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New PC build

D

Dadude122

Junior Member
1. What YOUR PC will be used for. Gaming, photo editing (Lightroom), surfing the net, and misc.

2. What YOUR budget is. $2500

3. What country YOU will be buying YOUR parts from. USA

4. IF you're buying parts OUTSIDE the US, please post a link to the vendor you'll be buying from. N/A

5. IF YOU have a brand preference. Intel-Fanboy, nVidia-Fanboy, Samsung-Fanboy

6. If YOU intend on using any of YOUR current parts, and if so, what those parts are. Monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers, and possibly my old WD 1TB HDD. Software Windows 7, Lightroom 4 (might upgrade to LR5)

7. IF YOU plan on overclocking or run the system at default speeds. Default

8. What resolution, not monitor size, will you be using? 1080p

9. WHEN do you plan to build it? One month at the most

Parts list:

CPU: Intel i7 4770K $339.99
Mobo: Asus Z87 Deluxe/Dual $339.99
PSU: Corsair AX1200i $349.99
Case: Corsair 600T $159.99
Ram: G Skill Trident X 16GB $201.99
SSD: Samsung 840 Pro $464.99
Optical: LG Blu Ray player $57.99/Blu Ray Writer $70.99
Video Card: Asus Nvidia GTX 760 $397.87

I currently own a Nikon D7100 and I plan on purchasing a D800E in the near future so I might need a bigger HDD due to the increase file sizes from the sensor. Currently shooting jpeg but might starting shooting RAW to learn the workflow.
 
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Holy.. $2.5k is overkill for 1080p gaming. And that PSU o.o

CPU & Mobo-
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboD...=Combo.1392847 $436.98
i7-4770 (Non-k since you aren't gonna overclock) and Z87 (Very good reviews and comes with the combo 😛)

PSU-
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817139028
CX600 (You seriously don't need 1200w...) $69.99

GPU-
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814125463
GTX 770
(Anything more is overkill for 1080p resolution) $399.99

HDD-
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822148910
Seagate Barracuda (Reliable and cheap) $99.99

RAM-
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820231358
12 GB G-Skill Ripjaws (Who doesn't love G-Skill? 😀) $123.99

SDD-
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820147193
Samsung 840 Pro (I don't think you'll need more than 256 GB, but you're free to change it if you do) $239.99

Total price (Excluding the case, optical drive, and fees)=$1,370.93

I don't know too much about cases, and I'm not sure what OP wants from the optical drive...
 
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The biggest thing I see is not maxing out the GPU while attempting to max out things not quite as important in the original build.

The Corsair CX series is a great choice as an under-$45 PSU, but for $70 or a little less, there are compelling alternatives, such as the Rosewill Hive 650, XFX Core Edition Pro450W or Pro550 W, or Rosewill Capstone 450.

The GTX 760's TDP is 170 watts. The CPU will likely overclock to 4.2 Ghz on air. Its power draw will likely not eclipse 150 watts, and that is a conversative estimate on my part.

The Trident X RAM costs 170 dollars at Newegg, and I'd say that the 1866 Mhz G.Skill Ares series should be a better bang for you buck part.
 
That's a pretty impressive budget...if you'd like, I think you have enough money in your budget to get yourself a pro-quality wide-gamut monitor for your photography stuff, and still have enough money to build a solid gaming rig.

In your build, it looks like you're spending a lot of money on on a large, pro ssd. Do you plan to use that as scratch space for lightroom, or to store your photo catalogs?

Also, do you have a back-up plan? If not, it might be worth your time to spend some of this budget on at least 1 external enclosure and a spare drive (or 2 depending on enclosure) to make sure you can easily, and regularly, back-up your photography.

From looking over your propsed build, it looks like you're spending a lot of money on your CPU, RAM, MoBo, PSU, and GPU. I might try something like this, but this sort of assumes a pretty heavy LR use case.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i5-4670K 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor ($229.99 @ Newegg)
CPU Cooler: Arctic Cooling ACFZI30 74.0 CFM Fluid Dynamic Bearing CPU Cooler ($29.99 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: MSI Z87-G43 ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($109.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LP 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($49.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LP 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($49.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Samsung 840 Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Disk ($170.71 @ Amazon)
Storage: Samsung 840 Pro Series 256GB 2.5" Solid State Disk ($227.37 @ Amazon)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($62.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($62.99 @ Amazon)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 770 2GB Video Card ($399.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Corsair 600T Mesh (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case ($104.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: SeaSonic S12II 620W 80 PLUS Bronze Certified ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply ($71.98 @ Newegg)
Optical Drive: Asus BW-12B1ST/BLK/G/AS Blu-Ray/DVD/CD Writer ($52.00 @ Newegg)
Optical Drive: LG UH12NS30 Blu-Ray Reader, DVD/CD Writer ($39.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $1649.96
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-08-04 10:16 EDT-0400)

Notes:

I don't know if lightroom can make efficient use of the i7's hyperthreading, so I stepped down to the i5, but if it can, you could upgrade to the i7 for + $100

The MoBo supports up to 32 GB of RAM, I included 16 GB because LR is a 64-bit program so it could really take advantage of the RAM, and depending on how much LR you do, you could consider going up to 32 GB.

I included 2 different SSDs. One for a bootdrive/applications, and one for lightroom catalogs/scratch space. regular 840 for the former, 840 Pro for the latter. Basically it's cheaper than having one huge pro-quality SSD, and it separates your data by usage type so you're spending money on the usage type that you need as appropriate. I also added two HDDs, one for photo-assets, and one for games/other media. I don't know either how big your LR catalog(s) are, or how much HDD storage you need for images/games/media so you could scale any of these up or down, or add/remove drives as appropriate. If you need higher capacity drives I'd look to the Seagate Barracuda line as they're all supposed to be 1 TB platters now.

I found a less expensive version of the case you liked, a less expensive but high-quality power supply, and I went up to the GTX 770 gpu. It should max out just about every game at 1080, and it will even be a solid performer if you go for a monitor upgrade.
 
Essence's build looks pretty good to me. I'd probably skip the BD-ROM/DVD-RW combo drive unless you copy DVDs all day.

I also second his suggestion of a bigger, better monitor. 1080p is kind of low for photo editing IMHO because you don't get to see much of the photo once you've got all your controls up. The HP ZR2740w is in your price range and high quality.
 
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