Hoping to get responses quickly because this is for an upcoming birthday present and I need to order components asap. Open to suggestions and tech savvy opinions on my specs and any insight of possible issues of components bottlenecking or useless upgrades. My son has wanted an Alienware gaming desktop and I just can’t see spending that kind of money on an OEM hyped up pc. It took a bit to convince him that I could build one just as good and he still is somewhat skeptical but I am giving it my best shot and hope to WOW him. He is a heavy Xbox gamer currently with favs being Skyrim, BF4 and really wants to do pc gaming of Skyrim and Rust and some video creating/editing. Any heads-up advice for first time builds would be appreciated as well.
Looks great! This is way better than Alienware. Maybe he would be interested in learning how to build a pc? Maybe you can go through it with him and he would enjoy it.
Looks very nice - you may get better feedback if you suggested budget etc.
Only thing I would consider changing at the moment is that air cooler. It will do the job, but the 4770K gets quite hot. I personally am a fan of Noctua (pun intended). This is a good one, pricier, but very good (lower noise and temperatures):
Yah I hope it blows Alienware owning friends out of the water. lol And I am hoping he will join in on the build, it would be a great learning experience for us both!!
Oh great I am up for any suggestions. I am pretty much on budget but willing to go up a bit for performance. I almost went with a water cooler but thought I would start without one and see how that goes. I will definitely check the Noctua out. Thanks!
YOU WIN DAD OF THE YEAR!!!! Yea looks fantastic! However i do agree with William on this one. going a little cheaper on the CPU and putting that money into getting a GTX 780 Is totally worth it. But either way its a killer build and would blow mine out of the water.
Okay maybe go to an i5-4670 and up the GPU to a 780? Probably just going with a 1920 x 1080 res monitor for now, haven't gotten that far yet. Budget is somewhat flexible.
I also like it for water cooling support, so if he wanted to try make a custom loop later on the support for it would be there and it has fantastic features at its price
Just looked at the NZXT 530 case that does look pretty cool. As for case recommendations are they based off of looks or ease of building, room, quality?
Phantoms are good cases to build in, they are usually roomy, have lots of room for cables, a fan hub in the back, a fan controller built in (I think), and they look good.
Yes, sounds good. You could also consider an FX 8320 or 8350 for the CPU, they'll perform similarly in gaming to the i5 and probably cost a little less.
Alright changing specs to the Phantom case and a modular psu, going down on the cpu but stepping up on the gpu!!! This is a very helpful forum!!! Thanks!!!
Okay thanks the prices are lower!!! I am gonna check some benchmark comparison sites and make a decision but you think putting more money into the graphics even without a high res monitor would be best?