It's about time I got myself a new gaming PC, and this time I want to make the transition to 1440p. I'm currently running my laptop through peripherals, but it's just not quite cutting it (only about 30-40 fps in WoW at 1440p, with settings level 7).
My budget is about
$1,500 - $2,000 depending on how much I need to run things I want to run, the way I want to run them.
My goal is
1440p at 60+fps. I already own a 1440p monitor I'm happy with (2560x1440, 144Hz, with G-Sync).
The games I play are about
75% WoW and
25% pretty RPGs in the vein of Witcher III or Skyrim (and irrelevant old games that run on a toaster). I like fidelity, and I like 60+fps. I do NOT play shooters or racing games, so something like 100fps madness is unlikely to matter.
I also
do NOT do video editing or rendering, but I do like to run Twitch in the background on Chrome. I am considering buying a second monitor sometime down the line for an additional non-gaming screen (so probably 60hz).
I live in the
US and I the only existing parts I will be using is my peripherals (including the monitor). I'd need an OS as well, but I'm guessing it's just going to be
Win 10 Home (64) so that's easy.
I've been considering something like this
PCPartpicker list, but that's by no means a totally informed setup or anything, just what I could piece together from browsing these forums and a cursory look over the component ratings. Feel free to suggest any and all changes, I'm not married to anything - what counts is performance. That being said, from personal experience I try to stay away from AMD - I simply have had nothing but trouble with them, frying two of their CPUs over the years and having a graphics card run hotter than the sun, while Intel/nVidia have not given me any problems at all.
Here's some things I'm particularly unsure about
:
- CPU - I know that WoW is a CPU-heavy game, and that I should probably overclock for best performance. That's fine. I don't know what CPU is best for that, though, and also works well with my other pretty games when I want to play them; some future-proofing in that respect would be a consideration I suppose. I also like running Twitch in the background, and it's so far turned out to be an absolute resource glutton, so I don't know how important the CPU is for that, too.
- RAM - I am a little confused about the RAM speeds, and how much they really add to everything. Given that it can mean a $/GB ration twice as high, I'd appreciate some clarification, advice, and/or recommendations in that respect.
- SSD - Apparently there's all sorts of interfaces for these now, like PCIe or M.2? Is this something to worry about? Should it be significantly bigger than the usual ~250GB or am I just going to run the OS on there and not much else?
- Power Supply - How do you even get to the Wattage you need with this? Eyeball it? 650W-one-size-fits-all?
- Cooling - Noise is a minor concern, I suppose, but the main problem I've always had with my machines since like the 1990s has been that they've just run quite hot. I want to avoid that this time. If I'm overclocking, is a water-cooling system a must, or are the fans good enough these days? Will I end up with a blow-drier level of noise as a result?
Any help is appreciated! And of course feel free to ask any questions.