Hi guys, was wondering if someone could review this PC build and tell me if I've chosen the parts correctly? It is of course primarily a gaming PC which will obviously be used for all the other day-to-day purposes.
The budget is quite strictly £500 and it has already been increased from what it was previously, so please don't suggest a CPU cooler for £15 unless you have modified the parts list to fit it in the budget.
Would prefer if all components were from Amazon (due to Amazon prime)
Yeah that looks pretty good, not far off from what I have. I would recommend going a 1 or 2 tb hard drive as si as possible further down the line. But that should work well for you I think.
The 1060 3GB is a neutered 1060. basically a 1055. Go with the 480, it'll do great in DX11 and pay huge dividends in DX12, far better than even the "normal" 1060 and it costs less
EDIT: and I'm saying this being partial to Nvidia. I have a 1070 in my system. but I still recognize how dumb the 1060 3GB is.. and how real hardware async compute is..
It isn't that much better than a GTX 1060, in some cases, it loses to the 1060 even in DX12 (not counting Rise of Tomb Raider cause that isn't a properly optimized game).
Well, Idk, it's a good choice if you can get it much cheaper. I thought about getting an RX 470, but I think they need to drop it to $170, it costs the same amount for some dumb reason.
Thanks for all the responses. Having used non-modular power supplies I know how much of a pain it can be to sort cable management, especially since it's for my girlfriend who is a first time builder.
For the GPU, I want to stick to the RX 480 4 GB instead of the GTX 1060 3 GB simply because it doesn't look like games are getting VRAM efficient (just take a look at GTA V and Mirror's Edge Catalyst, both of which my gf would want to play)
Although I'm not quite sure about the "future proof" argument when it comes to Vulkun and DX12, I'd like to let there be a probability of this being more future proof than the GTX 1060, so I am definitely going with the RX 480 unless she decides to spend more and get the 6 GB variant of the GTX 1060.
I did convince her to go for the 256 GB SSD since she didn't like the idea of buying another slow mechanical hard drive anyway. She doesn't really use too much storage (I'd say max 20 GB on her photos, videos, music and other downloads), and therefore fitting in a few games on the 256 GB SSD should be fine.
Also changed the case to fit the 256 GB SSD into the budget, as well as got an 80+ gold psu.
that's a solid build! just make sure you're getting a good warranty on the PSU. at least a few years.
good on ya for building with your girlfriend. I'd have to light my girlfriend's laptop on fire AND pay for the whole damn build before she's let me build for her. she wouldn't know what to do with the damn thing :P
She has a Steam and plays Riders of Icarus with me (which I highly recommend - new free to play game), so it wasn't too hard to persuade her.
Also I may change the PSU or case, although I think that nothing beats this case for the money. The cable management, PSU cable hiding "block", side panel window, plenty of space to work with as well as a good design all for £25.
Despite the fact that it's not really a well known brand I think it's worth it. I don't mind saving a few £££ because we do need to get her a mouse (probably steelseries rival 100) and keyboard (logitech k120, at least till she decides to upgrade to a mechanical one)
As a CSGO gamer (2000+ hours) I can definitely recommend the rival so that's all settled :)
Thank you everyone.
EDIT: Also everyone who is telling me to get the GTX 1060, only the 6 GB variant makes sense - she will probably want to play GTA V and Mirror's Edge Catalyst. Even the absolute cheapest GTX 1060 6 GB is £33 more, and realistically speaking it's a minimum of £40 extra - nearly 10 percent of the budget itself, so that speaks for itself.
I've gotten my girl to play fallout 4 a few times, and even dark souls 3, which she responded to.. correctly (got very mad but when I tried to take the controller she told me to fuck off) and she likes it a lot in the moment but always seems to forget about how much she liked it after the fact
"she likes it a lot in the moment but always seems to forget about how much she liked it after the fact"
IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN.
Jk, totally talking about playing Pokemon Yellow.
Speaking of which, my girlfriend will watch the movies and the "anime" if you like (english dub so not sure if it counts) but she always gives up when playing the games T_T advice? Can't get her past 30 minutes of it. Think it's the graphics?
Before you say she doesn't like Pokemon she's actually the one who suggests it most of the time.
Okay, I can say yes, the visuals matter, because my girlfriend is an art major in uni. lemme explain. So, she left the vault in Fallout 4, and there's this little stream outside vault 111, and she just sat there for like 2 minutes just looking at how the water moved, and then at the lighting coming through the trees, because for her, this was totally new. So I think the big thing with people new to games is that you need to show them something they haven't seen before. So for my girlfriend, it was how graphics can look like more than Galaga or that shitty House of the Dead arcade cabinet at the mall or something. For other people new to games, it might be how immersive a game's story can be, because most people aren't used to a narrative that they can directly control.