PC Gaming build (Australia)

[awnm]

Hi -

I'm looking to build a new gaming PC:
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1. Used for: mainly gaming. WoW, DIII, Borderlands, occasional FPS. Nothing too twitch.

2. Budget: Around ~AUS$2200

3. Country: Australia

4. Vendor: Likely PC Case Gear: http://www.pccasegear.com/

5. Brand preferences: Intel/ASUS/NVidia

6. Current parts: Dell 2407 monitor (1920x1200). May upgrade to 27" shortly. Mouse/keyboard.

7. OC: Unlikely. Always intend to, never seem to.

8. Rez: 1920x1200 (as above, may upgrade to 2560x1440)

9. When: Now.
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So mainly for gaming, interested in a relatively quiet build, replacing a 7 year old machine that is struggling.

My current buy list is:

CPU : $399 - i7-4790k
M-B : $269 - ASUS Z-97 Pro
RAM : $199 - G.Skill Ripjaw 2x8GB DDR3 1600
GPU : $549 - ASUS Strix GTX970 (tempted to get from Amazon for ~AUS$150 saving)
SSD : $269 - Samsung 840EVO 500GB
HDD : $279 - WD Black 4TB
PSU : $119 - FSP 650 80+ Platinum
Case: $119 - Naonxia Deep Silence 1

AUS$2202.

Thanks for any advice.

PS: Been poring over these forums for a while now reading up. Seems like a great and helpful community - much appreciated even as a lurker (good work by the mods keeping it civil too).

 

[mfenn]

Your build has the right idea, but some of the individual choices are not cost efficient.

- CPU: For a gaming PC, the 43% upcharge for the i7 over the i5 4690K at $279 is not worthwhile.
- Mobo: Whole lot of cash for not a lot of relevant improvement. A board with a good feature-set but without the high-end tax is the GA-Z97X-SLI for $175
- RAM: Totally fine, but this Crucial DDR3 1600 16GB kit is on sale at $169.
- GPU: Good, but GTX 970 pricing is crazy right now
- SSD : Good
- HDD : The WD Black is overpriced for what you get. You can get a pair of Seagate 7200 RPM 3TB drives for $125 each ($250 total) and either have increased reliability with RAID1 or increased capacity by using them independently.
- PSU: FSP is fine
- Case: Good

That works out to $1380 w/o GPU. You can either pocket the savings or use the extra to kick the GPU up to the GTX 980.

 

[awnm]

Good advice, thanks for the rapid feedback.

 

[Zorander]

I would also like to add if you are not likely to overclock, drop it down to a non-K CPU and H97 motherboard. Save around $80-100 on overclocking features you won't use.