Help! Desktop Part-picking

[lowco2525]

Long story:
So I know you all had a ton of fun helping Cohh pick his PC parts, and I thought I would continue the fun in this thread! As I have come back into the gaming world, and fallen in love with PC gaming, I have come to quickly realize my four year old laptop is not quite cutting it with these newer PC games. I am reallyyy excited about Wildstar so my goal is to save up enough money to buy and build my computer by May 31st.

Alright well I am looking for any help you can give me! Whether you want to recommend a few parts, or an entire build! You can include any parts that may not be available yet so long as they are out before the end of May. Beware! I am not super familiar with computer lingo, so bare with me!

If you help me you will have a special place in my heart and I will express my gratitude in some way shape or form! (like attaching hearts and extra exclamation points when I see you in chat!)

Short story:
Budget: ~$2000
I'm looking for a desktop that I can play games on and at least somewhat admire the graphics and also be able to handle streaming
More emphasis on the actual desktop rather than the accessories, I've never used a "gaming" mouse/keyboard so I'm not entirely sure I will get them, and if I do I'll have to test them out with cheap products first.

Again, PLS HELP AND THANK YOU!!!

[Ashardis]

I take it that you need a monitor aswell?
And I would also like to add that lowco2525 is a US resident, so US hardwaresites are the place to go

[lowco2525]

Well... I do have a monitor, but I may want a bigger one. If you'd like to recommend a monitor and accessories too that's fine by me! Any help is much appreciated!

[Ashardis]

This is my suggestion : http://pcpartpicker.com/p/39FDh

I don't think there'll be new releases until 1st of June that'll tip the scales much - and this system should kick some serious butt!
If you look for another case, make sure that it can take the CPU fan height (159mm or 6.25") - so going below 8" width could be bad.
I've made sure that the mobo/PSU can handle SLI, so if you want to boost the gfx eventually, another 780 will set you right.

[Ahven1]

The setup Ashardis suggested is good tho maybe get a different HDD maybe wd blue or black or Seagate Barracuda ....Also if you wanted to oc i would go with another cpu cooler.

[Ashardis]

I picked the WD green HDD for low noise when the PC isn't used for games, not super hardcore performance as it should, imho, mainly be used for storage of files.. and the SSD is big enough to have OS + several games installed without getting into size limitation shizzle
Obviously, should Lowco2525 want to put games over there, a 7200RPM HDD is important and Ahven1's suggestions are top-notch

[lowco2525]

1. Shouldn't I stay with windows 7? I heard windows 8 is awful.
2. Whats the difference between the two types of storage parts? What is HHD vs SSD?

Thank you so much guys for your input! <3<3 (See, you're already getting hearts!)

[rojomojo915]

1. Shouldn't I stay with windows 7? I heard windows 8 is awful.
2. Whats the difference between the two types of storage parts? What is HHD vs SSD?

Thank you so much guys for your input! <3<3 (See, you're already getting hearts!)

1. I would stick with windows 7 if it were me.
2. SSD = Solid state drive (flash memory) which is more expensive per GB but also much quicker and doesn't crash, great for storing your OS on to help performance. HDD is the typical hard drives that have been around for years.

[Ahven1]

I think windows 8 has gotten bad image from the ui and ppl would still like to use windows xp ui
Theres nothing wrong with windows 8 and i would say unless you dont have a copy of windows 7 i would get 8.
What rojomojo forgot to say is SSD = no moving parts also faster read and write speeds than a hdd and HDD has moving parts ( spinnnig disc or discs and a reader head )

[Ashardis]

Personally, I'd also stick with Win7, buuuut go into a store and poke around on one of the laptops they've got on display.. they run Win8.. see if you like this way of doing things

A HDD is an oldfashioned harddrive - rotating glassplates with a layer of magnetic coating being written/read by a physically moving part.. kindda like oldschool recordplayer (only a LOT faster and incredibly closer to the top layer). They're cheap storage pr. gigabyte. Drawbacks are that they're physically moving parts, noise (although with your GPU at full throttle, it won't be heard at all) and heat (for the more performance oriented drives).

An SSD is kindda like a USBflashdrive on speed. It's main drawbacks is primarily price per gigabyte AND the consumer/lower priced models are not good if you're planning on intense disk writing (and you plan on filling it to the brim many times a day with different data) as the memory cells have a finite number of writes "in them" so to speak. As a regular gamer/consumer, you don't need to worry too much about this (you'll replace the drive within 5 years anyway, most likely).
The benefits of an SSD is that it's all computer chips, no moving parts.. so no read/write head that has to find the right track to read something, so the average time to start reading/writing a file in a random location is below 0.1ms, where as on average HDD's it's 9-11ms - so when you're booting up and Windows needs to read a lot of small files, an SSD can accomplish this in a much speedier fashion than a regular HDD. Also - an average consumer SSD can read with speeds above 500megabyte/s (the best are only capped by the SATA3 interface at 600megabytes/s) and write with little above ½ the read speed (again best SSD's write ~600megabytes/s).
They're not prone to mechanical failures, they consume very little power, generate very little heat and make NO noise.

[lowco2525]

Okay, so my computer won't be noisy right? And I'll probably stick with Windows 7, I think I can get it for free through my school.

[Ashardis]

Well.. a big gaming rig with such a GPU will make some noise when you're gaming, unless you spend a zillion on custom watercooling loops and other stuff that's NOT for "Entry Level PC builders".
But when you're just browsing n whatnot.. it would not make much noise at all

[Ahven1]

I should add that the case Ashardis picked out has noise dampening material on the sides, front and roof what should help little with noise so if you look at other cases might wanna make sure they have this also if you dont like noise! Gonna get the Fractal desing Define R4 my self tho in titanium grey.

[lowco2525]

Okay cool! Thanks guys!

[bblondia]

Hey lowco.
Check the thread I posted about my first build. Those are the parts I used and it's pretty wicked. Although Ashardis is somewhat of a guru and I would follow his advice. As for my new rig it is whisper quiet compared to my old system. The only thing that I can really notice that makes noise is when I use my optical drive (DVD drive). But it is old and that is to be expected. As for the SSD vs HDD that has already been covered but I just wanted to say YOU ARE GOING TO LOVE THE SSD!!!! Holy geez is it fast. So fast compared to the HDD. I loaded my operating system on there as well as Diablo3. It runs lightning fast. All my other games that I play sporadically I put on my 2TB HDD.

[lowco2525]

That is great to hear! I will check out your thread, I am really excited about getting it! Just trying to get the money first

[TheLG]

Ashardis pretty much nailed it I'd say; looks like a solid machine all around. Windows 7 or Windows 8.1, either way is fine for gaming really, they've ironed out a lot of things in 8.1 that were giving games problems. Like Ashardis said, go walk into a Bestbuy, Walmart or somewhere and play around with their machines as they will all be running the demo version of 8.1. You may not like the "Metro" UI (more for touchscreens) but the normal desktop still exists and for your design/gaming works, you'll spend most time on the desktop anyways. Good luck!

[jagerman1980]

I personally would go with the GTX 780Ti over the 780, even if that meant dropping down to an i5. That being said I don't stream and I don't find the gaming I do to be that CPU intensive to need to go up to the i7.

[H3ll0J3ll0]

jagerman are you insane, 780ti is so not worth the money. btw windows 8 is much better performance-wise and if i were you i would spend more money on the motherboard and less on the ram.

[jagerman1980]

It's about a 10% improvement on benchmarks over the GTX780. Which the price is around $659 for the GTX 780Ti, where as the GTX 780 is only at $460. So it is about 50% more on the price. However, in two months the price could drop even more for the GTX780 Ti which has already loswered some since November. The prices I got came from pricewatch.com, and the stats below came from http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/.

GeForce GTX 780 TiAverage G3D Mark
Description:
Other names: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti
Videocard First Benchmarked: NA
G3DMark/\$Price: 12.77 Overall Rank: 2
Last Price Change: $689.99 USD (2013-11-09)8811

Samples: 526

GeForce GTX 780Average G3D Mark
Description:
Other names: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780
Videocard First Benchmarked: NA
G3DMark/\$Price: 16.17 Overall Rank: 3
Last Price Change: $497.77 USD (2013-05-29)8050

Samples: 1835