The $1000 heavy duty gamer
The $1000 heavy duty gamer
What's up everyone, this is Besle with a new computer build. It's been a while since i last posted a build, mainly due to the fact that not much new has been released in the last couple of months. There's a lot of upcoming stuff, mainly AMD's new APU's and graphics card, and Intel Skylake, but i'll probably cover those later.
For today i've chosen to do a somewhat familiar build to what i've done earlier, based on a request i got. A lot of people who build computers first off wants as much power as possible for multitasking, or simply heavy duty related work. As such the Core I7 series is incredibly tempting to buy, but i chose a different processor for this build.
The CPU
Intel Xeon E3-1230 V3
Now some of you might not be to familiar with the Xeon brand by Intel, and that's understandable. The Xeon series is mostly seen in very highend workstations, or in servers. They offer high reliability, support for ECC RAM, and hyperthreading at a lower price point than what Intels I7 series can offer. So what's the catch?
Well to put it plainly
Intel I7 offers
Overclockability
Internal Graphics Unit(The Intel HD graphics)
Lower price when compared to stock speed, and turbo speed
This means, if you're going on about wanting the highest stock speed as possible, Xeon is not your kind of CPU, as the Xeon model i've chosen does come at a slower stock speed than the Intel I7 counterpart.
Intel Xeon offers
Hyperthreading at a lower price
Support for ECC RAM
High-end Xeon CPU's offers a lot more L3 cache, not in this case
More cores per CPU, again, not in this case
So why go with the Xeon? Well the one i've chosen clocks in at about $60-$80 dollars less than the I7, for performance on pretty close to the best I7 based on the same chipset, the I7 4790K. Of course you're going to have to wave goodbye to overclocking, but the Xeon still performs well at stock speeds.
Since both processors offers hyperthreading you will see 8 threads usable in total, which makes this CPU perfect for gamers who wants to do more than just game while gaming. This being multitasking, or streaming. Streaming does take quite a toll on the CPU, since most streaming services are somewhat heavily reliant on the CPU to stream well.
The processor also does pretty well at work related stuff, like Photoshop, 3D Rendering, and solitaire.
Enough about the CPU's, on to the next part.
**No peripherals, accesories or operative systems have been used in the total price. Note that prices are prone to vary, due to sales and rebates being offered at the time of writing.
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The CPU Cooler
Cooler Master Hyper T4
Some things never seem to change, and Intel's stock coolers never seem to get better either. The Intel Xeon stock cooler is about as ineffecient as they get, without damaging the CPU itself.
For that reason i've gone and exchanged it with the Cooler Master Hyper T4 cooler. Cheap model, that does a decent job at being quiet, and hitting slightly lower temperatures. Not the best model out there, but at least it ain't a stock cooler.
The Motherboard
ASRock H97M Anniversary
Cheap motherboard with a H97 chipset, making it perfect for our build. It does support feautures like overclocking and whatnot, but given our chosen CPU doesn't allow overclocking it hardly matters.
It should be noted you could use a H81 or B85 chipset motherboard and save a couple of bucks, however you usually have to do a BIOS update before the Xeon processor will work. The ASRock H97M works out of the box with the Xeon CPU.
Other than that it mostly offers basic features, up to 32GB of RAM, 4 USB 2.0 and 2 USB 3.0 ports (more can be added to the front), basic 5.1 audio, and HDMI/VGA/DVI ports you can't use with this CPU due to the lack of an internal graphics chip.
Other than that a solid pick for our build, that support a good amount of RAM and most important of all, our CPU. It does not support ECC RAM though, so don't try to use this motherboard with ECC RAM.
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The RAM
Mushkin Stealth 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600
For heavy duty purposes, a good amount of RAM might come in handy. Most games and applications these days will run good with just 8GB of RAM, but since the purpose of this machine might stretch a bit beyond just simple gaming or application use, i've doubled the amount of RAM.
It comes at a pretty standard speed of 1600MHZ, and at a low latency of just 9.
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Storage
Samsung Evo 850 250GB
A good computer should always come with a Solid State Drive, and this is where Samsung EVO 850 pops into the picture. Providing us with a 250GB of fast storage, this SSD will offer enough space for our operative system, a couple of games and applications, and some of our favourite FJ gifs.
It's not exactly the biggest drive on the market, but SSD's tends to come at quite the high price, so we'll use a regular HDD for storage as well.
Western Digital BLACK 1TB
Not the first time i use this harddrive in a build, nor will it be the last. The WD Black offers good speed for a regular harddrive, while still offering us decent storage space for all the games and porn we'll be saving.
The graphics card
Asus Strix GTX970
Time to look at something a bit more interesting. The Asus Strix is one of the more popular models of the newest Nvidia GTX970 models, and for good reasons. It offers good performance, low noise, and a fan system that turns off when it's not needed. It comes with a slight factory overclock added as a bonus as well.
This usually makes it a favourite choice when choosing a new graphics card, and makes it a perfect graphics card for our build.
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The Case
Zalman Z5 Plus
I'm hardly a fan of the design on this case, but i got to hand it to Zalman, they do make decent bang-for-the-buck cases.
The Z5 plus offers 3 120mm fans, providing pretty good airflow in the case, as well as dustfilters to cover you against some of the dust that tends to build up in your case. The frontpanel offers basic fan control as well, something only available on the plus series, as well as a couple of USB ports.
The insides offers good cable management, through the cable holes, and support for long graphics cards
The power supply
Corsair CSM 450W
And for the last part, a rather small yet efficient power supply. The Corsair CSM 450W is a powerful gold certificed, semi-modular power supply, capable of pulling our build without any problems. Seeing as our build peaks at about 370w, there's more than enough juice in this little guy.
If you do plan on getting a motherboard capable of Sli/Crossfire, you might want to upgrade to the EVGA SuperNova Nex instead, for a couple of bucks more. Other than that, this will do just fine.
Price & Conclusion
When it all comes to an end, we got a pretty price efficient build for heavier tasks, as well as gaming. The Xeon combined with the GTX970 will run any game on the market without problems, and will be a solid build for a couple of years.
Total price: $973.30
If you use Mail-In rebates as well.
Link for the parts: pcpartpicker.com/user/besle/saved/zj7H99
**I hope you've enjoyed the build. Feel free to discuss, or provide constructive criticism in the comment section below. You're free to request a different kind of build.
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