Please help me with my virginity!*

Hardware Hub Build a PC
1

*My virginity of pc building..

First up! TL;DR at the bottom!

Hello there reader! Glad you clicked on my thread, I request your help and I hope you can offer me some. 

This post right here reflects the ideas I had for my first ever build. What I'm interested in are relatively "sweet-spot-price/performance" budget builds that aren't too difficult to build and can simply be described as "noob-friendly". I'm thinking ~$700. I've watched a variety of videos about budget builds including the recent $600 & $750 that were uploaded by tek syndicate.

Although I've been watching videos and looking at benchmarks I haven't been quite able to make a decision. This is because I don't know how to interpret these builds/benchmarks and how that relates to system performance/price comparison. I hope some of you can shed some light on these matters.

Now it's worth noting that I'm living in Europe but I can still buy Newegg products and have them ship over to me by my family still residing in the US. Although this has advantages like cheaper pricing in the US compared to EU, it also has disadvantages like making it more difficult to claim mail-in-rebates and RMA's. For this reason I prefer to avoid these if possible.

Okay, let's get to it shall we?

I was thinking about a combination of CPU/GPU/MOBO as follows;

FX-6300 + HD7870/HD7950 + MSI 970A G43

You can see this build here;

http://pcpartpicker.com/user/TunesForToons/saved/2A6j

The reasoning behind this build is to be able to play new games on 1080p with settings turned up to Ultra level or at least High without having to overclock anything and while not having to sell one of my kidneys to afford it. I am a dirt poor student after all..

The non-overclocking thing for me is not that important if it can be done as easily as "fiddling with the multipliers", but then I guess I'd have to buy an after market cooler with it and this is my first build so I'd rather stay away from scary things like overclocking for now.

A few questions I have are;

1) "Do I really need an HD7950 for my goal of 1080p+Ultra/High settings?"

2) "If I can drop down to HD7870 can I crossfire in the future? Is this viable seeing as I would have to spend more money now to buy a 990 mobo in stead of 970 mobo or is it better to invest a bit more money into the GPU now? I don't know how much extra performance the HD7950 will give me and if it's even relevant to spending more money on mobo+crossfire."

3) "If I don't have to invest more money into an HD7950, (the pricing without mail-in-rebates are still $200+), and can stick with an HD7870, would an FX-6300 still make sense? And what about the Mobo? The video that was uploaded by teksyndicate showed a build using a AMD Athlon II X4 760K. A build proposed by another member of this forum looked almost like it and is linked down below."

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/1P5jg

In conclusion, the most important thing that I'm asking here is for a little help as to what makes sense to buy and what doesn't. There are so many videos and suggestions out there that all make sense to me and in the end I can be persuaded into buying a $3k PC if the salesman makes enough valid arguements ^_^.    <-- I don't want that btw.. >.>   I'd prefer something in between of the $600 and the $750 build from Tek Syndicate. :) 

The 2 builds from Tek Syndicate I'm talking about;

$600 -  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvpMv52JTqQ

$750 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srmmt0-vrD8

Thank you for any support, I appreciate it.

 TL:DR;

The 2 pcpartpicker links I gave are links to 2 builds I and another forum member came up with. There are also 2 youtube builds that lead to builds uploaded by Tek Syndicate. I'd like to build my own pc for about ~$500-$700 that can play games at 1080p on ultra or high settings but I have no idea what makes sense to buy and what not. Is there a golden formula right now? I prefer to stay away from overclocking because it's a first build and I'm a newbie and I prefer to stay away from RMA's/mail-in-rebates because I'll be having my family sending over parts from the US since I'm currently staying in EU.

 

2

Go with your first build list. Seems rather good. UK.. .then head to somewhere like http://www.aria.co.uk/ and buy local if you want to save the hassle of having it shipped from the states.

3

Totally came here thinking I was gonna get a freebie

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You're overspending quite a bit on your partpicker. I'd get this instead: http://pcpartpicker.com/user/Sheepyy_/saved/2sjf (I made that for a friend of mine so excuse the weird name if you see it haha)

1) Yeah, pretty much. 7870 is a medium-high card, with the 7950 being the sweet spot for High-Ultra.

2) I wouldn't bother. 2GB Vram's already going out for 1080p at ultra so SLI 7870s would really bottleneck you in the future.

3) Although athlon x4 750/760Ks are good, they're really underpowered for Ultra settings gaming.

 

So yeah, my build features an FX 6300 a HD 7950 Boost (has a few extra FPS than the regular 7950), but I had to drop the SSD, sorry. SSDs dont make that much a difference anyway. Oh, it also has a really nice motherboard. If you wanna crosfire the 7950 in the future, get the M5A99FX PRO R2.0 instead, as it has crossfire support whilst the evo doesn't.

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Thanks for the link, I'll keep that in mind if I need something locally. :)

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"If you're good at something, never do it for free".

;)

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1) "Do I really need an HD7950 for my goal of 1080p+Ultra/High settings?"

Nah, you can get away with a 7870 Ghz edition.

The Following Cards will play BF4 at Ultra 1080p at above 30FPS:

GTX 660 - 39 fps  (May get slow down)

7870 - 41 (No slow down that I notice)

7950 Boost - 46

GTX 670 - 52

7970 - 53

gtx 770- 60

GTX Titan - 75

7990 - 80.5

GTX 690 - 92

2) "If I can drop down to HD7870 can I crossfire in the future? Is this viable seeing as I would have to spend more money now to buy a 990 mobo in stead of 970 mobo or is it better to invest a bit more money into the GPU now? I don't know how much extra performance the HD7950 will give me and if it's even relevant to spending more money on mobo+crossfire."

Yes, you can crossfire it in the future.  I'm currently doing so now as some cards are around the 158.00 mark.  Well, don't forget that adding crossfire to your system is also a load on your power supply and heat output.  If you already think you have those two things covered then you could go with Crossfire.  If you want ease of use I'd say grab the 7950 and wait for the prices to drop on those since you don't already have a 7870.  Since I had a 7870 I figured I sure grab another one and Crossfire. Granted Case and PSU are up to par for that in my circumstances.

 

3) "If I don't have to invest more money into an HD7950, (the pricing without mail-in-rebates are still $200+), and can stick with an HD7870, would an FX-6300 still make sense? And what about the Mobo? The video that was uploaded by teksyndicate showed a build using a AMD Athlon II X4 760K. A build proposed by another member of this forum looked almost like it and is linked down below."

An FX-6300 and 7870 are a good combination.  They will give you Ultra Settings and above 30 frame rates for most games. As for the board pick what is compatible with what you want and expandable for future use.  I'm currently using a MSI 990FXA-GD65V2 and I love it.  I still use my old Phenom 1100t on it with my 7870 and it works great.  If I want to upgrade to an 8350 at any point in time I can.


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That build looks sweet.

Thanks a lot for the feedback! 

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haha no worries. You might wanna look at doctorsub1's comment as to see some benchmarks or something. The 7950 Boost seems to provide very little performance increase in BF4, so if you primarily play that then drop down to something such as the 7870. If you do this, the game is in beta, so fps might change.

Some year old benchmark comparisons between the 7950 Boost and the 7870 (please keep in mind that youll get approx. 5-10fps+ more nowadays because of much better drivers, the only bench comparison I could find is a bit outdated :L so take it with a grain of salt)

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/857?vs=856

In my opinion, the upgrade to the 7950 Boost is well worth it, as it's the card that gets most game to the 60+fps zone, which is really the sweet spot. And, with games such as Crysis 3, Very High with FXAA is playable (30fps+) on the 7950 boost, with the 7870 having to drop down to high with fxaa or Very High without AA at all to get a non-stable 30. Just my two cents.

 

 

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How much wattage am I looking at when crossfiring 7870 with fx-6300 on a board like the msi 990fxa?

Is 600 watts enough?

If so, I wouldn't have to get another power supply.

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http://www.extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp

I have a 1000watt so I'm going to guess 750?

12

Actually 700Watt should be more than enough.

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Yes Sir, had I not already had a 7870 I would have gone up to at least a 7950.  Alas, tis be the autumn of my discontent until my other 7870 gets here... Teehee.

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Since the 7950 is now almost equal in price as the 7870 I think I'll buy that one.

I also noticed the fx-6300 came in a combo with the AsusM5A99FX Pro R2 mobo and was the same price as the EVO version of that mobo. Through some internet magic I learned the Pro was better for crossfiring.

The reason for going with that mobo is to be able to crossfire in the future with dual 7950's. If I want to do that I'll need a different PSU so I chose the 700W coolmax.

There might be some problems with bottlenecking the dual 7950's though, but by the time I'll need to start worrying about that I'm sure I've looked more into overclocking and I'll be able to do that with the fx-6300.

All that brings me to around ~$800. (For some reason partpicker list stopped showing discounts :/ ) 

http://pcpartpicker.com/user/TunesForToons/saved/2Axy

What do you think about that?

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Looks good Tunes...dood.

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After a call with my family I decided to go visit them soon which will give me the opportunity to bring back some hardware from the states. No shipping costs or anything this way.

Thanks for the feedback! 

Cheers ;)