Price-check for New PC

[Furunculus]

i like the idea of 1TB ssd's, split 128GB for Windows and 850GB for games/apps.

intend to do that on mine as soon as 1tb M.2 ssd's with NVME support arrive.

build looks good, if you are running hi-res (2560x1440 or more), then i'd tilt the cash more towards GPU and less towards CPU.

[Montmorency]

Sounds to me like you are not too hard up for money, and you'll be kicking yourself if it turns out that you needed the warranty and didn't get one. You'd pay $50 for a nicer case, but not sure about $150 more to have a warranty? Well, I guess it depends on how much a nicer case means to you, but I'd say that a warranty would be a least 3 times as important.

Point taken, but I was being a bit facetious there.

Chuck one of the HDDs and buy a bigger SSD. As of now, a 1TB Samsung Evo costs about 450 on newegg. Do you actually have stuff to store on the HDDs or are you playing games on them? If that is the case, you should use SSDs. I still think it is a bit premature to jump on the hyperthreading train with the i7, especially if you are just gaming, but that is your call. 1900 seems a little low, honestly. You aren't skimping on the MBR and the PSU, are you?

I actually do relatively-little gaming, but I do want to just be able to sit down and play/mod without having to worry about how many FPS this or that texture will eat up. I mean, even on vanilla Skyrim, on my current PC I get 20-30 FPS. It's just annoying.

I do need the storage over SSD. 256GB is definitely more than enough for my games and other programs. Meanwhile, for movies, music, books, pictures, etc. (not to mention the full backup of my old XP-era data) - I'll need 1 TB just for that.

With 3GB storage, I'll definitely not need to worry about storage again this decade. Anyway, from 2GB to 3GB of storage it's like $25, so why not?

For power supply, I would be getting something like 650W, and the motherboard would be in the $100-150 range.

[Husar]

I agree with Xiahou, why not just change the GPU?

I'm also on a Phenom II and if it hadn't started to bluescreen sometimes (I suspect a faulty mainboard), I would still be quite happy with it.
If I'm not mistaken, an i7 is quite a bit faster, even the somewhat older models.

And unless you want to overclock the machine or other fancy custom things, an i7 can often be replaced with a Xeon. They're meant for servers but are basically i7s without the overclocking functionality and with a lower price.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by warranty as individual parts should have a warranty as well and if you can afford a 1900$ upgrade, then you can certainly afford the "risk" of just trying a GPU-upgrade first.
I also like to buy at smaller local shops/companies if available, I don't know the situation in the US but the store where I bought most of my current PC hardware is pretty great and they are very friendly and helpful if there is a problem.

[Montmorency]

an i7 can often be replaced with a Xeon

From a quick search, available Xeons seem to be either more expensive or inferior to the i7 that I'm looking at.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by warranty as individual parts should have a warranty as well

A machine warranty is valuable for obvious reasons.

you can certainly afford the "risk" of just trying a GPU-upgrade first.

Time and effort are also part of the equation.

I also like to buy at smaller local shops/companies if available, I don't know the situation in the US but the store where I bought most of my current PC hardware is pretty great and they are very friendly and helpful if there is a problem.

No idea, but there's a certain stereotype here...

[Beskar]

I have to admit, interested in a rig myself at some point. I just seem to fail at getting the balance right. It is like "you can buy gaming tower at £800" and it looks pretty subpar, then it is like "or this one at £2000!" which you then have to finetune and it ends up at like "£2500" and you are like "I don't want to spend that much.."

All I want is a pretty silent, good cooling (even water cooled) right where Star Citizen can be ran at 60fps on max settings!

Not even sure those super expensive ones would be too much overkill either.

[Montmorency]

Am getting something along the lines described in OP. Will report on performance in a week.

What are some personal benchmarking software I could use in the testing? The final test, of course, will be how sexily Skyrim runs with 500+ (Merged) esps and 3/4 of the textures and meshes replaced, all on ultra settings.

If it all works with no further configuration, I will give praise to Allah forever.

[easytarget]

Not sure where you're located, but if in US and you decide you want to custom build you should sign up at the forum of MaxForce PC and describe what you want and he'll quote it out for you (and make recommendations as you see fit). This is a boutique builder who will put a system together basically by any specification you can describe using any specific parts by brand you want.

I didn't feel like building one the last time I needed a system so I got him to do it for me, it ended up being maybe 100 bucks more than if I had piece parted everything through Newegg myself. And it came with a 3 year warranty which thanks to an lightening strike netted me a replaced system. I also had a failed sound card he replaced by sending me a brand new boxed SB card (the one that has front mounted access).

http://www.maxforcepc.com/

Anyway, that's my 2 cents. Well, here's one extra penny of input, on the GTX970 choices, get the twin frozr MSI, it has cooling that is so good you can run it w/ no fans up to 40C, in fact it comes with that fan curve defaulted. Every other GTX I've run S2 or R2 on ran w/ high fan noise & high temps (i'm talking low to mid 80s), the custom cooling on MSI under full load is low 60's on ultra.

http://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages...-review,1.html