Hey guys, I’m partially upgrading my 5-year old Q9450 build and I was hoping you guys could help me finish out the build. Here’s what I have so far and the reasoning for it:
CPU -- i7 3770k I know the sweet spot is the 3570k but I’m a guy who only upgrades once every 5 or 6 years and since I live less than 10 minutes from a Microcenter I figure the extra $40 I’ll spend now on the i7 over the i5 will be worth it over the next 5 years. I’m not dead set on the i7 so if you can convince me it’s a complete waste of $40 then I’m all ears.
Cooler – None planned, unless the stock fan is extremely loud. If I’m not overclocking do I really need to spend $30 on an aftermarket cooler?
Mobo – I’m pretty much lost on this one. Seems like everyone likes the z77 boards and from what I’ve read the ASRock Extreme 4 seems to be a pretty good value. I’ve always used MSI/Gigabyte/Asus/Abit boards, so ASRock is new to me but if it works it works. I don’t immediately plan to overclock this build and to be honest, I may not for the foreseeable future. I also don’t think I’ll be running dual GPU’s anytime soon, so that’s not really a concern for me either. I would just like a very stable board, esata would be nice to have but no necessary, if one brand has noticeably better onboard sound than the others I would probably lean towards them (I’ve read Asus boards have better sound than others; but do they sound that much better?)
I’ve looked at close to 20 boards over the past couple days and not a single one has really jumped out at me. I definitely need the most guidance with this purchase.
Storage – I’ll be grabbing a Samsung 840 pro 256gb SSD while at Microcenter for around $205. I figure why not at that price. I also have a couple old drives from my last build which I’ll use for the time being until I get around to buying a cheap 1TB drive.
Ram – 16gb (2x8gb dual channel corsair vengeance low profile @ 1600mhz). Again, I know it’s overkill right now but when I built my last pc I only used 2x2gb sticks instead of 2x4gb sticks and I’ve really felt it over the past few years. While I know nothing I’m currently using will justify the additional 8 gigs of ram I’m more than happy putting in 16 now and leaving it there for many years to come.
Case – Another carry over from my prior build. I grabbed a full tower, aluminum, Rocketfish case from Best Buy many years ago on the cheap and I see no reason why I can’t reuse it. The case is fine and it’s huge, so there’s plenty of room for anything I could possibly need.
GPU – Gigabyte 460gtx 1gb. Bear with me guys. This card is from my previous build and since I’m not currently playing anything GPU intensive I figure I can get away with running this for a while. After all, there are always better cards coming… right, so why buy now when what I have is working perfectly fine for me?
PSU – Corsair 620HX. This thing is 5 years old but it was a quality power supply when I bought it and as far as I can see there’s no reason to think it won’t be able to power this new build, even when I do upgrade the GPU. Any problem with this thinking?
Monitor – I’ve been using my Dell 2405FPW for just over 8 years now and I absolutely love it. Problem is, it’s 8 years old and I have to believe that even though it’s still going strong it’s just a matter of time before I’ll need to retire it. Plus, I would really like to go with a dual monitor setup. This could probably be its own topic, but for those of you using dual monitors what are you using and what would you recommend? My only requirements are that it run in 1920 x1200 and be 24” or larger.
I was looking at the new U2413 but they would probably run me about $550 each and that just seems like a ton of money compared to some of these other 24” monitors that can be had for under $400. I don't really have a budget for what I want to spend but $1,100 on two monitors seems kind of steep to me (maybe I'm wrong).
I know this is kind of an odd build since everyone just seems to buy completely new parts each time, and I’m obviously not doing that here, but I’d appreciate any help you can give me.
CPU -- i7 3770k I know the sweet spot is the 3570k but I’m a guy who only upgrades once every 5 or 6 years and since I live less than 10 minutes from a Microcenter I figure the extra $40 I’ll spend now on the i7 over the i5 will be worth it over the next 5 years. I’m not dead set on the i7 so if you can convince me it’s a complete waste of $40 then I’m all ears.
Cooler – None planned, unless the stock fan is extremely loud. If I’m not overclocking do I really need to spend $30 on an aftermarket cooler?
Mobo – I’m pretty much lost on this one. Seems like everyone likes the z77 boards and from what I’ve read the ASRock Extreme 4 seems to be a pretty good value. I’ve always used MSI/Gigabyte/Asus/Abit boards, so ASRock is new to me but if it works it works. I don’t immediately plan to overclock this build and to be honest, I may not for the foreseeable future. I also don’t think I’ll be running dual GPU’s anytime soon, so that’s not really a concern for me either. I would just like a very stable board, esata would be nice to have but no necessary, if one brand has noticeably better onboard sound than the others I would probably lean towards them (I’ve read Asus boards have better sound than others; but do they sound that much better?)
I’ve looked at close to 20 boards over the past couple days and not a single one has really jumped out at me. I definitely need the most guidance with this purchase.
Storage – I’ll be grabbing a Samsung 840 pro 256gb SSD while at Microcenter for around $205. I figure why not at that price. I also have a couple old drives from my last build which I’ll use for the time being until I get around to buying a cheap 1TB drive.
Ram – 16gb (2x8gb dual channel corsair vengeance low profile @ 1600mhz). Again, I know it’s overkill right now but when I built my last pc I only used 2x2gb sticks instead of 2x4gb sticks and I’ve really felt it over the past few years. While I know nothing I’m currently using will justify the additional 8 gigs of ram I’m more than happy putting in 16 now and leaving it there for many years to come.
Case – Another carry over from my prior build. I grabbed a full tower, aluminum, Rocketfish case from Best Buy many years ago on the cheap and I see no reason why I can’t reuse it. The case is fine and it’s huge, so there’s plenty of room for anything I could possibly need.
GPU – Gigabyte 460gtx 1gb. Bear with me guys. This card is from my previous build and since I’m not currently playing anything GPU intensive I figure I can get away with running this for a while. After all, there are always better cards coming… right, so why buy now when what I have is working perfectly fine for me?
PSU – Corsair 620HX. This thing is 5 years old but it was a quality power supply when I bought it and as far as I can see there’s no reason to think it won’t be able to power this new build, even when I do upgrade the GPU. Any problem with this thinking?
Monitor – I’ve been using my Dell 2405FPW for just over 8 years now and I absolutely love it. Problem is, it’s 8 years old and I have to believe that even though it’s still going strong it’s just a matter of time before I’ll need to retire it. Plus, I would really like to go with a dual monitor setup. This could probably be its own topic, but for those of you using dual monitors what are you using and what would you recommend? My only requirements are that it run in 1920 x1200 and be 24” or larger.
I was looking at the new U2413 but they would probably run me about $550 each and that just seems like a ton of money compared to some of these other 24” monitors that can be had for under $400. I don't really have a budget for what I want to spend but $1,100 on two monitors seems kind of steep to me (maybe I'm wrong).
I know this is kind of an odd build since everyone just seems to buy completely new parts each time, and I’m obviously not doing that here, but I’d appreciate any help you can give me.
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