JaredAFX, on 06 July 2013 - 03:10 PM, said:
I'm looking to buy parts for a custom PC. I'm competent in my ability to get compatible parts, but just in case, I wanna ask you guys before ordering.
I'm not trying to cheap out on anything. If you guys think I should get different parts, please, let me know. I'm at about $1,200 right now and I can go higher. $1,400-1,500 is my max--I really want this to be future proof for a couple of years. Play Generations flawlessly now... replace dying parts 4-5 years later.
Cheap out? You have quite a bit of money sunk in the motherboard.
You can get something that will suit your needs just as well for $120. From there, you could use the savings to buy
16GB of RAM for good future-proofing with the onset of the Playstation 4.
I also wouldn't bother buying an i7 CPU because hyperthreading costs you $100 more and does not offer a noticeable improvement in games. Instead, I'd just buy the
Core i5 4670k. For one thing, you could overclock it. You can get it to at least 4.2GHz with an
aftermarket heatsink, like this one I use that works perfectly. Even in the most favorable circumstances, Hyperthreading cannot outperform a 25% overclock. Making this decision will give you a big performance increase if you choose to overclock, and only a 5-10% drop if you choose not to. and save you $55. The motherboard will even do the overclocking for you automatically if you don't want to raise the voltage offset by 0.05V.
That wireless adapter you found is only compatible with mini pci-e slots found on laptops, so you would have to shell out about $10 for an adapter just to make it work on your desktop PC. You also don't have to buy at wireless adapter at the obscene price of $54.
I have this $8 wireless-N adapter that uses USB 2.0 that has worked perfectly for me. Remember- your wi-fi adapter only needs to be as fast as your internet service, and this thing still moves data at 150mbps. As it turns out, I don't need mine anymore. Since it was so cheap, I'll just give it to you for free. I can mail it in a small envelope for ~50 cents. This right here is $65 in savings, $57 even if you had to buy the adapter for yourself. You also don't even have to open your PC to install and remove this thing.
With those savings, I would recommend buying an
NVidia GTX 760 instead of the 650Ti. The performance gain is over double, I don't know what else to say about that.
I think you would be better off saving your money and getting a
550W PSU instead. This is still a lot more than what you need for an 85W CPU and a GTX 760. This PSU is still 80PLUS Gold certified, so it's highly efficient.
As for your storage solution, I would just shell out $10 more and get this
128GB SSD instead of that 64GB unit or else skip the SSD altogether. You have to put most of your games on the hard drive anyway, so the performance gain isn't that great. I have an SSD, and it's really not that much better for desktops. If you take my advice, you're getting 16GB of RAM anyway which gives you enough RAM to run an 8GB drive on ramdisk (run a virtual hard drive using RAM) which reads at over 6000 MB/s instead of 400 MB/s. 8GB of These things provide the most utility inside laptops where shock resistance, power consumption, and noise are much more significant deciding factors. When I do a complete reboot, I'm going to put my
60GB SSD in my laptop anyway. If you don't get the SSD, you save $82.
Summary of suggestions...
-Buy a
cheaper motherboard that still has everything you need and more, save $60.
-Buy the unlocked i5 instead of the locked i7, buy a $25 heatsink, save $55 and still get a 20% performance increase.
-Don't buy the incompatible wi-fi adpater, take mine for free, save another $55 and have an adapter that actually works.
-Don't buy a 750W PSU,
buy a 550W PSU, save $40, and still have way more power than you need even with a GTX 760 in your system.
-Don't buy the SSD, use RAMdisk instead, save $82 and get
over 15 times the read/write speed.
-Use the $290 you just saved to buy
16GB of RAM instead of 8, buy a
GTX 760 instead of a 650Ti, and watch your game performance shoot through the roof.
-Maybe buy another set of the same RAM sticks I just recommended since you have a $1400 budget, and you've still spent less after doing all these things.
If you do everything I suggested, you spend $25 more, but you end up with a CPU that's typically 20% faster, a video card twice as fast, and four times as much RAM. I can't make any suggestions about getting Windows 7 cheaply because Sonic Retro has rules set in place for understandable reasons, but if to use more than 16GB as system RAM (not ramdisk), you need to get Windows 7 Pro instead.
EDIT:
http://www.raymond.c...ase-in-ramdisk/
I'm sure this will come in handy.
This post has been edited by Extended Play: 07 July 2013 - 12:31 AM
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