Helping a friend build a new computer. it's been a while since i've been in the game. So I'll just lay out the req's
-Need computer plus monitor.
-$1000 absolute limit, preferably under $800
-Mostly school work but would like to be able to run Witcher 3 and other Dishonored 2 at least
-probably won't overclock, but not sure yet, might just do the basic bump to 4.5ghz or so, so I might need a moderate cooler, a small ish step up from the hyper212 possibly
I was thinking i5, don't know what motherboard is good, gtx1060? at least 8gb ram, 600W or higher psu?
monitor should be at least 24 inches, 27 preferably. But this could also hold off for now until black friday, maybe some decent deals on a monitor.
Prices wise, I know CPU's and GPUs usually don't go on sale too much, trying to figure out what to buy around the black friday time, things that actually go on sale perhaps.
Anyways thanks in advance for the help. Any suggestions welcome
That's a tough one to fit but is doable in US, use partpicker to find some parts as a guidance then hunt down the best deals.
i5 8400 is what I would recommend. Otherwise R5 1600. Pick what you prefer or fits your budget better.
Boards for Intel are Z370 only which sucks, expensive. AMD has cheap B350 options.
RAM is a mess, expensive, but get as close to 3000+MHz as you can with your budget for DD4. 16GB preferred but for most people 8GB is fine but not for all games though.
GPUs are nuts too because energy wasters who buy them up. 580/1060 6GB are a good budget oriented card for 1080p.
PSU Corsair RMx, EVGA G2/G3, Seasonic Focus Gold or what's the name, Bitfenix Whisper M, 450-650W is reasonable, 450W is fine, usually minimum available is 550W.
Monitors, almost no one makes decent ones, so just pick what you want, TN or IPS. There are some cheap options for IPS for sure the most sold Samsung 24" with Freesync comes to mind, IPS/PLS 60Hz with FS something like $150. Samsung S24F350
Pair that with a 570/580 8GB and you have a good experience for sure.
No idea what goes on sale for Black Friday in US, I was just checking a couple items on Amazon.de and they didn't last year. Maybe Amazon.com is better when it comes to black friday. In EU it's nonexistent.
Thanks for the info, I kind of figured going in that the things you had mentioned were going to be the case. the only really thing im struggling with is the motherboard. I never really knew which ones were the current best bang for your buck ones.
ASRock usually has the best values at motherboard.
Unfortunately it's a bad time for builds in that budget range. Prices are inflated to the point where builds that should be around $1000 are closer to $1150. The biggest culprit is DDR4. Prices rose steadily after Ryzen released since supply couldn't keep up with demand. A year ago, you could get a 16GB DDR4 3000 kit for around $75. Identical kits are now priced around $140 to $150. Coffee Lake CPUs are priced higher from top to bottom because of limited supply. They're all listed about $20 to $40 higher than MSRP. Additionally, several video cards are priced higher than usual because of cryptocurrency miners. This isn't the first time this has happened. Prices have already peaked and come down slightly so hopefully the market settles by the time Volta releases.
If your friend can wait until the other 300-series chipsets are available, they will be able to build a similarly capable system for a lower price. Worst-case scenario, they end up paying the same amount of money for the same system a few months later.
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