Buying a new motherboard and CPU - Need advice/insight

DREADN0UGHT·8/24/2016, 8:53:01 PM·1 votes·969 views

Yeah so I'm going to be buying a new motherboard and therefor a new processor along with it. I already have a good idea of what I'm going for, I was just wondering if someone could give me a heads up on common mistakes made by neophyte pc builders.

I'm probably going to be buying an MSi X99ish board and get whatever CPU combo the websites suggest me.

For some reason, I have this anxiety about my graphics card, its a Zotac GTX 960, pretty basic, but I just can't help but to fear it might not be compatible with the new motherboard...

I've swapped and replaced every part of a computer in the past and understand the basics, but this is the first time I buy and install a new motherboard and CPU, so I'm having second thoughts about everything, as I don't want to throw 500+$ out the window..

Fill me in guys

http://i1.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/facebook/000/430/607/c3c.png

23 Comments

Aerothal8/24/2016, 9:44:17 PM3 votes

z170 board with a i7 6700k will last you for a good while! (estimate 3-5 years) for $500 you can even get a decent amount of ram with it, starting with 16GB, upgrading to 32GB later

its one of the fastest processors with overclocking capability.

here: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/sirsanio/saved/#view=nwV3CJ

btw, i just threw this together but dont know what kind of existing stuff/case you have. check with pcpartpicker if the mobo fits into your case.

maybe you can recycle your cpu cooler this processor needs the ddr4 memory, so you wont be able to use your old ddr3 memory.

if you dont want to get the i7 6700k, get the i5 6600k. I highly recommend the 6700k though.

Thrëat8/24/2016, 11:39:09 PM2 votes

Aerothal's link has pretty good parts if you are looking to spend $500. If you want cheaper you can get the i5-2500k and a water cooler and play pretty much anything for around $250. I have the i5-2500k, 8GB RAM and a 780 GTX and I get 200+ fps in league with everything maxed out and can play all the current FPS games with good FPS. I get about 50 in Squad, which is unoptimized, 70-100 in Rust, 60-80 in Ark, 200+ in CSGO, 70-120 in Battlefield, etc.

Genuwhine368/24/2016, 8:54:58 PM1 votes

This would be the shittiest place to look try the subreddit of computer stuff. These 14 years olds hardly know what the game is let alone what good computer ware would be.

Lugg8/24/2016, 8:59:16 PM1 votes

Honestly, you should buy the best ones you can afford. Otherwise they will become obsolete too soon.

Treeofwar8/24/2016, 9:30:16 PM1 votes

whats your price range

WoonStruck8/25/2016, 6:29:25 AM1 votes

https://pcpartpicker.com

The greatest advice anyone can give.

This site will not only list pretty much every potential component for your PC, it will allow you to see how they interact; if there are any incompatible parts.

Among the listed parts (sorted by type while you select), rating, price, specs, etc are all displayed.

On individual parts' pages, price trends are also listed from various retailers, including amazon, new egg, and many other sources.

Even if you don't shop via this site, its an amazing tool to guarantee your assembly and system experience all go smoothly by testing for compatibility and making sure you have all the relevant parts you need.

Btw, if you 'build' a system in it, it displays total price. You can make an extremely good computer for under $500 if you choose your parts wisely, especially since most PSUs (sometimes you need more Wattage) and HDDs (sometimes you need better R/W speeds) can be transferred without any loss of system power.

I would suggest a Crucial SSD for your system drive. Its a very cheap (~$35) but extremely reliable SSD, without a loss of performance. If you want one to speed up gaming, use it as a secondary drive and store all of your programs on it.

Be sure to go through the SSD optimization checklist to be sure you're getting the most out of your R/W speeds on it.