New computer, pro tips on the specs?

  • Thread starter citroengt1
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citroengt1

citroengt1

647
Croatia
Zagreb
johnwalter1044
Hello,
I am buying a new computer, and these are the specifications i choose for it.
I need professional advice, is this a good setup, in terms that will those components run
well with each other?

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-B85M-D3H (LGA 1150)

Processor: Intel Core i5-4460

Graphics card: GTX 760 Phantom 4GB

RAM: Kingston HyperX Fury 16GB

HDD: Western Digital Green 2TB (20EZRX)

SSD (for system only): Seagate SSHD 1TB (ST1000DX001)

Power adapter: Corsair CX500
 
SSD doesn't need to be 1TB if it is for system only. 256GB is more than enough.

Why not go for a K series cpu? It will cost about 10-15% more but provide a lot more performance.

The GPU isn't bad. It might not cut it for high end gaming at high resolutions though.

Other than that looks good.

*edit*
Just noticed that the SSD was a hybrid drive. Still, I would just get a 256GB SSD.
 
What do you plan to use this for?

Also keep in mind B/H prefixed motherboards cannot overclock and lack some of the good stuff the Z series has.

I don't know about gigabyte but my preference for motherboards is ASUS.

As DQuaN said, ditch the hybrid drive and go with a 256 or 512 SSD. My next question is why so much storage? I see this a lot where people feel it necessary to throw in a huge chunk of hard drives. I've still not filled a 512GB drive despite loading all the iracing content and my itunes library onto it.
 
Ditto on ditching the Hybrid drive. Go with a sizable SSD and a 1 TB or more HDD. Install the OS on the SSD and you're on your way. Leave the HDD for mass storage.

The rest of the PC looks about right. The 760 might not run every game at Ultra though.
 
Christian_C
My next question is why so much storage? I see this a lot where people feel it necessary to throw in a huge chunk of hard drives. I've still not filled a 512GB drive despite loading all the iracing content and my itunes library onto it.
Click to expand...
Just because you don't need more that half a TB doesn't mean no one does. :) I have my entire movie collection ripped. Even after compression, it wouldn't fit on my 1TB drive so a new 2TB drive was purchased. Now my OS is on an SSD, games and programs on the 1TB and movies and music on the 2TB.

Besides, drive space is cheap.
 
TB
Just because you don't need more that half a TB doesn't mean no one does. :) I have my entire movie collection ripped. Even after compression, it wouldn't fit on my 1TB drive so a new 2TB drive was purchased. Now my OS is on an SSD, games and programs on the 1TB and movies and music on the 2TB.

Besides, drive space is cheap.
Click to expand...

I'm sitting here with 4TB of HDDs and 3TB external and considering buying another pair of 2TB drives for backup/storage. 256GB SSD for most of my apps, and a 128GB SSD that I use for editing event photos quickly before moving them to the HDDs.

Meanwhile my cousin has his life's work taking up a few megs of space on Github :lol: Storage needs vary in almost comically different ways.

Also going to echo the SSD + HDD setup for programs and storage if 256GB (though 512GB SSDs are cheap enough now) doesn't cut it.
 
Why not a Skylake build? You can take advantage of DDR4 RAM and will also be on a slightly more future proof socket.

For the SSD I echo that you won't need 1TB, that is also not a true SSD as said. Instead you should ditch the SATA drives altogether and look into an M.2 version, along with a compatible motherboard of course. They have two benefits, firstly they're much smaller and have no cables, secondly they are super quick, Up to 2000Mb/s read vs the 550Mb/s limit of SATAIII.

Here is the build I would do, assuming you're not interested in over-clocking:

CPU: Intel Core i5 6600
Mobo: Gigabyte GA-B150M-D3H Micro ATX LGA1151
SSD: Samsung SM951 128GB M.2-2280
RAM: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-2133
PSU: Seasonic M12-II EVO 520W
GPU: Same
HDD: Same

The cost is roughly similar in the UK to yours but I can't be sure if it is where you are, obviously. If you do want more SSD space then you should either spend more and get the Samsung 950 PRO 256GB M.2-2280 or if budget won't stretch, stick with the Samsung 850 EVO 256GB, which will still be way quicker than that hybrid drive.
 
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TB
Just because you don't need more that half a TB doesn't mean no one does. :) I have my entire movie collection ripped. Even after compression, it wouldn't fit on my 1TB drive so a new 2TB drive was purchased. Now my OS is on an SSD, games and programs on the 1TB and movies and music on the 2TB.

Besides, drive space is cheap.
Click to expand...


That's true, i think the major difference is that I stream all my movie content rather than store it.
 
TB
Just because you don't need more that half a TB doesn't mean no one does. :) I have my entire movie collection ripped. Even after compression, it wouldn't fit on my 1TB drive so a new 2TB drive was purchased. Now my OS is on an SSD, games and programs on the 1TB and movies and music on the 2TB.

Besides, drive space is cheap.
Click to expand...

So does that mean that there is 4TB in your house? The three in your PC and yourself?


As the others are saying, 256Gb for the SSD should be pretty much okay unless you want a lot of storage space. I noticed that your build is using a Haswell CPU. You may want to consider the newer CPUs. Also, just from experience I would avoid a Seagate HDD. Ever since they took over Maxtor I haven't trusted them!
 
Azuremen
I'm sitting here with 4TB of HDDs and 3TB external and considering buying another pair of 2TB drives for backup/storage. 256GB SSD for most of my apps, and a 128GB SSD that I use for editing event photos quickly before moving them to the HDDs.

Meanwhile my cousin has his life's work taking up a few megs of space on Github :lol: Storage needs vary in almost comically different ways.

Also going to echo the SSD + HDD setup for programs and storage if 256GB (though 512GB SSDs are cheap enough now) doesn't cut it.
Click to expand...

Ditto. Between video, photoshop files (which are surprisingly huge), high quality scans and a fairly large pile of games I have something like 10TB of various hard drives kicking around. About 6TB of them are in the computer, and the rest are in a pile beside the swappable external dock I have.

There seems little point in deleting stuff when I really need to buy a new drive every couple of years anyway to replace the ones that are getting old, and every time I buy a new one they've doubled in size and gotten cheaper.

Although I do have the same SSD setup that everyone is recommending: small SSD for system and traditional HDDs for everything else. It's generally good practice to have your system partition separate from all your data anyway.
 
Samus
Why not a Skylake build? You can take advantage of DDR4 RAM and will also be on a slightly more future proof socket.

For the SSD I echo that you won't need 1TB, that is also not a true SSD as said. Instead you should ditch the SATA drives altogether and look into an M.2 version, along with a compatible motherboard of course. They have two benefits, firstly they're much smaller and have no cables, secondly they are super quick, Up to 2000Mb/s read vs the 550Mb/s limit of SATAIII.

Here is the build I would do, assuming you're not interested in over-clocking:

CPU: Intel Core i5 6600
Mobo: Gigabyte GA-B150M-D3H Micro ATX LGA1151
SSD: Samsung SM951 128GB M.2-2280
RAM: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-2133
PSU: Seasonic M12-II EVO 520W
GPU: Same
HDD: Same

The cost is roughly similar in the UK to yours but I can't be sure if it is where you are, obviously. If you do want more SSD space then you should either spend more and get the Samsung 950 PRO 256GB M.2-2280 or if budget won't stretch, stick with the Samsung 850 EVO 256GB, which will still be way quicker than that hybrid drive.
Click to expand...
Maybe good to get a Z170 motherboard so can have OC potential too if he ever needs extra performance. Wonder how much extra a GTX 960 or 970 costs where OP lives.
 
Saidur_Ali
Maybe good to get a Z170 motherboard so can have OC potential too if he ever needs extra performance. Wonder how much extra a GTX 960 or 970 costs where OP lives.
Click to expand...

Yeah I mean if it was me I'd get the K processor and Z170 motherboard anyway. At least get the K processor anyway, it's only £20 more than the non-K and gives you the option of OCing in future, either with a Z170 now or later. If you get the non-K and non-Z170 you'll need both in future to OC.

A decent Gigabyte Z170 without any of the expensive bells and whistles is £100 here, so again, only £20 over the B150.
 
Samus
Yeah I mean if it was me I'd get the K processor and Z170 motherboard anyway. At least get the K processor anyway, it's only £20 more than the non-K and gives you the option of OCing in future, either with a Z170 now or later. If you get the non-K and non-Z170 you'll need both in future to OC.

A decent Gigabyte Z170 without any of the expensive bells and whistles is £100 here, so again, only £20 over the B150.
Click to expand...
I was thinking more on the lines of non-K overclocking. ;)

 
@citroengt1 you're probably going to have to tell us what you want this PC for. Mine is literally just an OS, some games and a few small tools like an Xinput wrapper for my DualShock 4. I designed it to be relatively cheap, small, quiet and energy efficient but without sacrificing too much performance so I ended up with:

i5 4690k
ASUS Z97M Plus mATX
ASUS Strix GTX 960 2GB
2x4GB DDR3-1600 RAM
Samsung 840 Evo 256GB SSD
Samsung 850 Evo 256GB SSD
Corsair CS 450W PSU
And a TP-Link TL-WN951N wifi adaptor.

It cost around £720. I originally chose the cheapest current model graphics card because I figured I'd replace it if I ever wanted to upgrade my monitor but frankly, it works so well that I feel absolutely no need to change anything!

So your specs are a bit mismatched for a gaming PC - locked CPU, twice as much RAM as you need, a low-ish end, out of production graphics card with too much VRAM - but maybe you have another use in mind? What kind of display are you using? If it's anything more than 1080p at 60Hz that card won't do much for you.
 
Holy crap, i didn't expect such an amount of people trying to help me.
Thank you people!!! :bowdown:

Okay, first of my knowledge of electronics of any kind is based on a level where is still need to look at a battery to see which side is plus and minus, so i don't know much.This is way i asked for help.

Second, my configuration in the first post wasn't made by "my hand".It was a generated list using money amount and "gaming computer" values to calculate the specs.So no, i don't need:
- an SSD with 1TB space.
-neither do i need 2TB of HDD space, but i could take it.

What i do need and what computer type i want:
My computer is actually shared with my brother equally.We both use it for games mostly.
But, he only needs it to be strong enough to run games like: Witcher 3, Deus Ex: Man Kind Devided at high level.
Not necessary at maximum level.

But i want to run all kinds of games.I am a modding beginner.I like to fine tune my games to feel just right.
I have many tools and programs which i use daily, and two of them i need to run smoothly.
One is called Lego Digital Designer, a lightweight Lego building program that uses rendering.
And also Bluerender, a tool which renders the LDD made models in HD.
I also use Photoshop CS4, Audacity, Blender.

So all in all, i need a computer that will run today and up-coming games at least at 60fps,
and which will allow me to have render pictures.

Computer needs to have:
-Strong GPU
-Fast CPU
-16GB of RAM (hey, i want some reserve.Or is 8GB fine as well?)
-A motherboard to suit those above. (sound cards i don't know, just one that will run)
-at least 1TB of space
-and an SSD 60GB for the OS only (and some programs)[Do i need an SSD with those specs?]
 
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Also i have a question:

Would two GPU's with half of power as one stronger GPU be better then having one strong GPU?

I think that would be better since two wouldn't heat so much since they would share power?

[EDIT]:

Oh and the price i am affordable with is:
Euros - 920€
British Pounds - 700£
US Dollars - 990$
 
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citroengt1
Also i have a question:

Would two GPU's with half of power as one stronger GPU be better then having one strong GPU?

I think that would be better since two wouldn't heat so much since they would share power?

[EDIT]:

Oh and the price i am affordable with is:
Euros - 920€
British Pounds - 700£
US Dollars - 990$
Click to expand...

With that sort of budget, with your needs in mind, I'd say a PC like mine (I listed the parts above) with a cheaper motherboard is probably as good as you can afford, you can't save enough by cutting out other parts to get a GTX 970 so a high end i5 and 960 is what I'd buy... I can say that because that's exactly what I bought!

However, you could probably get more performance for your money if you went with AMD products, I know nothing about them though and would only recommend them to someone with a fairly tight budget like yours, hopefully someone else can chime in on that subject.

As for multiple graphics cards, the thing is that in theory, two lower-end cards can outperform a high end one, but there are so many caveats to that that I'd only ever recommend that if you manage to find a second card identical to your first for free or cheap. First of all, not all games are supported by SLI/Crossfire. Second, putting two cards close together will affect their cooling, and generally speaking if a GTX 960 has the same performance per watt as a GTX 970, a pair of 960s will generate more heat than a 970. Third, putting two 2GB cards together doesn't give you two processors with 4GB of VRAM, it gives you two processors with 2GB each - there's a big difference between the two. Finally, even if whatever game you're playing supports SLI/Crossfire, there's still a chance you'll suffer from some of the negative effects of multi-card setups, the most common being known as microstuttering (I have no idea what it is or why it has such a stupid name - it's either stuttering or it's not, surely? - But it's an issue).

16GB of RAM may well be worthwhile for you, I'm honestly not sure if the not-gaming applications you use would take advantage of more RAM or not. I know Photoshop would but unless if you work with a lot of big, uncompressed files (like over 1GB) or loads and loads of layers (in the hundreds), I doubt you'd exceed 8GB if you were being sensible.

60GB SSDs, if you can still buy them, will almost certainly not be cheap enough to be worthwhile, for instance I was looking at SSDs recently and a 128GB was £40, a 256GB was £55 and a 512GB was £110. 128GB is a squeeze as it is - I used to have a Windows 7 installation and Battlefield 4 on my 128GB SSD and it was pretty much maxed out. They say you should leave 10% free, too, to avoid write amplification - that's going to knock a 64GB drive (which would probably be more like 58GiB when formatted and displayed in real data sizes rather than marketing data sizes) down to 50GB. But regardless, 256GB is the most economical size in terms of cost per GB so I'd strongly suggest going for that.

When it comes to hard drives it's hard to recommend anything but Western Digital. I've had some Hitachi DeskStars that have lasted since 2008 but apparently for a while they were known as DeathStars... My last Seagate drive died after less than a year, too, so I'll never buy another.

Finally (sorry, this post is already quite lengthy), you won't need a sound card if your speakers/headphones aren't anything exotic but you might need to budget for a wifi card.
 
Okay thx for the quick respond, and don't worry, write a book if you want to, i need helpful advice.

So my brother and i agreed to raise the price to:
Euros - 1120€
British Pounds - 850£
US Dollars - 1210$

So we also picked out new components:
Gigabyte GF GTX970 G1 GAMING, 4GB GDDR5 DVI DP

i5 6600K 3.5GHz,6MB,LGA 1151, (no cooler)

GigaByte GA-B150M-D3H DDR3 Skylake

Western Digital HDD 1TB-5400RPM-2.5-SATA-8

XFX 520W Fanless full modular

SSD Samsung 120GB 850 EVO Basic

Would these work together?

[EDIT]:

Of course we want the Windows 7/8 64bit OS
 
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citroengt1
Okay thx for the quick respond, and don't worry, write a book if you want to, i need helpful advice.

So my brother and i agreed to raise the price to:
Euros - 1120€
British Pounds - 850£
US Dollars - 1210$

So we also picked out new components:
Gigabyte GF GTX970 G1 GAMING, 4GB GDDR5 DVI DP

i5 6600K 3.5GHz,6MB,LGA 1151, (no cooler)

GigaByte GA-B150M-D3H DDR3 Skylake

Western Digital HDD 1TB-5400RPM-2.5-SATA-8

XFX 520W Fanless full modular

SSD Samsung 120GB 850 EVO Basic

Would these work together?

[EDIT]:

Of course we want the Windows 7/8 64bit OS
Click to expand...
Are you planning on overclocking? If not, go for the i5 6500. The motherboard that you've chosen won't allow overclocking (AFAIK).

I'd go for a 3.5" 7200RPM version of that HDD, too.
 
No i don't want to overclock.
Main reason is because we both didn't know how to overclock and we were also told that overclock
is actually using higher speed for the processing unit than that is allowed, which then destroys it faster.

So no overclocking.
We actually have overclocking on our current PC build, but we never used it for the above mentioned reasons.
 
TB
I can get you to £930. There's probably places to trim that down, though.
Click to expand...

Looks pretty good. Only change I'd suggest is no point getting a Z170 when not overclocking, the B150 I mentioned earlier should be fine and will save £50. Or any other similar B150 board.
 
How much more expensive is a 256GB 850 Evo? Here a 120GB is £48, a 250GB is £66 (note to self: you're an idiot for not buying one when they were £55!), so you're getting 100% more storage for 37.5% more cost which is a great deal.

Edit: you might be able to save a bit more with a Corsair CS 550M PSU, I've got a CS 450M in my PC (but I would've gone with 550W if I had a 970) and it has been great so far. I can't actually find which XFX PSU you've picked, though.
 
Capture-1.jpg


That's £835 without the OS, choices are very limited from that vendor, especially psu, memory and cases.
 
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