Guild Wars 2

Hey guys, I’ve been interested in building a gaming rig for about a year now as I’ve been playing on an AMD A8 3520M laptop with HD6620G gpu. Short story, really bad not meant for a good gaming experience. Looking to build everything more or less of $1500 Canadian. Interesting how 970’s are around 300 in the US while in Canada is 400+. First Spoiler goes into more detail of price comparison. Sites such as Amazon.com (Murica) and B&H Photo sell things for much cheaper.

As for CPU, I’ve decided to go with the I7 4790k because I will be both video editing and streaming content from time to time (Something that I’ve always wanted to do and have tried with video editing but it was difficult due to hardware limitations..aka the projects looked horrible due to low frames and graphics).

What to achieve in a nutshell: Anything less or over 1500 is fine, 2000 is Max but rather not spend that much.
Possibly overclocking (If it’s not needed for this type of setup that’s fine), Low temperature, power usage, and lastly quiet as possible.

Build List So far
CPU: I7 4790K

GPU: MSI GTX 970 ME (Has a backplate compare to the regular one, prevents sagging scratches to the pcb?)

MOBO: Really confused. z97’s are to go to? A decent sound card would be great if possible as I love listening to music (Audiophile – FLAC, Headsets, all that jazz)

CPU Cooler: Noctua NH D-15? Kraken x61? Corsair series? My only concern for the Noctua is the size and weight/stress it could put on the MOBO with the GPU.

RAM: 8GB vs. 16GB. Also not sure what speed and DDR is recommended. Leaning towards 16GB for streaming and running multiple files as well as editing videos. I hear that it’s all/not possible on an 8GB back and forth so rather confused.

SSD: Was looking at Samsung 850 PRO 256gb but seems like the EVO is more popular. Is the price difference for the performance worth it?

HDD: 1TB seems good enough, currently using 750HDD. Seems like 1TB Western Digital Blue is popular for being the sweet spot between green and black for performance and noise. Other recommendations will be great as well.

PSU: Just like the MOBO, completely clueless on how much I’ll need and as well to avoid too unnecessary power use racking the bills and apparently it can cause coil whine on graphics cards?

Case: Don’t think I’ll need a full tower, about a year ago, NZXT H440 seemed popular for sound isolation and just an all round good case. Not sure what would be great for my build. (Would like a quiet gaming rig however, or least required moving parts/fans to do so)

Monitor: I hate contrast ratios on laptop screens, especially the cheaper models like mine. I’ve been brainwashed my Linus to get an IPS monitor. But not sure what’ll be great for both games like Counter Strike GO or any other FPS and beautiful looking ones such as GW2, Witcher 3, upcoming MGS Phantom Pain etc.

Keyboard: I’m currently at Cherry MX Reds for FPS games – Not sure how well it’ll work with MMORPG games like GW2, any other recommendations will be great. Also is there a way to still use the Numpad keys if I get a 10keyless? Possibly a module type of keyboard even where I can attach and detach if needed.

Extra Fans inside the case?
Mouse and headphones already have (razer naga epic and kingston cloud 2)

Hope I didn’t leave anything out for building my first gaming/editing rig, if so please feel free to give me a heads up!

Would really love to learn and have people guide me through this. I know it’s a lot of info and I apologies for not making it simple as some other threads. But I had to really get everything off my thought.

Heh your CPU, GPU and Motherboard are all identical to what I put into my new PC last year. They’re still going strong and I highly recommend all three stick with the z97 it’s lovely and very easy to work with.

With the equipment you got I would go with a 700W semi modular to reduce your cost PSU go for a high standard PSU so to protect your equipment. Corsair is a reliable make for PSU’s… Antec has mixed performance, some of there stuff is good but some of it is really diabolical.

Aim for a Gold Standard with your PSU, if you’re spending $1500 make sure you protect it from powersurges.

HDD wise I went for the Seagate Barracuda 2TB I’ve only used 200GB of that in a year and a bit and with my SSD I went with the Evo it’s really good and I’ve still got a roughly 5 second boot time from bootup to desktop.

For the case I used the Corsair Carbide 500R it’s fantastic for air cooling, and really easy for a first time builder to use due to all its easy to use modular slots for SSD’s and HDD’s it also has the benefit of one massive intake fan on the side and slots for two intake fans on the front and for the outflow you have one on the back above the motherboard and CPU and then two at the top so you get fantastic airflow through the case… It’s a bit pricy at £88-£100 (don’t know the Canadian exchange) but I highly recommend it.

For my monitor I just went for two decent 24 Inch Samsungs, can’t remember which though I’m afraid… I would not go any bigger than 24 Inch for gaming however as you will find you cannot see what is going on in the entire screen if you make it too large and will have to constantly pivot your head… Not very good gaming practice.

But overall I’ve restricted my FPS in GW2 to 63fps and it stays stable there with everything on max even in Edge of the Mists and WvW I don’t really get any frame drops or lag which is good as I’m pretty lazy and don’t fancy swapping my graphics settings in PvP.

So good choice in picking your hardware it all seems very sensible, my advice while building is take your time. Make sure you can focus on it entirely and don’t rush.

Your most stressful part will be with the CPU as you got to line it up nicely then lock it in place with the lever…. And it feels like you’re really putting a ton of pressure on the poor kitten to close it.

Truly the most painful part of any build.

Rest of it you will have no problem with really, just take your time and make sure everything is nice and secure but don’t over tighten anything and try and tidy up your cables as you’re fitting them to save having to do it after you’re finished.

Hope any of this helps you.

Best Regards,
Seras Nightwhisper.

PS. Don’t forget to buy an operating system Window’s 7 or Window’s 8.1 whichever you prefer. And then a simple DVDRW cheap as you like to install the Operating System, because you will never use it again anyway.

PSS. Here is a website https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/ here you can put your build together and it will find your cheapest suppliers for your parts and the community will really pick your build apart if you want them too :P

For PSU sizing I use the eXtreme PSU calculator and up the suggested size by 50%. So a good quality 650-700 watt PSU should be what you are looking for.

http://extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp

The Pro is technically faster than the EVO and on paper more reliable due to the type of flash they use. In practice the EVO is reliable enough for any consumer. TechReport drove both versions of the previous generation into the ground, all far exceeding their published lifespans.

http://techreport.com/review/27909/the-ssd-endurance-experiment-theyre-all-dead

For RAM I think the current conventional wisdom is that DDR3-1866, CAS 9 is the sweet spot in terms of price Vs perceivable performance gain.

Here’s TechReport’s most recent system guild.

http://techreport.com/review/28198/system-guide-current

For a “gaming” rig, I’m running an AMD AthonII x4 631 on an ASRock MB with 16GB memory, and (2) Samsung SSD’s (128 GB each). My GPU is an AMD Radeon 7870 (2GB) card—————and still getting frame rates in the low 60’s consistently!!