Quote:
Originally Posted by Dadhawk
I've been building my own PCs for over 30 years, and have ALWAYS found it better to go as high a processor as you can afford, and in the past 20 years, the second highest tier video card. With the processor, today's highest level processor is probably going to last you 5 to 7 years (easy) of business use and up to 5 years for gaming applications. A video card is usually good for 3 years.
In general I've found I upgrade my video card mid CPU cycle. (if I keep a CPU 6 years, I've likely had 2 or maybe 3 video cards).
My son wanted to build a new gaming computer for his college graduation present so we are in the process of putting that list together. There is an "under $2,000" limit on it based on our gift contribution and what he was able to put into it. This is our list (missing a couple of components that we plan to pick up locally either at Fry's or Micro Center.)
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/JKLsdX |
I typically go for the greatest value target. I didn't think processors were a bottleneck for most gaming since they are relatively efficient with back-end calculations. If you also want to do other cpu-intensive stuff or multitask like a boss then I can see your point, but an i7 or even i5 gets you everything you need for gaming for less money.
I'm going on 7 years with a Haswell i5 (now OC'ed), which is worse than any of these options. I haven't really done much in terms of stressing it recently though, so it might get interesting if I start doing modeling for my 3d printer...
I'm with you on the GPU. The top of the line stuff is not worth the premium price.
I definitely like those Corsair all-in-one coolers. Both me and my wife have them. I couldn't fit an h100 in my case so I stuffed an h80 in the external drive bay lol.