Building a new PC 2014

[Glengoyne]

So I did this about three years back, and I benefited greatly from the input I got here, so I'm looking to exploit all of your knowledge and and experience to my benefit once again.


My existing machine i5, 8GB ram, with a Radeon 6770 runs pretty much everything I run reasonably well.

I don't have a huge demand for graphics. My home system still only has one monitor. The games I play aren't too demanding, and I don't really have to lower the settings too much when I play. Recent gaming hours have included....
Skyrim,
Portal 2,
Torchlight 2,
Path of Exile,
World of Tanks,
Minecraft,
and I could see Diablo 3 getting purchased and played.

The kids are older, and I'm looking to pass my machine off to them, and keep the new machine for the adults.

I'm looking at an i7 4770 on an ASUS H87M Pro. I'm not interested in over clocking, so that appears to give me a reasonably fast system that I can likely run with stock cooling. <-- Thoughts on that?

I'm sticking with 8GB ram with windows 7 64bit.

For my video card I'm looking at a Radeon 6670, also from ASUS. <-- Is this too low end? I'm figuring it is about a $85, so that should be roughly equivalent to my $100 card of yesteryear.

The storage will be a 120GB SSD and a 2 TB sata.

All of the above including a monitor and peripherals is looking to run about $1250 on Newegg.

I guess I could go with a lower end CPU and then pump up the video card, but I'm not sure about that logic.

Again, I'm looking to benefit from the community's experience. thanks in advance.

[Scoobz0202]

What resolution do you run your games at?

If all you do is low intensive gaming and no real processing power is needed (Hardcore photoshop, etc) then you have no real need for a processor above an i5. Unless things have changed in the last year or so you will see no perceptible gain over say an i5 4570 and you'll save around $100 if not more.

Also, you're motherboard I think is good for those who overclock as i believe that is what the H87 is and if you are not going to then you only need a B85 chipset. I'd save a few bucks and get an ASRock B85 or something.

I'd then put the extra towards a better video card, because even if you don't do anything intense you'd be able to if you wanted. I haven't looked at prices but maybe look at a Radeon 7850, 7950, or GTX 760.

Honestly, you could probably even get an i3 4130 to save even more money and not notice too much of a difference unless your games require a little more processing power than graphical power, but I still wouldn't get above the i5 4570. Even if you don't want to get a much higher quality graphics card then maybe consider adding to extra saved to your bank account, or getting an IPS Dell U2312 IPS monitor or something that you would tangibly notice an improvement on. Or a larger SD. Or something.

Google benchmarks like "i5 4570 vs i7 4770 gaming benchmarks" and do the same for various video cards to get an idea where there is a big gap worth spending a little extra or cutting back.

[Glengoyne]

Thanks Scoobz,
On the H87 chipset. I thought that was the set for no over clocking, and the Z87 had all of the over clocking options. I'm just an ASUS fan when it comes to MBs, it stems from the old days when they were a cut above. These days, I imagine that the playing field is MUCH more level.

I'll look into the i5 vs i7 comparisons as I kind of thought that might be the case. I'm frankly just looking at it, and saying that I can get the "best" there is for just a bit more. Do games like FM woud benefit from the i7?

[stevew]

Snag the video card from the old machine, give the kids stock graphics and then when you have reached the maximum effectiveness of the card, splurge on a more expensive one.

[Glengoyne]

All right I'm stepping back from the i7 and going with the i5 4570, thank you for the advice Scoobz.

I used the savings to go with a Radeon R7 260 graphics card and snagged one of those fancy Dell IPS monitors to boot.

Good stuff. Now just the stress of building it. Oh and the wife, probably lurking over this thread, is requiring me to gather up at least three of my Legacy PCs that are lying around the house to clean them up and get rid of them.

[Glengoyne]

So yesterday at 3PM Pacific time I placed my order with Newegg.

This morning at 8:15 AM I received the entire order, aside from the OS that got dropped from the order for some reason.

That is less than 18 hours. Crazy! All that and I paid for the 99 cent 4-7 business day shipping.

[Edward64]

Originally Posted by Glengoyne

All right I'm stepping back from the i7 and going with the i5 4570, thank you for the advice Scoobz.

I used the savings to go with a Radeon R7 260 graphics card and snagged one of those fancy Dell IPS monitors to boot.

Good stuff. Now just the stress of building it. Oh and the wife, probably lurking over this thread, is requiring me to gather up at least three of my Legacy PCs that are lying around the house to clean them up and get rid of them.

Got me thinking about a new one but I've gotten 3 in the past 4 years (Dell and 2 builds) and don't think I can justify another one soon. I think you are set for a while except maybe for a new graphics card in 2-3 years time.

Back in the 90's and early 00's, it seemed that software would drive hardware sales every 3 years or so. When a computer couldn't handle a new OS or game, it was an indicator to buy a new one. Nowadays, other than for the GPU, desktops can last a lot longer with a little bit of upgrades.

Let me know how the SSD combo works out (is 120 enough?), been thinking about it ...