Thinking about building my own gaming computer. So many questions

The Game Room
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How important is a fully modular PSU? Looking at seasonic 750W, fully modular is like $165, while semi modular is $105. I could really use that $60 savings.

Comments on the cheaper one say it’s really small leaving lots of room for cabling.

EDIT: oh yeah, when I upgraded the power supply on my current computer, the air blew out in a different direction and so it fit in a different position in the case than the old PSU. (It used to vent out the back, but that new PSU vents out the bottom, so I had to get a little stand to sit the computer on so air could actually go out the bottom.)

Is that something I need to worry about? Could I end up buying a PSU that doesn’t properly fit my case?

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Modular cabling is neater and… that’s about it. Realistically, cabling has almost no impact on air flow in a case so a mass of cables won’t impact anything (and you can usually shove them somewhere anyway). If you’re going to put your case proud on your desk with lights and windows then you’d want a modular PSU to keep it minimal. Otherwise, it doesn’t matter much.

Cable management is one of those things where you’ll get internet denizens saying “Well, ACK-tually…” and going on about how it’ll disrupt the airflow if everything isn’t neatly tucked away, yadda yadda. In reality, air is fluid and isn’t going to be stopped by your ugly mass of ketchup/mustard cables and there’s numerous Youtube tests showing that it has negligible effects on system temps if any.

The case you linked has a bottom mounted PSU so you put the PSU down there with the fan pointing downward to take in air if needed. The case will have feet that will be sufficient unless you’re placing it directly on a carpet. Don’t do that. Put it on a board or something if it’s going under your desk onto a soft surface. There’s some non-standard shaped PSUs out there but you’d have to work to find and buy one on accident.

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I’d highly recommend using pcpartpicker.com. It makes sure all your parts work together, and it gives you the best price for each part. You can usually save a lot of money by ordering for multiple vendors instead of all from newegg.

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Over carpet yes, but not on the carpet. I have it on a little adjustable stand very similar to this one on Amazon.

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Fun! Lemme try that right now…

Hmmm. It doesn’t seem to include the 2TB wd blue 550, as seen on newegg. Does the fact that it doesn’t appear mean it isn’t compatible?

The 1TB wd blue 550 does appear, so it would be weird if the 1TB version was compatible but the 2TB version of the same drive is not.

EDIT: Nevermind, if I filter the list by Newegg it appears.

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Sounds like a fun project. NewEgg is my goto for PC builds.

You were smart to avoid an i7 or i9 processor. The i5 is plenty and will save you money; most modern PCs have more CPU than they need.

I prefer to go with a NVIDIA GPU for builds using Intel processors but that’s more of a preference from past experience than a hard rule.

Modular cabling on your PSU is nice but you don’t need it unless you care about how your gaming rig looks.

Yes, if you use a non-stock cooler you will need to purchase thermal paste. Buy a small amount of arctic silver and put a single pea-sized dot in the middle of the CPU before mounting. It doesn’t need to cover the entire CPU; if in doubt less paste is better. Be absolutely sure the paste doesn’t overflow on to the board.

It’s very unlikely you’ll see a noticeable difference between using a SATA SSD and a PCIe SSD. Both are extremely fast. Personally I’d go with the cheaper option.

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I’m getting increasingly confused with the hard drives. Newegg lets me pick this 1TB drive and this 2TB drive. Both are the blue SN550 series, both are NVMe, both are M.2 2280 form factor.

But pcpartspickers considers the 1TB as a valid drive but won’t show the 2TB drive no matter what I do. I don’t understand.

There is a 2TB wb blue drive I can select, but not price or vendor is listed. Is this indicative of it for some reason not being compatible, or is the site erroneously not seeing the drive on newegg, where it’s in stock and available for purchase?

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Only thing I can think of is that PCPartPicker thinks the board won’t have enough PCI Express lanes to support both m.2 drives and the GPU. Will it let you pick the 2TB model without having the 1TB model?

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Good thought but no joy. It’s as if that 2TB on newegg doesn’t exist in the pcpartspicker universe.

I’ve gotta be honest, this is undermining my faith in both sites and shaking my confidence in general.

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I’ve built gaming PCs in whole or part about every 4 or 5 years for the past 25 years… just built my last one a little less than a year ago.

Out of curiosity, why? AMD makes hands down the best gaming processors out now in the Zen 2/3 chips, and their new Big Navi GPUs are definitely competitive with Nvidia’s best. There’s no reason you can’t do something like a 5900x and a RTX 3060TI.

It’s easy- what you do is just install your CPU into the motherboard, then put some thermal compound on the CPU, center the cooler on top, and clamp it down. There’s a lot of debate over how you apply it- a rice/pea sized glob dead-center, an “X” shape, 5 dots, a line down the middle, etc… but in practical terms it doesn’t really matter any. I tend to subscribe to the dead-center glob or the single line myself.

As for what compound to use, the real truth is that it doesn’t really matter unless you’re doing serious overclocking. If you’re worried, just use Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut, since it’s not terribly expensive, easy to apply, and supposedly the most thermally conductive paste. but if your cooler comes with a little tube, just use that- no sense in spending money on something that won’t make any difference anyway.

Sure, for now. But RAM is about the cheapest single thing in a PC these days. Why NOT go up to 32 GB? Also, make sure you enable any XMP profiles in your BIOS.

Good choice- I have a Fractal Design Define R6 USB-C in gunmetal. It’s a fantastic case.

You should be able to plug both in and have two separate drives- that’s how my Samsung Evo and my ADATA work. I might consider going a little more max/min and go like WD Black for the boot drive, and WD Green for the user files; you’re really going to notice having a rippingly fast Windows and app drive, and might not notice it for user files as much.

I think I’d go 600-650w as a minimum- it doesn’t really cost much more these days.

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Probably just a glitch on PCPPartPicker’s part

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Inertia, mostly. But it’s pretty ingrained at this point, after 30 years of brand loyalty.

Perfect! I’ll check and see if the specs or buyer reviews mention it coming with anything.

Right? If I can afford the extra $80 I’ll go for it, but it seems like one of the more harmless cost-cutting measures. It’s also the easiest upgrade down the road.

Thanks for mentioning XMP profiles. I’ll look into that.

I’m quite excited for the case more than anything, I think. Whaddya think about replacing the stock fans with bequiets? Lots of fractal case reviews raved about the case but killed the stock fans. I penciled in top of the line bequiets ($23 each) but I may end up having to scale that back to the midrange bequiets ($13 each) now that I’m looking at 3 instead of 2.

One of the fractal case reviews (I think for the larger non-compact mid tower) raved about replacing the stock fans with lowest tier bequiets and how amazing it was.

Okay, good, that makes me feel better. That’s also a great thought about min/maxing, especially since the smaller (cheaper) drive is where the money goes. I like it.

Yep, agreed. I’m already thinking 750W or higher to make the eventual video card a non-issue. Currently have this semi-modular seasonic penciled in based on feedback in the thread:

Seasonic FOCUS GM-750, 750W 80+ Gold, Semi-Modular
Saves $60 over the fully modular version. My case doesn’t even have a window so cable appearance is moot. Plus, unlike my original choice, this is currently in stock and available for purchase. Reviews talked about it being surprisingly small and leaving lots of room for cables.

Hopefully it’s not loud. That would be a bummer.

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You’re completely fine going with the 2TB SSD drives. They will work; the PC part picker just isn’t listing them.

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Ok. Anybody feel free to critique this. My budget is $2000 but with video card prices the way they are, i’ll go over if I get the one I want. And for full disclosure I am not an RBG guy. I know some parts will have RGB but if given a choice between two equal parts (like the RAM) I’m going non-RGB because it is cheaper. I don’t want my computer to look like a unicorn dropped acid then threw up all over it.

CPU: Intel 10700k. Team Blue all the way. I can’t justify buying an i9 at their pricepoint.

Mobo: ASRock Z490 Extreme4. I normally buy ASUS and I don’t blame them for the broken Intel chips that they got for their ethernet port controllers. But ASRock makes solid mobos and this has everything I need: 2 M.2 slots and a type C front panel port header. Plus it looks badass.

RAM: 32GB (2 x 16GB) G.Skill Ripjaw V. DDR4 4000 should work great on this machine and this still leave 2 slots left. Latency doesn’t seem too bad for this RAM either.

Drives: I’m going two go with two M.2 drives. Samsung 980 PRO 1 TB for Windows and programs and the lower end 970 EVO 500GB for data. Plenty of room for software with fast loads and my data on a separate drive to make it easier to backup. Plus if I ever need to do a clean install of an OS and programs I can wipe the program drive and not worry about data loss.

Case: I like your case and that is my close second choice, but my first choice is the Phanteks Eclipse P600S. It’s got the filters and I like the option of keeping the top closed. Has the Type C port in the front and is very clean but like I said I wouldn’t mind going with your choice either.

Cooling: NZXT Kraken X73 360mm. Fits perfectly in the front of my case and moving the fans that come in the case I would have the full contingent of fans. Positive pressure so the radiator and two top fans blow in and the back fan blows out. If I decide to go with other fans, I’d be real interested in the MagLev fans. I hear they are very efficient and have a longer mean time to failure.

PSU: EVGA SuperNOVA 850W: I do tend to go high on my PSU because for a few extra ducats you can get a power supply that can handle higher loads as you upgrade and not run at 90% capacity all of the time. And I’ve built machines with modular and non-modular connections and I definitely prefer modular.

Video Card: I left this one last because it’s hard to know what to do. My knee-jerk reaction is to go with a Radeon 5700xt or should I go with a RX570? I don’t see much sense spend the same money on a GTX 1060.

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My son and I built a gaming rig for him using the same case. You can’t really tell from the picture but when you open the non-glass side there is a ton of room for cable management, even for non-modular PSUs. He did go for the case lights and it looks pretty badass.

I don’t see a problem with your build. Looks good.

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I’m having trouble finding greens, and unfortunately the 1TB black doubles the price compared to the blue, adding an extra $100 or more. Can’t really swing that; the 2TB blue is already (in my mind) an “extra” $50 more than the originally planned 4TB mechanical drive, so adding another $100 on top of that would necessitate uncomfortable sacrifices elsewhere. (Likely case and fans.)

At $330 combined, the two blues will be the second most expensive feature of my entire rig, behind only (hopefully) around $500 for any 3000 series video card at some point in the future. Hard to justify increasing the hard drive budget to $450 or more, y’know?

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Actually now I see a fully modular Seasonic Focus Plus Gold 750W for a reasonable $130, so penciling that in. Feeling pretty good about this choice for now.

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In effect, they’re high performance profiles that are built into the RAM and make a huge difference vs. stock.

My stock ones are awfully quiet. I haven’t had any desire to replace them yet- they’re quiet and seem to flow a lot of air.

It’s basically what I did- I have a Samsung EVO 970 Plus 1 TB as my windows/app drive, and some junky ADATA 1 TB that I got for half the price of the Samsung. There’s a pretty large difference in performance between them, even considering that they’re both PCIe M.2 drives, but there’s an even more dramatic difference between the ADATA and my fastest hard drive. Well worth it IMO.

I’ve got a 5600XT, and it is killer at 1920x1080. I wouldn’t go with a RX570; seems a bit out of date if you’re building a new PC. (my usual approach is to go mid/mid-high in the current generation of cards when I replace).

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I like the @EllisDee build and wouldn’t change anything, except probably forget the extra case fans. The Define 7 has so much noise insulation that it doesn’t matter. Maybe it’s enough to squeeze out a CPU or GPU upgrade or quieter heatsink if noise is a concern.

I don’t like the @Saint_Cad build much. The components are all good, but I think the balance is bad. A $2,000 gaming PC with an old mid-tier AMD card is disappointing. Start with a 3080 and i5-10600k and fit the rest around that.

That’s the trick to a gaming PC. Spending as much as you possibly can on a GPU, then CPU while keeping the rest good enough so it still functions.