My first Pc build, And I need help choosing parts

Hi, I am new to this website and this is going to be my first computer build.

I don’t have any part to recycle, my current PC is too old and the PSU is making a weird noise and beside it’s an old piece of junk anyway. And my other PC is a laptop. I’m not sure about my max budget but I’m confident enough to say that’s it’s going to be 1000$ and more. I will build it in early September, anyway I made this thread to get answer to my question first.

I live in Canada in the province of Québec

All I need is the computer itself, I don't need any peripheral.

I would like to overclock but I’m not sure if I can do it right :/

Water cooling would be cool, but I’m not sure if it will fit in my budget

I do not need a OS

 

My situation :

I am studying in multimedia at the college, I’m basically making website, coding, editing videos, photos, 3D modeling and a whole bunch of other things. I am a big gamer too but, I don’t really care about graphic, but I’d like to play games at least medium setting at 50~60fps. There also that dolphin emulator (gamecube and wii) I’m looking forward to run properly. I’m also looking for an upgradable system that’s going to last a fair amount of time. As of now, I only have a 1050x1680 monitor, but I planned on buying a 1080p (do not include that in the price) monitor later and use both for work n’ stuff (not gaming on both). I mostly use the adobe line, Photoshop, Premiere Pro, after effect… etc. also some 3d rendering software like Blender and 3ds max.

It would be cool if you guys make a list of nice game to play on PC… I’m a retro gamer at heart but I want to “modernise” myself a bit for this generation

For the hard drive, I would like to have a 1tb drive, I also want a 128gb SSD, I don’t really need that much more, I have a laptop with 750gb drive to store other things.

 

I did some research, watch videos and I think I’m ready to build my PC, I just want your help for the part I’m going to use: I choose two configurations and I want your input on it, they are pretty similar except CPU and mobo.

 

AMD build: http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/p/1lax7

Price : $1023,94, though I don’t think Partpicker calculate Quebec’s taxe rate.

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Intel build: http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/p/1laNW

Price : $1108.20, + taxe

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Question I have:

Do I choose trustworthy brand?

Should I get 1866 mhz ram? I don’t really know how it’s useful/worth it?

What’s the Cas Latency and the Timing and how it’s going to improve my performance? 

Should I pick an NVidia card… maybe a gtx 660 or 760? I heard that cuda work well with adobe program but I also heard that they added support for openGL so… now I don’t know, what’s the best?

Intel or AMD: should I get an Fx-8350 or an i5-4670(k), or should I go with an older Ivy bridge… or should I spend a 100$ more and get an i7 (Haswell or Ivy bridge) and I’ve seen some xeon E3 that look good and affordable? There is so many choices…. I don’t know what to think :S ….

Should I wait for AMD’s next steamroller architecture? I mean I can wait, but I don’t really want to… I’m excited to get my new pc and play with it :P

How far can I overclock with this motherboard and CPU cooler?

 

I’m not a fanboy of any company, all I want is a system that going to give me the best performance for my money.  Thank in advance, Take care!

          

Sorry for the wall of text, I'm a bit streested by this, I fear that I'll do someting bad...

              -Iguy005

 

Mate honestly you couldnt go wrong with either of the 2 builds you made. I would personally go with the haswell build. You wont get record breaking overclocking from it but that cooler should net you a mild oc for sure. The 8350 may be something to look at if programs you are using look to have better support for more cores etc. 

Could if anything drop your psu down to one with a higher efficiency and lesser wattage. 600w'ish will be ok.

Ram speeds make bugger all difference. You would be hard pressed to see the improvement from 1600 to 1866. If you go from 1333 to 2133 yeah sure you start to see improvement but otherwise, not really. Same goes for timings, for the everyday user these days it doesnt make a scrap of noticable difference.

Fingers crossed amd get their act together and update their kernel to help with the whole blender OpenCL fiasco. Until such time though CUDA supported cards from nvidia are your best option. A gtx760 like you suggested would be a very nice choice. There was an Evga 760 card shown on the tek here.

Best of luck with whatever you choose.

 

FX8350 + GTX 660 would be great. I have both and game at max settings on almost all games on my 1680x1050 monitor.

welcome to the forums mate!

you've done a decent job with both builds, but I've gone and changed a few things, mainly because I see you want to overclock and what you're using your build for, so here they are with an explanation!

AMD

http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/p/1lvwt

I've changed the cooler, because this EVO that you chose does tend to block a RAM slot or 2 because of how low it is, so since you are interested in liquid cooling, I chose the CoolerMaster Seidon 240M, to better cope with temps for overclocking the FX-8350

Also changed the RAM to Corsair Dominator Platinum (2x8GB) 2133mhz CL9, they are specifically built for overclocking, also with AMD CPUs, you'll be downclocking the RAM, so with a bit of overclocking, you'll be able to keep the RAM at 1866mhz (AM3 CPU memory bus limit) and lower the Cas Latency to 8, which mainly is good for rendering... these DIMMs also have some nice heatspreaders to go with it :)

I've changed the GPU to an HIS Radeon HD 7950, for that little extra kick for your gaming and 3D modelling work.

Although I have an odd feeling there will be others with possibly a better or different solution for the AMD build, but nonetheless, I hope this is alright for you and good luck mate! :)

EDIT:

I love your case choice! If I didn't get my BitFenix Colossus, this would've been my next choice for sure! :)

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/1lvHJ

and SSD (soz forgot it)

i am a fan of samsung drives

They are nice.  Put one in my mates build.  120GB 840 Pro

Forget about any form of water cooling.  Get a Xigmatek Dark Knight Hawk.  That's probably the best price to performance heatsink that looks awesome.  H100i is way too expensive taking in consideration the noise, the price and the actual performance isn't any better than the Xigmatek as a whole.

I have an H100i and I prefer my Xigmatek Balder.  But I do like the way the H100i looks in my system but that is not enough alone.

That cooler master water cooler seems a bit cheap to be worth the time TBH.

7950 would be a better choice than a 660.  But if you can find a 670 at a good price that would be worth considering also.

You could also save a bit of cash by going for Kingston Hyper X Beast over say Dominator Platinums.  Which I have.  They look awesome and perform well but are expensive.

Try to save on the Heatsink and Ram and put the saving on the GPU or step the PSU up to a Corsair TX650/750, or get a nicer case.

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119260

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835233029&Tpk=xigmatek%20dark%20knight%20ii%20sd1283%20night%20hawk%20edition

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820104363

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139005

At least you have a decent time frame to target, gives you a bit of room to save a bit more too.

Got some good options in this thread.

nice

Hmmm, i dont know if you should pick nvidia or amd because that depends on what programs you use For editing and 3d rendering, also what games do you play, so you play crysis or hotline miami. Awant when do you want to uppgrade, how hot is it where youre working because I keep my room at 60 f so I do a good overclock no prob and maintain good temps, do you need to have computing in the go if so then I'd get a laptop. If you really need to a card for 3d work get a firepro or a quadro, a firepro w7000 is like 600 dollars and and basically a 7870 but its meant for 3d rendering and you can game in it.

Thanks all of you guys =D

Thanks for answering my question, I still have a more than a month to make my decision, I’ll come back when I have my finalised budget.

I should have said that but I forgot: around November, I planned on putting a good ~500$ for upgrading. So, I’ll probably buy another graphic card and go SLI/Crossfire, then maybe add more ram or something, that’s why I put 8gb instead of 16 but when looking back… I can take 16gb right now and go 32gb later.Also, a good thing I used partpicker, the gigabyte motherboard is like $119.99 instead of the $149.99 of Newegg :S …. Make a big difference there.

In my opinion if you are planning on dropping another 5 hundy in November, I think you would probably be better off going for a Corsair AX860 and an Nvidia GTX 780 straight off the bat, rather than dropping in a second GPU and look at getting a Quadro card as next years upgrade, so you can game on the 780 and render on the Quadro at the same time.