More Components
Storage – Boring but Important
Don't tell Allyn we said this, but storage is b-o-o-o-o-o-r-i-n-g! Actually, it's one of the more interesting avenues of change in PC hardware in the last 5 years and with NVMe SSDs now reasonable priced from vendors like Intel, Samsung, and others, getting mind-bendingly faster storage is within reach to use as your primary or your only system drive.
The current "best of the best" is the Samsung 960 Pro though the 960 EVO is a close second and will save you quite a bit in terms of cost per GB. You can pick up the 960 EVO 1TB drive for $479 on Amazon or as low as $129 for the 250GB model if you plan to supplement with spinning drives.
If you are looking for a lower cost solution, but still want to keep it all on solid state, might we recommend the Samsung 850 EVO SATA, where the same 1TB capacity runs slightly less expensive at $324.
Finally, for your spinning disk, multi-terabyte needs, Allyn still likes the Western Digital Red drives for RAID configurations (and don't you deserve redundancy protection?).
Cases and Cooling
Whether you are starting from scratch or just need a new case for your system, it's hard to argue with the value proposition from Corsair's Carbide series. The 100R comes in just a hair under $60, and is a solid mid-tower with good build quality and features for the price.
For a step up the options are vast, but sticking with Corsair for this example yeilds the excellent Graphite series, with the full-tower 780T a nice addition to the family that includes the older (and still awesome) 600T.
Let us not forget about CPU cooling, which is a market with as many players as the enclosure category. I'm a fan (pun intended) of air cooling for most of my builds, but there is no denying the power of a big dual-width liquid cooler for overclocking. Corsair has long been a go-to, but we shouldn't forget about Cooler Master, with very good performance and low noise output from their MasterLiquid Pro 240 and 280; and these are priced very competitively.
It wouldn't be a cooler recommendation without the long-time #1 seller: Cooler Master's Hyper 212 EVO. This is still one of the best coolers you can buy for $30, and represents a huge step up from most stock heatsinks.
not really exactly a buyers
not really exactly a buyers guide, as there’s not a lot of particular recommendations. I was hoping for more of a refresh of the Hardware Leaderboard…
This is not a guide, it’s an
This is not a guide, it’s an ad and WTF look at those drop down menu selections for Baby products.
LOL the embeds are context
LOL the embeds are context based from Amazon. That means it REALLY things you need some baby products. 🙂
Sorry!
Maybe, but promotional
Maybe, but promotional materal is creeping fruther into PCPer’s content instead of being tastefully off to the side. Ad Blockers that where mostly not needed at PCPer are now required to restore some form of non disruptive viewing of content.
Those pushed ads are pushing out scripts that interfere with the UI and only annoy. It’s not going to help if with any revenue shortfalls and juts creates more reasons to enable the ad blockers. More intrusive ads mean more ad blockers resulting in more ads pushed into readers faces that do not normally use ad blockers.
Hey there are drop down Amazon options for pet supplies and these wall of ads articles certianly qualify as dogfood.
i’m sure they’ll do an update
i’m sure they’ll do an update after Tuesdays processor releases and any resulting Intel price cuts..
Mini Price war Ryzen 7 1700
Mini Price war Ryzen 7 1700 against the 7700k, just watch out for those games that may like more than 4 CPU cores. Gamers that like to stream may want to look at more than 4 cores. I’ll take the 8 core 1700 and overclock, but even if I don’t as long as the framrates are mostly in the bounds low to high I’ll always take more cores over less cores. That price per core metric will be AMD’s winning metric! Look the R7 1700 $319.99/8 = around $40 per core, and the 7700K at 313.89/8 = around $78 per core.
And both the DX12 and Vulkan API’s are taking more of the stress off of the CPU, Intel’s or AMD’s CPUs. So I’ll take those extra cores and threads(8 core 16 threads) on the Ryzen 7 1700. And the latest AMD Generic Encapsulated Software Architecture (AGESA) update has fixed a lot of the gaming regressions with SMT enabled. The next AGESA updates from AMD will be targeting memory clocks/memory overclocking.
My head hurt when I see a
My head hurt when I see a gaming web site recommends a four core CPU in 2017.
If you only play games on your PC, then an i7-7700K at 5 GHz may be okay. But this CPU runs hot and at 4K may not provide good frame rates in all games. In two years, 4K gaming will be common.
On the other hand, AMD R7 1700 has 8 real cores. The gamer will enjoy smoother game play and an excellent multi-threaded performance.
By the way, AMD R7 1700 is cheaper than Intel core i7-7700K processor.
7700K is likely the last 4
7700K is likely the last 4 core CPU you will ever buy assuming you dont upgrade every year. Might as well skip it.
If you are upgrading, why
If you are upgrading, why would you buy anything on this list instead of just holding out for those Ryzen 5 CPU tests?
Even AMD says wait for the performance to be revealed.
If you are buying new, why not look at the MacBook that has some battery life for your portable programming? oh you are gaming? then buy a ps4? already have one of those sit back and make fun of these AMD fanboys
7700K does hold an advantage
7700K does hold an advantage today in games. Even after latest Ryzen optimizations. But it is a choice that limits the owner to 8 threads max, and only 4 real cores. If he ever needs more processing power, he will be forced to change the whole platform.
Instead of 960evo. I think
Instead of 960evo. I think that a 950Pro, corsair mp500 or an OCZ RD400 are much better choices in terms of quality. MLC and not 960s TLC memory, that is 3x endurance. Also they can sustain the advertise speeds forever in contrary with the 960evo that the speeds advertised are applicable only as long as the cache is enough, after that you get sata ssd speeds. There is a very in depth review on this matter on this site.
No keyboard recommendation?
No keyboard recommendation?
Logitech G502 is the worst
Logitech G502 is the worst piece of garbage mouse I have ever bought. It stops responding every 5 minutes.
Don’t buy it unless you want to destroy it in a fit of rage!!!
Mine doesn’t have that sort
Mine doesn’t have that sort of problems, but the scroll wheel sensor and click failed me and had to send it to them twice now. Would not recommend aswell.