My sister is new to gaming but keeps using my computer. She has $1000 saved to use for her build. I just picked some parts quickly and wanted to see what can be changed to come up with something better.
She currently only plays Skyrim and The Sims, but who knows after she has her own computer. I know the build I picked is overboard but I was trying to get her the best for $1000. I would personally rather go on the cheaper side of things. She currently has no parts at all.
It's a pretty solid build, the only thing that bugs me is it will have quite a bit of CPU horsepower but a bit dated on the GPU front. If this were me, I would drop down to an XFX XTR 550W psu and up the graphics to a sapphire tri-x 290 4gb. There is zero need for an 850 watt PSU to run a 4690K + 750 Ti so that's one place you can afford to drop down on costs.
4690k + R9 290 is one hell of a starter gaming rig and she'll be able to play Skyrim marvelously modded
Doesn't sound like she is planning on overclocking since you had no CPU cooler on your build. It's a pretty big waste of money to buy a 4690k + mid-range Z97 board then. You can get a locked i5 and solid H97 board and save $200 to put towards a GPU.
This build would absolutely obliterate the one you have as the 390 is significantly faster than a 750ti. 290's are poorly priced currently (likely to get people to buy 390s or get a premium from those who already own a 290 and want to CF) so you may as well go with the 390 and never worry about being VRAM bottlenecked for a bit more.
With the rest of the budget left over, go to staples/office max/whatever and buy a cheap $20 keyboard/mouse kit and cheap headset, then have her upgrade those down the line.
Even if she is planning on OCing, you would still be better off with the locked chip and cheaper mobo since even if you put that 4690k on Ln2 and OCed it to 6GHz you wouldn't come close to the performance in games of the 390 + locked i5.
You could also cut the Qnix and buy a really cheap 1080 monitor and add in SSD. In fact you may be better off just cutting the 1TB HDD and getting a 128GB SSD instead and let her add an HDD on later.
290's are poorly priced currently (likely to get people to buy 390s or get a premium from those who already own a 290 and want to CF) so you may as well go with the 390 and never worry about being VRAM bottlenecked for a bit more.
$260 after rebate is not poorly priced, also comes with dirt rally.
The 8GB vram is practically useless (especially as this build can only afford a 1080p display) unless running two of them at 4K or across a few displays.
Please find a game at a resolution where 5GB+ vram is being used and see if a single R9 290/390 can push good frame rates anyway........doesn't happen.
$260 after rebate is not poorly priced, also comes with dirt rally.
The 8GB vram is practically useless (especially as this build can only afford a 1080p display) unless running two of them at 4K or across a few displays.
Please find a game at a resolution where 5GB+ vram is being used and see if a single R9 290/390 can push good frame rates anyway........doesn't happen.
Mail in rebates don't count. 50% of the time you never even get them back and when you do you wait 3-4 months minimum.
They were $260 before MIR just two months ago.
I'm well aware there is little that pushes over 4GB of VRAM at 1080p, but don't act like nothing does. SoM, CoD:AW, the dark souls ripoff game, etc. can all do more than 4GB even at lowly 1080p.
The main reason to buy the 390 however, is the likelyhood for better drivers vs the 290, since AMD seems to be artificially inflating 390 benchmarks vs the 290 with software drivers.
You forgot an aftermarket cooler for the i5-4690K in your build so I made sure to include one here. Some people will probably disagree with me including an SSD with no HDD, but I would rather have the performance benefit of a SSD than the capacity of an HDD. Unless your sister will be downloading movies, she won't need a capacity hard drive immediately. It's also easier to add capacity down the road than it is migrating the OS to a SSD.
I tried to fit an R9 380 into the budget, but it was too prohibitive. The 280 isn't much more expensive than the 750 Ti but it's considerably better.
The power supply you picked out was complete overkill. The one I picked out is semi-modular to provide some flexibility and cleanliness in the case.
I figure since saving money on peripherals is important, I picked the Cooler Master keyboard/mouse bundle. The price is low enough that you wouldn't really care about getting rid of them when she can afford better equipment if she even cares about having a better keyboard or mouse.
For the budget, an AMD build would probably provide more flexibility.
Mail in rebates don't count. 50% of the time you never even get them back and when you do you wait 3-4 months minimum.
I'm well aware there is little that pushes over 4GB of VRAM at 1080p, but don't act like nothing does. SoM, CoD:AW, the dark souls ripoff game, etc. can all do more than 4GB even at lowly 1080p.
What does this tell us, vram usage is identical at every resolution, it basically means it will fill the space even though it doesn't necessarily require it.
Kitguru states the gtx 780 has no problems playing shadows of mordor and averages 75 fps average on ultra 1080p, again it's just about memory management and if the vram was a problem you'd see a 3GB card fall flat.
I'm not even sure I know what this dark souls ripoff game is but I'm sure you could lower ram usage by dropping AA by a notch anyway.
Honestly people get too caught up in ultra benchmarks and seem to forget you can adjust one or two minor things which don't even affect the overall look of the game and you end up with much lower vram usage.
Many games cram as much stuff into the memory as possible and it's basically just average management, there will always be a few titles to cherry pick but it doesn't paint a picture for 1080p as a whole.
If u get it off instantly or weeks later the part costs the same ultimately
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