So the reason for not going with a 290 is because my friend said that if I want to at a later date purchase another graphics card on the cheap (an R9 270X or something) and cross fire and reach a performance a little below the 290.
I was also trying to avoid Nividia CPU's because I like that the AMD has built in software that tracks CPU temperature.
EDIT: Also we were trying to avoid Micro ATX's for the motherboard/case. I'm very wary about overheating the computer, so I want as much surface area/volume as possible.
Crossfire and SLI is generally not recommended around here as not all games work with multiple graphics cards and not all will scale well in terms of performance. I actually had twin Gigabyte R9 270X cards for a bit less than a year and while it did work very well with the games that supported crossfire, I was disappointed that some games simply don't use more than one GPU. Of course, that is my own experience and not necessarily how it'll be for you. Aside from the Witcher 3, you should do a bit of research and see how well crossfire is supported by the games you intend to play.
That said,
500 watts isn't enough for R9 280 crossfire, an 700~800 watt or greater power supply is recommended. In the future you would need to factor in the cost of a new higher quality power supply. Also,
you can't crossfire that R9 280 you had in your list with an R9 270X either. The general rule of thumb for running multiple GPUs is that you want to have the exact same model of card.
It's definitely true that a crossfire setup can result in much better performance for the money over a single stronger card, but it also comes with its own issues like higher wattage requirements, potential graphics glitches (
flickering textures are common issues for games that don't support multiple GPUs well but can be fixed with new drivers), and extra heat (extra card generates heat, overheating will depend on your case's airflow and fan setup). For overall stability and "ease of use" we tend to recommend single graphics cards whenever possible, and crossfire and SLI only for setups where money isn't an issue and/or the person wants high quality and framerate at high resolution (4K, etc) where even the strongest single graphics cards like the Titan X won't be enough.
It is possible to get a cheap ATX motherboard, it will cost a little bit more than mATX. I only recommend mATX for your full ATX build because it cost the least money and you have a low budget. For example, this ATX size
ASRock B85 Anniversary motherboard costs $60. That would be one of the cheapest ones I could recommend.
However, you seem to be mistaken about PC cooling. The processor and graphics cards are the largest contributors to PC heat, the motherboard itself will not overheat unless you are doing extreme overclocking which you stated you would not be doing at all. The size of the motherboard has nothing to do with heat radiation and the board itself does not act as a radiator/conductor for heat. The one part of a motherboard that does heat up would be the motherboard MOSFETs, which usually don't need extra cooling unless the user is overclocking or running a very high end processor.
Take a look at these thermal images by Tom's Hardware, you can see for yourself that the ATX motherboard's extra PCI-E slots are the coolest part of the PC even during hotbox testing, so the extra length of the ATX motherboard doesn't matter when it comes to temperatures, the CPU and graphics card does.
The CPU cooler, case airflow design, and what fans are installed will make the difference when it comes to heat and cooling. I'd recommend a CPU cooler if you want lower CPU temperatures. The stock one is alright, but only barely gets the job done if under heavy CPU stress (video encoding, computation, or other similar tasks). The stock cooler is alright since you won't be overclocking, it might just get somewhat loud as the small fan ramps up speed under load.
If you are worried about heat, the i5 4590 is a nice processor and should not get too hot.
It is rated for a 84 watt TDP. Thermal Design Power figures can be thought of as how much maximum heat the device will produce at normal operation).
The FX-6300 is rated for a 95 watt TDP. As for the graphics card, Nvidia's latest cards
offer much more efficiency and less heat than AMD's current offerings, but since you want to avoid them, let's just leave it at that.
Edit: revised the post a few times for clarity and info links.
It's an ARRIS : Touchstone Data Gateway DG1670. I do get spotty signal though since my room's in the basement and the router is behind the couch above me in the living room. A fancier router (and for only $13 more) seems great - I definitely want to use N if possible. Thanks for the help!
Here's my final build (individual parts arriving either tomorrow or Monday at my office):
Oh, you can use wifi N with both adaptors, just throwing out a cheaper recommendation in case you prefer to save costs.
I don't think I remember you saying you were going to order everything from Amazon and Newegg, I could have tailored the build for best cost from those two retailers. Oh well.
Thanks I'll going to go ahead and order some of the parts now. But I wanted to ask one last question. my friend says that putting the OS on a ssd harddrive and my other data on a regular will increase my boot time greatly.
Should I go for this option or would it be pointless? since I spend a bit more if the benefit is worth it.
The SSD will improve loading times greatly for anything stored on it. It's very nice to have, but I usually leave it out of cheap builds. It's up to you to decide if it's worth it because SSDs cost quite a lot more when compared to hard drives. While you can get a 1TB HDD for $50, the same amount of money only gets you a 120/128GB SSD. If you don't need that much storage space, then you could opt for an SSD instead of a hard drive if you prefer one. If you want both, thenyou're going to have to spend over your budget. Given the size of Windows and that you may want to keep some applications and games on the SSD for faster loading, 120GB is the smallest SSD we'd recommend for that. You could consider a 64GB SSD, but those aren't very popular anymore and mainly exist as budget options for those that really can't afford a larger one.
I should mention that while SSDs improve loading times, they don't improve game performance. Hard drives are a bottleneck when it comes to file transfers and loading times, but the CPU and graphics card are what matters for game performance like framerate and graphical quality.
T01ACA 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($49.98 @ OutletPC)
