Building First PC, Many Questions

[Rayblue]

Thanks for the suggestion Rayblue but won't I need the DVD drive to load Windows?

 

The DVD drive is for installing Windows or any programs needed, or if you want to perform permanent DVD backups, but in my case as my old drive doesn't work anymore, most often I use an external DVD drive.

[...0...]

Good luck with your new system hope you have alot fun with it.

[lidowxxx]

Congrats on your new rig! I build a PC with the same CPU and GPU a few months ago, so far it's performing very well for the games I play, including my heavily modded skyrim with tons of HD textures, 4GB VRAM definitely helps as I often go over 3GB playing.

[crudo]

Thanks Evasia and Lidowxxx.  I'm pretty excited but now I have to wait for delivery which should be about a week.  Also thining about which monitor or keyboard to get, I started a thread about that already.

 

Lidowxxx, it's very reassuring to hear that your CPU and GPU have been up to the task.  Picking out the right components was a bit difficult as this was my first time but like I said earlier, it really helps having a site like this with experienced members willing to help.

 

I did make some last minute changes to my final build.  I went back to the Define R4 case, the motherboard is now an Asus z87 Pro, the cooler is from Cooler Master and I chose a different set of system RAM from Crucial that has a lower profile so it wouldn't get in the way of the CPU cooler.  I also went with Windows 8.1.  I guess I changed quite a bit!

[indaryselarren]

Oh, and liquid cooling, did I mention liquid cooling? I have this on mine, super easy to install. Sadly no longer avaialable but look at the similiar items and find one that will work with your cpu.

[crudo]

I went with an air cooling unit, I hope it will be good enough.  I was a bit intimidated by the idea of setting up a liquid cooled machine.  This is my first build and at times, it's overwhelming.

[tejano2828]

Good luck with that build all great choices...awesome video card....

 

the addiction has begun lol  but its a great one...once you build your

first machine you truly began to appreciate the PC modders it is one 

of my favorite hobbies.....suggestion to visit some of the overclocker sites

like overclocker.net and tomshardware they have good info and again

 

youtube:  linustechtips this guys great in explaining components if you still

have some questions about some of this stuff....your game will be beautiful

with this system.....

[lidowxxx]

I went with an air cooling unit, I hope it will be good enough.  I was a bit intimidated by the idea of setting up a liquid cooled machine.  This is my first build and at times, it's overwhelming.

Air cooling is enough as long as you don't plan to intensely overclock your CPU and GPU, but 4670K is not much an overclocker anyway, I overclocked it to 4Ghz and stopped there, pushing it any further requires a lot more voltage and the heat isn't worth the extra little performance you gain, that's partly because my CPU cooler is pretty cheap, but from what I have seen, haswell CPUs run hotter and have much less overclock potential than previous generations.

[crudo]

For right now I have no plans ot overclock the cpu or anything else for that matter.  I'm sure, in time, I will want to do those things but I've got a lot on my learning plate as it is.  After getting the parts, building the computer, setting up the software, I'm going to have to learn step by step proper modding.  I've been watching videos by Gopher on youtube and I'm going to follow his direction for my initial mods.  Slowy, add one and try it out.  I've played Skyrim and Fallout to death on my Xbox so I'm really looking forward to a new experience.

[Spartan 363]

If you ever do decide to overclock, just ask us here, some of us are familiar and good at overclocking.  When I overclock, I prefer stable overclocks so that I don't have to worry about my PC crashing when I'm playing games and such.  Currently, I'm on an aging first generation i7 overclocked to 4 GHZ for stability, I have pushed it past 4.7 GHZ before, but it runs too hot for my air cooling system.

[crudo]

Just thought I would let everyone know I got my PC built.  It took me two days.  Would have been done in one but I made one really dumb mistake.  Everything was going fairly smooth minus a few missteps and confusion, then when I went to the final test and run BIOS my boot drive, an SSD wasn't showing, only the optical drive.  I tried moving the SATA cables into different ports, playing around in the BIOS but nothing would work.  Went to bed and the next morning I looked at with fresh eyes and realized the power cable wasn't seated properly in the drive.  Everything went easy-peasy after that.

[Halstrom]

I've built around a dozen computers by now, one thing I have learned is get the Motherboard, CPU & Memory together from the one supplier as a kit, everything else is unlikely to give you compatibility issues.