First Time Building a New PC
 

As the title states, I'm looking at building myself a new rig instead of buying one. It will be used for both gaming (playing GTA V) and from time to time Video Editing and the use of After Effects. I was wondering if anyone has a suitable build that I can follow but won't break the bank. I'm looking towards having a budget of around $1,200. Any recommendations?

Haven't done it for awhile; it's like a lost art. But I'd start here:
NCIX.com - Canada's Premier Computer Store

Then look at what's on special and mix & match. Pretty sure that's what 99% of the people do nowadays.

$1200 is a perfect mid range budget. try https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc

I'm building one right now but it's more low end at 800 bucks. Already have the case and PSU. Let me know if you have any questions.

Careful with buying a video card this minute. AMD announced a budget 199 USD card yesterday and Nvidia has two powerhouse cards coming out that will drop current card prices when it releases.

Here's my build keeping in mind that it's a low-end gaming build:

http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/list/vGKznQ

Video card is omitted due to waiting on price drops and I suggest not going with my CPU. Most people would get an i5 or i7 for video editing. A secondary 3 terabyte non-ssd hard drive might be useful for you if you're keeping the video files locally.

Few resources for you.

ca.pcpartpicker.com has already been mentioned.
Logical Increments is a great resource to see what is considered to be best bang for the buck in your budget.
www.choosemypc.net is an easy tool to use to get an idea of what fits in your budget. Tweak from there based on brand and needs. Best of luck.

IIRC, adobe products don't use muti core processing and games also don't. for 1200 you can get a good core i5, and a good video card and you'll be set. GTX1070 can be achieved within your price range.

Your motherboard only supports up to 2133 DDR4, so getting 2400 is a bit pointless, as it will just be downgraded to 2133MHz anyway

year is 2016, please dont get a dual core user if its for gaming (good games, not solitaire)


/current dual core user from 2007 LOL......

Please read: The Best CPU for the Money: Intel Core i3-6100 Skylake Tested

I went though a few rounds on buildapc on reddit where I actually had useful feedback but thanks.

OP should go i5 as I stated above. His is a mid-range ($1200) and mine is low-end ($800).

Yes they do. Photoshop premier and other programs all benefit from multiple cores.

Oh didn't know that's great!

Also just just put a budget system together, mostly new parts with some used. Used a i3 6100 and no complaints for the light gaming i do. Mostly total war. Your budget, depending on if that budget needs to include a monitor, key board, and mouse will get you an I5 processor and a solid medium range gpu. Also depends on what kind of performance you expect and what resolution you will be playing at?

I just noticed he said hes using editing tools and other software.

Why are we recommending him an i3? Why did I get failed?

you suggested dual core is bad for gaming but infact no games uses more than 1 core at a time. So technically a more powerful single core machine will be better comparing to a low clock speed i7 for example.

Nobody is recommending him an i3. Both TJ and I said to go i5 with his budget.

I posted my build as a low-end baseline for OP to build on.

Games do use multiple cores. Games like BF4 can use more than 4 cores.

https://linustechtips.com/main/topic...4-use-8-cores/

brah....

tons of game utilize multi core cpu's.... heck even look at counter strike global offensive, they have an option for multi core rendering....

anyways im not going to argue, it shows you know very little about video games on PC tbh

1.) Sorry for posting my budget build. I thought it would be nice for OP to see a cheap build so he can make a better one with his budget.

2.) Everyone in this thread who's rocking an i3 have budget systems. In case you don't know what that means, it means building a computer that can play games but still be very cheap. An 800 dollar computer like the one I am building can still play new titles at 1080p and render high framerates at low/medium quality settings. This is acceptable for many people. Hell I think that's better than some Xbox titles.

3.) Yes, games can utilize more than 2 cores but I advice you to check out my link above. In some games like Battlefield 4, it makes virtually no difference. Here's the quote from that article: "Battlefield 4 doesn't tell us much with all processor configurations delivering virtually the same performance when using the GeForce GTX 960."

Using cores and seeing performance differences are two separate things. Some CPU intensive games will see better performance with 4 cores but in many cases it isn't a bottleneck. I did my homework: GPU is the major factor in a gaming build. No one is going to pair an i3 with a Titan GPU so I don't get the hate.

I stand corrected, my info was a bit older then I had assume.


Watching the benchmarks from videos like above, it will differ from game to game. But it seems that a dual core processor vs 8 core processor has similar results. So is there a benefit for going with a higher core count?

If you want to play a game like farcry 4 there is a huge difference because it will not even run on a dual core system and other games take up to a 30% hit on a dual core and that's with games from early 2015. 4 cores will give you better gaming performance and for video editing more cores the betters.


Is someone being trolled?

I read up on this topic a lot recently while building my budget system. The general consensus is more the better because outside of gaming it will also help with other apps (adobe as mentioned above) and multi-tasking.

I say it depends on budget. Sub $1000 if you go with a high end i3 vs low end i5 you won't see much difference. i3 will actually game better at this level and the i5 multitasks better.

Past $1000 you're going to be getting 4 or 8 core chip so it's kinda moot.

Couldn't find any recent benchmarks so I have to go with a 3 year old processor:

Far Cry 4 Benchmarked: Graphics & CPU Performance > CPU Performance - TechSpot

76 fps paired with a GTX 980 at 1920x1200. Very unacceptable.

oh theres no doubt more cores are better, some of this is a bit personal as well I had a core i3 560 with my 970 as I game in 1080 I didn't see a big jump or much of an improvement when going to my 6700k. What I did notice was when I was video editing.

The whole point was current i3 gaming is plausible if you are on a budget, but the op budget allows him to step up into an I5. Where the fails and argument came from is Verdasco blatantly said skip i3 all together for any sort of gaming. Which is wrong, period. Go look at benchmarks, the i3 probably is the best bang for buck at the moment. Yes anything above will out perform it, but for around double the cost.

Another option op, which I did, was buy a motherboard I can upgrade around when my budget grows. The price difference between a budget mb and mine was around 50-70 dollars. A lot easier to swallow when purchasing everything at once, compared to the i3 to i5 price difference.

Also look for sales and look on Craigslist for some good deals.