PC Build Help

[Aketi]

So I've spent the last five hours or so researching PC builds, browsing this forum, looking up benchmarks and parts...and I've thrown in the towel. I still feel as clueless as I did when I started and all I've really learned is that building a PC is like legos for adults and I should definitely do that over anything else. Unfortunately my life revolves around murphy's law and if I so much as looked at a PC wrong it would probably spontaneously combust, yes I'm that computer retarded.

Therefore, I'm reaching out to you guys on bended knee...

Budget: $400-$600
Games: Just WoW. Right now the computer I use can only play it with everything on super low settings and gets about 30-50 FPS and occasionally lags just when doing a simple 5 man dungeon. So really, anything better than that would be fantastic. I don't need it to play with maxed settings, but medium would be nice and if I can get maximum settings within my budget that would be awesome too.
Other Uses: Just web surfing and video watching. The computer I have now struggles to load YouTube videos...
Peripherals: I already have a monitor, mouse and keyboard so I just need a tower build

Since I won't be building this myself I was looking at either of these two for base builds, and I'm flexible on cases since I know that adds to the cost, and I would of course choose performance over design, but the preferences were as follows:

ibuypower.com/Store/AMD_FM2_A-Series_APU
Case: NZXT Guardian 921 RB Gaming Case

cyberpowerpc.com/system/Back_To_School_2012
Case: Raidmax Viper Mid-Tower Gaming Case w/ 1x USB 3.0 Port & Side Window Panel

Again, I'm really open to suggestions or changes.

[Aketi]

Ok I made this configuration using this as the base ibuypower.com/Store/Intel_B75_Core_i5_Configurator

It's a little overbudget but does everything work here? Is there anywhere I can save money on that I maybe unnecessarily upgraded?

Case: AZZA Armour Gaming Case-Blue
Processor Intel® Core™ i5-3570 Processor (4x 3.40GHz/6MB L3 Cache)
Motherboard Gigabyte GA-B75M-D3H
Memory 8 GB [2 GB X4] DDR3-1600 Memory Module-Corsair or Major Brand
Video Card NVIDIA GeForce GT 630 - 1GB
Power Supply 400 Watt - Standard
Processor Cooling Liquid CPU Cooling System [SOCKET-1155]-Standard 120mm Fan
Video Card Brand Major Brand Powered by AMD or NVIDIA
Primary Hard Drive 2 TB HARD DRIVE -- 64M Cache, 7200rpm, 6.0Gb/s-Single Drive
Optical Drive 24X Dual Format/Double Layer DVD±R/±RW + CD-R/RW Drive-Black
Sound Card 3D Premium Surround Sound Onboard
Network Card Onboard LAN Network (Gb or 10/100)
Flash Media Reader / Writer 12-In-1 Internal Flash Media Card Reader/Writer-Black

Subtotal $613.00

[Deleted]

Ok I made this configuration using this as the base ibuypower.com/Store/Intel_B75_Core_i5_Configurator

It's a little overbudget but does everything work here? Is there anywhere I can save money on that I maybe unnecessarily upgraded?

Case: AZZA Armour Gaming Case-Blue
Processor Intel® Core™ i5-3570 Processor (4x 3.40GHz/6MB L3 Cache)
Motherboard Gigabyte GA-B75M-D3H
Memory 8 GB [2 GB X4] DDR3-1600 Memory Module-Corsair or Major Brand
Video Card NVIDIA GeForce GT 630 - 1GB
Power Supply 400 Watt - Standard
Processor Cooling Liquid CPU Cooling System [SOCKET-1155]-Standard 120mm Fan
Video Card Brand Major Brand Powered by AMD or NVIDIA
Primary Hard Drive 2 TB HARD DRIVE -- 64M Cache, 7200rpm, 6.0Gb/s-Single Drive
Optical Drive 24X Dual Format/Double Layer DVD±R/±RW + CD-R/RW Drive-Black
Sound Card 3D Premium Surround Sound Onboard
Network Card Onboard LAN Network (Gb or 10/100)
Flash Media Reader / Writer 12-In-1 Internal Flash Media Card Reader/Writer-Black

Subtotal $613.00

no just no with that gpu alone and then a locked i5-3570 with a water cooler? (bad mixing there imo)

[Aketi]

That was the default cooler, I didn't even notice. What would you suggest?

I didn't have too many options for the GPU, the ones that seemed best were an additional $100+ (at least using Nvidia there were AMD options as well but I read somewhere nvidia was better?) which would have taken me way over budget. I'd have to save money elsewhere if I were to put more of my budget into the GPU.

[isntyourname123]

this is what that 630 looks like:



its not something you would want for long hours of gaming. Might sound silly to go by what the card looks like but. If it has a wimpy looking cooler it cant take alot of heat or the card has been underclocked. Like getting a laptop graphics card.

and about the prossesor and cooling. what that guy was trying to say is. If your going to get the water cooling you should go with the i5 ####K.
The ones with the K at the end are unlocked. You can over clock them. If you dont want to over clock just go with the one with out the K and standard cooling.

[Deleted]

well that gpu isn't a gaming gpu it is a multimedia card.
get the gtx 650 sale they got on sale swap all parts to the cheapest except for the cpu (make that a i5-3570k) managed to get price to just over $625 (but should be a lot better for games)

[isntyourname123]

well that gpu isn't a gaming gpu it is a multimedia card.
get the gtx 650 sale they got on sale swap all parts to the cheapest except for the cpu (make that a i5-3570k) managed to get price to just over $625 (but should be a lot better for games)

^this
You can always get a upgrade graphics card in the future. Thats what i did with my curent build. Just started out the build with my old 460gtx then upgraded to a 580 a few months later.
See how the it looks. Alot better cooling.

[Deleted]

^this
You can always get a upgrade graphics card in the future. Thats what i did with my curent build. Just started out the build with my old 460gtx then upgraded to a 580 a few months later.
See how the it looks. Alot better cooling.

well even though it is only entry level gaming gpu it should run quite some decent frames in most games.

[Aketi]

^this
You can always get a upgrade graphics card in the future. Thats what i did with my curent build. Just started out the build with my old 460gtx then upgraded to a 580 a few months later.
See how the it looks. Alot better cooling.

Yea that definitely is a huge difference!

The thing is it's a gift so the less upgrading and computer mucking about the better, which is why I'll probably stick with the locked processor, switching to standard cooling...

But if I upped my budget to $700 what would be a better graphics card at that point?

[Deleted]

well yes and no.
main problem is the more expensive cards require a bigger PSU so the extra budget would go towards that instead of performance.
with the budget at 700 you might want to really consider the K chip or perhaps an small primary SSD instead (and also a normal big data drive for storage)

K chip kinda equals future proofing with perhaps a better cooler few years down the line but the overclocking performance gain is pretty big from it. ( even with stock cooler +-10/15% oc should be doable)

[isntyourname123]

Well i still have my 460gtx and it runs wow at max settings just fine. The lowest the frame rate gets is 40fps. It is in a AMD x2 255 emachine i got from bestbuy. It can run crysis and skyrim at a mix of med and high settings. The 650 or a 660 should be fine for wow. My $500 geforce 580gtx isnt even maxed out by wow... kind of over kill. even at 8x AA and maxed settings its only getting used %80.(vsync set to 60)

[Aketi]

If I were to use my budget for a small SSD as a primary, would the 60 gb be fine or should I choose the 120gb?

[isntyourname123]

a quick look on newegg for these cards as far as power supply required.
650gtx needs min 400w
660gtx needs min 450w
670gtx needs min 550w
680gtx needs min 600w
They might run with less powerfull power supplys but you will get problems like blue screens and crashes. Better to use more power than you need. But not by alot. No need to do what i did and get a 1000w corsair.

What i do with my SSD is use it for Windows and WoW. Store all my other stuff like games i rarely play and music on a second drive. WoW loads so fast on a ssd i hate using my other computer to play it. 60gig should fit. As long as you put your download/music/pictures folders on the other drive.

[Aketi]

It appears there are different brands of SSD offered here, some cheaper than others, does the brand make a difference?

[isntyourname123]

Corsair is what i use, no problems with it yet. I don't know much about ADATA. Intel is good. OCZ has been getting bad press for reliability on the newer SSD's.

[Deleted]

It appears there are different brands of SSD offered here, some cheaper than others, does the brand make a difference?

intel/corsair and new ocz ones are fine and yes 60gb is plenty for boot drive and will likely fit wow aswell
also only the 2gb version of the card needs 450W the 1gb version will be fine with the 400W one.

[isntyourname123]

yea now that i think about it. when i was hearing about OCZ's SSD problems was some time ago. I dont remember exactly what one was having the problem but. One of them had a bad controller and was killing the drives within a week or 2. looking it up Yea it was the OCZ Vertex's from almost a year ago... lol
Something about the firmware. Probably fixed now.

[Deleted]

yea now that i think about it. when i was hearing about OCZ's SSD problems was some time ago. I dont remember exactly what one was having the problem but. One of them had a bad controller and was killing the drives within a week or 2. looking it up Yea it was the OCZ Vertex's from almost a year ago... lol
Something about the firmware. Probably fixed now.

yup mostly even with vertex 2/petrol and some other oddly named ones.
vertex 3/4 is just fine (agil4 also)