I'm looking to buy a PC that has a SSD, decent upgradability and will have acceptable performance for daily computing and light gaming. I live in Canada, so my dollar is worth like .75USD roughly but sometimes we get comparable prices on deals.
In the future I plan to upgrade and sell off the lesser parts for hopefully not too much of a loss. I have worked with OEM computers and installed RAM and HDDs but have never built a PC, so advice would be appreciated :D
I spec'd one out on pcpartpicker.com. I just basically picked stuff I thought would be decent, but I don't know if I'm "bottle-necking" anything lol.
Oh yeah, I plan on using Linux. I have installed it in the past and like the idea of supporting the open source community. Anyways, thanks for looking! : http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/list/H6RVBP
I have a few suggestions for your build. 1) Due to the budget being small and the Canada dollar being weak I might suggestion forgoing the graphics card at the start and getting a stronger cpu so you don't have to change it out later then when you have more cash go for a more powerful graphics card.
2) If you are going with Linux I would highly suggest going with an Nvidia gpu, at this time amd is making some phenomenal strides in there gpu support but the amd gpu pro drivers which are the ones you are going to want to use are only available in kernel 4.5 and above. This means that you will need to be using bleeding edge software Like an Arch based distro or Ubuntu 16.10 or the newest version of Fedora and if you are new to Linux this is a pretty tuff thing to do. These are just some suggestions.
I was wondering if it was worth it to go Skylake, or buy some 4000 or 3000 i5s used? Or should I wait to build for when AMD comes out. I don't absolutely need to upgrade right now. I could wait.
If you can get a used Haswell or Devil's Canyon chip then go for it. Ivy Bridge might be harder to come by. I'm using a i5-4590 on a primarily gaming machine. But I was extremely lucky to get a new one with warranty and everything for 160 euros when it was only four months old. So check your options. You might even be able to find a used Skylake for a really good price.
Then wait... at least until we hit the holiday season with all the deals you should be able to throw together something fairly decent (and you may have more cash to throw at a system by then).
One thing I can say is get literally any other case... the core 1100 is really shitty @psycho_666 can elaborate further than I could.
makes sense...
Yeah I get where you're coming from. Nvidia is usually better for linux for drivers, but, OP has said they've used linux in the past so going with a new software may not be too much of a challenge.
Have I been summoned to step on Fractal Design's face? http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/product/hJM323/bitfenix-case-bfxnov100kkxskrp Literally everything is better. It's larger,so it can carry an upgrade, it have bottom mounted power supply, that should be standard these days, no matter the price, it have best of all, cable management. All things, that the Fractal case don't have. In that price range, if you can find Zalman Z3 or Z3 Plus - you are golden. Plus have a window and a GPU support bracket, otherwise they are the same. If not, the Bitfenix case is better than the Fractal...
True I just wasn’t sure how much experience he had in Linux if he has ever upgraded a kernel before or dealt with bleeding edge os like Arch so it was just a suggestion. Its not like the community wouldn’t be willing to help if he ran into issues as long as he was willing to listen.
Yeah I've worked with several distros on my laptop, but that was still good to know. For a few years I've heard bad things with AMD drivers as well.
The Zen CPUs are intriguing to me because AMD tends to make CPU for more affordable prices and they may bring the market down.
Yeah I could probably spend more on my PC, but I like the idea of getting good performance for cheap. I don't need to game at Ultra high detail or anything.
My last gaming rig was a 7850k. It was great and was under 200 with an old case psu and hdd. If your gonna go intel then you want skylake since the real boost was in the iGPU portion. The g4400 was tested and reviewed on Linux: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=intel-pentium-g4400&num=1 Really really good article! There is a g4400 thread in the cpu section but it would be a waste of time.
It will not. 460 is similar to 270X/370/950... It will not slow down. It may if the game requires cpu heavy lifting, but then the game requires heavy lifting. My issue with the pentium in general is the core count. We are not 2006 anymore. Dual cores should be killed with fire...
OK so I bought a Gtx 1060 today because I found it new on Amazon for like $235 CAD and heard its a really good card for the money . That is roughly $175-180USD.
So it was kinda of a cart-before-the-horse type decision but I think this card will keep me happy for years to come.
Edit
Also, I have a 1TB laptop HD that I can use now too.
On Amazon there is a i5 4460 new for $235 CAD which is like $100 less than the Skylake i5s. If I were to get this, would I need to upgrade sooner than if I just went with Skylake? Is DDR4 worth it?
The years to come - not really, no... It's a mid range now, and with it's crap DX12 support will suffer more and more. But for the money, now, it is really good buy. AMD have 470 for that price and 1060 is some 15% faster in current titles... So yeah, for the money is great. The problem is, you can't use freesync now... But it's still great for the price. Unless it's the 3GB version, in which case... Well it's not bad card, but it's not that great anymore.
The only draw back with going with the I5 4460 vs the newer sky lake i5 would be ddr3 you wont notice anything different in gaming its just that the prices are going to start to rise on ddr3 because its on its way out so buy ram sooner rather than latter.
I bought the i5 4460, a Thermaltake PSU and 8gb ddr3 stick. $315 for it all.
I just spent $550 damn lol.
I am now over my budget and I don't have a motherboard or case. Ah well. I would rather have a sufficient system off the hop so I don't need to upgrade for a few years.
Good thing I work and have a visa.
I know literally nothing about motherboards and what I need to be concerned with. Do modern boards all have good SSD integration? I want good USB speed too.
Most motherboards do have usb 3.0 on them just some dont have usb 3 for the front of the case. Since you are going with a locked processor you really don't need to go any further than a H97 chip set board and ssd are pretty well supported on most modern motherboards as well. I personally like gigabyte as a budget board company they seem to have pretty good features for the price.
Buy used, don't build a $400-500 PC in Canada because it'll be complete trash. Get a second gen PC with an i5 2400, add a gpu, upgrade the PSU, possibly a new case, and bam, you'll have a much more powerful PC, for cheaper.
If you live in Toronto, I have an i5 2400 PC. All you'd need to do is add a PSU and GPU, and it will perform much better than your Pentium PC.
If I went cheaper than this I would be losing stuff I didn't want. That's how I'm justifying overpaying (lol). I guess I could have went with an AMD build on the CPU side and still have 4 cores, but Intel is a lot better right now from what I've seen. I could have gotten a cheaper GPU, but then I'd be losing a lot of performance for not a lot less cost.
I'm taking a keyboard and mouse from my GF and I have an old square monitor that I'm going to use for now.
Anyways, I'm super excited to build this thing. I will show some pictures when I'm done. Hopefully I don't break anything. Thanks for the help!