Been debating building my own computer for a while now. Was just curious if anyone had any opinions on my part choices. I’ve never actually built a PC before but it really looks fairly easy, as long as I follow a few tutorials online as I go! haha
I honestly know that I don’t NEED a top of the line gaming monster, but I want to have components that will be able to keep up with the ever increasing demands for power so I don’t have to replace it for quite a while. My Dell 8500 is still doing me alright, but it’s having trouble playing videos (a bigger new monitor did that), the blue screens are getting more frequent, etc, I think it’s time to replace the old thing before it dies.
My uses? I’ll use Photoshop CS3. Adobe Reader. I do have some combat flight sims, stuff like that, so it is used for gaming as well, though nothing too hardcore yet. The hardest part of my computing is my multitasking, having a movie playing while working in Photoshop, etc, so sometimes the ole computer is working pretty hard.
That’s actually pretty well thought out.
You can save money for “free” in a few areas.
There are cheaper 660Tis than that right now ($220-230), or a 670 for like $10 more.
Windows 8 I think is like $50 less than that price right now I think, it isn’t a great OS but I don’t think it is worth paying more for Windows 7 either.
You can get Shoprunner free, which will kill virtually all shipping charges at newegg.com (and make it 2-ish day shipping too).
I believe the 500R is about that same price on newegg as well right now after rebate.
Don’t forget extra 120mm Case fans - the Zalman Fluid Dynamic Bearing ones currently on rebate at newegg are quite quiet and push a decent amount of air.
But you want to add more case fans than come with most cases.
I have no comments on your computer to-be, but I do want to say that building your own is indeed quite easy. The hard part is troubleshooting if something goes wrong. For me at least, because I tend not to fully know what I’m doing, so if something goes wrong, I don’t really know how to eliminate certain options from the root cause of the issue.
Not that that is a particularly good price - you should be able to find DDR3-1600 1.5v 2x8gb kits with small heatsinks for $60 each pretty regularly (so just buy 2 - often cheaper than the 4x kits)
I was having trouble with the pcpartspicker website but got everything ordered today, I did end up switching to a Corsair 500R, it was slightly cheaper for more space.
It will all be showing up in a week or so, the Frankenstein will be ALIVE!
Your CPU is overkill, you’re better off with a 3750k at $200-220. It’s highly unlikely that you’d ever use more than 16gb of ram so 32 is overkill. 7950 is a much better buy than a 660 TI if you’re willing to overclock it. Your PSU is probably adequate but I’d go into the 650w range to give a little more headroom.
I’m the first to admit I’m going a bit overkill with the CPU. And definitely with the RAM. I just want something that’s reliable for the long term. The computer I’m using now is probably 9-10 years old if I remember right with only RAM upgrades and an extra hard drive (and replacing a bad hard drive after a storm, and later a DVD drive). I’d love to go that long or even more with this one
I don’t see a monitor on the list. For Photoshop you will want to get a monitor that has a full 8-bit (per colour) display. Currently that means IPS - and you’ll benefit hugely from having two monitors.
i7-3770 TDP is 77W. GTX 660 TDP is 140W. Toss in 50W for the mobo (generous) and 10W per drive (how often will those optical drives even spin?), and that takes you to a whopping 307W for a ballpark full load. It’s pretty much impossible to get peak draw from every component simultaneously unless you are intentionally running a benchmark suite aimed at doing exactly that. A quality 350W psu would run this system just fine. 550W gives him plenty of margin for error in my math.
PSUs are also more efficient running at 75% load all the time, and larger PSUs are generally less efficient at the rather low power draws that a typical gaming computer sees when it’s engaged in web-browsing or the like and not actually gaming.
The PSU he picked is appropriately sized for what he is getting. The reason so many people have trouble with “400” or “500” watt PSUs that aren’t quality is because the rating is fantasy, not because 400 watts isn’t enough. A quality 500 watt power supply is more than enough for a fully overclocked i7-3770k & 660ti, let alone at stock. I’d probably want to see a 680 or an SLI build before you really would have any need for more than what he picked, if it is a good supply.