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Been writing PC building guides on another site, for a couple of days, so why not share them here.
#velmspcbuilds Dedicated minecraft server - 350$ ~ 450$
Today we cover the hardware for dedicated minecraft servers. And you will see soon why am I posting about this specific purpose.
Well, after a period of inactivity and the overall lack of new hardware, Intel's Devil's Canyon CPUs finally came out, which did introduce better thermal paste for its internal heatspreader and refreshed haswell architecture. The new i7 4790K, i5 4690K and the star of the show, Unlocked Dual core Pentium G3258, clocked at 3.2Ghz by default.
So let's begin.
CPU: Intel Pentium Dual Core G3258. For 75$ you get a capable dual core CPU which can be overclocked as far as 4.4Ghz on stock cooling, though I have seen cases where people managed to get to 4.8Ghz and stay stable at the same time. At 4.4Ghz it easily beats out i3s priced at around 130$.
The main reason you should choose this CPU for your minecraft server is because it's unlocked, cheap and has only two cores. And guess what, minecraft dedicated server is a strictly single threaded aplication, meaning that you can spend 550$ on a 4930K but the server won't perform much better than on an overclocked G3258, because it uses only one core. Being unlocked also allows you to get more bang for you buck and begin able to push 4.4Ghz on stock cooling it like a dream come true for single threaded apps.
MOBO: ASRock Z97M Pro4 - For a minecraft server, you need to care about overclockability, which is supplied by the Z97 chipset, maximum RAM support, which is 32Gb in this case, and SATA3 ports, 6 ports overall, it also has RAID support if you need that extra capacity and read/write speeds, or just a backup drive in case anything goes wrong.
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-U12P SE2 (optional) - Nothing fancy, I just picked it up for it's silence and slightly better performance than the stock. Though if you want to save money, you can stick with the stock one.
RAM: Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB 1600Mhz. I think it will be a while until a cheaper 1600 CL9 1.5V kit apears.
SSD: Kingston SSDNow V300 120Gb (optional) - Not exactly stellar speeds, but if you really need more, just shove 2 of them into RAID 0, because you'll do regular backups on the HDD.
HDD: WD Caviar Green 1TB (Red is also a viable option, but more expensive while we're at it) - chosen for it's focus on silence and power efficiency, besides, you'll probably just use it for backups if you pick up the SSD. If you do skip the SSD, get WD Red or WD Blue, WD Black just isn't worth it and WD Purple is meant for security footage servers, so don't mix those up.
Case: Just pick up some case with a powersupply 450 ~ 500W, mostly because this build guzzles around 150W at stock speeds and expect it to reach up to 200W when overclocked. And yes, 500W (usually peak rating, not the continuous one) is overkill, but as I said multiple times before, even if it's just 250W it will still do the job, paying for the cases bellow 500W just doesnt seem to be worth of the extra 5$ of savings.
I also forgot to mention that the Z97 motherboard will allow you to upgrade to any i5 or i7 in the upcoming broadwell generation, that is if mojang stops sitting on it's hands and develops proper multi core support for the server application.
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/3P12L - The Dream Machine.
Take note, this is the "perfect high end pc" for me. Some of you might prefer the quad 780 Tis and 4960Xs, I wouldn't. Anyway let's begin.
CPU: i7-4930K - the high end sweetspot CPU. It has 6 cores and hyperthreading, which makes it a quite capable heavy lifter. Now, someone would ask, why not 4960X? Well, 4960X is still a 6 core CPU with slightly more cache memory and a higher clock and costs 2 times as 4930K does. Paying twice as much for marginal performance increase is silly. Yes, I am calling all of you 4960X owers, silly people.
MOBO: MSI Bing Bang XPower II XL ATX. Where to start, the completely black finish, 128Gb maximum RAM support, 7 full sized PCIe slots. Quad SLI and Quad Crossfire support. 4 SATA2 and 6 SATA3 slots. I mean, do I need to say anything else? This thing has it all.
CPU Cooler: I chose the H100i, just for one thing, the Corsair Link. I admit, I like monitoring my hardware, one of the reasons I run Rainmeter skins on my desktop all the time. If I didn't have that urge, I'd probably go with Cooler Master Seidon 240M.
The fans on H100i would be replaced with 4 Noctua's P12 PWM fans. It's a marginal decrease in performance, but significant improvement in noise levels.
RAM: G.Skill Ares 2x8Gb 2133Mhz - One of the rare 2133Mhz 1.5V kits on the market. I didn't go full 64Gb with these, because let's be frank, games and most apps won't require more than 8Gb of ram any time soon. Kingston at the moment doesn't have any ram kits like this and corsair ones were just more expensive, though the black heat spreader would be more fitting.
SSD: Asus ROG Raidr - 240Gb PCIe - 800mb/s + read/writes. Not to mention it looks awesome. xD
HDD: WD Green 3TB - Meh, it's just so the music and other space requiring junk doesn't take space on the edgy SSD.
GPU: 2x MSI Twin Frozr GTX770 4Gb. I covered these cards before for their good price performance ratio, though the 2Gb frame buffer just doesn't do any justice to these cards.
Case: BitFenix Shinobi - It's a beatiful metal box. And no I don't like Obsidian 900D, it looks like an oven and not a PC case.
PSU: Corsair 1200W - AX1200i - same reason as H100i, the corsair link which allows me to monitor the PSU. Quite handy considering PSUs rarely have such features.
Soundcard: Asus Xonar Essence STX - The best consumer grade soundcard on the market. I don't care if I'm deaf as Beethoven, I want this.
Fans: A couple of noctua fans for the case.
Fan Controler: A touchscreen fan controler to control all those noctua fans. Knowing my lazy ass, I would just leave them at 80% and forget about them, considering how silent they are. xD
Optical Drive: Asus BW-12B1ST - Blu Ray drive, because why not. Not like I would spend 5$ on a BR Disc anyway. xD
Overclock: Just overclock the CPU from 3.4 to 3.6, just so we can laugh at the 4960X silly people. xD
Regarding the peripherals: I already have what I like (G710+, Cavimanus 7.1, and Genius 4500 125W 5.1), I just need to get the G502 and I'm done with those.
pcpartpicker.com/p/3Oa9y And now for something interesting. A sub 200W Gaming PC.
These days it's all about higher performance with little or no regard for power consumption. Only in past couple of years manufacturers decided that lower power consumption is something people genuinely need. This build is for those people who need to cut down on power consumption and noise without giving up much performance.
So let's begin.
CPU: Intel i5 4690S. S suffix means it's a low power variant, 65W TDP comparing to its normal counterpart at 84W. There is not much to say about this CPU, it;s performance is comparable to i5 4570, which isn't far behind the commonly used 4670K. In the low power category AMD CPUs simply didn't stand a chance, which I hope will change with the next generation of their desktop CPUs.
MOBO: Gigabyte GA-B85N Mini ITX. The smaller it is, the less power it consumes. People usually overlook motherboard power requirements, while not rarely it is the component that guzzles most of the power. Maximum RAM capacity of 16Gb does seem low, but mini ITX boards with 4 RAM slots are really rare and usually too expensive for those extra 2 slots to be worth it. No overclocking capabilities with the B85 chipset, one PCIe slot and 3 SATA3 + 1 SATA2 slots for your storage needs.
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-U9B SE2 - Chosen for it's exceptionally low noise rating: 7.9 - 17.6 dbA There isn't much to say about this cooler besides it does it's job and it does it silently.
RAM: Kingston XMP Blu 1600Mhz 1.5V 2x8Gb. So, someone would ask "Why 1.5V RAM when there are 1.25 ~ 1.35V kits." Well there's the thing, all newer Intel CPUs require ram to run at 1.5V +/-5% (1.425V ~ 1.575V) (1.65V with certified kits in XMP mode). Running lower voltage RAM on this build, would cause system instabilities, even failiure to POST in some cases, so anything other than 1.5V is not an option.
SSD: Kingston HyperX 3K 240Gb. I already covered this SSD in my previous builds. Top of the line performance and one thing that's common for all SSDs, extremely low power consumption, 1 ~ 2 watts (maybe 3W with some large SSDs).
HDD: I didn't add a harddrive to this build to keep the power requirement to a minimum, but you can always pick up WD Caviar Green 3TB for extra space. Those drives are designed with low power consumption and noise levles in mind.
GPU: I think we all knew this one. The GTX 750ti, simply the most energy efficient GPU on the market currently (until Maxwell series, aka GTX800 cards come out). It performs the same as R7 260X with using half the power a 260X needs. I opted for EVGA one, because of the physical dimensions of the card.
PSU: Corsair 430W. I know, this PSU is overkill, but I had hard time finding a high quality PSU with 250W ~ 300W power output.
Case: BitFenix Prodigy. Probably the most popular mini ITX case at the moment. And for good reasons. It offers good acoustics, rubber feet to dampen the vibrations, looks nice, has carrying handles and is compact.
Though, some things to keep an eye out for:
Broadwell Intel CPUs are coming out this year, they are build with 14nm manufacturing process which in comparison to 22nm, results in less heat, lower power requirement and higher performance per watt. Same goes for nVidias Maxwell generation. I haven't found much info on AMD's upcoming products besides those ultra low power APUs.
In theory this build shouldn't be able to draw more than 200 watts of power even on full load. The graphics card might get noisy, due to the small fan, but that was the limitation of the case. You can always opt for one of those dual fan cards and remove the drive cage from the case to fit it in.
pcpartpicker.com/p/3NrUt - The "Console killer" 450$ build. This build was created to stay under 500$, offer decent performance, and some upgradeability.
CPU: AMD Athlon 750K 3.4Ghz quad core. I admit, Intel doesn't have anything like it. At lower budgets and at this price, you will see this CPU being suggested a lot. Why? Well it's a competent Quad Core CPU for 80$ which uses FM2 socket. Closest Intel has in terms of performance is the i3 3220, which costs about 130$. Now you can see why this CPU is so commonly suggested. While the i3 consumes about 50% less power at this price range it's not worth it, even with the fact that these low budget builds have to focus on power consumption. At number crunching it's about 2 times slower than i7s, which cost 300$+, it's price performance ratio speaks for itself.
MOBO: Well, FM2/FM2+ motherboards are some of the cheapest motherboards on the market and support the newest AMD's APUs, which is a big plus in this price range. The Gigabyte GA-F2A78M-HD2 I selected does the job, but just barely. Two RAM sockets, supporting 64Gb of ram (Don't ask, I don't know why would a board like this support 64Gb of ram), speeds up to 2400Mhz, 4x SATA3 slots (useful for adding a SSD later). No Crossfire or SLI due to having only one PCIe slot. My only gripe with it is that it doesnt have 4 ram slots, but if you want to pick up such a board Gigabyte GA-F2A78M-D3H is a fine choice for 5$ more.
CPU Cooler: While I like AMD's aproach to making competitive CPUs at reasonable prices, for god's sake make a new stock cooler. At the very least make one that uses 80mm or 92mm fans, you know, the "standard sizes"? No, you use 70mm fan that spins up to 6300RPM (seen it once reach 6500RPM), whoever designed that stock cooler is a deaf man.
Yes while I'm cringing, I am suggesting a stock cooler for this build, just to keep the cost down. If you don't want to suffer the design flaws of coolers designed by deaf people, get CM 212 Evo, or any other FM2 compatible cooler for that matter, it will be quieter anyway.
RAM: Cheapest 8Gb you can find, I'm currently sticking with that same Crucial 8Gb 1600Mhz, due to it having average performance at a great price, though you wouldn't see much of a decrease in performance with 1333Mhz RAM.
HDD: WD Blue 1TB. Now, some would ask, why not 500Gb to save money? WD Caviar Blue 1TB, costs 56$, WD Caviar Blue 500Gb , costs 50$. You don't have to have a PhD from maths to figure that one out.
GPU: Asus GeForce GTX 750ti 2GB. At the moment, it's performance per watt is unmatched. It's AMD counterpart, the R7 260X does perform similarly in game benchmarks, but has a TDP of 115W, comparing to 750ti's 60W. It's because the 750ti is built on the upcoming maxwell GPU architecture that focuses on improving performance while significantly decreasing power consumption, something people tend to overlook. Because all of that juice it draws, ends up as excess heat. Remember why FX9590 had a stock liquid cooler? Because of the 220W TDP everyone laughed at.
Overall, this variant of 750ti has a dual fan cooler, which is more than enough to keep it cool, and while having lower TDP than 75W, that means it doesn't require a separate 6pin connector from your PSU, which is also a nice thing.
Case/PSU: Any case with an included PSU, with at least 500W (managed to find Raidmax Rhino 550W case for like 20$). Now, why 500W when the build barely draws 250W at maximum load. Well first, it's a similar situation to HDDs, just as you won't save much money on taking 500Gb instead of 1Tb, the same way you won't be saving a lot of money by taking a sub 500W PSU comparing to a 500 ~ 550W. Now there are a couple of factors here. Low quallity PSUs usually get named for their peak output, which is meaningless, because "peak" doesn't have a defined time period, so it could range from half a millisecond to a minute or two. Such PSU's can handle lower wattages fine, somewhere along the lines of 350 ~ 400W, which is again, sufficient for this build. Also, such PSU's commonly do not have 6pin connectors, so it's a good thing our 750ti doesn't need one.
Overall, people will suggest against picking up low quality PSUs and rightfully so. A lot of my inexperienced friends bought some cheap chinese PSUs which couldn't output enough power even though they were more than powerful enough (supposedly). A common symptom of a weak PSU is when your PC shuts down, soon after you start playing a game or run a CPU/GPU intensive app.
Optical drive and OS aren't included in the price, because for gaming you're going to run windows 7 or 8 anyway, and you'll buy a DVD drive if you need one, it's no rocket science.
#velmspcbuilds Dedicated minecraft server - 350$ ~ 450$
Today we cover the hardware for dedicated minecraft servers. And you will see soon why am I posting about this specific purpose.
Well, after a period of inactivity and the overall lack of new hardware, Intel's Devil's Canyon CPUs finally came out, which did introduce better thermal paste for its internal heatspreader and refreshed haswell architecture. The new i7 4790K, i5 4690K and the star of the show, Unlocked Dual core Pentium G3258, clocked at 3.2Ghz by default.
So let's begin.
CPU: Intel Pentium Dual Core G3258. For 75$ you get a capable dual core CPU which can be overclocked as far as 4.4Ghz on stock cooling, though I have seen cases where people managed to get to 4.8Ghz and stay stable at the same time. At 4.4Ghz it easily beats out i3s priced at around 130$.
The main reason you should choose this CPU for your minecraft server is because it's unlocked, cheap and has only two cores. And guess what, minecraft dedicated server is a strictly single threaded aplication, meaning that you can spend 550$ on a 4930K but the server won't perform much better than on an overclocked G3258, because it uses only one core. Being unlocked also allows you to get more bang for you buck and begin able to push 4.4Ghz on stock cooling it like a dream come true for single threaded apps.
MOBO: ASRock Z97M Pro4 - For a minecraft server, you need to care about overclockability, which is supplied by the Z97 chipset, maximum RAM support, which is 32Gb in this case, and SATA3 ports, 6 ports overall, it also has RAID support if you need that extra capacity and read/write speeds, or just a backup drive in case anything goes wrong.
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-U12P SE2 (optional) - Nothing fancy, I just picked it up for it's silence and slightly better performance than the stock. Though if you want to save money, you can stick with the stock one.
RAM: Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB 1600Mhz. I think it will be a while until a cheaper 1600 CL9 1.5V kit apears.
SSD: Kingston SSDNow V300 120Gb (optional) - Not exactly stellar speeds, but if you really need more, just shove 2 of them into RAID 0, because you'll do regular backups on the HDD.
HDD: WD Caviar Green 1TB (Red is also a viable option, but more expensive while we're at it) - chosen for it's focus on silence and power efficiency, besides, you'll probably just use it for backups if you pick up the SSD. If you do skip the SSD, get WD Red or WD Blue, WD Black just isn't worth it and WD Purple is meant for security footage servers, so don't mix those up.
Case: Just pick up some case with a powersupply 450 ~ 500W, mostly because this build guzzles around 150W at stock speeds and expect it to reach up to 200W when overclocked. And yes, 500W (usually peak rating, not the continuous one) is overkill, but as I said multiple times before, even if it's just 250W it will still do the job, paying for the cases bellow 500W just doesnt seem to be worth of the extra 5$ of savings.
I also forgot to mention that the Z97 motherboard will allow you to upgrade to any i5 or i7 in the upcoming broadwell generation, that is if mojang stops sitting on it's hands and develops proper multi core support for the server application.
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/3P12L - The Dream Machine.
Take note, this is the "perfect high end pc" for me. Some of you might prefer the quad 780 Tis and 4960Xs, I wouldn't. Anyway let's begin.
CPU: i7-4930K - the high end sweetspot CPU. It has 6 cores and hyperthreading, which makes it a quite capable heavy lifter. Now, someone would ask, why not 4960X? Well, 4960X is still a 6 core CPU with slightly more cache memory and a higher clock and costs 2 times as 4930K does. Paying twice as much for marginal performance increase is silly. Yes, I am calling all of you 4960X owers, silly people.
MOBO: MSI Bing Bang XPower II XL ATX. Where to start, the completely black finish, 128Gb maximum RAM support, 7 full sized PCIe slots. Quad SLI and Quad Crossfire support. 4 SATA2 and 6 SATA3 slots. I mean, do I need to say anything else? This thing has it all.
CPU Cooler: I chose the H100i, just for one thing, the Corsair Link. I admit, I like monitoring my hardware, one of the reasons I run Rainmeter skins on my desktop all the time. If I didn't have that urge, I'd probably go with Cooler Master Seidon 240M.
The fans on H100i would be replaced with 4 Noctua's P12 PWM fans. It's a marginal decrease in performance, but significant improvement in noise levels.
RAM: G.Skill Ares 2x8Gb 2133Mhz - One of the rare 2133Mhz 1.5V kits on the market. I didn't go full 64Gb with these, because let's be frank, games and most apps won't require more than 8Gb of ram any time soon. Kingston at the moment doesn't have any ram kits like this and corsair ones were just more expensive, though the black heat spreader would be more fitting.
SSD: Asus ROG Raidr - 240Gb PCIe - 800mb/s + read/writes. Not to mention it looks awesome. xD
HDD: WD Green 3TB - Meh, it's just so the music and other space requiring junk doesn't take space on the edgy SSD.
GPU: 2x MSI Twin Frozr GTX770 4Gb. I covered these cards before for their good price performance ratio, though the 2Gb frame buffer just doesn't do any justice to these cards.
Case: BitFenix Shinobi - It's a beatiful metal box. And no I don't like Obsidian 900D, it looks like an oven and not a PC case.
PSU: Corsair 1200W - AX1200i - same reason as H100i, the corsair link which allows me to monitor the PSU. Quite handy considering PSUs rarely have such features.
Soundcard: Asus Xonar Essence STX - The best consumer grade soundcard on the market. I don't care if I'm deaf as Beethoven, I want this.
Fans: A couple of noctua fans for the case.
Fan Controler: A touchscreen fan controler to control all those noctua fans. Knowing my lazy ass, I would just leave them at 80% and forget about them, considering how silent they are. xD
Optical Drive: Asus BW-12B1ST - Blu Ray drive, because why not. Not like I would spend 5$ on a BR Disc anyway. xD
Overclock: Just overclock the CPU from 3.4 to 3.6, just so we can laugh at the 4960X silly people. xD
Regarding the peripherals: I already have what I like (G710+, Cavimanus 7.1, and Genius 4500 125W 5.1), I just need to get the G502 and I'm done with those.
pcpartpicker.com/p/3Oa9y And now for something interesting. A sub 200W Gaming PC.
These days it's all about higher performance with little or no regard for power consumption. Only in past couple of years manufacturers decided that lower power consumption is something people genuinely need. This build is for those people who need to cut down on power consumption and noise without giving up much performance.
So let's begin.
CPU: Intel i5 4690S. S suffix means it's a low power variant, 65W TDP comparing to its normal counterpart at 84W. There is not much to say about this CPU, it;s performance is comparable to i5 4570, which isn't far behind the commonly used 4670K. In the low power category AMD CPUs simply didn't stand a chance, which I hope will change with the next generation of their desktop CPUs.
MOBO: Gigabyte GA-B85N Mini ITX. The smaller it is, the less power it consumes. People usually overlook motherboard power requirements, while not rarely it is the component that guzzles most of the power. Maximum RAM capacity of 16Gb does seem low, but mini ITX boards with 4 RAM slots are really rare and usually too expensive for those extra 2 slots to be worth it. No overclocking capabilities with the B85 chipset, one PCIe slot and 3 SATA3 + 1 SATA2 slots for your storage needs.
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-U9B SE2 - Chosen for it's exceptionally low noise rating: 7.9 - 17.6 dbA There isn't much to say about this cooler besides it does it's job and it does it silently.
RAM: Kingston XMP Blu 1600Mhz 1.5V 2x8Gb. So, someone would ask "Why 1.5V RAM when there are 1.25 ~ 1.35V kits." Well there's the thing, all newer Intel CPUs require ram to run at 1.5V +/-5% (1.425V ~ 1.575V) (1.65V with certified kits in XMP mode). Running lower voltage RAM on this build, would cause system instabilities, even failiure to POST in some cases, so anything other than 1.5V is not an option.
SSD: Kingston HyperX 3K 240Gb. I already covered this SSD in my previous builds. Top of the line performance and one thing that's common for all SSDs, extremely low power consumption, 1 ~ 2 watts (maybe 3W with some large SSDs).
HDD: I didn't add a harddrive to this build to keep the power requirement to a minimum, but you can always pick up WD Caviar Green 3TB for extra space. Those drives are designed with low power consumption and noise levles in mind.
GPU: I think we all knew this one. The GTX 750ti, simply the most energy efficient GPU on the market currently (until Maxwell series, aka GTX800 cards come out). It performs the same as R7 260X with using half the power a 260X needs. I opted for EVGA one, because of the physical dimensions of the card.
PSU: Corsair 430W. I know, this PSU is overkill, but I had hard time finding a high quality PSU with 250W ~ 300W power output.
Case: BitFenix Prodigy. Probably the most popular mini ITX case at the moment. And for good reasons. It offers good acoustics, rubber feet to dampen the vibrations, looks nice, has carrying handles and is compact.
Though, some things to keep an eye out for:
Broadwell Intel CPUs are coming out this year, they are build with 14nm manufacturing process which in comparison to 22nm, results in less heat, lower power requirement and higher performance per watt. Same goes for nVidias Maxwell generation. I haven't found much info on AMD's upcoming products besides those ultra low power APUs.
In theory this build shouldn't be able to draw more than 200 watts of power even on full load. The graphics card might get noisy, due to the small fan, but that was the limitation of the case. You can always opt for one of those dual fan cards and remove the drive cage from the case to fit it in.
pcpartpicker.com/p/3NrUt - The "Console killer" 450$ build. This build was created to stay under 500$, offer decent performance, and some upgradeability.
CPU: AMD Athlon 750K 3.4Ghz quad core. I admit, Intel doesn't have anything like it. At lower budgets and at this price, you will see this CPU being suggested a lot. Why? Well it's a competent Quad Core CPU for 80$ which uses FM2 socket. Closest Intel has in terms of performance is the i3 3220, which costs about 130$. Now you can see why this CPU is so commonly suggested. While the i3 consumes about 50% less power at this price range it's not worth it, even with the fact that these low budget builds have to focus on power consumption. At number crunching it's about 2 times slower than i7s, which cost 300$+, it's price performance ratio speaks for itself.
MOBO: Well, FM2/FM2+ motherboards are some of the cheapest motherboards on the market and support the newest AMD's APUs, which is a big plus in this price range. The Gigabyte GA-F2A78M-HD2 I selected does the job, but just barely. Two RAM sockets, supporting 64Gb of ram (Don't ask, I don't know why would a board like this support 64Gb of ram), speeds up to 2400Mhz, 4x SATA3 slots (useful for adding a SSD later). No Crossfire or SLI due to having only one PCIe slot. My only gripe with it is that it doesnt have 4 ram slots, but if you want to pick up such a board Gigabyte GA-F2A78M-D3H is a fine choice for 5$ more.
CPU Cooler: While I like AMD's aproach to making competitive CPUs at reasonable prices, for god's sake make a new stock cooler. At the very least make one that uses 80mm or 92mm fans, you know, the "standard sizes"? No, you use 70mm fan that spins up to 6300RPM (seen it once reach 6500RPM), whoever designed that stock cooler is a deaf man.
Yes while I'm cringing, I am suggesting a stock cooler for this build, just to keep the cost down. If you don't want to suffer the design flaws of coolers designed by deaf people, get CM 212 Evo, or any other FM2 compatible cooler for that matter, it will be quieter anyway.
RAM: Cheapest 8Gb you can find, I'm currently sticking with that same Crucial 8Gb 1600Mhz, due to it having average performance at a great price, though you wouldn't see much of a decrease in performance with 1333Mhz RAM.
HDD: WD Blue 1TB. Now, some would ask, why not 500Gb to save money? WD Caviar Blue 1TB, costs 56$, WD Caviar Blue 500Gb , costs 50$. You don't have to have a PhD from maths to figure that one out.
GPU: Asus GeForce GTX 750ti 2GB. At the moment, it's performance per watt is unmatched. It's AMD counterpart, the R7 260X does perform similarly in game benchmarks, but has a TDP of 115W, comparing to 750ti's 60W. It's because the 750ti is built on the upcoming maxwell GPU architecture that focuses on improving performance while significantly decreasing power consumption, something people tend to overlook. Because all of that juice it draws, ends up as excess heat. Remember why FX9590 had a stock liquid cooler? Because of the 220W TDP everyone laughed at.
Overall, this variant of 750ti has a dual fan cooler, which is more than enough to keep it cool, and while having lower TDP than 75W, that means it doesn't require a separate 6pin connector from your PSU, which is also a nice thing.
Case/PSU: Any case with an included PSU, with at least 500W (managed to find Raidmax Rhino 550W case for like 20$). Now, why 500W when the build barely draws 250W at maximum load. Well first, it's a similar situation to HDDs, just as you won't save much money on taking 500Gb instead of 1Tb, the same way you won't be saving a lot of money by taking a sub 500W PSU comparing to a 500 ~ 550W. Now there are a couple of factors here. Low quallity PSUs usually get named for their peak output, which is meaningless, because "peak" doesn't have a defined time period, so it could range from half a millisecond to a minute or two. Such PSU's can handle lower wattages fine, somewhere along the lines of 350 ~ 400W, which is again, sufficient for this build. Also, such PSU's commonly do not have 6pin connectors, so it's a good thing our 750ti doesn't need one.
Overall, people will suggest against picking up low quality PSUs and rightfully so. A lot of my inexperienced friends bought some cheap chinese PSUs which couldn't output enough power even though they were more than powerful enough (supposedly). A common symptom of a weak PSU is when your PC shuts down, soon after you start playing a game or run a CPU/GPU intensive app.
Optical drive and OS aren't included in the price, because for gaming you're going to run windows 7 or 8 anyway, and you'll buy a DVD drive if you need one, it's no rocket science.
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/3MbHX
CPU: i5 4670K - chosen for it's performance and energy efficiency, as well as smaller thermal signature. K suffix means you can overclock the CPU. Yes, it's a common thing with Intel charging extra for overclocking, but you can't argue with it's results.
CPU Cooler: I have suggested Cooler Master 212 EVO, so many times, I'm beginning to feel bad for other manufacturers. So there's a suggestion from Zalman, but if you want to go CM, go for 212 EVO.
MOBO: Gigabyte GA-Z87MX-D3H - chosen for supporting overclocking and both Crossfire and SLI at a great price. Though no support for ram faster than1600Mhz. Z87 chipset allows you to overclock your CPU and with Intel's strict control of chipset manufacturing, you can expect similar overclocking performance on all Z87 boards.
RAM: Crucial Ballistix Sport 1x8GB, great value, runs at 1600Mhz and at 1.5V, which is a requirement for all new Intel CPUs.
SSD: Kingston HyperX 3K 120GB - chosen for it's stellar performance, though 240Gb might be a better idea, but that would go over the budget.
HDD: WD Blue 1TB, cheap storage. WD Green is also a viable choice and comes in higher capacities than 1TB.
GPU: For graphics card you pretty much have two choices for this build, GTX770 or R9 280X. I usually suggest MSI Twinfrozr cards, because they hit the sweetspot between the price, cooling and noise levels. Gigabyte's windforce cards, have more powerful cooling, but it is more noisy I don't really have expirience with asuses direct CU2 cards, but judging by the benchmarks, they are close to MSI twinfrozr, but cost more. If you wish to save money on the graphics card, go with R9 280 or GTX760, though personally I wouldn't go down that route.
At the moment GTX770 and R9 280X are the sweetspot cards everything above and bellow is less cost efficient.
Metal Bawks: For the gaming case, take what you like, I personally never liked spending more than 50$ on a metal box, because the excess money can go into more RAM, larger SSD, better cooling and so on. You should buy expensive cases only and only if money is not a problem for you and you have a relatively large budget (2000$+).
PSU: Corsair CX600W, a sufficiently powerful PSU for both GTX770 and R9 280X, but if you'd like to run SLI or Crossfire, you will need a more powerful powersupply.
I did not include a optical drive, because people rarely use DVDs these days, and you can install your OS via USB drive. But if you need one, take the samsung or asus ones. DO NOT TAKE LITE ON, that stuff is noisy as hell (I have one, so yeah).
I assemble all of my builds without peripherals and operating systems because those choices are up to the user. I can give general suggestions, but I won't include them in the PC builds.
CPU: i5 4670K - chosen for it's performance and energy efficiency, as well as smaller thermal signature. K suffix means you can overclock the CPU. Yes, it's a common thing with Intel charging extra for overclocking, but you can't argue with it's results.
CPU Cooler: I have suggested Cooler Master 212 EVO, so many times, I'm beginning to feel bad for other manufacturers. So there's a suggestion from Zalman, but if you want to go CM, go for 212 EVO.
MOBO: Gigabyte GA-Z87MX-D3H - chosen for supporting overclocking and both Crossfire and SLI at a great price. Though no support for ram faster than1600Mhz. Z87 chipset allows you to overclock your CPU and with Intel's strict control of chipset manufacturing, you can expect similar overclocking performance on all Z87 boards.
RAM: Crucial Ballistix Sport 1x8GB, great value, runs at 1600Mhz and at 1.5V, which is a requirement for all new Intel CPUs.
SSD: Kingston HyperX 3K 120GB - chosen for it's stellar performance, though 240Gb might be a better idea, but that would go over the budget.
HDD: WD Blue 1TB, cheap storage. WD Green is also a viable choice and comes in higher capacities than 1TB.
GPU: For graphics card you pretty much have two choices for this build, GTX770 or R9 280X. I usually suggest MSI Twinfrozr cards, because they hit the sweetspot between the price, cooling and noise levels. Gigabyte's windforce cards, have more powerful cooling, but it is more noisy I don't really have expirience with asuses direct CU2 cards, but judging by the benchmarks, they are close to MSI twinfrozr, but cost more. If you wish to save money on the graphics card, go with R9 280 or GTX760, though personally I wouldn't go down that route.
At the moment GTX770 and R9 280X are the sweetspot cards everything above and bellow is less cost efficient.
Metal Bawks: For the gaming case, take what you like, I personally never liked spending more than 50$ on a metal box, because the excess money can go into more RAM, larger SSD, better cooling and so on. You should buy expensive cases only and only if money is not a problem for you and you have a relatively large budget (2000$+).
PSU: Corsair CX600W, a sufficiently powerful PSU for both GTX770 and R9 280X, but if you'd like to run SLI or Crossfire, you will need a more powerful powersupply.
I did not include a optical drive, because people rarely use DVDs these days, and you can install your OS via USB drive. But if you need one, take the samsung or asus ones. DO NOT TAKE LITE ON, that stuff is noisy as hell (I have one, so yeah).
I assemble all of my builds without peripherals and operating systems because those choices are up to the user. I can give general suggestions, but I won't include them in the PC builds.
pcpartpicker.com/p/3MQ4d Now on to the AMD counterpart build. In case of TL
R - cheaper up front, but more heat and higher power consumption, performance is almost identical. So let's start.
CPU: FX8320 3.5Ghz /4.0Ghz turbo. Now, many of you will ask, why not the FX8350 which runs at 4.0Ghz/4.2Ghz turbo? Well, you see, all processors are designed to operate at turbo frequencies at all times. Turbo boost was introduced as a form of CPU throttling when it's idle or doing some lighter tasks, that results in lower power consumption and lower heat output. Even Intel's CPUs that aren't overclock able, can be overclocked to run at their turbo speed as default. So, by buying 8320 you're pretty much buying a 4.0Ghz octa core (not getting into that discussion, but if AMD calls them octa core CPUs I'll call them octa core CPUs), while by buying 8350 you're buying a 4.2Ghz octa core CPU. The difference in performance between 4.0 and 4.2 is marginal and you might notice it only in some CPU heavy apps, video rendering apps might finish their renders a couple of percent faster. Besides, you can push 8320 almost as far as 8350, maybe 100 ~ 200Mhz lower, still nothing significant. In this case, it's 140$ 8320 vs 190$ 8350. Comparing to 8320, 8350 costs 35% more and by benchmarks here: http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+FX-8320+Eight-Core you can see that it performs around 11% faster at stock speeds. Anyone can get extra 10% by overclocking and I mean anyone and you get to keep those 50$ to spend on something cool, like liquid cooling.
That is what cost effectiveness is all about.
MOBO: ASRock 990FX Extreme3 - A great motherboard for overclocking with 990FX chipset, maximum 32Gb ram, ram speeds up to 2100Mhz (which isn't really important because you should go up to 1866Mhz with AMD CPUs and because higher speed ram becomes less cost effective as the speed goes up). Now that doesn't mean that you can't shove for example that new fancy 2400Mhz ram AMD just released, but you wont be able to run it at it's full speed, so it's pretty much wasted potential.
It has both Crossfire and SLI support, 5 SATA3 ports with RAID support, good enough for most people and a very reasonable price.
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Seidon 120XL. I love it for several reasons. First, it needs no maintenance since it's a closed loop system, no danger of leaking because of the same reason. A common issue with people that fiddle around with their H100is and then forget to secure the hose properly, next thing you know, your GPU and MOBO are dead because of a coolant leak. So for people who want great liquid cooling with no risk of leaking and at a reasonable price, Seidon 120XL and 240M are the way to go. Just don't go with 120M, its only slightly cheaper than 120XL, but performs much worse than 120XL and 240M.
Just one complaint about Seidon series coolers, the Blademaster 120mm fans CM uses on them, run at pretty high RPM by default, you should lower it via fan control software or via fan controller, because they tend to randomly make creepy whiny sounds.
RAM: Nothing interesting there. 1600Mhz, CL9, 1.5V Crucial. You can get what you like, you don't have to worry about RAM voltages with AMD CPUs, just try not to go over 1866Mhz in speeds. Kingston's HyperBeast and Hyper Predator series have perfect RAMs for both Intel and AMD platforms.
SSD: Kingston HyperX 3K 240Gb. Yup, the slightly lower prices AMD platform offers, resulted in us getting a kickass liquid cooler and not a meager 120Gb SSD, but 240Gb one. And believe me, if you're playing more than 2 games on your PC, 120Gb just won't cut it. Anyway, what I said before, HyperX 3K still dominates the consumer SSD market in terms of performance (I know about mushkin advertising 600mb/s speeds, but I also heard about a large number of people having those same drives die on them frequently).
HDD: any WD drive will do, I just shove the 1TB Blue, because it's the cheapest 1TB you can get. There's Seagate as well, but I haven't had much experience with them.
GPU: Sapphire 280X Dual X 3Gb. It's counterpart is the GTX770, both cards perform almost identically with each having it's advantages and disadvantages. With GTX770 you get shadowplay, physx, gamestream, lower power consumption and lower thermal output. On AMD side you get True Audio, larger frame buffer, 3Gb comparing to 770's 2Gb, it's slightly cheaper and supports 4 way Crossfire (which I strongly suggest against, because the efficiency of both SLI and Crossfire drops exponentially with every card above 2).
So the choice is up to you. R9 280 and GTX760 aren't really worth it in this budget, costing just 50$ less (around 17% less), while having significantly lower performance.
Case: It's just a metal box. I tend to suggest Zalman, because they make some pretty sturdy cases at affordable prices. Though if you're hellbent on getting CM, HAF 912 is around 60$.
PSU: Considering that this system will draw approximately 500 watts at full load, so the minimum you should be looking for is 600W.
Always look for certified PSUs, getting a non certified PSU is quite dangerous, because a faulty PSU can fry most of your PC components.
Optical Drive: Just make sure it's SATA and not IDE if you really need it, those haven't really changed at least for a decade.
R - cheaper up front, but more heat and higher power consumption, performance is almost identical. So let's start.CPU: FX8320 3.5Ghz /4.0Ghz turbo. Now, many of you will ask, why not the FX8350 which runs at 4.0Ghz/4.2Ghz turbo? Well, you see, all processors are designed to operate at turbo frequencies at all times. Turbo boost was introduced as a form of CPU throttling when it's idle or doing some lighter tasks, that results in lower power consumption and lower heat output. Even Intel's CPUs that aren't overclock able, can be overclocked to run at their turbo speed as default. So, by buying 8320 you're pretty much buying a 4.0Ghz octa core (not getting into that discussion, but if AMD calls them octa core CPUs I'll call them octa core CPUs), while by buying 8350 you're buying a 4.2Ghz octa core CPU. The difference in performance between 4.0 and 4.2 is marginal and you might notice it only in some CPU heavy apps, video rendering apps might finish their renders a couple of percent faster. Besides, you can push 8320 almost as far as 8350, maybe 100 ~ 200Mhz lower, still nothing significant. In this case, it's 140$ 8320 vs 190$ 8350. Comparing to 8320, 8350 costs 35% more and by benchmarks here: http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+FX-8320+Eight-Core you can see that it performs around 11% faster at stock speeds. Anyone can get extra 10% by overclocking and I mean anyone and you get to keep those 50$ to spend on something cool, like liquid cooling.
That is what cost effectiveness is all about.
MOBO: ASRock 990FX Extreme3 - A great motherboard for overclocking with 990FX chipset, maximum 32Gb ram, ram speeds up to 2100Mhz (which isn't really important because you should go up to 1866Mhz with AMD CPUs and because higher speed ram becomes less cost effective as the speed goes up). Now that doesn't mean that you can't shove for example that new fancy 2400Mhz ram AMD just released, but you wont be able to run it at it's full speed, so it's pretty much wasted potential.
It has both Crossfire and SLI support, 5 SATA3 ports with RAID support, good enough for most people and a very reasonable price.
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Seidon 120XL. I love it for several reasons. First, it needs no maintenance since it's a closed loop system, no danger of leaking because of the same reason. A common issue with people that fiddle around with their H100is and then forget to secure the hose properly, next thing you know, your GPU and MOBO are dead because of a coolant leak. So for people who want great liquid cooling with no risk of leaking and at a reasonable price, Seidon 120XL and 240M are the way to go. Just don't go with 120M, its only slightly cheaper than 120XL, but performs much worse than 120XL and 240M.
Just one complaint about Seidon series coolers, the Blademaster 120mm fans CM uses on them, run at pretty high RPM by default, you should lower it via fan control software or via fan controller, because they tend to randomly make creepy whiny sounds.
RAM: Nothing interesting there. 1600Mhz, CL9, 1.5V Crucial. You can get what you like, you don't have to worry about RAM voltages with AMD CPUs, just try not to go over 1866Mhz in speeds. Kingston's HyperBeast and Hyper Predator series have perfect RAMs for both Intel and AMD platforms.
SSD: Kingston HyperX 3K 240Gb. Yup, the slightly lower prices AMD platform offers, resulted in us getting a kickass liquid cooler and not a meager 120Gb SSD, but 240Gb one. And believe me, if you're playing more than 2 games on your PC, 120Gb just won't cut it. Anyway, what I said before, HyperX 3K still dominates the consumer SSD market in terms of performance (I know about mushkin advertising 600mb/s speeds, but I also heard about a large number of people having those same drives die on them frequently).
HDD: any WD drive will do, I just shove the 1TB Blue, because it's the cheapest 1TB you can get. There's Seagate as well, but I haven't had much experience with them.
GPU: Sapphire 280X Dual X 3Gb. It's counterpart is the GTX770, both cards perform almost identically with each having it's advantages and disadvantages. With GTX770 you get shadowplay, physx, gamestream, lower power consumption and lower thermal output. On AMD side you get True Audio, larger frame buffer, 3Gb comparing to 770's 2Gb, it's slightly cheaper and supports 4 way Crossfire (which I strongly suggest against, because the efficiency of both SLI and Crossfire drops exponentially with every card above 2).
So the choice is up to you. R9 280 and GTX760 aren't really worth it in this budget, costing just 50$ less (around 17% less), while having significantly lower performance.
Case: It's just a metal box. I tend to suggest Zalman, because they make some pretty sturdy cases at affordable prices. Though if you're hellbent on getting CM, HAF 912 is around 60$.
PSU: Considering that this system will draw approximately 500 watts at full load, so the minimum you should be looking for is 600W.
Always look for certified PSUs, getting a non certified PSU is quite dangerous, because a faulty PSU can fry most of your PC components.
Optical Drive: Just make sure it's SATA and not IDE if you really need it, those haven't really changed at least for a decade.
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