So I'd like to upgrade my PC. I don't really need to necessarily but I want to damn it. My current specs are as follows:

Windows 7 Premium 64 bit

Intel Core i7 960 @ 3.20 Hz

12 gigs of Ram

GTX 580

1 TB Hard drive

This won't be a popular option, but I'd prefer to buy prebuilt or a site that let's me customize one (or swap parts) and builds it for me. Me building it is not an option so please don't even bother suggesting it. In regards to what I'm looking for...GPU wise I'm looking at a GTX 970. I'd like to have an SSD as well. Not sure what other things I should consider throwing in there, but if there's something I'm all ears. In terms of budget...let's go with a $1000-2000 range. Now $2000 being the max doesn't mean I WANT to spend that much, but just giving a range to work with. I don't need a mouse, keyboard or monitor (well I could be swayed into a new monitor I suppose). Don't need speakers either. In regards to what website to use for this...I guess it doesn't really matter so long as they build it themselves. In terms of the other parts I just want improvements across the board. So in a nutshell:

- Must have an SSD

- Must have a GTX 970

- Website must build it themselves.

- Budget is $1000-2000

- Improvements upon current PC across the board

That probably covers it. If I'm forgetting something or you need more information just let me know and I'll gladly provide it.

You buy the parts from ncix and they will assemble it for you for $50.

Very few prebuild sites have 970s yet.

@kidavenger said:

I like building my own computer, but I always freak out when putting on thermal paste. That sounds excellent for people who are hesitant to build one.

They don't have 970s yet though so it's kind of a wash.

Why can't you build it yourself? You could just add those things to your current computer and save a shit load of money.

@corevi: Is it possible to not select a graphics card from them and buy one separately?

Yes but at that point he might as well just buy the card and the SSD and put them in the build he already has.

@corevi: That sounds like the way to go, but OP gonna do what OP gonna do.

I've seen a few sites have them already. If it's not in there by standard, you can just swap it in. Shouldn't be an issue.

Huh I've never heard of them. I assume you wouldn't recommend them if they were bad though.

I figured this would come up. I'm not messing with that. Not gonna risk buying all this stuff, for a good chunk of cash, and then fucking it up. Blah, blah, blah "it's easy". That's great. Not for me though.

You are willing to swap it in to a new build but not the perfectly good one you already have?

Um...

You know... With what you have you only need to upgrade maybe the graphics card and add a SSD. You don't have to spend all that money making a new computer. I mean, I get it (my mom does this too where she just wants to build a new computer every couple of years for no real reason) but there's no reason to not be practical.

Or is that a laptop in which case; I get it. (Edit: BTW, based on your hardware specs, I know it's not. That was rhetoric =P )

If you want to look into someone else building you a computer I will recommend Cyberpowerpc.com. I have used them multiple times, as well as recommended them to my family and friends and have not been told to go fuck myself so it must have gone well for them too.

I will add I have read bad things from random people on the internet (wrong computer sent to them, missing parts, and other weirdness) but those could be outliers. No one is perfect.

Anyway, just a site for you to consider in your search. They are relatively cost efficient, and, in my experience, they are reliable.

Edit: Also if you are determined to get a new computer I may be coerced into buying the one you have. =P

I don't really like doing the piece meal thing. I go all or nothing. Probably gonna end up seeing if I can trade in my current one somewhere or sell it. Like I said in the opening it's not something I really want to debate. I totally understand what everyone's saying.

Yeah I've heard things about their customer support or something, but like you said you'll hear that about anyone. Actually the one I have I want to say is a Cyberpower (got it through Amazon though).

If you're actually serious about me selling it just let me know.

So I'm messing with a few of these sites now and a few things have stood out to me.

1. Liquid cooling is something I see a lot. Sounds nifty but is it actually worthwhile? Is something like that more of a hassle to maintain?

2. I noticed a lot of builds have, for example, both an SSD and a stand hard drive. SSD's, from my limited knowledge, seem to be flat out better, but much pricier. I'm guessing you put the more important stuff on the SSD so it boots faster, and games load up quicker and the other shit on the other drive? I really have no clue how that works. Ideally I'd prefer just one SSD. I'll be paying more, but that's fine. If I were to go the dual route, which I imagine is more common what size should my SSD be?

3. Overclocking is always something I see mentioned. Again from limited knowledge isn't that basically like juicing up your card past its limits or to its full potential, for lack of better phrasing? It's something I've never bothered with, because I have to assume there are Pro's and Con's to it.

4. Lastly just how much power should my PSU have? If my GPU requires something like 500 watts and the power supply is 550 is that cutting it too close? Is there some kind of standard rule to how much higher I should go?

I've got 4 I'm looking at right now, of various specs. They are as follows:

1) GIGABYTE GA-Z97X-SLI

Intel® Core™ i5 4590 3.3GHz/3.7GHz Turbo 6MB L3 Cache HD 4600

8GB Corsair® Vengeance™ DDR3-1600 1.5V (2x4GB)

NVIDIA® GeForce™ GTX 970 4GB GDDR5 w/PhysX

750W EVGA® SuperNOVA 80 Plus Certified PSU - GTX 780 SLI Ready

1TB Seagate SSHD Hybrid SATA w/ 8GB Caching

Price: $1875 (From Maingear)

2) MSI Z97 Guard-Pro -- 2x PCIe x16, 4x USB 3.0, 2x USB 2.0

Intel® Core™ i5-4690K Processor (4x 3.50GHz/6MB L3 Cache) - Intel Core™ i5-4690K

16 GB [8 GB x2] DDR3-1600 Memory Module - Corsair or Major Brand **Free Upgrade to DDR3-1866 G.SKILL RipjawsX**

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 - 4GB - EVGA Superclocked

750 Watt - Thermaltake SMART SP-750M - *Free Upgrade to 850W Thermaltake SMART SP-850M - 80 PLUS Bronze*

1 TB Samsung 840 EVO SSD -- Read: 540MB/s, Write: 520MB/s - Single Drive

Price: $2026 (From iBuyPower)

3) GIGABYTE Z97-D3H ATX w/ Realtek GbLAN, 2 PCIe x16, 2 PCIe x1, 3 PCI, 6x SATA 6Gb/s (Pro OC Certified)

Intel® Core™ i7-4790K 4.0 GHz 8MB Intel Smart Cache LGA1150 (All Venom OC Certified)

8GB (4GBx2) DDR3/1866MHz Dual Channel Memory (Corsair or Major Brand)

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 4GB GDDR5 PCIe 3.0 x16 Video Card (Maxwell) (Single Card)

600 Watts - Standard 80 Plus Certified Power Supply - SLI/CrossFireX Ready

1TB Samsung 840 EVO Series SATA-III 6.0Gb/s SSD - 540MB/s Read & 520MB/s Write (Single Drive)

Price: $2095 (From Cyberpower)

4) GIGABYTE X99 UD4 ATX w/ Intel GbE LAN, 4x Gen3 PCIe x16, 3 PCIe x1, 1x M.2, 10x SATA 6Gb/s

Intel® Core™ i7-5820K Six-Core 3.30GHz 15MB Intel Smart Cache LGA2011-V3

16GB (4GBx4) DDR4/2400MHz Quad Channel Memory (Corsair or Major Brand)

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 4GB GDDR5 PCIe 3.0 x16 Video Card (Maxwell) (Single Card)

600 Watts - Standard 80 Plus Certified Power Supply - SLI/CrossFireX Ready

1TB Samsung 840 EVO Series SATA-III 6.0Gb/s SSD - 540MB/s Read & 520MB/s Write (Single Drive)

Price: $2078 (From Cyberpower)

Whew...this is a long post. Anyways there you have it. The SSD is definitely the thing that's driving up the price the most on all of these, so I might look into the smaller SSD + Standard HD combo after all. So which of those seems best? They all have the same GPU and same size SSD. Is there anything I should downgrade/upgrade?

I'm wondering what you are planning on doing with this machine that would require or even take advantage of a 5820k? That is a monster of a processor and many would argue that it's extreme overkill for a gaming machine.

@kishinfoulux: I am serious about considering the one you currently have if you actually want to discuss that in a PM or whatever I'd be fine with that. The logistics of that are troublesome, though, so I guess I was partially kidding, but if the price is right. I don't actually know if we even live in the same country or not haha. We can discuss it if you want.

To answer your questions:

1. Liquid cooling is something I see a lot. Sounds nifty but is it actually worthwhile? Is something like that more of a hassle to maintain? Liquid cooling is more complicated when it comes to cleaning and you really only need to do that once every 2 years. The thing is, it's more than you have to do with just fans (which you normally just blow out with canned air). With cyberpower you do also have the option to use just fans even though they try to push liquid cooling on you (I mention just in case that is why you brought it up). I tell everyone that asks me about that if they feel comfortable taking the liquid cooling apart every couple of years to clean it out- if so then go for it. Most don't want to deal with it as it does have it's own risks. The plus side, though, is liquid cooling means less dust so your hardware can potentially last longer. It's up to you if the downsides outweigh the upsides. For you I'd imagine you don't want that, if I had to guess. It's up to you, though.

2. I noticed a lot of builds have, for example, both an SSD and a standard hard drive. SSD's, from my limited knowledge, seem to be flat out better, but much pricier. I'm guessing you put the more important stuff on the SSD so it boots faster, and games load up quicker and the other shit on the other drive? I really have no clue how that works. Ideally I'd prefer just one SSD. I'll be paying more, but that's fine. If I were to go the dual route, which I imagine is more common what size should my SSD be? SSDs load information faster- to put it simply. What people tend to do is load their OS on the SSD so the computer boots faster. Gamers will sometimes also partition it out so they put the game they're playing on it and use regular HDD for everything else. I personally don't use an SSD yet because they're still super pricey (as you said) but when they come down I'll probably then get into it. The difference is negligible in only that you wont notice if you don't have it (games still load super fast on PC if it's a decent PC anyway), but if you do have it you would notice a difference. I don't currently see it as important enough to be a necessity. If you don't care about the price, though, by all means get both. It does afford you decreased load times on everything and with modern systems your only bottle neck (when the build is proper) is your standard HDD.

The size you want to get depends on what you want to use it for. If you just put the OS on the SSD and nothing else then the smallest is fine (60 some odd gigabytes), if you want to use it for games maybe consider 100 or 200 some odd GB just so you have room. You'd have to remove the game after you play it, though, or you may run out of room as file sizes are getting really big now-a-days what with HD textures and increased sound files. I'd probably recommend a 250GB SSD if you want to go the OS + room for playing a game off it route. You may need someone to help you partition it though if the place you get it from doesn't do it for you (cyberpowerpc may do it for you if you speak to someone when you purchase it). For a regular HDD I always get 2 TB, but I also have 2 external hard drives totalling over 6 TB due to all the videos I have on my PC (I rip my movies to my PC which takes up a ton of space). It's up to you and how you want to use your PC really. If you don't need it for big stuff like me you can consider smaller HDDs although they're so cheap now a days it's not a waste to get a 2TB drive just to have it.

3. Overclocking is always something I see mentioned. Again from limited knowledge isn't that basically like juicing up your card past its limits or to its full potential, for lack of better phrasing? It's something I've never bothered with, because I have to assume there are Pro's and Con's to it. I don't recommend you bother with over clocking. Overclocking pushes your GPU and/or CPU to it's limits. As a result it wears out faster. Regular joe gamer who doesn't care about winning tournaments when playing games honestly shouldn't bother caring about it or worrying about it. It's never necessary to just enjoy a game.

Much like cars, yes, it juices up your system. As the term implies this has a degrading effect on the hardware as well. In my opinion the downsides outweigh the upsides (again unless you're making money off winning competitive multiplayer games) so there's no need to even consider it. The easiest way to look at it is it's similar to people who race cars. Regular people don't need to supe up their cars engine, but someone who likes to race may want to consider it. Hopefully that makes sense.

4. Lastly just how much power should my PSU have? If my GPU requires something like 500 watts and the power supply is 550 is that cutting it too close? Is there some kind of standard rule to how much higher I should go? The PSU you need depends on the parts you use. If you are worried about money where ever you buy the PC should tell you if the PSU you have selected is enough. If you're not super worried about it, I always go with a 750w not necessarily because I need it (I probably don't yet) but it doesn't hurt your computer to have too much and it will always be enough as I upgrade (for several years at least).

Something you should keep in mind, as Vinny has actually said (and it's true). The two most common PC failures are the Hard Drive and the PSU. In my experience the PSU is the most likely to fail so get a good one that people are favorable towards. This is the one I currently have if you need examples. Edit: I should probably add that 600w is probably fine- especially if you're not intending to overclock. Again I always overkill a little on PSUs.

Hopefully I didn't use any tech terms you are not familiar with. If so I apologize. Hopefully that helps!

@mb: If I had to guess it's within his price range and I know Cyberpower is pushing i7s right now so it just added up to that. I agree he could probably tone it down a little and actually be fine.

Something like their gamer infinity 8800 build would probably be just as well for a tad less (just an example). Although, I'm not sure why it has an 800W PSU on it. I'm only glancing at it.

Honestly I just took machines they all had prebuilt and put in the things I wanted. So stuff like the motherboards and processors are what came with it.

And yeah Corn just shoot me a PM whenever you want. Also thanks a ton for those answers. Probably won't bother with Overclocking and the liquid cooling then. As for the SSD situation, yeah I plan to pretty much have Windows on there and whatever games I play. I don't keep many installed at once so I'm fine with just deleting what I'm not using. Also what do you mean by partitioning, in regards to the drives?

@kishinfoulux: Harddrives can be partitioned out so you allocate certain amounts of data to separate drives. This was more common a long time ago when hard drives were small so you could keep one part to your OS and the rest to whatever. Some MFR (like Dell) still retain this practice (if you ever bought a dell you'd probably notice more than one drive even though there's only one hard drive- like a C: and a K: or whatever).

Since SSDs are so small it is useful to do. You don't have to, I guess, but it helps manage your drives easier at that size. You wont have to worry about the OS that way as the files will be on their own partition of the drive.

The best example I can come up with is: it's like a wall partition which separates rooms.

Hopefully that makes sense. =)

@cornbredx: that partition on Dell (and other) hard drives is used to house recovery data, it isn't actively used unless you need to restore the system partition to a factory state. They are imaged that way from the factory largely so Dell doesn't have to ship separate recovery disks.

I'm not sure what the point of partitioning a small drive would be...partitioning is normally used on larger drives to create multiple smaller ones. In fact in all the years I have been building PCs or helping people build them, I have never partitioned a small SSD for any reason. You put the OS on it and then use the remaining space to install a few programs and are done with it, partitioning in that case is unnecessary. I think you have it a bit backwards.

@mb: Well, I've seen it used to store the OS as well, but you are right I forgot to mention that they store back ups on there for recovery. I used to partition out my drive for that as well until I stopped caring, but either way point still stands haha

Partitioning is not a requirement just something I usually suggest.

Except you can't write to the recovery partition on those drives, they're 100% full of data used to restore the computer if you need to...so you must have been looking at a completely different partition or a different drive setup.

Just want things to be clear since the topic was getting technical, it's important for this stuff to be right since people come back to these threads years down the road sometimes.

Alright so I ended up doing another build on Cyberpower. I took one of their pre-existing ones that they are having a sale on and swapped some things.

ASRock Z97 Pro4 ATX w/ Intel GbLAN, 2 PCIe x16, 2 PCIe x1, 2 PCI, 1 x M.2, 6x SATA 6Gb/s (All Venom OC Certified)

Intel® Core™ i7-4790 3.60 GHz 8MB LGA1150

16GB (8GBx2) DDR3/1866MHz Dual Channel Memory

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 4GB GDDR5 PCIe 3.0 x16 Video Card (Maxwell)

Corsair CX750 750W 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Active PFC Power Supply

500GB Samsung 840 EVO Series SATA-III 6.0Gb/s SSD - 540MB/s Read & 520MB/s Write (Primary Hard Drive)

1TB Western Digital Caviar Blue SATA-III 6.0Gb/s 7200 RPM HDD (Secondary Hard Drive)

Price: $1671 *Free shipping* (Cyberpower)

Bit of a price reduction. Mostly from, I imagine, not going full blown 1TB SSD. Seems solid to me, but what do I know? lol

Just hope it has all the necessary wires and ports. That stuff always worries me...but yeah assuming people think this one is alright I'm definitely gonna pull the trigger.

@mb: Yes, I understand.

To be clear, back when I started learning computers (1990 or something) I was taught to partition the OS to a separate drive. It was before back up and recovery which I learned later and that was on RAID drives which isn't relevant here.

Anyway, in the early 2000s or so I would partition one drive to the OS and another to recovery. This is probably a carry over from how I was taught.

I stopped doing it (edit: it meaning an OS partition) a few years ago as I got Hard Drives that were really large mainly, I guess, because I didn't really need it seeing as I am not going to accidentally delete my OS at this point anyway so I no longer worried about it. Other people I have worked with over the years have said they did the same as well so for me it wasn't something I really questioned until now honestly haha.

I guess it's just how I was taught and again I don't use SSDs myself but I was told by someone I worked with once that they did it with SSDs so I assumed it was still a thing with them as well. If it's bad I will rescind that information and not even advise it anymore. If that is so I wasn't aware- I never really thought to check about it. It's never been questioned before, to me, to be honest.

@kishinfoulux: I don't know what the mother board is, but it looks fine just from those specs. (edit: oh duh, the Mobo is up there- looks great).

So you know you don't need 16 GB of RAM. 8 is fine. You won't even notice a difference. I understand if you still want it, but you should know that at least.

I would recommend looking around for similar builds if you want to see what the prices are like, but ya that seems like a fine build to me.

Yeah I was going back and forth on the RAM. I guess I figured I have 12 on my current one I'd go equal or higher. For whatever reason they didn't have 12. So it was basically 8 or 16. Going to 8 GB brings the price down to $1566 however and having 12 to begin with seemed like overkill.

Think I'm gonna go with that then. Thank you for the help. I fully realize it's bothersome to deal with someone like me, who's stubborn in their ways. ^_^

@kishinfoulux: No problem. It's not bothersome. It's kind of fun, really, and your needs weren't overly complicated (more so than I probably made it =P)

@kishinfoulux: If all your doing is new gpu & ssd then.

Open case:

1. Press button to release old gpu, pull out
2. Get new gpu, push in
3. Grab SSD
4. Connect to motherboard with sata cable
5. Find a spot to secure it <- this is the only fiddly bit

:close case

If you want a new processor then forget about what I just said and get someone else to build it. (Unless you want to, I like building my own.)

The 840 EVO Series SSD has been having issues. You will need to update the ssd's firmware (somehow, I don't know if that's easy) after you get it as the performance drops below hard drive speeds if you don't after a few weeks.

Make sure to get 1 GPU with alot of vram (to future proof it).

If your getting ddr3 ram then just get 16gb it's fairly cheap you might render a video at some point in your life that may use it once. :D

Or you could be an architecture student and need 64 gb of ram which I wish I had oh god these render times are so long what is happening with my life I'm just trying to get my work done. WHAT STUDENT HALLS THINKS THAT HALF A MB OF INTERNET SPEED IS ADEQUATE! AHH!!!

@cirdain: hmm... interesting. I wasn't aware of that with the SSD. Your link doesn't work (at least for me) so I took the liberty of looking that up. There is currently no fix, but it will be released on October 15th.

This is my source... I googled that- I'm not aware of the site otherwise.

This is what I built a few months ago. It's been awesome. I just got a great CPU for whatever reason. Not sure if it's necessary or whatever. I use a PS4 controller with a premium version of the driver skin thing.

http://pcpartpicker.com/user/camp_bean/saved/mrqhP6

Looks like I'll sort of luck out with the SSD issue. The fix is supposed to come Oct. 15th, which isn't very far off. It should work fine until then. After some quick googling it seems the issue wouldn't manifest that quickly, since nothing will be "old data" on it by that time. Should be smooth sailing, though it's something I'll keep in mind, if I notice odd performance issues.

Don't know if you pulled the trigger already but you could drop to an i5-4690 and get dual GTX 970's? If I copied your build right that would put the price at $1727,-. Gaming wise that would add a whole lot more firepower than the difference between an i5 and i7.

I did already, but I've never been one for using two cards. Thanks for that suggestion though.

What the hell are you doing upgrading that?

This entire thread deserves a #firstworldproblems hashtag...