Good Enough Build?

[sze5003]

My little brother has a crappy Aurora R4. i7 3820 processor and a gtx 660 I think.

He's going to college soon so and I offered to build him a decent desktop. I can't find a case that he likes. I've picked the following components.

i5 6600k - Microcenter
Asus z170 pro gaming or Gigabyte Ud5-Microcenter
Rosewill Hive 750 Modular PSU-Newegg
G Skill 16gb V- DDR4 3000 -Newegg
Coolermaster 212 Evo- Newegg

I will be giving him an SSD that I don't use anymore and my GPU for now. Any case suggestions that look "cool". For some reason this is important to him when I mentioned he probably won't even look at the case.

 

[UsandThem]

Cases that look 'cool' are such a personal preference.

One person might like cases that look like a Go-Bot, while someone else might hate it.

Why not have him go on Newegg and see what is 'cool' to him?

 

[sze5003]

Cases that look 'cool' are such a personal preference.

One person might like cases that look like a Go-Bot, while someone else might hate it.

Why not have him go on Newegg and see what is 'cool' to him?

Yea I have been giving him suggestions and he showed me an aero cool 800 case in white. After watching a YouTube review and noticing it's decent size, it does not have any tool free HD cages and missing grommets for cable routing, not future proof either because no radiator support should he ever want water cooling again.

He wants to stay in the $500-600 range for everything so I showed him some $50-70 cases but he hasn't decided anything yet.

 

[UsandThem]

I'd just go to Newegg and filter down the results on features you think are important for his case to have, and say "Here, select one from these results".

 

[dave_the_nerd]

I'm going to be "that guy" and point out that his existing system isn't "crappy" at all. The 3820 is positively beefy.

Drop a 480 or 1070 in there and you're golden. Add an SSD for extra sexy.

You're not going to build an appreciably better system for $600 without recycling a bunch of parts anyway.

 

[sze5003]

I'm going to be "that guy" and point out that his existing system isn't "crappy" at all. The 3820 is positively beefy.

Drop a 480 or 1070 in there and you're golden. Add an SSD for extra sexy.

You're not going to build an appreciably better system for $600 without recycling a bunch of parts anyway.

I'm afraid the Dell tech that last repaired his PC has damaged the alienware CPU water cooler. I've cleaned it and placed it back as best as i could but the PC has been overheating and shutting off many times.

I gave him an ssd and reinstalled windows for him so he's been running ok with that. I thought about replacing the water cooler with a corsair h80i but was worried there may be other things wrong.

Being it has a proprietary Dell board and other parts I opted to help him build something more modern. He's had that desktop since 8th grade and he just graduated high school last month.

 

[mnewsham]

I'm afraid the Dell tech that last repaired his PC has damaged the alienware CPU water cooler. I've cleaned it and placed it back as best as i could but the PC has been overheating and shutting off many times.

I gave him an ssd and reinstalled windows for him so he's been running ok with that. I thought about replacing the water cooler with a corsair h80i but was worried there may be other things wrong.

Being it has a proprietary Dell board and other parts I opted to help him build something more modern. He's had that desktop since 8th grade and he just graduated high school last month.

The mounting should be standard 2011 mounting. So you should be able to toss an air cooler on there for $50-75.

The 3820 is within ~25% of the 6700k and should actually be faster than a 6600k in multithreaded performance since the 3820 is a quad core with hyperthreading and the 6600k is just a straight quad core, you'll not notice any difference outside benchmarks. Give them the same GPU and I doubt you'd notice which is which.

 

[sze5003]

The mounting should be standard 2011 mounting. So you should be able to toss an air cooler on there for $50-75.

The 3820 is within ~25% of the 6700k, you'll not notice any difference outside benchmarks. Give them the same GPU and I doubt you'd notice which is which.

I was going to buy him the corsair h80i since that will fit fine on his board without any other installation. If he doesn't make up his mind then that's what I'll probably do unless he really wants a new computer. I'm giving him my GPU too as soon as I can snag an AIB 480 or the new 1060.

Hopefully if he decides not to change anything his Psu isn't crap, not sure what Dell used in those models at the time it was purchased.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Yeah slap an air cooler on there, if you're not overclocking or something. Should be more reliable long-term.

"Something more modern" assumes that something more modern exists. Except for USB 3.1 support maybe, a SB/IVB is pretty modern.