First timer needs guidance

[Aesop11]

1. Looking to build a midrange pc for media and gaming. I would like to run games with decent graphics, ideally at "max quality" or at least close to it without clipping issues. Fallout 4 and the like.

My office is directly above my living room so I would like to be able to run an HDMI through the walls, get a second wireless keyboard/mouse and be able to use it to watch movies and what not on the tv downstairs. I would also like to have 2 monitors up in my office, but that is not something that needs to be available from day 1; just something to consider when counting up HDMI ports.

2. Do not want to spend more than $800

3. I live in the USA. There is a Microcenter near me, so If I could get the bulk of the components from there or Newegg, that would be ideal.

5. Intel please

6. This is a ground up build, I've got nothing but HDMI cables at this point.

7. Do not need to overclock.

8. Run in 1080p

9. I would like to start the build as soon as possible. My antiquated laptop (I kid, its only ca. 2009) keeps BSOD'ing on my while playing EQ2 at max performance(low setting).

10. I have access to most OS and other software I'll need via school, but I may need a basic windows to start as I am not sure if the files I have access to can be loaded onto the pc in first start up or if it needs to be downloaded and opened directly onto a computer with a preexisting OS.


I have a buddy who will help me with the actual build since I am so incredibly green when it comes to this, but I would like to have a starting point to go from.

Thanks for your help.

 

[Homerboy]

I wouldn't bother running the HDMI down to the TV.
I would just run Plex Media Server on the PC, toss a Chromecast onto the TV and use your phone or whatever for a "remote" to control Plex.

 

[Aesop11]

I wouldn't bother running the HDMI down to the TV.
I would just run Plex Media Server on the PC, toss a Chromecast onto the TV and use your phone or whatever for a "remote" to control Plex.

I considered that but I was concerned the image and sound quality would suffer. Is that not the case?

 

[Homerboy]

I considered that but I was concerned the image and sound quality would suffer. Is that not the case?

Depends on a lot of factors. If your content is able to be played via Direct Stream (may want to use something other than Chromecast for this) then it should be rock solid.

Most my content needs to be trans-coded, and the picture quality is more than solid enough for my liking.

 

[MrTeal]

This is about 5% over budget, but would serve quite well as a gaming platform going forward.
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1231 V3 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor ($257.98 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: ASRock Z97 Extreme3 ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($82.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill Ares Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1866 Memory ($64.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Mushkin ECO2 512GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($119.99 @ Newegg)
Video Card: XFX Radeon R9 380X 4GB DD XXX OC Video Card ($223.98 @ Newegg)
Case: Thermaltake Versa H25 ATX Mid Tower Case ($24.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: EVGA 650W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($61.50 @ Newegg)
Total: $836.41
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-01-12 16:59 EST-0500

The MB is $8 cheaper at Microcenter if you do instore pickup. There's no such thing as a budget version of Windows, so that was left of pending more clarity on what your school's MSDN subscription gives you.

 

[Yuriman]

1. Looking to build a midrange pc for media and gaming. I would like to run games with decent graphics, ideally at "max quality" or at least close to it without clipping issues. Fallout 4 and the like.

If shooting for maxing out games, it's easy to spend $800 (or more) on a video card alone. The difference between "High" and "Very High" is usually very little, and costs a lot in terms of performance, and the difference between "Very High" and "Ultra" is often unnoticeable, again at a very large cost.

MrTeal's build looks good to me. There's some flexibility in video card and SSD choice, but his selections are solid. Only thing I might suggest is going mATX.

 

[Aesop11]

If shooting for maxing out games, it's easy to spend $800 (or more) on a video card alone. The difference between "High" and "Very High" is usually very little, and costs a lot in terms of performance, and the difference between "Very High" and "Ultra" is often unnoticeable, again at a very large cost.

MrTeal's build looks good to me. There's some flexibility in video card and SSD choice, but his selections are solid. Only thing I might suggest is going mATX.

(Greenhorn alert) what wuld be the benefit of mATX over ATX?

 

[Aesop11]

This is about 5% over budget, but would serve quite well as a gaming platform going forward.
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1231 V3 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor ($257.98 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: ASRock Z97 Extreme3 ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($82.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill Ares Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1866 Memory ($64.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Mushkin ECO2 512GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($119.99 @ Newegg)
Video Card: XFX Radeon R9 380X 4GB DD XXX OC Video Card ($223.98 @ Newegg)
Case: Thermaltake Versa H25 ATX Mid Tower Case ($24.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: EVGA 650W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($61.50 @ Newegg)
Total: $836.41
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-01-12 16:59 EST-0500

The MB is $8 cheaper at Microcenter if you do instore pickup. There's no such thing as a budget version of Windows, so that was left of pending more clarity on what your school's MSDN subscription gives you.

Thanks for your help and efforts pointing me in the right direction. I've been looking at various suggested builds over the last few months and was curious of the differences between HHD and SSD. Some suggesting one over the other, other times both. I know speed is one factor which elevates SSD but is that speed only at start up and loading or is it felt in game as well and or are there other strengths and weaknesses which define each?

 

[Erithan13]

An SSD makes a staggering difference to the feel and responsiveness of the operating system and general applications, put simply it would be madness to build a decent gaming system in 2016 and then cripple it with a primary HDD (primary = the drive containing the windows installation). However, while an SSD makes games load considerably faster, it won't effect the actual performance in terms of FPS or lag or anything, so it's far from essential to have games on the SSD.

The usual solution is to have a small (250GB or 120GB at a push) SSD with Windows plus web browser and whatever other applications you can fit in it, then a secondary conventional HDD for bulk storage of games/photos/videos. If you're only playing one game at a time it's pretty straightforward to move that game onto the SSD and enjoy shorter loading times, then when you're done with it copy it back to the HDD. It sounds more complicated than it is.

I'd prefer a 120GB SSD + 2TB HDD over a 512GB SSD alone since games are getting quite large these days. It depends on your usage though.

As far as the rest of the system goes, I'll look into it in more detail tomorrow, I'm thinking along the lines of an i5 6500 + 8GB RAM + R9 380X as a ballpark. There was a thread recently here noting that games don't eat up as much ram as you might expect so I think a case could be made for 8GB to get you going and it can be very easily upgraded to 16GB further down the line if needed. It frees up a little more budget for the GPU which is where you will see the most benefit.

Edit: Although that Xeon E3 1231 looks like a mighty fine choice, having hyperthreading will serve you very well with games going forward.

 

[MrTeal]

(Greenhorn alert) what wuld be the benefit of mATX over ATX?

Really, just the size of the box. The benefit of mATX is it's easier to move around, easier to hide, and if it does need to be in plain site there's some really nice mATX cases. The downside is that it limits you to mATX motherboards which can have their own limitations, the cases can be a little more cramped to work in, and all things being equal they'll usually have worse airflow than a mid or full tower.

An SSD makes a staggering difference to the feel and responsiveness of the operating system and general applications, put simply it would be madness to build a decent gaming system in 2016 and then cripple it with a primary HDD (primary = the drive containing the windows installation). However, while an SSD makes games load considerably faster, it won't effect the actual performance in terms of FPS or lag or anything, so it's far from essential to have games on the SSD.

The usual solution is to have a small (250GB or 120GB at a push) SSD with Windows plus web browser and whatever other applications you can fit in it, then a secondary conventional HDD for bulk storage of games/photos/videos. If you're only playing one game at a time it's pretty straightforward to move that game onto the SSD and enjoy shorter loading times, then when you're done with it copy it back to the HDD. It sounds more complicated than it is.

I'd prefer a 120GB SSD + 2TB HDD over a 512GB SSD alone since games are getting quite large these days. It depends on your usage though.

As far as the rest of the system goes, I'll look into it in more detail tomorrow, I'm thinking along the lines of an i5 6500 + 8GB RAM + R9 380X as a ballpark. There was a thread recently here noting that games don't eat up as much ram as you might expect so I think a case could be made for 8GB to get you going and it can be very easily upgraded to 16GB further down the line if needed. It frees up a little more budget for the GPU which is where you will see the most benefit.

Edit: Although that Xeon E3 1231 looks like a mighty fine choice, having hyperthreading will serve you very well with games going forward.

Going with a primary disk vs two drives is always a compromise. I find 120GB is (as you say) kind of pushing it for an OS drive these days, but I did consider the an $80 240GB SSD + $60 2TB drive.
It depends what else you store, really. Coming from a laptop I'm guessing he's not storing a whole lot of high def movies and whatnot. 512GB gives you the flexibility to load up a couple dozen games (or even a dozen massive AAA ones) should you want, and really if you get to the point where you're buying ten $40 games and want to keep them all installed at the same time, treating yourself to a storage drive next Christmas is always a dead simple upgrade. I find pretty much every time I've waffled on SSD space, I've always regretted going with the smaller option.

 

[Aesop11]

An SSD makes a staggering difference to the feel and responsiveness of the operating system and general applications, put simply it would be madness to build a decent gaming system in 2016 and then cripple it with a primary HDD (primary = the drive containing the windows installation). However, while an SSD makes games load considerably faster, it won't effect the actual performance in terms of FPS or lag or anything, so it's far from essential to have games on the SSD.

The usual solution is to have a small (250GB or 120GB at a push) SSD with Windows plus web browser and whatever other applications you can fit in it, then a secondary conventional HDD for bulk storage of games/photos/videos. If you're only playing one game at a time it's pretty straightforward to move that game onto the SSD and enjoy shorter loading times, then when you're done with it copy it back to the HDD. It sounds more complicated than it is.

I'd prefer a 120GB SSD + 2TB HDD over a 512GB SSD alone since games are getting quite large these days. It depends on your usage though.

As far as the rest of the system goes, I'll look into it in more detail tomorrow, I'm thinking along the lines of an i5 6500 + 8GB RAM + R9 380X as a ballpark. There was a thread recently here noting that games don't eat up as much ram as you might expect so I think a case could be made for 8GB to get you going and it can be very easily upgraded to 16GB further down the line if needed. It frees up a little more budget for the GPU which is where you will see the most benefit.

Edit: Although that Xeon E3 1231 looks like a mighty fine choice, having hyperthreading will serve you very well with games going forward.

Thanks for the breakdown!

 

[Aesop11]

Really, just the size of the box. The benefit of mATX is it's easier to move around, easier to hide, and if it does need to be in plain site there's some really nice mATX cases. The downside is that it limits you to mATX motherboards which can have their own limitations, the cases can be a little more cramped to work in, and all things being equal they'll usually have worse airflow than a mid or full tower.



Going with a primary disk vs two drives is always a compromise. I find 120GB is (as you say) kind of pushing it for an OS drive these days, but I did consider the an $80 240GB SSD + $60 2TB drive.
It depends what else you store, really. Coming from a laptop I'm guessing he's not storing a whole lot of high def movies and whatnot. 512GB gives you the flexibility to load up a couple dozen games (or even a dozen massive AAA ones) should you want, and really if you get to the point where you're buying ten $40 games and want to keep them all installed at the same time, treating yourself to a storage drive next Christmas is always a dead simple upgrade. I find pretty much every time I've waffled on SSD space, I've always regretted going with the smaller option.

How easy is it to add an ssd a year down the road and transferring the OS and what not?

 

[MrTeal]

How easy is it to add an ssd a year down the road and transferring the OS and what not?

Depends on the size of the SSD and what you're transferring from. Going from a spinning disk to a smaller SSD can be a challenge in some cases, especially if you still want to use the bigger disk and it's close to full. There are some decent tools out there to shrink and migrate partitions available now, but it is always easier to just install the OS on an SSD in the first place.

 

[ArisVer]

How easy is it to add an ssd a year down the road and transferring the OS and what not?

For that, the easiest way is to make a small 100-200GB partition for the OS so that it can easily be transferred to an SSD later.

 

[Yuriman]

Considering how big a difference an SSD makes, I personally would greatly prefer to deal with limited space than live with the slowness a traditional spinning disks brings. It's easier to add a HDD later when you're starting to fill your SSD, than it is to add and SSD and transfer your OS and programs onto it.

 

[Homerboy]

Just have a bake sale and buy an SSD for the OS drive. It's a no-brainer.

 

[Aesop11]

Just have a bake sale and buy an SSD for the OS drive. It's a no-brainer.

Lol