Hi everyone, how are you all doing?
...I know, I know, I can feel you guys furrowing you brows and becoming slightly annoyed but I like your opinions.
Any who, I just found out that I will be receiving some help (in the form of money) from my parents as a graduation present to replace my old dinosaur of a laptop! My laptop sounds like a lawnmower with it's defective fan. >.< So, I am going to be putting this computer a lot sooner than I previously thought.
This build has gone through some evolutions and I would like to know what you guys think about it! To note, this is meant to be a budget build. (It is supposed to be about $600-ish USD and you should subtract $40 from the CPU and Mobo since I'm going to Microcenter for that combo to give you a good estimate of what it costs)
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/3izib
So, what do you think about it? Good build for the price? Comments and or thoughts? Constructive criticism is welcome!
Sincerely,
The New Guy
The R7 265 is supposedly faster than the 750 Ti and is roughly the same price.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121868
Other than that it looks fine to me.
Benchmarks do give reasonable evidence that the R7 265 has better performance over the 750Ti. Personally, I prefer the 750Ti over the 265 for a few reasons: 1) It is relatively smaller and doesn't need a 6-pin connector. 2) The features that Nvidia has with their products are more compelling and Mantle, while impressive as it is with processors like the one in my build, isn't used in very many games and thus makes the R7 265 less compelling in that respect. 3) The price/performance ratio absolutely baffles and intrigues myself a great deal. Something that only uses 60w and is able to play many games on the highest settings at roughly 40-50fps @1080p...that alone blows me away!
Yeah, the 750 Ti has amazing performance per watt. If I had a use for an HTPC I'd probably be using one. Anyways, the way I see it:
R7 265
Pros
Neutral
- Mantle
- Possibility of 'coin mining messing with pricing
Cons
750 Ti
Pros
- Extremely low power
- Cheap
Neutral
- nVidia cards aren't supported in Linux that great
Cons
It just boils down to if you want performance-per-watt or performance-per-dollar. Or even go used if you want even better bang-for-your-buck.
I am happy with my decision of choosing the 750 Ti. I am not a hardcore gamer like I used to be when I played on console (CoD:BO2 competitive play was my thing for a while). I don't like to take in only performance v. performance and while the performance/dollar of the 265 is great, the efficiency of the 750 Ti will save me money.
That is just the way I see it.
Still hoping for feedback/constructive criticism!
Don't get me wrong, I was just putting out the R7 265 as an alternative. If you want a 750 Ti go for it, either one would probably work great.
I don't see anything wrong with that build. The only things that would make it better would be based on brand preference. Like I normally suggest G.Skill RAM and Western Digital hard drives, but that's just because that's what I've always used and I like them.
Haha, sorry about that. I have a tendency of being stubborn and it doesn't help when on the interwebs! Honestly, I would get the G. Skill and the WD 1TB Blue but they aren't as cheap. :/
So what do you think would be a good upgrade path with this build? Go for a stronger GPU later on, add more fans, etc.?
Hmm, if it were me I'd upgrade the fans first since it appears that the Source 210 only comes with one fan preinstalled. In my opinion the best bang for the buck case fans are the Cougar Turbine fans since they are $30 for four 120mm fans, and they work pretty darn well.
After that would be either an SSD or a graphics card depending on what the computer is used for.
If it's primarily productivity I would suggest an SSD before a graphics card because SSDs are fast, I can boot up completely into Windows in probably no more than 10 seconds with my Samsung 830 in my rig. Within the next few seconds I can get pretty much any program up and running on my computer. I remember the first time I got the SSD installed and Windows put on it I ended up turning around to throw something in the trash. By the time I turned back to the screen it was already at the login screen waiting for my password.
If it's for gaming I would suggest a graphics card. The 750 Ti is nice, but I feel like it might be underpowered within a year or two for the latest games at that point in time. And any mid or low tier card would probably be murdered if real-time ray tracing starts being implemented by developers. I wouldn't be surprised if the HD 6950 I have up for sale is more or less obsolete within a few years as well if that happened. The 750 Ti would probably still work well for lighter games though.
What I have on my list is a Source 210 Elite. I believe that the Elite version comes with 2 fans but more fans would help out quite a bit.
This is going to be my main rig for college but I am going to game a bit before then. I will also have a Chromebook too, so I suppose that a graphics card would be the first upgrade.
Oh, I must have been looking at the regular Source 210 then. Either way, more fans would probably help. Or even moving the top fan to the front of the case would probably help air flow a little. Those NZXT fans are half decent though, so I wouldn't bother replacing them if you don't need to. I actually have one sitting on my desk right now that I need to find a use for.
Which reminds me, I need to find uses for all of the fans I have laying around my desk...
College gaming was hilarious for me, a bunch of people were playing Skyrim once so I decided to boot it up on my MSI X460DX laptop with it's GT 630m graphics card. My laptop could play Skyrim that looked better than the X360s and PS3s people were using.