First computer build advice?

Have you folks seen that Seagate now has a 60tb (yes 60 terabytes) ssdhd...not available to the public yet though...

That sounds majestic, I'm over budget as it is though.

Don't go for a 980 ... as far as I know the price/performance ratio is terrible, also it's the older
generation. If your budget permits, go for a 1070 or two 1060's. Two 480 respectivly if it is
to be ATI.
Seriously, read up on graphics, there are a lot of shenanigans right now

Took your advice into account and made some other changes to try and slim down the budget. I tried reading up on the subject but from what I could tell the difference between the 980 and 1070 were pretty marginal. But I'm fully aware I wasn't fully comprehending what I was looking at.

I built my gaming rig myself a few years ago. Little did I know then that I would be too broke to upgrade it as time carries on. Oh well, even on my outdated tech I can still play most games with relative ease. Perhaps one of the biggest obstacles these days is what OS to put on it. Linux/Debian distros are getting better and more game production companies are making their games compatible with Linux, but it's a long ways off still from being an ideal setup. Mac OS, just never.




Which leaves us with Windows. Windows has really gone downhill. I really like and still use Windows 7. Windows 8 and subsequent iterations are just awful, however Windows 10 is slightly less awful. As I understand it, Windows 8 was an attempt to streamline all the Microsoft/Windows products: phone (Metro is the interface they based Windows 8 off of), PC, and Xbox. Unfortunately, Windows updates and a host of compatibility problems make it an unbelievably problematic OS. Windows 10 or Windows 7 are your best bet if you're going to go with Windows. Another option, is to go Steam OS for gaming and have a Linux distro like Mint, Mandriva, or Ubuntu (I prefer Mint) as your regular OS for your non-gaming needs. You won't be able to do video editing (at least, not unless you've got some mad programming skills and can make a port of your preferred video editing software into Linux).

It all depends on your ability. I bit off a little more than I could chew when built my first computer, but I had most of the basics down on account of helping my dad cannibalize and restore dozens of computers for his clients (including his church).

As for the brass tacks of building the darn thing, I strongly suggest watching Newegg's tutorial videos on building a computer. I used an older version of this video ( link here ). Make sure you have reliable connection to the Internet/YouTube while building your machine so you can refer back to any part of these videos while building it. Yeah, they're going to try to sell you stuff in the process of explaining how to build the machine, but they're very thorough and explain the logic of why it is they do things the way they do.

Your parts list looks pretty good, though I only glanced at it and didn't check for compatibility. I'm glad to see your getting an 80+ gold certified power supply. That's one of the things people who don't know enough tend to skimp on and it can create all kinds of problems later on (worst case: fry your machine).

Good luck and feel free to PM with questions you might have.

EDIT: I see you've got an SSD. I know they're quiet, fast, and powerful but have you considered a mechanical hard drive? They're cheaper and work just as well.

I second Jamie, if you're strapped for cash, get that same size SSD as a normal HDD. You'll save a lot. If you REALLY want an SSD, what a lot of folks do is slave one, load their games onto the SSD, but otherwise use the HDD

I didn't realize I had picked a higher end item for that. Thank you both! As for OS I'm probably going to end up going with Windows 7, it's what I have now and I like it. I'm in no rush to "upgrade"

Draft 3

If we are talking savings you could downgrade your powersupply, not in quality but in ... well power. That rig calculates to somewhere at ~550W so you should be perfectly fine when picking a 650W supply. I agree with Jamie though on the 80+ gold rating, keep that

While I agree with a HDD doing the job I'd personally not downgrade that, disks already are the chokepoint of most systems anyway. Then again I'd never use it as a 'on the sides' game partition either since I think (no sources though) that having your OS (that which runs everything else) on the fastest part of the storage brings the highest increase. Even with 16GB RAM Windows will insist on swaping (aka writing parts of your memory to disk) so there's that. Also most people point out it's only for loading when really most procedual games (without instanced maps) load all the time as you move about. I actually made skyrim crash by running to fast as the game needed more textures than my HDD could provide (figured that out by looking into the resource monitor and then running slower ) - then again I do go overboard with texture/ambient mods so that's not really a good measure.

At any rate do not install everything onto a single partition, make two, one for OS, one for the data. After you've got everything up and running, do a system backup/make a restore point. If you corrupt your OS partition for some reason, you then can fall back to that backup without losing the data of your second partition.

Sadly I really can't fit an SSD into the budget, switching to an HDD is what made this workable.

Actually some of the parts on my current machine are fairly recent. I'm going to double check what kind of power supply and RAM I have right now and see if I can switch those over to the new machine.

..after I've had caffeine.

7Blue wrote: Sadly I really can't fit an SSD into the budget, switching to an HDD is what made this workable.

Actually some of the parts on my current machine are fairly recent. I'm going to double check what kind of power supply and RAM I have right now and see if I can switch those over to the new machine.

..after I've had caffeine.

If your current HDD is working and has enough space for you, you can move that over too