I've been reading up a ton on custom PC building and I've been molding a PC Part Picker list for quite a while, but recently, I haven't found anything I want to change, so I want some opinions from people who actually have experience with this stuff. Hopefully I will have the money to build this before too long. I would greatly appreciate any and all feedback about it. A few notes, though: Yes, I know there isn't a CPU cooler. This is to keep the cost down at first. Yes, I also know that I could change the rest of the hardware so that I could fit a cooler into the budget, but I don't want to. I plan on purchasing either a 212 EVO or an H100i (or the equivalent at the time of purchase) at some point, depending on how urgent the need for a cooler becomes. Also, if / when the MSI GTX 970 LE is available, I'll probably switch to that (visit this post of mine about that if you feel like it > https://teksyndicate.com/forum/gpu/msi-gtx-970-gaming-4g-le/186890). Additionally, I plan on adding an HDD before too long. Thank you for taking the time to read / reply to this, and as I said, any feedback is appreciated. Have a good day!
I think it looks great. Personally I would look to see what AMD has to offer with the R280X and the upcoming R285X but aside from that it looks really good for around $1100. This is another option for around the same price that I've constructed: http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/PublicWishDetail.aspx?WishListNumber=31357008
Great stable build. If you want budget go ahead and look at the AMD counter parts though I think you should stick with Nvdia those cards are superior and well Nvdia in general is leading the game. As for cooler. You do not need to go over kill just get a single 120rad AIO cooling unit such as the H80I... It cools very well and even if you overclock to hell it will be a great performer.. It will save you some bucks if you want liquid(which I recommend having built many MANY CUSTOM PC's).. good luck and POST THAT RIG UP IN HEEEERRRRR
I think i came in at 1140.40 includes shipping with everything from newegg (the 970 is Out of stock everywhere i looked i put in a gtx780 classified for a placemark to get the price in there you may want to consider one also)
and i put in a high end mobo asrock fatal1ty z97 killer
Be careful with pcpicker because alot of times using multiple retailers cost triple in shipping i looked at it and it would be about 20 more dollars also the gpu is out of stock at b and h and the ram price changed to 91.99 so with all that added up it may make sense to just use one or two retailers
I can email you the wish list its not coming up in public maybe search for it later i saved it as Mister Berdill.
P.S. the 280x in crossfire x2 scores lower than one 970 you would save about $100 bucks though
gtx970
http://www.3dmark.com/fs/2898988
vs one 280x
http://www.3dmark.com/fs/2709633
i just tried to find the first listing of single cards not sure if these are the highest scores just wanted to get verified top averages
1. Unless you absolutely want to, don't bother with the watercooling if you don't have money to waste. If you want a good and quiet cooler, get a Noctua NH-D14 or NH-D15.
2. Use two 4GB RAM-sticks instead of one 8GB stick. You want to take advantage of the dual-channel memory controller.
3. 120Gb is not very much these days. So if the budget is tight, you might want to consider using a single Hybrid-Drive instead. Or upgrade to a 256Gb that isn't too expensive like the ADATA Premier Pro SP900 (See below in my parts lists).
4. Stick with the GTX 970 if you can afford it. It's the best card out there from a price/performance standpoint. Period
Hybrid drive:
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/brbTjX
SSD:
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/7BBGdC
@NeedlessBird:
It looks like the 285X will never show. At least not under that name. There was a tweet from AMD stating "We are only releasing the R9 285. ^RH" *quote*
I switched the GPU, the Case and the PSU. And it costs about $8 less than your original list.
GPU:
The GTX 970 at $350 really doesn't make sense. Either get the Sapphire R9 290 Tri-X: same performance for $55 less ($295) or (and that's what I put in the tweaked parts list) go for the Sapphire R9 290X Tri-X for 980 performance for only $20 more. I chose a Tri-X b/c they're very quiet and very well cooled.
Case:
For $20 more, I switch the H440 with an H630. That way you get all the space you could ever need to upgrade or expand your system in the future. It has 9 expansion slots instead of the H440's seven.
PSU:
I switched the PSU for a Corsair CX600M. It has 50 more watts. It's impeccably reliable (I've had the CX600 for about 2 years now, and it's performed flawlessly). It's also quiet and costs half as much for a $50 savings.
Thanks for the feedback. To address your suggestions (keep in mind this will be very much a work in progress build):
1. I was looking a bit into the NH-D15 before, and when the time comes, I will give it a serious consideration, I was merely giving some examples and should have worded it better.
2. The reason I have one 8GB stick is that I plan on adding another sometime, but now that I think about it, I could just get two 4GB sticks right off then get two more later...
3. I plan (get used to hearing that) on getting a 1TB drive fairly soon after the initial build (I wanted to get the SSD first for the OS mainly), but for me personally, I don't think it'll be that big of an issue at first.
4. My thoughts exactly.
It's always good to hear other peoples' opinions on things like this.
Not trying to be a jerk or anything, and I do really appreciate your input, but the fact is you are at very least partially wrong about the 970 and the 290 being the same performance wise. Without turning this into a huge argument, the 970 outperforms the 290 in many tests, and even beats the 290X in some. Anyway, I want the features such as GeForce Experience and all the new Maxwell things, along with much improved thermals and wattage that come with NVIDIA's new architecture.
Case:
I don't think it's worth the extra money for a case with extra space that I have no plans at all to utilize.
PSU:
As for the PSU, I wanted an RM series because they're quiet, 80+ Gold, and fully modular. Simple as that.
I will, however, keep all of what you suggested in mind moving forward. Thanks very much for the reply and have a good day :)
Thanks for your feedback. I was looking at AMD graphics before, but when the 900 series launched, I couldn't resist the pricing and performance, not to mention new architecture with better thermal performance and lower wattage. Additionally, I find myself drawn to NVIDIA's features on the software side. Anyway, thanks for the reply and all.
I love the 970's price-performance, and it's a big plus that the power consumption and heat output is much, much less than an R9 290X's
Corsair's RM series is better than their CX series for sure. They're not bad, but their build quality is quite expensive for the price. Many other power supplies can also be semi-passive, and have 100% japanese capacitor build quality. Here's one I'd recommend: http://pcpartpicker.com/part/xfx-power-supply-p1650bbefx
Feature is listed on Newegg's site:
Hybrid Fan Control allows the power supply to operate silently until it reaches 20% load or 77°F (25°C)
OEM'd by Seasonic, one of the best power supply designers and manufacturers for consumer-grade power supplies. 100% japanese capacitors, fully modular. Also 100 watts more, so 20% load is much easier to stay under. 550w is out of stock at newegg: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817207032
Not trying to start an argument either. But in my defense I am not an AMD fanboy.
As it happens, I think your build would be best with an Intel CPU (i5-4690K + Z97) (as opposed to an AMD CPU) and an AMD GPU (either a Tri-X 290 or Tri-X 290X) and, in fact, I would recommend against getting an AMD 280X or even a 285X.
I just wanted to make sure when you weighted the 290/290X GPU recommendation against other GPUs that you knew that my recommendation of it was not diminished by any pro-AMD bias. In the end it comes down to feature set. And I get it that you prefer Nvidia's feature set over AMD's. Personally, I prefer AMD's, especially FreeSync, TrueAudio, Mantle and wider Crossfire compatibility (which includes support for 3- and 4-way Crossfire on LGA115x boards with PLX chips). And I find FreeSync another major feature since adaptive refresh rates are the future and I expect FreeSync monitors with equivalent specs to be about $200 cheaper than G-Sync monitors. However, that's not a foregone conclusion.
And in the end the choice is yours. I shared my knowledge with you hoping you can make as informed a decision as possible.
Regarding the CPU cooler: if it came down to these two coolers: the NH-D14 and the NH-D15, I recommend the NH-D15 because a single model is compatible with both AMD and Intel mainstream CPUs/sockets as well as Intel's LGA-2011 socket should you ever get one in the future. Whereas the NH-D14 has different variants compatible with different sockets. Just a tiny tip to help improve your rig's futureproofness a bit.
If I would have given it a bit more time, I would have found some more credible sources, but those were just the first ones I saw for examples - and I was going to add AnandTech's article about the 970, but for some reason the site was being very unresponsive so I stopped worrying about it. However, here it is: http://www.anandtech.com/show/8568/the-geforce-gtx-970-review-feat-evga/4 . It very much does show them trading blows.
To continue, I've grown rather fond of that XFX PSU. After reading up a little and toughing through the typos on their website, I have become convinced that it would be a great choice, especially with that semi-passive cooling feature. And for $10 cheaper, it seems like a good bargain. I really appreciate your feedback a lot.
(p.s. I would have responded earlier, but as it turns out, sleep and school are things, which is annoying haha.)