First time build: gaming PC with friend's parts

[BurgerGung]

Q: Can you recommend an ATX tower, new or used?

 

Q: Which brand of power supply is top quality? Corsair? Be Quiet Black? Thermaltake? 

 

Can you recommend loudspeakers, or are you all using headphones? I had KLIPSCH in the U.S. and TEUFEL in Germany and liked them both. But doubt they will be for sale over here...

 

Cheers!

 

 

[BurgerGung]

Graphics card: Nvidia 970 GTX

16 GB RAM, i5-46xx CPU, unknown main board

[Matzzon]

Thermaltake would always be a good choice. If you can spend it, just go for a 1200W that leaves a lot of a power buffer. With the stuff you´re mentioning it will not be much of a gaming pc with todays measurments, and you will be fine with 800 W too.

 

Thermaltake case view 21 with tempered glass ATX would also be ok, with a price of 2000-2500 baht.

 

Klipsch you will find to order at Lazada.

 

 

[manarak]

15 minutes ago, Matzzon said:

Thermaltake would always be a good choice. If you can spend it, just go for a 1200W that leaves a lot of a power buffer. With the stuff you´re mentioning it will not be much of a gaming pc with todays measurments, and you will be fine with 800 W too.

 

Thermaltake case view 21 with tempered glass ATX would also be ok, with a price of 2000-2500 baht.

 

Klipsch you will find to order at Lazada.

ridiculously overpowered.

midrange gaming PC won't exceed 450 to 480W, brand power units rated 600W will have no problem sustaining it. Use 800W if using a cheap no-name Chinese-made power unit.

[Matzzon]

23 minutes ago, manarak said:

ridiculously overpowered.

midrange gaming PC won't exceed 450 to 480W, brand power units rated 600W will have no problem sustaining it. Use 800W if using a cheap no-name Chinese-made power unit.

Thanks for clearly stating that you know nothing about the importance of having a cool environment in a gaming PC for maximum performance.

However, you have a nice surfing day.

[manarak]

1 minute ago, Matzzon said:

Thanks for clearly stating that you know nothing about the importance of having a cool environment in a gaming PC for maximum performance.

However, you have a nice surfing day. 

just have been building gaming systems for 30 years, but if you say so! lol

[OneMoreFarang]

The best way to know how much power you need is looking at the specifications:

 

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/900-series/
GeForce GTX 970
Graphics Card Power (W) 145W
Recommended System Power (W) 500W

 

Personally I have good experience with Enermax and Cooler Master but any brand name power supply should do the job.

 

I would be concerned about the motherboard. It's important that the motherboard has stable voltage regulators and with a no name board that is likely not the case. I use ASUS boards since forever and have very good experience with them.

 

[ignis]

Myself have the Thermaltake 850 watt, would give it 5 out of 5, compared to some I have had over the years

 

As for Case, where will the PC be used ?

Myself never use Air Con, so cooling is a factor..  I have the full case by AZZA, lots of room + has 10 fans inside, always used to have problems with heat, last case had a electric 12" fan + the case side off to keep it cool.   Full price 4,280 baht, but on Lazada found one place with 76% discount. 

 

Never used Intel ever, many builds over the years always use AMD...  even my laptop is AMD..... 

 

Nvidia graphics cards, had a few, never appear to last long, changed back again to Radeon,  present one is the R9 so getting on a bit... Next build will be both CPU and Graphics card by AMD., and use Gigabyte Motherboards

[Matzzon]

A recommended motherboard for your cpu could be one of the 2 following:

 

MSI Z97 Gaming 3

ASUS Z97 Pro Gamer

 

Here you have an overall better board with the choice of ASUS, but there are many gamers that like the "lag-killer" function in MSI boards.

[BurgerGung]

Well, I will be using it in my apartment with air con.

 

I've ended up winning a BE Quiet Dark 550 W PS at auction for about 850 THB and may end up with a Corsair PS, too with a maximum bid of 23 Euros, too.

 

Would a sound card free the CPU up? 

[Matzzon]

20 minutes ago, BurgerGung said:

Well, I will be using it in my apartment with air con.

 

I've ended up winning a BE Quiet Dark 550 W PS at auction for about 850 THB and may end up with a Corsair PS, too with a maximum bid of 23 Euros, too.

 

Would a sound card free the CPU up? 

Integrated sound will never chew a lot of your cpu power, but in my opinion: All that can be external from GPU to sound and wifi card should be.

[SpaceKadet]

I like Corsair products, and use their modular power supplies in all my builds. You can connect their higher end power supplies to the USB and using their iCUE application set the fan profile and view the power utilisation. I would also use Corsair Vengeance for memory, but you've got that covered.

 

For the cases I use Lian Li, mainly because I prefer aluminum to steel, but their products can be expensive and difficult to source in Thailand.

Otherwise Cooler Master Cosmos series is nice.

[manarak]

On 7/28/2019 at 10:40 AM, Matzzon said:

Integrated sound will never chew a lot of your cpu power, but in my opinion: All that can be external from GPU to sound and wifi card should be.

or do completely without WiFi.

Ethernet is so much better for gaming.

[Matzzon]

2 minutes ago, manarak said:

or do completely without WiFi.

Ethernet is so much better for gaming.

Yeah, that´s so obvious that I didn´t even mentioned it.