First PC build! A few questions for the pros!

Hey all!

I'm about to start my first PC build! I've been a laptop PC gamer for awhile due to living circumstances, but now I can put my over price underpowered toy aside and upgrade to the real deal. Before I start actually buying the parts I wanted to check with you all about what I've selected and also see if I could get a few questions answered. So first up my build:

CPU: i5-6600k

Heat sink: CRYORIG H7 Tower Cooler

MB: ASUS Z170-A

GPU: gtx 1070. (Looks to good to pass up!!!)

RAM: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 DRAM 3000MHz (PC4-24000

Primary HD: SanDisk Ultra II 240GB SATA III

Secondary HD: WD Black 1TB Performance Desktop Hard Disk Drive - 7200 RPM SATA

Power: EVGA SuperNOVA 750 G2 80+ GOLD, 750W

Case: NZXT S340 Mid Tower Case CA-S340W-B1

OS: Windows 10 Pro

Monitor: ASUS VG248QE 24-inch

All togeather the budget is roughly $1700, that includes monitor and a new copy of Windows 10 pro.

So my questions:

1) Does everything look good? Being my first build I just want to make sure I'm on the right track.

2) Do you think the cooling tower is sufficient for light overclocking? And the 750w power supply?

3) I'm really struggling with what monitor to go with... The one I'm showing is an TN but I like the response time and the 144mhz, I'm thinking with a 1070 the 144mhz would be worth having. But any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks all for any input you can give!!

That all looks good to me. The Cryorig H7 should give you plenty of overclocking headroom, and 750W is more than enough power considering a reference 1070 will only draw 150W. Regarding the monitor, I'd recommend holding off for a bit, if you can. Computex is happening as we speak and a bunch of manufacturers will be showing off their latest models. At the very least, it could mean a price drop in their existing lineup, or if you're lucky you may be able to bag a brand new 144Hz IPS panel in the same price range as the VG248QE.

@conmulligan: thanks for the info! Do you know of anywhere that would cover such announcements from Computex? Would tomshardware?

Also I'm in no real rush, espically since the 1070 doesn't come out till mid June (if I can even get one than, crazy how fast the 1080s sold out)

Looks solid to me, I have the same motherboard and cpu and they have been great. 1070 should be solid. My opinion only but monitor shopping is a nightmare at this point in time so you'll just need to settle for something at some point otherwise you'll drive yourself crazy analyzing everything. Good luck, don't forget to get some thermal paste for the cpu!

@twi: Yep, Tom's Hardware should be pretty on the ball coverage-wise. The folks at PC Perspective are also very good, and usually go into exhaustive detail if that's what you're looking for.

@moztacular: thanks man! Glad to hear I'm not alone on this crazy monitor boat!

If you're looking for a good 24" monitor, I just got a Dell 24u14h with my first build about two months back. Relatively pricey but it comes precalibrated, with super slim bezels, and about a million ports in the back. It's 1080p though, I don't know if you're looking for 1440 where you'll be picking up a 1070.

Oh, also, I forgot to mention that Microsoft are still allowing Windows 7 and 8 users to upgrade to Windows 10 for free until the 29th of July, so you might be able to save a few quid by buying an older license and updating before then.

I recently put in a new CPU cooler and as a PSA I'd like to say if your PC when built has trouble turning on, try taking out and putting back in the ram.

Thanks for the tips all! I was wondering about buying an older version of windows and than doing the free upgrade. I wonder how that would work if i need to do a clean install in the future however. Will i beable to save the windows 10 install files? or would i need to up the upgrade after july 29th.

@twi: I've upgraded the Windows licences on two PCs so far, one Windows 7, one 8.1. They both have since had clean installs of W10 done on them, and activated with no problems.

Just be sure and get W10 on your PC and activated the 'upgrade' way the first time you do it, then you can download the iso from Microsoft and do a clean install.

@dave_tacitus : Thanks for the info, still not sure which way i'll go, i'll have to check prices when i get closer to buying items.

@twi: when you upgrade to W10 you own W10 so you're good. You just download the W10 installation files on a USB and use that to do your clean installs. What I did is use a super cheapo USB dedicated for W10 installs and keep that stored somewhere instead of the CD. And you can always download the files again from another computer if ever necessary.

Two things that might be of interest to you

1. You can d/L and make a boot USB stick for Windows 10 without owning it. It'll ask you to activate after about a week by buying a key directly from microsoft. Its much better to buy the license from Microsoft because you know it will be valid.

2. The Z-170-A mobo you picked has a dedicated m.2 slot for an SSD. This type of hard drive is faster than the primary SATA-III you picked. Your processor also has the pci-e lanes to allow the GPU to run at 16 pci-e lanes and the m.2 hard drive to run 4 lanes (at same time). It might be worth looking into a m.2 as your primary SSD.

@css_switchfoot: thanks for that heads up! I'll have to check out both of those options

@css_switchfoot: The m.2 disk is really nice becouse its so small and easy to install without any cables.

Theres no noticeable performancegain however.

As with most things today (GPU excluded), the actual performance gain isn't really detectable by a human sitting at the computer doing computer stuff. But it is faster, easier to install, and his mobo/CPU combo allows it to run at full speed.

One word of caution though, is that once you have a GPU in the x16 slot and an m.2 pci-e 3.0x4 installed, you've used all of your available lanes. So any other pci-e device you pop in will drop your GPU down to x8 mode instead of x16

Looks good. As several other posts have pointed out, Computex is just starting so that means new options and some price cuts to older hardware, wait a few weeks. I don't know what version of the 1070 you plan on getting but while the reference cooler on the nvidia 10-series is a step up from the previous generation, it is still not good enough when you can pay an extra 10-60$ and get something that runs better and quieter.

I know you are probably trying the cost down but I would still reccomend spending a bit more on your monitor, I recently upgraded to a ASUS PG279Q and it was worth every penny.

@css_switchfoot: @expensiveham: would you guys recommend getting any additional case fans? The 340 comes with two 120mm fans and space for two more. Do you think that those are needed? I could see it being useful for heavy OC applications bit currently I'm not planning on pushing anything to extreme.

Everything ive read about the 1070 is that it runs cooler and quieter, and your CPU cooler is pretty good. The extra case fans can't hurt but I don't think they are necessary. It all sort of depends on where you will be keeping it and how averse you are to a bit more noise

Those are not needed. 2 big fans + the PSU fan is enough to ventilate a normal gaming pc without heavy overclock or something like that. Theoreticly you could get it a bit more silent by adding more fans and running them at lower speed but i wouldnt bother with that.

The only time I really mess with fans is when the ones I have are too loud. Positive air pressure inside the case is what you're aiming for (more intake fans than exhausts so air gets pushed into the case rather than pulled through it) unless you want your dust filters clogging up super quickly.

I had/have an i5-6500 (no OC) and an Asus GTX 960 Strix (modest OC?) in the same case. With a Rjaintek CPU cooler and just the stock case fans and the cooling was totally fine.

I've since added two front case fans, but really just to try to reduce the negative pressure to keep dust out as the stock fans are both set up as exhaust fans by default.

@arjailer: good to know. Maybe I'll invert the base fans to be intake fans than.

It's still better to draw the air through filters, I'd rather have dusty filters than dusty components. I'm a fan of "more fans at low speed" approach, 140mm fans at inaudible speeds are able to massive amounts of air and it makes it very easy to make you PC completely silent during light workload. Unfortunately, GPU will still make noise when you're playing games and fixing that is not an easy job, basically you'd need a custom watercooling loop or modify the case in some way to channel air for GPU.

@crommi: I don't have dusty components. ;)

Two 140mm BeQuiet intake fans at the front which replaced the stock LED things the case came with. I compare how often I needed to clean the dust filters with my previous case, which had 3 exhaust fans on top and back and none in the front, and there's no comparison.