But what do you want it for? Do you care about noise? Do you want to overclock ? What type of case do you want? Do you need a lot of storage?Just tell us something for that amount money you can make tons of builds for your preference. If you don't know what exactly do you want then honestly just watch some youtube vids pick some build with GTX 970 that you like and there you go you have a good starting point. If you just want game performance for the price then I would buy
Intel Core i5-4590 3,3 GHz
MSI GTX970
MSI B85-G43 Intel B85 LGA 1150
Crucial MX100
Seagate ST1000DM003 1TB
HyperX 8GB DDR3-1600 Non-ECC CL9 XMP Savage Series HX316C9SR/8
Thermaltake Smart SE 530W 80Plus Bronze (SPS-530MPCBEU)
and some random ATX case you like
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Thanks so much! I need a decent amount of storage space, 2 or 3 TB. Noise doesn't matter since I have a yappy dog. I don't think I'll overclock since I haven't looked much into it but I do know what it is, etc. Sorry about lack of details and reply, didn't sleep before post and I just got home since then. I'll continue to look up some builds and stuff, just kinda wanted a little direction, ya know?
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my advice here is to replace the out of date processor and mobo with the most recent hardware, z97 chipset and 4690K processor. You want something to last, not something that's already a generation out of date. I'd also think about getting an aftermarket cooler so you can overclock the thing. Overclocking is one of the best ways to extend the viability of hardware.
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If you're waiting a month or two, you might be looking at a DDR5 Skylake build (late August, fingers crossed), which changes the game somewhat.
Will you be wanting a monitor? That also significantly affects the balance of the budget.
For today, just as Vegas82 says, any overclockable i5 (must have a "K") on a 1150 Z97 motherboard is the best price/performance/future combo. At RRPs, I prefer the Nvidia GTX 970, but it's probably a much better idea to bargain-hunt an AMD 290X for better price/performance (at higher temperatures and power usage - make sure your PSU can handle it - and you'll also have less Linuxy fun going with an AMD GPU, which is a factor for some people). Throw in a 256GB SSD for Windows and seek-time-intense applications and games, and a 2TB 3.5" HDD for media storage and other games. You can drop those down to 128GB/1TB if your budget doesn't cover it. And buy a case and a PSU separately. Your PSU should be at least bronze rated. I like the BeQuiet PSUs - very lickable - but you'll have to see what's on offer on the day you're buying. Getting an external USB Blu-Ray reader / DVD writer will allow you to use it on this PC, on your Tosh laptop, on future laptops and PCs, lend it to friends, etc - IMO, much better than an internal optical drive (for the once a year you'll use it ;)).
For August 2015, NOBODY KNOWS. (And we're not supposed to ask.)
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Then the build I suggested will be okay just change the 1TB HDD to 2TB Seagate or 2TB WD Blue. i5-4590 is pretty much 4690K without overclocking capabilities. z97 chipset is meant for overclocking if you are not planning on overclocking then b85 will be enough
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REDs are overpriced drives only used for making RAID configurations. BeQuiet! is an excellent PSU but once again overpiced unless you care about noise which OP clearly does not. And as of ram games do not need 16GB of ram, even The Witcher 3 at max uses 4 GB.
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Batman Arkham Knight can easily use this RAM. Many applications also. Even Windows will use this additional space to minimize swap usage. RAM is cheap, so there is no need to save on it. Also you can enable dual channel with two RAM sticks - few fps more. How WD Red or BQ are ovepriced when the differece is like 20% at best? Thermaltake PSUs are nothing special, medicore at best. If you really want cheap, Corsair is much better. Still WD Red will perform much better and also BQ. Probably it will outlast Thermaltake like 10 times. But once again, why save insignificant amounts of money when you expect to achieve best possible preformance and value?
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Batman Arkham Knight is just a terrible port everything is not enough for it to run decently.16 GB is only needed as a headroom for heavy multitasking! unless you render videos or photoshop you do not need it. And also how many times do I have to repeat WD REDs are only used for RAID. between these different PSUs there is no difference for an average gamer apart from price and noise. Why we should pay more for something we simply do not need?
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BAK PC port is bad, but on 16GB RAM it runs MUCH better. More and more games will use more RAM in the future, and like I said - if you have more system memory you don't need swap. You can even turn it off completly. There is no such thing as HDD for RAID. It's a normal drive with better performance - very important in gaming. Even better would be actually to buy a 512MB SSD. Games load much faster and you can hardly see any texture loading during gameplay. And the difference between BQ and TT is huge, especially in build quality, voltage stability and parameters but also in noise levels. The difference in price is like 20 bucks...
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You can disable page file anytime. Only handful of applications will actually need it (older, badly codded). Windows is writing to swap "unused" program's data - to free RAM. If your HDD is slow it will lag - especially you can see it by switching between inactive windows. I have disabled swap for like 15 years and didn't notice any problems - only benefits. With 16GB of RAM there's no need for swap. Swap is great but really needed only in systems with small amounts of RAM.
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http://choosemypc.net is pretty straightforward when it comes to recommending parts.
http://reddit.com/r/buildapc/ on reddit is a pretty good place for questions.
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I'd recommend going to /r/BuildAPC. They are very active and helpful.
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I've just ordered all the components for my first build and my experience was that there was actually very little difference between the "standard" parts and the modified versions required if you want to overclock. If the budget will allow the slight increase in cost for those parts it should be considered. may not want to overclock now but if they want tat boost a year down the line it'd require at the very least a new CPU which is large part of a builds cost and probably a new motherboard as well in which case you either have to find something that everything else fits or replace everything else as well.
In my case a K processor was around £30 more. You don't need to consider cooling as much as anyone building a dedicated gaming machine should be including an aftermarket cooler anyway regardless of whether or not they'll be overclocking.
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Well, generally I would agree there with you. Not everyone is willing to overclock for some reason though. And in that case, considering my link, you could save $40 if not more on the motherboard alone and the negligible $10 on the CPU, as you have pointed out (didn't realize the price difference between non-K and K CPUs was so low :o ). I expected a higher amount, my bad. x) Hmm, so yeah, with such a budget, might as well spend these $50 extra and overclock at some point. I agree about the cooling too.
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If you absolutely need the portability check Lenovo's Y series, they are for gamers and low budget. If not then I absolutely recommend you to build a desktop and upgrade the parts in the following years, it will be way cheaper than just buying a new laptop for gamer purposes.
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In that case I highly recommend you this parts' tiers list
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Just a thought if you're heading down the desktop route, would you need to purchase a monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers/headset, wireless card/adapter, and other peripherals too?
I wouldn't recommend skimping on a monitor at least. Wouldn't want all that power going to waste if you can't visually appreciate its beastliness.
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Okay, so currently I'm using a decently bulky Toshiba laptop for gaming and I'll post the specs below but I'm honestly not sure if or what to upgrade to. I'm not turned off to the idea of building my own but I don't know what to pick or where to start and tossing around a grand or two blindly is the worst thing ever. Anyway, long story short my current laptop's hard drive is full and about a quarter of my library doesn't run on playable FPS, i.e. Witcher 3, Dead Rising 3, GTA 5, ect. My laptop wasn't intended for hardcore gaming purposes but handles extremely well for a 4 year old $500 hunk of parts. I can play lots of other games on medium quality but since newer more demanding games are coming out, this thing might need to retire to just be a college 'puter. Thanks in advance for advice/help!
I'm currently using a Toshiba Satellite L755D
AMD A8-3520M APU processor, a shoddy 1.6GHz
6GB of RAM
600GB HDD, only 50GB free after I removed some games that don't run.
AMD Radeon(TM) HD 6620G graphics card; 3059 MB total memory, 512 MB dedicated while the rest is shared
P.S. Congrats on reading everything, or just skipping to this. Here's a kitty cat!
Tl;dr cat
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