Pc Build advice (sorry)

Hey Duders,

Sorry to be a pain in the arse and I know people ask for advice all the time on pc builds and by now I should probably know what Im doing but I don't.

So Im currently looking at 2 PC builds would you mind perusing them and letting me know which makes most sense.

Both builds will use my 7970 I already own.

Build 1:

<td "="">CaseFRACTAL DEFINE R4 BLACK PEARL QUIET MID-TOWER CASE

	Processor (CPU) Intel® Core™i7 Six Core Processor i7-5930K (3.5GHz) 15MB Cache
	Motherboard ASUS® X99-S: ATX, HSW-E CPU, USB 3.0, SATA 6 GB/s
	Memory (RAM) 16GB KINGSTON HYPER-X PREDATOR QUAD-DDR4 2400MHz X.M.P (4 x 4GB)
	Graphics Card NONE, I ALREADY HAVE A GRAPHICS CARD
	1st Hard Disk 120GB Samsung 840 EVO SSD, SATA 6Gb/s (upto 540MB/sR | 410MB/sW)
	2nd Hard Disk 2TB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD2003FZEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (7200rpm)
	1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive 24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
	Power Supply CORSAIR 850W RM SERIES™ MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET (£99)
	Processor Cooling Super Quiet 22dBA Triple Copper Heatpipe Intel CPU Cooler (£19)
	Thermal Paste STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
	Sound Card ONBOARD 8 CHANNEL (7.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
	Wireless/Wired Networking 10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT (Wi-Fi NOT INCLUDED)
	USB Options MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 6 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS
	Power Cable 1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
	Operating System Genuine Windows 8.1 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence (£79)

£1,398.00 inc VAT and Delivery

Build 2:

<td "="">CaseFRACTAL DEFINE R4 BLACK PEARL QUIET MID-TOWER CASE

	Processor (CPU) Intel® Core™i5 Quad Core Processor i5-4690K (3.5GHz) 6MB Cache
	Motherboard ASUS® Z97M-PLUS: m-ATX, USB3.0, SATA 6.0, XFIRE
	Memory (RAM) 16GB KINGSTON HYPER-X FURY DUAL-DDR3 1600MHz (2 x 8GB)
	Graphics Card NONE, I ALREADY HAVE A GRAPHICS CARD
	1st Hard Disk 120GB Samsung 840 EVO SSD, SATA 6Gb/s (upto 540MB/sR | 410MB/sW)
	2nd Hard Disk 2TB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD2003FZEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (7200rpm)
	1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive 24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
	Power Supply CORSAIR 850W RM SERIES™ MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET (£99)
	Processor Cooling Super Quiet 22dBA Triple Copper Heatpipe Intel CPU Cooler (£19)
	Sound Card ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
	Wireless/Wired Networking 10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT (Wi-Fi NOT INCLUDED)
	USB Options MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 4 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS
	Power Cable 1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
	Operating System Genuine Windows 8.1 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence (£79)

£928.00 inc VAT and Delivery

You don't need an aftermarket CPU fan unless you are planning on immediately overclocking.

Other than that both builds seem great for the price so really it's just a matter of how much you want to spend.

The cheaper one will max out any game coming out this fall but might not be able to do so with some of the games coming out early next year (particularly Witcher 3).

The R4 Define is the perfect case.

Between the two, I'd go with the i5 build - that i7 is, in my opinion, overkill for gaming and not worth the extra cost. I'd up the SSD to the 250GB model. The wattage on the power supply is also more than is probably necessary - you can use a power supply calculator to get an idea of what you need. Also, if you do get the i5, it'll come with a CPU heatsink - you don't need to buy an extra one unless you decide to overclock, and if you do, I've heard good things about the CM Hyper 212 Evo (though it's not listed, this heatsink *is* compatible with LGA1150 because it uses the same mounting holes as LGA1155). The rest of it looks good!

@kylenalepa: I've got a 212 Evo on a 4670K and it's a great investment at £25 even if you're not overclocking. The stock Intel fan (which I think is the same on the Haswell refresh chips) is noisy and doesn't do a great job of cooling. Mine didn't, anyway.

When I got the 4670 I did some stress testing with OCCT on the stock cooler and it was running at 85C before powering off. With the Evo I'm getting mid 60s and it's massively quieter.

@dave_tacitus: @corruptedevil:

Thank you both, im leaning slightly towards the more expensive as outside of the graphics card I don't want to have to upgrade anything for a good number of years.

@carryboy: If you're not wanting to upgrade anytime soon you might want to quickly check out the Haswell E cpus & X99 motherboards. They're probably a little expensive & not the best to get right now but I assume they'll be the standard in the next year or two.

@carryboy: Ah, the illusive "Future-proof" myth :P No such thing, I'm afraid.

Seconding build 1, the first one is overkill for gaming. Unless you're doing heavy-duty content creation on a professional level, that i7 and 16 gigs of ram (this goes for build 2 also, btw) won't give you any significant boost in performance relative to cost.

@hakunin: 8 gb of ram enough?

To get recommendations on a build to suit your needs, you'll irst probably want to state what those needs are.

If gaming is the most demanding task you'll be performing, I'd recommend the following:

• Go for an i5 over an i7. The gains in performance are totally negligible (we're talking a couple fps in most case), and in some instances, i7s perform slightly worse in gaming. i7s are not designed with gaming in mind, and games are not designed with i7s in mind.
• Likewise, you almost certainly don't need 16 gigs of RAM. 8 will do a perfectly good job.
• Unless you're a big fan of constantly micromanaging your hard drive space, get a bigger SSD. 250gb is the minimum I would recommend, and EVO 840s and MX100s are so cheap that it's criminal not to go for a larger size
• Don't get a WD Caviar Black drive. If you have a big enough SSD to fit your OS and core programs/games on, there's no point in it. They're hot, loud, and resource intensive. Get a WD red or blue instead.
• Get a 212 EVO. It's widely regarded as the only entry level aftermarket cooler worth buying.
• Depending on your GPU, you probably don't need an 850W PSU. What card is it you've already got?
• I seriously doubt you'll need a power cord, for what it's worth. PSUs invariably come with one included, at least in my experience

As @hakunin said, future proofing isn't a real thing that you can actually do, it's just something you can waste money attempting. No matter what type of machine you end up building, you can rest assured that a couple of years from now, something more powerful will be available for half the price. But you wouldn't want to buy that, because by that time there will be newer, shinier and more expensive toys in a higher end of the market. If you want to get into building and upgrading gaming PCs, it does help if you're kind of an idiot with money.

@pcorb: Kind of an idiot with money sounds awefully familiar.

Thanks, for your post, my needs are primarily gaming, all other activities are easy going (web browsing, word processing).

My GPU is a hd 7970 ghz edition.

@corruptedevil: Not sure about Intel stock fans, but the one for my AMD sounded like a jet.

@carryboy: In that case I'd recommend an i5, 8GB RAM, 250GB+ SSD, and ~650W PSU (Gold rated) as the best use of your money.

@bigboss1911: AMD stock fans need to be super powerful because AMD chips run hotter than the surface of the sun under load. Intel's fans were only just audible when I had stock cooling in my Define R4.

@pcorb: Ok awesome thanks for your help, last question how concerned should I be about ddr4 ram, is 3 not going anywhere anytime soon or is the takeover off 4 on the horizon?

@carryboy: It doesn't matter. The speed increase with 4 is negligible when gaming.

I don't want to mess with your decisions now, but I would strongly argue against the fact that 8GB is enough. I don't know how long you want this machine to last, but I bought a PC 4-5 years ago with 6GB of RAM, and I have played a handful of games already that have made my computer literally run out of memory. ArmA III being a particularly bad example.

Also don't fret about DDR4, it won't be the standard for the next 2 years or so. There are only 3 of the 5th gen Intel processors released so far. As far as I am aware they are going to be the only ones which will support DDR4 anyway. The other ones won't (I could be wrong about that, they might just be the first ones that will support it for a while). The difference in RAM speed will be inconsequential in gaming really, and DDR4 right now comes at a huuuge premium, basically twice as expensive per gigabyte.

All that said, I'm an idiot and I want one of the new i7s and DDR4 because I want to be able to say I have it. If money is a concern, don't be me.

+1 for the r4 great case

Both of the new consoles have 8GB of RAM so unless you are playing a lot of simulator type games (ARMA, KSP, DCS) or large scale strategy games (Total War) then 8GB will be enough for the rest of the generation.

Your web browser and OS combined will use a flat 3GB going up to 4 if you have a lot of tabs open. RAM is so cheap I'd argue going for 8GB to save money isn't worth it, but it's up to you. Can always add it later I guess!

@bollard: Your web browser and OS "will use" as much RAM as they can (with things like Windows' superfetch, or Chrome's prefetch), because RAM that's not in use is a waste of resources. That doesn't mean they require 3-4GB to run. Far from it, seeing as plenty of netbooks run Windows 8 and a web browser with 2GB RAM.

ARMA III isn't really a good example because it's known for issues with memory leaks and is generally a bit of a buggy mess.

For what it's worth, I've been using 8GB for 3 years now and never felt like I needed more.

I assume this is for gaming, maybe a bit of light editing since 16 GB is a lot for a gaming rig.

First, I'd just cut to the chase and buy a 240 GB to 256 GB SSD as you main boot drive, then buy an inexpensive middle of the road 2TB storage drive, you don't need a Caviar Black for storage. Moreover unless you are planning on burning tons of media and watching movies on the rig I'd skip the BluRay drive. Without a doubt if you not burning a lot skip and internal drive totally...just get a $26 external DVD/CD-RW drive to load the OS and burn your backups when needed. [It is a pet-peeve of mine that people toss pointless media drives on their rigs.]

Skip the cooler because that one is likely not any better than the stock cooler. Dirty secret of industry is, if you aren't OCing, a stock cooler is more than fine on a well vented system. As far as Core i5 or high end i7 I would say that depending on what you are doing...only you know that.

Why are you building a new PC? I question this because you make it clear you are not upgrading the GPU and if you are not doing that... I fail to see the need for a new build unless your current PC blew up or you think the CPU is bottlenecking the 7970 you have in there now. You said this is mostly for gaming so when building a whole new PC, I always start at the GPU.

Yeah, that is a good question, what does your current build look like OP?

oh, the new intels shut down at 85? the older gens go all the way to 100.

Currently I have...

AMD Phenom II X4 955

8GB DDR2

not sure what motherboard but is an old one which does not support anything past my current processor.

Windows Vista.

I had a 955 in my previous build and by the end it was bottlenecking GPUs - When I built my new rig at the turn of the year I did the same as you and carried my GPU over, a 7950 (which I've since changed but I got a good 6 months out of it), and the difference in gaming between the old and new CPU was noticeable, especially in stuff like Skyrim which is notoriously CPU intensive.

Also I have another question, Is there any reason I should think of going for windows 7 over 8?

Does 8 have any problems running games?

@carryboy: Not that I've encountered. Just get windows 8. Even if you're dead set against the metro UI, it's pretty easy to avoid. Windows 7 is 5 years old at this point, there's no good reason to buy a new copy.

allright, yeah the phenom II is getting a bit long in the tooth,

i'd go for the system with the 4690k, the 5930K is an expensive toy, pretty cool, but its not really certain that it will have any longer legs than the 4690k when it comes to gaming.
I guess getting a 4790k would be a compromise, incase games start using more threads in the future.

8 GB of ram is fine, but i would probably get 16 if i bought a pc today, cause why not.

Like other people have said, get 200+GB's of SSD, 120 is only enough for windows and BF4 pretty much.

Hmm ok thanks for the advice, now deciding between 4690 and 4790.

Also thinking of just going nuts and buying a 500gb ssd.

@carryboy: For the love of god don't go X99. Currently it is not a gaming relevant chipset.

If you're considering spending X99 money, go for an i7 4790k, which will last you the entire generation and going forward it should actually be more and more worthwhile over an i5. Or upgrade your video card. X99 components are all super expensive, you could probably build a z97 PC with a new 900 series card for the same price as an X99 pc without a GPU upgrade.

4690k is still going to be quite the difference, but depending on the games you play a 4790k might make a difference. Probably not enough to warrant the price. My suggestion would be to go with a 4690k and put that money into as much SSD storage as you can manage, or save it for next year when we see entirely new GPU designs (which will, at least on the nVidia side, require new mobos) come around.

If you want an SSD, get a tiny one for the OS and like, browser style apps, a bigger one for games, and then go with the HDD for storage. Trust me, having an OS dedicated drive is a freaking god send. Need to reformat? No sweat. It takes no time at all, you never have to worry about losing data because you forgot to move apps, games, or data over (just make sure you set your "libraries" up to be on your storage drive and not your OS SSD), and it's just plain neater.

Unless you have a specific need for a CD/DVD drive just make sure you get the cheapest thing you can. or, just scavenge for one that you already have. Considering you got a DVD writer, I'm guessing you specifically need a DVD drive but if not, just get a slow $15 basic DVD drive.

Windows 8 at this point will be the same or better than W7 for games. Slightly less overhead generally, and going forward it will continue to be supported officially. W7 support is on it's way out. W8 is great anyway, and usually cheaper I think. Certainly easier to find. Do not listen to the anti-Microsoft sheeple.

I will say that I would encourage a GPU upgrade along the way or in the near future. But starting with a GPU when you plan on doing a comprehensive redo isn't a great idea. And with where his PC is at currently, most of his stuff will need to be upgraded to really support something like a new GPU. A new CPU will benefit a 900 series card greatly, for example. And that new CPU will need a new motherboard which will need new memory.

Side thought: If you aren't having a hard time getting games to a playable level, maybe wait on the upgrade. Next year, Intel and nVidia are about to bring very big changes to their respective lines. Enough that BOTH will require pretty comprehensive rebuilds. And of course they will come with very significant performance improvements and likely quite a few new features. Personally, I wouldn't make sweeping changes or spend a lot. If you can get away with it, a new video card or some SSD storage would help bridge the gap until bigger things come next year.

@jarmahead: Thankyou very much for this post, any articles you can link too about the changed for next year?

After reading a bit more I say you might need to look at a fresh system. Now might be the best time to just save up for a new system, or at least the base of a new system.