Seagate ST31000520AS Barracuda LP Hard Drive - 1TB, 5900rpm (games, other stuff)
NZXT M59-001BK M59 Gaming Mid Tower Case - ATX, mATX, Baby A
Microsoft Windows 7 Professional FQC-04649 Operating System Software - 64bit
EVGA 01G-P3-1563-AR GeForce GTX 560 Ti SuperClocked Video Card - 1GB, GDDR5
Intel Core i7-960 BX80601960 Processor
Corsair XMS3 CMX6GX3M3A1600C9 Tri Channel 6GB PC12800 DDR3 Memory - 1600MHz, 6144MB (3 x 2048) (x2, 12 gigs ram total)
Sony Optiarc AD-7260S-0B 24x DVDRW Drive
Ultra LSP750 750-Watt Power Supply
So the system builds all right, after using it heavily for a few months, I decided to upgrade to 12 gigs of memory, from the 6 I had originally. It all went downhill from there. After installing the memory I started getting lots of blue screens and hard freezes. Testing the memory with memtest showed bad memory. Replaced the memory, same thing kept happening. After contacting Corsair, they finally bumped me off to Intel support. Two motherboards and a new CPU later, still random intermittent freezes. Hard system lockups, can't figure out whats wrong. I can game for 10 hours straight on something like Bioshock Infinite, but 0-60 minutes of Hulu.com would hard freeze.
Fast forward to today. Income tax time and wife gave me the go ahead for a new system. Thank the gods of gaming. My brother wants to buy the old system off of me for about 500$ since all he does is game on it, which oddly works OK usually.
So my budget is $1500 max and I'd like build a new system and to fit a decent gaming monitor, mouse, and keyboard in. I'm a fan of Intel stuff and EVGA and I'm looking for help/advice.
Thanks in advance :)
Update to answer questions from the general guidelines (which I should have read first...)
budget $1500 max, USA currency (Prefer ~$1k range)
I like tiger direct, but I'm not that picky. I prefer big retailers, it makes me feel more secure in my purchase.
I can skip peripherals if it adds too much. Otherwise, I would like to fit in a new keyboard and gaming monitor.
PC will be used for (in order of most use) gaming, programming (side projects, some opengl, some web), internet.
I'm not big into overclocking, at least not at the start of new hardware. Near the end of its lifespan I would try overclocking to extend it a bit.
I'm OK with good air cooling, a little noise doesn't bother me. I use a huge AirMaster fan now in my system, it works great. (Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus 120mm fan CPU Cooler )
OS - I plan on picking up a new copy of Win 7 (or Win 8 if its now preferred, though I'm not a fan of it)
I play games in 1080p most of the time. I like vsync (or whatever new sync tech is in use) and 60fps when possible.
I play warframe a lot, a ton of RTS games (supereme commander, ect.) and far too many games on steam to mention without being ashamed...
This is a nice system i came up with http://pcpartpicker.com/p/39au8
It will be a great system for gaming, and other usage chases such as editing and streaming. I also included a nice IPS monitor and a very nice mechanical keyboard
total would be about 1450$ with the peripherals
IF your games are really CPU bound, the id say go with an i5-4670K or a Xeon 1230 v3 cpu and pair it with a nice Z87 mobo, since intels single core performance is quite a bit higer than AMD's but the price will be a bit higer too
If you have any question please feel free to ask
hope i helped :)
EDIT: no keyboard included http://pcpartpicker.com/p/39ast
@hoocee12 - That PC part picker is looking mighty nice, thanks for that link. I'm not a big fan of AMD, I know there good, I've just used Intel forever. That keyboard is a bit much too, I"ve been typing on a hand me down dell keyboard for a decade, I don't know if I could handle an awesome keyboard :)
@flockoftanks - thanks for the link. I hadn't even considered amazon. I was looking between a EVGA 760-770 card. I'll need to adjust when I work out my final build.
How do you guys feels about the difference between i5 and i7? I'm still old school where I'm willing to allocate the majority of my budget to cpu/ram/gfx card.
I'm not sure how much of a difference it'll make, and I'm willing to spend more. I suspect going forward a lot of new games will use as many cores as you have because of ps4 and xbox one.
Overcome your longterm Intel affiliation. If you game hard and a that is 90% of the use a good pure AMD system will see you right and keep you on your $1000 budget.
I am a generation out at the moment with an FX-6100 and a HD7870 and it can still more than hold its own. So a modern FX-8xxx/9xxx and Radeon 280/280(X) will see you right. Intell is still really nice but if you game on any sort if budget it is a better choice to go AMD. You will not notice a difference once it boots guaranteed.
if you want intel then i have 2 great builds for you here, but the amd option is also very powerful.
without HT: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/39gv7
with HT:http://pcpartpicker.com/p/39gxW
The xeon is a good way to go if you need the hyperthreading, since it performs simularly as an i7-4770 without iGPU (integrated graphics). The only benefit you will get from going with the 4770K is that the multiplier is unlocked, so you can overclock it easily
There is the same IPS panel included in both builds and they are both around 1370$ with the monitor included.
@Zibob - I'm trying, its not easy after so many years of using Intel :)
@hoocee12 - both of those are very close to what I've been tweaking: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/39gzM I'll probably go with a setup somewhere in this direction. Its what I"m used too and its not a huge performance/price difference. So why use IPS, a quick Google shows its good for viewing angles, is it really worth it? I choose a monitor with 2ms response, I keep reading that its king.
I can also drop the other HDD, I"ll be scavenging a 1TB HDD from the old system and the SSD, I'm only giving my bro 1 TB HDD. (He'll never make use of anything beyond that). I'll be using a new ssd though for the new os and probably steam OS.
Thanks again for all the help guys, its greatly appreciated. I've been away from hardware every since I started programming a few years back. (I know that statement makes so little sense, I mean building hardware :))
Many people say that you will not see a difference between 2ms and 5 ms response time, but the response time is not everything. The IPS panel gives you much better viewing angles, much better colour production, better details and better contrast.
with a simpler answer, the game looks much better on an IPS panel compared to the TN panel what you were talking about.
(note that your link doesn't work)
The thing with AMD is, that you are getting 8 true cores compared to intels virtual cores with hyperthreaded CPU's. It may not matter now but if you get an i5, and then decide that you want to do streaming etc. The FX 83XX CPU's will be much much faster, due to the extra cores.
I'm open to what other gamers are using so I'll do some research on the AMD cpu, I have about 2 weeks to come to a decision on what to get. Its hard to leave your safety zone :) I've used Intel since The original Pentium and star craft. As long as all of the programming tools I use work fine on it, I could care less (mostly visual studio and .net), that and windows/SteamOS run OK.
I'll still only use nvidia cards, the only 2 radeon cards I owned were unending problems getting their drivers to work properly. I know they're better now, but I've never had such issues with nvidia.
As for streaming, that probably won't happen, I have a 2 year old daughter and another coming in July. I basically don't get to have a TV. I even play my ps4 on my second monitor (it used to be for my desktop....). Besides games, I'm not sure what else I would do that would require the extra cores.
Quick Edit: I also like the note about the IPS monitor, I"ll be getting one with IPS, most likely the one you recommended.
You could save yourself 50 bucks by just going with Windows 8.1 OEM. If you don't like the new UI, just install startisback and it will work the same as win 7.
The Samsung 840 Pro is a great drive, but the performance difference that it brings isn't really noticeable in day to day usage. At that price, you could get double the capacity.
I'm still iffy on windows 8.1. I read mixed reviews on it. I tried 8.0 for a while and didn't like it very much, but I did read there were some nice under the hood improvements, but I also hear there are some rather bad things too (something about shadow copy being messed up). How do you feel about win 8.1 for 90% gaming, 5% programming and 5% other.
Also, I went win 7 pro for the higher memory limit (home is limited to 16 gigs), the remote desktop feature, (which I sometimes use), and being able to easily join a company network. My company uses a VPN at the moment, but there were talks about allowing win7 uses to join via domain.
For Windows 8.1, it works great for me, it is definitely faster than windows 7. I don't like the metro interface so I installed the startisback like Logan recommends:
I use it for my work (economic research), which involves lots of coding, working with large amounts of data, I think it is fine. I use a vpn too, but I think that will specific to your network.
For the shadow copy, apparently the functionality is still there, but you can't directly access it, there is a third-party app that unlocks the functionality though, I think it is called ShadowExplorer.