I am helping a friend put together a PC that he is going to buy on Black Friday. This will be primarily for 1440p gaming and general use, and this rig will probably not be getting upgraded often (maybe in 3-5 years). Top end budget is $1700. I think I have most of it hammered out with the price per part I think we are going to spend, and some things may get adjusted on a per sale basis once the BF stuff starts up. Basically just looking for opinions and see if there is something I have missed. He needs a keyboard and mouse as well, and I just put in the two that I prefer as those are somewhat subjective to the user, if any other combo in the $120ish range look good let me know. Prefer Newegg or Amazon, although that may change. Considering changing the 450D to a Phanteks Enthoo Pro (probably sale dependent).
I am thinking the i5 is faster than the xeon in gaming because slightly better single threaded performance? And overclock possibility.
I have also never done a dual card setup, I know the raw FPS is higher with 2x970 vs 1x980 but I have heard dual cards suffers from micro stutter and frame latency issues so Im not sure how noticeable that is. I could swap the 970s for a 980 though and then get an i7
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/NwbQLk
Although I'm not sure the i7 would benefit him much. Maybe swap to the 980 and stay with the i5, and use the extra ~$200 on something else like bigger ssd http://pcpartpicker.com/p/HHFnNG
First thing i notice, the 4790k is $199.99 at my local micro-center right now. That's less than the price you have for the i5 so if you have access to a micro-center and it's not just the one near me I'd jump on that.
EDIT: looks like that was a clerk mis-labeling from checking the website. Guess I better stop waiting for black friday and try and hold them to their price tag :D
You could definitely go with less PSU if you wanted to. An 860 would handle monster overclocks on that CPU and GPU's and still have ~%30 left over. Meaning it could last 10+ years.
The 840 EV0 240 has waaaaay better read IOPS than the SSD you have listed. well worth the $20 difference. especially if you drop your PSU
I think there are better boards for the $$ but a lot of that is both personal brand preference (I have had some awful experiences with ASRock) and what combo of features is the killer app for you.
I also think there are better coolers for your price point but again... a lot of personal preference there.
The i5 is a waaay better value for the money than the xeon. Xeon has bigger cache but is a locked part, for more money. Don't really understand that choice.
SLI issues are often greatly exaggerated. With a few rare exceptions (that are usually just delays in SLI Driver support and fixed quickly) the worst case scenario is that you only get the performance of one card. And if you are experiencing the exception, you can always turn SLI off. So really, worst case is you have to change a setting(big deal i know) and then you only get the performance of one card. I run an SLI rig and in my experience %99.9 of games do fine.
So the 2x GTX970 SLI is a good value. It's about %35 better, call it %90 of the time for %20 more money. And that doesn't take into consideration that people are getting some insane overclocks on 970s that make them even more of a great value. This is the same dynamic that happened with the 600 series cards and then to a lesser degree with the 700s, also to an even lesser degree :P
Looks really good... although a few things I personally would change
1. As privateZim said, you can probably get a better Motherboard for the same price (asus Z97-p for instance). I know people that have had terrible problems with ASRock Motherboards. + you get that AI suite thing that can over-clock for you.
2. If you are going to be overclocking maybe get something a little better than the 212. I personally would go for a Noctua NH-U14S.
3. I know the case is comes very much down to personal preference but I can not praise the Define r4 enough. I have build't 2 pc's for my friends in it and it is the perfect case in my mind. Just a heads up if you have never considered it.
4. Not sure that you need a 1050 PSU. The 970 uses very little power compared to something like a 780Ti. Unless you are thinking about overclocking both of them. witch would make you quite right to chose that psu.
and lastly id consider going with a mechanical Keyboard. I just switched from membrane about 6 months ago and it is a whole new world! And if youare thinking about the price id check out some steelseries or something like the CM Storm quickfire 10 key-less
This is what I'd buy for his needs... it's cheaper and beastly... by the time he needs another 980 the price will be down... no need for the i7 for his purposes... 120GB SSD is plenty for core programs and boot... a 750 PSU gives you way more than enough PSU to add another 980 later... even with overclocking... MUCH better mobo with beefy VRMs and pretty much every feature you'd want and then some... much better CPU cooler... ram is ram, matches the mobo... included a backlit mechanical keyboard that matches the red theme and actual nice mouse (which is RGB backlit so you can turn it to red)... and I'd easily pay an extra $10 for EVGA cooling over Zotac just for the looks, but it cools better as well...
Basically everything BeardHat recommended I agree with and this is what it looks like... just cause you have a $1700 budget doesn't mean you have to spend every dime of it to get what you ultimately want... if you're looking for upgrades, a max keyboard nighthawk is REALLY, REALLY nice... I've used the DeathAdder and it's a great mouse, but I DO prefer my Mionix NAOS 8200... you could always watercool the CPU... more storage never hurt anybody but get 7200 RPM drives... you could also try out the Caviar Black Hybrid...
If its for gaming, why not go AMD? They recently dropped the price on the 8 series chips, and my FX-8350 performs just as well as an i7 for games in its current overlocked state.
at this point... I'd go Intel just for the H97 mobo features and throughput (not to mention the single-threading and Devil's Canyon i5's multi-thread to the tune of an 8350)... but some people never crack the surface of a mobo UEFI so THAT is what it is... however, on top of that, you have to include the 9 series chips taking the >B quality chips from the chip bin and buying a new processor that was released 2 years ago to date (most enthusiasts upgrade once every 3-5 years... putting it in line for a mobo/CPU upgrade, since the socket is dead, 1-3 years from now)... so all of that and he's got a $1700 budget, so why not use some of it... :P