Building a custom PC | Advice would be helpful

[Thomas2012]

First off, apologies if this is the wrong section if so lock it, move it. Whatever is the right thing 👍

Hello everyone,
I'm currently planning out a custom PC and I'm getting a little confused and stuck in the planning stage as I don't know all that much just the basics, I've got my friends to help out aswell but I'd like to see what others think.

Heres what I've got so far:
http://au.pcpartpicker.com/list/fGKD8K

One of the major decisions I've been going through is GTX 960 4GB vs RX 480 4GB

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Nexus]

1. RX 480, no contest. The RX 480 has similar performance to the R9 390, which in turn is a competitor for the GTX 970 for DX11 games and a 980 for DX12 games. The GTX 1060 will be revealed soon though, so it's worth waiting to see how that turns out.

2. Power supply is overkill, 500W should be plenty but I'm not 100% sure about that.

120GB for an SSD seems a bit small, but everything else seems pretty good. 👍

Edit: Forgot to mention that the RX 480 is currently having power consumption problems -http://www.anandtech.com/show/10465/amd-releases-statement-on-radeon-rx-480-power-consumption
More info here - http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-radeon-rx-480-polaris-10,4616-9.html#NaN
This shouldn't matter if you're planning on getting a non-reference card but if you are, it's best to wait for a fix.

 

[BobK]

1. RX 480, no contest. The RX 480 has similar performance to the R9 390, which in turn is a competitor for the GTX 970 for DX11 games and a 980 for DX12 games. The GTX 1060 will be revealed soon though, so it's worth waiting to see how that turns out.

2. Power supply is overkill, 500W should be plenty but I'm not 100% sure about that.

120GB for an SSD seems a bit small, but everything else seems pretty good. 👍

Edit: Forgot to mention that the RX 480 is currently having power consumption problems -http://www.anandtech.com/show/10465/amd-releases-statement-on-radeon-rx-480-power-consumption
It's a bit late over here, I'll add more info in the morning.[/b]

I built a more or less similar system not too long ago and wanted to use a 400 to 450 watt power supply. I ended up getting a Corsair 600 watt unit because it was actually the cheapest supply over 300 watts at the time that wasn't some sort of mongrel brand. So I have lots of headroom for possible expansion.

But yeah, 600 watts is overkill; 500 would do the job or even 450.

 

[Thomas2012]

1. RX 480, no contest. The RX 480 has similar performance to the R9 390, which in turn is a competitor for the GTX 970 for DX11 games and a 980 for DX12 games. The GTX 1060 will be revealed soon though, so it's worth waiting to see how that turns out.

2. Power supply is overkill, 500W should be plenty but I'm not 100% sure about that.

120GB for an SSD seems a bit small, but everything else seems pretty good. 👍

Edit: Forgot to mention that the RX 480 is currently having power consumption problems -http://www.anandtech.com/show/10465/amd-releases-statement-on-radeon-rx-480-power-consumption
More info here - http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-radeon-rx-480-polaris-10,4616-9.html#NaN
This shouldn't matter if you're planning on getting a non-reference card but if you are, it's best to wait for a fix.

Alright, thank you very much for your imput. I have looked into the RX a little more and found out the 4GB version is sold out nearly everywhere that I've checked so I may have to opt out for the 8gb which is $70 more :/ I do feel as if 8gb will be overkill but would the extra cost still be worth the power it has?

I'll be sure to downgrade that power supply thank you 👍 possibly up the size of the SSD

I built a more or less similar system not too long ago and wanted to use a 400 to 450 watt power supply. I ended up getting a Corsair 600 watt unit because it was actually the cheapest supply over 300 watts at the time that wasn't some sort of mongrel brand. So I have lots of headroom for possible expansion.

But yeah, 600 watts is overkill; 500 would do the job or even 450.

Alright thank you for your imput as well! I was planning to just have room for some upgrades but it seems like even running 500 watts would be alright for upgrades correct? Also what is your opinion on the extra for the 8GB RX? Should I furiously look for a 4GB model or contiue with a more expensive 8GB version?

Thanks again @TwinTurbo LM & @BobK !

 

[Nexus]

Alright, thank you very much for your imput. I have looked into the RX a little more and found out the 4GB version is sold out nearly everywhere that I've checked so I may have to opt out for the 8gb which is $70 more :/ I do feel as if 8gb will be overkill but would the extra cost still be worth the power it has?

No problem, happy to help. 👍
I would personally go for the 8GB model if you're planning on holding onto your GPU for a few years as there are already games that use more than 4GB VRAM on max settings, such as Batman: Arkham Knight, Mirror's Edge: Catalyst, AC: Unity, GTA V and Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor. This list will continue to grow but if you don't mind playing at slightly lower settings, 4GB should be fine.

But like I said earlier, I'd personally go for a non-reference model like this Sapphire card for the better cooling, and to avoid the power consumption problems that the reference models are currently experiencing. I know that AMD have said that they're working on a fix (they might just undervolt the cards), but it might be better to just avoid the problem entirely.

 

[Grayfox]

Get rid of the SATA SSD and get a M.2 SSD.
It will be faster since it is on the PCIe Bus rather than SATA bus.
https://www.pccasegear.com/products/33632/samsung-950-pro-256gb-m-2-ssd

 

[Thomas2012]

No problem, happy to help. 👍
I would personally go for the 8GB model if you're planning on holding onto your GPU for a few years as there are already games that use more than 4GB VRAM on max settings, such as Batman: Arkham Knight, Mirror's Edge: Catalyst, AC: Unity, GTA V and Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor. This list will continue to grow but if you don't mind playing at slightly lower settings, 4GB should be fine.

But like I said earlier, I'd personally go for a non-reference model like this Sapphire card for the better cooling, and to avoid the power consumption problems that the reference models are currently experiencing. I know that AMD have said that they're working on a fix (they might just undervolt the cards), but it might be better to just avoid the problem entirely.

Alrighty again thank you! I will highly likely go for an non reference model of the RX 480 8gb 👍

Get rid of the SATA SSD and get a M.2 SSD.
It will be faster since it is on the PCIe Bus rather than SATA bus.
https://www.pccasegear.com/products/33632/samsung-950-pro-256gb-m-2-ssd

Alright I'll swap that out thanks for the help Grayfox!

 

[Grayfox]

Alright I'll swap that out thanks for the help Grayfox!

Make sure it is one that uses the PCIe bus.
You can get versions that use the SATA bus as well.

NVMe are the best SSD based options as it is designed for SSDs unlike ACHI which is designed for HDDs

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NVM_Express#Comparison_with_AHCI

 

[Thomas2012]

Make sure it is one that uses the PCIe bus.
You can get versions that use the SATA bus as well.

NVMe are the best SSD based options as it is designed for SSDs unlike ACHI which is designed for HDDs

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NVM_Express#Comparison_with_AHCI

Thanks a lot I really appreciate it. I'll read into those to get more familiar with those terms. I'm sure that's a great choice but I'm trying to keep it in the 1500 budget which I should of stated before my bad so I'll look around for a suitable one 👍

 

[Grayfox]

Thing is with SSDs you can reuse them in the nex build.
SSD do die, but very slowly as the TRIM function makes sure that all the memory modules wear at an even rate.

And try to bump up your budget if you can, do more shifts at work, some extra savings will help and you will be happier down the track.

 

[Thomas2012]

Thing is with SSDs you can reuse them in the nex build.
SSD do die, but very slowly as the TRIM function makes sure that all the memory modules wear at an even rate.

And try to bump up your budget if you can, do more shifts at work, some extra savings will help and you will be happier down the track.

I see. I could defintely bump up the budget to fit that in as well 👍 saving for many things at the same time haha. Again I really appreciate the help

 

[RX-7_FD3S]

Thing is with SSDs you can reuse them in the nex build.
SSD do die, but very slowly as the TRIM function makes sure that all the memory modules wear at an even rate.

And try to bump up your budget if you can, do more shifts at work, some extra savings will help and you will be happier down the track.

That is all relative, the latest SSD I had before I change to the one I got now last me 2 years. Not that much when some of my regular HD are 7+ year old. And they are running 24/24.

 

[TB]

And they are running 24/24.

Do you live on a planet other than Earth?

 

[sesselpupser]

Get rid of the SATA SSD and get a M.2 SSD.
It will be faster since it is on the PCIe Bus rather than SATA bus.
https://www.pccasegear.com/products/33632/samsung-950-pro-256gb-m-2-ssd

This is pretty terrible advice for a general purpose or gaming PC, the price premium is huge (in the UK a 256GB Samsung 951 PCIe M.2 drive is twice the price of an 850 Evo of the same capacity, a 950 Pro is three times the price) for very little real life improvement. I mean we're talking boot times in the low-single-digit seconds range faster than a SATA SSD and even less doing basically anything else. If you were going to use it as a scratch disk for video editing or other I/O heavy work then fair enough because time is literally money in those situations, but for gaming pretty much everyone except the money-no-object types would be better served spending the money on a bigger SSD rather than a faster one.

The way I see it, if you have a 256GB PCIe SSD and 1TB HDD, you will notice the difference between the SSD and HDD when it comes to loading games, media or whatever. If you have 1.25TB of SATA SSDs, you won't see any difference in speed and I strongly doubt many people would pick the former over the latter if they could try them side by side. Then, later on down the line, you can add an M.2 drive as well.

 

[GT_Alex74]

Best bet is to have a dedicated SSD for system and programs (and eventually games), and a high speed HDD for data (and games), or even a SSHD (though I don't know if it would be really useful at that point, never used one). It is better to limit the amount of writing and erasing on your SSD to make it last, hence why lot of people keep their data on a HDD.

Currently, I have a Samsung 850 Evo 120 GB SSD, and two 160 GB WD Velociraptor 10.000 RPM HDDs reused from a friend's previous build, one is dedicated to games and the other to data (and I have an external 1 TB 7.200 RPM USB 3.0 drive for my music / picture collection storage, as well as various stuff and backups). This works perfectly fine and fast, without digging a big hole into your wallet. Although I would definitely recommend getting a 250 GB SSD as the price difference is not huge and the capacity much more comfortable, and it would allow you to store games on your SSD more easily.

OP, if you're going to spend more on something compared to what you already showed us, for gaming you should spend it on the GPU. Although a RX 480 will certainly more than enough already for 1080p (I'm just waiting for the custom ones personally, otherwise I also have a i5-6500 on a H170 mobo and very happy with it). Or maybe the PSU to allow the possibility of crossfire in the future ? I don't know if 650 W would be enough (that's a real question).

 

[Thomas2012]

To all the replies thank you!

I'm still going through things and deciding. A mate said to me that I should wait for the Nvidia GTX 1060 so I might wait till then to see if it's price and power are any good in comparison to the RX 480 if not by then surely a different version of that would of came out so I can buy that. As a newbie to this I'm slowly learning more and more thanks to the help from everyone here and research. Hopefully not too far from now this little project may be finished 👍

 

[Mr Latte]

Have to agree about the storage. Get a decent SSD for program installs and larger standard drive for storage.

I seen YT reviews that show very little improvement with games with some M.2
The format will improve and get cheaper right now its hard to justify the cost for gaming/general usage.

Do advise to maybe get a 512gb as have found my 256 soon runs out of space with steam/game downloads. Also for the CPU buy the "K" unlocked version of the i5 to get a easy overclock.

I was surprised by my own recent build not having a PC in 3 years....
i7 6700k@4.6GHz / Gigabyte gaming 7 motherboard / Evo 850 SSD / 16GB 2400 DDR
Selecting fast boot on the motherboard means windows 10 loads under 9 seconds, everything feels fast. This has been a very stable build for me thus far.

Also currrently awaiting reviews for AIB models of RX480 and GTX1060 to determine which GPU to get in the in the future like the OP for mainly 1080p gaming.