Posts by Bryan Grant29

Matthew Alvarez said:👍
If you happen to be living right here in Washington, D.C., you could probably have the rig at your place by tomorrow... but if you aren't local, as long as you get the order in by tomorrow morning, it should hopefully show up at your door by Tuesday morning...

Either way, definitely let me know what you think once it arrives...

Since I'm out in San Francisco, I think I'll just hang tight for a bit. I'll reach out once everything shows up and let you know how it's running... thanks again...

Matthew Alvarez said:Here is how you could set it up:

1 x Nvidia GeForce GTX 960 4GB GDDR5
1 x Intel Core i5-4460
1 x MSI H97-PC Mate, LGA1150, D3,S3,U3, HD, Gb Lan
1 x 8GB DDR3 1866MHz (2x4), Kingston HyperX Fury
1 x Fortron Hyper M 500W, 80+, modular
1 x SanDisk Z400s 256GB SSD, 2.5” 7mm, SATA 6 Gbit/s
1 x Zalman Z3+, USB3.0 black

Total: $2051, and Accenture handles the assembly and shipping for free!
If you don't really see yourself gaming on this machine at all, just leave the graphics card out for now and keep everything else as is... that way, if you ever decide you want to dive into some gaming down the road, you'll already have a solid foundation ready for when you pick up a GPU...

Thanks so much for the help. I think I'll go ahead and get this ordered tomorrow morning...

Timothy Kim60 said:Wait, let me make sure I'm following you... are you saying you wouldn't even want to game on a rig like that?

If that's the case, you don't need a PC in that price bracket at all! Especially since you definitely don't need a GPU like an $600... honestly, you probably don't need any dedicated card besides just using integrated graphics

Basically, I'd mostly just be playing on PlayStation, though I might try out a PC exclusive here and there—maybe some older titles that haven't made it to consoles yet, like the first two Witcher games—so I figured once I saved up a little cash, I'd just grab everything from the thrift store and get it sorted out...

Matthew Alvarez said:Bryan Grant29

crimsonstag84 already suggested a cooler for you, but that one isn't really built for overclocking, and since he picked out a motherboard that actually allows you to overclock the CPU, I'd suggest grabbing a much better cooler right away if that's your goal... though it really depends on whether you even care about that sort of thing or if you plan on messing with it, because if not, you could probably save some money by picking a cheaper $100.

How many hard drives are you running exactly?

I've never actually done any of that before—honestly, I don't even know how—so I doubt I'd ever try it, but if a beefier cooler makes the PC run better, then I'll definitely pick it up... My computer is mostly just for browsing the web and watching movies and stuff like that. I have five internal hard drives right now, and I bought an enclosure for one of them, so I should be able to fit four standard ones and one SSD in there...

Matthew Alvarez said:Personally, if I were starting this build from scratch, I’d go ahead and grab the LC CC 120 right away... the jump in performance from $27 compared to the LC CC 95 is pretty noticeable, and it keeps things much quieter. I honestly doubt they'll feel like upgrading to a beefier cooler later on if they don't just get it now, so might as well... maybe even bump up to a 600W power supply to allow for overclocking, just so they aren't stuck when it comes time to pick out a better graphics card.
It also wouldn't be a bad idea to look for a used GPU, since you can often find an AMD Radeon R9 290 or an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 floating around on marketplaces or forums for around $600 with some kind of warranty left...

So, does that mean I should pick up an extra cooler too? And does anyone happen to know how many hard drives will actually fit in these cases? I was planning on just using an SSD for my OS and basic apps, but I've still got about 13TB of data sitting on old mechanical drives in my current rig...

crimsonstag84 said:Intel Core i5-6400
Asrock Z170 Pro4S
LC-CC-95
2x4GB of the cheapest DDR4 you can find
EVGA Hyper 500W should be plenty
Cooler Master Deathclaw case
Regarding SSDs... ranging from the SanDisk Ultra II and Patriot Ignite/OCZ ARC 100 up to the Samsung 850 EVO

For the GPU: honestly, it just depends on how much extra cash you're willing to drop 😛

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950 WF2 ~ $467
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 4GB = $600
AMD Radeon R9 380 = $630

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 is pretty close to the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950, while the AMD Radeon R9 380 is generally about 15% faster on average...

Thanks for getting back to me. I'll definitely look into all of those options. I don't know a whole lot about this stuff myself, I just remember hearing people talk about avoiding AMD cards for a while, so I was mostly just looking at NVIDIA brands because of that...

Matthew Alvarez said:Are you planning on buying all of this fresh, or do you already have some of it on hand?

If you're looking to buy everything new, honestly, I'd skip the Cooler Master Z11 Plus... there are much better budget-friendly options out there like the BMW Z3, the Z1 neo, or even the R1, which would probably serve you better... also, you really don't need 16GB of RAM for this build, and if you're hunting for an SSD on a budget, maybe check out a Patriot Ignite instead, since it'll be a bit of an upgrade over that Blast option...

That was actually my plan, so I'll definitely spend some more time looking into those different cases and picking out an SSD... thanks for the tip. Oh, and between those two graphics cards, which one do you think is the better pick?

crimsonstag84 said:What kind of CPU and power supply are you running right now?

In that price range, honestly, you probably can't beat an AMD Radeon R9 380 for $633.

I'm looking to just buy everything brand new since my current setup feels practically prehistoric (I mostly just play on PS3 or PS4 anyway)...
I was thinking about this processor: Intel Core i5-6400
And this power supply: EVGA Hyper 500W, 12cm fan
Motherboard: ASRock B150M-PRO4, 1151
RAM: PC-19200, 16 GB, G.SKILL Ripjaws 4 series, F4-2400C15D-16GRR, DDR4 2400MHz, kit 2x8GB
Case: Cooler Master Z11 Plus
And a Patriot Blast 240GB SSD

Hey there. I’ve been looking to pick up this NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950, but no matter how much I scour the internet, I just can't seem to find a single retailer actually stocking it... Does anyone happen to know where I might be able to track one down? I'm based out in Cleveland, so I'd love to just grab it from an online shop, though I wouldn't mind driving out to pick it up if I really had to. Thanks in advance.

Also, I had a quick follow-up question. Should I just shell out a few extra bucks and go for the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 OC, 4GB GDDR5 128bit, GV-N960OC-4GD instead, or are they pretty much identical so it wouldn't really be worth the extra cash...