First off, thank you for reading this! I appreciate you taking the time.
Secondly, in general I'm used to dealing with garbage for computers. I've never had a real powerhouse of a machine. I don't need top of the line specs on anything, I haven't been spoiled. Good is good enough.
-Background
I'll be entering college in the fall and I'm looking to build a desktop for CAD, spreadsheets and other scientific programs, and hopefully some gaming as well. My budget is ~$1000 right now (though the less I can spend the better) and I do live in the United States if that makes a difference to anyone.
I already have a monitor (20 inches and I'm pretty sure it's 720p), keyboard, and mouse(I'm not concerned about upgrading those right now). I also have access to fairly new wifi card, a GTX 560 graphics card, and I could potentially buy a 270 off a friend as well.
-What I'm Looking for
Capable of running CAD software on relatively small assemblies, with room to upgrade in case I need more horsepower there. I'll also be running Excel and other scientific programs. The complexity I reach with those programs always seems to step up a little with every project, but if it runs on my laptop it should be fine on anything desktop grade, right?
Quiet and Cool! I'm not looking for a furnace, I don't want it to sound like a helicopter. If I need to render a drawing at 3 am while I sleep I want to be able to actually SLEEP while that happens ya know? But that's a bit of an edge case. What I really need is a case that's not built like a vacuum and fan upgrades. Maybe an overkill power supply?
A new monitor! I want a nice 1080p monitor to top this sucker off. The plan here is to use that as my primary with my current primary off to the side in portrait for documents. What would you reccomend?
RAM? how much do I need, should I leave extra slots open for future expansion?
SSD's? I heard they were wicked fast! What would it look like to set one up for my OS and core programs?
Gaming. I want to be able to run games at 1080p with a high frame rate at nice looking settings. I'm especially interested in the Dark Souls series. I won't be using this for gaming 24/7 though, so I'm willing to take a cut in performance to save money here.
Room to upgrade. If I find that I need more storage, more ram, or a better graphics card I'd like some wiggle room to upgrade. Heck, I'd even look at building a system with a terrible GPU to start then upgrade later. I need this thing to last till I have a job sometime in 2020. Some upgrade space would be good.
You Made It! Bravo! Thanks for making it through that mess. So I kinda know what I want I'm just way out of touch with the current market. I need help to start off on the right foot here. Any other suggestions or questions or comments would be greatly appreciated. I'm honestly just lost at this point.
Here is a build that should the monitor is a bit entry level but the price is pretty hard to beat. http://pcpartpicker.com/p/dhRyD3 If its still not quiet enuf you could add an aftermarket cpu cooler like a Hyper 212 evo for like $30 and that should help but shouldn't be necessary for a non over clockiable cpu.
but my god man, upgrade that display, how can one live with such limited vertical pixelage? 1440p would be even sweeter, but eh, would cut into the budget too much though you could go for a korean display which you might be able to find at around $200.
You could also forgo the display I guess and go for a 390, but your 390 would sit idle running a 720p display. You could probably just use intel's iGPU instead of a GPU if you're going to run that 720p display as your only display.
Includes a silence optimized case.
Also you could go for a workstation card, but then you really couldn't do much gaming unless you got 2 GPUs and did a GPU passthrough or just switched them with a reboot
Here is my 2 cents. I tried to economize but it still came to over $900. As you will be in school I went with a small mITX case and motherboard. I also picked a monitor with speakers so you won't have to worry about that in your dorm.
It got a bit buried in that post but I fully plan to buy a better display, I'm just going to keep the crap one as a secondary for awhile. Those Korean monitors are amazing though! I don't think I can justify one until I have a paycheck coming in.
Thanks for watching out for the sizing. I'm honestly not that concerned though I'm pretty savvy with cramming stuff into small spaces.
What's the thinking of picking up a devil's canyon i5 instead of a newer generation or and i7? I figured this would be a fairly cpu heavy use build. Would an i7 be overkill?
@Streetguru What are your thoughts on using something like a Xeon 1231 v3? I know it's a little bit older and the core clock is a bit lower than an i7, but it would still perform well, while giving some extra breathing room. That way you could add an SSD, more RAM, and an aftermarket CPU cooler, possibly.
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/mcc723 Current looks of it. I came across the H440 last night and I just love the design of that case so I decided to upgrade to that. I won't be pulling the trigger on a build for a few months, but does this seem good?
Don't believe the hype. Just trying to save you some money. Z170 CPU's are way overpriced compared to Z97 CPU's. There really is not enough of a performance benefit IMO to justify the huge premium Intel is charging for their latest and greatest.
I am using an i5 to do PTC Creo with no issues. The only time I miss not having an i7's additional cores is when I am ray tracing a 3D image. The i5 works fine, but it takes a little longer. "C'mon, C'mon. It's been 30 seconds already. For the love of God, how much longer do I have to wait?" Rendering maxes out my CPU temps more than any game or artificial benchmark. Plus, I figured you can start with an inexpensive i5 and upgrade to a super-duty i7 later if you find you need more cores. 99% of the time my $200 4690K is ideal. It didn't make sense for me to spend $500 to get 4 more cores that I only need 1% of the time.
I should have said the i7 I wanted for my motherboard was $500 when I built my system in 2014. I just checked and it's $300 now. My bad.
What I am trying to say is an i5 will get the job done and save a few bucks. Will an i7 with a FirePro work better? Of course! But a student can not offset the additional costs incurred with billable hours. Save the i7 until you can get your clients to pay for it.