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JerzeyLegend

JerzeyLegend

Well-Known Member
I like to build PC wishlists for no particular reason. Sometimes I buy the PC, sometimes I show others the build and they buy it, sometimes I just like putting parts together.

So just now (mostly out of boredom) I put together My 2014 Ultimate Badass PC.

Here we go:

Processor:
Intel Core i7 4770k
Why: Fastest 4 core (non E series) available. Unlocked for overclocking.

Cooling:
Corsair H110 Liquid Cooler
Why: Best sealed liquid cooler on the market. Large 280mm radiator to dissipate all the heats!

Motherboard:
Asus Z97-WS Motherboard
Why: This motherboard has heavy copper, solid caps, and a shit ton of options. It also has LOADS of debugging and troubleshooting built in. This board is a tweakers dream board. Dual x16 lanes allows for FULL use of the GPU bandwidth, and it has the new Sata Express which allows for 10Gbps transfers.

Graphics:
2 x EVGA GTX 980 Ti Classified
Why: The latest and greatest from EVGA. 384-bit bus width and full x16 PCI 3.0 means full transfer of power with no bottlenecks, also lots of room for pushing the video cards harder. Dual x16 may seem gimmicky to a lot of people, but it's something I used in the past and I like it, a lot. These cards have 3GB of VRAM and base clocks of 1072MHz.

Memory:
G.Skill 32GB (4 x 8GB) 3100MHz memory
Why: Why not? 32GB is most likely overkill, but this is an overkill machine. No reason to have page files here buddy. BUY ALL THE RAMS!

Power:
Corsair HXi1000 Fully Modular PSU
Why: This is a fully modular power supply. It is also 1000W and Platinum Certified. So lots of room for more power and overclocking and high efficiency. I wanted fully modular because it would make cable management infinitely easier.

Case:
Corsair Obsidian 900D Ultra Tower
Why: Three words: Loads. of. Room. This baby is 27" tall! I could fit a child in it. This case is going to make great work out of cable management. I just hope the supplied PSU cables are long enough.

Storage:
Main System : Samsung XP941 M.2 SATA SSD.
Why: This is the big bad dog of SSDs right now. 1.7GB Read Speed and 900MB+ write speed. In order for applications to open faster, it would have to read your mind. Also since it's mSATA it doesn't consume a SATA slot.

Gaming Array: 2 x Samsung EVO 840 1TB SATA SSD in RAID 0
Why: 2TB of game storage. Install your whole damned collection and don't worry about it. With RAID 0, you can load in faster than those peasants still using platter drives.

Storage Array: 2 x 4TB WD Caviar Green Hard Disk Drives in RAID 0
Why: These drives will serve two purposes. One is to provide a backup for your main system and gaming arrays. The rest is storage for media such as pictures, movies, music, etc. 8TB of storage is MORE than enough I am sure.

Mouse:
Razer Deathadder Chroma Edition
Why: I own the deathadder. It's a nice mouse, feels good in the hand. It has two side buttons which I use for PTT. The Chroma edition replaces the single LED color for changeable colors.

Keyboard:
Razer BlackWidow Ultimate Chroma Edition
Why: Wonderfully crafted large heavy keyboard with Razer exclusive Green keys (Cherry switches developed just for Razer). Loud and clicky. Heavy and stays in place. Lots of colors for showing off, or you can highlight keys only needed for a particular game.

Monitors:
3 x Dell UltraSharp U2412M 24" IPS panels
Why: 24" of sharp, bad ass, IPS goodness. I opted to choose these over 4K, because GPUs would have been stressing trying to render 3 4k monitors. Also the lack of 4k gaming and content. While 3 4K monitors would have been BADASS, I just feel these are better. IPS means bright and great viewing angles. 1920 x 1200 means nice widescreen goodness and incredibly sharp games. Also anything higher would send the price up $2,400.


The price?

An unapologetic $5,755.91

Actually quite attainable. Perhaps if tax return is good to me, I will build this monstrosity.


So what do you think? Need a PC? Have a budget? Let me know, I like trying to build PCs within budget constraints. I'll post the result here.
 
Could you provide a list of things you look for in a motherboard. I'm not looking for your preferences, but rather if you were to, say, compare two different motherboards, what are the things you look at besides compatibility with CPU, memory, etc?

Also, budget $1300 max. What you got?
 
lacar1601 said:
Could you provide a list of things you look for in a motherboard. I'm not looking for your preferences, but rather if you were to, say, compare two different motherboards, what are the things you look at besides compatibility with CPU, memory, etc?

Also, budget $1300 max. What you got?
Click to expand...

I'll do the build later.

When looking at a motherboard past the basics (compatibility, etc) would be build quality, colors, and features (like extra sata ports, dual x16 PCIe lanes, and debugging features).
 
JerzeyLegend said:
I'll do the build later.

When looking at a motherboard past the basics (compatibility, etc) would be build quality, colors, and features (like extra sata ports, dual x16 PCIe lanes, and debugging features).
Click to expand...

Could you expand on quality and features, please? Or otherwise direct me to an article that gives these details?
 
JerzeyLegend said:
I like to build PC wishlists for no particular reason. Sometimes I buy the PC, sometimes I show others the build and they buy it, sometimes I just like putting parts together.

So just now (mostly out of boredom) I put together My 2014 Ultimate Badass PC.

Here we go:

Processor:
Intel Core i7 4770k
Why: Fastest 4 core (non E series) available. Unlocked for overclocking.

Cooling:
Corsair H110 Liquid Cooler
Why: Best sealed liquid cooler on the market. Large 280mm radiator to dissipate all the heats!

Motherboard:
Asus Z97-WS Motherboard
Why: This motherboard has heavy copper, solid caps, and a shit ton of options. It also has LOADS of debugging and troubleshooting built in. This board is a tweakers dream board. Dual x16 lanes allows for FULL use of the GPU bandwidth, and it has the new Sata Express which allows for 10Gbps transfers.

Graphics:
2 x EVGA GTX 980 Ti Classified
Why: The latest and greatest from EVGA. 384-bit bus width and full x16 PCI 3.0 means full transfer of power with no bottlenecks, also lots of room for pushing the video cards harder. Dual x16 may seem gimmicky to a lot of people, but it's something I used in the past and I like it, a lot. These cards have 3GB of VRAM and base clocks of 1072MHz.

Memory:
G.Skill 32GB (4 x 8GB) 3100MHz memory
Why: Why not? 32GB is most likely overkill, but this is an overkill machine. No reason to have page files here buddy. BUY ALL THE RAMS!

Power:
Corsair HXi1000 Fully Modular PSU
Why: This is a fully modular power supply. It is also 1000W and Platinum Certified. So lots of room for more power and overclocking and high efficiency. I wanted fully modular because it would make cable management infinitely easier.

Case:
Corsair Obsidian 900D Ultra Tower
Why: Three words: Loads. of. Room. This baby is 27" tall! I could fit a child in it. This case is going to make great work out of cable management. I just hope the supplied PSU cables are long enough.

Storage:
Main System : Samsung XP941 M.2 SATA SSD.
Why: This is the big bad dog of SSDs right now. 1.7GB Read Speed and 900MB+ write speed. In order for applications to open faster, it would have to read your mind. Also since it's mSATA it doesn't consume a SATA slot.

Gaming Array: 2 x Samsung EVO 840 1TB SATA SSD in RAID 0
Why: 2TB of game storage. Install your whole damned collection and don't worry about it. With RAID 0, you can load in faster than those peasants still using platter drives.

Storage Array: 2 x 4TB WD Caviar Green Hard Disk Drives in RAID 0
Why: These drives will serve two purposes. One is to provide a backup for your main system and gaming arrays. The rest is storage for media such as pictures, movies, music, etc. 8TB of storage is MORE than enough I am sure.

Mouse:
Razer Deathadder Chroma Edition
Why: I own the deathadder. It's a nice mouse, feels good in the hand. It has two side buttons which I use for PTT. The Chroma edition replaces the single LED color for changeable colors.

Keyboard:
Razer BlackWidow Ultimate Chroma Edition
Why: Wonderfully crafted large heavy keyboard with Razer exclusive Green keys (Cherry switches developed just for Razer). Loud and clicky. Heavy and stays in place. Lots of colors for showing off, or you can highlight keys only needed for a particular game.

Monitors:
3 x Dell UltraSharp U2412M 24" IPS panels
Why: 24" of sharp, bad ass, IPS goodness. I opted to choose these over 4K, because GPUs would have been stressing trying to render 3 4k monitors. Also the lack of 4k gaming and content. While 3 4K monitors would have been BADASS, I just feel these are better. IPS means bright and great viewing angles. 1920 x 1200 means nice widescreen goodness and incredibly sharp games. Also anything higher would send the price up $2,400.


The price?

An unapologetic $5,755.91

Actually quite attainable. Perhaps if tax return is good to me, I will build this monstrosity.


So what do you think? Need a PC? Have a budget? Let me know, I like trying to build PCs within budget constraints. I'll post the result here.
Click to expand...
What would that price tag be without the 3 monitors tacked on?
 
Its pretty maxed out unless you add another GPU and I don't think that 4k will be so good until the near future. Just try normal 2k.
 
lacar1601 said:
Could you expand on quality and features, please? Or otherwise direct me to an article that gives these details?
Click to expand...

Does the motherboard have high quality solid caps? Have a look at the heatsinks, are they laid out well, will they keep the chipset (North/South bridge) cool? How are the sata ports laid out? Will it allow for good cable management? Look at the reviews.... how are people commenting? Do they mention weight, if they do, I lean towards heavier boards, usually means it's more solid, less flexible, and perhaps they used more copper.

Not too much other than that. Besides brand loyalty and a few small things, I don't dive further than that. For example, the reason I picked the board in the original build was due to the fact that it has dual x16 lanes and loads of options for debugging. With sata express and m.2 ssd support it's on the bleeding edge. Also quad SLI, if I ever felt like it.
 
Current system spec:

CPU: AMD Athlon II X2 250 (2992MHz, 2 cores)
RAM: 2 x 2GB DDR2 PC2-6400
M/Board: AS Rock N68PV-GS
Chipset: nVidia GeForce 7050
GPU: NVidia GeForce 9500 GT
Sound: SB Audigy LS
PSU: 500W Corsair CX500M
HD:eek: 500GB
O/S: Windows 7 Home Premium

It's an old system that I've had for around 5 years and was a budget build even then. It cannibalised parts from my previous machine such as the sound card. I'm looking to upgrade in two steps: new processor/mobo/RAM, and new graphics card. Not sure which to do first, probably the processor/mobo/RAM bundle. I have a budget of around £500 for this and will probably use scan.co.uk as my supplier.
I've already ordered a new 1TB HDD so storage doesn't need to be taken into consideration, although I am thinking of utilising a small SSD as the main system drive and having the HDD as storage only. Also, I've ordered a new USB headset that has onboard audio processing, so for now audio cards don't need to be taken into consideration. Bearing in mind I'm more of a casual gamer than hardcore, although I would like to be playing more games and running them at nice resolutions.

I'm willing to wait and buy a graphics card separately when I have more money. Also, would be nice if my new system ran with my 500W PSU as it's fairly new, bought to replace one that died, but obviously that's not critical.

What can you suggest that will give me the best bang for my buck?
 
kimbal86 said:
What can you suggest that will give me the best bang for my buck?
Click to expand...

I made this:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-4690 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor (£164.96 @ Scan.co.uk)
Motherboard: Asus Z97-A ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (£106.76 @ Scan.co.uk)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£65.76 @ Scan.co.uk)
Total: £337.48
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-10-26 16:58 GMT+0000

It doesn't hit the £500 because past this we leave the price : performance area. It will work under your 500W PSU, and all use scan.co.uk as the supplier. I chose the Z97 board because you said you wanted to play at nice resolutions, so you can add a second graphics card when you need to, the i5 4690 because it yields the best performance out of the locked i5s, and the Corsair Vengeance RAM because it's low profile and matches the motherboard. However, I have one question. The ASRock N68PV-GS is a Micro-ATX motherboard, so do you have a Micro-ATX case or do you have a regular ATX case? I need to know this because the Z97-A, an ATX motherboard, won't fit into Micro-ATX cases.
 
DaGamer12345 said:
I made this:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-4690 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor (£164.96 @ Scan.co.uk)
Motherboard: Asus Z97-A ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (£106.76 @ Scan.co.uk)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£65.76 @ Scan.co.uk)
Total: £337.48
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-10-26 16:58 GMT+0000

It doesn't hit the £500 because past this we leave the price : performance area. It will work under your 500W PSU, and all use scan.co.uk as the supplier. I chose the Z97 board because you said you wanted to play at nice resolutions, so you can add a second graphics card when you need to, the i5 4690 because it yields the best performance out of the locked i5s, and the Corsair Vengeance RAM because it's low profile and matches the motherboard. However, I have one question. The ASRock N68PV-GS is a Micro-ATX motherboard, so do you have a Micro-ATX case or do you have a regular ATX case? I need to know this because the Z97-A, an ATX motherboard, won't fit into Micro-ATX cases.
Click to expand...

I think it's a mid case. I'm open to buying a new one anyway. This one looks nice but not sure if it will fit:
 
kimbal86 said:
This one looks nice but not sure if it will fit.
Click to expand...
What do you mean by fit? Fit under a desk? Fit the motherboard? Fit the look you're planning for the build?

If size is an issue you can always measure the dimensions of where you want it to fit and see if there's enough room.
 
DaGamer12345 said:
What do you mean by fit? Fit under a desk? Fit the motherboard? Fit the look you're planning for the build?

If size is an issue you can always measure the dimensions of where you want it to fit and see if there's enough room.
Click to expand...
Fit the motherboard. Currently suffering from information overload so heading to the pub to get drunk and hope the answer comes to me in a blaze of vodka. Been reading about the merits of Corsair Vengeance as opposed to cheap Kingston RAM.
 
kimbal86 said:
Fit the motherboard.
Click to expand...
ATX Mid cases will fit ATX motherboards. As long as you don't get a Micro-ATX case or Mini-ITX case, ATX motherboards will fit in them.

kimbal86 said:
Currently suffering from information overload so heading to the pub to get drunk and hope the answer comes to me in a blaze of vodka.
Click to expand...
That's always a good idea.

kimbal86 said:
Been reading about the merits of Corsair Vengeance as opposed to cheap Kingston RAM.
Click to expand...
RAM is RAM. As long as you don't get cheap no-name RAM, you'll be fine. Brands I recommend are Corsair, Crucial, G.Skill, and Kingston for RAM.
 
kimbal86 said:
Current system spec:

CPU: AMD Athlon II X2 250 (2992MHz, 2 cores)
RAM: 2 x 2GB DDR2 PC2-6400
M/Board: AS Rock N68PV-GS
Chipset: nVidia GeForce 7050
GPU: NVidia GeForce 9500 GT
Sound: SB Audigy LS
PSU: 500W Corsair CX500M
HD:eek: 500GB
O/S: Windows 7 Home Premium

It's an old system that I've had for around 5 years and was a budget build even then. It cannibalised parts from my previous machine such as the sound card. I'm looking to upgrade in two steps: new processor/mobo/RAM, and new graphics card. Not sure which to do first, probably the processor/mobo/RAM bundle. I have a budget of around £500 for this and will probably use scan.co.uk as my supplier.
I've already ordered a new 1TB HDD so storage doesn't need to be taken into consideration, although I am thinking of utilising a small SSD as the main system drive and having the HDD as storage only. Also, I've ordered a new USB headset that has onboard audio processing, so for now audio cards don't need to be taken into consideration. Bearing in mind I'm more of a casual gamer than hardcore, although I would like to be playing more games and running them at nice resolutions.

I'm willing to wait and buy a graphics card separately when I have more money. Also, would be nice if my new system ran with my 500W PSU as it's fairly new, bought to replace one that died, but obviously that's not critical.

What can you suggest that will give me the best bang for my buck?
Click to expand...
You might want to upgrade the CPU and the motherboard together... Newer chips use less power... And runs cooler
 
I tend to give up partway through. Partly because I'm bored, partly because I don't make enough to go out and buy it all at once and that depresses me. Maybe next year when I get my $12/hr raise :D
 
I still do this from time to time. If anyone needs something, let me know. I may have forgotten a person or two.
 
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