New PC Build

[Hangman]

I am having a new extension built starting in the next 4 weeks and will take upto 12 weeks to finish, once done I will have my own office / man cave.

I have not built my own PC for about 10 years but thought now would be a good time to put something together. The PC is not for high end gaming as I do most gaming on my XB1, I will be using the PC for general Office productivity, downloads, view videos, streaming and playing games like Football Manager and CIV plus Elite when it comes out. Also might consider plugging one of my old XB360's into one of the monitors.

As there are many of you on here with lots of experience of building PC's could you take a look at what I've put together and if you see problems or errors please let me know.

I won't be buying until the extension is complete so have plenty of time to play around with the configuration.

http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/dNzBGX

Thanks

Paul

[Jokah]

I would firstly suggest a different PSU. That wattage will be more than enough but Zalman aren't really one of the top contenders. Your PSU is not a place where you want to skimp. I haven't been keeping up with who's good and who's bad like I used to but some of the usual contenders were the likes of Corsair, Seasonic, Rosewill and BeQuiet (my personal favorite). Just picking one of these brands doesn't guarantee a good PSU though. Best to do some research and see who currently has some good PSU's around the 500W category.

The other thing I would do is get 2x4GB memory sticks instead of 1x8GB. The optimum setup for the board and CPU is for your RAM to run in dual channel mode. With only one stick in you will not be able to take advantage of it.

If your not doing much gaming I'm sure the GPU you have picked will be fine but may want to try step the processor up to an i5 Quad Core. Will be much more beneficial for your "general office productivity" and games like Civilization are quite processor intensive.

[consoles]

Think about future use rather than just for now, id deffo go with a 120gb + SSD M100 is a good SSD drive for the price range for the OS and what ever for storage build some future proofing in now rather than spending more later.
AMD chips are better for gaming intel for general all round use.

[pattikins]

The motherboard you've selected seems more suited to a gaming set up - crossfire. The Gigabyte GA-H81M-HD3 is worth a look & it's a lot cheaper. I'd also use the Intel stock cooler, & scrap the Coolermaster Hyper TX3...along with consoles suggestion I'd put the savings towards an i5 cpu. The i5 cpu's have a built in HD 4600 gpu & should also run the games that you've listed.

If you're willing to drop an inch, Scan are selling - X2380HS-B - 23" iiyama Prolite X2380HS LED IPS Monitor HDMI/DVI/VGA 1920x1080 - for £121

[Hangman]

Thanks, I'll have a play around with the configuration later,

[Hangman]

http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/user/hangman/saved/42qBD3

I've made a few changes, changed the CPU to an i5 4690S, removed the Coolermaster Fan and will use the stock Intel fan, changed the Memory to 2x 4GB and finally changed the CPU to a be quiet model.

I've also removed the graphics card, but am unsure how the integrated graphics will perform.

I decided to stay with this motherboard due to its additional upgrade potential for a small amount extra.

One more question which is more down to opinion, what do people think is better 1x Large screen (28" or 32") or 2x smaller screens (23" or 24")

[Jokah]

Nearly there I would say. I have just a few more suggestions.

You can do slightly better than that processor and for less money. Instead of the i5 4690S I would advise the i5 4690 (without the S). The S model is the same chip but running at a lower frequency so they can sell it as having a lower TDP. Basically meaning they can sell it as consuming less power therefore producing less heat. Essentially with the S model you are paying more for less.

Next would be the GPU. I am sorry but the suggestion to game on the processor iGPU is terrible (I don't mean to offend it just is). Although technically you can game on them it is not what they are intended for. Any game you play will have to be played on it's lowest settings. Even then some of the more demanding games will be next to unplayable. The GTX 750 you selected should be just fine for what you want to do but for just a little more money the AMD R7 265 seems to be the best bang for buck card at that price range. Consumes a little more power, probably a little noisier but makes up for it with the performance it delivers.

My final suggestion would be to be aware that when shopping on part picker it doesn't usually take postage costs into consideration. If you are ordering from say 4 different places then that is 4 lots of postage to pay. When doing a complete build it usually pays to buy everything from one place. Just find the place that does everything you want the cheapest.

[Hangman]

Nearly there I would say. I have just a few more suggestions.

You can do slightly better than that processor and for less money. Instead of the i5 4690S I would advise the i5 4690 (without the S). The S model is the same chip but running at a lower frequency so they can sell it as having a lower TDP. Basically meaning they can sell it as consuming less power therefore producing less heat. Essentially with the S model you are paying more for less.

Next would be the GPU. I am sorry but the suggestion to game on the processor iGPU is terrible (I don't mean to offend it just is). Although technically you can game on them it is not what they are intended for. Any game you play will have to be played on it's lowest settings. Even then some of the more demanding games will be next to unplayable. The GTX 750 you selected should be just fine for what you want to do but for just a little more money the AMD R7 265 seems to be the best bang for buck card at that price range. Consumes a little more power, probably a little noisier but makes up for it with the performance it delivers.

My final suggestion would be to be aware that when shopping on part picker it doesn't usually take postage costs into consideration. If you are ordering from say 4 different places then that is 4 lots of postage to pay. When doing a complete build it usually pays to buy everything from one place. Just find the place that does everything you want the cheapest.

Thanks, I won't be buying for a few weeks yet so will see how the CPU prices change and get the best I can for my money. I will probably initially buy without the graphics card only so I can keep the price down and hence keep the mrs of my back, it will be easier to add in a graphics card a month or 2 later without her noticing.

Regarding delivery, I live within driving distance of Scan so unless it really pushes up the price I will probably buy all from there together, as I get closer to buying i'll start to watch the deal of the day section.

[DejaVu]

I am having a new extension built starting in the next 4 weeks and will take upto 12 weeks to finish, once done I will have my own office / man cave.

May I suggest a progress thread with pictures? Love all that kinda stuff.

[pattikins]

Next would be the GPU. I am sorry but the suggestion to game on the processor iGPU is terrible (I don't mean to offend it just is).

Did you google the games hangman wants to play along with the Intel GPU (HD4600)? Here's a start:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0LohyD_rks
https://software.intel.com/sites/def...n_Brief_v3.pdf

[Jokah]

Well I do apologise. It seems to handle that game (and probably others of similar demand) to an acceptable level. I just peeked at a couple of reviews and I saw it running most games below 30 fps on medium settings at sub 1080p resolutions.

It would appear games like this and, I am going to assume, football manager should be playable on the chips iGPU. I doubt much else will be though so you will be limitting yourself drastically to what you can play. Just something to bare in mind.

[Hangman]

What if I added a Gigabyte GV-N750OC-1GI which is around £85?

[Hangman]

May I suggest a progress thread with pictures? Love all that kinda stuff.

I'll start a thread with photo's, just waiting on confirmation on the start date, hopefully will be within the next couple of weeks.

[Hangman]

Finally sorted the new PC, went for

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-H81M-D2V
CPU: Core i5 4690
Memory: 2x 8GB Kingston HyperX DDR3-1600
HDD: Toshiba 1TB SATA 600
Graphics: AMD Radeon R9 200 Series 2GB
Monitors: 2x Samsung S24C450BW 24"

I will add a SSD later and maybe a spare 2TB HDD that I have knocking around since the matching one in my NAS failed.