(Part 2) Reddit mentions: The best data storage products

Also, I like your build, but I have a few suggestions

​

CPU - AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor

Nice. While the 3700x is clearly better for video editing, better in this case only means that it saves you time. And while time is nice, I think it'd be better to use that $140 towards a second monitor.

​

CPU Cooler - ARCTIC Freezer 34 eSports DUO CPU Cooler

I feel like you would be better off either buying a better cooler or just sticking with the stock cooler, because I don't think this one will let you oc much more than the Wraith.

​

Motherboard - MSI MPG X570 GAMING PRO CARBON WIFI

I don't think your use-case justifies an X570 board, I'd recommend the Aorus Pro with WiFi or the Aorus Elite without WiFi, and I would again say to use the extra $100+ towards that second monitor.

​

Memory - Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory

Nice. 3600 would be better, but if you can't find a 3600 set for a reasonable price, then you can try to manually oc this 3200 set to 3600.

​

Storage - Crucial MX500 500 GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive

This is really important and confused me when M.2 drives first came out. Some SSDs have different physical Form Factors and electrical Interfaces.

Two common Form Factors are 2.5 inch and M.2 - Again, these are just physical, not too much of a difference here other than size.

Two common Interfaces are SATA III and PCIe - This is the important part, because SATA III has a maximum theoretical throughput of 600 MB/s, while PCIe Gen 3 4x has a maximum theoretical throughput of about 4000 MB/s

In this case, the Crucial MX500 is an SSD that uses the M.2 Form Factor and SATA III Interface. If you check it's rated read/write speeds, it's about 560/510 MB/s respectively, which would make sense given that it's SATA III.

But this doesn't mean that all NVMe PCIe SSDs can achieve read and write speeds of 4000 MB/s. This just means that if you see an M.2 SATA SSD, you know that it's not gonna be faster than 600 MB/s, but an M.2 PCIe SSD can be faster than 600 MB/s.

Maybe I went on for too long, anyway, my SSD suggestions would be:

Samsung 970 Evo 1TB for $169.99, my personal preference, nice brand, nice speeds (3500MB/s read, 2500MB/s write), nice warranty (5 years)

Sabrent Rocket 1TB for 109.98, I haven't personally used it, not familiar with the brand but this specific product of theirs has a lot of positive reviews, similar speeds (3450MB/s read, 3000MB/s write), ok warranty (1 year?... some people question this)

Intel 660p 1TB for 89.99, I haven't personally used it, nice brand, nice speeds (1800MB/s read, 1800MB/s write), nice warranty (5 years)

​

Video Card - MSI GeForce RTX 2070 8 GB Video Card

Strictly gaming performance wise, the 5700 XT is better than the 2070. On top of that, it's around $30 cheaper.

General performance is tough to compare. And on top of that, they each have their own individual benefits in different video editing programs.

If video editing is mostly just a side thing, then the 5700 XT looks like the card for you. But if you are serious about video editing, then you're gonna have to do some research on which GPU is best for you.

​

Power Supply - EVGA SuperNOVA G3 650 W 80+ Gold Fully Modular

Nice, but it seams a little overpriced. The Corsair RM650x is also 80+ Gold and fully modular, but $20 cheaper.

​

Monitor - I'm tired, so I'm going to bed, but I personally use 2 monitors:

27" 4k 60Hz for content consumption

24" 1080p 144Hz VA for that juicy smooth gaming

I wish I got a 27" 1080p so they'd match in size but the increased pixel density of the 24" is probably better anyway.

​

Good luck with whatever you decide to build :D

Looks like a really good build. I will put part links in the end of the post. Here's some tips to save a bit of money if you're open to it:

1. Power supply: 550 watts is a great amount for this system. You could save some money by passing on the 80+ gold rating (although it's great to have a super efficient power supply, you don't need 80+ gold) and get a power supply that has an 80+ bronze efficiency rating. A power supply being fully modular isn't a must either, for me at least. A good semi-modular pick would be the Rosewill Hive 550, I have it and it has has sleeved black cables for about $55. If you want to save more money on the PSU, though, the EVGA basic 550W unit has all black cables and goes for around $43. Otherwise, the 600B from EVGA is a great 600W unit for around $50. Changing your power supply with these options might save you around $30-$40.
   
2. RAM: there are 16GB kits out there that are cheaper than the ones you selected, some are even in red to match your color scheme. I know there is a kit from Corsair that goes for around $80, so that might save you $20-$30 there. Otherwise, if you can't afford 16GB at the beginning of the build, 8GB will suffice until you upgrade. Just make sure if you get 8GB, get a single stick so you can throw another one in later. 8GB instead of 16 GB may save you $30-$40.
   
3. CPU cooler: The i5 6500 comes with its own stock cooler, so you can save around $25 by not paying for a CPU cooler right away. Otherwise, the 212 Evo is a superb cooler and also comes in a red LED fan version for a few bucks more :D
   
4. GPU: The GTX 1060 is a great option for a video card, but the RX 480 from AMD might be able to save you a few bucks right now and down the road. When you look to purchase another monitor, options with FreeSync (AMD adaptive sync) are normally cheaper than monitors with G-Sync (Nvidia adaptive sync). Adaptive sync monitors will make your gameplay smoother. Also, if you get a motherboard that supports crossfire, you can throw another RX 480 in your rig in the future. I will recommend you a motherboard for this at the end, and it won't cost you much more than your current one. An RX 480 8GB starts at around $230. Also, RX 480's are said to be better in DX12, another "future proofer".
   
5. Motherboard (minor): H110 is a budget chipset, and a Micro ATX one will save you a bit of money. BUT, if you want another RX 480, you'll need a motherboard with 2 PCIe slots to house them. An ATX motherboard will fill your case better, not look as awkward as a mATX one, and will let you put another RX 480 card in your rig in the future. A good ATX motherboard that would work for this build would be the Asus B150-PLUS for $95. This may be a bit expensive, but you could spend your saved money on this part. I highly suggest you exercise this option.
   
6. Storage: if 250GB is enough for you, then you could save some money by not getting a Samsung SSD. An SSD comparable to this would be the Crucial MX300 275GB for around $80. Also, the SanDisk z400s is $75 and is 256GB. If you want more storage, though, I would recommend a 120GB SSD like the PNY CS1311 for $40 and a 1TB hard drive like the WD Blue for $50.
   
   TL;DR: cut back on PSU efficiency ratings, look for different 16GB or even 8GB RAM kits, ditch CPU cooler (or keep if you want), get an RX 480 for saving money on future monitors, you can also put another RX 480 in your build in the future with a different motherboard; an ATX motherboard would fill your case and add capability for a second RX 480, a non-Samsung SSD could save you some money, while for $100, you can get an SSD and a 1TB hard drive.
   
   Links:
   EVGA 550W "basic" http://amzn.to/2gbEbeQ
   Rosewill Hive-550 http://amzn.to/2gbBtGe
   EVGA 600B http://amzn.to/2gtvZcH
   Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO LED http://amzn.to/2fJ7mHM
   RX 480 http://amzn.to/2gbIUgI (choose which one you like)
   Asus B150-PLUS http://amzn.to/2eVnuqj
   Crucial MX 300 275GB http://amzn.to/2fidOoq
   SanDisk Z400S 256GB http://amzn.to/2fifFtk
   WD Blue 1TB http://amzn.to/2fJcPhK
   
   I hope my advice helped you and that this didn't overwhelm you. If you save enough money, you could throw in a red LED PWM fan, which adjusts its speed based on your computer's needs. I had a lot of fun making this, thanks for posting, and happy gaming :D
   
   
   

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

Type|Item|Price

----|:----|:----
CPU | Intel Core i7-4790K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor | $299.99 @ Amazon
Motherboard | Asus Z97-P ATX LGA1150 Motherboard | $110.47 @ Amazon
Memory | G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-2133 Memory | $83.98 @ Newegg
Storage | Toshiba 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive | $47.99 @ Newegg
Video Card | PNY GeForce GTX 970 4GB XLR8 Video Card | $329.99 @ Amazon
Case | NZXT Phantom 240 ATX Mid Tower Case | $69.99 @ Amazon
Power Supply | CoolMax 600W 80+ Certified ATX Power Supply | $39.99 @ Amazon
Optical Drive | LG GH24NSC0B DVD/CD Writer | $12.99 @ Newegg
Operating System | Microsoft Windows 8.1 - 64-bit (OEM) (64-bit) | $119.98 @ Newegg
Other| Asetek High Efficiency 120MM| $55.00
Other| Tt eSPORTS Talon Gaming Mouse| $20.00
Other| Tt eSPORTS Backlit| $30.00
| | Total
| Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available | $1220.37
| Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-11-30 06:12 EST-0500 |

OP's build on website (roughly).

OP WELCOME. I am always so happy seeing new people looking into getting a quality computer! Welcome to the community! I am going to give you my advice and take it with a grain of salt. I am biased and my mentality is get best bang for your buck but if it cost 20-30$ for quality than jump on that!

First off OP, I HIGHLY HIGHLY recommend building/picking your own parts on retailers websites or PCPP (pcpartpicker.com). You will save loads of money compare to buying from a site like the one you were on. Also, knowing you built your own PC just makes it even better! You will cherish it more! So lets get to it...

RAM: Yes they are offering a promo for a "FREE" upgrade but the promo is a bit scary. They don't even tell you all the specs on the RAM! Serious bothers me. You could get a DDR3 2133 with CAS of 9-11. Even though this isn't that big of a deal, it still matters a bit! Why pay 83$ when you could spend 5$ dollars for the better quality one. Also, the RAM they chose is a bit pricey at the moment. I would suggest going with something cheap like DDR3 1600-1866 with CAS 9 or 10.

Storage: Doesn't even give a brand or even model! This scares me a bit because they could just throw you a cheap brand with a model that could be shit. I just chose the cheapest 1TB at 7200RPM with 32 cache.

Video Card: Again doesn't even tell you the brand. You won't even know the clock speed or what type of cooler it has! This might not seem much to you but it is a big deal.

PSU: 600W 80+ PSU sounds good to new people but you could do soooo much better. If you throw like 10-20 dollars at the PSU you could easily get 500-650Watt GOLD or even if you wanted to save I know Corsair has some cheap BRONZE PSUs.

Optical Drive: They just chose the cheapest one and at the moment it is LG. There is a better one out there for the price/performance (ASUS).

OS: I highly recommend taking an OS on an older computer if you have one and using that product key for your new computer. If you don't have that option than actually 60$ for Windows 8.1 isn't bad. Although if you are a student you could get it cheaper from Microsoft. I pray in the future Microsoft makes their OS free. Would help so many builders out.

Keyboard: I couldn't even find that model. I don't even know if it is a mechanical keyboard. I just put 30$ just because that's how much it looks like. (If you don't know about mechanical keyboards come over to /r/mechanicalkeyboards. Great community and they have lots of information regarding mechanical keyboards.)

Mouse: I don't know too much about it so I won't comment.

Cooler: The cooler you chose is so old and to be honest it probably doesn't even perform that well. You could do better.

SSD: I seriously love the EVO and the MX100. Such great SSDs for the price. However, at the moment this baby is killing it. SanDisk Ultra II:

Overall OP build your own computer. I even limited parts to Amazon and Newegg and also turned off rebates and it was cheaper. For basically a 1260$ build you could buy all your parts now and get better quality for the same price than buying from that website. I bet you could even fit a monitor in there if you bought your parts on sale!

I HIGHLY recommend buying your parts over time if you can. There is really no reason to buy them all at once unless you are in need for a computer. Come over to /r/buildapcsales. We have such a wonderful community and everyone is very helpful.

Not even sure what's up with your form:

> Do you prefer a 2 in 1 form factor, good battery life or best specifications to your requirements for the money? Pick or include any that apply.

>Best Requirements

Wtaf man. GET IT TOGETHER CHARLIE.

> Do you have a preferred screen size? If indifferent, put N/A.

>Look at last question

Last question says you prefer Windows..

I get the feeling this question is a troll but nevertheless, I'm going to give you a nice answer.

Programming doesn't usually require a hardware intensive machine, it doesn't need a GPU or a penisvery powerful CPU but since you asked for such a high budget laptop in which weight doesn't matter I'm going to offer you a high-budget laptop and a low-budget laptop. The high budget lappy will last you approx 6 years and the low budget will last you 4 years approx.

I shall, from this point onwards, assign nicknames to the laptops:

1500 USD ASUS ROG G751JY-VS71(WX) shall now be called "That popular fat guy in college"

The 800 USD Dell Inspiron 15 7599 shall be called "good guy greg" because it's great value.

Processor: Both of these guys have incredibly powerful processors but note that a high end notebook processor is equal to a mid-range gaming processor. The fatty can easily spit out 2.6 GHz with it's i7-4720HQ however the good guy can push out a very respectable 2.3 GHz with it's powerful i5 6300HQ.

I want to give you a tip, NEVER buy a laptop based on it's processor solely. Most people are fooled buy the fact that one processor is an i7 and the other is an i5, well here's a fact, the most powerful model of the i7 can push out only 3% more than the most powerful i5.

Both of these processors can run heavily processor intensive games like "Total war: Warhammer" and can compile code equally fast because the algorithm is usually bottle-necked.

Graphics Card: They both have very powerful graphics cards but the fatty wins this battle hands down. It comes with a Nvidia GTX 980M which has 1536 CUDA cores, versus the good guy which only has approx 640 CUDA cores, respectable but the 960M is no match. VRAM is not a limiting factor, in either of them, the only game that requires more than 4 GB of VRAM is The Witcher 3, which can still be run at high and only consumes about 3 GB. Even GTA V only requires 3.8 GB at it's highest settings. Both of these can run Overwatch at max with 50-60 FPS, though the 980M can probably push out 80 FPS.

The fatty is definitely much better in this regard if you plan on doing very hardcore gaming.

Storage: I know for a fact that coders lover SSD's, the good guy comes with a pre-installed 256 GB M.2 SSD, M.2 SSD's are some of the most powerful SSD's and 256 GB is more than enough. The ASUS (popular fatty) has an optional SSD slot, goes upto 512 GB in both of the laptops. You can get a 256 GB M.2 SSD for 200 USD or a 512 GB M.2 SSD for 320 USD.

When getting an SSD only opt for Samsung, they make the best SSD's with 0 flaws.

Other than that they both have 1000 GB HDD's (no, not 1024) but that should be plenty.

RAM: NEVER BUY A LAPTOP BASED ON RAM YOU FUCKING DIMWIT, IT'S UP-GRADABLE. JESUS CHRIST.

But yeah they both have DDR3 RAM. The ASUS has 16 GB while the Dell has 8 GB

Screen size: Coders ALWAYS prefer large screens so I got the ASUS with it's 17.3 inch 1080p display, you know the ladies love a big screen ;), though the dell has a comfortable 15.6 inch 1080p screen. But as a coder I think you will prefer a large display.

Extra: The dell has thunderbolt 3

Sorry if I hurt your feelings during the review. Pansy.

Youtube videos you should watch:

[SSD's vs HDD's](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQEjGKYXjw8)


[CPU vs GPU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kypaBjJ-pg)

[i3 vs i5 vs i7**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLSPub4ydiM)

Good luck.

>All of those things that you mentioned, some of which may trickle out in the next few months, or boards that are capable of accepting them (i.e. Broadwell/Maxwell-ready motherboards).

Maxwell-ready motherboards? Maxwell is the same PCIe 3.0 as before. There's no such thing as a "maxwell-ready" motherboard.

Of course we'll have Broadwell-ready boards with the 9-series chipsets, but the problem with that is with a $2000 budget you're well in (and past) 4670K/4770K level (or their tweaked replacements) and there's no way Broadwell will bring anywhere near a big enough performance boost to justify an upgrade there.

As for the rest: as I already stated in the initial reply, PCIe 4.0, SATA Express, and DDR4 are all slated for release well after June 2014, and even if they were, none of them will really be all that revolutionary for the end user.

>Yeah, there's no definite date, but it's likely that some new 800-series GPU will come out between now and then

Well, no, you're just pulling that out of a hat. The current information/rumours point to Nvidia waiting on the 20nm node at TSMC to be ready for large scale production before they release the desktop 800-series chips. That could be anywhere from mid-summer to even early 2015. We just don't know. With the relatively recent release of the 780 Ti and Titan Black it doesn't look like Nvidia is planning to replace their high end lineup anytime in the near future, especially with AMD's ability to compete in the gaming space crippled by miners driving the prices up and supply down.

>or at least that prices on existing components will drop as well.

Prices fall in CPUs and GPUs because of 2 main things: competition and replacement products. Both hold their price (ignoring the crypto-mining for now) until their respective company decides to reduce it to boost sales or to re-position the product to be more competitive.

Intel CPUs pretty much maintain almost exactly the same price from a month after release to soon after the release of the new line, and even after that prices don't really drop by much either. A prime example would be the i5-3570K - still $216 even this long after being replaced.

> If he has a few months to buy, and is not in a hurry to have it now, what is the benefit of buying now?

The benefit of buying now is having a great gaming machine for those few months versus having no gaming machine. Your justification for waiting was "there's a bunch of really awesome new stuff definitely coming out between now and then so you should wait", but you've so far gotten to "prices might fall a bit" (which is always true, plus sales) and some speculation on Maxwell maybe coming out.

>I just bought a laptop with a 770m at the end of January, and I got a great deal on it, but 6 weeks later I could have gotten an 870m laptop for $150 more.

So if you'd waited 6 weeks you could have spent more to get more power? What you got was basically a clock boosted GTX 670M, and the 870M is basically a clock boosted GTX 680M. Three name generations and we've still got the same GK104 chip at the heart of the high end, just with higher clocks on each release.

>edit: PCI-E SSDs. Will any consumer ones be out for a reasonable price by June? I dunno. Which is reason enough to wait to find out.

As I already said, consumer SATA III SSDs are already fast enough that PCIe SSDs are at this point more of a curious blip on the consumer radar. They had some brief fame near the end of SATAIIs life before SATAIII really took off as they allowed users to bypass the bottleneck without buying a new board. As of now they really only get used for enterprise and data center workloads. Consumer-oriented PCIe SSDs are basically just two SSDs and controllers mounted on a single board in RAID0. The Asus ROG Raidr for instance is two bog-standard Sandforce SF-2281 controllers connected up to 128GB of NAND each and connected together with a Marvell RAID controller. That'll run you $350. Alternatively you could just grab three Crucial M500 240GB drives and run them in RAID0 with Intel's onboard controller which would give you triple the storage, and about twice the speed, for only $330. Plus $20 to buy some beer with to celebrate getting better performance for less money.

Looks pretty good to me but I think a few small changes could get a little better value.

I'd suggest getting the 3000 or 3200MHz versions of your RAM instead of 2666. It's literally two dollars more on Amazon. for 3000.

You could possibly save a bit of money with a different motherboard, but if you like that particular one it should work great. I don't have any specific recommendations because I don't know if there's anything specific you needed that that board has.

Personally I don't like having have two different drives for OS and any programs, so I'd just go with a single 1TB 970 Evo for $228 and a HDD with no 2.5" SSD. Or to save a bit go with a HP EX920 for 38 bucks less. With either choice, enough super fast NVMe storage to fit the OS and every single program you'd realistically ever install is worth the loss of 250GB space total when you are also getting a massive storage HDD with several TB.



You could definitely save on the PSU unless you plan on getting a second 1080ti in SLI. A high end 8700k/single 1080ti system running CPU, GPU, and storage stress tests simultaneously would still be unlikely to ever hit 500W, and in real world usage would rarely pull over 400W. You could definitely save on the PSU while still having plenty of headroom. I definitely wouldn't go lower than 500 or 550, but there are plenty of top-tier brands of 650 and 750W Gold or Plat rated PSUs for much less than $140. EVGA's Supernova G2 and G3 are around 90 bucks for top quality with a 10-year warranty and gold efficiency.
Even the normal black colored 850W Corsair RMx is thirty bucks cheaper thatn the $140 white one you picked, which would pay for the other upgrades, and you usually don't even see the PSU or its wiring any more as most cases have a PSU shroud including the SPEC-OMEGA RGB you chose.

I'm not a fan of that case's plastic Transformers look, but if you like it, other than aesthetics it seems like it has every feature you'd want in a case. IMO NZXT's H500i looks a lot cleaner while still having built in controllable RGB and a glass side panel and is also 20 bucks cheaper without having to fill out a rebate form. If you do that though, I'd suggest getting one of NZXT's AIO CPU coolers instead of Corsair's to work with their LED sync software. Usually makes sense to try and keep sync-able RGB stuff the same brand for compatibility.

Everything you already have selected should work great together but some tweaks would get you a better deal for what you're paying.

I do not know of very many books- besides what you will probably read through your CS coursework -but you are on the right track by watching Daniel Shiffman's videos. I have found that many books are just out-of-date reference materials. The best books, articles, and blogs are those that walk you through the development process, such as how they came up with their idea, how they developed the idea, and what they took into consideration when designing and programming it.

My advice, if you have an idea, write it down and/or type it up.

Personally, I have a Microsoft OneNote notebook that I type all of my ideas and programming notes into. It isn't the best solution, but it has worked for me. You could do a word document, or just a plain text file. Just get those ideas on paper.

As you learn more about programming and software design, look through your notes and expand on your ideas. Even if you are no artist, draw a picture of what each screen of your app/game might look like and put it with your notes. If you want to borrow a concept from another app or game- but be careful of copyright -find a video or picture of it and add it to your notes along with what you like and dislike about it.

That is honestly going to be the hardest part about the whole process, finding an idea and developing it into something someone would use or play. Don't be afraid to propose something big, just be realistic on how long it will take to develop.

If you are looking for tools, probably the best for a beginning game developer is Unity 3D, which is free- with paid options available and kind of required when you go commercial -and supports multi-platform development. It uses JavaScript and C#, but if you are comprehending C++, those two will be easy to pick up. Tons of free game assets and tutorials available online as well.

For creating some basic 3D models in you potential game, learn some of the basics of Blender You don't have to be an artist to create some simple models and textures to prototype your game.

For general non-gaming apps, there is Android Studio. I don't have much experience with it, but it appears to be fairly straightforward in design.

I would definitely learn how to use Git, if you don't know already. My favorite GUI- for Windows and Mac OSX -is SourceTree. I would highly recommend using Git with any programming project, even if you are working alone, to keep track of your changes and to make creating backups easier. For example, I have my working copy of my projects on a 128GB SanDisk Ultra Fit USB drive, with Git remotes pointing to bare repositories on my home network attached storage, and one in the cloud at Amazon Web Services. With one click, my entire day's work is backed up to those repositories. . .no worries if I lose my USB drive or my house burns down.

So, that was a unintended wall of text. . .if you want to know anything more specific, feel free to ask.

I’m not Canadian, but I’ll try to help.

This PC is a great build with an awesome CPU and a decent GPU but lacks both an SSD and 16 gigs of RAM, both necessary for future-proofing. (The SSD is necessary now, but you can hold off with 8 gigs of ram) Sadly, I can’t find builds that are less than 1k CAD with anything similar or better than this with more RAM or an SSD.

I recommend getting a separate SSD like this. (You can always do the cheaper 250 gb variant for less money). I recommend this SSD because it is one of the fastest and comes with amazing Windows 10 cloning software. this guide is how I installed mine (just ignore the laptop specific parts like removing the battery. You can then order a SATA wire like this one to install your SSD. (If you don’t know where in the case you should put your SSD, just use 3M or double sided tape and tape it someone aesthetically pleasing on the bottom of the case.

The sata cables should be obvious where to install (on the right side of the motherboard, usually stacked on top of each other, slightly above or below the GPU), otherwise, you can look up your motherboard to find the SATA slots. Then just install the cloning software and follow the guide. When you need more RAM, look at the PCs ram slot and order another 8 gig stick (if there is only 1 stick of 8 gigs), otherwise, just order 16 gigs of any DDR4 ram you want. I’m sorry you need to do work to get a fully future proof machine, but remember this isn’t 100% needed, just highly recommended. (Plus you can save 100 bucks from your paycheck a few weeks from now for the SSD, you don’t need it the second u get ur pc. Good luck, let me know if you need any help!

P.S You don’t even need a big SSD, just something to hold Windows 10 and programs like Steam and Chrome. Big stuff like games can go on the HDD

> They are about the same price, while the Radeon seems to have a little bit better performance, while the GTX 960 uses less power. What do you think on that?

The difference in performance is not that small. I'd go with the R9 380 – apart from the higher energy use it has no drawback.

> A lot of reviews said, that the i3 is definitely faster, but not future proof since it only has two cores.

2 cores but 4 threads, which so far means that all games that rely on more than two cores run perfectly fine. The i3-6100 is a great gaming cpu and will be faster than the i5-6400 in many games, as it has a higher clock. Not that the i5-6400 would be too slow in practice.

> I don't really know a lot about chipsets and how taking the best one are relevant in a gaming PC.

They aren't. The problem with H110 boards is that they have only two ramslots, maxing out your mainboard with your two 4GB sticks, which will be an issue later. Get 1x8GB, and better a B150 board with 4 ramslots to not have this problem.

> Corsair VS 450W ATX Power Supply

That's not a good idea

> Sandisk SSD PLUS 240GB - 62€

That's too expensive for that SSD. The 120GB model of the Sandisk Plus is a great budget pick for 40€. but 62€ is too near to the better SSDs, like the UltraII or Samsung 850 Evo.

Altogether, I think this would be a good build for your friend:

pc-kombo shared list

Type|Item|Price

----|:----|:----
CPU | Intel Core i3-6100 | EUR 118,50 @ Amazon.de
Motherboard | Gigabyte GA-B150M-DS3H | EUR 73,90 @ Cyberport
Memory | Crucial CT8G4DFD8213 (8 GB) | EUR 26,01 @ Amazon.de
SSD | SanDisk Ultra II 240 (256 GB) | EUR 65,99 @ Amazon.de
Video Card | Radeon R9 380 | EUR 188,28 @ Amazon.de
Case | Cooler Master N300 | EUR 45,70 @ Amazon.de
Power Supply | Super Flower Golden Green HX (450 W) | EUR 69,21 @ Amazon.de
| Total | €590.58
| Generated by pc-kombo 23.05.2016 |

Be aware that AMD might (paper-)release new gpus on the 1th of June that could replace the R9 380 with a faster alternative. Doesn't matter if you want a PC now, but something to check if it takes some time.

I agree with what a lot has been said so far. The 3600x is only the smallest improvement over the 3600 and definetly not worth the price, in my opinion. The 3600 is the best bang for your buck CPU and all you really need for gaming.

I would reccomnd trying to find a nvme pcie ssd, right now you have a m.2 sata which uses a sata connection so it's just about the same speeds as your standard ssd. I don't know what prices are like in Canada (Im in the US) but I can get a 500gb pcie samsung ssd for 90 bucks and the read/write speed is 3500mbs/2500mbs vs 560mbs/530mbs respectively. It's a huge increase in speed. Samsung 970 EVO 500GB - NVMe PCIe M.2 2280 SSD (MZ-V7E500BW) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07BN4NJ2J/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_r0bBDbQ1P13YQ

Also I would get a better pcu. You want to shoot for a 80+ gold or higher, gold is kinda your standard, as anything below, especially bronze, is a lot less efficient and adds excess heat into your system. I like evga but a lot swear by corsair or coolermaster. Up to you.

I would also say that the Radeon 5700xt is a better gpu that out performs the 2060 super as well as being a better price but if you are set in gsync and or just like Nvidia products I get that. If you decide to get the 5700xt I would suggest getting an aftermarket one with a better blower.

Good luck my dude and happy building!

Leandro Coutinho on Apr 01 2017 04:15:32PM:

One interesting thing to do is to compare how much does it cost to maintain

a bank check account and how much does it cost to run a full node.



It seems that it is about 120USD/year in USA:

http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/6219730



A 4TB hard drive ~=115USD

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B01LQQH86A/ref=mp_s_a_1_4



And it has a warranty of 3 years.



As your calculation shows, it will take more than 19 years to reach 4TB

with a 4MB blocksize.



Em 29/03/2017 12:35, "Johnson Lau via bitcoin-dev" <

bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org> escreveu:





On 29 Mar 2017, at 14:24, Emin Gün Sirer via bitcoin-dev <bitcoin-dev at lists.

linuxfoundation.org> wrote:



>Even when several of the experts involved in the document you refer has my

respect and admiration, I do not agree with some of their conclusions



I'm one of the co-authors of that study. I'd be the first to agree with

your conclusion

and argue that the 4MB size suggested in that paper should not be used

without

compensation for two important changes to the network.





Our recent measurements of the Bitcoin P2P network show that network speeds

have improved tremendously. From February 2016 to February 2017, the average

provisioned bandwidth of a reachable Bitcoin node went up by approximately

70%.

And that's just in the last year.





4 144 30 = 17.3GB per month, or 207GB per year. Full node

initialisation will become prohibitive for most users until a shortcut is

made (e.g. witness pruning and UTXO commitment but these are not trust-free)





Further, the emergence of high-speed block relay networks, like Falcon (

http://www.falcon-net.org)

and FIBRE, as well as block compression, e.g. BIP152 and xthin, change the

picture dramatically.





Also as the co-author of the selfish mining paper, you should know all

these technology assume big miners being benevolent.





So, the 4MB limit mentioned in our paper should not be used as a protocol

limit today.



Best,

• egs
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  On Tue, Mar 28, 2017 at 3:36 PM, Juan Garavaglia via bitcoin-dev <
  
  bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
  
  
  
  > Alphonse,
  
  >
  
  >
  
  >
  
  > Even when several of the experts involved in the document you refer has my
  
  > respect and admiration, I do not agree with some of their conclusions some
  
  > of their estimations are not accurate other changed like Bootstrap Time,
  
  > Cost per Confirmed Transaction they consider a network of 450,000,00 GH and
  
  > today is 3.594.236.966 GH, the energy consumption per GH is old, the cost
  
  > of electricity is wrong even when the document was made and is hard to find
  
  > any parameter used that is valid for an analysis today.
  
  >
  
  >
  
  >
  
  > Again with all respect to the experts involved in that analysis is not
  
  > valid today.
  
  >
  
  >
  
  >
  
  > I tend to believe more in Moore’s law, Butters' Law of Photonics and
  
  > Kryder’s Law all has been verified for many years and support that 32 MB in
  
  > 2020 are possible and equals or less than 1 MB in 2010.
  
  >
  
  >
  
  >
  
  > Again may be is not possible Johnson Lau and LukeJr invested a significant
  
  > amount of time investigating ways to do a safe HF, and may be not possible
  
  > to do a safe HF today but from processing power, bandwidth and storage is
  
  > totally valid and Wang Chung proposal has solid grounds.
  
  >
  
  >
  
  >
  
  > Regards
  
  >
  
  >
  
  >
  
  > Juan
  
  >
  
  >
  
  >
  
  >
  
  >
  
  > From: Alphonse Pace [mailto:alp.bitcoin at gmail.com]
  
  > Sent: Tuesday, March 28, 2017 2:53 PM
  
  > To: Juan Garavaglia <jg at 112bit.com>; Wang Chun <1240902 at gmail.com>
  
  > Cc: Bitcoin Protocol Discussion <bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org>
  
  >
  
  > Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] Hard fork proposal from last week's meeting
  
  >
  
  >
  
  >
  
  > Juan,
  
  >
  
  >
  
  >
  
  > I suggest you take a look at this paper: http://fc16.ifca.ai/bit
  
  > coin/papers/CDE+16.pdf It may help you form opinions based in science
  
  > rather than what appears to be nothing more than a hunch. It shows that
  
  > even 4MB is unsafe. SegWit provides up to this limit.
  
  >
  
  >
  
  >
  
  > 8MB is most definitely not safe today.
  
  >
  
  >
  
  >
  
  > Whether it is unsafe or impossible is the topic, since Wang Chun proposed
  
  > making the block size limit 32MiB.
  
  >
  
  >
  
  >
  
  >
  
  >
  
  > Wang Chun,
  
  >
  
  >
  
  > Can you specify what meeting you are talking about? You seem to have not
  
  > replied on that point. Who were the participants and what was the purpose
  
  > of this meeting?
  
  >
  
  >
  
  >
  
  > -Alphonse
  
  >
  
  >
  
  >
  
  > On Tue, Mar 28, 2017 at 12:33 PM, Juan Garavaglia <jg at 112bit.com> wrote:
  
  >
  
  > Alphonse,
  
  >
  
  >
  
  >
  
  > In my opinion if 1MB limit was ok in 2010, 8MB limit is ok on 2016 and
  
  > 32MB limit valid in next halving, from network, storage and CPU perspective
  
  > or 1MB was too high in 2010 what is possible or 1MB is to low today.
  
  >
  
  >
  
  >
  
  > If is unsafe or impossible to raise the blocksize is a different topic.
  
  >
  
  >
  
  >
  
  > Regards
  
  >
  
  >
  
  >
  
  > Juan
  
  >
  
  >
  
  >
  
  >
  
  >
  
  > From: bitcoin-dev-bounces at lists.linuxfoundation.org [mailto:
  
  > bitcoin-dev-bounces at lists.linuxfoundation.org] On Behalf Of Alphonse
  
  > Pace via bitcoin-dev
  
  > Sent: Tuesday, March 28, 2017 2:24 PM
  
  > To: Wang Chun <1240902 at gmail.com>; Bitcoin Protocol Discussion <
  
  > bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org>
  
  > Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] Hard fork proposal from last week's meeting
  
  >
  
  >
  
  >
  
  > What meeting are you referring to? Who were the participants?
  
  >
  
  >
  
  >
  
  > Removing the limit but relying on the p2p protocol is not really a true
  
  > 32MiB limit, but a limit of whatever transport methods provide. This can
  
  > lead to differing consensus if alternative layers for relaying are used.
  
  > What you seem to be asking for is an unbound block size (or at least
  
  > determined by whatever miners produce). This has the possibility (and even
  
  > likelihood) of removing many participants from the network, including many
  
  > small miners.
  
  >
  
  >
  
  >
  
  > 32MB in less than 3 years also appears to be far beyond limits of safety
  
  > which are known to exist far sooner, and we cannot expect hardware and
  
  > networking layers to improve by those amounts in that time.
  
  >
  
  >
  
  >
  
  > It also seems like it would be much better to wait until SegWit activates
  
  > in order to truly measure the effects on the network from this increased
  
  > capacity before committing to any additional increases.
  
  >
  
  >
  
  >
  
  > -Alphonse
  
  >
  
  >
  
  >
  
  >
  
  >
  
  >
  
  >
  
  > On Tue, Mar 28, 2017 at 11:59 AM, Wang Chun via bitcoin-dev <
  
  > bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
  
  >
  
  > I've proposed this hard fork approach last year in Hong Kong Consensus
  
  > but immediately rejected by coredevs at that meeting, after more than
  
  > one year it seems that lots of people haven't heard of it. So I would
  
  > post this here again for comment.
  
  >
  
  > The basic idea is, as many of us agree, hard fork is risky and should
  
  > be well prepared. We need a long time to deploy it.
  
  >
  
  > Despite spam tx on the network, the block capacity is approaching its
  
  > limit, and we must think ahead. Shall we code a patch right now, to
  
  > remove the block size limit of 1MB, but not activate it until far in
  
  > the future. I would propose to remove the 1MB limit at the next block
  
  > halving in spring 2020, only limit the block size to 32MiB which is
  
  > the maximum size the current p2p protocol allows. This patch must be
  
  > in the immediate next release of Bitcoin Core.
  
  >
  
  > With this patch in core's next release, Bitcoin works just as before,
  
  > no fork will ever occur, until spring 2020. But everyone knows there
  
  > will be a fork scheduled. Third party services, libraries, wallets and
  
  > exchanges will have enough time to prepare for it over the next three
  
  > years.
  
  >
  
  > We don't yet have an agreement on how to increase the block size
  
  > limit. There have been many proposals over the past years, like
  
  > BIP100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 109, 148, 248, BU, and so
  
  > on. These hard fork proposals, with this patch already in Core's
  
  > release, they all become soft fork. We'll have enough time to discuss
  
  > all these proposals and decide which one to go. Take an example, if we
  
  > choose to fork to only 2MB, since 32MiB already scheduled, reduce it
  
  > from 32MiB to 2MB will be a soft fork.
  
  >
  
  > Anyway, we must code something right now, before it becomes too late.
  
  >
  
  > bitcoin-dev mailing list
  
  > bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org
  
  > https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev
  
  >
  
  >
  
  >
  
  >
  
  >
  
  >
  
  > bitcoin-dev mailing list
  
  > bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org
  
  > https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev
  
  >
  
  >
  
  
  
  bitcoin-dev mailing list
  
  bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org
  
  https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  bitcoin-dev mailing list
  
  bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org
  
  https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev
  
  -------------- next part --------------
  
  An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
  
  URL: <http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/attachments/20170401/f0a4a59e/attachment-0001.html>
  
  
  
  ------------
  
  original: https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2017-April/013947.html

Sorry for terrible formatting, on mobile.

Ok so here’s the deal. There are about a million options out there, and each of them has its ups and downs.

This is gonna get a little technical but let’s start by breaking things down into 2 categories: hard drive vs solid state, and offline vs online.

The most common solution here would be to get an external hard drive. They are generally designed to ‘plug and play’ directly into a computer and store whatever you put on them. They’re fairly cheap but they are mechanical so you have to handle them carefully and not move them when in use or you risk physical damage and data corruption. They usually come at two different speeds: 5400 or 7200 RPM (rotations per minute). The higher the number the faster data can be accessed.

Solid state is the newer, more expensive cousin of the hard drive. Whereas HDDs are mechanical, SSDs are digital. Without the moving parts, SSDs are more robust, and significantly faster. They’re also way more expensive.

Now on to where things get interesting. Most external storage is offline, but some newer options exist that can be connected to the internet and allow you remote access to your data.

The cheaper devices in this category are usually called something along the lines of a ‘personal cloud’, and they’re a 1 - 10 TB HDD with software that lets you access them over the internet.

Higher end devices are usually called a NAS which stands for Network Attached Storage. These are basically servers to allow you high capacity data storage, and can be made to store hard drives in a variety of sizes and configurations.

Ok, so where do you fit in to all of this? What you need really just depends on what you want to use it for. How much space do you need? How fast do you need to access it? Do you want remote access to your data, or shared access with family and friends?

The truth is most people are gonna be fine with a simple external hard drive like the one already linked in the comments. I usually recommend a western digital like this one:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01LQQH86A/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_XeoYDb7V1HT0A

They’ve worked well for me. If you want something more interesting, look into WD’s personal cloud option:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B076CTK55W/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_dhoYDbH3X5XBF

Or if you get curious about the higher end stuff, you can always check out names like Synology, Asustor, and Qnap. I have an Asustor and love it.

There are definitely many options for SSD available, my recommendation would be to go for a 970 evo for your 500GB-1TB SSD that you want to guarantee speed on, then do a 2TB Sabrent Rocket (Gen 3) as it is the best price per performance as far as I know and its only problem got solved with some software (previously it couldnt clone 512e, only 4k, in case you wanted to copy over any existing drives you have). For my PC personally, as I just want to use it for gaming, light work, and on/off streaming/video editing purposes, I went with a Seagate Firecuda 510 2TB, as it outperformed the 970 pro or was very competitive with it in all areas for a much, much lower price point (I got mine for $360 on newegg).

As for the mobo, the Taichi chipset overheating was actually just due to the case being used. Your case is a good one, so this shouldn't be a concern at all. Another Taichi issue is possible loud fan, but that is just a possible problem with the base Bios I believe, so as soon as you update that problem goes away. The taichi is regarded as the best board at your price point by respected motherboard expert buildzoid. I'd highly recommend skipping to 18:22 for relevant info, but hey if you have time and want to learn more then go for it. For my PC, I went with the ASUS Crosshair VIII Hero at $360, which was probably overkill but I havent had any complaints with it and it did excellent for me on memory overclocking. I don't think you can go wrong with the Taichi, it has all the features you want and is a great $300 board provided you have a good case.

I know you didnt ask lol but heres how your case's thermals stack up courtesy of gamersnexus: https://www.gamersnexus.net/images/media/2019/cases/h710/nzxt-h710-cpu_all.png

Its middle of the pack at stock which is more than serviceable, definitely not a concern.

Oh and just in case you were curious this is the full build I went with :)

Oh! And a money saving tip: Google shopping/express/whatever they're currently calling it typically has a very good first purchase/sign up/whatever bonus going, could be very worth seeing if a couple parts are available on it so you can knock 15 or 25 bucks off (forgot what the limit was, but they'll advertise it as a %, with an amount limit obviously), all the little savings here and there can add up. Supposedly right now it is 25% off your first order, unsure on the limit. I used it to get a webcam, a couple case fans, and a cd/dvd drive.

e: For some reason this guy has the Rocket as "sambrent" rocket lol, but its a decent video showing some different SSD options and their performance.

There are several ways to accomplish this. Other people in this thread have mentioned using a Raspberry Pi, or a wireless hard drive. These are both okay solutions, especially the wireless hard drive. However, I'd be worried about either of them being able to serve files to seven people at once. I just don't think that a wireless chip in a hard drive enclosure will have the power or speed necessary to make that happen. One or two people, sure, but not seven. Similar problems with the Raspberry Pi. The Pi would also be a significant amount of setup, would be pretty fragile given the number of interconnecting pieces needed to make it work for your needs, and you'd still have problems with bandwidth on just about any USB wireless card. There might be a solution with multiple USB wireless cards, but that just makes the whole thing that much more fragile.

I think what you need here for pure bandwidth purposes is an honest to god wireless router. Not a travel router, but the full thing. Modern wireless routers have USB ports on them, and you can plug USB storage devices into the router and have the router share the files on that storage device. So I think the right solution for you is a desktop wireless router and a USB hard drive.

The router is somewhat harder of the two items to find because of your physical size requirements. In addition, I think you don't want any protruding antennas which could break off. For that, I can recommend the Netgear R6300. I have the R6300v2, and I can personally attest that it's a fast, reliable router, and it measures 7.75" to a side.

Once you have a router, you need a hard drive. Get one in a small form factor that runs straight off a USB port and has a reasonable size. A 4TB drive should be more than enough, and you might get away with a 2TB drive drive depending on how much you want to store on it. I recently ripped my DVD collection and I was happy with the quality at about 1GB per movie. Since you'll probably be downloading movies from the internet, sizes and quality will vary. You may want to transcode the larger movies down to a more manageable size. You can batch transcode movies with Handbrake or other programs. Choose more aggressive compression and downsize 1080p movies to 720p, for example, to save space. Keep in mind that conversion takes a long time, so start early. Smaller files also stream more easily, so more people will be able to stream at once if you manage the file sizes well.

Good luck!

Ah, so you do have a laptop. Yeah... you'd have to copy all the data over from your old drive to your new drive, if you were to get a larger internal drive. Definitely possible, but not always easy.

You may want to ask a local store how much they'll charge to move the data over to your new disk. If they do it for free, it's a great value, though I doubt they'll do it for free due to the small price difference I found online.

A 2TB external disk from seagate: here. - $64

A 1TB internal disk (half the space!): here - $66.

2 TB WD black drive: here - $65

... So apparently an external disk is cheaper. Go for it!

Edit: Also, most laptops don't have the storage space for an additional drive. That's why I keep mentioning "desktop" - desktops have a ton of storage space.

You may want to google your laptop, and the query "m.2 SSD?" because some laptops have a m.2 slot on the motherboard. Spending the $100 on a internal M.2 and an additional $60 on an internal HDD would be great, though you'd have to be comfortable with moving the OS to the new M.2.

Also, I added a WD black external HDD above, same price as the seagate.

I don't have very much experience with SSDs (I have a WD SATA 500 gb) but it might be worthwhile to pay for a Western Digital or other more name brand. I am not trying to spark an argument over the best SSD brand or anything but I think that as far as support and future reliability goes, the WD or Samsung might be a move if you are willing to make the 40-50 dollar price jump. I have heard that Samsung makes some very nice SSDs - https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-970-EVO-1TB-MZ-V7E1T0BW/dp/B07BN217QG/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=samsung+1tb&qid=1574356509&s=electronics&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&sr=1-3

Other than that, looks good. Make sure when you build it to build the RAM in the correct slots so it will run at full speed and give you dual channel capability.

Best of luck to you, and welcome to PCMR.

Case: Rosewill, NZXT, and CoolerMaster are good places to start. Its mostly an aesthetic choice.

CPU: Intel i5 or i7. If you're budget is tight go i3.

GPU: This is the most important!! If your budget is tight I'd go with AMD R7 265X, R9 270, or Nvidia GTX 750 Ti. If not my pick would be the AMD R9 290 non-reference. It's cheaper than most yet is very powerful.

Motherboard- I use a Asrock Fatal1ty Killer. Most common brands are Asrock, MSI, Asus, and Gigabyte.

RAM- I use Kingston HyperX. Other good brands include Corsair, Crucial, G-Skill. Be sure to get 8GB or more RAM memory.

Power Supply Unit- The two highest reviewed brands are Seasonic and XFX (I use 1050watt XFX). Other good brands include Corsair, EVGA, CoolerMaster. You will want probably at least 700W PSU but I would recommend a !000W. It will give you headroom for any components you want to add.

Wifi- If you want/need this: TP-Link WDN-4800

SSD- This is for your operating system, doesn't help much with games. Samsung 840 Evo, Kingston HyperX, and AMD R7 (just released, only read reviews) are all good and affordable brands. You shouldn't need more than 120GB. If you have a M.2 socket on the Motherboard you choose, go with an M.2 SSD such as the Crucial M500, or if you can find it at an affordable price, the Samsung XP941.

HDD- Seagate Barracuda 3TB is a cheap, yet reliable choice.

Optical Drive- I've only used mine once, but you can find a DVD-RW on Amazon for like $12. (Internal not external)

Miscellaneous:

Keyboard: RAZR, Logitech are good brands

Mouse: too many to count, just browse "gaming mouse" on Amazon or Newegg.

Monitor: I prefer Asus. Go with an IPS monitor. They are gorgeous. !440p if you have the money, if not, 1080p.

Headphones- AudioTechnica or Sennheiser

non-reference are graphic cards with after-market coolers on them. I like XFX and Gigabyte.

Links to Parts:

CPU: http://www.amazon.com/Intel-i7-4790K-Processor-Cache-BX80646I74790K/dp/B00KPRWAX8/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1408495033&sr=1-1&keywords=intel+i7

GPU: http://www.amazon.com/Gigabyte-GDDR5-4GB-2xDVI-Graphics-GV-R929OC-4GD/dp/B00HS84DFU/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1408495068&sr=1-1&keywords=R9+290

Case: http://www.amazon.com/NZXT-PHANTOM-Tower-White-PHAN-001WT/dp/B003WE9WQO/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1408495102&sr=1-1&keywords=nzxt+phantom

MOBO: http://www.amazon.com/ASRock-FATAL1TY--LGA1150-CrossFireX-Motherboard/dp/B00KG5T4C4/ref=sr_1_2?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1408495154&sr=1-2&keywords=Asrock+z97+fatal1ty+killer

RAM: http://www.amazon.com/Kingston-HyperX-FURY-2x8GB-1600MHz/dp/B00J8E8XT4/ref=sr_1_6?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1408495201&sr=1-6&keywords=Kingston+RAM

SSD: http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Electronics-2-5-Inch-Internal-MZ-7TE120BW/dp/B00E3W15P0/ref=sr_1_3?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1408495329&sr=1-3&keywords=samsung+840+evo

HDD: http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Desktop-3-5-Inch-Internal-ST3000DM001/dp/B005T3GRLY/ref=sr_1_3?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1408495357&sr=1-3&keywords=Seagate+Barracuda

Good Luck ascending brother!!

Halo=3.4GB, Halo 2=4.4GB, GTA San An=2.9GB, DJFFNY=2.8GB, SW KOTOR=3.7GB, Battle for Bikini Bottom=1.7GB. I'd say average is maybe 2 to 3.5GB. All these sizes I listed are in xbe format, ftp'd to hdd.

I put a 2TB in mine, and I can now see it was overkilll for what I wanted. I have a few more modded xbox's I'm gonna upgrade soon, and planned on going with 500GB, but the 1TB is only a few bucks more, so I'm gonna do that.

I used these parts...

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B013QFRS2S/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o04_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00EOJNGC2/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003IDF0JC/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

The adapter comes with a molex splitter, so you dont need to buy one if you go that route. I've read that the HDE adapter also works, but is 50/50 on if you get a working one, so that's the only reason I went with Startech. I'm very happy with that 80 wire cable, also. Before ordering, I read countless reviews of other cables being crap, and not being a tight connection, or even having a connector that works. This one is awesome, its a little snug, and hard to bend, but I eventually got it in there and look semi professional. The 3 connectors are spaced a little weird for xbox, so you can only use it one way, and just barely have enough spacing between the hdd cradle and dvd drive. The cable is very firm, I was worried it was going to be low quality, but its nice.

Here is an outdated upgraded hdd list to browse through... http://xboxdrives.x-pec.com/?p=list

Next time, I'm gonna try the WD10EZEX. I've read it works fine.

I have the following games installed and am only using 94.2GB.

GB-569, GBA-1140, GBC-564, N64-212, GENESIS-810, NES-820, SNES-787, XBOX-27, PSX-5.

Since this is my main xbox, I'm gonna eventually load it down with as many original xbox titles as I can find. After that, I've read that CoinOps and Final Burn are worth checking out, so thats also on the list. Once I find out the games I like, I'm gonna make the 1TB purely for games I enjoy, nothing extra. I do love the Favorites tab in Rocky's Emustation, makes finding a game you love out of thousands very easy.

I haven't found out how to get the PSX games to show up in emustation yet, but I know it has to do with the bin/cue area. The bin's are large files, but the cues are only 1kb. I think I saw Rocky post somewhere saying you have to load from cue's, but I'm not sure how.

If you are into N64 at all, check out EarthWormJames' 212 pack. Very sweet. I can link you in pm if needed.

I have a 2013 Dell Latitude 3540 with the same i5-4200u CPU which I still use fairly regularly as a secondary laptop to watch / listen to videos and browse the web. Also use it to play some old games with either the the Intel HD 4400 or the dedicated Radeon HD 8850m. It has 8GB of RAM (2 x 4GB), 2TB hard drive and 1080p screen.

There is no 12GB RAM stick. Your laptop has 4GB of onboard RAM (soldered into the motherboard). You can install a 4GB or 8GB stick of RAM. 8GB is still sufficient enough and allows the RAM to run in dual channel mode (full speed). Your laptop's RAM is currently operating in asynchronous dual channel mode because of the 4GB onboard RAM and 2GB RAM in the slot. Installing a 8GB stick will increase the total RAM to 12GB and will still operate in asynchronous dual channel mode. That is faster than only using the 4GB onboard RAM (single channel or half speed), but it is slower than dual channel mode. If you play games with the Intel HD 4400, then for best performance you want to install 4GB of RAM to allow the RAM to operate in dual channel mode. You are not going to see a massive increase in performance; it will be more like a 5% to 10% increase at most depending on the game. If you do not play games, then just add an 8GB RAM stick.

The Latitude 3540 takes about 90 seconds to get to the Windows 10 desktop (including entering my password) and it takes about another 180 seconds (3 minutes) for all of the background processes to load and the hard drive activity light to stop flashing. If it takes 10 minutes for your laptop to become usable, then there is definitely a problem. Perhaps it is just bloated because you never reinstalled Windows before which is not unheard of. But reinstalling Windows 10 (assuming you currently have it) should fix the issue. Well... at least make the laptop usable in 5 minutes...

Replacing the hard drive with a 2.5" SSD should allow you to boot into Windows 10 in about 20 seconds and all of the background processes will probably load up in 5 to 10 seconds. But you should be able to immediately use the laptop. I haven't upgraded the 2TB HDD to a 2TB SSD because that is roughly a $225 upgrade and I thinking about retiring this laptop sometime next year.

You cannot upgrade the CPU because it is soldered into the motherboard, and you cannot add a graphics card. As stated above, to get the best performance out of the Intel HD 4400 you should simply install a 4GB RAM stick. Example games I played using the Intel HD 4400 in the past at 1920x1080 resolution are as follows:

- Mass Effect Trilogy

- Fallout 3

- Fallout New Vegas

- Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines

- Skyrim (Not the Special Edition version) @ 1600x900 resolution.

​

=======================================================

​

I recommend the following upgrades. Perhaps wait for a Black Friday sale on the 2.5" 1TB SSD do not necessary have to be Crucial. It is very unlikely the old DDR3L RAM will go on sale.

- Crucial MX500 1TB SDD

- Crucial 4GB Single DDR3/DDR3L 1600 MT/S (PC3-12800)

or

- Crucial 8GB Single DDR3/DDR3L 1600 MT/S (PC3-12800)

Beautiful tiny PC but here's a very friendly price break down. I'm using new prices here from Amazon except for the fan. This isn't taking into consideration whether the parts are a day or a year old they are officially used and if you go off of even good/average to great /r/hardwareswap deals this would be quite cheaper and it's hard to add a building tax to a community full of builders.

CPU $200 - Ryzen 3600

MOBO $129 - MSI B450i

GPU $320 - RTX 2060

NVME $90 - Samsung 970 Evo

RAM $90 - XPG 3200 MHz 16GB RGB

COOLER $40 - Noctua NH-L9a

FAN $24 - 25mm 4000 RPM Delta Fan

PSU $90 - OP's model is OOS

Custom SFF Cables - $30-50

CASE - GEEEK A30 + Riser Cable + Shipping = $100.67 (for me)

This is $1,113 for everything, basically new.

I don't really think it's a terrible price at all but the nature of this sub seems to be getting great deals so you can pretty much build a PC you would have never had if you just bought everything new on Amazon etc, especially since I believe this sub is full of PC builders. I have seen some absurd deals on this sub reddit that make me want to quit my job so I can just refresh constantly and that's because I've had a full system for awhile. Just a little food for thought for anybody. With some commitment to checking here you can get a great build for way below retail cost of the parts.

I have an SSD and that improved my loading times by a good amount of time, also helps to have better internet, my speeds are good enough but not great at all.

They really aren't that expensive, I'll point you in the right direction if you want. Also helps a ton with games like PUBG, BF, Red Dead, GTA etc.

.

Edit: If anyone is wondering I have one 512GB Silicon Power 3D NAND A55 SLC Cache Performance Boost SATA III 2.5" 7mm (0.28") Internal Solid State Drive from Amazon for $49.99 USD along with another of the same Silicon Power SSD but in 256GB for $28.99 USD.

Then you need the enclosure which costs $8.99: Sabrent 2.5-Inch SATA to USB 3.0 Tool-Free External Hard Drive Enclosure [Optimized for SSD, Support UASP SATA III]. Super simple set up, literally open the enclosure by sliding the top off, slide the SSD into the connection slot in the enclosure, put the top on, plug it in to the USB slot and turn the thing on. Really nice price, had never heard of the brand but it has really good reviews, and works well for me. Just about the cheapest SSD I've seen on Amazon with an average review of 4.5+ (and at least 1k reviews).

I took a check, and would say not to buy in Sweden - in Ireland it is the same due to high costs and not having a very big market, you will not get good value for money. However I checked in Germany and it seemed... ok-ish. But I made a dummy address in Stockholm on my Amazon UK account and came up with this for €580

(NOTE: pay in GBP, not EUR or SWK as Amazon inflate the exchange rate by a good 5c or so if you do). Delivery is only €10, so you're doing pretty great there (and the weak pound has been awesome for buying stuff on Amazon lately)!

• CPU - Ryzen 1200 - https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0741DN383/ref=ox_sc_act_title_6?smid=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&psc=1
  
  
• GPU - GTX 1050 TI - https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01M8M5T4T/ref=ox_sc_act_title_4?smid=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&psc=1
  
  
• Motherboard - AB350 - https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B06WW9S5BY/ref=ox_sc_act_title_5?smid=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&psc=1
  
  
• RAM - 8GB DDR4 2666mhz (Ryzen does not perform well on 2133 or 2400mhz so don't skimp here) - https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0123ZASHO/ref=ox_sc_act_title_3?smid=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&psc=1
  
  
• Storage - 120GB Sandisk SSD (for OS, Chrome and programs - will make your computer run so, so much better and quicker) - https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01F9G414U/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?smid=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&psc=1
  
  
• Storage - 1TB Seagate 7200 RPM, 64MB cache HDD (for all the games, etc) - https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01LY65EVG/ref=ox_sc_act_title_2?smid=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&psc=1
  
  
• PSU - EVGA 430W 80+ (solid, reliable budget PSU - non modular but 5-6 zip ties will fix that up) - https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01M9EX1AD/ref=ox_sc_act_title_7?smid=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&psc=1
  
  
• Total (incl. delivery): £524.21 = €580.47 = SEK5,030
  
  The one thing missing from this is a case as the delivery costs are very high due to it being a big, bulky item - maybe it would be best to look for a low cost, €20 equivalent type of one near you. You won't get anything beyond a black slab of a box without breaking the budget but what is inside it is much more important in this price range and you're getting a good bit for that.
  
  I took a quick look and this was the cheapest case I could find at €40 - https://www.netonnet.se/art/datorkomponenter/datorchassi/tower/mission-sg-ggx-1-1/239989.8976/ .... though these two at €57 look a lot nicer https://www.komplett.se/product/930914/datorutrustning/pc-komponenter/chassibarebone/midi-tower/cooler-master-masterbox-lite-31# and https://www.komplett.se/product/891800/datorutrustning/pc-komponenter/chassibarebone/minimicronano-tower/corsair-carbide-88r-midi-tower-sv
  
  Just do a lot of checking around - any case marked ATX or MATX form factor will work, though if you want one with a window on it go MATX to match the motherboard (otherwise the motherboard will look kind of weird and tiny through the window).
  
  I have done two 1050 TI builds as gifts with a G4560 CPU in them and was on mostly high settings at 50+ fps 1080p when testing them out, so with a 1200 quad core (that performs identical to an i5 7400 when overclocked) you should be doing a good deal better here.
  
  Also check Amazon UK Warehouse Deals for more 1050 TIs, I got both for £111 instead of £130 off of it - they are used but will describe any wear and tear and it only means damaged packaging, plus Amazon do a no questions asked 30 day money back policy on them and will of course pay for the cost of return shipping if you need to do that.
  
  
• Example of what performance to expect - https://www.youtube.
  com/watch?v=LZknFkWZNaU
  
  
• I had not noticed but you also get a free copy of Rocket League with the GPU selected for what it is worth, I think that game is worth €20 so a nice little benefit I guess! :)

So starting from the ground up.

APC PDUs into two seperate circuits.

The cisco switch is the only device without redundant power. But again, it's only running IPMI which I can't make redudant anyway.

The 4 servers, 2 switches, and qnap are both each plugged into both PDUs.

I set up both Nutanix Clusters (3 node, 1 node). All the VMS on my 3 node are snapshotted and replicated to the 1 node cluster daily for 30 days and monthly for 72 months. Nutanix does not offer a way to export their VMS. No 3-2-1 rule for them.

I shut down a test VM on 3 node cluster and switched to the other 1 node cluster I was doing their data protection on. Hit restore and the vm came right back up on this 1 node cluster. pretty happy with that.

The VMS themselves back up their data daily to the QNAP using emcopy.exe. Qnap has backup software, I just haven't had time to get into it.

These clusters have been up and running for about 2 months. I finally copied all of the old data off the old servers and got them unplugged last night. That was a great feeling.

I am currently running 25 VMs (+3 controller vms). personal, friends, media, mysql, mssql, nginx, mongo, redis, domain controllers, dns, etc all adds up pretty quick. I am a developer by trade, so I have a lot of expermination and code all over the place.

Once pleasant suprise is that since most of my VMs are a clone and I am running the data dedupe, I am getting ~20:1 effeciency. I am only using around 2.5% of my logical data storage.

I refuse to do the exact math, but I am well over $8k into this.

So lets go back to my goals

no single point of failure.

Any cable can pulled and nothing turns off.

If any piece of hardware fails, all my vms continue running.



faster speed.

Nutanix has some voodoo. The VMs disk benchmark is faster than my NVME desktop.

Network copying gets 600mbps+ tends to slow down on transfers of serveral gbs. Needs to investigate more.



some sorta backup.

doing snap shots to secondary cluster.

nutanix allows file level restore from previous snapshots.

data copied to nas daily.

would like actual file level back up to nas eventually.

Since someone will ask. I am running between 4-5 amps on each APC.

Problems I have encountered:

Nutanix does not show the network cards in their web interface. They show up fine in the CLI?

2 Ram sticks were returning ECC errors. Used servers, this is a risk. Monitor your IMPI people!

Watchguard does not technically support Nutanix. So the manager shows a lot of warnings. Support said they are just warnings.

I somehow crashed a nutanix install on the satadom. Was able to get it re installed relatively quickly. requires a live cd to image the disk. I bought a 5th satadom to just have on hand.

No way to monitor the disk SMART info from nutanix that I have found yet.

Hardware List;

2x APC7900

https://www.amazon.com/APC-AP7900-Switched-Surge-Protector/dp/B0000AAAYH

​

Cisco SG110-24

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01MDNHKQ4

​

2x QUANTA LB6M 24-PORT 10GBE SFP+

https://www.unixplus.com/products/quanta-lb6m-24-port-10gbe-sfp-4x-1gbe-l2-l3-switch

​

4x SUPERMICRO 1U X9DRI-LN4F+ SERVER

Dual E5-2650 V2, 128gb Ram (8x16gb)

https://unixsurplus.com/collections/1u-servers/products/supermicro-1u-x9drw-3ln4f-dual-intel-xeon-e5-2670-octo-core-2-6ghz-1u-server

​

4x Intel X520-DA2 10Gbps SFP+

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833106044

​

8x WD Blue 1tb SSD

https://www.amazon.com/Blue-NAND-1TB-SSD-WDS100T2B0A/dp/B073SBQMCX

​

4x 16gb SATADOM

https://www.amazon.com/Supermicro-SSD-DM016-PHI-16GB-SATADOM/dp/B00NGBW5GM/

​

6x WD RE 2tb spinny drives (Nutanix 3 node cluster) (pulled from last lab)

2x WD RE 4tb spinny drives (Nutanix 1 node cluster) (pulled from last lab)

​

QNAP TS-432XU-RP-2G-US

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07DWC85JH/

​

4x WD 6tb Red Pro

https://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Red-Hard-Drive/dp/B07B1HX5KN/

Remove the CPU Cooler. The 2700x got its own cooler, which is a relatively good one (probably even better than the Hyper 212 evo).

The Motherboard: I'm not sure, it is a micro ATX board, which will likely limit your upgradability options in the future, but I haven't looked into this one yet to be sure. You do want to research a lot about it though.

RAM: It is okay. Does the job. 3000mhz would be better, but you could get by with the 2400. It won't make a big difference anyway.

GPU is good, but I would try to get an Evga variant, as they have great warranties and customer support.

Case: No idea. Never heard of that brand before, but it is a microATX, which also limits future upgradability (goes hand in hand with the motherboard). If you're willing to change the case, this is an amazing one, for only a bit more (but probably won't make sense to get it with a microATX Motherboard, so keep that in mind):

https://www.amazon.ca/Thermaltake-CA-1K8-00M1WN-01-Computer-Chassis-Pre-Installed/dp/B07FL1D5RV/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1542983696&sr=1-1&keywords=thermaltake+v200

I also have no idea about the SSD brand. The Samsung one seems to be on sale though:

https://www.amazon.ca/Samsung-Internal-MZ-76E250B-AM-Version/dp/B07864WMK8/ref=sr_1_4?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1542984270&sr=1-4&keywords=samsung+850+evo

RAID 0 (which is what the user above mentioned) isnt really beneficial enough for an Xbox, or any type of RAID really. A standard drive will work fine. If you leave your Xbox on a lot, I'd recommend a WD Red (5400rpm), WD Red Pro (7200rpm), WD Black (7200rpm) or a HGST Deskstar (7200rpm) in either 2TB or 3TB. I have a 3TB HGST Deskstar myself, with a Rosewill enclosure, and its a little bit noisy, but unnoticeable once I have the TV volume up or use my headset.

HGST 3TB

WD Black 3TB

WD Red 3TB

WD Red Pro 3TB

3.5 inch USB 3.0 enclosure

Its pretty easy to put the harddrive into the enclosure, so no need to worry about that. I have a different enclosure myself, but I got mine from America because I couldn't find it here. I ended up hacking it apart and putting a big fan on it, because its own little one broke. The enclosure above doesn't have a fan (and its not entirely necessary either). All of those drives have very good reliability and a good warranty. Not sure about the WD Reds (3 years I think) but the HGST is 3 years and the WD Black is 5 years.

> Is SSD needed to ensure top quality for 1080p/60fps? Or would a 1 TB WD Black be fine.

A 1TB WD Black HDD will be fine. Personally I would get a WD Blue 2TB for the same price as the WD Black 1TB because sometimes recording files can get very large. Also, like me, you can horde loads of footage.

I would strongly advise against recording on an SSD. If you record to an SSD its lifespan will decrease very fast, and so will its performance. An SSD only has a certain amount of Reads and Writes, and you're using them up very quickly by recording to it. An SSD will not increase the quality of your recordings.


> technology has improved a lot in the past few years.

True, but still, they have a limited amount of Read/Writes. So, lets say that you record to an SSD. Yes, you can throw it into whatever program you'd like to edit it in, and it will initially load faster. SSD's are also generally small. Yes, there are large ones, but for the price of one you're better off getting 5 2tb WD Blues. How did I get this number? Well, a Samsung 850 EVO 1TB is $345, and a 2TB WD Blue is $70. $345/70=4.92.

When it comes down to it, recording to an SSD won't be any faster than recording to a HDD. Additionally, all the reading/writing will decrease the SSD's lifespan, and performance. SD's have a much more limited number of writes than an HDD. It will definitely last a lot less than an HDD. Also, they're much more expensive.

EDIT: One reason your recording may be stuttery is because its you're recording to an External HDD. What color is the USB Plug? If its White, its USB 1.0. Black, USB 2.0. Blue is USB 3.0. Your external HDD is most likely black, so your recording will be limited by the speed of the USB port, of this was an internal drive, you wouldn't have your stuttering problem, or even, if it was USB 3.0.

• 750 Watt Power Supply. $89.98
  
  
• Generic Corsair Case. $64.99 You can shop around for something better looking for a little more money.
  
  
• DDR4 3200 RAM (2*4GB Sticks) for $147.99 and DDR4 3200 RAM (1*8GB Stick) for $160.32. You can also drop to 3000MHz and save like $5-10 but not worth it in my opinion.
  
  
• GTX 1060 3GB for $304.99 or GTX 1060 6GB for $389.99.
  
  
• i7 8700k for $449.99 or i7 7700k for $422.96. 8700k is 8th gen and 7700k is 7th gen. You can drop to any processor around an i7 7700 (No "k") without seeing issues I'd assume. WoW is a processor heavy game though. Still my i7 8700k only ever reaches maybe 30% useage that I see.
  
  
• Heat Sink + Fan. Cooler Master is good. $34.99
  
  
• i7 8700 will require a 300 Series Motherboard like ASUS ROG for $141.50 or ASUS Prime for $84.99. The 7700s will take a 200 series motherboard like this one for $129.61 or this one for 149.99. Basically just make sure it has all the hook-ups you need (sound and USBs and shit) with the proper chip set and supports DDR4 RAM with minimum 1 PCI Express slot for your GPU.
  
  
• Samsung 860 Evo 500GB SSD for $179.94 or the 250GB for $109.94. Any decent SSD will do. Make sure it has enough room for your OS and the game(s) you play. You can use any regular HD to store other stuff on. Samsung is a good brand for them.
  
  When trying to decide on what power your PC needs a good website to use is http://gpu.userbenchmark.com/ - it'll give you a general idea since I get confused with all the "i7/i5/i3 XXXX gen X" nonsense too.
  
  That'll build you a tower. Then you just need external components. Monitor, keyboard, mouse, headset, chair, desk, etc. Depending on what you have available and stuff it can vary so I'll let you price out that stuff.
  
  $1,358 pre-taxes if you go with i7 8700k, and GTX 1060 3 GB. For the tower. Taxes in, plus all the other components you're still looking at pushing close to $2000. That's CND I think. If you do a little shopping around you might get a decent deal on a few items and look into different price points between AMD and Intel if you choose their Board/Chip/GPU combos.

> but which one should I buy, considering a Wi-Fi adapter?

The TP Link WDN-4800. It's very popular on this subreddit and gets recommended very often.

For cpu and Mobo I'd go with the I5 4690 and the ASRock H97 Pro4.

> Which 750w PSU for my GPU? (I'm talking about compatibility for pins)

Most 750W power supplies come with the necessary cables for the computer. I know for sure that this XFX Pro Series 850W has all the cables you need.

> About the RAM, I'd go for the faster CL9 I put in description

There is no scenario where you'll even notice the difference between CL9 and CL10... It might, just might improve when doing something like rendering / 3D-modeling.
So you can save yourself about 8,- that way.

> and same thing for the SSD 840 Pro, which has better read/write speed.

When only considering the read/write speeds you'd see 1 maybe 2% performance improvement over the 840 Evo. While the 840 Evo is ~30% cheaper.
If you think performance is important get the Samsung 840 Evo 120GB twice and put them in Raid 0. It improves performance up to 100%! And is still cheaper than the 840 Pro.

This is the wrong take, OP didn't ask for best bang for the buck PC, he asked for the best PC.

Cooler: Air is usually cooler and quieter than AIOs, in your machine you want the noctua nh-d15 though.

Your memory is not the best it can be for Ryzen (you want 3200c14 or 3600c16). Remember you have 4 DIMM slots, you can go 4x8 if you want, but I don't think they are cheaper than the 2x16 kits.

3600c16

or

3200c14

I personally have the latter one, Samsung b-die for good overclocking potential.

Storage: Don't put mechanical in this build for the love of god. Your "boot drive" is fine w/ the 860 evo, consider the m.2 version for slight (and I mean slight) performance gains and less wires:

also consider it's bigger brother the 970 Evo

For your "data drive", get a 2tb mx500, If you buy a mechanical drive for this build you will be banned :).

The video card situation is a weird one right now. nVidia keeps the good bins of their cards and sells the rest to AIBs. If you want the best 2080ti, you want the founders edition

But nVidia has probably the worst customer service, and 3rd party cards offer better cooling. It's a decision that's up to you. I personally went with a Founders Edition card for my build (2080 Super though).

Get an 80+ platinum power supply

This is a hot take, but consider a wireless mouse. The offerings today have no lag and gaming without cable drag is fantastic. Some suggestions:
Logitech G Pro Wireless


Logitech G703

3- wd blues are great drives, and i've been running one solo for the past 2 years, but about to buy an ssd for my os and important programs. 1tb and 2tb. also note that the 1tb drive is 7200 rpm vs 5400 rpm in the 2tb, but since you aren't running the OS on that and just using it for storage, it's nothing to worry about.

4- stick everything in here. that's there recommended wattage psu to get, but its probably worth it just to get something 50 watts over that.

5- obviously, ethernet is the best choice, but if that's not available you can get something like this. one of my friends has powerline, and its really weird for him. some outlets he gets good speeds, and others are absolute trash. turning off and on the lights repeatedly causes a little lag while gaming, but overall he still likes it and uses it.

6- 27 inches is really huge, and you're not going to find a 1440p, 144hz, 27in, and gsync monitor for less than that.

1. These for now; Gigabyte GC-RAMDISK i-RAM PCI and 5.25 bay variants: https://imgur.com/gallery/D2tI0
   
   
2. Nexus WaveAir PCI Intake or Exhaust Cooling
   
   
3. Nexus BeamAir Fan Grill
   
   
4. Bought this case for a build but never touched it because I wanted a tall but very shallow case because I love the monolithic look; Rosewill Rise
   
   
5. I bought couple tiny USB thumbdrives specifically with an activity LED just to RAID them (mainly for password with Keypass protection, ISO backup and log files for each node) and have blinkenlights on the back of my future build (mostly on sale): Sandisk Ultra Fit's Then a couple other tiny ones that look sleak with no LED for the front of the cases: Leaf Surge
   
   
6. Totally awesome RGB mouse with a ton of button to replace my dead mouse. I could have just gone for a standard layout mouse and save a few bucks but I wanted to have extra buttons for gaming in War Thunder, etc. I still haven't used the majority of buttons for anything, derp. I did get a discount though. SteelSeries Rival 500
   
   
7. Extra SATA SSD for just my pagefile, temp files, log files, torrents & downloads (cache before moving to HDD). Totally not needed but eh; was on a Newegg special sale I believe. ADATA S510
   
   
8. Little LCD screen to show my computer stats (with fully customizable software): LCDsysinfo GOverlay and here's pics of it: one and two
   
   
9. Had a perfectly fine case, NZXT Gamma that I replaced just because I wanted an orange case; Corsair 230T. It's my current build.
   
   
10. I bought different fans just to play around and test them from Cougar (with orange fans), CoolerMaster and others. Totally not needed. But I found the ones I love, CoolerMaster 120mm JetFlo's.
    
    
11. Took out my 5.25 bay slots and put an orange Cougar fan in there with an acylic mount for more streamlined airflow (and got featured on a site): http://www.ambassadorbase.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/09-W7ARHue.jpg
    
    
12. Killer NIC Xeno Pro (I wanted the 2100 Bigfoot branded but got sold me the wrong one, he didn't know better, eh) just to play around with. Got it off ebay last year for $10ish. I just like hardware. Surprisingly works with Win10 (with some crashing). Has a Freescale PowerPC CPU (NPU) and running linux internally; that's pretty cool. The router function is pretty easy and snazzy. From all the research, it does do some things slightly faster since bypasses the Windows stack and no shitty emulation (thus CPU) from Realtek (TCP delay set to 1).
    
    There are a couple things I wanted but lost bids on.
    
    For example I wanted an cartridge based DVD drive to use DVD RAM for fun (and because it's cyberpunk as fook): image
    
    I also wanted these 5.25 bay speakers: image

The Lenovo Y510p would be the best bet if you want bang for the buck.

The ones linked by others don't have the second graphics card which is the only thing that makes the Y510p a good buy. It does have an SSD cache for quick startup, but it doesn't have a true SSD. It's also kind of bulky and heavy, but you are going to find that with most 15.6" laptops, especially in this price range.

You could do a little better for bulk and get a true SSD with considerably less performance than the Y510p that I linked, but would still be able to game and give you room in the budget to get your own SSD.

For that I could suggest an ASUS R510DP, a hard drive caddy, and a Crucial M500 SSD. With that you could replace the optical drive with an SSD if that is important to you.

Keep in mind neither of those solutions will have good battery life. If you want to be able to play some games, want portability, light weight, and battery life, you may want to look into the Acer V7-482PG. It's got an i5-4200U, 8GB RAM, 500GB HDD + 24GB SSD Cache, Nvidia GT 750M graphics, and a beautiful 14" 1920x1080 IPS touch display. It only weighs 4.4lbs and gets up to 8 hours of battery life under the right conditions.

Certainly!

First and absolutely foremost: BACKUP YOUR DATA AND SAVE FILES TO A USB DRIVE OF SOME SORT. (This is mostly if you're on a PS4. Xbox I believe has some cloud save feature but please verify first you have your data backed up before doing any hardware replacement on any console.

Next, pick up a 2.5" laptop SSD. You can use up to a 2TB drive in a PS4, I don't know Xbox Ones size limitations but 2TB is a friggin lot of storage. Here's a pretty sweet deal on a 1TB on Amazon

Now, if you haven't backed up your save files yet, do so. Seriously. Don't make the same mistake I did.

Once you've got your SSD, follow these directions to replace the shitty mechanical HDD in your PS4 or Xbox with that slick solid state storage:

• Regular PS4 SSD replacement tutorial.
  
• PS4 Pro SSD replacement tutorial.
  
• Xbox One SSD replacement tutorial.
  
• Xbox One X SSD replacement tutorial.
  
  After you've got the SSD installed and your PS4/xbox software re-installed and updated, setup your account and restore your save files to your account.
  
  Now kick back and enjoy the quickest load times you've ever experienced on a console.
  
  Note: This may affect how you treat bathroom breaks while gaming.

I own a few of the NUC8i5's and use it for pro audio work and a tiny bit of video work.

The machine is fast, quiet, and efficient. 16 gigs of memory may be fine (that's what I'm using), 32 may be helpful in Premier as Steve mentioned. Consider a Samsung 970 EVO m.2 drive; the 1TB is $149 on Amazon today...that's quite a deal. https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-970-EVO-1TB-MZ-V7E1T0BW/dp/B07BN217QG/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=MZ-V7E1T0BW&qid=1574095226&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&sr=8-1

The 970 EVO Plus (even faster) is $199 today for a TB.

​

And 32 Gigs of memory is currently $125 (Crucial 2400 MT/s)

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B019FRCV9G/ref=ppx_od_dt_b_asin_title_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

If I'm producing anything substantial video wise, I go to another machine. But for light video, the NUC will work. And the i7 you're looking at will perform slightly better than the i5 I'm using.

All that said, this tiny PC space may be getting even more exciting if AMD gets into it as has been rumored. They have superior graphics rendering in many cases, and their latest laptop chips have been shown to outperform the Intel counterparts. It'll be interesting to see the 10th gen intel chips in a NUC soon.

I love the NUC platform. I've built 25+ of them and have been please along the way.

Hey dude, Singaporean here as well! And For you I'll recommend getting a new case and Motherboard +CPU.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1W3wurvEJFEEZkES875Os6DHOT2RuYqFDGB9Bl1iH2ZA/edit?usp=sharing

here is a spreadsheet that I use for people I help to build PCs for, with prices for stuff from Sim Lim (because having local warranty is good). But yeah, this is just for reference. You can always try amazon esp to save abit on older Ryzens and RAM but RMA may be a bit of a pain just so that you are aware. But for cases, the techware Nexus is pretty solid choice and I think it's only $50 SGD.

https://www.tecware.co/nexus

​

IIRC it's the same case that Aftershock uses on their more budget lineup.

​

In any case, If I were you, I'll either wait for the Ryzen 3000 series if I want local warranty, or if I dont mind shipping from amazon and potentially having to deal with overseas RMA, wait for Ryzen 2000 sales on amazon after the 3000 series launches. Or get the 1600 from amazon now. since the prices of those have been crazy cheap these days and TBH it wont bottleneck your RX 580 anyways.

SSD wise, how big do you want it? a 500GB WD Blue 3D is like $100SGD now, so not too different from say a 500GB 860 evo once you add in the conversion rate + Import Tax+ Shipping. But if you wait for a sale on the 1TB 860Evo, those could be quite nice, since I've seen amazon sell those for 130USD during sales, which is quite cheap considering the lower performance 860QVO is like $200SGD right now from local distributors (and the failure rate on Samsung SSDs are so low that the RMA risks are minimal). as for the 860 evo, no reason to buy one of those in SG now since for almost the same price you can get the Adata XPG SX8200 Pro but with performance matching or surpassing in some areas, the much vaulted 970 Evo.

​

Edit: Just saw the WD Blue 3D 1TB for $115USD on amazon.https://www.amazon.com/Blue-NAND-1TB-SSD-WDS100T2B0A/dp/B073SBQMCX/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1LPKB9DX5EIHI&keywords=wd+blue+3d+1tb&qid=1557331485&s=gateway&sprefix=WD+Blue+3d+1tb%2Caps%2C354&sr=8-12

I don't know what kind of budget you are on, but I would say spend 30 more and get this 120gb from Samsung. I have it and it works like a charm, comes with software that is very easy to use and helps keep it running at maximum potential. But this is just my completely unprofessional opinion. It just seems like a hassle to have to think about what you can put on there, with a 120gb you can't put everything but you can put most of your most used programs on there and not have to worry about it. I put all my drivers on there, software for my mouse, keyboard, speakers, and Bluetooth dongle, chrome, team speak, iTunes, and my trend micro antivirus and still have about 50gbs free. I love being able to restart my computer and hop back onto Reddit and team speak before I can take my next breath haha.

1. I went with this https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B013QFRS2S/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1522885721&sr=8-2&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=wd+2tb+hdd&dpPl=1&dpID=519l6PabkxL&ref=plSrch. Works great!
   
   
   Also note that you’ll need a data adapter to use the drive. I recommend this one: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00EOJNGC2/ref=mp_s_a_1_11?ie=UTF8&qid=1522885867&sr=8-11&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=startech+sata+adapter
   
   Also will need a Molex Y power splitter and an 80 wire ide cable (upgraded from the stock 40 pin) Everything all together should be around $75.
   
   I reccomend using Chimp to clone your hard drive since you have a 1.6 and can’t tsop. I watched this video and it told me everything I needed:
   https://youtu.be/lBC9599ww6I
   
   
2. As you stated before, JCRocky5 has his softmod package which you can burn to a dvd-r and easily install xbmc and set it as your main dashboard.
   
   
3. Tbh not many people I know do the ram upgrade, it’s uses are limited but would help a bit with some emulators. The 2 popular snes emus run fantastic without the ram upgrade, as does the genesis, gba, and nes. The psx and n64 ones are a bit more finnicky, but many of the popular games have compatibility settings which make the games run quite well.
   
   Number 4 I’ll let someone more experienced help on.

That's incredible that your folks are willing to support you in this and it's a great chance for your channel to take off! So this leaves you with...5 months to get that momentum? I believe you can do it, and once it hits that 2k mark, it only multiplies so long as you're consistent with it!

It sounds as though you have an audience already in mind, but what I would recommend is putting a least a couple video projects together that would have a long shelf-life.

What I mean is if you are able, do some DIY/guide type videos for relatively common subjects/problems in your niche. If (more like when) they get searched for, you'll see that things with an inherent value and good SEO can last for a LONG time.

$800 is an awesome budget for this too! Wish I had that much to work with when I started. I don't know what kind of content you create, but investing in at least a studio-quality mic, decent editing software, a good sized SSD and an external storage as well. Camera of course would be necessary if it's a vlog style or whatnot, but again, not sure what you're going for here. Doing gaming oriented content, I have no need for a camera (yet).

Here's what I'm running with - having a computer is already implied:

• Blue Yeti Microphone with shock mount, arm & pop filter - This's a relatively common combo, and can be found on Amazon for around $150.
  
  
• Corel VideoStudio Ultimate X8 (One-time purchase, not a license) - This is INCREDIBLY cheap right now on Amazon due to the recent release of a newer version.
  
  
• Solid State Drive - For storage of projects and raw project files
  
  
• External Hard Disk Drive or Solid State Drive for file/save backup
  
  
  

I know you've already purchased things but there's a lot you can improve and I'd suggest returning things to improve your build:

• Get Haswell over Ivy Bridge. It performs better in every aspect for $10 more. Plus you can then upgrade to the newer z87 motherboard chipsets which are worth the price increase alone. You're buying slightly outdated tech when you can get the newest and best for essentially the same price.
  
  
• You'd need a new motherboard to match the 1150 socket and z87 chipset and IMO you can do better than ASRock at the $150 price point. I'd recommend a UD3H/UD4H or a comparable Asus board.
  
  
• Newer, faster, more reliable SSD by Samsung with the same amount of storage for $25 less: http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Electronics-EVO-Series-2-5-Inch-MZ-7TE120BW/dp/B00E3W15P0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1382718396&sr=8-1&keywords=samsung+840+evo
  
  
• GPU. If you're at around the $300 price range get a 280x. Nothing can compete with it for the price right now.

Haha, I feel you-- I do miss the days when a console was a console and you didn't have to worry about customizing it to improve performance.

Here's the drive and the external enclosure I'm using, total $59.98:

Original link (see edit below; might not want to get this one): https://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-240GB-Solid-State-SDSSDA-240G-G26/dp/B01F9G43WU/ref=sr_1_6?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1537193290&sr=1-6&keywords=250gb+ssd

Better link (Samsung, $8 more): https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-250GB-Internal-MZ-76E250B-AM/dp/B07864WMK8/ref=sr_1_3?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1537193972&sr=1-3&keywords=250gb+ssd

https://www.amazon.com/UGREEN-External-Enclosure-Adapter-Housing/dp/B06XWRRMYX/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1537193304&sr=8-4&keywords=external+enclosure+2.5

There are better SSD drives that that one, but the PS4 OS is not optimized for SSD so other people's tests show the better drives aren't any faster than lower-end drives. If you're buying one for a PC, then you might want to spring for a Samsung or something, but it's not necessary on PS4.

Edit: Ah, wait, that's not the exact same drive I'm using. Mine is listed as 250GB. This one is listed as 240GB. I think the minimum PS4 can use externally is 250GB. I know there's funny business in hard drive capacities due to the next step of bytes being 1024, not an even 1000, but I don't know if it would make this 240GB not meet PS4's "250" requirement or not. Might want to go with something explicitly 250GB to be safe.

Edit 2: Wow, Amazon actually has the Samsung brand 250GB for only $57 on sale today. I added that link if anyone's interested.

Okay, here's what you do. I know because I literally just upgrade my HDD and carefully backed up my library (which has PT in it) and successfully transferred it to a new drive.

First off, buy this drive
www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00TKFEE5S?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00.

This one works with the PS4. It's cheaper than an equivalent naked 2TB drive ($99 something on Amazon) and you get a harddrive enclosure out it that you can reuse. You're going to take it apart and use the drive inside for your upgrade. It's not as hard as it sounds. I did it and it's very easy. Before you do anything, hook it up to your PC and format the drive to FAT32 (or just FAT if you're on Mac) and use Master Boot Record as your partition.

Gently place the knife in the crevice between the top cover and the rest of the case to wedge them far enough apart for you to pry it open yourself. Digital Foundry has a video on this. Remove the rubber covers and the screws. Gently remove the aluminum sheets covering the top of the drive and disconnect it from the SATA/USB 3.0 adapter.

To backup your games, make sure the HDD is bigger than the total install size on your PS4. Make sure that you formatted as exFAT or FAT32 and that you choose Master Boot Record instead of GPT or anything else. This is important because PS4 doesn't like anything that is not MBR and it won't recognize your drive or return an error (like there not being enough space for backup). Backing up using this method will backup your game saves, your screenshots/videos, your apps, and games to the external.

Now you're going to need the PS4 firmware. This page has the firmware you need. Be mindful which update you download because the one you want is the full firmware, not the one intended to only update the PS4. I've directly linked it here. It's about 800 MB. Put it on a thumb drive (separate from the external drive that you used to backup your games). Make sure that drive is also formatted as FAT32 or exFAT and that you have the folder tree done correctly. It should be Thumb Drive -> PS4 -> UPDATE in that order. Put the 800 MB PS4UPDATE file that you downloaded into the UPDATE folder. Make sure everything is named correctly, including the update file (don't add numbers to it).

Once that's done, just do as Digital Foundry shows you. Power everything off, push the faceplate off to expose the drive, use a Phillip screwdriver to remove the screw, pull out the harddrive cage and unscrew the harddrive. Now put the 2TB one in. Be mindful here because the Seagate drive is actually thinner than the stock drive so the screws won't align correctly. I recommend putting the drive into the cage upside down to make it easier for you to align the screws with the drive. Screw everything back in, put the drive back, and put the cover back. Connect your DS4 to the PS4 and hold down the PS button for 7 seconds until you get into the PS4 recovery (it should be pretty obvious what it is). Choose the last option to install the firmware. Connect the thumb drive and let the PS4 do its thing.

Now walk through the start up process again and then connect your external HDD. Now restore everything that you backed up. This should take a while depending on how much stuff you backed up. Notice that this backup does not transfer over your profiles so you'd have to sign back into PSN again after the upgrade. You won't have to make any changes like deactivating the PS4 before removing to the drive and activating it as primary again after installation. That's tied to your console ID, not the harddrive. Last step is to take the old PS4 harddrive and put back into the Seagate case that you took your new drive out of.

Awesome, I love the audio upgrade! Don't really need the type C connector yet so this is a great trade off. Thanks!! I noticed that the Sniper has an M.2 connector. Would you recommend a NVMe? Looks like 4x-5x the real world read/write speeds and only 2x the price. You've saved me money from not wasting on an OCing battlestation, so would this be the best upgrade value? (instead of my 850 EVO for my OS/C: drive?)

Great write-up. I'm probably going to buy those pants and maybe another item or two. Even after ~10 long one-bag trips I'm still working on refining my load.

> USB drive x2 – My laptop’s hard drive isn’t huge, so I use these for extra storage.

Check out these tiny Sandisk drives. They're so small you could probably just leave them in your MacBook all the time.

> One thing my bag is missing that I wish I’d had: A European USB charger.

I recommend picking up some small, cheap adapters (look around and you can find even smaller ones) and coupling them with your USB chargers from home.

I prefer multi-port, high-speed chargers (2+ amps/port) such as this one. Even better, grab a 4-port charger if you have more than 2 devices to charge. While Airbnbs have plenty of outlets, hotels are often skimpy—and one of them is consumed by your MacBook—so it's essentially to be able to charge all of your devices with just one outlet.

> Google Maps

Check out the offline maps app called Galileo Pro. It's designed specifically for offline mapping. Google Maps is my #1 choice when I have a connection but it's pretty clunky about offline data. Galileo has tons of points of interest, it can import custom Google maps, and it'll even cache Wikipedia articles related to the area & sights. I've tried tons of offline mapping solutions and this is my favorite. There's a free version as well, but Pro is well worth the petty cash price.

You should get an SSD. 512GB, or better yet, 1TB. They've really fallen in price. Amazon has the WD Blue SSD for $115 and that's what I have. I'm crying (not literally, LOL) because I paid $300 for that. And it's amazing. I don't regret it. I mean, I know you're being facetious about 20 minutes to launch an app store, but with an SSD, you can go from your computer having been off a week, to you reading Reddit, in like six seconds flat. I'm not kidding. It's stupid fast. Your computer is probably faster than you think. The bottleneck is your hard drive. Replace it with an SSD, and let the app stores start when the computer does.

There are apps that combine all your games into one place, kind of like what Steam does, but for all the app stores, plus emulators. The main one I know of is called LaunchBox. Personally I think it's a giant pain in the knob, but I respect the hustle. I mean, I'm lazy. If I want to play a game, I just launch it from the start menu. If you launch the game, it'll launch any dependencies in the background, and that's that. It's never been an issue. LaunchBox is free, by the way, with a $20 pro version that does some cool shit. And the author sounds like a great guy. If you like what you see, definitely try it out. Maybe the all-in-one launcher thing is for you. I'm old school. Same with music... I don't do music libraries, I just play the songs out of my file manager. Old school. It's worked for ~20 years, why change it?

That's a good cooler for the 2600x. You'd have to spend a lot more than its £40 price tag to get a better white cooler. Not necessarily a bad long-term investment, but the 2600x doesn't really need it.

The b350m is a first-gen motherboard, so it didn't support the newer 2nd-gen ryzen CPUs by default.

If you happen to buy one that doesn't come with a recent-enough BIOS update, it won't work with the 2600x, and you'll need to use an older, compatible CPU to update it so that it would work.

B450 motherboards also support a better turbo boost feature for the 2600x (PBO or precision boost overdrive).

A lot of people report that this feature actually performs better for them than their own manual overclocking for many uses, especially with a little undervolting.

They're both good motherboards though, from what I've read.

On an unrelated note, MX500 SSD is only £50 at the moment for some reason. Worth it.

Oh well there’s your issue, ssd all the way. Your processor is mighty fine. Your graphics card is a great card alonefor a pc, if you’re doing gaming it’ll hold up but if you’re trying to play at ultra or 1440p then you’d have to get a new card, but it doesn’t seem like that’s what you’re going for. But as for general performance in your computer? Ssd ssd ssd. Samsung 850 evos are by far the most popular, and for good reason, but any brand name ssd will do you perfectly fine, such as this crucial one or this kingston . Read enough forums and you’ll see that ssds are the main upgrade for older systems, because the actual os runs off of them, slowing everything down. It doesn’t matter how fast your brain can think through data if it can only read a book at 2 words per minute, the reading speed will be your weakest link. Same with the computer. All of those ssds are great, you might need a sata 3 cable unless you want to replace your hard drive instead of add to it, and the size of the ssd should depend on how much you plan on putting on it. Anything you put on the ssd will run a lot faster, so your OS should always be the first thing, allot at least 16 gigs for the OS, and then any programs you want to run faster. Personally with a 256gb, I can keep all programs on my ssd, and the only thing on my hard drive is games, which is, after loading times, the only computer software that isn’t affected by hard drive speeds.

On Kodi (not on Roku, but can be installed on cheap android sticks) there is an addon named Pseudotv that should do exactly this. It can also "build TV channels" around internet streams. Be sure not to stream illegal content (a lot of youtube videos showing how) and get your mother in law in trouble. Should work great for local content.

If you use a windows based HDMI stick (maybe with a cheap flash drive for storage, there is a nifty Pseudotv library tool.

Note, this can be accomplished without a windows stick for a lot cheaper, using an android stick, and you get better app support (windows 10 apps do not support remote controls out of the box. If you go that route use this to enable remote support in netflix)

There are a lot of options when it comes to client/server setup.

The only way you could get a vr capable pc for under $700 would be to build one with buying the main components used off Ebay. Let me see if I can put together something:

Used Parts
GPU - $95
CPU, motherboard, and memory - $233

New Parts
Power Supply - $50
Hard Drive - $110
Case - $45

Total - $533

You'll still need a mouse and keyboard, which you can spend as little or as much as you want on. If you have a TV with an hdmi input, which you probably do, you can use that as a monitor. This will satisfy the minimum requirements for most headsets, but just barely. You would be better off getting a gtx 1070 over a 970.

GTX 1070 - $260

New Total - $698


That would give you a better experience, but is obviously more expensive. If you haven't built your own pc yet, don't feel intimidated. There are plenty of guides on youtube and it is very simple. It is also a right of passage. Putting it together yourself will also allow you to upgrade one component at a time later on. Used pc parts are usually pretty good. All the stuff I listed should be able to work for another 8 years or so, well beyond the time they will be obsolete. Feel free to ask any questions.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/252750143992

Just wondering if this RAM is compatible? Not entirely sure if my PC has 2 x 4GB or 1 x 8GB but assuming it's the latter would I be right in thinking this will be fine? (Same description as what the PC specs site show) or does it have to be the same brand etc?

I was also wondering if a 120gb SSD would do nicely (Just for the OS), and finally the PSU is 280w, will that handle the 1050?

Thanks! Very excited to upgrade this!


And can anyone do me a huge favour and verify these will be compatible before I bite the bullet haha;

120GB SDD:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B01F9G414U/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1486008661&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=120gb+ssd+drive&dpPl=1&dpID=31-X%2BjRZTpL&ref=plSrch

GPU:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01M5FSDS9/?tag=pcp0f-21

500W PSU:
http://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/computing-accessories/components-upgrades/power-supplies/corsair-builder-series-cx500-fixed-atx-psu-500-w-19736920-pdt.html

8GB RAM (Different brand, more expensive than the one from the eBay listing):
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B00TMMA18S/ref=mp_s_a_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1486008927&sr=8-7&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=8GB+PC3-12800+1600Mhz+DDR3+SDRAM+DIMM+240-pin&dpPl=1&dpID=41YzXj%2B1jML&ref=plSrch

There's a couple kinds of SSD: 2.5" drives connected though SATA, PCIE based SSDs and then the dedicated slot M.2 and U.2.

SATA SSD speeds are limited by the SATA port itself but the drives are still much faster than spinning HDDs and are easy to install since they're compatible with any build.

PCIE based SSDs as I understand it were useful before M.2 and U.2 slots were as popular as they are now because you could still install them in any computer with a PCIE slot open. But they take up a lot of space and have basically been replaced by the M.2 standard.

M.2 use dedicated PCIE lanes and have a dedicated spot on the motherboard.

So when looking at SSDs you're basically considering m.2 or SATA.

You're budget, storage needs, transfer speed preferences, and motherboard are going to guide you one way or another.

This LinusTechTips video explains it pretty well.

Here's my chat log. TL;DR it comes with the game code

04:21 PM PST Marc(Amazon): Hello there! My name is Marc. I hope you are doing well in this beautiful day! I will do my best to assist you with your concern.
04:21 PM PST Demetri: Hi Marc
04:22 PM PST Demetri: I was looking at the Samsung 120gb SSD that is advertised with the promotion for Far Cry 4
And just wanted to ask if this ssd for sure comes with this code or not
04:22 PM PST Marc(Amazon): Can you send me a link to that promotion so that I can check?
04:22 PM PST Demetri: http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-120GB-2-5-Inch-Internal-MZ-7TE120BW/dp/B00E3W15P0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1417133211&sr=8-1&keywords=samsung+120gb+ssd
04:23 PM PST Demetri: Honestly, I've been on reddit seeing that some people are claiming they have spoken to one of you guys and you confirm that this deal is real
and some have said it doesnt qualify
04:24 PM PST Marc(Amazon): It does qualify Demetri. The download code will be emailed to you when the item will be shipped.
04:25 PM PST Marc(Amazon): To receive the Bonus with Purchase:

1. Add qualifying products described in the promotion to your Shopping Cart via the “Add to Shopping Cart” button.
   
   
2. After your item ships, we will send you an e-mail with the game download redemption code for Far Cry 4 within 5-7 business days with instructions to redeem.
   04:25 PM PST Demetri: And we're for sure talking about the 120gb sized ssd, correct?
   04:26 PM PST Marc(Amazon): Yes, the item that you are looking right now.
   04:26 PM PST Demetri: Okay, thank you so much Marc! Thats all the questions I have.
   04:27 PM PST Marc(Amazon): You're welcome. Just follow the instructions on how to place the order so that you will be able to take advantage of the promo.
   To receive the Bonus with Purchase:
   
   
3. Add qualifying products described in the promotion to your Shopping Cart via the “Add to Shopping Cart” button.
   
   
4. After your item ships, we will send you an e-mail with the game download redemption code for Far Cry 4 within 5-7 business days with instructions to redeem

Since I'm spending slightly less than I anticipated elsewhere I'm willing to go a bit more expensive. You're not the first person to recommend a 570 so I'm starting to feel that's the way I should go. However I'm finding out, there's a bit more to it than that. I've seen at least two "Radion 570s" with the same pricepoint but are obviously different, one above and the other on Amazon.

Maybe I just need to be educated on what the nuances of different video cards are. Both are $130, a bit above my initial GPU budget but worth it if the quality and longevity are there, however I'll need to read up on how to interpret GPU specs to determine which would be better for me.

As for SSDs, I just ordered one that looks to be pretty good. Honestly it might be more than I need but I figured I'd spend a little more to better future-proof myself.

I actually just upgraded my hard drive and did a bit amount of research into it. Depending on the specs, there are definitely some differences in load times but all in all they are pretty negligible. Look for articles on IGN or others that will give you rest results. You will have to spend 200-400 for a nice one and still will save only 5 seconds or so on load times. I went for this one: http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00I8O6OQ4. 2 TB for about 100 dollars and great reviews as far as compatibility and performance.

Here's a good Article: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2014-ps4-hard-drive-upgrade-guide

Hey, full stack developer using x1 extreme with Linux here. Everything you listed here seems fine other than the ssd you want to make sure you get nvme as opposed to normal sata 3 one to make sure you get the most out of it. This is the lowest one I'd put on a workstation

https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-970-EVO-1TB-MZ-V7E1T0BW/dp/B07BN217QG

That's the normal 970 evo, the 970 evo plus is a bit better though. 970 pro isn't worth it to me from a price point perspective the 970 plus is my go-toand is what I have installed on my X1E. 3500mb/s read and about 3200-3300 mb/s write, the one you listed hovers around 500mb/s read and a bit less write than that.

Everything you listed as a requirement can be done on all Linux distros, what you have to determine is how you'd like to manage them. If you're a first time user I'd recommend pop os and manjaro, they're sure to have all the stuff you need and work pretty good out of the box. I personally use manjaro because it's a rolling release so I install once and just go upgrading stuff as it comes out, no need to install a new one over what I have once the new release is out like other distros. Just remember that with Linux you'll have to do some digging around and getting your hands dirty with stuff sometimes for things to work properly but once you get used to it you'll see it's a small price to pay for all the flexibility you get. The ones I listed are just some personal favourites, you really can't go wrong with any other to be honest just experiment with a few until you find the right fit for you, try them on some virtual machines if you want to make your testing a bit faster.

Cheers

https://www.amazon.com/ASUS-TUF-X570-Plus-Motherboard-Lighting/dp/B07SXFK1TP

That’s a good mobo, costs more but anything cheaper has bad VRMs,

https://youtu.be/zuyuS04lD4o

this video is good for motherboards.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/62vp2g/clearing_up_any_samsung_bdie_confusion_eg_on/

Good Reddit post on bdie RAM.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B073SB2MXT/?tag=pcpapi-20

I also think the higher end builds should have a 1TB ssd, and this one is nice.

And as other commenters said, a better PSU and perhaps a nicer case (meshify C, and H500 are both nice) on the higher end builds would be a good improvement.

I've used quite a few SSDs and I would steer you towards paying an extra 10 quid (not British I hope I am using the proper slang up in this John) to get a Samsung 840 Evo 120gb

The main reasons are not only that the reviews show that it is one of the faster SSDs available in the price range, but it has Samsung Magician, which lets you dedicate some of your system memory/RAM for use with the SSD for faster read/write, and here are some pretty benchmark numbers showing how well Magician works in synthetic tests, although these are synthetic, and RAPID mode might not give you as large an advantage in real-life scenarios (unless you frequently use the same programs so that RAPID mode throws those files into your RAM, then the gains will be rather large!)

The V300 should be awesome should you choose to get it but you might want to spend some time drooling at charts before you make the purchase, and I admit that I am a little biased towards Samsung (I own 2x 840 Pro and 1x 840 Evo for OS/Games and a few Crucial SSDs that I relegate to less-important things like music/etc)

I think your best bet would probably be one of these Silicon Power 256GB SSDs from Amazon. Link.

They aren't the most well known brand and they aren't as good as something like a Samsung SSD, but most people find they work well and at only $63.99 US I'm pretty sure it's the best you're going to get storage wise without increasing your price range a bit or buying something used or completely unknown from eBay.

I personally don't care for Seagate because of Blackblaze mostly but also the horror stories I hear from time to time. I'm a longevity buyer or BIFL (buy it for life). I work in a datacenter and know that drives are never bifl but I do my best. Recently I looked for a large drive for my brother to put in his laptop. Seagate was the only drive available for the larger sizes in his price range. I found a sale for a WD External Hard Drive 4tb where basically he would pay $90 for a large external drive. That was what I went with for him as WD are better drives from what I've seen as well as they're a bit more reliable.


I've noticed that Seagate puts a LOT of money into advertising which I understand works some but if your drives are high failure rate then people that consistently buy drives may stop buying them such as those on r/datahoarders . Personally even WD drives aren't as reliable and if I buy anymore for myself I'll be paying a bit extra to get HGST due to their quality which overall is more important to me. I'd suggest to Seagate that they increase quality and decrease advertising some if they need money from somewhere. If I found that Seagate quality increased to HGST standards even if it was a NEW LINE; I'd be very inclined to spend money on a high end Seagate with a better warranty.

> HDD: 1TB SATA-III 6.0Gb/s 32MB Cache 7200RPM HDD
> .
> My main goal with this build is to not only be able to game but to also to build and animate 3d models, and well as process heavy visual effects in my adobe editing programs. Well better than my current laptop at least. I just can't wait 7 minutes to process a simple effect on a wedding video lol.

It sounds like the biggest most fixable problem you had is that you're using a regular hard drive (which is very slow compared to other options).

Your files would load dramatically faster from an SSD. If you're editing large video files I'd go for one of the more expensive ones - at 1tb the Crucial mx500 ($130) or the Samsung EVO 860 ($150). An ssd will make the whole machine faster for someone who's just web browsing...it's an even bigger improvement for someone who's video editing.

If you want it faster still, you might benefit from Nvme's even higher speeds. The Samsung 970 is one suggestion:
https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-970-EVO-1TB-MZ-V7E1T0BW/dp/B07BN217QG/

You should definitely be getting an SSD at minimum though. It makes everyone on your computer much faster (except game framerate).

You need an SSD. HDD's are very slow on modern operating systems and will bring any PC down. I dont even know why they still put them in computers. Otherwise your specs are not that bad.

I'd get a Kingston A400 assuming you're on the cheap side, but if you want best of the best in every category you can get a Samsung one. I can help you through the installation, cloning, ext, processes if you wish once you get the drive.

Samsung: https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-250GB-Internal-MZ-76E250B-AM/dp/B07864WMK8/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=samsung+ssd+240gb&qid=1567214881&s=gateway&sr=8-1

Kingston: https://www.amazon.com/Kingston-240GB-Solid-SA400S37-240G/dp/B01N5IB20Q/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=kingston+a400+240gb&qid=1567214901&s=gateway&sr=8-1

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

Type|Item|Price

----|:----|:----
CPU | Intel Core i3-6100 3.7GHz Dual-Core Processor | $109.67 @ Amazon
Motherboard | ASRock H110M-DVS/D3 Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard | $54.00 @ SuperBiiz
Memory | Corsair Vengeance Pro 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory | $44.99 @ Amazon
Storage | Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive | $49.99 @ Amazon
Video Card | MSI GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4GB Video Card | $142.99 @ Amazon
Case | Cooler Master N200 MicroATX Mini Tower Case | $49.00 @ Amazon
Power Supply | Corsair CXM 450W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply | $53.99 @ Amazon
Operating System | Microsoft Windows 10 Home OEM 64-bit | $92.99 @ Amazon
| Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts |
| Total | $597.62
| Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-04-02 06:55 EDT-0400 |

I own an i3 6100, and the hyper threading makes such a difference.The Nvidia 1050ti is a fairly new card meaning that it won't go out of fashion in a hurry, but I have heard good things about the AMD rx 470. I don't really know much about AMD, but a 1050ti suits me just fine. The case is nice and small, and I think the only reason that the OS is so expensive, is because it's from an online shop. You can probably find a better deal in store perhaps, I'm not sure. An SSD would be impossible with the current budget, but if you're really desperate, you could swap the hard drive for one, and then get a large hard drive at a later date to store everything on, if you feel that you can survive with less space for a while. In that case, may I recommend this.
The price is the same, but it's only 120gb. So maybe a couple of games installed at a time, until you get the biggie. I've got a pretty similar build, and it can run most things. Good luck!

EDIT However, after a little bit more research, I've seen people go nuts over this thing:. It's a little slower than an i3 6100, but much cheaper. It does have hyper-threading. BUT you may need to reconsider the motherboard, as PC Part picker says you need to mess with bios updates ect ect...

So that SSD seems a bit excessive....

You're generally better off getting a smaller SSD, like 250GB along with a larger mass storage.

Swap that 1TB SSD for this 275GB SSD and this 2TB HDD. You're gonna save almost 100$ on this and have more storage.

You can also get some cheaper RAM like This Kingston HyperX FURY, yeah it's slower at 2133 mhz, butit really doesn't matter.

Now you have about 110$ left over which you can put into a better GPU. You can get a GTX 1070 for 399$ so you'd need to get an extra 20$ on top of your current funds. The 1070 offers substantially better performance than the 1060, you're easily looking at gaining 20-30 frames on average in most games.

Not for the money, no. The i7 U processor and i5 U processor are essentially the same features, only difference is clock speed - which isn't really something you'll feel a big difference on, at least not nearly $300 worth of one. Were it an i7 MQ/HQ it'd be quad-core, so there you'd see a difference, but that's not an option on this system (due to power usage).

The system has 4GB RAM soldered, true, but there's one open DIMM slot that can fit up to a single 8GB SO-DIMM in. So the max memory for the system is 12GB.

Yea you could save about ~$100 installing your own SSD, if you're comfortable doing so. From Notebookcheck's internal look, it appears the 256GB they include is the Samsung 840 Pro, which is one of the best SSDs on the market, and retails for about $220. If you were to install your own, you could get a much cheaper Crucial M500 240GB for $120.

This WD Blue 1TB M.2 SATA SSD is $115, but goes on sale for $99 pretty often. There is also the intel 1TB 660p NVMe M.2 drive that runs about $90. Both are good options, I have the WD Blue one and it works perfectly, it probably costs a bit more because of brand/reliability.

So I see quite a few suggestions on CPU's and RAM, but the one I see staring me in the face is this:

>Storage Inland 480 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive $51.99 @ Amazon

Good for you going for an SSD as your system drive, but for another $30 you can get the Samsung 970 EVO nvme drive that is MUCH faster and much better quality. I want you to picture this. From powered off to Windows loaded and ready to go in 5 seconds.



SSD is good, nvme is God Tier. Read below

Inland 480GB 2.5" solid state drive

Read Speed: 550 MB/s

Write Speed: 490 MB/s


Compared to the 970 EVO nvme:


Read Speed: 3500 MB/s

Write Speed: 2500 MB/s


That's the difference you get for $30


I'm going to disagree with u/ChiliPeanut on his Storage Philosophy. I think you went the correct route looking for an SSD as your system drive and then having a disk drive as extra storage. If you ever decide to stream, or record your game play...you don't want to be constantly writing to and erasing video on a SSD...especially when that SSD is your ONLY drive. Disk drives handle the write to: function much better right now.

Personally i would recommend changing your power supply to [this] (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371073&nm_mc=AFC-C8Junction&cm_mmc=AFC-C8Junction-_-na-_-na-_-na&cm_sp=&AID=10446076&PID=3938566&SID=)

Personally i would get rid of that garbage CX series power suppy and go for the one i linked instead. It has 5 year warranty and very good build quality. It will be futureproof in case you ever decide to upgrade.

The 750W may seem like overkill now but it will last you a long time with great performance.


If you don't want to spend the $69.99 i would recommend getting the EVGA 500W B power supply which is $40.

You could also save roughly $26 with this instead of the ssd you listed above. It has pretty much the same performance.

It definitely runs better and always has there's just a lot of crashing bugs with the May update.

My buildings render a lot better (everything is usually loaded in as soon as I'm in the plane), the console is pretty quite, and all my other games look amazing and load faster.

I play CODWWII, Assassins Creed Origins, and NBA 2K and it's a way better experience than my OG Xbox.

I upgraded bc my disc drive in my OG Xbox was busted and I had to tilt my xbox up to a 45 degree angle for the discs to be read lol.

EDIT: I also just ordered the SSD below bc I had the extra cash, it arrives today so I'll let you know if it makes difference with PUBG and my other games:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B075RJS55D/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00OJ3UJ2S/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Some points:

• The power supply is overkill. Something in the 500W range would be plenty. Check this out to make sure you choose a good one: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/id-2547993/psu-tier-list.html
  
  
• I've never personally dealt with this but what I hear is "enterprise hard drives" tend to be louder and overcosted. Here's an alternative: link
  
  
• The SSD is super small and will barely fit the OS + maybe a couple of programs. Also, you can get 250 gigs for the same price. Here's a decent one, but there are even cheaper choices out there without much loss of performance or anything.
  
  
• In general, you could find better deals on a lot of the parts, and with the money saved you could make the jump to a 1070 instead
  
  And here's what an example build can look like:
  https://pcpartpicker.com/list/gvxQLD

What quality do you want the games to be? In Pakistan gaming parts are insanely expensive, my GTX 1060 cost me nearly 40,000 alone. I'd recommend just not buying parts here if it's possible for delivery from abroad.

If you're sure, what city do you live in? I can recommend some general parts you might want to aim for in that range.

• CPU: Ryzen 5 2600 (an X isn't necessary)
  
• GPU: Get either a Radeon RX 580 (I'd recommend this) or a GTX 1060 (wouldn't recommend now with the shift to DX12 but it's not a huge difference)
  
• RAM: Stick with either 8gb or 16gb, if you have the remaining money go for 16 gb but make sure you go for dual channel (two sticks totaling one amount) meaning 2x4 or 2x8. The fps difference between dual channel and single channel is a lot.
  
• Motherboard: MSI B450 Tomahawk (you should read up on compatibility it has with the ryzen, you may need to install some drivers, if you're interested I can read up on it and tell you myself.)
  
• Storage: Go for an SSD, forget HDDs since the performance difference between a SSD to an HDD is quite insane. An older samsung 970 evo is likely the perfect choice for you.
  
  As for your PSU, cooling and case. Stick to air cooling and see what cases you have in terms of availability nearby, people really try to rip you off. This thermaltek case is what I got in Karachi for around 8000 Rs. You probably won't need additional fans with this so the cooling is mostly eh.
  
  As for PSUs, never cheap out on these. I'm not entirely sure about the availability here in Pakistan, but it depends on your parts really. You will likely need a stabilizer to ensure your computer isn't blown up incase of short circuits, load shedding or low voltage. I'd recommend the EVGA 650 GQ but once again, EVGA doesn't sell in Pakistan so I'll have to look into it.
  
  I think you may get these within your budget or you may or may not end up going outside your budget because of the GPU. If you're gonna order online or get retail it also changes things. Feel free to ask any questions, also check out groups on facebook like Pakistani PC Gamers as u/muhammad1236 recommended, you might be able to learn a bit more since I'm not invested in the Pakistani market (made my pc a year ago) but I can give you the general outlook.

Upgrading the Hard Drive really isn't that difficult.
All you need to do is buy the drive you want and make sure it is 9.5mm x 2.5inch (I recently got this - https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00I8O6OQ4/ref), next you'll want to make sure that any saves you have are backed up either on the cloud storage or an external drive. To save time later I would advise downloading the most up-to-date version of the PS4 OS from Sony's website (From here you'll want the "Fresh Install option - https://www.playstation.com/en-us/support/system-updates/ps4/), follow the instructions and save this to a USB with at least 1Gb of space.

(Note that you will need a small crosshead screwdriver for this)

Once you've got the drive all you need to do is slide the shiny part of the console away from the power indicator and you'll hear it unlock. From here you should notice a small screw that has the well known PS buttons on it, simply unscrew that and pull the drive out in its holder. You'll notice that there are 4 more screws holding the drive to the caddy, simply unscrew these and the drive will come out.

Now all you need to do is remove the packaging from your new drive, screw it into place on the caddy, re-insert the caddy and screw it into place with the "Sony Screw", reconnect the power/TV/Controller/USB, boot up the PS4 into Safe Mode (Hold power for ~7secs) and choose option 7. From here the drive will update from your USB and after that it'll be good for use, all you need to do is reinstall all those lovely games.


Hope this helps and if you have any problems just shoot me a message :)

Thanks for the reply! I found the WD Blue for $95 on Amazon, but noticed there's also a Seagate 2TB for $90 that appears to be 7200RPM (at least accoring to pcpartpicker).

Any reason you think I shouldn't got for the Seagate? It looks like it gets good reviews on Amazon and PCPP. Though I'm familiar with WD having a solid reputation.

Hey NewMaxx, I really appreciate all the hard work you do to keep us informed, you have influenced a lot of my purchases I make for me and my friends, and I can't thank you enough, but thank you so much! Anyway, I recently ordered an Xbox One X, and I was planning to replace the internal HDD with an SSD. It uses a 2.5" drive and thankfully has SATA III, and I was looking at either the Inland Professional 1TB SSD or the MX500 1TB. This will be for the OS and games, and the drive has to have a capactiy of at least 1TB for formatting purposes. Will the Inland be good enough for those purposes, or should I spend $20 more and get the MX? Thanks again, I appreciate your time.

Some great choices in the build for your friend :)

I would get the Intel 660p 1TB NVME drive. Skip the mechanical drive altogether and the smaller 500GB Samsung. Then if he ends up needing more storage later on, you can help him with an additional drive. https://www.amazon.com/Intel-660p-1-0TB-80mm-978350/dp/B07GCL6BR4. Or, if you have budget left, you could get the 1TB Samsung: https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-970-EVO-1TB-MZ-V7E1T0BW/dp/B07BN217QG/ . However, you might have trouble telling the difference in how fast it and the Intel are, given how quick NVME is. That's why I say go for the Intel.

Look into the RTX 2070 Super that is coming out. That might be just the GPU you were looking for.

Not sure what kind of fans need (if any) to be purchased for that case. Check out this review by Gamers Nexus. Steve always discusses various cooling solutions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmYcKg0x4bw

Use Seasonic's PSU Calculator to estimate PSU needs: https://seasonic.com/wattage-calculator. They will recommend a PSU (and they are a great brand).

1. You don't need a CD drive. You can install Windows using a USB Flash drive.
   
   
2. If you are a student, see if you can get a free copy of Windows through onthehub.com. Save 80 bucks there if you can.
   
   
3. That solid state drive is way too small. I'd go with a 250 GB or 500 GB model of the Sandisk Ultra II or the Samsung 850 EVO. Unless you have some reason to go for such a small drive (planning on having multiple drives).
   
   
4. The case you have listed is really expensive. If you're attached to the look of it or something, that's fine. But I spent $20 on my case and it works perfectly. There's a great selection of cases in the $50 range.
   
   
5. I'd go with everyone's favorite power supply, the EVGA G2.
   
   
6. If you can wait, the AMD RX 480 graphics card is coming out in about a week and will likely blow the GTX 970 out of the water, at a $200 price point. Paying $300 for the GTX 970 would be silly right now. Either wait and get a 480 or wait til after the 480 releases and see if the 970 goes way down in price.
   
   
7. You have a micro ATX motherboard with a full ATX case - meaning your MOBO will fit, but you could fit a full ATX motherboard with more features, or get a smaller case. Look up the dimensions of ATX cases - they're big.
   
   

8. If you're running Math programs for school, look and see what programs you'll be running and see if it makes sense to get an i7 instead of the i5.
   

   
   

   All of this in mind... a $932 build with better power supply, graphics, and SSD. Doesn't include OS, so see if you can get that through school. If you want to put the i7-6700k instead, it comes to around $1040.
   

   PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant
   

   
   

   Type|Item|Price
   

   ----|:----|:----
   CPU | Intel Core i5-6600K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor | $219.99 @ SuperBiiz
   CPU Cooler | Cooler Master Hyper T4 70.0 CFM Rifle Bearing CPU Cooler | $22.99 @ NCIX US
   Motherboard | Gigabyte GA-Z170-HD3 ATX LGA1151 Motherboard | $95.66 @ Newegg
   Memory | G.Skill Ripjaws V Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-2800 Memory | $68.99 @ Newegg
   Storage | Sandisk Ultra II 480GB 2.5" Solid State Drive | $123.86 @ Amazon
   Case | NZXT Source 530 ATX Full Tower Case | $82.99 @ SuperBiiz
   Power Supply | EVGA SuperNOVA G2 650W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply | $87.98 @ Newegg
   Other| AMD RX 480| $230.00
   | Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts |
   | Total | $932.46
   | Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-06-21 13:45 EDT-0400 |

There is definitely a way to cut corners even further while getting higher performance at the same time. Especially since you don't mind going used.

PC: This $200 Dell Optiplex. It comes with an i7 2600 (4 cores 8 threads), 8GB of RAM, a 500GB HDD, and Windows 10 Pro.

GPU: This $226 Gigabyte GTX 1050 Ti.

• • -
    Total: $426 ($496 if with monitor below)
    
• • -
    This is much better bang for your buck and it will definitely work without issue. The CPU is still very strong and goes toe to toe with present-day ones. The GPU is a little better as well and has 2GB more vram, and the stock PSU is more than enough to handle it (if unsure, get a 450W bronze). Consider getting a GTX 1060 6GB for roughly twice the general performance (if getting the GTX 1060 consider settling for a nice 500W bronze or a higher wattage/rating if you plan on overclocking later).
    
    Please also consider getting an SSD to clone the OS on your hard drive to it (here's a Silicon Power 256GB for $65). You can even fit in a cheaper monitor with 1080p, 60Hz, and IPS if you want to. This one's on sale for $70 at Best Buy.
    
• • -
    You can also consider getting this $370 GTX 1060 6GB.
    
    Comparison between GTX 1050 Ti and GTX 1060 6GB.
    
• • -
    New Total (if GTX 1060 6GB added, along with monitor): $640

Yes. I'd stick with Samsung or Crucial. I use a 840 Evo in my build. Works great.

http://www.amazon.com/Crucial-2-5-Inch-adapter-Internal-CT240M500SSD1/dp/B00BQ8RM1A/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1417640223&sr=1-1&keywords=crucial+m500+240gb

SSDs are easy to use. Make sure you have an extra SATA6/3 cable and a SATA power cable to run the drive. You may have to buy the SATA6 cable. The Samsung Magician Software is very easy to use and does a great job at keeping the drive tuned up. Do a YouTube search for Samsung Magician software and check it out. The Crucial drive is also good.

so do you think it would be better to buy like a 120gb ssd (something like this) for windows and maybe 1 or 2 games, then have the external hard drive for the rest of my games/everything else? because i'm pretty sure after buying everything i'll have about $100 left over that I was going to use for either a better keyboard or more ram/storage. if that doesn't work would it be better to get a 120gb ssd or a 1tb hard drive? thank you so much for your help btw

I have personally not had good luck with GDrives. Not due to the actual drive inside (they don't make drives) but to their interface/board in the box.

You would pretty much be fine with any USB 3 drive. I have had really good luck with these from Western Digital.

i would recommend to get a couple for redundancy and then start looking at getting a NAS or Directly connected storage box, like a 5 drive box, in the future and use them in tandem.

Yup, that one will do fine. They are all the same card with different coolers as long as it says GTX 1050ti (or in this case, GTX 1050 without the 'Ti' suffix. Ti is faster, but costs more of course). I have that model in my sisters computer as well and she is doing just fine with it.

Other than that, there isnt much that would give a huge increase in performance. With the exception of a SSD.
SSD's really bring any machine to life again. Everything loads so much faster. It will not increase gaming performance (framerate) but it will drastically reduce load times. Most games will load in a few seconds or less. Skyrim on my machine loads so fast, i can't even read the first word in their load screens that normally talk about things in the game.
The downside is, they are expensive for their size. Normally one puts windows on it, and perhaps your favorite game (or software if you use anything specific).
Something like a https://www.amazon.co.uk/Crucial-MX300-275GB-Internal-Solid/dp/B01IAGSD5O/ref=sr_1_3?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1520087828&sr=1-3&keywords=mx300 would work quite well, or the cheaper 120-150GB versions as well.

Depends a bit on how much money you have to spend.

After that, you need a new processor. Sadly, there isn't much you can do with your current hardware in that area. That would mean new motherboard, new RAM and new processor. Which is quite expensive. Pretty much half of a new computer.

I typically just edit my local copy of the container, then manually copy/paste it out to multiple thumb drives, because I only really make updates once a year (tax time). I just plug them all into a hub, copy, then paste, paste, paste.

If I were doing it more regularly, I would use a file sync utility. Microsoft's SyncToy is free and powerful, but I'm not sure I trust MS anymore. I would look for an open source sync/backup tool if I wanted to automate it now.

As for brands, I stick with any major brand (Transcend, SanDisk, Samsung, Kingston, PNY, I'm sure there are other good ones) in the format that makes the most sense. For safe storage, something like this would be great (bought one 3 years ago, still going strong):
https://smile.amazon.com/PNY-Turbo-64GB-Flash-Drive/dp/B00FDUHDAC

If you want to keep it in your bag, car, etc., you might want something ruggedized:
https://smile.amazon.com/Corsair-Flash-Survivor-Stealth-Drive/dp/B00YHL1LN8

To keep stuck in a laptop (or in my case, windows tablet) USB port, I personally use this one:
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B01BGTG2A0/

> Also the game is not on an SSD

This is 100% the problem.

Especially since:

> Ram: G.Skill - Ripjaws V Series 8 GB (2 x 4 GB) DDR4-2400 Memory

8 gig is not a lot of RAM these days for a gaming machine. I'd recommend 16 gig for the sweet spot in terms of price vs performance. 32 gig is nice to have if you're like me and leave up 30+ browser tabs open.

But you'd see a greater performance bump with an SSD. These days, it's crazy NOT to have one as they're relatively inexpensive. You can get a 1 TB SSD for under $100 now. If you want to save a few dollars, get a 500 GB SSD for $65.

If your motherboard supports it, and you've got some money to blow, I'd recommend the 1 TB WD Black NVMe for $220. This thing is blistering fast, with read/write speeds of up to 3 gigaBYTES per second. They also have a 500 gig model for $100.

Seriously though, hard drives are very slow. Even under ideal conditions, read speeds are typically very fast, and their latency is really bad compared to an SSD, even on a 7200 RPM drive. Those stutters can easily be caused by needing to load some data off the hard drive and the game pauses while fetching it. Or, because you only have 8 gig of RAM, it needs to page some data in or out. An SSD would vastly improve both scenarios, an NVMe more than doubly so.

WD Mybook 8TB for £119.99 (until midnight UK time on the 16th of July):


https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01LWVT81X/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=B01LWVT81X&linkCode=as2&tag=amoves-21&linkId=109e41ed89969139d870a312cd99835b



We can finally feel like Americans for a day with these bargain prices. You need to sign up for Prime as well but if you don't have an active prime membership, you can also start a new Prime trial if you haven't used your 30-day trial in the last 365 days. I just checked and these are the lowest prices these 8TB hard drives have ever been sold for in the UK.

They also have the WD Elements Desktop 8TB on a Prime Day sale for £124:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07FNK6QMT/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=amoves-21&camp=1634&creative=6738&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=B07FNK6QMT&linkId=7a13bc41e7e1867b91417ef49df553e1


From what I've read it's quite similar to the MyBook but doesn't offer backup, encryption and password protection by default. Both are good for schucking. The main advantage of the Elements Desktop 8TB seems to be the ease of adding another drive in its case later on if you decide to schuck it.


The Seagate Expansion 8TB is on sale for only £109 and I've heard only good things about it in comparison to their smaller drives which seem to be problematic. I went with the MyBook 8TB myself.


https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07DQBFQ2D/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=amoves-21&camp=1634&creative=6738&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=B07DQBFQ2D&linkId=28f3f183cd50ec9d3adf5c102ece5daa

The only other good deal I found was the Western Digital My Passport 4TB Portable. Still debating whether to buy it as well or get another Mybook 8tb. It is currently on sale for only £75 which is the second lowest price ever for it in the UK:


https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01LQQH86A/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=amoves-21&camp=1634&creative=6738&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=B01LQQH86A&linkId=54e3c55ae8c90b3e6a3f373dfb0b7335

Well, if you want, I suggest you to keep the storage device that came with the laptop (probably an HDD that has at least 500GB) and get a M.2 SSD. There are some cheap ones from WD like this one or even cheaper. I linked the 1Tb version which is a pretty good value for 114$. Also if you buy this you can get rid of the HDD and make your laptop even lighter.

I strongly suggest getting a M.2 SSD, it connects directly to the motherboard of the laptop. But first check if your laptop has M.2 slots. This is a basic M.2 SSD that acts like a normal one in a different form factor, high end M.2 SSD are waaaaaaay faster.

You could get twice the capacity of SSD for £15 more.

I would save a bit of money and go with a r9 290 for £330 or if you like nvidia a 780 for £360. These should give you nearly the same performance as the 780ti when overclocked. I would save the money for another GPU upgrade in a year or so.

I would get one of these monitors:

Iiyama Prolite GB2773HS-GB1 144Hz 27

Benq XL2720T 27" TRUE 120Hz 3D Vision 2.0

The Iiyama is 144hz and has longer warranty.
They are much cheaper than the monitor speced.

I would go with a red mechanical keyboard for gaming unless you want the tactile feedback in which case I would go with browns. The blues do make a clicking noise which some people like though. Reds are linear so are more suited to gaming. Browns are blues are similar and have a tactile bump which is useful for typing.

There is a hybrid drive for 59.99 w/ 2tb

A normal HDD for the same price w/ 2tb

Heres a WD Blue w/2tb

All of them are 2tb and a buck short of 60 dollars.
Ive never used a hybrid drive or Seagate drives but I found my WD Blues last a VERY long time. However a hybrid drive could speed up programs you use quite frequently. Good luck on the hunt!

On Win 7, I would try to get at least 4 gigs of ram if possible, but it ultimately depends on what you're doing with it. Use Crucial's system scanner tool to see exactly how much it can handle and what type of ram it takes. It could be dirt cheap to upgrade it, it could be expensive.

I know you just replaced that hdd, but I would have recommended looking at doing an ssd instead. If its still an option, doing something like this can make a world of difference in older machines. Anything that involves the hard drive is significantly faster. So faster boot times, snappier system performance, and it's all around just better.

If you get 4 gigs of ram loaded into it, you can also use your win 7 product key to activate 10 on a clean installation and breathe some new life into it. I wouldn't recommend 10 on 2 gigs of ram though.

Also, since you used acer recovery discs, did you end up with a clean installation? Or did it reinstall factory bloat? That can make a big difference.

I gotta respond to a fellow Owl! I also did similar topic replies earlier today. If the 350GB HDD is running your OS then your first step would to be to get a cheap 250gb SSD and transfer your OS onto there. How many extra HDDs bays do you have within your computer? Next step would be to get a 8TB or 10TB shuckable HDD on sale, Easystore and Elements drives are good.
https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/dmisv3/anyone_familiar_with_backblaze_storage_pods/f55nxpp/
https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/dmvcqc/bestbuy_easystores_8tb_130_10tb_160/
https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-500GB-Internal-MZ-76E500B-AM/dp/B07864WMK8/

But to expand upon that it really depends on how much money you want to spend and the quality of a setup you can get by with for now. As history has shown, every dollar you spend now gets you less than what you can get next year. Putting that aside though, you do need a base level set up and upgrade from there. The cheapest is just to reuse your computer as a "NAS". You could purchase Drivepool (Windows) if you want to pool/combine all of the drives onto one drive letter/mount point or use free MergerFS (Linux) standalone or within OMV4 OS (also free).

There is a real void in the market for cheap low end stuff that you can expand cheaply. You can use USB external storage, but USB is finicky so don't trust any raid setups via USB, but Snapraid might be ok'ish... You want a network attachment with one of the following.
https://ameridroid.com/products/odroid-hc2
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B076G6YKWZ/
https://forums.serverbuilds.net/t/nas-killer-4-0-build-guide-fast-quiet-power-efficient-and-flexible-starting-at-125/667/12

Since you already have a computer up and running then you can skip the odroid, but it's still good for standalone NAS backups of your OS or VMs. The Synology is new AND it is network attached, not USB attached; however it is only 2 bay (4 bay is too pricey), it has minimal processing power and upgradeability with no storage expandability. Depending on your location and shipping then ebay would have the highest value per dollar spent if you make the right purchase and the used device doesn't crap out shortly after... I made a ton of posts on all this, so if you want start reading up. Just click on the link then read and keep following the links and reading, have fun.
https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/d56cfr/best_upgrade_from_a_single_drive/f0nxotm/

I am really paranoid when it comes to drives as it is where I keep my files safe and therefore want them to be very very reliable. This makes me always go with trustworthy brands such as Seagate, Samsung and Crucial. However, Samsung is currently making the best SSDs in the market. At $70, I wouldn't recommend the Sabrent Rocket because its not a very widely known brand, at least not as widely known as the ones I mentioned. Don't get the Barracuda M.2 as it is too expensive for what it is. Get the Samsung 970 EVO. It's currently for sale for $90 which is only $20 more than the Sabrent and $10 less than the Barracuda. The 970 Evo is perhaps the best all round NVMe SSD in the market for the money right now, especially with the sale going on. Another option I would recommend is the Western Digital Black SN750. It's also among the top M.2 NVMe drives in the market which is also currently for sale at $90. I would strongly suggest these two instead of the Sabrent and the Barracuda.

https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-970-EVO-1TB-MZ-V7E1T0BW/dp/B07BN4NJ2J/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=samsung%2B970%2Bevo&qid=1574151954&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&sr=8-1&th=1

https://www.amazon.com/BLACK-SN750-500GB-Internal-Gaming/dp/B07MH2P5ZD/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=western+digital+sn750&qid=1574151883&sr=8-1

4TB SSD is quite expensive, but might be worth it. They are probably less than half the weight. Big spinning disk drive has got a lot of metal in it. big added bonus for SSD is that they are pretty rugged out of the gate - you don't have to worry about shocks nearly as much and can have a lighter case for it.

Not sure you can live with multiple disks, but 4x 1TB might be worth it as well.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01LQQH86A/ref=psdc_595048_t3_B01HOV57QE claims to be less than half a pound vs the 4.3 yours claims to be. I doubt the passport is quite as fast, but probably fast enough.

If you feel comfortable doing computer surgery, you could replace the 1TB in your laptop (https://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/laptops/powerspec-1710 right?) with an SSD. Probably save yourself quite a bit of weight there too.

I recommend the DS414j stuffed with WD Red 3TB for price performace or WD Red 6TB for max storage.

This meets all your criteria:

• ( 4*3TB=12TB or 4*6TB=24TB ) > 5TB.
  
• DS414j supports RAID 5 or SHR, which both allow single disk hot swap redundancy and hot swap upgrade.
  
• DS414j stuffed with WD Red 3TB comes to $844, $14 over your price range. If you really can't overbudget, I suggest going with 3 drives, or even non-nas drives.
  
• Synology is Plug and Play.
  
• Synology supports RAID 0,1,5,6,10,JBOD and SHR.
  
• Yes, it's a file system :p It stores everything ever and probably streams it too.
  
• Synology GUI is very comprehensive.

I use FlexRaid to create a raid for my data - and I have a few Green drives but now I only use WD RED drives. They're supposed to be better at being in an array, now I'm not sure if it actually is better or marketing hype - but it makes me feel better.

http://www.amazon.com/WD-Red-NAS-Hard-Drive/dp/B008JJLW4M/

NVME is Non-Volatile Memory Express. NVME is extremely fast, compared to a regular sata SSD.

>NVME's are great for transferring very large files like 4k video or uncompressed audio. If you just want to throw a couple games and your operating system onto it, A regular sata SSD or M.2 will work out fine. The difference in gaming on an NVME is negligible.

In regards to speed

>Hard Drive > SSD = M.2 SSD > NVME

As an example take these two SSD's

• Crucial 1TB SATA - Sequential reads/writes up to 560/510 MB/s
  
• Crucial 1TB M.2 - Sequential reads/writes up to 560/510 MB/s
  
  >One requires power thru a SATA cable, the other just plugs in directly into the motherboard, both have the same speeds.
  
  As for brand recognition, WD and Seagate make good HDDs. You can't go wrong with Crucial or Samsung SSDs.
  
  ​
  
  >I'm 100% going to have this PC wired in, so I suppose wireless capability isn't the most necessary.
  
  If you have absolutely no need for wifi like you stated before, the Aorus Elite should serve you very well. If you ever think you may need wifi, the Z390 Aorus Pro Wifi is a solid board aswell.

> You should buy an SSD ;) Here's a great deal on one for my locale: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B01IAGSD5O/?tag=pcp0f-20

Doesn't ship to my location, but I will keep looking.

> That's the main thing to do. Clear out any of the heatsinks or fans that you can.

Any ideas on how to reach certain fans that I don't know how to get to? Or would you need to see actual photos in order to know how to help?

> Download a Windows iso (7 or 10, depending on which you have a license for) from the Googs, and then use Rufus to create a bootable USB drive from which you can tell your motherboard to start up from and install Windows.

And this would make it like the first time I ever booted up my PC when I first got it?

Definetely go with a SSD My MacBook Pro is almost like a new computer after installing one. But If you want the best of both worlds I’d advise you replace your optical drive with a HDD caddy and install your current HDD there, installing a SSD in It’s place. The installing process is fairly simple watch the videos of people doing it closely and watch out for the flex cable. Installing the SSD in place of the HDD is pretty easy as well. The guide says you need a T6 screwdriver for the studs of the HDD but it can be disassembled and reassembled with just pliers. Go for a 250GB SSD It’s enough for everything I currently use on a daily basis including the whole adobe lineup, my photos and videos. Good luck! Please ask if you have any other questions in your head ^^
Hard drive SSD replacement
Optical Drive replacement

I got this one at BB for $85 but the 3TB

WD 4TB Black My Passport  Portable External Hard Drive - USB 3.0 - WDBYFT0040BBK-WESN https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01LQQH86A/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_ABCHzbX5VFKCA

Works great so far

Others like the sea gates as well

EVGA 600 Watt Bronze

Yeah I thought the keyboard was a bit of a waste tbh. My build is pretty similar to yours and I'm using a keyboard that came with an Inspiron my dad got like 6 years ago. It's not mechanical but I still do okay in CSGO

Also for the SSD look at this, this, or even this

As far as monitors go, do you know for sure what you want? Don't buy an ultra-wide or high refresh rate monitor that's twice as expensive as the one you picked out just because I mentioned it lol.

What is most important to you in the monitor?
Resolution?
I can look around for some 2560*1440 monitors

Also your Mobo looks good as far as I can tell

Pro tip 1#...

Order a 128gb SD card to go with it

I just ordered one it should be here tomorrow I'll let you know how it works out

But for the price it's the best one out there plus it's small.

Has a 150mbps wright speed pretty good and is USB 3.0

SanDisk Ultra Fit 128GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive (SDCZ43-128G-GAM46) [Newest Version] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01BGTG2A0/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_CLV-zbFY7RNTE

Pro tip 2#...
Buy the one for $ 170 with only remote... From Amazon or Best buy if they have it for $170

If you want the controller I would order the $199 witch includes the controller because if you order the controller septate you might end up paying all together at 60$ for the controller. Better to bungle ..

I am looking for a 1tb M.2 SATA SSD. I am not bothered about the price really, but I would like to know which one is the best in terms of speed and lifespan.

The WD Blue has dropped down to £130 and I was thinking of picking it up, but would a Samsung SSD be better for example?

Thanks.

I have a seedbox that I use. The laptop does get pretty warm when transferring files via FileZilla, but I bought a small desktop fan I turn on high speed while I transfer data. I also elevate the back of the laptop about a half inch with a folded piece of paper to help cool it better.

This is the HD I'm looking at: http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Momentus-SpinPoint-ST2000LM003-Notebook/dp/B00I8O6OQ4/ref=cm_rdp_product

Also, thank you!

Processor - Ryzen 5 1600 - 17k

Motherboard - Any good motherboard which support AM4 socket. Dont choose the cheapest one. - GIGABYTE GA-AB350M-Gaming 3 AM4 - 7k

RAM - Any good 8GB DDR4 2400Mhz(or more) RAM HyperX FURY Black 8 GB 2400 - 6k

SSD - Get atleast 250GB. Nvme ssd is much faster than sata ssd. Samsung is the best in SSDs. - Samsung 960 EVO nvme - 11k

Power supply - Get a good power supply. Don't cheap out. This is the one thing keeping your other components safe. Bad power supply can even catch fire. Corsair VS650 - 4.5k

Cabinet - Get whatever you like. You can get cool looking cabinet for less than 2k to 3k. Iball Stallion - 2.5k


Hard disk - You can always buy more storage later- WD internal 2TB -5k

Graphic card - It is a must have because Ryzen doesnt have an internal GPU. Nvidia 1050 Ti - 1050ti -12k

Total - 65K

You will get better prices if you look around. In most cases, it is overpriced on Amazon. I have just mentioned approx prices.

If you want better performance than this, then just spend 5k more on the processor and get Ryzen 1600X + Coolermaster 212 cooler.

Oh come on man, give me a break. No need to be on a high horse with this one...

It's still 4x faster than an HDD. The original drive the OP linked was also SATA anyway and the WD M.2 I linked was priced the same, so at least there was an improvement in form-factor. Like, I understand if I was suggesting a SATA drive that cost the same as a PCIe drive, but I wasn't. There are clear price differences between those options and as a consumer you have to gauge the pros and cons versus the pricing.

Sure, Samsungs have a better reputation. They have direct control of their chips, controllers, and firmware sure; better warranties in general too. But that's a personal choice; if you want to pay the premium to get that little extra squirt of peace-of-mind, then that's up to you. All brands have finite failure rates and quality control issues. It's not like WD is notoriously bad or anything, and Samsung is not perfectly flawless either.

If OP cares about the speed benefit of PCIe and doesn't mind paying the premium, then get the Mushkin PILOT at $129 as the budget option, or pay extra for the Samsung 970 EVO at $168 if the price difference is worth that little extra peace of mind. Personally, I think it's perfectly fine to opt for the budget options for non-critical personal use. The failure rates across different brands are so negligible anyway that I don't think it's worth bending your head over.

Here’s the first one:
WD Blue SN500 500GB NVMe Internal... https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07P7TFKRH?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share

And the second:
WD Blue 3D NAND 1TB Internal PC... https://www.amazon.com/dp/B073SB2MXT?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share

Looks like the tb one is sata. What does that mean? Do I need to return it?

Thanks for the help.

That's not a bad rig, but at that price point, you deserve something with an ssd. It will make your overall experience much snappier. After getting an ssd, I can never go back to a regular hard drive. I also feel that, if you're going to get an rx 580, you might as well go with the 8gb variant over the 4gb.

I realize that it can sometimes be hard to find pre-builts with ssds. Another good option in my opinion is to buy a pre-built with no ssd (ie, the one you linked), and then throw in your own ssd. If you really want to keep costs down, this is a 120gb from adata for just over $20 that has been serving me well:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07DNLY1R2/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_Bbp-BbXNPMFQ9

If you wanted to get a bit more storage however, I really like the Samsung 250gb for around $50:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07864WMK8/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_kdp-Bb0AGT49S

There's other options out there, but those are my personal picks. If you don't want to do any custom work though and would prefer more plug and play, then I'm not sure at the moment. If you find another pc with an ssd, then I would strongly recommend that over the one that you have linked.

Over all though, it's a decent build.

(sorry for formatting, on mobile)

If you can stretch to a 240-256GB SSD then it'll give you plenty of space to have the OS, your apps and all but your biggest files on the SSD. Then you can use the HD just for media files etc. This is a nice pain-free option. With a 120GB SSD you may find yourself juggling to ensure you don't fill up the SSD (Keeping in mind that most SSDs perform best if you stay under 80% or so usage).

This is a very decent 240GB SSD for less than the 120GB Sandisk in your list. (The Samsung 840 EVO benchmarks a little better than this one, but they are roughly comparable).

The magic of an SSD on a PC is moving only what you wanted sped up onto it. Personally, I put my OS and any games newer than 2015 on it. The rest go to a rather slow 1TB internal which I use for short term storage and usable stuff.

Skyrim has questionable load times when I played it a few years back. Worth speeding up, maybe just get a smaller drive to put games you want to load quickly?

IIRC 240gb was like $30-$40 for cheap ones on amazon (back them up weekly JIC), which would make the bottle neck either your graphics card or amount of RAM or single core processor speed. Heck, 512 Samsung EVO are $80ish, definitely the most effective and cheapest upgrade if you haven’t already done it yet.

Bonus: I’ve been using a older one as my boot drive for a while now, it takes longer to type in my 12 digit password than it takes to boot to the login screen. It’s glorious

I would go with a cheaper CPU. I don't know if you want to go as low as an i3, but I have a 3.4 GHz i3-4130 and it is decent. If I were you, I'd go with a cheaper CPU (this one is a dual-core i3), get a better GPU (GTX 760) and an SSD. I would also recommend GIGABYTE motherboards, specifically this one. You might also want to look into getting a higher wattage PSU, especially if you think you'll want to upgrade your GPU down the line.

Finally, if you have some cash in your budget left over, I'd definitely up that RAM to 12 or 16 GB. It's not imperative, especially with an SSD, but you'll find that you can have a lot more stuff open in the background, not that you would need to.

Whatever you decide to buy, make sure you are very careful installing your processor. If any of the pins on the motherboard get bent, you'll need a whole new motherboard.

TL;DR: Spend less on CPU, more on GPU, try a GIGABYTE motherboard, and get an SSD. Higher wattage PSU and more RAM if you can afford. Be careful with your motherboard.

> So I will try to defragment the hard drive later tonight.

This shouldn't be needed, as Windows 7 is much better with this than XP or older were, but it's worth checking.

> Does this mean I should buy a new hard drive? Should I start looking for cyber monday deals?

You should buy an SSD ;) Here's a great deal on one for my locale: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B01IAGSD5O/?tag=pcp0f-20

> Occasionally I will spray some air in some fans and on the components of my PC,

That's the main thing to do. Clear out any of the heatsinks or fans that you can.

> How would I do this?

Download a Windows iso (7 or 10, depending on which you have a license for) from the Googs, and then use Rufus to create a bootable USB drive from which you can tell your motherboard to start up from and install Windows.

Hi, I was able to get this config on the lenovo site right now (10/8/19) for $2,306.20 using the 'THINKPADSALE' coupon.

Processor : Intel® Core™ i7-9850H with vPro™ (2.60GHz, up to 4.60GHz with Turbo Boost, 6 Cores, 12MB Cache)

Operating System : Windows 10 Pro 64

Memory : 16GB (8GB + 8GB) DDR4 2666MHz

Hard Drive : 512GB Solid State Drive, M.2 PCIe-NVMe, Opal

Display : 15.6" UHD 4K (3840 x 2160) OLED, 350 nits, multi-touch, AR/AS with Dolby Vision™ HDR 500

Graphic Card : NVIDIA Quadro RTX5000 16GB

Factory Color Calibration : X-Rite Pantone Factory Color Calibration

Pen : Lenovo Pen Pro

Wireless : Intel AX200 Wi-Fi 6 802.11AX (2 x 2) & Bluetooth 5.0

Warranty : 1 Year Depot or Carry-in with 1Y Accidental Damage Protection Add On


This the configuration that I purchased (still waiting on shipping - Oct 15). My out the door price was $2,357 (with military discount & eCoupon). My usage also includes ML agents with Tensorflow, Visual Studio 2017/2019, Unity, Blender 2.8, virtual machines (need a MAC OSX VM for uploading to Apple's app store), Docker, and various other software.

I understand the need for a decent CPU. I decided to get the 6 core 9850h because of the RTX5000. I chose not to go for the Xeon because ECC memory isn't necessary for the projects I work on in my off time. The price different between the Xeon and the 9850h is quite large, and the performance gap is quite small (outside of ECC).


The OLED screen is supposed to have 100% DCI-P3 coverage, 100% SRGB coverage, and 100% AdobeRGB coverage (though some reviews have shown the numbers to be slightly lower, but with delta E for less than 2 all around).


I personally believe it is a better value proposition to get the 16GB (8GB + 8GB) configuration with the 512GB storage, then upgrade from another vendor such as Amazon or Newegg. 32GB kits (16GB + 16GB) are currently going for around $130 Amazon Link. A 1TB Samsung NVMe SSD goes for around $170 Amazon link


It should be noted that the RTX5000 that comes in the P53 is reported to be the full non max-q version. NotebookCheck Link


Lastly if you are fine with repasting the CPU & GPU it might lead to better thermal results. I haven't seen anything on the P53 yet, but I did find this for the previous model the P52 Youtube Link. While temps didn't really improve a lot, the CPU was running at a higher clock speed.

Edited to improve readability and add links.

Gotcha, the warranty is a good thinking. I'll probably go with the WD drives as a result of that as I don't think the seagates I've seen come with even a year.

I can't even imagine 5TB. I'm currently upgrading from a 500GB it's taken me 2 years to fill up so I'm hoping this 3TB will last me a looonng time.

One final funny observation is that the amazon reviews are exponentially better. As in 75% reporting 5 stars. The only thing I can think is that amazon might package them better so there's far less DOAs.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008JJLW4M?ie=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0&action=selectNewCardExpiredCC

Get Windows 8. It's way faster and the learning curve is not too bad at all.

Intel 4690 i5 + Asus H97 if you're not gonna overclock.

Intel 4690k i5 + Asus z97-A if you're gonna overclock.

Of course, the mobo's are entirely up to you, depending on what features you want, but those are pretty popular ones.

As for the HDD, I'd really recommend taking advantage of the low SSD prices and getting a cheap 120 GB Samsung 840 EVO and pairing that with the existing hard drive you have. Installing Windows 8 on this SSD should give you a noticeable performance boost. Then again, the SSD is up to you.

Are you looking for speed, or size? I personally recommend the Seagate 1TB SSHD for speed/size for value, as you get twice the standard drive size, and a big increase in speed. It automatically caches the most used files on the SSD portion of the drive, so that game files or OS files that are accessed frequently can be loaded the fastest. It increased boot speed and game load times on games you play frequently. Say you play a LOT of Destiny, it's going to become quite fast loading the assets you use a lot, like the Tower, in game worlds, things like that.
Amazon link

On the other end of the spectrum, you can go for sheer size, and maintain the same speeds you have now, and just never worry about filling up the drive until 5 years down the road. The similarly priced 2TB Spinpoint -
Amazon link

Sure. In the UK but pretty sure prices will be similar or cheaper in the US.

Inateck 2.5 Hard Drive Enclosure, USB 3.0 External Hard Drive Case, FE2004 https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00IJNDBM4/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_0jgkDbPEJVKAT

Crucial MX500 CT500MX500SSD1 500 GB (3D NAND, SATA, 2.5 Inch, Internal SSD) https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0786QNS9B/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_hlgkDbQHKN335

Crucial or Samsung ssd are best imo. Capacity depends on how much you want to use it. Destiny obviously benefits from it but other games can too

Right now I'm trying to choose storage for my first PC build. I've seen a lot of "NVMe M.2 are not worth it if you are just doing gaming." Which is fine with me, I don't mind getting the 2.5'' SSD. Except right now I am looking at the Samsung 970 EVO 1TB SSD and the Samsung 860 EVO 1TB SSD and they are both on sale and the difference between the two is only $30. I was wondering, at this price range is the 970 EVO worth it? If it was at max price I would definitely not buy it, but right now it looks like this is a pretty good deal.

TL;DR

Looking to buy Storage. Should I get the Samsung 970 EVO 1TB SSD or save $30 and get the Samsung 860 EVO 1TB SSD Is the 970 EVO worth it at this price?

Not turnkey, but a much better option than a QNAP or Synology.

Workstation: ~$300
https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.com%2Fulk%2Fitm%2F302947028588

Hard Drives: 6x$105=$630
WD Red 3TB NAS Hard Drive - 5400 RPM Class, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64 MB Cache, 3.5" - WD30EFRX https://www.amazon.com/dp/B008JJLW4M/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_XyZ-BbKN4D314

OS: Free
FreeNAS

Total: ~$1000

12TB Usable In raidz2 18TB Total.

In a 4-bay NAS the best you could do is raidz1/Raid 5. Raid 5 is worthless. Source: https://www.zdnet.com/article/why-raid-5-stops-working-in-2009/

I got my 240 for $130. Not great, but nowhere near bad. I just didn't want to wait for the prices to drop any more because I needed the extra space. Also, did you but the PNY from Amazon? There seems to be many counterfeit PNY on amazon. My SSD was a crucial 240gb and it's currently $120, and definitely worth it. It works great, and is like half the price of the samsung and intel ones.

http://www.amazon.com/Crucial-240GB-2-5-Inch-Internal-CT240M500SSD1/dp/B00BQ8RM1A/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1396888334&sr=8-3&keywords=SSD

Give your local Best Buy a call and ask.

Amazon Link:
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B01LQQH86A/

Best Buy Link:
https://www.bestbuy.com/site/wd-my-passport-4tb-external-usb-3-0-portable-hard-drive-black/5605533.p?skuId=5605533

>Best Buy is dedicated to always offering the best value to our customers. We will match the price, at the time of purchase, on a Price Match Guarantee product if you find the same item at a lower price at a Designated Major Online Retailer or at a local retail competitor's store.

>Here's how:
> - If you find a qualifying lower price online, call 1-888-BEST BUY and direct a customer service agent to the web site with the lower price, or when visiting a Best Buy store, one of our employees will assist you.
> - On qualifying products, Best Buy will then verify the current price to complete the price match.

> Exclusions apply including, but not limited to, Competitors' service prices, special daily or hourly sales, and items for sale Thanksgiving Day through the Monday after Thanksgiving. See the list of Designated Major Online Retailers and full details.

It's not a 1TB but I've got a used-in great condition WD Red 3TB Internal 3.5" Hard Drive for only $65 shipped if ur interested. Link + Check out some of my other stuff! Reddit LINK

The one you can buy is all TLC SSD´s. From the qualtiy, I could recommend you Kingston, Samsung or WD here are some examples:

Samsung:

https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-500GB-Internal-MZ-76E500B-AM/dp/B0781Z7Y3S/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1549304266&sr=8-3&keywords=samsung+ssd

Kingston:

https://www.amazon.com/Kingston-120GB-Solid-SA400S37-120G/dp/B01N6JQS8C/ref=ice_ac_b_dpb?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1549304281&sr=1-2&keywords=kingston+ssd

WD:

https://www.amazon.com/Blue-NAND-1TB-SSD-WDS100T2B0A/dp/B073SBQMCX/ref=sr_1_8?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1549304281&sr=1-8&keywords=kingston+ssd

​

Kingston is cheap for ssds with low capacity if you want more space use the WD. Samsung is an allrounder

Thats looks to be the right part, i got something similar as well but different brand for my 2011 pro (http://amzn.com/B004PR6DAA). If it interest you for about the same price, get a Crucial M500 240GB Solid State Drive instead it dramatically improves the performance of the laptop. I have it and love it, anyone i know that has an older ish macbook pro has it. http://amzn.com/B00BQ8RM1A, this as well http://amzn.com/B00G57BN1M

I can already see a couple problems. Can you also specify what kind of graphics design do you? 2D or 3D? what programs? long render times?

The problems:

• CPU
  
  I see you have a CPU cooler but that is only needed if you are going to overclock your CPU. The CPU you have is not a K version ( the K version of your CPU is called i-5 6600K). You will need a K version CPU if you are going to overlock.
  
  You can change the CPU to a i-5 6600K and look up a guide on how to overlock if you would like to get a extra ~25% performance. Also if you are overclocking you will need a motherboard that supports ocerlocking. If you don't want to overclock then you don't need to buy a CPU cooler.
  
  
• RAM
  
  I would get a single stick of 8GB RAM since it is easier to upgrade later on. You might also want to buy 16Gb of RAM but that depends on what graphical programs you use.
  
  
• SSD
  
  I always like to use SSD of knows brand, I don't know this brand but the reviews seem oke. I can maybe recommend you to buy a Sandisk Ultra II (64$ on amazon for one that only has damage to packaging). It is a bit more money but you will have a good SSD that is twice as big.
  
  
• GPU
  
  See /u/nokmanoks2

I actually like this. Can we maybe change the case around? I really like simple pain cases from the outside. Also would I be able to place an SSD in there? This one is on my mind:


http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00E3W15P0/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?qid=1410183583&sr=8-3&pi=SX200_QL40


Maybe a bit cheaper on the GPU like $130? XD But if not I can just stick with that one!
Also any ideas about cooling such as fans?


Would a case like this work since it's the same as the motherboard that you listed?


http://pcpartpicker.com/part/corsair-case-200r


We can also go a bit higher on the motherboard for a better one.

Thank you so much.

HDD is better "dollar value," SSD is dramatically better performance for load times, general feel, etc. But if value is most important, you can get 3TBs for < $100, easily.

If you don't need space, this is the best 250 GB SDD for < $100.

Or both: SanDisk SSD PLUS 120GB + Seagate 1TB BarraCuda for roughly $98.

Sure thing. It is a german amazon-link but I think you can read all the necessary stuff from it:

Crucial MX500 CT1000MX500SSD1(Z) 1TB (3D NAND, SATA, 2,5 Zoll, Internes SSD)

Erfahren Sie mehr: https://www.amazon.de/dp/B077SF8KMG/ref=cm\_sw\_em\_r\_mt\_dp\_U\_zxVWCbKQR2729

​

Crucial MX500 is the drive you want to buy, then check for the size you want 500gb, 1000gb or even 2000gb. They need to be SATA and 2.5 Zoll build-in size. Not much to worry about besides that.

​

Good luck and enjoy if you gonna buy it!