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[JonnyDBrit]

Hey guys. So I have my PC part list all fleshed out but something is bothering me after picking up my CPU today. I bought a Intel Core i5-7600K 3.8GHz Quad processor which is the newest generation (I think kaby lake or something) and I'm looking to pair this with an Nvidia 1070. Would both of those go together fine? I was speaking to a guy on the line who I was picking it up with as well and he told me that going for an i7 with a 1070 is better than the i5 which threw me off and gave me second thoughts on that graphics card now 😥. Help...PS. first time pc builder

What they mean is that performance wise the CPU, if it were an i7, would have less of a bottleneck on it when paired with the card. The i5 will be fine however if your main aim is 1080p at 60 frames a second - you'll be well clear of that in almost every game - and should handle mostly alright at 1440p, though you may have to drop a few settings here and there.

 

[Wowfunhappy]

WTS an EVGA GTX 1070 Founders Edition for $380, shipped to anywhere in the US. It has never been overclocked, and while it was physically in my computer for ~8 months, I ended up having very little time to use it during that period. It has never been overclocked.

If you don't mind picking it up in Manhattan, I can do $370.

Thanks!

 

[anaron]

Is there a decent $500-800 prebuilt desktop on Amazon Canada anyone can recommend for my friend who just wants to play FF XIV?

 

[Megabat]

OK, I hope this is the right place to post this.

A co worker that I used to work with ( guess thats an ex co worker ) Wants me to build him a computer. He wants to record music I think, and his budget is around 500$.

I haven't had to buy components for a computer in a couple of years so I'd really like to know where I stand. If what I have thought out is bad please tell me. I'm welcome to any and all suggestions.

Corsair Carbide Series 200R Black Steel 54$
Seagate 1 TB hard drive 51$
EVGA 450W PSU 29$
Ballistix 16gb Ram ( 2x8gb ) 89$
ASRock B250M-HDV Motherboard 62$
Intel Core i5-6400 6 MB Skylake Quad-Core 2.7 GHz 182$

That comes to 472$

Can I skimp on the graphics card since he won't need it? or is there anything else I could possibly reduce the cost in?

At what level? How many tracks simultaneously? What software/outboard equipment does he want to use?

Without knowing any of that: He might be better off starting with a secondhand 2008-09 Mac Pro. They're purpose-built for audio production. They are beautiful machines.

On the other hand, you can build a pretty nice Windows machine: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/stNfGf

Especially if he's new to audio, this will take him far. The Pentium G4560 is a 2C/4T part that is very close to an i3/laptop i5. If you go for a quad-core, there'll be nothing left for a fast SSD (a much better up-front investment, IMO) and memory. You could save some money with a SATA SSD instead of PCIe, but the flash shortage (I suppose) has driven those up to a point where the price difference is nearly negligible. As his need increases, he can upgrade to an i5 or i7. I was surprised at how good some of the less--expensive H270 boards are. Plenty of PCIe lanes, plenty of display outputs.

Just in case, make sure he isn't including OS/monitor in that budget.

Edit: sorry, yeah: you don't have to worry about discrete graphics unless he's driving multiple 1440p+ panels.

 

[Megabat]

Hey guys. So I have my PC part list all fleshed out but something is bothering me after picking up my CPU today. I bought a Intel Core i5-7600K 3.8GHz Quad processor which is the newest generation (I think kaby lake or something) and I'm looking to pair this with an Nvidia 1070. Would both of those go together fine? I was speaking to a guy on the line who I was picking it up with as well and he told me that going for an i7 with a 1070 is better than the i5 which threw me off and gave me second thoughts on that graphics card now 😥. Help...PS. first time pc builder

Unless you swap the 1070 for two 1080 TIs and drive a high-refresh monitor, you'll be GPU-bottlenecked for a good long while. Rejoice.

 

[Jesb]

Is it worth it for me to upgrade from my 7970? Starting to see that even for 1080p it's going to struggle at high settings for new games coming out. I have a amd 8350 cpu with 700 psu.

 

[JonnyDBrit]

Is there a decent $500-800 prebuilt desktop on Amazon Canada anyone can recommend for my friend who just wants to play FF XIV?

...Does it have to be from Amazon Canada specifically? Because honestly there's just not a lot of decent options that aren't also running FX-series CPUs, which for the price to be paid wouldn't be all that great.

Admittedly, it seems to be there's a general lack of current, up to date prebuilt PCs in that price range for Canada in general. Closest I can find is this over at Newegg, and that's without accounting shipping, which nudges it over 800. If they were willing to shell out another 50 dollars or so though they can get this, which with the RX 480 alone would be a fair bit more powerful.

 

[Megabat]

Is it worth it for me to upgrade from my 7970? Starting to see that even for 1080p it's going to struggle at high settings for new games coming out. I have a amd 8350 cpu with 700 psu.

You could go up to a Radeon 480 or GeForce 1060 - or wait a year or two and replace the entire system.

 

[Jesb]

You could go up to a Radeon 480 or GeForce 1060 - or wait a year or two and replace the entire system.

Looks like I should probably wait until I get a new build eh.... Probably best to wait it out and get something 4K ready if I go that route.

 

[Kadey]

7700k it is. 1080 Ti is all I need now. Have to wait for non FE versions.

Someone made new thread? I think we're pass the limit now.

 

[AyaisMUsikWhore]

What they mean is that performance wise the CPU, if it were an i7, would have less of a bottleneck on it when paired with the card. The i5 will be fine however if your main aim is 1080p at 60 frames a second - you'll be well clear of that in almost every game - and should handle mostly alright at 1440p, though you may have to drop a few settings here and there.

This is precisiely what I'm what I'm aiming for. Since the games I have aren't that demanding, I don't think I'll need to go higher than that. Thank you 😊

Unless you swap the 1070 for two 1080 TIs and drive a high-refresh monitor, you'll be GPU-bottlenecked for a good long while. Rejoice.

This.....means...I'm good right? 😳

 

[Megabat]

This is precisiely what I'm what I'm aiming for. Since the games I have aren't that demanding, I don't think I'll need to go higher than that. Thank you 😊



This.....means...I'm good right? 😳

If you just want 1080p, get a Radeon 480 or GeForce 1060. The 1070 has 8GB of memory on a 256-bit bus - it is two fast 1080p-capable cards taped together.

 

[Nuu]

What CPU seems to have i5-2500k lengths of life in it?

Anyone?

 

[opticalmace]

Anyone?

Can't predict the future, but I can't see you going wrong with the 7700k. I haven't read any 7600k reviews, but the 6600k was extremely potent so I imagine it should be very good too.

Normally I'd say the 5820k too, but that segment might get upturned a bit with Ryzen--hard to say. Games seem to be starting to use more cores, but maybe coffee lake will bring mainstream intel 6 core parts.

My money would be on the 7700k if I had to buy a gaming rig today.

edit: as urthor says below, I don't think we're going to see 2500k-like lifespan in the CPU market for a long long time.

 

[Urthor]

Honestly I don't think 2500k length of life is going to be a feature of the industry going forward. What is more likely is incessant complaining on 'Gaf and other sites about Intel not ponying up and releasing better single threaded CPUs as our console releases become more and more CPU limited as better GPUs arrive.

The 2500k's long lifespan was a function of it coming in 2/3rds of the way through the last console generation, Intel not releasing stronger single threaded CPUs because AMD shat the bed, and with 99% of demanding AAA games being cross platform almost every game was undemanding enough on the CPU that they weren't troubling the 2500k's almightyness.

This continued for a number of years before eventually we started to see certain locked 30FPS console games that leverage the console CPU enough that we would be actually CPU gated.

This won't be the case in the future, going forward PC players are going to be playing an ever increasing stream of those high end sub 30FPS with drops console games at 60FPS, and given that GPUs have followed Moore's law and CPUs haven't we're going to start running into CPU limited PC games where a 2500k isn't going to stack up.

 

[Nuu]

Can't predict the future, but I can't see you going wrong with the 7700k. I haven't read any 7600k reviews, but the 6600k was extremely potent so I imagine it should be very good too.

Normally I'd say the 5820k too, but that segment might get upturned a bit with Ryzen--hard to say. Games seem to be starting to use more cores, but maybe coffee lake will bring mainstream intel 6 core parts.

My money would be on the 7700k if I had to buy a gaming rig today.

edit: as urthor says below, I don't think we're going to see 2500k-like lifespan in the CPU market for a long long time.

Honestly I don't think 2500k length of life is going to be a feature of the industry going forward. What is more likely is incessant complaining on 'Gaf and other sites about Intel not ponying up and releasing better single threaded CPUs as our console releases become more and more CPU limited as better GPUs arrive.

The 2500k's long lifespan was a function of it coming in 2/3rds of the way through the last console generation, Intel not releasing stronger single threaded CPUs because AMD shat the bed, and with 99% of demanding AAA games being cross platform almost every game was undemanding enough on the CPU that they weren't troubling the 2500k's almightyness.

This continued for a number of years before eventually we started to see certain locked 30FPS console games that leverage the console CPU enough that we would be actually CPU gated.

This won't be the case in the future, going forward PC players are going to be playing an ever increasing stream of those high end sub 30FPS with drops console games at 60FPS, and given that GPUs have followed Moore's law and CPUs haven't we're going to start running into CPU limited PC games where a 2500k isn't going to stack up.

Great posts! Thanks.

To be fair, I've noticed that as time goes on the amount of games that notably push hardware are farther and fewer inbetween. And as ibdie games seem to dominate the landscape, the future looks similar.

 

[Oxn]

WTS an EVGA GTX 1070 Founders Edition for $380, shipped to anywhere in the US. It has never been overclocked, and while it was physically in my computer for ~8 months, I ended up having very little time to use it during that period. It has never been overclocked.

If you don't mind picking it up in Manhattan, I can do $370.

Thanks!

Isnt brand new $350 now?

 

[A.Romero]

Hey guys. So I have my PC part list all fleshed out but something is bothering me after picking up my CPU today. I bought a Intel Core i5-7600K 3.8GHz Quad processor which is the newest generation (I think kaby lake or something) and I'm looking to pair this with an Nvidia 1070. Would both of those go together fine? I was speaking to a guy on the line who I was picking it up with as well and he told me that going for an i7 with a 1070 is better than the i5 which threw me off and gave me second thoughts on that graphics card now 😥. Help...PS. first time pc builder

He is wrong. Your set up is fine. There is no way that CPU is bottlenecking a 1070...

Also it's a K series so you can easily overclock it.

Get it and enjoy it, it's a hell of a system.

 

[Guileless]

Any owners of the Digital Storm Bolt here? I'm considering one of those.

 

[gdt]

Any advice for Ram?

Now that I got a 1080ti coming, I figure it's time to bump the old girl up to 16gb. Any deals or something I should look out for in particular?

 

[Cyriades]

Will the 5820k work well with 1080ti?

 

[Bloodember]

Will the 5820k work well with 1080ti?

Yes, why wouldn't it?

 

[opticalmace]

Any advice for Ram?

Now that I got a 1080ti coming, I figure it's time to bump the old girl up to 16gb. Any deals or something I should look out for in particular?

What cpu/mobo?

 

[Cyriades]

Yes, why wouldn't it?

Thanks.

 

[anaron]

...Does it have to be from Amazon Canada specifically? Because honestly there's just not a lot of decent options that aren't also running FX-series CPUs, which for the price to be paid wouldn't be all that great.

Admittedly, it seems to be there's a general lack of current, up to date prebuilt PCs in that price range for Canada in general. Closest I can find is this over at Newegg, and that's without accounting shipping, which nudges it over 800. If they were willing to shell out another 50 dollars or so though they can get this, which with the RX 480 alone would be a fair bit more powerful.

She has 400 dollars of Amazon credit on there so she wants to use it towards that.

I found one that seems good/worth it. Thoughts?

 

[PlayALLtheGames]

Hey guys. So I have my PC part list all fleshed out but something is bothering me after picking up my CPU today. I bought a Intel Core i5-7600K 3.8GHz Quad processor which is the newest generation (I think kaby lake or something) and I'm looking to pair this with an Nvidia 1070. Would both of those go together fine? I was speaking to a guy on the line who I was picking it up with as well and he told me that going for an i7 with a 1070 is better than the i5 which threw me off and gave me second thoughts on that graphics card now 😥. Help...PS. first time pc builder

If he was alluding to bottleneck that's nonsense. Don't worry about it.

By the way you should overclock that 7600k right out of the box.

 

[Filth]

Hey guys. So I have my PC part list all fleshed out but something is bothering me after picking up my CPU today. I bought a Intel Core i5-7600K 3.8GHz Quad processor which is the newest generation (I think kaby lake or something) and I'm looking to pair this with an Nvidia 1070. Would both of those go together fine? I was speaking to a guy on the line who I was picking it up with as well and he told me that going for an i7 with a 1070 is better than the i5 which threw me off and gave me second thoughts on that graphics card now 😥. Help...PS. first time pc builder

your setup is great. you can upgrade your video card for atleast the next two years. you have a 1070 but if you ever decide to get a 1080 ti you would be set.

 

[Filth]

yo pc bros. i never dabbled with overclocking but i have a 4770k, an asus z97 deluxe mb and a corsair h100i watercooler. so im at 4.2 mhz at 1.26 core voltage. after aida64 stress test at 22 minutes my pc reset. highest temp was 78c but it still crashed. should i raise voltage or lower the clock ?

 

[Drain You]

If he wants to record music you should at the least look at getting a SSD.

I thought about that but I don't think he is very serious about the whole music thing, and with a 500$ budget I feel like it would be hard to fit in. He does want ample space though. Plus an SSD could alway be something he could add at a later date. I just wanna get him up and running.

At what level? How many tracks simultaneously? What software/outboard equipment does he want to use?

Without knowing any of that: He might be better off starting with a secondhand 2008-09 Mac Pro. They're purpose-built for audio production. They are beautiful machines.

On the other hand, you can build a pretty nice Windows machine: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/stNfGf

Especially if he's new to audio, this will take him far. The Pentium G4560 is a 2C/4T part that is very close to an i3/laptop i5. If you go for a quad-core, there'll be nothing left for a fast SSD (a much better up-front investment, IMO) and memory. You could save some money with a SATA SSD instead of PCIe, but the flash shortage (I suppose) has driven those up to a point where the price difference is nearly negligible. As his need increases, he can upgrade to an i5 or i7. I was surprised at how good some of the less--expensive H270 boards are. Plenty of PCIe lanes, plenty of display outputs.

Just in case, make sure he isn't including OS/monitor in that budget.

Edit: sorry, yeah: you don't have to worry about discrete graphics unless he's driving multiple 1440p+ panels.

Thanks for this post. He has no idea what software he wants to use. Has no audio equipment yet. He knows nothing about literally any of it. I just need two build him a somewhat capable computer for him to work with plus usual stuff. Internet youtube etc. The monitor he's got I don't believe is even 1080p, as for the OS I've got a friend who works as a school who can purchase on campus for fairly cheap.

 

[arigato]

On the market for a new gaming PC. My budget is $300 to $539. I already have all the neccesary peripherals now all I need is the gaming desktop tower PC. For that price what's the best I can get?
Must be able to run Ori and the Blind Forest on high at 60 FPS, preferably same goes for Hollow Knight. Based in the US and main use is a 4. I have no qualms with reusing parts or buying refurbished. Resolution? 1920x1080 is good enough and not planning on upgrading my monitor anytime soon. I don't have any deadline to build the PC, and I am not sure what overclocking is but if saying yes to overclocking means better smoother performance then yes.

 

[Jeff6851]

Can I use 2800 MHz DDR4 RAM with an i5 7600k? It says the max RAM speed is 2400 but I've read that it just treats anything above that as an overclock (paraphrasing hard here).

Would it be better to go down to 2400? The price difference isn't really that much.

This is the mobo

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130971

 

[Filth]

Can I use 2800 MHz DDR4 RAM with an i5 7600k? It says the max RAM speed is 2400 but I've read that it just treats anything above that as an overclock (paraphrasing hard here).

Would it be better to go down to 2400? The price difference isn't really that much.

This is the mobo

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130971

from the intel website


" Given the specs of any Kaby Lake processor, the maximum supported DDR4 memory speed is 2400. Any memory speed above 2400 is a memory over clock. The Intel specifications for the memory controller in the processor have always been conservative. DDR4 memory at 2400 will only be at 1.2V.

As you know, there are all kinds of models of DDR4 memory sold with speeds over 2400. Speeds up to and beyond 4000 are available. DDR4 at 3200 is a moderate memory over clock for a Kaby Lake 'K' type processor. You should be able to achieve that easily with a good quality mother board, by simply using the XMP profile. The quality of your mother board and its UEFI/BIOS are factors in achieving higher memory over clocks. It is more difficult to use greater amounts of memory (16GB+) at speeds above ~3400. Using 1.35V with good DDR4 memory is standard procedure. I personally won't go beyond 1.35V, but some people do. "



you can use it.. in the bios set it to 2800 and it will be ok

 

[Coldfriction]

On the market for a new gaming PC. My budget is $300 to $539. I already have all the neccesary peripherals now all I need is the gaming desktop tower PC. For that price what's the best I can get?
Must be able to run Ori and the Blind Forest on high at 60 FPS, preferably same goes for Hollow Knight. Based in the US and main use is a 4. I have no qualms with reusing parts or buying refurbished. Resolution? 1920x1080 is good enough and not planning on upgrading my monitor anytime soon. I don't have any deadline to build the PC, and I am not sure what overclocking is but if saying yes to overclocking means better smoother performance then yes.

IMO look for a refurbished Dell T1650, or T1700. These are just coming out of their three year warranty period are being replaced all over. Ivy Bridge and Haswell machines still have all the grunt needed for even the highest 1080p 60hz performance.

They will look similar to this, although I might not recommend this one specifically:
https://www.amazon.com/Precision-T1650-Workstation-i5-3550-3-3GHz/dp/B01G7NYNHY/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1489215311&sr=8-5&keywords=dell+t1650

Realize that they don't have power supplies able to handle more than an RX480 or GTX1060, but they match up fairly well with those cards. Some out there come with a decent SSD, 16GB of ram, etc. I doubt any will have a serious graphics card in them. But for a lot of indie games and Ori, they should be fine. Many are ex-CAD machines and have okish graphics cards that you could consider entry level to pc gaming.

Don't try to overclock them either. I've had one motherboard on a similar system actually blow a capacitor. Dell makes these things in massive quantities and they don't like high failure rates for machines built en masse, but they build them to very tight and limited specifications. The biggest concern is if an add in graphics card will draw more power than their power supplies can handle.

If you really look around you can find them for a great price. If you know someone working at a place that uses these sorts of machines and replaces them regularly, ask them what their company does with the old machines.

 

[scitek]

My old i5 2500K is crashing routinely, and I think I'll just go ahead and replace that and my motherboard this weekend. I live near a Microcenter, so what would be the best combo (mobo+CPU+RAM) to replace it with right now for ~$500?

Also, can I reuse my Hyper 212 Plus cooler? Thanks for any help.

 

[intheinbetween]

My old i5 2500K is crashing routinely, and I think I'll just go ahead and replace that and my motherboard this weekend. I live near a Microcenter, so what would be the best combo (mobo+CPU+RAM) to replace it with right now for ~$500?

Also, can I reuse my Hyper 212 Plus cooler? Thanks for any help.

I am still using my old CM Hyper Evo 212 (which I used on my old 2500k rig) with my current i7 6700k.

nvm, I just noticed Hyper 212 Plus is older than Evo..

 

[scitek]

I am still using my old CM Hyper Evo 212 (which I used on my old 2500k rig) with my current i7 6700k.

nvm, I just noticed Hyper 212 Plus is older than Evo..

I'll likely just get a new cooler. They're not that expensive, and I'll likely try using the 2500K for an HTPC. I think it might just need new thermal paste applied, but I'm using this as an excuse to upgrade.

 

[TheTux]

Hey tech GAF I have a problem with my new PC and I have no idea how to fix or even what the hell is causing it.

Basically, the PC works perfectly when it's on but sometimes when I boot it I get nothing but a black screen.

The monitor doesn't get any signal, I can't see the BIOS text and I can't even reset it by pressing the power button for many seconds... I have to manually reset the power and then restart the PC. After restarting it, it works wonderfully.

My motherboard is a Z270 Gaming Pro Carbon (latest firmware). My GPU is a RX480 (latest drivers).

Is there some option in the BIOS that I don't know about that could be causing this? Maybe something like Fast Boot?

Thanks in advance for you help, GAF!

 

[Bloodember]

Hey tech GAF I have a problem with my new PC and I have no idea how to fix or even what the hell is causing it.

Basically, the PC works perfectly when it's on but sometimes when I boot it I get nothing but a black screen.

The monitor doesn't get any signal, I can't see the BIOS text and I can't even reset it by pressing the power button for many seconds... I have to manually reset the power and then restart the PC. After restarting it, it works wonderfully.

My motherboard is a Z270 Gaming Pro Carbon (latest firmware). My GPU is a RX480 (latest drivers).

Is there some option in the BIOS that I don't know about that could be causing this? Maybe something like Fast Boot?

Thanks in advance for you help, GAF!

What are the rest of your specs, including the PSU.

 

[GinoFelino]

Hey tech GAF I have a problem with my new PC and I have no idea how to fix or even what the hell is causing it.

Basically, the PC works perfectly when it's on but sometimes when I boot it I get nothing but a black screen.

The monitor doesn't get any signal, I can't see the BIOS text and I can't even reset it by pressing the power button for many seconds... I have to manually reset the power and then restart the PC. After restarting it, it works wonderfully.

My motherboard is a Z270 Gaming Pro Carbon (latest firmware). My GPU is a RX480 (latest drivers).

Is there some option in the BIOS that I don't know about that could be causing this? Maybe something like Fast Boot?

Thanks in advance for you help, GAF!

Yeah I've got a similar mobo (z270 SLI Plus) and the Fast Boot thing didn't sound like it should be enabled. Turn it off and see if the issue persists.

 

[TheTux]

Yeah I've got a similar mobo (z270 SLI Plus) and the Fast Boot thing didn't sound like it should be enabled. Turn it off and see if the issue persists.

Will try later.

 

[Sqrt_minus_one]

Hey guys I think my GPU might have bit the dust and I need some troubleshooting advice.

I have a GTX 780 and last night I was idling in a game and using my phone then all of a sudden my screen goes solid grey then monitor goes into power saving mode - I can still hear the game in the background though.

I do a hard restart but now there are blue dots all over my screen.

Now the get this though if I use Nvidia drivers for my GPU I get blue dots but if I use the generic windows drivers everything is fine.

Does anyone have any advice?

 

[Vipu]

Hey guys I think my GPU might have bit the dust and I need some troubleshooting advice.

I have a GTX 780 and last night I was idling in a game and using my phone then all of a sudden my screen goes solid grey then monitor goes into power saving mode - I can still hear the game in the background though.

I do a hard restart but now there are blue dots all over my screen.

Now the get this though if I use Nvidia drivers for my GPU I get blue dots but if I use the generic windows drivers everything is fine.

Does anyone have any advice?

Try different (older) drivers?

 

[TheTux]

Yeah I've got a similar mobo (z270 SLI Plus) and the Fast Boot thing didn't sound like it should be enabled. Turn it off and see if the issue persists.

Looks like Fast Boot is off and has always been off.

 

[Sqrt_minus_one]

Try different (older) drivers?

Have done, I also used Display Driver Unistaller and selected clean install from Nvidia driver installer.

The dots only appear in dark areas though which is weird.

 

[GinoFelino]

Looks like Fast Boot is off and has always been off.

Hm, that's not good

 

[AyaisMUsikWhore]

If you just want 1080p, get a Radeon 480 or GeForce 1060. The 1070 has 8GB of memory on a 256-bit bus - it is two fast 1080p-capable cards taped together.

So wouldn't that be a good thing? I'm sorry, I'm a complete baby at this so I'm kind of lost on the translation. 😥. He did tell me that going down to a 1060 was better but I thought having the bigger 1070 would just put me in a comfortable range that I wouldn't need to upgrade it for a while.

He is wrong. Your set up is fine. There is no way that CPU is bottlenecking a 1070...

Also it's a K series so you can easily overclock it.

Get it and enjoy it, it's a hell of a system.

If he was alluding to bottleneck that's nonsense. Don't worry about it.

By the way you should overclock that 7600k right out of the box.

I'm a bit worried about overclocking. If this something that I can do very easily? Are there any potential risks I need to be aware of before doing it such as frying the system.

your setup is great. you can upgrade your video card for atleast the next two years. you have a 1070 but if you ever decide to get a 1080 ti you would be set.

Thanks! I'm not sure I'm ready for that card yet lol but I definitely will look at that in the future. All I'll be doing with this build is catching up on my steam backlog which are mostly indie game but some third parties as well, overwatch, playing civilization and Cities Skyline so I'm praying that this build holds up.

I never posted it but this is what I'm looking at

https://pcpartpicker.com/user/ayaismusikwhore/saved/bpwmGX

 

[JonnyDBrit]

She has 400 dollars of Amazon credit on there so she wants to use it towards that.

I found one that seems good/worth it. Thoughts?

That seems like the best she'll get. Only other possibilities would involve getting cheaper machines and buying/installing a better graphics card separately. Stuff like this would outstrip it on the CPU side of things, but only has integrated graphics, while this has a GPU (and a really cheesy case), but has an R7 250 which would not hold up well performance. After looking around today there seems to be a deal for a PC at $639.99, but that would mean leaving the Amazon credit for another day entirely.

 

[Übermatik]

What's the difference between a standard SSD and M.2 memory? How does M.2 fit into the rest of a build, and are there any additional Mobo requirements to use M.2 storage?

I just got an alert from PCPartPicker for this:

Samsung 850 EVO 250GB M.2-2280 SSD:
https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/8WZ2FT/samsung-internal-hard-drive-mzn5e250bw?ref=ppxe
£85.98

How does this fare vs. the SSD I chose?:

Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive:
https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/3kL7YJ/samsung-internal-hard-drive-mz75e250bam
£89.00

Just a heads up for the rest of my config: AMD Ryzen 7 1700, B350 Motherboard, 2x8GB RAM, 500w PSU.

 

[JonnyDBrit]

What's the difference between a standard SSD and M.2 memory? How does M.2 fit into the rest of a build, and are there any additional Mobo requirements to use M.2 storage?

I just got an alert from PCPartPicker for this:

Samsung 850 EVO 250GB M.2-2280 SSD:
https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/8WZ2FT/samsung-internal-hard-drive-mzn5e250bw?ref=ppxe
£85.98

How does this fare vs. the SSD I chose?:

Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive:
https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/3kL7YJ/samsung-internal-hard-drive-mz75e250bam
£89.00

Just a heads up for the rest of my config: AMD Ryzen 7 1700, B350 Motherboard, 2x8GB RAM, 500w PSU.

M.2 drives are basically sticks that slot directly into the motherboard itself. Recent motherboards tend to come with a slot by default, and for Ryzen I'd be surprised if any of them didn't. If I'm reading the details right there wouldn't be any substantial performance difference - the advertised read/write speeds being the same - but hey, one's cheaper and won't require a drive bay.

 

[GreenTornadoX]

I know that it's cheaper to part things out and do it yourself, but is this prebuilt pc decent for $719 plus tax?

My last pc was a dell back in 2006 and it died in 2010. I've seen videos having that pc run games decently at 1080p.