It’s time to build myself a new PC. This is the 3rd build I’ll do. Some years ago I had to exchange a broken Motherboard, and as you might know that is essentially like building a new PC since you have to take everything apart. At that time I thought why not build the next one myself completely? Worked fine every time, never had problems – and it’s fun!
I do a bit of everything with my PC: Gaming, poker, development, simulation, movies, music... I plan to do an upgrade (CPU, graphics) in 1-1,5 years. Here are the specs:
CPU: Intel Core i5-4670K Box, LGA1150
I’m going with the boxed-cooler for now, as people always lol when I tell them of the big monster of cpu-cooler I installed. If it’s too loud I can still change that later, e.g. when I upgrade to an i7.
Motherboard: MSI Z87-G45 Gaming, ATX, Socket 1150
Thought about the GD65 first, but I don’t see much additional value actually.
RAM: 16GB-Kit Corsair Vengeance Low Profile PC3-12800U CL9
Probably going for 32GB when upgrading.
Graphics: MSI N660 Twin Frozr 2GD5/OC, GeForce GTX 660, 2048MB DDR5
This one has still reasonable performance, is pretty cheap (170,-€), and it’s silent. The idea is to go for a GTX 780 or Titan later when they are available for a reasonable price. Thought about trying an ATI card, but I’m skeptical how that would work together with the GPU of the Haswell, as I will put 1-2 of my 3 Monitors on that. I also want to fiddle around with CUDA a bit.
System-Disks: 2x Samsung SSD 840 Series Kit 250GB
Finally SSD – I’m super excited about this! I will use them as a RAID1 for the O/S (Win7 Pro) and programs that might benefit from it. I probably put 1-2 virtual machines on it (VBox) with Linux distros for development and maybe one just for surfing, as I think it might be a good idea to do that on a VM. I expect big things from the Haswell here, as my current Q9550 simply isn’t up for the task.
Data disks: 2x Seagate Barracuda 7200 1000GB
Also as a RAID1. Silence is again a main factor here.
PSU: be quiet! DARK POWER PRO 10 650W
Case: FRACTAL DESIGN Define R4 PCGH Edition
The last two also with silence in mind. The whole thing will cost me about €1340,- without OS.
I bought the SSDs today at a local store; while I could get everything else from the same online shop they hadn’t these. Here they are:
I actually wanted to buy only one, but decided for 2 at the last minute for additional RAID1 safety (new technology and all; I currently have 4 500GB disks in a RAID10 combo lol).
The rest should arrive Thursday or Friday, I plan to update on the process and the results.