Help Building 1st Gaming PC

[Barotar]

Hello fellow WoW-ers,

I have enlisted the help of a friend who is good with PCs to walk me through the construction of a gaming PC. My budget is $1500. I should note that I run two (2) monitors (although the second one is typically used for Netflix/Chrome/Ventrilo and never gaming). I play Blizzard games exclusively, mostly Hots and WoW but looking forward to Overwatch.

I'm gathering the parts to buy the PC and looking for advice.

Specific areas of feedback appreciated:

1) Am I missing anything?
2) Am I over-killing or under-spending on any piece of hardware?
3) Are there any Black Friday/Cyber Mondays specials that I should be aware of?
4) Major DOs and DON'Ts of assembly (although he has build many PCs before)?

Current Buylist:

Current Buylist:

Thermaltake Chaser Series Chaser MK-I (VN300M1W2N) Black SECC ATX Full Tower Computer Case
$114.99
$25.00 Mail-in Rebate Card

Seagate Barracuda ST1000DM003 1TB 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive
$53.68

EVGA 01G-P4-2753-KR G-SYNC Support GeForce GTX 750 Superclocked 1GB 128-Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 Video Card
$129.99
$15.00 Mail-in Rebate Card

Cooler Master Silent Pro M2 - 1000W Power Supply with 80 PLUS Silver Certification and Semi-Modular Cables
$139.99
$40.00 Mail-in Rebate Card

Mushkin Enhanced Blackline 16GB (2 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model 997069
$124.99

ASUS SABERTOOTH Z97 MARK1 LGA 1150 Intel Z97 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
$233.99

Intel Core i7-4790K Haswell Quad-Core 4.0GHz LGA 1150 Desktop Processor BX80646I74790K
$299.99

NZXT Kraken X61 RL-KRX61-01 280mm All-In-One Water / Liquid CPU Cooling Solution
$139.99

LG Black Blu-ray Drive SATA Model UH12NS30 - OEM
$49.99

SAMSUNG 840 EVO MZ-7TE250BW 2.5" 250GB SATA 6Gb/s 1x nm Samsung Toggle DDR 2.0 3-Bit MLC NAND Flash Memory (400Mbps) Internal ...
$129.99

[Denpepe]

You do not need a 1000W power supply with that build, a 550/650W will do easily, I would however buy a better graphics card, the one you chose is the bare minium, the go to card atm would be the GTX970.

You can cut some cost by only going for 8gb of ram which should be more then plenty if you only play games and watch video's. You could also bump the CPU down to an i5, the i7 would be great if you do a lot of rendering for gaming it has little to no benefits.

[Deleted]

Generally in the build you spend too much without getting much.
- Psu is too much, a good psu between 500-600w is enough
- I replaced gpu with something appropriate, night and day performance difference
- Awesome case for the value
- You don't need 16gb to game, 2x4gb is plenty.
- Went rem/black theme to be complimented from the windowed case
- More reliable hdd.
- Added o/s since you haven't included it (if needed).
- Left the i7 as it was cause it has high clocks at stocks if you don't want to mess with overclocking much. The usual cpu to go tho, provided you overclock it, is the i5 4690k.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-4790K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor ($299.99 @ Newegg)
CPU Cooler: be quiet! Shadow Rock 2 87.0 CFM Rifle Bearing CPU Cooler ($49.90 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z97X-Gaming 5 ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($119.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1866 Memory ($82.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Samsung 840 EVO 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($119.98 @ OutletPC)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($53.89 @ Directron)
Video Card: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 970 4GB WINDFORCE Video Card ($368.99 @ NCIX US)
Case: Phanteks Enthoo Pro ATX Full Tower Case ($99.99 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: Antec High Current Gamer 520W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($54.00 @ Amazon)
Optical Drive: LG UH12NS30 Blu-Ray Reader, DVD/CD Writer ($34.99 @ Newegg)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8.1 (OEM) (64-bit) ($89.98 @ OutletPC)
Total: $1364.69
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-11-22 08:28 EST-0500

[Deleted]

I've knocked a little bit off of Kos'b build, but that's primarily in aesthetic choices:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-4790K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor ($299.98 @ NCIX US)
CPU Cooler: be quiet! Shadow Rock 2 87.0 CFM Rifle Bearing CPU Cooler ($34.99 @ NCIX US)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z97X-Gaming 5 ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($119.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: Patriot Viper 3 Low Profile Red 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1866 Memory ($69.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Crucial MX100 256GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($109.96 @ OutletPC)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($53.89 @ Directron)
Video Card: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 970 4GB WINDFORCE Video Card ($369.99 @ Amazon)
Case: Corsair 300R ATX Mid Tower Case ($59.99 @ Micro Center)
Power Supply: Antec High Current Gamer 520W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($54.00 @ Amazon)
Optical Drive: LG UH12NS30 Blu-Ray Reader, DVD/CD Writer ($34.99 @ Newegg)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8.1 (OEM) (64-bit) ($89.98 @ OutletPC)
Total: $1297.75
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-11-22 16:11 EST-0500

[chazus]

Moving this to the build/upgrade subforum

[Greg Gates]

Kos's build is solid. I cannot stress enough how important a good GPU is.

I've recommended this in another thread, but before you proceed with your build, check out the newegg build tutorial. Gives a lot of safety advice, tricks with seating, etc. It's better to have a general idea of what's happening before you build. As far as BF/CM deals go, newer components won't drop much. You'll probably save big on peripherals if you need those. Definitely worth waiting though and checking the prices.

[May90]

Going to support Kos' build as well. A very neat solid rig! I personally would change 970 to 980, but many people don't like the diminishing returns on this, so 970 would be a great choice anyway.

[Jake H]

Don't buy an i7, get an i5 4690k. No reason to pay the extra $ just to have hyperthreading for no reason. It would be better to spend that money towards 2 8gb sticks instead of 2 4gb sticks.

[Arbiter]

Don't buy an i7, get an i5 4690k. No reason to pay the extra $ just to have hyperthreading for no reason. It would be better to spend that money towards 2 8gb sticks instead of 2 4gb sticks.

This PC is being built for gaming. The 16GB of RAM will likely be 100% useless for him. An i7 is within the budget, comes out the box at 4.4Ghz so if the OP doesn't have much experience with overclocking then this will benefit him completely in gaming while still likely offering benefits in other applications that aren't gaming through hyperthreading. It isn't a bad investment if it's in the budget without having the give up important things like a GTX 970.

[Barotar]

Thank you for all the feedback! I picked up a great PC with your help!