FMod

But the Threadripper isn't as fast in games. And which 2TB SSD? P.S. I use the same config myself, with only user-specific differences (screen size, 4x16 ram, storage, audio, etc) that call for close discussion once/if the OP confirms they're serious about buying an advanced PC.

I didn't say "spend as much as possible", just buy a PC with a reasonably flexible budget. i9 sucks in games.

If price isn't an issue, get a Define XL, Seasonic Titanium 1000W, i7-8700K, Asus Maximus X Hero, 2x16 GB DDR4-3200, 2x1080Ti (more is useless, less is lacking), matching SLI HB bridge, LG 55C7, Monoprice premium certified HDMI cable.

Just because you take a piece of tape, write "GAMING" on it, and stick it on a box, doesn't make it a gaming computer. Also, all in all: Computers don't really get discounted on special days and they're not in limited quality. It's marketing BS to create a sense of urgency out of nothing. Don't get played.

Well, the reason I posted it like that is I'm very familiar with doing system builds. Anyway, most of the info is in the above post. With a correction - upon further checking, updated Deus Ex MD now takes up 70 GB, not 55. So there's basically room for one modern game on a 120 GB SSD, and with some of them only just. It's not just modern games; older games with even light modding take tens of GB as well. Hence the suggested fork, either get a more serious SSD or skip it.

One 980Ti, not dual. Yes, one 980Ti or 2x970 would've made for a much better setup. The 4930k's PP is only lacking in a straight CPU vs CPU comparison. If you needed more than 4 cores, it was the only option that made sense, and, in a full system comparison, the premium was reasonable. Of course quad-cores have always been more cost-effective in absolute terms. Anyway, unrelated to the thread subject.

The 4930K isn't the unoptimized part. That CPU was great value for the money, I ran the same model myself. It was a no-brainer when Haswell flopped. I was referring primarily to using 3x960 instead of 2x980 or 980Ti. There's no rational reason to do so, two faster cards are always better than three slower ones. Not sure what your reason for 64 GB RAM was. That much memory is used in rendering and FEA, do you run a ramdisk for video editing or something? Even in 2013, SSD capacity was cheap enough to get more flash storage, which easily beats having multiple HDD. Don't know your exact use case, but for most people a more practical late 2013 build with an early 2015 GPU upgrade would be 16 GB RAM (optionally upped to 32 in '15), 980Ti, 2x480 GB SSD (first '13, second '15), same 4 TB HDD. I couldn't find a 3x960 benchmark, BTW - you could totally fill that gap and do one. Based on known SLI scaling for the 900 series, I'd expect them to just edge out a single 980Ti in FLOPS-hungry games and stay just behind in VRAM-hungry games. That's not how it works. Most ratings are given on either day 1 of use, or on the day the product breaks. People don't wait 3 years to give a 4.5-star review, but only if the product lasts that long; they'll have long forgotten about their purchase by then. So it's more like: User likes everything on day 1 = 5 stars User doesn't like something or product breaks = 1 star There's only a small number of users that go into any more detail, and they don't make the overall rating. And failure rates today are small at a few % and quite similar across brands and products. No. I'm telling you that you should trust a product with 1 review over both of the above - if that review is good and comes from TPU, SPCR, HardOCP, or a similarly reputable website. That's on day 1. Install some general applications, fill up your user folders, let it do a big update once or twice, and you're looking closer to 60 GB taken up on your system drive. You want to keep at least 10%-15% free at all times, so that leaves just 40-50 GB for your games... ...or, as of 2017, your game. XCOM2 is 36 GB, Bioshock Infinite is 40 GB, ME: Andromeda is 50 GB, Deus Ex: MD is 55 GB, GTA V is 60 GB. Even indies aren't small anymore - DFC is 20 GB, SRHK is 12 GB, South Park is 16 GB. South Park! Hence my recommendations above: at this tight a budget, SSD for old games, but HDD for new games. SSD are great for general computing comfort, but they don't help much with game framerates. And I felt like that statement needs to be corrected. "A few large games like GTA5" won't "eat through the space rather quickly" - a few of them won't fit at all. If it's for gaming, drop the tiny SSD and get a better GPU. Every little bit helps here. You want more gaming-oriented builds around $500? Here comes: $480 - https://pcpartpicker.com/user/FMod/saved/KR6qkL If at all possible, one should stretch to $527 and get this - https://pcpartpicker.com/user/FMod/saved/dc7pbv Alternately, if it's a general purpose PC, not just a gaming one, then a SSD is called for. A SSD build is also doable. With the same 1050Ti, that would be just about $500 - https://pcpartpicker.com/user/FMod/saved/prfFdC With even less emphasis on gaming, it can be $486 with a slightly better SSD - https://pcpartpicker.com/user/FMod/saved/pnrYrH RX560 vs 1050 is a tough choice. The 560 is a couple % slower, but its 4 GB will handle any game at reduced settings for years to come, and its Freesync keeps games playable at lower framerates with a compatible display. If one prefers higher quality in older games over future-proofing, however, the 1050 is better. You can spend the remaining $14 on the PSU - https://pcpartpicker.com/user/FMod/saved/4ksnnQ (BTW: your suggested PSU upgrade is a bit expensive, and it's still only a Bronze unit. At $50 one can get a 80+ Gold PSU: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?item=N82E16817153198. Yes, it's a special, but there's a special every day.) Or stretch to $520 and get the best of both worlds - https://pcpartpicker.com/user/FMod/saved/PqgQVn Note that this comes with a 275 GB SSD that is actually useful for more than just Windows plus one game. It still requires a good internet connection - but at least you'll be able to play Game A while Steam's installing Game B, not sit waiting for it.

I'm glad they are better than the former. I actually figured the build wasn't for you halfway through reading your blog post, but decided not to edit out the initial statement. It still carries a point... are you comfortable advising people to build something you won't and wouldn't build yourself? To be brutally honest - since we're not discussing a mod - your first ($450) build is better optimized for the money than your actual home build. The latter has several mistakes in it (yes, accounting for it being a 2013 one). The former is actually OK. Now, I'll briefly go over your key points. And sorry for not being diplomatic here - I would if you were doing it for yourself - but if you're giving out advice, you open yourself up to being held to a higher standard. From this statement, one might conclude you don't know how shopping site ratings work. It's not 4 stars because everyone gave it 4 stars. It's 4 stars from 400 people who gave it 5 stars for no reason other than that it wasn't DOA, and 100 people who gave it 1 star because they had some deviation - be it DOA or a poorly marked USB 3.1 slot - from their expectations. So, to reiterate, shopping site reviews are meaningless when it comes to complex hardware like computer parts. They tell a $5 chinese knockoff that works apart from a $5 chinese knockoff that doesn't. They don't tell the subtle difference between two $100 components from major brands that both work, but differ in something specific few people are aware of. This is sadly impossible. It's easy to come up with the best PC for $5,000, but there is no one best build for everyone at $500. * A budget gaming PC doesn't need a SSD. If all that fits on your SSD is Windows (and with a 120 GB, that is the case), then all it helps is Windows startup. And it's only a few seconds on laptops; on desktops, it's not. I have one of the fastest SSD money can buy (960 Pro)... my time from Reset to game splash screen is 1 minute from the 960, and 1.5 minutes from an 8 TB SMR drive. The only time these 30 seconds matters is when my PC freezes in the middle of a MMO raid and I have to get back in. * The GPU you've suggested is underpowered. It's fine for people who want to revisit PC/PS3/xb360 multiplatform games - the 1050 can handle everything stuff called for, at 1080p. It's woefully lacking for all but the least-demanding Xbone/PS4 era games. Back to brutal honesty? There are 3 optimal builds at the $500 level, depending on what you want to do: - Work and light gaming: SSD only, i3 8100 or Ryzen CPU, any GPU - Older games in high quality: HDD or SSD+old HDD, Intel CPU, low RAM, Nvidia GPU - Future games in low quality: HDD, quad-core Ryzen CPU, more RAM, AMD GPU All in all, you've really suggested a great PC for work and light gaming. SSD+HDD is no longer a practical combo at this price point - buying a tiny SSD and a tiny HDD takes away too much economy of scale. There's too little budget to spread it over one more part, and internet speeds are coming close to the low end of hard drives for backup storage. Also, Windows 10 works great with HDD, far better than 7 and XP, there's so much caching and all that half the sessions you don't even notice you're on a mechanical drive. For a gamer especially, it's better to wait 3 minutes for game load and get 50 fps for an hour than to wait 2 minutes and get 35 fps for an hour. Especially when that 2 vs 3 minute difference will only apply to that one single game that fits on a 120 GB SSD alongside Windows, and not every game will at all. It's your post. But really, the same rules apply for any user base. Unless you're trying to sell something (and sell it to idiots, to boot), you're better off telling people the real ups and downs of an item, or telling something else informative, not copying/retelling advertising blurbs. Forgive my lack of excitement; for me, most of that stuff would be something to toss in a box and ask around the department if anyone wants it before I send it straight to IT.

IDK if 22k subs is a lot or not, but presumably it pays enough to get a more than $450 PC - most people pay more for their cell phone. Also, the prerequisite of parts having a set number of "stars" on probably some shopping site is silly. They're just random people's opinions. Stars are more often given for features, not actual experience. Reliability is different to predict these days, and you have to look at reviews to get some idea. The budget is so tight, you can't make a versatile build. You have to optimize for a specific game or set of games. And the specific resolution you'll be using. If you're in the US, or one of the other supported countries, pcpartpicker.com is the best way to price your build. It lets you compare similar options, account for special offers, etc, to get the best price. As for feedback on the post: part descriptions looks like they were written by a novice marketing copywriter. IDK about others, my brain is well trained to filter out such claims. Since you're not actually selling that stuff (and it would be even more applicable if you were), why not write facts instead of generic praise? Like, say, link to a test that shows how well a given card or CPU or something actually performs, cite a few best and worst points, etc.

This is only the second VR boom, so it's hard to establish a pattern. It should last 2-5 more years, the question is if we get actually usable hardware in that time, or it boils over again until the third boom. I've recently shifted from cautious optimism to neutral: VR seems to be stuck at unusably low resolutions, the headsets are massive, you have to be careful with your power and data cable, and the need for multi-point room hardware is a big logistical issue. There's nothing worth that hassle, with primitive games that offer little more than "look how different this is". The two separate struggles to get rid of bulk and cables and to get proper resolution are in conflict. Solving one, but not the other, will leave it a niche solution that will stagnate, but keep some followers.

For any 1060. It's likely to need more than 3 GB, highly unlikely to need more than 4 GB, and it will never need the full 6. Low fps tolerance and screen size matter, though. The larger your screen, the more fps you need for comfortable motion resolution. 30 fps is very tolerable on a laptop or a mid-sized TV far away, but 60 fps feels torn on a big screen. There's also significant individual variation within any given resolution. There's a particular breed of "renderphile" gamers that seem obsessed with setting everything to ultra, while not giving a damn about viewing it through a small dim yellowish TN screen that's barely adequate for a paper salesman's office. To them, the 6GB would represent good value. To the rest, IDK. All of the Radeons are currently highly priced due to being scooped up by miners. The 1080 is in a whole other price range, it's not a real competitor. The 1060/3 still represents good value, but you'll have to sell it soon.

True. But also keep in mind that a 1060 3GB will be difficult to sell once you're done with it and will lose more value. So if you think of it as leasing GPU rather than buying, the price difference is quite small. And I prefer to think of it as leasing - anything that gets obsolete quickly and never appreciates isn't really an investment. You pay $$/month to have a PC with 20% of reference performance (1060/FX-6300), or $$$/month to have 80% of reference performance (anything over 80% is extreme overclocking land). Every so many months you need to sell and upgrade pieces, otherwise your reference-% decays and newer stuff doesn't run as smooth. If you plan to keep it forever, a 6 GB makes sense, because future games might get VRAM-hungry. Really that card would've been right at home with an in-between amount, say 4 GB, but oh well. At $200 vs $260, though, the 6 GB makes no sense. It's $60 for something you'll hardly ever use, and probably have a new card by the time you need it. If you like top quality at low fps, you might use over 3 GB. If you like 60 fps at the expense of settings, no way.

That's stock Skyrim. Mods will drop fps. I don't think i3-8xxx will be beatable for the price, for Skyrim and similar. All in all, it's basically like i5-2500K if you get the basic 4/4 i3, or like i5-6600K with the overclockable i3-8350K. Of course, prices have risen to the point where new i3 cost like old i5, so no free lunch... still. Elsewhere, Ryzen will eventually be better going forward.

It's OK, but could be better. If you're after Skyrim performance, your best bet is probably to wait for Intel 8th generation (Coffee Lake), specifically their new i3. Expected to offer 4 cores for around $180, although they might bump the price to $190 this time. Or you could get a used Haswell mobo+CPU set. Possibly a used Skylake once Coffee Lake drops and people go upgrading. Look for a set, they're likely to be cheaper than CPU+mobo separately, might include DDR3 to boot. Get the GPU anyway, though.

What town, what game? If it's TES, it's heavily CPU dependent. Fallout 3-NV shouldn't be this slow ever, fix your settings. Fallout 4 can be either CPU or GPU.

Unless you want a SSD for games. It matters for any online games, some slow-to-load games, etc. Right now, a 1 TB PCI-E NVMe SSD will set you back just $330: https://www.superbiiz.com/detail.php?name=INT600P1TB&c=CJ It's not a lot of money, but you get a lot of performance: 1.8 GB/s sequential transfer speed (10 times that of a HDD) and up to 155k IOPS (1000 times that of HDD). Two years ago, you'd have to pay 3x the price of a regular SSD for a NVM-express drive, now it's only a 20% premium. And, all in all, at $0.4/GB, it's time. HDD are still useful for movies and cold storage, but for software the savings aren't there anymore.

Well, the 1060 is too new to be out of warranty. This happens a lot, video cards are probably the most fragile part of a modern PC. They're basically a complete computer in itself, but one you can't repair at home. If you can still change it: - Ryzen 1700 is way better and won't even cost you much more in the long run - top CPU for the socket (or near-top) hold their value, everything else drops dead. Get an 8-core, i.e. the 1700. - The mobo is overly expensive. You can save on that. Say, do you need wi-fi? If not, https://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157760 is a bit cheaper. And that's if you want SLI. Non-SLI mobos are further cheaper. Running 1080Ti SLI, I've got impractical headroom for NV-inspector settings even in 4K... in most games I just run SLI AA (a very good version of supersampling, with single card performance) - proper AFR SLI is overkill. Unless you already have a 4K display, a single card will likely suffice. OTOH, AM4 will be long-lived, so you don't want to skimp too much. A Crossfire (non-SLI) mobo is also an option. - RAM prices are through the roof, can't help that. But you can at least shop for deals: https://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820313668 (valid till monday; i'm sure there will be new deals then, of course)

Unlocker is one option. Another one (a bit more capable) is to go to advanced permissions and change the files' Owner to yourself. And there's also booting from another HDD or DVD.

Do not do that, it won't work right. The 960 will only work as intended in a motherboard with a native PCI-E M.2 port. It will work to some extent with that card, but much slower than intended. The Kingston is basically outdated. In your situation, you should just lose one of the hard drives (or relegate it to cold storage) and buy a regular low-priced SATA SSD. If you had 6x4 TB drives, that would be a call for extra controllers.

Write wear is not a serious problem anymore. Hardly has ever been, really - most old SSD still have a lot more write cycles left than they'll ever see. 250 GB is very doable, but tight. You'll have to clean it up once in a while, manage your space usage, etc. All in all, if you can, get a 480 GB or larger model. P.S. Lived with a 128 GB ultraportable a long while back, and managed to fit everything in... But, before every trip, I had to delete everything unnecessary for that specific trip. Easy to do when you're free to delete whatever, you'll just copy it from your real computer if needed. Not the case for your main PC. Given your needs (photos and music), 250 GB will require frequent data rearrangement.

That's not a SSD, that's a hard drive with a tiny flash memory cache. It boots Windows quick all right, that's all it does quick. Are you sure your SSD is actually dying? Copy everything from it to a hard drive and secure erase the SSD, flash it if there's new firmware, see if the problem persists.

It's only safer if you use a redundant storage space, which is difficult to set up, so most people don't. Otherwise you're just spreading the risk, but it's the same in total - a higher chance of one of the old drives failing for a smaller loss if it does. Reliability-wise it's easiest to live with 3 live drives: SSD where speed matters, one large HDD for data, one reasonably large HDD for backups. That makes it easy to back up the irreplaceable data. Using old small drives as cold storage (disconnected) also protects the data from failures other than HDD hardware, like power, malware, etc. Be careful with expansion boards. This one is a passive adapter, not an active controller. The difference is that a passive board doesn't add any more slots, it just lets you connect M.2-SATA SSD to SATA slots you already have. If you're out of M.2 slots, it does nothing. The two SATA slots on it have to be connected to the motherboard's SATA for the M.2 slots to work. The board I've linked and his original board are both controllers, i.e. they actually add slots (at the expense of PCI-E lanes).

Oh. So you have a bunch of junk drives, not special storage needs. All of your drives - the whole 3 TB worth - can be absorbed into a single modern lower-mainstream level HDD (3-5TB is the current bottom $/GB). Start getting rid of the drives. They're not just small, these old drives are slow. Unless you got them in an alternate way, don't pay your own money for drives below market average capacity. Any mobo w/o PCI-E 3.0 is clearly old. Unlikely that you have a M.2 slot, but great if you do. Right now, drop a drive and get a low price/GB SSD. Crucial MX300, usually. 480 GB or larger. M.2 if you have the slot. If you want to buy a controller, at least get one with M.2: https://www.amazon.com/IO-Crest-Controller-Components-SI-PEX50069/dp/B00O1AEKFQ You don't need more SATA slots (though it adds one). The next HDD you buy will obsolete all but one of your current ones simultaneously.

You can do it, but it's not an awesome idea. You can use that same space to get a PCI-E SSD (or a M.2 with a PCI-E adaptor included). It will cost more than what you have in mind, but not all that much more, and you'll buy something useful vs something you'll junk on your next upgrade. BIOS won't have a fit either way. Also, consider just transferring your oldest HDD (any 250 GB pieces there?) to cold storage.

Your data folder and saves is all you need to play your mods as installed. Beware - your saves may get screwed up if you don't reinstall mods with the exact same load order. If you're done with modding the game, "if it works, don't touch it" may be a good approach to take. To keep tinkering, you'll need to redownload all your mods with NMM. Maintain your backup in case things break down.