Hey all!

Some of you might remember me from this thread asking about gaming laptops: http://www.giantbomb.com/pc/3045-94/forums/looking-to-get-a-gaming-laptop-1767091/#12

I'm weighing my options now, and I figured I might as well consider building a pc instead. I currently have a rough build that looks like this: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/BL6HLk

Anyone have any thoughts on it?

One thing I was wondering was whether I should consider upgrading the processor. I know the general consensus is that an i5 is good enough for gaming, but I wonder if its something that would still be true several years from now. Keep in mind that I don't plan on doing any overclocking if I do decide to build this thing. Also does anyone have any specific case and psu recommendations? I thought the two I selected looked good, but I'd like to know your guys' thoughts on them and what I should look for.

Also, really newbie question here, but I have never built a pc with an ssd and a regular hd before. Is it as simple as connecting the ssd to a SATA port on the motherboard (I'm assuming SATA 0) and the hd to a different SATA port? Will the motherboard and Windows just auto detect that I have two drives installed without me having to fiddle with anything?

Thanks! :)

Build looks great. I think the 4690k is more than fine, I have one myself in one of my machines and I couldn't be happier with it. It's a good CPU choice, you aren't going to be needing to upgrade that thing anytime soon.

I see you chose a 4690k unlocked chip, but no aftermarket CPU cooler. You don't necessarily need one if you don't plan on overclocking, but you may as well just get one now and install it while you're building the thing. Then you'll be set up for overclocking down the road if you decide to do that. Personally, I'm a fan of Noctua air coolers.

As far as your drives, on that board I think all of the SATA ports are identical so it shouldn't matter which ports you plug them into. You choose boot devices and priority in BIOS. All that stuff is covered in the manual and is fairly straightforward.

For cases, just pick one that you think looks cool and has a good feature set. I recommend watching some build videos with the cases you are interested in on YouTube to see what the builders think of them and how the process goes. I recommend LinusTechTips and HardwareCanucks.

PSUs...a lot of that is personal preference. Just go with a major brand and get a unit that has good reviews, and of course modular to help with your cable management. I personally like the Corsair HX Professional Series.

I"m in the process of setting up a build as well and this is quite comparable to my own build that I've gotten advice from on Reddit. I've been out of the loop in terms of advice since I haven't built one in quite some time so I can't really add much there.

Nice build! Your SSD will be very simple, no doubt. The one you picked will include the necessary SATA cable to plug into your motherboard. Typically I recommend a meaty battery backup if you don't already own one, and embrace going ham on cooling! Looks like a solid rig to me. Cheers!

Looks good man, good luck with the build

With Windows 7, at least, when you're doing a fresh install, you'll get a list of devices (see: hard drive) to install to. Your SSD and HDD will show up together. Something along the lines of:

SATA0: 120GB KINGSTON 142ACUDblahblach
SATA1: 1TB SAMSUNG 4410AVCblahblah

If you're crazy and still using XP, it might/probably will require drivers. As for upgrading your CPU, I would advise against it. The price of technology is always dropping, and if you don't feel your CPU failing under the current load you're putting it under, then you're upgrading for no reason. I opine that by the time i5 isn't cutting it, there will probably be some fancy new CPU i9 6Ghz++ Candy Bridge for everyone to cream over, and your future proof rig was outdated before you could take advantage of it, and the price of i7s will be cheaper to boot.

Whether or not the prospect of an i7 being a better "investment" in 2015, I'm not educated enough to speak to that. I'll let someone else catch that potato.

Pretty much. There are only a handful of games that actually take advantage of HyperThreading. At this point you are still better off getting an i5 and putting the extra money into a better GPU or an SSD instead of an i7. The 4690k is a great CPU, I would buy one again in a heartbeat.

I'm not sure what you mean when you say 'unlocked chip'. Does that just mean that the processor can be overclocked? How do I know whether a chip is unlocked or not? Is that processor still worth getting if I don't overclock it?

@orexis97: Unlocked means the CPU can be overclocked. For Intel, generally the designation for an unlocked CPU is "K."

There was a time when the 4690k was more expensive than the 4690, but now I think they are about the same price. Just get the 4690k, but remember that if you ever end up wanting to overclock it, the stock Intel cooler won't be enough.