger video card, you'll be restricted by both the size of the case and the size of the powersupply you can fit in the case. It'll also be a pain for a first timer to work on. I'd recommend a mid-sized tower for a new comer. A case that'll take any component you want to toss in it. One where there's more room than you'd actually want to work.

@zelyre: The 4790k has a stock clock of 4.0Ghz, while the locked variant is clocked at 3.6Ghz. If there's only $30 in it, it makes sense to go for the 4790k. Even if you're not going to overclock, there's a substantial difference in power.

That said, OP probably doesn't need an i7 to begin with.

@pcorb: Oh! I didn't even notice the clock difference. Back in my day, K simply meant unlocked multiplier. Apologies, I didn't know Intel got real shady with their numbering scheme. In that case, yeah if an i7 is a must, that's the one.

But, I'd still rather put that money towards a better GPU or SSD than take an i7 over an i5.

Just get the Steam Link!

Joking, of course.

BTW, get that PC built and enjoy your indoctrination into the PC Master Race

The Evga card's heatpipes aren't aligned properly, so the Evga cards will run hotter than it competitors. It probably won't be a big problem, but a MSI gaming, Gigabyte G1 Gaming or a Asus Strix should cost about the same, and don't have this design oversight.

Gaming PC's are like DOTA2.

I love DOTA 2

I hate DOTA 2

Because your outlook on progress and tech is so bleak and depressing, rejoice being wrong, in your views towards purchasing, in your assessment of technology trends and even factually about Intel not cheapening out. You obviously have followed the industry and eloquently present your case, but I disagree with your conclusions and I have some pet peeves in particular.

You acknowledge that Intel never drops price of their CPUs, but do you fail to realize how this makes purchasing it at the end of the product cycle a bad deal? Product lasts X years before it is obsolete, if you buy it 1.5 years after release how many years of use are left before obsolescence? The 4790K though recent is a fixed 4770K released Q2 2013.

I don't blame Intel for now wanting to use solder in their consumer CPUs after the prices of indium went up 900% on the world market (it would almost be 1 $/CPU). But they still use proper solder for the big server chips, so your assertion to the contrary is simply incorrect, cheapen out they did.

I even agree that there is always the next best thing, but that doesn't mean that some things aren't worth waiting for. Even without a giant leap, DDR4 and reversible USB 3.1 will be around for a long time, and Intel is essentially skipping one generation to make a two generation jump. Also 6Gbit/s SATA speeds are already too slow for SSDs, so we'll either see a switch to M.2/PCI or perhaps something new. With DDR4 and eDram it's now possible that CPUs after Skylake will be able to match current consoles just with integrated graphics. HDMI and Display Port can't really handle 4K content at 60 or more Hz, and there is this whole thing with Gsync and Freesync promising to fix an oversight that has been around for almost 15 years. It's a bit of a bad time to spend big on either PCs or Displays, when there are 14nm Graphics cards out in 2 years, Freesync and/or VR-helmets, you'll be upgrading your PC anyway, and if you have a Skylake PC by then upgrading will be as simple as dropping in a new graphics card.

This whole discussion is moot anyway because OT guy just posted a steam box.

@eurobum: As I said, the 2500k is as good as or better than current haswell i5s, so it's hard to say definitively when precisely modern chips will be obsolete.

As far as I recall, early Haswell server chips did indeed use the thermal grease seen on desktop chips. The fact that the later revisions of the Xeons used solder was due to the fact that they were released far later on in the cycle, when they'd actually had time to robustly address the issue (for 22 nm at least). They're still staying away from solder with Haswell-E too, from what I gather they 're using an epoxy as the thermal interface. Besides, the higher temperatures in Haswell were mostly down to the fact that the grease was poorly applied in the original release, and had a significant gap between the lid and the die that hindered conduction. That's why Joe Internet was able to better the work of some of the most talented electronic engineers on the planet and reduce temperatures significantly by delidding and reapplying thermal paste. It's also why Devil's Canyon went a long way towards fixing the issue, despite retaining the grease. I could be wrong, and Intel very well could be lying about the architectural difficulties, but they certainly seem to be spending a lot of R&D, time, effort, and money trying to come up with an alternative, and it'd be very strange if it was all down to some elaborate ruse.

As for your assertion that "with DDR4 and eDram it's now possible that CPUs after Skylake will be able to match current consoles just with integrated graphics"... Well, we'll certainly see one way or the other (spoilers: it's going to be the other).

@pcorb: Because the performance jumps get smaller as you say, and games are designed for ~1.8 GHz multi-threaded phones and consoles, it is the peripherals, interfaces and changing standards that will force people to upgrade, rather than just CPU speed. The 2500K/2700K you keep bringing up and it's i7-920 predecessor were such well timed choices, because among other things they were the first and second DDR3 platforms out, granted the 2700K Sandy Bridge also was the last consumer CPU with a soldered heat spreader, huge IPC improvement and could almost reach 5 GHz.

Noo ! don't buy a pre-built PC, as they're openly stealing you...

If you buy the parts and built it on your own or hire someone to build it for you, you will save no less than 300-400$ if not more.

But if you have no choice but to buy it pre-built then i say go for it :), the I7 will come in handy in the future as you won't be thinking about upgrading your CPU for a very long time, even though it's power is not fully used in current games due to consoles limiting the fun.