While the games he plays arent very demanding, the 390 will last quite a bit longer before he needs to add a gpu or upgrade it. The higher VRAM will be better for AAA titles at max settings with high levels of anti aliasing. If you can afford it, theres no reason to gimp yourself right off the line.

I have the feeling he may be a multi. :/

and ur join date is 06
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Not Dexa...but arkc. lol

This post was edited by Ghot on Dec 7 2015 01:39am

He can't afford it, and it shows by gimping to an awful psu and the cheapest hdd you can get, skipping an ssd/m2.
8gb VRAM is overkill, unless you're actually 3d rendering physics simulations. 4gb VRAM is plenty for any game on the market, even at 2560x1440.

Half the stuff he wants to play will run fine on an intel hd 4xxx, and the other half won't run well no matter how much money he throws at it because the devs are incompetent.

Given his taste in vidya, any card that runs things well now will be fine for the next 7 years or so, until the next consoles come out.

No one needs an m2 SSD.

How would you even get into the BIOS at that speed?

just rely on os bloat to kill any improvement from hardware.

Even OS bloat can't use 2500 MB/s lol

a friend of mine i usually talk to about this stuff says,

"gtx 970 is typically ~5-10% faster than the r9 390,

you don't need a k- cpu if you don't plan on overclocking, might as well save ~$50 for the i5-6500 (which would actually come out to over $70 cause you won't need a cpu cooler, the one in the box is definitely good enough)

don't need a z170 chipset motherboard if you're not using an overclockable cpu

on top of the last 2 things, if you don't get a -k sku then getting an h170/b150 motherboard is cheaper, only need the extra features if you're going to be overclocking

and as a general thing, for almost every user unless you're gonna be going for high benchmark scores or crazy rendering power, ddr3 is equal to ddr4 in this generation for general usage and gaming"

You're friend is right, and getting a locked Intel cpu is a viable option.

With an unlocked cpu, there is a perceived better value which helps with higher resell price. Also, with an unlocked cpu, you won't need to upgrade the cpu as quickly as you can overclocking the cpu for better performance. Z170 boards have slightly more features and expandability than the h170 and b170 boards.

Just some benefits of getting an unlocked cpu for you to understand both sides.

If you won't be overclocking, here is something I'd get,
i5 6500/6400
H170 board
Ddr3/4 ram
250gb ssd
Hdd
Gtx 970
500-650w quality power supply, or 750-850w quality power supply for sli
Case of your choice. Consider the fractal design R5 if budget allows.