Wednesday, 6 July 2016

$900 Gaming PC Build ft. RX 480 (Special Request) And 1060 vs 480 talk.

Today, I got a build request from a guy named DC on the LTT Forum. He wanted a Skylake PC with an RX 480 and an Optical Drive. Now, the budget was quite enough to get a powerful gaming PC so building it was not at all difficult.
Few things to note, there is no INR Pricing in this build as this is a special request also the PCPartPicker Link is at the end as usual.

Starting off with the CPU, we have the amazingly powerful yet efficient Intel Core i5 6600K. At $30 higher than the 6500 it offers 20% more Stock and over 30% more overclocked performance which sealed it the deal. Fore more budget friendly build. One can opt to go with the 6600 because it will offer the same stock performance at a slightly lower chip and platform price.
CPU- Intel Core i5 6600K

Cooling our amazing CPU is the amazing Cooler from the Masters. Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO is always the choice of budget overclockers. Its amzing Price/Perfomance Ratio brought it here on the list. 6600K overclocks to 4.3 very easily with this on Stock Voltages.
Cooler- Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO

Having an Unlocked CPU meant that an overclocking motherboard was required. While being on a budget getting those fancy Motherboards with colorful VRMs was not possible so we stuck with the pure Practicality with a budget Z170 Motherboard from MSI with all the required features and no bells and whistles. Another thing to note is that the guy wanted an AMD GPU and this Motherboard was the cheapest one to support Crossfire, there is not any SLI support though,
Motherboard- MSI Z170A PC Mate

For the RAM we have the amazing and beautiful G.Skill Ripjaws V. With its amazing performance and looks it stole a spot on the list.
RAM- G.Skill Ripjaws V 8 GB 2400mhz DDR4 (x2)

Storage was a no brainer with WD and Sandisk both being the most popular choices among budget HDD and SSD respectively I decided to follow the crowd.
HDD- WD Blue 1 TB 7200 RPM 3.5"
SSD- Sandisk Z400s 128 GB 2.5"

The guy to request this build DC wanted an RX 480, so we got him one. Now, the problem with the Stock AMD RX 480 is the fans. They are quite YES but don't perform well which prevents the user to put any sort of even mild overclock. This problem will be resolved with the aftermarket RX 480s which will start shipping really soon (next week probably). Taking the price to be around $270 we have-
GPU- Aftermarket (MSI or Sapphire) AMD Radeon RX 480 8 GB

The case wasn't a difficult choice. I selected the Corsair 200R as per DC's Request.
Case- Corsair 200R ATX Mid Tower

A beefy power supply was not required for the build. But for Potential Crossfire in Future I decided to go with one. Now nothing is better than a beautiful for both eyes and wallet Corsair CXM Series. So we have-
PSU- Corsair CXM 650 Semi Modular Power Supply 650W

Now an Optical Drive isn't required in most modern Computer but since DC requested one we have-
ODD- Asus DRW-24B1ST


This sums up the build and the amazing thing is that we built a 1440p capable rig in under $1000 but before signing off I would like to talk about a few things;

Many would think that with 1060 in sight why an RX 480? I also thought the same but with there are reasons to forget the 1060. Firstly, there has been no Official announcement for it yet, it is suspected it will be done in mid August, another month for release and the cards hitting the shelves which makes it mid-September, another 15-20 days for the Aftermarket Cards and that is October for you and what if the perfomance it not all that great?? Congratulation, you wasted 3 months for nothing. Also byy the end of October News and Leaks of AMD Vega will start coming and you would think of waiting another few months to get hands on the Vega Card and hence an endless cycle starts. Remember, hardware will always get obsolete, better stuff will always come in always buy when you want and what you want don't see the future (not applicable in all cases).
Another reason is  DX 12 Support and Crossfire Scaling of Polaris. At the current stage, Crossfire Scaling of Polaris is better than SLI Scaling of Pascal. It is always better to get one stronger card than two weaker cards but what if you can't chug so much cash at one time? Then, 2 Way Card setups are for you. The RX 480 has shown amazing Crossfire Scaling which will only get better with driver updates. Yet another reason is DX 12 Performance of the RX 480, the $200 RX 480 performed better than the $300-$350 cards from both Nvida and AMD itself in the DX 12 titles. This performance would get better as more DX 12 titles start shipping.


Also for DC- if you can add another 30 bucks get a BluRay reader (http://bit.ly/1rsF2Lz) over the CD/DVD, would definitely be helpful as more and more stuff is coming in BluRay now (including 4K movies Yaay!). Wait for the aftermarket 480s should be here any day now also, it is highly recommended you Crossfire in Future, if not get the Corsair CX 500 Power Supply over the one mentioned here.

If you guys have any other Question comment down below. For Build requests use Contact THB Gadget on the right and Stay tuned for more such amazing builds and TechTalks.
Thank You all for joining.

Parts-
CPU- Intel Core i5 6600K
Cooler- Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO
Motherboard- MSI Z170A PC Mate
RAM- G.Skill Ripjaws V 8 GB 2400mhz DDR4 (x2)
HDD- WD Blue 1 TB 7200 RPM 3.5"
SSD- Sandisk Z400s 128 GB 2.5"
GPU- Aftermarket (MSI or Sapphire) AMD Radeon RX 480 8 GB
Case- Corsair 200R ATX Mid Tower
PSU- Corsair CXM 650 Semi Modular Power Supply 650W
ODD- Asus DRW-24B1ST

PC Part Picker- http://pcpartpicker.com/list/9MY4Cy

~APex

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