Gaming PC Build - Sub $1700

• 

  bananabendera on 19/10/2016 - 23:12

  +1

  You might want to look at the thread I made and got help with, plenty of info there and it was a similar build. Keep in mind I'm still nowhere near as experienced as some of the other OzBargainers here :P I waited about a week for some small price drops for my parts on Umart and got everything but the SSD, CPU and GPU from there (free pickup=cheaper).

  1) It should be fine as living in Aus, WiFi bandwidth most likely exceeds your internet bandwidth anyway. Just make sure drivers etc. are up to date and it is installed properly!
  2) Nothing really for me to contribute there, I got a 450W Seasonic Gold Modular for pretty much the same price $110.
  3) Read good stuff about it but nothing else from me there.
  4) I ordered a couple of extra Corsair Air Flow 140mm for mine (you have the same case). Tried the actual functionality of them in an old case as my new build is waiting on shipping for GPU and CPU, so far so good.
  5) Nothing for me to contribute (except comments in my thread)
  6) :)
  7) Depends how long you think you can wait. I waited around a week and a half to buy my CPU, GPU storage but there might be Halloween sales coming up? Especially on Amazon.
  8) You could have got your GPU for a better price. That CPU is also $269 at Umart and I'm sure many other local tech shops that you can get free pickup from. Also, are you including a HDD in your build for some extra space? 65 bucks for 1TB.

  • 

    bananabendera on 19/10/2016 - 23:29

    http://au.pcpartpicker.com/list/LkfXf8 is pretty much my final build, I wasn't including OS/monitor/peripherals in my budget though.

• 

  vasper on 20/10/2016 - 01:09

  5) Students can get Windows for free from http://onthehub.com/download/free-software/windows-10-educat…. See if you are eligible.
  7) If not in a hurry, you could save some significant amount buying parts on sale(Black Friday/Cyber Monday). I recently built my first home-office PC (http://au.pcpartpicker.com/list/qsDC8K) and saved about 15-20% off the retail price(thanks to Ozbargain community).

• 

  Diji1 on 20/10/2016 - 01:11

  -4

  gaming rig

  $1700 and you're getting a GTX 1060 for a gaming rig? That's nuts if you want to play AAA titles when you could be affording a GTX 1080 + sane mobo/cpu that will pound the floor of a 1060. A GTX 1070 will not play some titles at 1920x1080 60FPS maximum settings ATM to be clear.

  I didn't even bother looking past the video card but I'm going to guess your spending a lot of money on overclocking your cpu and RAM which does about nothing for gaming and your going to skimp on GPU which does everything for gaming.

  • 

    cwongtech on 20/10/2016 - 12:06

    +1

    I didn't even bother looking past the video card but I'm going to guess your spending a lot of money on overclocking your cpu and RAM

    You didn't even look at the CPU. It's not a K version, nor does it look like there is a 3rd party cooling fan for it.
    $1700 includes monitor, wifi card (WHY OP WHY!! I fixed wireless lag by not using wireless!).
    That's $250 gone right there.
    Looks like OP got rekt for GPU price, another $100 gone.

  • 

    M1ndFu7 on 20/10/2016 - 12:44

    +3

    Pretty obvious a GTX1080 will out perform a GTX1060. But id like to see a recommended setup with GTX1080 and includes everything that OP has listed for under $1700 and performed better overall.

    My opinion is that the overall experience is important. Whats the point of running a game at max res with 60fps when you need forever to load a game. Most games will require good CPU and RAM to handle as well as a good GPU.

    my advice to OP is to look for cheaper store. For example, the CPU listed can be bought from MSY for $244 rather than $300.When you add all the savings up, it might outweight the $100 voucher you get from Ebay.

    In addition, if you did a calculation on the required power for the setup, i think a 550W PSU should suffice. Unless you are thinking of running SLI down the road. Gold+ certified PSU is certainly great but for 140 is kinda steep. I would get a 80+ bronze PSU for 70bucks and save yourself some money!

    Cheers

• 

  Gecko on 20/10/2016 - 12:21

  +1

  I reckon ditch your CPU/Motherboard/Memory and go this combo:
  https://www.pccasegear.com/products/35929/pccg-xeon-v5-gamin…

  Get much, much better CPU and only spend an extra $60.

  SSD looks fine, GPU will get the job done at 1080p. It won't last 4+ years, you'd want a 1070 or higher to last 4 years imo - but understand the budget isn't stretching very far.

  To be honest I got no idea about cases/PSU but seems like you've chosen alright there.

  If you live outside a city/apartment complex wifi is fine, but if you're in a really busy area it's less great. Make sure you setup your 5ghz network away from everyone else in your area's channels and it'll be fine.

  I get only 1-2ms ping to my router at home using a decent wifi card and never had any issues.

• 

  wheretobuychocettes on 21/10/2016 - 12:38

  +1

  1. If WiFi is a must and you can't run a cable for whatever reason, the card you have selected is likely your best possible chance at getting a solid WiFi signal if you're 'far away' from the router.
  2. I would almost never recommend a PSU with a rating over Bronze. The amount of money you spend up-front will likely not be noticed in the potential savings on power bills for a number of years, depending on how much you have the PC turned on/in use even. That said, your build doesn't even stand to use 500w with everything using maximum amounts of power, so you could even get a 500w gold if you really wanted gold… saves some money surely. Here at work we use mostly Silverstone power supplies, not a great deal of issues which is why we stick with them compared to other brands.
  3. Motherboard is fine, we also use a great deal of MSI products and as long as the product isn't DOA, you'll probably never experience any issues. As with most branded motherboards. It's good you're not getting carried away and getting a H170 or Z170 unnecessarily. Basically as long as the motherboard supports all the connections you want to use now and in the near future (SATA, PCI, USB, etc.) then that's all you need.
  4. Additional fans are almost always unnecessary. You're not likely to be overclocking significantly given the specs of the hardware, which means all the components will be pretty happy and find it easy to maintain their safe temperatures. The case you're getting has a few fans as you mentioned, and every component that will generate a 'significant' amount of heat will also have its own fan(s). Don't spend money on extra fans, unless you get some regular 120mm fans for free or something!
     Intake at the front, exhaust the back. It's the usual flow of cases. Don't get too caught up in it all, unless you live or game in a very warm environment or don't have Air-Conditioning in the summer. Even then, you yourself needs to be able to stand the ambient temperature in order to game in the room with the PC, so you likely don't need to concern yourself too much still.
  5. NA
  6. You missed number 6! Sneaky guy…
  7. NA
  8. No major issues here. The only thing I might have suggested you consider was getting say a 240-256GB SSD (or even 120-128GB) instead of 480GB and also get a 1-2TB mechanical drive too. Really the only thing that makes a big difference being on an SSD is the operating system and your applications like Word, Chrome, Photoshop, blah. Game load times will be faster, but the game won't run faster or give you higher frame rates once loaded.
     But that's fine since it says you already bought it! You might still find that installing about 5 games will fill up the SSD, then you can just buy a larger mechanical drive as they're pretty cheap. 2TB is under $100.
     I have the same case, it's great. NZXT makes high quality cases, allowing good cable management too. I've got a 120GB Sandisk, for about a year now, no issues.

  Should be problem free! Good luck with the build. :)

  If you have any questions about anything I've said, let me know.

  • 

    gazza524 on 23/10/2016 - 00:30

    Hi @rloos, thank you for your reply. Regarding the PSU do you have any suggestions for which one to get? I'll be shopping at either Scorptec, PCCaseGear & Centrecom. I found this XFX PSU, however I don't particularly like the cables. https://www.pccasegear.com/products/33118/xfx-ts-series-pro-…
    Also with the CPU/motherboard/ram, is this worth it https://www.pccasegear.com/products/35929/pccg-xeon-v5-gamin…. The XEON processor offers better performance and the motherboard is much more appealing with more features. Is it worth the extra $60? I don't mind spending about $100 more.

    Thanks

    • 

      wheretobuychocettes on 23/10/2016 - 11:37

      We use a lot of Silverstone. When customers select the cheapest 500w PSU more often than not we end up using this: https://evatech.com.au/500w-below/313-silverstone-500w-st50f…

      I haven't heard of XFX before, but I'd imagine if PCCG carry them that they can't be too bad.

      The Xeon bundle is better on paper, but in the real world it's probably only an advantage in games that have been specifically optimised or written with multi-threading in mind. So it would ultimately boil down to the games you want to play and how keen the developers are on catering to those who game on Xeons. There is a reason that the Skylake series is referred to as consumer grade. And probably what developers are really catering towards.
      Not that I have any personal experience, just going off what I've heard/read.

      There's always a little more you can spend for a little better (potential) performance or features. In reality though if you utilise them or need them is the factor you should consider, and also if it's worth the extra dollars compared to the performance and features your original configuration had.