First PC Build! €600-800 Budget Inc Shipping

i_imperator

Hey all! Firstly thank you for looking at this thread and helping! This is my very first time building a custom pc, and I am doing so because my 2013 Toshiba satellite laptop died during the week (Hard Drive failure). Rather than replace it I've decided to take the opportunity to get experience building a pc (and not repeat the mistake of using a laptop for gaming). Ill be using this pc for gaming and web design/digital art. Looking to run most releases on high settings.

I'm concerned about two things, firstly where should I buy the parts, I have never used the German sites (amazon and mindfactory) and I'm not sure if I can trust them. At the same time I'm concerned about shipping costs.

My biggest concern is the possibility of ordering the parts, putting it together and then it doesn't work for whatever reason. I know this is a reasonable concern but this is very new territory for me as I've always bought laptops before this.

I was also wondering are there any companies that can order the parts for you and put it together?

My current build is here:

Intel Core i5-6600 3.3GHz Quad-Core Processor

Gigabyte GA-H110M-A Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard

G.Skill NT Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-2133 Memory

Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive

EVGA GeForce GTX 960 4GB SuperSC ACX 2.0+ Video Card

Cooler Master N200 MicroATX Mid Tower Case

EVGA 500W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply

and a monitor, which needs to be decided on.

Digital Solitude

I'd drop the CPU to a 6400 to free up a little in the budget, add an SSD and switch the 960 to an R9 380 4gb
Build is sound overall though

Mindfactory are generally sound, Amazon are a dream for returns so if you're worried I'd go for them. Not sure about anywhere that builds for you tbh

Terrorfirmer sells gaming PCs on Adverts for really good prices if you wanted to check him out, he's a boardsie.

Where are you located? You might be able to rope a local boardsie into helping you

i_imperator

Digital Solitude wrote: »

I'd drop the CPU to a 6400 to free up a little in the budget, add an SSD and switch the 960 to an R9 380 4gb
Build is sound overall though

You're the first person to suggest dropping the CPU and the second to suggest a SSD and a the R9 380. Is the R9 380 really better than the 960? Again im not an expert on this, ive never used an SSD before either.

Digital Solitude wrote: »

Mindfactory are generally sound, Amazon are a dream for returns so if you're worried I'd go for them. Not sure about anywhere that builds for you tbh

I was leaning towards Amazon, but they're shipping is what really worries me, Im looking into parcel motel too but I haven't had experiences with them either.

Digital Solitude wrote: »

Terrorfirmer sells gaming PCs on Adverts for really good prices if you wanted to check him out, he's a boardsie.

Digital Solitude wrote: »

Where are you located? You might be able to rope a local boardsie into helping you

I'm in kerry, Ive actually got a college friend that is willing to build it for me if necessary.

Digital Solitude

380 has 2gb extra VRAM over the 960 which is always handy. It's a stronger card in general. SSD is pretty much essential, you won't know yourself with one.

The CPU won't make any odds if you drop to the 6400, it's just to free up funds mainly.

Amazon aren't too bad for shipping normally, and you're generally in good hands with Parcel Motel too if it comes to it

i_imperator

Digital Solitude wrote: »

380 has 2gb extra VRAM over the 960 which is always handy. It's a stronger card in general. SSD is pretty much essential, you won't know yourself with one.

The CPU won't make any odds if you drop to the 6400, it's just to free up funds mainly.

Amazon aren't too bad for shipping normally, and you're generally in good hands with Parcel Motel too if it comes to it

Why exactly is it essential though? for faster boot times? And would I need an internal HDD then? This build was recommended by a Redditor

Intel Core i5-6600
MSI H110M PRO-VD
Crucial CT8G4DFD8213 (8 GB)
WD 1TB Blue (1 TB)
SanDisk Ultra II 240 (256 GB)
Radeon R9 380
Cooler Master N300
Super Flower Golden Green HX (450 W)

Eoinmc97

Yes, the 380 is superior to the 960, due to having wider bandwidth, better DX12 performance and even better DX11 performance. Sapphire and Gigabyte make the best 380s for the price.
DS gave solid advice on droping your CPU, as the performance/€ of the 6400 is better than the 6600.
Take a look at Scan.co.uk, as they do good prices and shipping
SSDs are ridiculously fast for loading the OS and any design programmes you use. Get a 1TB HDD for games and storage, as these will fill an SSD too quickly.
SuperFlower is an American brand PSU, which are hard to find here for cheap. Good alternatives are Corsair, Seasonic, XFX, CoolerMaster and BeQuiet are great PSU makers.
Make sure your Mobo supports DDR4, as even DDR3L can damage Skylake CPUs.

i_imperator

Ok But if I drop it, will the processor of the 6400 be able to play games like the witcher 3, gta v and Xcom 2 on high settings? The ghz seem lower than the 6600

Digital Solitude

You're cutting PC boot from 1 minute to 10-15 seconds, game loads from 20-30 seconds to 4-5, it's a crazy difference

Internal HDD is for general file storage then.

Price that an see, I don't think it'll fit the budget

Digital Solitude

i_imperator wrote: »

Ok But if I drop it, will the processor of the 6400 be able to play games like the witcher 3, gta v and Xcom 2 on high settings? The ghz seem lower than the 6600

Yeah no problem, the 6400 vs 6600 is pretty much equal in 99% of games, the 380 is a bigger bottleneck

Eoinmc97

i_imperator wrote: »

Ok But if I drop it, will the processor of the 6400 be able to play games like the witcher 3, gta v and Xcom 2 on high settings? The ghz seem lower than the 6600

Ghz is only a speed for bit counting, more Ghz does not equal more performance.
And yes, you can play all those games with the 6400. What's important to see in a CPU, is that, IPC is more important.
If my cpu can do, say, 3 things every clock, but it's at 1Ghz, then it would match a CPU at 3Ghz that can do 1 thing per clock.
Seeing as they are the same architecture, the 6400 and 6600 will NEVER show a tangible difference between performance in games.

i_imperator

So something like

Intel Core i5-6400
Radeon R9 380
MSI H110M PRO-VD
Crucial CT8G4DFD8213 (1X8GB)
WD 1TB Blue (HDD)
SanDisk Ultra II 240gb (SSD)
Super Flower Golden Green HX
Cooler Master N300

Build from pc-kombo.de

Digital Solitude

Can you link the Motherboard and PSU?

i_imperator

Digital Solitude wrote: »

Can you link the Motherboard and PSU?

I Cant link them directly because I'm a new user but this is what i got from the pc-kombo list, linked from amazon.de

Super Flower SF-450P14XE Golden Green HX 80Plus Gold Power Supply (450 watt)

MSI Mainboard H110M PRO-VD LGA1151 2x DDR4 PCI-E 3

Digital Solitude

Good enough, just wanted to confirm that the PSU had enough wattage and the board was DDR4


You're good to go with that order

i_imperator

Digital Solitude wrote: »

Good enough, just wanted to confirm that the PSU had enough wattage and the board was DDR4


You're good to go with that order

So should I definitely go with that one instead of the original? And what would you recommend for monitors?

Digital Solitude

Better for gaming and will load faster, so it's a yes from me.

I've a BenQ 2450 I like, 24" 1080p, costs about €150

i_imperator

Digital Solitude wrote: »

Better for gaming and will load faster, so it's a yes from me.

I've a BenQ 2450 I like, 24" 1080p, costs about €150

Would I be better off ordering that or just going into pc world and getting it there?

i_imperator

Digital Solitude wrote: »

Better for gaming and will load faster, so it's a yes from me.

I've a BenQ 2450 I like, 24" 1080p, costs about €150

Would I be better off ordering that or just going into pc world and getting it there?

Only other problem is that amazon wont always be able to deliver those parts. I think this has to do with third party sellers.

Digital Solitude

They should deliver to parcel motel

Have a look in PC world I guess, price a few 1080p Monitors

i_imperator

Digital Solitude wrote: »

They should deliver to parcel motel

Have a look in PC world I guess, price a few 1080p Monitors

Ok will do, there's one close enough to me in Tralee anyway. Another thought, will the LGA1151 be compatible with the video card ? I know its not recommended to mix intel and amd sockets.

grindle

i_imperator wrote: »

Ok will do, there's one close enough to me in Tralee anyway. Another thought, will the LGA1151 be compatible with the video card ? I know its not recommended to mix intel and amd sockets.

GPUs are platform agnostic, they just have to fit in the case.

Digital Solitude

i_imperator wrote: »

Ok will do, there's one close enough to me in Tralee anyway. Another thought, will the LGA1151 be compatible with the video card ? I know its not recommended to mix intel and amd sockets.

An Intel CPU won't fit into an AMD board and vice versa, but nVidia and AMD graphics cards can be used interchangably.

tipperary

Two things to watch for with Amazon, returns to third party sellers are not necessarily straightforward, so go with Amazon as seller if possible. If buying multiple items they often come from different warehouses and will be posted separately, this will result in multiple parcel motel deliveries. Sometimes use large boxes too which can be of oversized for parcel motel.

i_imperator

tipperary wrote: »

Two things to watch for with Amazon, returns to third party sellers are not necessarily straightforward, so go with Amazon as seller if possible. If buying multiple items they often come from different warehouses and will be posted separately, this will result in multiple parcel motel deliveries. Sometimes use large boxes too which can be of oversized for parcel motel.

I've looked into parcel motel, I think I'm going to just order the ones that can be bought through Amazon. Would you recommend just buying from third party sellers directly then? Not all the products are available through Amazon. I notice the 6400 isnt on the amazon uk store today.

grindle

Order the innards from Mindfactory.de.

i_imperator

grindle wrote: »

Order the innards from Mindfactory.de.

is it a good/trusty site though? I've never bought anything from them before.

jayo26

i_imperator wrote: »

is it a good/trusty site though? I've never bought anything from them before.

I used mindfactory last month and they were excellent i ordered on monday morning and they didnt have the ram in stock so instead of waiting for the ram i emailed them in english and changed the ram they replied within half an hour in english and dispatched the order within another hour and i received it thursday morning.

Just dont order your case from them they charge for two deliveries then. I ended up buying my case from adverts for half price so it may be an option to have a look there see if anything suitable.

i_imperator

jayo26 wrote: »

I used mindfactory last month and they were excellent i ordered on monday morning and they didnt have the ram in stock so instead of waiting for the ram i emailed them in english and changed the ram they replied within half an hour in english and dispatched the order within another hour and i received it thursday morning.

Just dont order your case from them they charge for two deliveries then. I ended up buying my case from adverts for half price so it may be an option to have a look there see if anything suitable.

So are they only useful for ordering single items, and do they work with parcel motel? I was considering using amazon uk and parcel motel. Not sure about parcel motel and the case though.

eeguy

i_imperator wrote: »

So are they only useful for ordering single items, and do they work with parcel motel? I was considering using amazon uk and parcel motel. Not sure about parcel motel and the case though.

They have 30 quid flat delivery rate though.

Grand when you're spending 700 euro but for one offs it's crazy. I was going to buy from them but the delivery made them more expensive than amazon.

Also a PC case is another 30 euro delivery on top of the standard rate.

i_imperator

eeguy wrote: »

They have 30 quid flat delivery rate though.

Grand when you're spending 700 euro but for one offs it's crazy. I was going to buy from them but the delivery made them more expensive than amazon.

Also a PC case is another 30 euro delivery on top of the standard rate.

So if I bought the CPU Radeon card and Hard drive off them that would be about 30€ on top of the standard rate? or will it count per item?

jayo26

i_imperator wrote: »

So are they only useful for ordering single items, and do they work with parcel motel? I was considering using amazon uk and parcel motel. Not sure about parcel motel and the case though.

No they are better for ordering multiple items its standard rate of 30 euro but if you order a case it comes from a seperate warehouse so its an extra 30.

Im not sure about parcel motel i just got mine delivered to house the send you tracking code with ups.