Build Advice Building my first PC

Hey everyone,
Going to be building my first custom PC soon. I'm still pretty new to this so I'm still learning, I just wanted to make sure that everything's okay and that I've not missed anything. I would appreciate ANY advice from you, with everything from components/hardware to assembling it, as well as anything else. It will be heavily used for gaming, but mainly for recording/editing music (mainly with ProTools, FL Studio 9 Pro and Reaper) as I produce my own music.

So here it is.

CPU Intel i7 4790K (Devils Canyon)
Motherboard Gigabyte GA-Z97X
RAM Corsair Vengance 16GB DDR3
Graphics Card Asus GeForce GTX 770
PSU Corsair HX650
HDD Western Digital Caviar Green 3TB
SSD Intel 530 Series 240GB
Case Corsair 200R Carbide

and incase you were interested...

Mouse Gigabyte M698x
Keyboard Gigabyte Force K7

At the moment this is going to cost £972.99
When I purchase everything I will also get any extra fans/cables if needed, as well as a disk drive. I have a monitor, OS and speakers, so shouldn't need to budget for anything else.

Let me know what you guys think of it, and if you have any suggestions let me know. As I also said I'd appreciate any help about putting together as well.
Thanks in advance!

 

+1 on the AIO water cooler.

 

thanks, looks like I'll need to look into a cooler. is water cooling really necessary though?

 

Extra fans ? AFAIK the 200R only comes with two.
Some decent quality TIM, the goop that comes with most heatsinks is normally pretty poor.

 

What's the max budget so we can see what we can come up with some ideas.

 

Thanks, any extras like fans and cables I'll get. Didn't Think It'd be worth mentioning them.

 

around £1k. trying to keep the cost down though but any suggestions are helpful

 

Do you need a monitor with that?

Also, any preferences, i.e. size etc (Do you need a soundcard or a DAC or anything either?)

 

Hi just interested why you want the Intel i7 4790K when you could have a Core i5 4690K 3.5GHz Socket 1150 6MB L3 Cache at about £80 cheaper that will more than do the job and it will overclock to well above 4GHz.

Don't get me wrong that's a very good CPU but you are paying quite a bit extra for not much more.

 

Shop around for the best price, SCAN is not the be all and end all of shopping for PC components. The free delivery under one retailer is nice but you can source a better deal. For example there's currently a promotion available through dabs.com where if you buy that Motherboard and CPU combination £22.50 cashback can be claimed on top!

Link to promotion...
http://www.dabs.com/learnmore/components-and-storage/gigabyte-intel-z97-cashback-promo/

 

Music production loves threads. The i7 has double the threads of the i5!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

hi this is a cheaper case

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/cors...c-01-aggressive-red-led-mid-tower-gaming-case

 

Nah, I'm gunna wait until 4k becomes more accessible before upgrading. Will probably have to do a few minor the system before i take that option as well.

 

Thanks man, It's not that much cheaper though and there's less air flow, so i think I'll stick to the original to keep my system cooler.

 

Imho the suggestion of extra case fans is unnecessary. 2 case fans in most cases with most components, including the ones listed, will do fine. I imagine we're all familiar with the Dell boxes of various stripes that run flawlessly for close to a decade with no dedicated case fans at all.

 

Your spec looks kick ass to me. The only thing you are missing for a functioning computer appears to be an operating system, monitor and speakers. As far as I am aware if you are serious about sound quality for music production you need a pro grade soundcard (like a focusrite) and studio monitors (however it is entirely possible to make music on a laptop so I really am talking real home studio spec+ upgrades here). Personally if you could double the size of that SSD I would be happier, on top of the OS, games and music production files will probably eat into it very quick, plus a drive operating close to full capacity takes a performance hit.

Assuming your components are retail boxed items your spec also includes all the basic cables and accessories you need to put it all together. The board will come with all the sata cables you need, the cpu is bundled with the adequate stock cooler and TIM and the case should include fans and extra cables for power switches and front panel ports. If you are getting a deal on the cpu it may be OEM, it is the chip only, so in this case you must get an aftermarket cooler (TIM is often bundled with these coolers). The best aftermarket coolers are quieter and cool more efficiently than the intel stock cooler, I would probably try an AIO watercooler in my next build, either way try and check any aftermarket cooler fits in the case and does not interfere with components on the board (heatsinks, caps), the gpu/top pcie connection or the ram.

You may need to check the power supply has enough useful connectors to power all your components, in particular check there are enough pcie connecters for you GPU and auxiliary ATX 4-pin cpu power connections. If there are not enough you can get adapters but you might be better sourcing a supply that has all the correct connectors as standard, even if it is a little more this is offset by not needing adapters and results in a neater build.

Once you have a functioning computer you can upgrade it later as your needs dictate.

 

Cheers man! i have an OS and Monitor. I have a cheap wharfedale 2.1 set up (£40ish) that's just for casual use but I'm mixing through headphones, though due to my prehistoric computer I can't really do much anyway
I do plan do get some speakers at a later date though, and will be my focus point once this rig is up and running (and have saved some more money!). Is there anything you would recommend? I don't have a budget yet but so far I'm leaning towards a nice pair of KRK's. I have a friend who produces some quality music through rokit 8's. I've not looked much into yet though so anything could happen

As for a soundcard I'm currently using a Tascam US-122 MKII. I don't have any immediate plans to upgrade yet as this fits the bill nicely, although the sound randomly starts to crackle and distort sometimes, which from reading other reviews seems to be a common problem. this doesn't really bother me too much though as I only use the card when making music, and simply unplugging the usb and then putting it back usually fixes it haha.

I've also messaged my friend that's ordering my processor about it coming with anything, but he can only view the sites from work. So I'll update you when he finds out for me tomorrow.
Thanks for all the advice man, it's been a massive help!

UPDATE:

I've heard back from him today and it's retail version with the cooler. I'm not worried about overclocking for now, so I'll just stick to the stock cooler.

I've also updated the SSD (check the original post). Turns out I'd planned the wrong one so i had to upgrade it anyway, so I thought if the price was going up anyway then i may as well opt for the 240GB.