$1500 New Build

[kirilus]

Hi Everyone!
It is the third time I am using the forums for advice on the new build and I am hoping to tap into the knowledge and experience of this community.

Regarding the build:
1) Purpose: general use, gaming (high quality is important), videos, photo editing and also aesthetics (so case is important)
2) $1400-1700 (monitor can be extra)
3) USA
4) --
5) --
6) --
7) No
8) Higher the better, I am planning to upgrade the monitor as well
9) 1-2 weeks
10) Windows

Other notes:
A) Is it worth buying Alien or Battlebox pre-built PCs these days or do-it-yourself still the best option.
B) Always wanted to have liquid cooling... any advise on air vs water?
C) Any good cases that don't have rainbow disco colors but something more grown up like solid blue lights? I also liked the alien area 51 case.

Thank you in advance for your ideas.

 

[TennesseeTony]

Can't give any advice until we know your proposed monitor resolution for gaming.... Good size budget though, should be quite a nice system!

 

[UsandThem]

Other notes:
A) Is it worth buying Alien or Battlebox pre-built PCs these days or do-it-yourself still the best option.
B) Always wanted to have liquid cooling... any advise on air vs water?
C) Any good cases that don't have rainbow disco colors but something more grown up like solid blue lights? I also liked the alien area 51 case.

A. Nothing wrong with PCs like that, and especially when catching a good sale because you can many times buy one of those cheaper than you can build it yourself. Even the Dell XPS or Inspiron Gaming (they even have a clear side option, blue lights, and liquid cooling) lineup are good pre-built choices.

I prefer building myself because I can fine-tune my entire system from audio, graphics, fans, storage, etc. But at the same time, when you build it yourself, you have to be willing to troubleshoot problems (not an all-the-time issue, but it happens after Windows updates and such).

B. I'm not a fan of liquid cooling. I like quiet, so I like coolers and fans from a company like Noctua. There are people here who are really into water-cooling, so maybe they can give their side's sales pitch.

C. Cases are a personal choice. What looks good to one, is ugly to another. But if you want a nice looking (in my opinion) case that you can look into, I'd say look at cases like these:

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811139109

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?item=N82E16811108480

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811139055&ignorebbr=1

or maybe even this bad boy

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811854055&ignorebbr=1

As far as the build goes, you would have to decide if you want to build an AMD Ryzen or Intel Coffee Lake based PC. With your budget, you probably would be going with a Ryzen 1700(x) / 1800x or an Intel i7-8700(k). The best way is to look at some reviews, and see which CPU your PC use lines up with.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-coffee-lake-i7-8700k-cpu,5252.html

https://www.anandtech.com/show/11859/the-anandtech-coffee-lake-review-8700k-and-8400-initial-numbers

http://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/intel-core-i7-8700k-processor-review,1.html

But like TennesseeTony stated, we need some info on what resolution you will be gaming to know what GPU you will need
($400 - $800).

With editing you will likely want 32 GB of RAM, and it ain't cheap right now. So that will eat up $400 of your budget right there.

The rest is up to you. You could get a NVMe drive for your OS, and then a large 1TB SSD ($260), or traditional HDD depending on how much space you need.

 

[kirilus]

Can't give any advice until we know your proposed monitor resolution for gaming.... Good size budget though, should be quite a nice system!

Ah, a good point. I would really like something that is wide maybe one 27 inch monitor with 21:9 aspect ratio instead of 2 monitors.

 

[UsandThem]

Ah, a good point. I would really like something that is wide maybe one 27 inch monitor with 21:9 aspect ratio instead of 2 monitors.

1080p, 2k, 4k?

 

[kirilus]

1080p, 2k, 4k?

I would really appreciate if you could recommend one over the other... Reading monitor reviews (and posts on this forum) it seems like ultra wide don't always work for movies and all games... some claim 1440p 2k are as good as 4k... Would be great to learn others have experienced.

 

[UsandThem]

I have a 2k monitor and I like it.

Probably the best thing would be for you to go to an electronics store, and take a look for yourself and see what your eyes like.

The big issue is since you say "gaming (high quality is important)", if you go with a 4k monitor, you will be looking at a GTX 1080ti ($750+) to maintain 60FPS.

If you go with a 2k monitor, you can get buy with a GTX 1070, 1070ti, or 1080 ($440 - $550).

The bad thing is about a month ago, GPU prices dropped, and almost got back to MSRP. Now that crypto currency has taken off once again, prices are going back up. Honestly, between GPU prices (and availability) and RAM prices, it's one of the worst times I have ever seen in PC building. At least SSD prices have started going down a little bit.

 

[TennesseeTony]

I'd suggest quad HD, as an example: https://www.bestbuy.com/site/benq-27-led-hd-monitor-black/1097389.p?skuId=1097389

In which case I'd suggest a GTX1080. $560

Ryzen 7 1800X $350

ASRock Taichi motherboard $200

CPU cooler $25-up shop around. All-in-one liquid coolers have the potential for losing coolant. You want silence, get a Noctua, and you can always see if it's working or not, compared to liquid.

3200+ MHz Ram of your choice....I'm not up to date...seems some DDR4 is now tailored to intel, some tailored to AMD. I sure wish adherence to standards was 'standard' practice. $180 for 16GB (horrible pricing lately)

500W GOLD or better PSU $40-60 more than 550w will be overkill, but if you find a deal......

And I really like this case, for ease of use. Two cold-swappable drives in the front. $80, $60 w/rebate

Now what, ah, hard drive/ssd/optical drive. We are at about $1450 already. Clearly you will want an SSD of some form factor as the boot drive, but likely a larger mechanical HD for storage of larger files. Sounds like you may already have the storage drives though, from your current system?

Good Luck.

 

[fastamdman]

8700k processor for $379
asus Z370 motherboard for 140
16gb of ram for 190 bucks
aio water cooler for 100
samsung 850 evo 512gb ssd for 150
corsair cx750 psu for 70
gtx 1080 for 530
Total = 1560 before mail in rebates and deals. Leaves plenty for a legit copy of windows if needed, monitor is extra, also leaves enough left over if you feel you need 32gb of ram.

That is an amazing complete system that will be great at gaming for both 1080p and 1440p. It will also render very well as the 8700k is a 6c/12t beast that can be overclocked to 4.8 - 5.0ghz fairly easily. This is the system that I would build, give or take, if I had that budget. Hell, it's pretty close to the system I am using currently and I do both of your tasks. I game at 1080p 144hz (I game semi professionally so I need the high refresh rates).

 

[snoopy7548]

8700k processor for $379
asus Z370 motherboard for 140
16gb of ram for 190 bucks
aio water cooler for 100
samsung 850 evo 512gb ssd for 150
corsair cx750 psu for 70
gtx 1080 for 530
Total = 1560 before mail in rebates and deals. Leaves plenty for a legit copy of windows if needed, monitor is extra, also leaves enough left over if you fell you need 32gb of ram.

That is an amazing complete system that will be great at gaming for both 1080p and 1440p. It will also render very well as the 8700k is a 6c/12t beast that can be overclocked to 4.8 - 5.0ghz fairly easily. This is the system that I would build, give or take, if I had that budget. Hell, it's pretty close to the system I am using currently and I do both of your tasks. I game at 1080p 144hz (I game semi professionally so I need the high refresh rates).

Agreed; you can't go wrong with this build. This is pretty much my next 1440p gaming system in a couple of months, except the Noctua NH-D15 instead of the AIO, an M2 SSD, and probably a Fractal Meshify C case. It'll be a worthy upgrade from my current i5-2500k system.

Bonus points if you live near a MicroCenter. They usually have some good discounts on CPU + Mobo combos, saving maybe $50-100 from ordering everything separately online.