Hello all,

Moving over from an iMac, and do not wish to purchase a new one due to the insane prices.

I have put this together (with the help of a friend), and wondered if there was anything obviously lacking.

List of parts: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/4GBgzM

Case (as not on the website): https://www.amazon.co.uk/Corsair-CC-9011070-WW-MicroATX-Mini-ITX-Case-Black/dp/B00LA6WXEO/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1479488802&sr=8-8&keywords=micro+atx

Thanks for reading.

Personally, I wouldn't go with just a 60hz monitor, you'll be able to play most games at framerates higher than that with a 1070 and games really do feel a lot smoother on a 120/144hz display.

Seems like a great computer. The Corsair H105 cooler might be slightly unnecessary unless you're planning on doing a lot of overlocking.

@huelarl: Thanks for the reply.

After looking I felt that this was the best bang for buck really. I want a 27" screen minimum, and similar screens at a higher refresh rate are insane money.

I am coming from a console gaming background, and a constant 60fps will be enough for me in the near future I feel.

@isomeri: I am planning on doing no overclocking initially, could it be something I can add later on instead?

Build overall looks good to me. I have the same model monitor and I like it really well. It is a little finicky with switching inputs and the built in speakers are only there to prove that audio can be played.

Technically your PSU is double the power that it needs to be. Outervision has a nice power consumption calculator that rates your system at 319 load wattage. http://outervision.com/b/RoNm7D

Personally I shy away from water cooling but you'll be perfectly happy with that setup I think.

Have you built a system before? I was scared of it so my brother helped me two years ago. Now I'm tearing into the thing on a semi regular basis, sometimes for the fun of it.

@koelsh: I have never build one, no! There is always a first time for everything...

I am looking to reject the water cooling currently, it feels unnecessary.

I like the idea of a PSU that isn't near the edge, so that sounds good to me!

Thanks for the comment, and help deciding!

@supersambo: You can totally add it later on. Something like a Hyper 212 EVO is half the price and allows for plenty of overclocking as is. Then again, watercooling is rad and usually a bit more quiet than fan solutions so I totally understand if you do go that way after all.

@supersambo Oh yea you wouldn't want a PSU that only provides the exact wattage. Mine is rated for 450 watts and I think the system tops at 300 to 350 but usually runs more about 150 to 260 depending upon the game.

@koelsh: I have opted for this one instead - similar wattage, but cheaper.

@isomeri: Good to know, thanks. Will be adding later if needed.

@supersambo: Are you OC'ing the CPU? because you need a Z motherboard in order to do that.

If you are not gonna overclock do not get a K level processor so you can save some money there. You can also get an air cooler to save some more money.

If you are gonna overclock you will need to switch to a z170 level motherboard and you can keep the watercooler.

750watts seems a little overkill for your build unless you will eventually go SLI.

What everyone else had said so far is pretty good.

I think though that you should be able to find a 7200 RPM drive instead of a 5400 RPM for the same price. I found this but I do not know UK sellers to know how easy this is to order for this price.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Seagate-Desktop-inch-Internal-Drive/dp/B008FXHKVQ/ref=sr_1_2?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1479505182&sr=1-2&keywords=seagate+2tb

Looks pretty good, here are my suggestions. Look into a Noctua air cooler instead of the water cooling - a bit cheaper, performs better in all reviews I can find, and is extremely quiet. But it's very big, so you need the right case. The giant heatsink and giant, low-RPM fans are what make it cool so well and operate so quietly. Water cooling setups are a pain, the GPU is really expensive if you want one that can be watercooled, and they still use fans so there is not much point in them.

Most motherboards have an auto-overclock function these days that works fine, and is easy. Honestly, plan to overclock the CPU - there's no reason not too, they're all designed to run at atleast 10% or more over the defaults, because Intel is fully aware that people are happier with a purchase when they feel they got more than they paid for. So the headroom is built in, and on the more recent Intel processors, heat is not really the concern, they start to get unstable long before the heat is at a dangerous level if you have decent air cooling.

I would get a Samsung M.2 PCIe x4 NVMe SSD drive... the 960 series. You'd need an M.2 slot on the motherboard for it, so even if you can't afford one initially, it will make you very happy down the road when you can do an easy upgrade to an SSD that is literally 5x faster than a SATA3 one is (3500 MB/s sequential read vs. 550 MB/s on the SATA3 SSDs).

Also, never buy a 5400 RPM platter drive, IMO. UNLESS it's way cheaper... but usually 7200 RPM is about the same price, and it's already too slow.

You don't need to buy Windows 10 if you have any old Win7/8 keys around, even OEM keys on the sticker of an older laptop or PC. If you don't have one, I bet someone you know has an extra one they'd give you. Currently, you can still upgrade to Win10 for free with ANY Win 7/8 key - they said they'd stop this summer, but then extended it indefinitely it seems.

I think you're good sticking with a 60-100Hz IPS panel monitor. Don't listen to the people touting 144Hz monitors as the 2nd coming of christ... unless you're literally a pro eSports player and are competing for money and not for fun. Monitors that go to 120/144 Hz use TN panels and they look like shit. Higher than 60 Hz does look a bit smoother, but not worth it to sacrifice major image quality on the monitor. THat one you chose also is at the 1440p sweet spot, and has a 4ms response time which is not noticeably higher than a 1ms response time TN panel.

Don't get one stick of memory. 2 is needed, 4 is best since modern Intel mobos support quad channel memory. Dual channel generally works fine though, so you could get 2x 8GB sticks for now and get more later if you want. If that mobo doesn't have 4 memory slots, easy overclocking, and an M.2 slot, I'd highly recommend you look at others who suppor those things, even if it costs a bit more. You'll be much happier down the road to have those features, for sure!

Couple Things

1. You need to get a z170 mobo instead of the mobo you have now. Since you went with a water cooler I'm assuming you want to overclock. The board you have currently selected will not allow you to do that. I would recommend this one. It is more money but it will allow you to use the features that you're paying the extra money for on the CPU.

2. You do not need a 750 watt power supply. A 500 watt one is still more than enough but if you want the extra headroom a 650 watt will suit your needs. I would recommend this one.

3. There have been a lot of bench marks done with memory and, for games, a dual channel configuration works best. (Two RAM Sticks). Swap out the single 16GB for this dual channel configuration. Just remember to put them in the same coloured slots for the RAM.

I would think about looking into another motherboard, i've personally had issues with my gigabyte board so i definitely wouldn't trust their budget ones. And yeah like people already stated you won't be able to overlock, if you stick with gigabyte just make sure you read reviews and make sure the ram you get is 100% compatible as it can be a real headache. 5400rpm hdd is questionable as well, unless you never plan on ever putting games on there but i'm sure that ssd will run out of space at some point if you are gaming a decent amount.

A 60Hz monitor is already outdated, or will very soon be outdated. With GPUs where they are, 100Hz or higher should be your standard.

2560 x 1440 is a pretty normal resolution by this point and isn't a bad bet at all. I'd go higher, either to 3440 or 4K (and I did when I bought my monitor) as cards like the 1080 and doubtlessly the upcoming 1080Ti can max games at these resolutions almost every time with ease.

A 1070 will get you more than 60 FPS at 2560 x 1440 in most games, but you won't max everything and will likely have to turn off things like anti-aliasing in some intensive titles. I'd rather the better monitor than the 1080, but a 1080 and a 3440 or 4K monitor would obviously be better and you won't find many games that you can't run flawlessly.

Solid build. I'd say pull the trigger.

@zombievac: It may be 5x faster on paper but you will be lucky if you notice any difference whatsoever. Unless you are spending your day running benchmark programs an Sata3 drive will not be the bottleneck in your performance.

The 2 obvious things are don't buy a cheap shit PSU (referencing your post further down with the aerocool) get a solid brand like Seasonic, and get dual channel RAM.

Also ditch the water cooler if you're not OCing, and tbh if you are too, as it's really not worth it over a cheaper but just as good air cooler like the 212 or whatever the current 212 is. Also yeah ideally get a 7200 HDD unless you're only using it for storage AND it's way cheaper, which I mean, £35 more for a 2tb black drive so yeah maybe stick with the blue lol.

Here's my proposed changes. It's about £70 over-budget if the PCPartPicker prices are to be trusted, but you might not want to run around to 7 stores to get everything so that might be off. Nevertheless, I think the changes proposed make sense, so hopefully you can afford it.

Firstly, if you're going say something like...

...then get a motherboard that can do the job and a cheap cooler, not a cheap motherboard and an overkill cooler. If you find you need a better cooler later on to get a good overclock (and you might not, the EVO seems pretty good in my experience) then you're only out of pocket ~£30, whereas the board will cost considerably more to replace, and in the meantime you're dealing with a less well-featured board. The EVO is big and chunky and not exactly pretty so you might prefer a liquid cooler if you have the extra cash, but I'd prioritize the board.

The board I picked out for you is the Mini-ITX cousin of the board I recently picked up, which has been smooth sailing so far outside of needing a BIOS update to fix some sleep/restart bugs. Honestly, though, if you were willing to move up to a mid tower case (which'd be a good idea for your first build) you could get a proper motherboard, like the Fatal1ty K4 that Tom's Hardware recommends, which is the budget version of my own board. I settled on the K6 (after much agonizing, the motherboard market is a pain in the ass) for the sake of features that I might use like SLI and diagnostic LEDs, but you can probably do without those. There is a duder or two here who will warn against getting ASRock boards, but as it so happens, ASRock seem to be the only vendor not looking to gouge their non-US customers: in the US the K6 is on the same price level as such boards as MSI's Gaming M7, and ASUS's ROG Hero and Sabertooth S boards, but in Australia (and judging by a brief perusal of PCPartPicker UK, in the UK too) the K6 is considerably cheaper.

I switched you over to a pair of 8GB 3200MHz G.Skill Ripjaws V because that's what I have, they seem very well-liked, and they're the teensiest bit faster than the memory you picked out for the same price. Honestly though, my impression is that fast memory doesn't matter, so if you want to go with a 2x8GB 2133MHz kit instead to save a few dollars go ahead.

Switched the video card and PSU over to EVGA because I'm pretty impressed with the EVGA video card and PSU I got and they have pretty impressive warranty offers and whatnot. If you want pretty RGB lighting on your video card you can fork out extra for the FTW version of that card.

You don't need 750W of power, but you should go for a high-quality 80+ Gold-rated PSU for numerous reasons: you'll save the difference in cost in power bills over time, you don't want the PSU to malfunction and blow other components up, and the PSU is a component you can carry over from build to build so it's worth having one that'll last a while (the warranty on the G2 is 10 years). You could go for the 650W version if you don't mind paying a bit extra up front to ensure you'll always have enough power, but the 750W is probably overkill. (But then again, I have the 750W version, because I couldn't easily get a 650W one in Australia.)

Finally, I'm not prepared to recommend specific monitors at all, but I'd recommend running your choices by the DisplayLag monitor database, especially if you have any interest in competitive gaming (especially fighting games, I'd imagine also shooters and MOBAs, etc.). What you care about is input lag, i.e. the time between you doing something with your controller or keyboard/mouse, and that input translating into action on screen. It's not the same thing at all as "response time", which is a mostly unrelated nitty-gritty thing about how quickly a pixel can change colour. In a 60fps game a frame is ~17 milliseconds, so the monitor you picked out takes 2 frames to produce a change in the action whereas the best monitors take 1 frame. Adding in the lag of the game as well as your own reactions, it might be literally impossible for you to block an overhead attack in a fighting game that has 15 frames of startup, whereas someone with a better monitor might be able to do it. That said, 2 frames of lag is decent, so if this wasn't a thing you cared about before then you could probably ignore this.

...anyway, this has turned into a big thing, but one last thing:

So, this is a bit dubious. For specialized workloads you can probably get up around 3.5GB/s, but the guys at Tom's Hardware who review these drives insist that home software (including games) just about never gets above queue depths of 2 or sometimes 4, where the 960 EVO "only" achieves sequential read speeds of 2GB/s. The mixed workload benchmarks (which seem to be what matter) are considerably worse. Mind, I'm not an expert on this stuff so I could be blindly trusting people who don't know what they're talking about, but I have been watching the reviews for this stuff because I've been considering getting either a 960 or a considerably more affordable MyDigitalSSD BPX, because I hate load times and the NVMe class seems to be a step up. (But then again, I'm not sure how well that's reflected in applications.)

Anyway, if the OP is interested in any of these devices, they'll probably need to move to a mid-tower case.

EDIT: also, the new Samsung NVMe drives seem to be in super-limited supply. They're about a month or two late, and apparently there's a big flash memory supply shortage, and people seem to really want them, so it could be hard to get one in the near term.

I don't know what else to tell you. That's like going from a GTX 580 to a 1080 and saying you don't notice the difference... if you use the thing, you'd notice. My laptop has a slower CPU and GPU than my desktop yet feels faster because of the M.2 drive. But any storage upgrade is not going to do much for your FPS in a game properly designed to stay within normal RAM and VRAM limits, except when loading. And less stuttering if the game streams assets in like most open world games.

In windows, working daily on an M.2 SSD and copying files around and such, you'd be blind not to notice.

And BTW, unlike most parts, whats listed "on paper" for Samsung SSDs is what you actually get in the real world. All the time, so far. I can see the difference in file copy speeds alone. Or the 2 second boot up with GBs worth of tray apps on startup.

@zombievac: 2sec boot is not because a fast hd but because you have a good cached startup. My PC clocks around 20sec and it doesnt matter if its sata 3 or the samsung disc. 95% of what i do in windows and in games are bottlenecked by the CPU and the last 5% gets maybe a 5-10% boost which aint noticeable if you aint sitting there with a stopwatch.

Theres a clear difference between 580 and 1080 and between hdd and ssd but not between sata and nvme drives.

@supersambo: Others have already mentioned that you'll need a motherboard with the Z170 chipset as opposed to the H110. I would add that you should check out the recommended boards on https://www.tonymacx86.com. Making a Hackintosh got much easier when the Clover bootloader came along, and there are plenty of installation guides available. Something to keep in mind if you've considered running both macOS and Windows on this new machine.

@fnrslvr said:

1080, 1070 and 1060 EVGA cards with ACX 3.0 coolers are bursting to flames because of a design flaw, so I would not recommend buying those at the moment.

Edit: Here is the article about the case.

Nothing to shabby there, Looks good. I think @fnrslvr has some good suggestions, but I don't think there is anything particularly bad with your choices, have fun building it!

@icemo: uhh, shit, I better look into that. :P

I had heard that the fan curve needed adjustment, which came in a BIOS update. I'm also not all that worried since at worst, EVGA has a highly-regarded warranty program to live up to and they'll probably sort out even the worst of issues with the line of cards. But yeah, fair warning for the OP.

@zombievac: Which M.2 drive do you have? I'm guessing a 950 Pro or maybe a 960 Pro, since the latter just came out and the 960 Evo is waaaaaay late to market? Assuming you have the 950 Pro, I could see you getting ~1.5GB/s when copying big files around, but it's probably tanking to sub-500MB/s on things like booting and running games, based on the mixed random workload benchmarks I've seen. Which still seems very fast, but I don't know if you'd say you're getting what's listed "on paper" in the real world. Also, the new drives seem to only get close to their reported >3GB/s reads in very unrealistic situations, so the appealing idea of maxing out the DMI 3 link with one NVMe drive seems naive.

I bought a 1070 ACX 3.0 a couple months ago when I built my computer. Thanks for the info, just updated.

@fnrslvr: The EVGA warranty program will give you a new or updated card but you will still be left with an superloud card.

wow, wtf i have one of these myself I think. They seem to be offering free thermal pad kits but i have no idea how it works, guess i will need to look this up now. :-(

I have a 950 and bought a 960 recently at work. I never said I got 3500 MB/s all the time, that's not what the spec is. In sequential reads, I get around 4-5x the speed of my 850 EVO, as it's listed, for both models. That has to be done with a benchmark though.

In real world speeds, it's slower, but still "X" times faster than the SATA3 variety's real world speeds, all the time. The SATA3 one often doesn't hit near 550MB/s either. SATA3 is also not a direct-to-bus interface, slowing things down more. For double the price, but at least 2x, if not 5x the speeds, it's worthwhile - you don't see those types of speed differences in one generation for little more in price overall unless you're on the cusp of a hardware revolution, which SSDs are. Any other part and you'd pay 5x as much for the highest end part and get only 10-20% more speed or so (say, using a TITAN GPU or Intel Extreme edition proc).

With SSDs, you pay 2x as much (or 3x) and get 5x the speed - that's still the best price/perf ratio around right now. And one of the major things about it though, is the fact that you can feel the difference all the time, while doing anything on the PC - CPU you almost never feel the difference between the $400 and $1100 models, and GPU you do but it's more like 25% or so maybe, only while in a game or 3D app.

950 or 960 series support (having an M.2 slot) is WORTH IT, unless you can't or won't upgrade for some reason!

@zombievac: Well i absolutely feel the upgrade from 980ti to titan x but the upgrade from an normal SSD to 950pro is dissapointing at best. Again, It may be 5x the speed but you will never use that speed for anything. Games loading about 0.5sec faster is the improvement you will get out of it and its not noticeable if you aint directly clocking it.

Of all the upgrades in a PC build spending (at least) twice the amount on storage for 960pro compared to normal SSDs is perhaps the least value.

Whatever you wanna spend on your drive i recommend you go for a normal SSD and get twice the amount of storage instead of 10% extra speed. If you want that 10% extra speed then sure go for it but dont expect it to be anything but 10% extra speed.

To put that in a real world situation. Your Overwatch match will load in 3sec instead of 3.3sec with that "5 times faster drive".

Wow, I really don't know what to say at this point. I can only assume you are just trying to continue to state bizarre fiction to continue a circular debate to up your precious post count or something. All the statements you made above in bold are false, at least in almost all cases - real world or benchmark. I would not recommend an M.2 SSD for a budget build, but the speed gains in general system use AND gaming are impossible not to notice - MOST of the time. Plenty of reviews agree with me and I've used these drives all extensively myself - at home, or building PCs for people, or doing the same at work. And benchmarking and testing load times or file copies.

Sure, some games or apps are not built efficiently and will bottleneck easily before they ever saturate the PCIe x4 lanes an NMVe drive uses. But in every way, they are faster or (very rarely) equal at worst - by up to 5x and generally 3x faster than the SATA3 variety - except when doing tons of random small reads, then they are sometimes close enough not to be too noticeable - but that is simply poor optimization most of the time when a game or app does not benefit much or at all from significant storage speeds.

Yes, CPU and GPU are the most important components, BUT you can get a used Intel i7 CPU that is a couple generations old, overclock it, and get performance better than the newest 6700k's at default clocks. That right there could save someone enough to get an NVMe drive, even if its a size smaller than they prefer. They're probably not playing more than 4+ large size games at once, so they could even get a 256GB drive. Some motherboards have two M.2 slots anyway, you can always get another and RAID 0 them some day (as always, good backups are always needed, but especially for RAID).

And most games are not CPU bound (bottle-necked by the CPU), but if they are, single or per-core performance matters the most anyway in most cases (programming multi-threaded processes is VERY difficult), and pure clock speed is almost always best in those cases - so the older i7 is actually usually faster when both are overclocked to max stable clocks (6700k's overclock to 4.4GHz on average, and top of the line 4000 series i7s overclock to 4.66GHz on average). Some i7 generations go up to almost 5GHz easily on air).

GPU is almost always more important than SSD speed but only up to the GTX 1080 right now, not the TITAN X - then you're paying way too much more for little gains, around 10-20% (or less when comparing both overclocked).

My general point has been that NVMe support on the motherboard of a new build is nearly a must (2 slots are best if possible but might be too expensive still), and if one can afford it, their C: drive should be one. If not, try and save to get one some day (and hopefully the prices will come down). Soon there will be no reason to ever buy a SATA3 drive, it's a very old standard at this point.

The exception is people who don't care at all about general speed, only in-game speed with storage fast enough to not hold up streaming assets so there is no FPS loss. That's fine, if you feel that way just get a 7200RPM drive (and some open world games will suffer at times due to the bottleneck)... and never taste the sweet speed of the storage future.

rethla, this is my last post on the subject, I have nothing more to say, bud.

Everyone who is confused about the issue or interested in knowing more can just google the Samsung 960 Pro vs 850 EVO or Pro review comparison, and see what multiple sources say for themselves.

Doesn't seem like that article mentions EVGA released a BIOS update which adjusts fan speed settings to address the issue. Applying the thermal pad kit isn't really necessary. If you really want to go the hardware route, might as well just have them replace the entire card for you. They're offering cross-shipment, so you won't have to live without the card while it's in transit.