Newbie build Q's

tilting tim

1. What is your budget? €600-€700

2. What will be the main purpose of the computer? General office/accounts package and Gaming (gta5, football manager)

3. Do you need a copy of Windows? Yes

4. Can you use any parts from an old computer? No

5. Do you need a monitor? I have an old 21" monitor and a 32" hdtv I could use

5a. If yes, what size do you need.

5b. If no, what resolution is your current monitor and do you plan to upgrade in the near future? Both are old TV is 1080i I think

6. Do you need any of these peripherals? Mouse Wireless Card DVD drive

7. Are you willing to try overclocking? No

8. How can you pay? Bank Transfer Credit Card Laser

9. When are you purchasing? January

10. If you need help building it, where are you based? Cork but would give it a go


No experience of anything like this.
Had been considering buying a PS4 for gaming but can't really justify it as I won't spend that much time on it. Have been using a netbook for farm package and accounts for a few years but it's gone slow. So I've decided to go this way.
Only other consideration is music files that I moved to an external hard drive (5000 songs maybe).
I have an Apple wireless keyboard, will I be able to use this? Do I need something to connect it with?
Could I have it set up to use both monitors? Use TV for gaming and monitor for accounts etc?
Is the wireless card for connecting to wifi?
Sorry for all the basic Q's

Denny_Crane

A PC will be so much better than a console! You can hook up both the monitor and TV no problem at all. Wireless card is for connecting to your Wifi, they're pretty cheap.

Building the PC is easy and this forum is a great resource for help.

tilting tim

Thanks, does the wireless keyboard connect the same way or do I have to get something different for Bluetooth

Denny_Crane

tilting tim wrote: »

Thanks, does the wireless keyboard connect the same way or do I have to get something different for Bluetooth

I actually dunno I'm afraid. Keyboards are pretty cheap though. There is probably some wee bluetooth USB you can get.

tadcan

A keyboard and mouse will have a USB dongle to connect them to the PC. If you are playing online games, making frequent skype calls, having a physical Ethernet connection to the router would give you more stable/faster speeds. If the router is in a different room you can send it through the electricity cables with a powerwall.

Denny_Crane

tadcan wrote: »

A keyboard and mouse will have a USB dongle to connect them to the PC. If you are playing online games, making frequent skype calls, having a physical Ethernet connection to the router would give you more stable/faster speeds. If the router is in a different room you can send it through the electricity cables with a powerwall.

Generally but his is an apple one, I assume it's bluetooth and macs have it built in so there may not be a separate one here.

tilting tim

It's Bluetooth only, nothing else came with it. Rural location so only internet is mobile broadband so wifi is probably all I need

tadcan

Denny_Crane wrote: »

Generally but his is an apple one, I assume it's bluetooth and macs have it built in so there may not be a separate one here.

Ah I missed that bit. Youtube to the rescue.

tilting tim

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/7d7MXH

Am I missing anything?

Prefer to spend £50-100 less, is there anything I can drop down in?

Denny_Crane

CPU comes with a (crap) cooler.

No need for a Z170 motherboard - you also have a mATX mobo with an ATC case, they will work but you might find an ATX cheaper. Case might be overkill. If you do go the mATX format check sizes.

2x 4 GB for the memory for dual channel operation (faster)

psu, evga do a reasonable unit for about £45.

tilting tim

Ok so I can drop the cooler so,
Bit lost regards motherboard and case?

Denny_Crane

tilting tim wrote: »

Ok so I can drop the cooler so,
Bit lost regards motherboard and case?

PSU


H110 board (example)

B170 is the next one up. B170 might be worth it for the high speed M.2 SSDs in the future.

Case (will do the job)

tilting tim

Updated my list

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/jGy8Ps

Definitely better with the budget

tadcan

Since that motherboard has two ram slots, get a single 8GB stick, which will mean you only have to buy one instead of two sticks to upgrade to 16GB.

tilting tim

Would it be much better to have 16 rather than 8? Worth the extra first day?

Denny_Crane

tilting tim wrote: »

Would it be much better to have 16 rather than 8? Worth the extra first day?

About 5% if that of games use it. An SSD for your OS would be a much better buy than 8GB or RAM. There is an argument for single channel 8 GB with only two RAM slots though.

Denny_Crane

B150 sorry, not B170 - might be worth a look:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Asus-B150-Intel-1151-Motherboard/dp/B017M5KA2S/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1483035421&sr=8-5&keywords=b150+motherboard

tilting tim

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/RNLpD8

Few changes brings it towards my max budget

Am I forgetting anything (as in when I put this all together it will work)

Thanks for all the help btw

tadcan

You could go a bit cheaper on the motherboard.

Denny_Crane

tadcan wrote: »

You could go a bit cheaper on the motherboard.

I'd actually go B150. The M.2 SSD option and 4 DIMM slots is worth the 20 quid or so IMO.

tilting tim

Would I be better with 2x4 rather than 1 8 memory then

Denny_Crane

tilting tim wrote: »

Would I be better with 2x4 rather than 1 8 memory then

With 4 DIMM slots yes as the memory can operate in dual channel mode. What the performance boost is - dunno :pac:

K.O.Kiki

Denny_Crane wrote: »

With 4 DIMM slots yes as the memory can operate in dual channel mode. What the performance boost is - dunno :pac:

Dual Channel provides no tangible benefits in games - a 1-2% boost, or sometimes even reduction, in frame rates.

Grab the cheapest/Gb stick or set you find.

Denny_Crane

I stand corrected. Right so unless you need a stupidly fast (M.2) SSD vs a very very fast (SATA) SSD you can probably go back to the H110.

tilting tim

One more stupid question, is there an SSD in the motherboard already?

Denny_Crane

tilting tim wrote: »

One more stupid question, is there an SSD in the motherboard already?

SSD = Solid State Drive, it's like a very very fast hard drive and will massively speed up your system. Even a 120GB model is worth it for chucking the OS on.

tilting tim

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/hPVbyf

Dropped down in motherboard and price of storage and added ssd, still around £600, this a better system?

Slutmonkey57b

Any system with an SSD is automatically better than one without.

tilting tim

So would this be a fairly good build?

K.O.Kiki

tilting tim wrote: »

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/hPVbyf

Dropped down in motherboard and price of storage and added ssd, still around £600, this a better system?

Looks good, no compatibility issues.

Denny_Crane

+1 Looks like a neat system that. For 1080p gaming it's going to fly!

tilting tim

Great stuff, should I buy away or is there January sales coming up?

tadcan

Not only will there be sales in January, new processors will be released by Intel as well, so if you can wait for a month then it should save you a few €.

Denny_Crane

There might be some marginal drops but at the 500-750 range it likely to be around 10% at best. You might get a bit more power for your buck though, perhaps a true quad core, but bear in mind you can always pick up an i7 in 36 months time second hand for a nice boost.

Joshua J

tilting tim wrote: »

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/hPVbyf

Dropped down in motherboard and price of storage and added ssd, still around £600, this a better system?

I actually have the same set up (i3 6100/RX 480 4gb) and I'm currently playing Witcher 3 on Ultra settings at 1080p and it looks fantastic.

Denny_Crane

120GB isn't huge but you'll be able to put a couple of games on it and punt them back to the HDD once you're not playing them so much. AFAIK steam doesn't have a feature to migrate games so you have to do it manually but it's well worth it for the load time reduction! The difference between day to day use on the OS as well is staggering. I find it almost impossible to use a non SSD system these days especially just after boot.

tilting tim

Ordered this last night so thanks for advice on what to get, sure I will be back with more questions when I start trying to figure out how to put it all together

tilting tim

Well, followed a video and have it put together and think its working ok, now I must install windows, anyone know a good guide or have a link to download windows?

K.O.Kiki

https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/software-download/windows10
https://mspoweruser.com/how-to-create-a-bootable-usb-drive-for-windows-10/

Install Windows 10 Home 64-bit, skip Activation whenever it asks.

You can buy a key in future if the watermark annoys you.

tilting tim

Great doing that now, when I have it downloaded and ready to go is it just plug USB into new pc and press delete when I start up to get onto the boot up options

tilting tim

Progress update
Everything is working well only problem I have is I can't seem to find the 2nd drive on file explorer, it is registering on the boot menu (when I pressed F2 starting up) but can't find it to save files on, any suggestions?

Joshua J

tilting tim wrote: »

Progress update
Everything is working well only problem I have is I can't seem to find the 2nd drive on file explorer, it is registering on the boot menu (when I pressed F2 starting up) but can't find it to save files on, any suggestions?

Did you assign it a drive letter?.

http://windowsreport.com/second-hard-drive-not-detected-windows-10/

tilting tim

That sorted it thanks