Wednesday, September 26, 2018

gaming rig for the wife

so I used to be smart with hardware.... but that was windows XP era. I'll call myself above stupid now. My wife wants to get back into gaming so I need to build her a rig. We don't need the best of the best, something "good enough". When digging through PCPartpicker, I kept going this is better and ended up with a 4k build. I'd like to stay in the sub $1500 range. I'm hoping to get suggestions on parts that will allow her to play at decent settings but not looking to set any benchmark records.

Cooling: This area I have little knowledge of. I put a water cooler on an old PC that was overheating and was in love with how quiet it was. Are the systems with big illuminated reservoirs necessary on these builds or is that all show? ... They are pretty though.

OS drive: I'm assuming the OS should go on the M.2 drive. If the OS and boot applications are the only thing on the M.2, should I get like a 128GB and save money for other components.

Storage: I picked up a 1TB SSD on Amazon for $100 so I think I'm good there. I also have a 8TB File server so I think I don't need to spend any money on this. The way I'm thinking is a 128-300GB M.2 for boot apps and the 1TB SSD for local file storage.

CPU: I go down a rabbit hole when looking at these but truth is I still look at modern CPU's with old people eyes. Do I need an I7 to play games decently or should I save and get an I5. Should I get the I7 but with less cores? I feel like this component can make or break budget and I don't know enough to make an informed decision.

GPU: This is where I planned on putting the big chunk of cash. I was thinking a 1070Ti or 1080Ti. Both do VR, both should play games at very good resolution/frame rate. The Bitcoin crash is really helping with GPU prices so better is becoming more of an option. I'm not sure how much RAM is good in a graphics card, probably the more the better. What would be a good card for good game play but not a serious gamer.

MOBO: I was thinking about throwing the other info into PCPartpicker and letting it tell me what is compatible and then reading stats. Anything I should be looking for?

Ram: probably just going to read reviews on compatible parts

Power supply: should I be picky here or just get something compatible with power requirements?

OS: most likely sticking Windows 10 on this.

That's all I can think of right now. Am I missing anything? Thanks for any input you give, it's good to learn new stuff.

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