BitFenix Build for Gaming and Audio Editting/Composition

Hello!

I am from the US and have never built a computer before. After researching for about two months, I have come up with a build that should fit my purposes and keep me under budget. I am looking to create a machine that 1) is portable with handles 2) Has the capability of gaming at 1080p with at least 30fps (though more is better) on a single monitor 3) has the capability of upgrading to 32GB of memory or more (sound libraries like East West can become very memory intense as you add in more and more midi sounds) 4) after buying a blu-ray drive and OS will come in at under $800.

Here is my PC Part Picker list http://pcpartpicker.com/p/3mdBg

1. Will everything work with my other components?

2. Is this the best option for my budget?

Thanks!

SirBaggiepants

First of all, EVERY single amd FX series mATX board just plain sucks. They have years old chipset, poor power delivery, and poor features. If you go AMD, you will have to do a midtower build at least, or go with a Athlon/A series CPU. If you want to go smaller than that, intel is the only higer end option.

I do not encourage you to fo piracy, but there are ways of getting windows for cheaper...

If you could leave the windows out of the price tag, you could get a much more powerful build, and it would be easily portable. Here would be my suggestion for around 800$ including a blu-ray drive

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/3mo1x

You would get much much better performance with this build. This would have faster load times on frequently used programs, you could play modern games with high/ultra settings with ease and with framerates about 45+, with even minimums being well over 30 fps. This would also be much more silent, since the fractal case has sound dampening materials in the panels, but it doesn't come with handles, so it is up to you what case you want :)

This is what you could get if you could use some other methods to get windows, but if you have to buy it, then please do no buy an AMD FX series CPU for mATX build...

Hope i helped :)

Here's my suggestion, trying to keep Windows inside the build, thought it's a bit over your price point:

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/3mpeC

I changed you to a single stick of 8gb ram so you can add as you go without needing to completely replace your existing RAM--all the way up to 32GB.

Switched you to Intel for the same reasons as hoocee12.

Okay, I made a few changes and experimented with an intel setup. Here it is http://pcpartpicker.com/p/3mt4Q

I have a few questions still. 1) Should I get a similarly priced Geforce card instead of Radeon and why? 2) Both of you switched my PSU to a non-modular one - was this just to save money or was there another reason? 3) What are the advantages to going with a regular windows package vs OEM?

Thanks for your responses! They have been most helpful.

If you can find it, the R7 265 performs better than both the 750ti and R9 260X,  It's not a lot more, either, and is a good price-performance ration AT AMD's MSRP.  Otherwise, changing brands doesn't really matter that much.

Save money on the PSU.  Anything over 550w, and I would consider modularity.  Cables can be managed in this wattage range.

3. I think with OEM, you only get whatever -bit version.  With the regular one, you get both 32-bit and 64-bit.  No modern computer uses 32-bit windows, though.

The non modular psu was just to save money. OEM version of windows is for PC builders like you, for my knowledge, i don't know what is the difference between those two, but the OEM version will be just fine.

For your build, i wouldn't ecommend it, since you went with a last gen intel processor, and even tho while they do perform great, they cost more, than what the new haswell CPUs cost

It seems like you want to buy the copy of windows so here is a build i came up with. This would still be able to play games with high settings and with great FPS.

The thing is, most of the modern games utilize more the GPU than the CPU, so i would suggest using more money on the GPU, but still getting a quite decent CPU, wich the Athlon II X4 760K is.

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/3mvXc

Thanks for the info - and thanks for that part list hocee, that looks pretty good for my purposes.

One question though (I forgot to ask this in my last post) Is there any reason to get two sticks of 4GB memory to add up to 8 rather than a single 8GB stick?

Get 2 sticks so you can get the benefits from dual channel memory, wich in theory doubles the bandwith of your ram :)

Since he intends to upgrade down the road, I'd advise against it. If he's got two sticks of 2x4, he'll have to pull them and replace them both in order to get up to the full 32gb, which amounts to throwing money away in my opinion, even if you can resell/reuse them. Better to have the one stick in the short run, and upgrade when possible.

i don't see any reason why he would need 32 GB of ram. Even 4 GB is enough for gaming today. With that system, he would NEVER be able to utilize 32 GB of ram, and there is actually a performance gain with dualchannel memory, so if he will not buy a second stick in like 2 weeks, there is no reason why he should not buy 2x4GB ram

"Audio Editting/Composition"

"sound libraries like East West can become very memory intense as you add in more and more midi sounds"

The machine isn't going to be used exclusively for gaming. Yeah, he may not need to jump all the way up to 32GB, but he said he wants that option open.

Yeah, there's a performance gain with dual channel memory, but if he's going to be munching up RAM with his editing/composition anyway, going a month or so without dual channel memory to get the machine together will prove advantageous in the long run.

The thing is, that the athlon CPU is not strong enough for him to utilize all of the ram anyways... I do edit by myslef with a laptop, and i have never seen my ram usage over 5 GB and my CPU is an A10.

And when i was using that 5 GB i had firefox with over 10 tabs open and i was rendering

If he really wants to do hardcore editing and stuff, he should have bigger budget...

This is only my opinion, but if he REALLY needs 32 GB of ram, then go with the 8 GB stick, but istill think it would be just a waste of money with this kind of system...

I think our earlier suggestions with the i5 earlier are more fitted to his needs. If he took my list and swapped its processor with the lower-spec i5 you had listed in your list, it would almost exactly match his budget.

Basically, this: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/3mBSM

This is what i came up with: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/3mC3Q Possibility of 32 GB of ram. Still decent gaming. Hybrid HDD. OS included, but go a bit over budget :/

[you don't need 32 gigs of RAM, especially in a system like this]

If 16 gigs ever becomes too little, the rest of your system will be terribly outdated.