Suggested Gaming PC for $1,200

[Erik005]

What is wrong with a 450w power supply for a 1060?

 

A decent 450w one would run a 1080

 

Core i5: 65w

GTX 1060: 120w

 

A system like that would pull 250w under load max

[BlackRoseOfThorns]

What is wrong with a 450w power supply for a 1060?

 

A decent 450w one would run a 1080

 

Core i5: 65w

GTX 1060: 120w

 

A system like that would pull 250w under load max

 

The guy from the store suggested i7 6700k cpu that is ment to be overclocked for that PSU and you can't believe he will offer a good one when he gives no details.

GPUs can be easily pushed even without overclocking voltage, you just have to boost max power limit and fan speed. This allows auto boost to kick higher and stay there, but also eats power. Gtx 1080 boost to ~1900MHz without OC. When you add peripherials, drives, cpu cooler, more case fans, etc it all adds up.

PSUs have 10 years warranty, you don't want to be stuck with one limiting your upgrades and a rig with 6700k is not ment for just for mini 1060 (higher grade 1060 models consume 256W when overclocked).

Power supplies work best when the load is between 20-80%. 550W is a much safer choice. ~450W is good for builds with parts you won't overclock much and might be not enough, if you decide to go with something else in next 3-5 years.

Edited September 17, 2016 by BlackRoseOfThorns

[FMod]

2. I usually don't go for SSD's simply because I am not fond of the price to storage capacity ratio they have. I do get what you mean though, it would certainly be worth adding a small SSD just to use as a boot drive. That or pick a reasonably sized SSD and knock the HDD out and add one later (like you said).

Don't think of it as price/GB; that's an outdated paradigm. Today, on an ordinary consumer PC, 90% of your data is non-unique, non-essential, and effortlessly recoverable from the cloud (e.g. Steam games). Another 9% is your OS, required to access the cloud. The other 1% should be continuously backed up there anyway due to its value.

 

So, a modern content consumer's PC no longer stores data. Rather, all its storage devices are either outright processing memory (RAM) or data caches, or in more hardware terms accelerators.

 

IOW, you have an unlimited amount of storage at about 2-9 MB/s (for a common 100 Mbps connection, capped/uncapped). Hard drives accelerate a limited amount to 2-100 MB/s, depending on how random or sequential it is, usually around 20 MB/s. SATA SSD accelerate a (smaller) limited amount to 200-400 MB/s.

 

So, say you have a 10 GB movie, game, whatever. You can access it from the net in 2,000 seconds, or from a HDD in 500 seconds (in a game, spread over multiple load screens), or from a SATA SSD in 50 seconds. Or 10 seconds from a 950 Pro, or 2 seconds from a ramdrive, but those last seconds don't make a difference.

 

And that changes the value equation from "price/GB" to "time saved per $". A HDD will save you a few large chunks of time on occasional downloads, a SSD a lot of small chunks on bootup, game and level loads, plus a few large chunks on downloads until its capacity is reached.

 

Considered this way, SSD offer better value as your first drive. As your second, it's HDD. As your 3rd, 4th, etc, it depends on which route costs you more time - cloud->SSD or HDD->RAM.

 

Personally, I bought my last mechanical drive over 3 years ago and it wasn't money well spent. I plan on buying one more HDD in my lifetime, an 8+ TB SMR archive drive, just to consolidate everything (I code, so it's not a common case) from my older drives.

 

 

3. I picked that monitor because it was affordable, and I didn't want to go over the OP's budget. A monitor is also kind of subjective. I figured if they didn't like the monitor choice, they could just pick their own. The same principle applies to the other peripherals. It was more to show that their is room in their budget to have these things more than anything else.

Cheap, I'd say. "Affordable" has the notion of maintaining quality, that one's more of a "I don't care what my employees use" type of item.

Basically, VA/IPS + 24" or more + 300 cd/m^2 or more is what makes a decent screen nowadays.

[iXenite]

 

Don't think of it as price/GB; that's an outdated paradigm. Today, on an ordinary consumer PC, 90% of your data is non-unique, non-essential, and effortlessly recoverable from the cloud (e.g. Steam games). Another 9% is your OS, required to access the cloud. The other 1% should be continuously backed up there anyway due to its value.

 

So, a modern content consumer's PC no longer stores data. Rather, all its storage devices are either outright processing memory (RAM) or data caches, or in more hardware terms accelerators.

 

IOW, you have an unlimited amount of storage at about 2-9 MB/s (for a common 100 Mbps connection, capped/uncapped). Hard drives accelerate a limited amount to 2-100 MB/s, depending on how random or sequential it is, usually around 20 MB/s. SATA SSD accelerate a (smaller) limited amount to 200-400 MB/s.

 

So, say you have a 10 GB movie, game, whatever. You can access it from the net in 2,000 seconds, or from a HDD in 500 seconds (in a game, spread over multiple load screens), or from a SATA SSD in 50 seconds. Or 10 seconds from a 950 Pro, or 2 seconds from a ramdrive, but those last seconds don't make a difference.

 

And that changes the value equation from "price/GB" to "time saved per $". A HDD will save you a few large chunks of time on occasional downloads, a SSD a lot of small chunks on bootup, game and level loads, plus a few large chunks on downloads until its capacity is reached.

 

Considered this way, SSD offer better value as your first drive. As your second, it's HDD. As your 3rd, 4th, etc, it depends on which route costs you more time - cloud->SSD or HDD->RAM.

 

Personally, I bought my last mechanical drive over 3 years ago and it wasn't money well spent. I plan on buying one more HDD in my lifetime, an 8+ TB SMR archive drive, just to consolidate everything (I code, so it's not a common case) from my older drives.

 

I guess I prefer size of storage over the speed of storage, but I have begun to see the benefits of SSD's lately. It's still hard for me to justify the purchase, but regardless I will take your words into consideration in the future. Thanks for sharing.

 

 

 

Cheap, I'd say. "Affordable" has the notion of maintaining quality, that one's more of a "I don't care what my employees use" type of item.

Basically, VA/IPS + 24" or more + 300 cd/m^2 or more is what makes a decent screen nowadays.

 

 

[HeyYou]

With SSD's, it isn't just price vs. size you should be considering. Price vs Performance comes in to play as well. I have two SSDs in my system. A smaller one, on which the O/S resides. (and keeps boot times, from pressing the power button, to having windows up, and ready to roll, in less than a minute.) I have another 500 gb drive that my games are installed on. Loading screens in skyrim are momentary, at worst, in some cases, I don't even see them. (they simply don't have time to load, before the new area does.) FO4 has some interesting issues, and load times are a tad longer, but, MUCH faster than they were on a mechanical harddrive. Even a 10K RPM drive...... after seeing the performance difference, I won't go back to mechanical drives.......