Advice on a computer i built...Follow

About the only thing I'd considered is beefing up that power supply a titch more. 600 watts is adequate, but for a gaming machine you want to try to future proof it too, and for $40 more you can get an 800 watt one which will support a second video card later on.

Edited, Oct 8th 2013 9:10am by Catwho

It should be okay. Gigabyte is a decent brand, and it has two PCIEx16 slots which means it'll be ready for a 2nd video card a year from now when you want to upgrade. (Looks like it's only Crossfire compatible, not SLI, but since you're getting an AMD card that's a moot point.)

Aside from the PSU, what you selected looks like a solid mid range system with a solid current gen video card, so to get that for around a thousand dollars is a good deal.

If you're not scared of computer guts, you could probably buy the components and assemble it on your own to shave a few hundred off. I'm a weirdo and work on computers the way some people work on old cars, though, and I realize not everyone is comfortable with doing that.

Very likely high, if not extremely high on 1080p. The limiting factor is probably going to be the processor (alas, Intel's current gen beats AMD's current gen in speed, although that setup should be able to handle a little overclocking without melting down) since you've got a solid video card picked out.

The benchmark scores don't always translate over to real life performance, though. Still, I run above 50 fps at 1080p 90% of the time on my system, and I don't have as beefy a video card as you've picked out.

That machine will run FFXIV maxed out quite well. You'll have no problems.

I'd have gone Intel + Nvidia for processor/video card. Intel is wiping the floor with AMD at the moment. What you've selected will work fine though so don't stress about it.

Only thing I would really suggest is trying to get an SSD in there for the OS. You won't believe the difference. It won't necessarily make your games run any better but overall "pep" of the system will be night/day verses an HD only system. My system boots cold to up and running with all background processes loaded in 22 seconds, including typing in my password, post SSD install. Single best PC upgrade I have ever done in 20 years of building PCs.

Not unless you're playing FFXIV while actually walking around with the machine.

You can get a decent laptop for gaming, but it's probably going to be on the heavy side for laptops.

Then use two hands :).

A thinner laptop won't fix this. If you have to use a laptop for gaming you want a big bulky beast of a laptop that has as much airflow as possible (which won't be much in any laptop but thinner you get the worse it'll be.)

It's not an option because the base machine selected is AMD so all the options are AMD related. The motherboards are not compatible with Intel chips. Also, the motherboard you have selected is not SLI compatible, so if you did go the nVidia card route, you'd be stuck with only ever using one card. You'd have to go to the next higher motherboard to get two nVidia cards to work together.

The closest nVidia card to the 7970 in terms of price and performance would be the GTX 660 2GB, which would add $36. But you'd have to add the next higher up motherboard for $117 for that to really be a sensible investment, and the 7970 is a really solid current gen card despite not being from nVidia. (See Passmark results for yourself.)

Get the SSD instead. Out of the SSDs listed, I'd think the 128 GB SanDisk should work. SanDisk specializes in Flash memory so I'd trust them. (All my little SDHC cards are from them.) That's $38 more (if you get it instead of a platter drive - you can probably ask them to stick in a smaller platter drive alongside the SSD, say the 500 GB, as well.)

I only mentioned Nvidia because Intel pairs well with it. The video card you selected is just fine, particularly with an AMD processor.

128 GB SSD is more than enough, you definitely want an HDD as a second drive though, size depends on what your usage is like but the difference between a 500GB and a 1TB is $13 so...yeah. Install programs to the second drive with the exception of a few things you want to load fast, once things are running load times are irrelevant for most programs. I put Libreoffice on my SSD because I open it all of the time and use it as a fancy calculator so it's nice to have it just pop right up like it was just minimized :).

The 128GB Corsair Force GS Series SATA-III 6.0Gb/s SSD - 560MB/s Read & 535MB/s Write is good. But any SSD will be light years faster than any HDD so budget can dictate if it needs to. It will spoil you. I get slightly annoyed when I have to wait for my HDD to spool up now, you forget how noisy they are :).

Holy smokes, you weren't kidding about the load times! So do I need to get a HDD drive on the side as well or is it something not necessary? I am really trying to keep it around 1000 but I will add it if you guys feel I should.

http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/saved/1FG9GW

This is what I have changed it to, if you guys see any other minor changes (adds/removes to save a little money).. please let me know! Would like to order tonight :)

Edited, Oct 9th 2013 9:23am by Kuja20