It's been ages since I've had a desktop and I finally have the funds to build one. I've been doing research for a week or two trying to get it figured out but I just keep reading more and more stuff with out making much actual progress. I'm getting some parts of it figured out but I've got some questions and need some help nailing down a build.
Budget: $1200, fairly flexible if there's reason to spend a little more
More specific use (what games, what programs): Gaming, school, movies/tv, some coding
Planned time until purchase: Within the next week or so. Would I save a lot if I waited a few weeks for black friday sales?
Do you need an Operating System?: Yes, going for Windows 7
Do you have any specific preferred components?: 256GB SSD, 8GB ram, 1 TB HDD and see below
Do you need a sound or wireless card?: No
Do you want stock cooling or do you plan on overclocking?: No to stock cooling, looking for good air cooling, I may not overclock initially but I plan to eventually.
Do you need a monitor? mouse? keyboard?: Yes, i'm looking to spend around $200 on a monitor separate from the desktop budget. 1080p around 20" Looking for a new keyboard/mouse as well, but that's pretty low priority unless somebody has an awesome suggestion for one.
Location: Denver, Colorado, there's a microcenter here if that helps at all
For CPU im leaning towards the i5-4690K, i may try to upgrade to an i7-4790k if there room in the budget. For GPU im thinking the GTX 970, my biggest hangup is which card manufacturer to go with. What is the difference between all the different cards with the same GPU? I keep going back n forth on cases, I was thinking the HAF X, then the HAF 932, now I'm looking at the Antec 900 or 1200. Can't make up my mind, I want a durable case with good cooling and good dust filtering. Would I be better off just buying dust filters and picking a good case on other merits? Seems like a lot of the ones I've looked at either have bad/little filtering and/or they are a pain in the ass to clean.
I'd like to be able to run two monitors but I only need to have movies/browsers etc. on the second one, I assume I could do this just by plugging the second one into the mother board? If I were to run three monitors would I need a second video card or could I plug two into the video card or into the motherboard? I'm a little lost on motherboards as well, I've looked at some and found some decent looking ones but I'm not quite sure how to pick one.
Thank you in advance, any builds or advice are greatly appreciated.
This post was edited by thenoose on Nov 5 2014 11:49pm