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How is this for a budget gaming PC?

Is there any reason why you're going with AMD over Intel? I could understand price concerns, but I built a pretty mid-high end PC a couple months back using a quad core Haswell i5 for just a few bucks more.

Same thing with the GPU. My GTX 970 isn't much more expensive than the R9 270x you've got, and is a bit more of a stout performer.

Oh, and I deeply recommend a closed loop watercooling setup for the CPU. The Corsair setup I've got is about the same price as your Cooler Master heatsink, but keeps things SO much cooler.
 
Renzatic said:
Is there any reason why you're going with AMD over Intel? I could understand price concerns, but I built a pretty mid-high end PC a couple months back using a quad core Haswell i5 for just a few bucks more.

Same thing with the GPU. My GTX 970 isn't much more expensive than the R9 270x you've got, and is a bit more of a stout performer.

Oh, and I deeply recommend a closed loop watercooling setup for the CPU. The Corsair setup I've got is about the same price as your Cooler Master heatsink, but keeps things SO much cooler.
Click to expand...
The GTX 970 is a card I wanna avoid because of the 4GB VRAM fiasco. I'll take a look at the water cooled option but I'm a first time builder so maybe it's not the best idea for me to go to that? I really do not wanna go above 1.5-1.6k NZD though and if I opt for the better GPU, CPU and the water cooler, I'll most definitely go over.
 
TechGod said:
The GTX 970 is a card I wanna avoid because of the 4GB VRAM fiasco. I'll take a look at the water cooled option but I'm a first time builder so maybe it's not the best idea for me to go to that? I really do not wanna go above 1.5-1.6k NZD though and if I opt for the better GPU, CPU and the water cooler, I'll most definitely go over.
Click to expand...

Eh, it's only sort of a fiasco, since that last janky 512GB doesn't change the fact that the 970 is still the best bang for the buck card on the market right now. I played through the Witcher 3 with one, and averaged about 45 FPS with everything maxed out (save for the Nvidia Krazy Hair FX or whatever it's called).

Though since it looks like you're going a bit cheaper on the GPU, I'd recommend the 960 GTX over that 750 ti you chose. It's a faster card, and it costs about the same.

As for the watercooling setup, I was a bit worried about installing one myself, since I had never done it before. But in practice, it's only slightly different from hooking up a bog standard heatsink. You run a bracket through the mobo, mount the mobo inside the case, install the radiator in place of one of your big 120mm case fans, set the waterblock on top of the CPU, then tighten it all down. There's no real worry about spills, since the liquid is entirely self contained (I didn't learn that fact myself until I was about ready to commit to it). It'll be nerve wracking, since it's your first time building a PC, but it's all pretty straightforward.
 
TechGod said:
The GTX 970 is a card I wanna avoid because of the 4GB VRAM fiasco. I'll take a look at the water cooled option but I'm a first time builder so maybe it's not the best idea for me to go to that? I really do not wanna go above 1.5-1.6k NZD though and if I opt for the better GPU, CPU and the water cooler, I'll most definitely go over.
Click to expand...

I assume you've dug around a little in a computer. A water cooled fan unit is pretty simple to install. I can see the concern of a leak, but they are sealed. Also, I preferred an Intel CPU, because it has no pins. Just be sure the motherboard is made for it. This guide may be of interest.

http://titanicbuildgamingpc.blogspot.com/2014/01/part-1-preliminaries.html
 
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Renzatic said:
Eh, it's only sort of a fiasco, since that last janky 512GB doesn't change the fact that the 970 is still the best bang for the buck card on the market right now. I played through the Witcher 3 with one, and averaged about 45 FPS with everything maxed out (save for the Nvidia Krazy Hair FX or whatever it's called).

Though since it looks like you're going a bit cheaper on the GPU, I'd recommend the 960 GTX over that 750 ti you chose. It's a faster card, and it costs about the same.

As for the watercooling setup, I was a bit worried about installing one myself, since I had never done it before. But in practice, it's only slightly different from hooking up a bog standard heatsink. You run a bracket through the mobo, mount the mobo inside the case, install the radiator in place of one of your big 120mm case fans, set the waterblock on top of the CPU, then tighten it all down. There's no real worry about spills, since the liquid is entirely self contained (I didn't learn that fact myself until I was about ready to commit to it). It'll be nerve wracking, since it's your first time building a PC, but it's all pretty straightforward.
Click to expand...
Ok, thanks a lot for your help guys! I'm still saving up so in the time that it takes me to fully save up, there will probably be better components to choose from (or these parts will just get cheaper)
 
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TechGod said:
Ok, thanks a lot for your help guys! I'm still saving up so in the time that it takes me to fully save up, there will probably be better components to choose from (or these parts will just get cheaper)
Click to expand...

No problem. Huntn's guide above will probably answer most any question you have about building a PC. It's pretty thorough. But if you've got any question beyond it, ask away.
 
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Id there a reason you're running an APU and a discreet card? The whole point of the APU is not need discreet. Here's what I'd build.

Gaming PC.PNG


https://pcpartpicker.com/parts/partlist/
 
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Just for poops and giggles, I went ahead and put together the machine I built a couple months back in PartsPicker. The first thing I noticed that I previously missed entirely, despite all the oh so suble clues, is that you're over in New Zealand. Yeah, I should've noticed from your location field, and the .nz, and all that, but...eh. I know now.

So when I said some things were roughly equivalent in price, I was a bit wrong. My machine in ANZ dollars with your selected monitor costs $2287. That said, it's a stout machine in a tiny package, and pretty well future proofed (though in retrospect, I should've picked a 600w gold rated PSU). Granted, Skylake and DDR4 are just around the corner, but I doubt they'll completely outclass Haswell/Broadwell on the desktop for a good while yet.

Oh, and despite the fact the CPU is advertised at 3.3Ghz, it almost always runs at 3.6Ghz when you set your power profile to high performance in Windows. It's temps idle a bit higher when I do this, but...eh. It's a desktop, not a laptop, so I'm not too worried.

With everything together, it looks like this (before I tidied up the wires). Lots of power, little space used.
 
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lowendlinux said:
Id there a reason you're running an APU and a discreet card? The whole point of the APU is not need discreet. Here's what I'd build.

https://pcpartpicker.com/parts/partlist/
Click to expand...

Definitely something I would do, and actually have done. I've been nothing but impressed with the miniITX build I made, to where the only changes I have made to it since building it was swapping out the video card (which I really didn't need to do; RadeonHD 6950 w/second core unlocked to a Radeon R9 290), and swapped my 1.5TB WD Green 5400RPM drive for a Samsung 850 EVO 500GB SSD (moved the green drive to offline backups in addition to a Synology NAS I have). $300 change, and that would last me. I'll put together what I did and post it.

BL.
 
bradl said:
Definitely something I would do, and actually have done. I've been nothing but impressed with the miniITX build I made, to where the only changes I have made to it since building it was swapping out the video card (which I really didn't need to do; RadeonHD 6950 w/second core unlocked to a Radeon R9 290), and swapped my 1.5TB WD Green 5400RPM drive for a Samsung 850 EVO 500GB SSD (moved the green drive to offline backups in addition to a Synology NAS I have). $300 change, and that would last me. I'll put together what I did and post it.

BL.
Click to expand...

When I build computer for most people I’m able to convince them to go mini ITX it just make more sense for most people a small computer small footprint with just basically non-consequntial trade offs.
 
lowendlinux said:
When I build computer for most people I’m able to convince them to go mini ITX it just make more sense for most people a small computer small footprint with just basically non-consequntial trade offs.
Click to expand...

And I figured that out 2 years ago after going at least 10+ years doing huge ATX builds. After seeing how smooth that mini ITX build went, that's when I decided that I'm not going to build another PC again. That suited me more than enough for the very little gaming I do (the odd revisit to Doom and Duke Nukem 3D, and Flight Simulator). My only concern is I play it really safe and not only pick out everything, but put that same build up against the PSU Calculator to see what my wattage would be. Once seeing what they recommend, I double it. Your build comes out to roughly 212W, so the 550W you added is perfect. My Core i5-3570K build came out to 416W, so I went with a 750W PSU.

BL.
 
Renzatic said:
Just for poops and giggles, I went ahead and put together the machine I built a couple months back in PartsPicker. The first thing I noticed that I previously missed entirely, despite all the oh so suble clues, is that you're over in New Zealand. Yeah, I should've noticed from your location field, and the .nz, and all that, but...eh. I know now.

So when I said some things were roughly equivalent in price, I was a bit wrong. My machine in ANZ dollars with your selected monitor costs $2287. That said, it's a stout machine in a tiny package, and pretty well future proofed (though in retrospect, I should've picked a 600w gold rated PSU). Granted, Skylake and DDR4 are just around the corner, but I doubt they'll completely outclass Haswell/Broadwell on the desktop for a good while yet.

Oh, and despite the fact the CPU is advertised at 3.3Ghz, it almost always runs at 3.6Ghz when you set your power profile to high performance in Windows. It's temps idle a bit higher when I do this, but...eh. It's a desktop, not a laptop, so I'm not too worried.

With everything together, it looks like this (before I tidied up the wires). Lots of power, little space used.
Click to expand...
That's definitely outta budget(unless I save up even more), not to look like I'm ignoring your advice but I'm gonna try another build that's more in my budget and show you guys?
 
TechGod said:
That's definitely outta budget(unless I save up even more), not to look like I'm ignoring your advice but I'm gonna try another build that's more in my budget and show you guys?
Click to expand...

Oh, that's fine. I just threw my build out there because it ended up being such a solid, relatively inexpensive computer for me, and figured it could work as a reference piece while you're building yours.
 
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