Introducing Isaac's PC Build – Prelude to the How to Build Your PC Build Video

In this article, myself, Isaac Harsh, will introduce you to me and give you a brief overview of the parts I used in my build. There will be a video on Newb Computer Build on how to build a computer and I will be using my parts. In each category that I put my parts in, I will give you a small guideline to deciding if you need them, or which one to get. Enjoy what you will read and leave any questions in the comment section, I will try to respond to them as quickly as possible.

About Isaac:

Hello everyone, I am Isaac Harsh, and I will be making some videos for Newb Computer Build on how to build a computer. I am almost 17 and a junior in high school. I am a computer fanatic and know a lot about them, if I don’t know something, I will look it up and research to help find you the most unbiased choices/decisions. I am no fan boy of Intel®, AMD, or NVIDIA. I choose parts for performance and support for games that I will play.

The Parts Used:

In these videos, the parts used will be for a gaming build, the first one will be an unboxing of the parts. This article will discuss further about each part, why I chose it, and its performance compared to other parts. The Processor I chose for my build was the Intel® Core i5 4670k. The Motherboard is the MSI® gaming series Z87 chipset, socket 1150. The Graphics card that will be put into the build is the AMD R9 290x, the one I will show in the video is the NVIDIA GTX 580 due to not having enough money at the moment. For storage, I went with a 1tb Western Digital blue and a 250gb Samsung SSD. For memory, I went with 8gb of G-Skill sniper ram. For the power supply, I went with the Corsair RM 750 watt power supply. For the operating system, Windows 8.1 was my choice. I chose the Rosewill Thor V2 case to house all of my components.

Hardware Overview:

Processor:

I chose this Intel® Core i5 4670k due to it being at a great price and is a great processor for gaming, not like AMD is a bad company. AMD makes great processors for gamers on a budget and they can slash prices because there are no integrated graphics on their FX processors. The other tempting choice for me was the AMD 8320 as it is 8 cores and has great performance because I will be playing mainly Battlefield 4. If you will not be gaming, a nice AMD apu will suite you nice, as they have great onboard graphics and enough processing power for daily use, not including gaming even though you can use them for gaming and do a hybrid crossfire with a compatible graphics card to get more of a performance boost.

Motherboard:

This motherboard, as Corey recommends mostly in his monthly builds, is amazing. As Corey and I were discussing the other night, we were discussing how much we love this board and why. This board is for 4th gen Intel® processors and is not backwards compatible. There are 3 Gen 3.0 PCI Express slots, one running at x16, or two running at x8 x8, or three running together and x8 x4 x4. Four ram slots that support 8gb in each slot and memory clock speeds up to 3000mhz. Two way NVIDIA sli or three way AMD crossfire supported. It has a nice red and black theme with dragon on a heat sink and dragon heads on the other heat sinks. Use any motherboard you feel like as long as it is compatible and has the features you would like. Form factors vary from; ATX, miniATX, microATX, EATX, and vice versa for ITX motherboards. Another article later on will descried this differences between the different motherboards/sizes.

Graphics Card:

The graphics card that will be put into this build is the AMD R9 290x. As said above, the card in the video will be the NIVIDIA GTX 580. This AMD card runs Battlefield 4 perfectly well above 30 frames per second. The card may get really hot, but the card is made to reach temperatures of 95oC when any game is thrown at it, that is its goal. The cooling on the reference card is good, but loud. If you don’t mind sacrificing sound for a great card than this is the graphics card for you. If you want cool, quiet, and overclocking room, get the NVIDIA GTX 780 ti as it performs better or worse than this card depending on the situation. The two main companies for graphics cards as you can tell are NVIDIA and AMD. Many companies make their own custom coolers for these graphics cards and sell them. A graphics card is not needed if all you will be doing is surfing the web, writing papers, or anything else done in a daily day on computers.

Storage:

For the storage, a 1tb Western Digital Blue hard drive, and a 250gb Samsung SSD. This hard drive is very reliable and is good for daily use as well. This SSD is said to be one of the best SSDs out there and great reliability, I found this for $150 on Amazon during Black Friday and I could not let this deal go as it was too good to be true. If you want a cheaper drive that is still reliable and well for gaming/storage, get the Kingston drives, they are cheaper and are still great drives.

Power Supply:

The power supply is a Corsair RM 750 watt power supply. If you need to calculate your computers wattage, go to the Thermaltake Power Supply calculator as that is what I use. This power supply had its components handpicked so no noise was created by them. It is super silent and the fan doesn’t even spin up until 40% load and is still quiet. This is a fully modular power supply so cable management is easy to do as you can plug in the cables you need. Not to mention it is backed with a 5 year warranty. Another good power supplies out there are Corsair CX and Corsair HX series.

Ram:

I chose the G-skill Sniper 8gb ram as it is reliable and fast. Nothing much said on ram than that 8gb is plenty for gaming. If you will be making videos, get 16gb. Anymore than 16gb is overkill and a waste of money. 1600mhz is the sweet spot for ram, but you can go higher clock speeds if you really want to. There are many reliable ram companies; Corsair, Kingston, ADATA, and G-Skill.

Case:

The case is a Rosewill Thor V2. A massive Full tower case with support for 4 230mm fans and comes with 3 of them and a 140mm fan on the back. There is plenty of room for wiring, large graphics cards, and large motherboards. Cases don’t matter so much as their performance doesn’t matter. Chose a case for if it fits all your components first then go for aesthetically pleasing looks or color schemes that match your other computer parts, my scheme is red and black. Some cases have windows so you can show off your sleek and sexy parts, along with lights and some support complicated custom water cooling loops if that is the kind of cooling you want.

Operating System:

I can hear you all collectively face palm when you hear this, I used Windows 8.1. Hear me out, Windows 8.1 has more support for Directx 11.1 and 11.2 so more future games will be better compatible. Windows 7 is a great operating system if you don’t want to go the tile way of operating systems. Windows 8 also give a fps boost in Battlefield 4, and since that is what I was going to be playing mostly, it smooth’s frames better. Windows 7 is the other option as it has been around for a while and has no bugs; it is a great choice and doesn’t have as big of a learning curve as Windows 8. It’s all up to what you want to do, as operating systems come in 32bit and 64bit.

Optical Drive:

The optical drive in my build is just a plain and simple LG disk drive. Any disk drives works and doesn’t matter which one you use. If you will be using your computer as a media center as well, then pay double a normal disk drive costs and get a blue ray, but for a gamer like me, blue ray is not a feature I need.

Final Remarks:

I will not include how to build a pc in this article; it will be in the video. This article would be triple the length if I included how to build a pc, as you read, this article is a brief overview of the parts I am using and about them and a little bit of a guide to what part might suite you best. Happy building everyone, and have a wonderful holiday (the time I am writing this is two weeks before Christmas and holiday break for everyone).