My first PC build

Dan_P

Dan_P

Dan_P

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Joined
17 Feb 2015
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368
Location
Leighton Buzzard
Good Morning All,

I finally have been given the go ahead from the Mrs that I can splash some cash on my first desktop PC. Previously my main gaming and computer work has been fulfilled by a PS4, iMac and HP Laptop.

I'm not comfortable at this stage to build the computer myself so will be looking to OCUK for them to build it for me. I expect to use the computer for photo editing (I'm a photographer) and gaming. The games I want to play are AAA titles at high/ultra settings hopefully at 1440p. I would have liked to look at 4K but don't think that's realistic currently. I also have a budget of around £2k 'give or take' a couple of hundred.

I have selected the below build and think this is the best build for my needs but would like your opinions...

UPDATED BUILD v5: https://www.overclockers.co.uk/ocuk.../z7qHI/z8qHJ/z9qHL/z;qHM/z,qHN/z+qIA/z*rjc/z'

Thanks
Dan
 
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Do you not need a monitor, keyboard, and mouse? For the monitor, look at the 3440x1440 ones. I also suggest you get a headset for gaming.

Save yourself some money and have a larger SSD or larger M2 instead of the M2 + SSD combo.
 
Quartz said:
Do you not need a monitor, keyboard, and mouse? For the monitor, look at the 3440x1440 ones. I also suggest you get a headset for gaming.

Save yourself some money and have a larger SSD or larger M2 instead of the M2 + SSD combo.
Click to expand...

Thank you for your quick reply.

I should have mentioned, already have a keyboard and mouse (Razer Blackwidow Chroma and Razer Mamba Mouse). Monitor wise I have a 32" Samsung TV i'll use for now, I will be buying a monitor two/three months later once a couple of pay packets have come in.

I do agree actually that one larger M.2/SSD is better than two split, that makes sense.

Should I go with the M.2 or the SSD? From my reading I believe M.2 is better?

EDIT: I've had a look at the build and If I go with the M.2 I'm limited to the amount of space I can have. I have now chosen a 1TB Samsung EVO 850 instead and no M.2. I'm assuming OCUK will build it with the OS on the SSD rather than the HDD?
 
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Dan_P said:
Should I go with the M.2 or the SSD? From my reading I believe M.2 is better?

EDIT: I've had a look at the build and If I go with the M.2 I'm limited to the amount of space I can have. I have now chosen a 1TB Samsung EVO 850 instead and no M.2. I'm assuming OCUK will build it with the OS on the SSD rather than the HDD?
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OCUK will put the OS on the SSD. However, I do think that there is merit to mix up the drives. With my build I use the PC for digital art, photo editing, gaming and general day-to-day workstation stuff.

I have a M.2 drive for the OS and some key software (Lightroom, PS, Painter), a 500gb SSD solely for games and a 1tb external HDD for images and media. It works well and keeps things nicely segregated.

One thing that I would suggest is that you consider a 5820k if you are doing a lot of workflow based stuff. The additional cores are nice for batch processing of lightroom/photoshop work/painter. It sounded like the photography was a key use of the build and this is something that you may want to consider as an alternative to Skylake.

Aside from the personal preference on the drives though, the build looks solid. Keep in mind that whilst you are not wanting to build from scratch (so will pay a premium for what you are buying), there will be the option to add in upgrades down the line. Don't necessarily think that you need to go all in on the drives for the moment.

I can appreciate that you may not want to start from components and having to overclock/set everything up. However, adding in an additional drive or upgrading case fans/GPU etc is very simple.
 
Petelock said:
OCUK will put the OS on the SSD. However, I do think that there is merit to mix up the drives. With my build I use the PC for digital art, photo editing, gaming and general day-to-day workstation stuff.

I have a M.2 drive for the OS and some key software (Lightroom, PS, Painter), a 500gb SSD solely for games and a 1tb external HDD for images and media. It works well and keeps things nicely segregated.

One thing that I would suggest is that you consider a 5820k if you are doing a lot of workflow based stuff. The additional cores are nice for batch processing of lightroom/photoshop work/painter. It sounded like the photography was a key use of the build and this is something that you may want to consider as an alternative to Skylake.

Aside from the personal preference on the drives though, the build looks solid. Keep in mind that whilst you are not wanting to build from scratch (so will pay a premium for what you are buying), there will be the option to add in upgrades down the line. Don't necessarily think that you need to go all in on the drives for the moment.

I can appreciate that you may not want to start from components and having to overclock/set everything up. However, adding in an additional drive or upgrading case fans/GPU etc is very simple.
Click to expand...

Thank you for the advice.

I did have a look at a different CPU but wasn't sure if a Skylake with a higher clock speed would be better than something like a 5820k/5930/5960x. - Gaming/General usage wise how well would they perform compared to the 6700k? I also have an iMac I use for editing but if I'm honest with this new build I can see this being made redundant.

I like that this gives me the opportunity to have 32GB of ram where as the other only allowed 16gb. I think it might be worth me adding a small M.2, 128GB perhaps for OS,LR,PS etc. I like that idea.

I do want to look at Overclocking once I've done a little more research and think I would probably be ok with simple tasks and upgrading so don't mind looking at increasing my storage later.

SSHD/HDD is the improvement in speed worth the extra £21 or is it minimal for bulk storage?

Here is the updated build with your recommendations, its now getting to the max part of my budget but think this looks like a better system.

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/ocuk.../z7qHI/z8qHJ/z9qHL/z;qHM/z,qHN/z+qIA/z*rjc/z$

labcoattech said:
If you can go for the EVGA 980 ti graphics card, the last thing you want is to have to wait 6 weeks for the RMA.
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I'm not sure what RMA means but I couldn't find the EVGA 980Ti on the list.
 
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The 1TB SSD may be a bit excessive for games.
To put it in comparison I have about 20 games installed right now (inc Shadows or Mordor, Dragon Age Inquisition, The Witcher 3, Batman Arkham Knight to name a few of the AAA hefty gb titles.

I've still got about 120gb left on the drive. With this in mind I would say save yourself the £120 difference for the moment.

Whether you need 32gb of ram is also questionable. 16gb should see you fine for any game right now (the most clock just over 8gb iirc)

SSHD vs HDD is not worth it for data storage. A decent HDD will see you fine.

A few other points. Call OCUK to get the final build put together. I can see that you're not wanting an optical drive so you will want a USB version of Win10. Also, if you want an EVGA 980ti they would be able to get this configured for you.

With some of the savings you may want to look at some additional fans for the airflow. 980ti's can get quite hot (particularly when overclocked). I found that an investment in airflow was well worth it. Again though, leave this for now and consider that a small upgrade down the line when you can assess the temps and airflow from your set up. WHen choosing the card you may want to talk through hybrid card options which will help reduce GPU heat getting dumped into the case.

In short, a lot of this is down to your personal preference. Good luck and hope that you enjoy whatever you end up choosing.
 
Petelock said:
The 1TB SSD may be a bit excessive for games.
To put it in comparison I have about 20 games installed right now (inc Shadows or Mordor, Dragon Age Inquisition, The Witcher 3, Batman Arkham Knight to name a few of the AAA hefty gb titles.

I've still got about 120gb left on the drive. With this in mind I would say save yourself the £120 difference for the moment.

Whether you need 32gb of ram is also questionable. 16gb should see you fine for any game right now (the most clock just over 8gb iirc)

SSHD vs HDD is not worth it for data storage. A decent HDD will see you fine.

A few other points. Call OCUK to get the final build put together. I can see that you're not wanting an optical drive so you will want a USB version of Win10. Also, if you want an EVGA 980ti they would be able to get this configured for you.

With some of the savings you may want to look at some additional fans for the airflow. 980ti's can get quite hot (particularly when overclocked). I found that an investment in airflow was well worth it. Again though, leave this for now and consider that a small upgrade down the line when you can assess the temps and airflow from your set up. WHen choosing the card you may want to talk through hybrid card options which will help reduce GPU heat getting dumped into the case.

In short, a lot of this is down to your personal preference. Good luck and hope that you enjoy whatever you end up choosing.
Click to expand...

I think I perhaps am being a little greedy with a hard drive storage. I have reduced the SSD down to 500Gb alongside swapping the SSHD for a standard HDD. I think that will be more than enough for now and if I need to increase it in the future I could always add another SSD.

I am aware that 32GB of RAM is overkill however I often have numerous applications open, especially while editing and I don't want to ever worry about it. I have looked at the brand "Team Group Elite" which assuming they still get good reviews (I haven't looked yet as I'm at work) then I will go with them. That give me another £36 saving and is only £21 more than the premium 16gb options which I think is worth it.

You mentioned the USB Win 10 - do I need to install Win 10 or do they complete this for me? Is the USB just for recovery/rebuild purposes.

I'm not entirely fussed what version of Graphics Card I get, it is just that another member mentioned EVGA would be better but I am unaware why? I thought the G1 gaming edition was a reasonable card.

I will give them a call in a couple of weeks to ask about Hybrid cards/More fans and see what they can do. (Waiting for Payday)

I just wanted to say a thank you to everyone who has posted already in less than one day. My build has already progressed after listening to all of your hints/tips and advice. I welcome any more :)
 
Update: I called OC today to complete my order and was advised to email Damien White. I have sent over the link to the build and the amendment I want to make.

Hopefully I'll hear something soon :)
 
Petelock said:
Nice - seems like you will have a good time building and playing with all the new kit :D
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I cant wait!

I think I'm driving my work colleague and the Mrs mad as I'm talking about it all the time. I've checked my emails 10/20 times today waiting for a reply, like a kid at Christmas.
 
So the order has been placed - The build should be here by 02/03.

Only a couple of changes made, the full build is below:

  • NZXT Noctis 450 White Full Tower Chassis
  • Asus X99-Pro Intel X99 (Socket 2011) DDR4 ATX Motherboard
  • Intel i7-5820K 3.30GHz (Haswell-E) Socket LGA2011-V3 Processor - OEM (CM8064801548435)
  • Ballistix Sport LT 32GB (4x8GB) DDR4 PC4-19200C16 2400MHz Quad Channel Kit - White (BLS4C8G4D240FSC)
  • Corsair Hydro Series H115i Extreme Performance Liquid CPU Cooler (CW-9060027-WW)
  • Samsung SM951 128GB M.2 PCI-e Gen3 8Gbps x 4 AHCI Solid State Drive (MZHPV128HDGM-00000)
  • Seagate 3TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache HDD - OEM (ST3000DM001)
  • Gigabyte GeForce GTX 980Ti G1 Gaming 6144MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card
  • Super Flower Leadex GOLD 1000W Fully Modular "80 Plus Gold" Power Supply - White
  • Microsoft Windows 10 64-Bit
  • Samsung 500GB 850 EVO SSD 2.5" SATA 6Gbps 32 Layer 3D V-NAND Solid State Drive (MZ-75E500B/EU)
 
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