Computer for Gaming/Twitch Streaming & General Use

• 

  WalterPPK on 03/07/2016 - 12:55

  For what you're wanting to do, definitely go with a desktop. Not only will you get more performance per dollar spent, but you can overclock, upgrade more easily, and you can replace any part that fails with your choice of suppliers.

  You're probably looking at the Intel Skylake CPUs or the newest generation of AMDs. You'll almost certainly want to get a high quality graphics card from Nvidia or AMD.

  For comparison of CPUs I'd go to cpuboss.com and spend a little time browsing.

  For comparison of graphics cards I'd usually read the monthly "best graphics cards for your money" at TomsHardware.com however I should point out that both the major manufacturers have a new line of cards hitting the market as we speak and these are designed to help them corner the emerging VR market, so they'll be fighting competitively over the next few weeks to see who can get the "best value gaming and VR capable chipset" crown. That might also mean that some of the not-quite-VR-capable but still damned powerful options will see price drops.

  Overclockers.com.au are usually well ahead of these, and follow lots of different review sites to compare not just the cards themselves, but the various manufacturers and how they differ.

  Finally, I'd recommend Whirlpool for some build "suggestions" to get you started, and staticice.com.au to compare prices across different stores once you have an idea what you want.

  http://whirlpool.net.au/wiki/rmp_sg_whirlpoolpcs

  http://au.pcpartpicker.com/

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  jimbobaus on 03/07/2016 - 13:02

  +2

  if u plan to stream to twitch make sure you are on a NBN plan as Twitch required at least 5mbs upload to be able to stream (7mbs min for 1080p streaming)

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  Settero on 03/07/2016 - 16:50

  op you need to give a budget, as for hearthstone you could easily get away with a laptop for streaming.
  desktops are just so much easier to customize / upgrade / cheaper for the specs, but some people would just find themselves not using the desktop as much as a laptop, and you kinda seem like you are doing this as a because i can thing , not something even remotely seriously , so i would not shift to desktop if you are accustomed to laptops.

• 

  p1 ama on 03/07/2016 - 18:12

  +2

  This is going to be in some detail, so bear with me for a minute and hopefully this is helpful. I would recommend starting with a budget and getting all the non-core components down pat first, then you can work out how much money you have to spend on a processor and graphics card.

  To start off with, you need to consider things such as case, storage, PSU, RAM…etc., stuff that is not really variable in price given that you aim for good value stuff. This is where you can't really cheap out all that much.

  1) Case: $100
  For the case, I recommend something that's around $100, as that's the price where you get decent value - e.g. good build quality, good internals that make it easy to build in, route cables, looks sophisticated and makes future upgrades easy. Good options include the Phanteks Eclipse P400, NZXT S340, and Corsair SPEC-Alpha. If you want to spend a bit more, the Fractal Design Define R5 is a great case that is super quiet and high quality.

  2) PSU: $100
  For any modern system, I recommend a 600-650W PSU which is more than enough for a single GPU system. I wouldn't recommend anymore because it's simply a waste if you're only ever going to use one GPU. A good option is the EVGA 600B 600W PSU. It's a decent mid-range PSU with enough wattage and efficiency. No need to spend super big.

  3) Storage: $200
  This is pretty standard as well. I recommend, as a minimum, a 250GB SSD for the OS and key apps. You can get these for as low as $50, but I recommend spending a little extra, around $100 and getting a good quality one, since you'll be reading/writing to it quite a fair bit. This will set you back around $100. You should also get a 2TB HDD to store all your other stuff too, so maybe a WD Blue 2TB for around $100.

  4) RAM: $100
  Just get 16GB RAM, that's around the standard these days and you can get 2400 MHz DDR4 for around $100, which I think is fairly decent value.

  So that's $500 for all the core stuff, now you just have to add a motherboard, CPU (+ cooler) and GPU.

  It depends on your budget, but if you allocate around $1500 (a pretty healthy budget), you can fit in a nice Z170 board (around $200), an i5 6600K (around $350) with a Coolermaster Hyper 212X Cooler (around $50) and a GTX970 (which is $320 from a previous deal somewhere around here).

  That gives you a pretty nice system for $1500 that should last a while. You can also wait for some new graphics cards to appear, but unless the GTX1070 drops pretty heavily in price soon, the recommendations won't change too much.