Haven't looked at PC components in years...don't want to waste my money

[iusprimaenoctis]

Hello everybody. I haven't built a PC from scratch for 11 years, and haven't played around with my desktop in 6, since being far too mobile to have anything but laptops. I want to play things like the Total War series, Fallout 4, etc., on a 1080p 60hz monitor. I spent considerable time doing some research, but wanted to run it by some others to make sure I'm not wasting my money on parts that won't help. Thoughts?

Processor:
3.2/3.6, i5 6500 Skylake

Motherboard:
Asus Pro Gaming h170 chipset
I'm not looking to overclock so I didn't go with the z170.

Video Card:
Asus Geforce GTX 970 (dc2oc)
I hear that the MSI one is faster, but I was thinking Asus' superior warranty might be worth the trade off...thoughts?

Memory:
16gb ddr4 2133 Corsair Vengeance (2x8gb)
Or will 8gb be enough? Is there any point to ram faster than 2133 when it looks like the processors don't support it?

Hard Drives:
SSD: 250gb Samsung 850 EVO
HD: 3tb 7200rpm Seagate ST3000DM001
I figure 250gb should be enough for the OS and programs and all that, and 3tb should store all my movies and other stuff

Optical Drive:
DVDr/rw Samsung SH-224FB/RSMS
Just in-case...

PSU:
650w Corsair rm650x

Wifi:
Asus PCE-N15

Case+fan:
Corsair 100r + 1xCooler Master Silencio fp120 fan


Any advice or commentary would be greatly appreciated!

[gupsterg]

As it doesn't come across your in a rush to build I'd dump the i5 6500 and get the i5 6600 from Amazon on Pre-Order for £155.

I'd say 8GB & 2133MHz is more than fine for gaming. You won't see a real benefit in gaming with higher speed RAM and any difference is gonna be negligible. Going higher than 2133MHz is technically overclocking.

[iusprimaenoctis]

Great, thanks! Is the i5 6600 better? I'm curious, considering it's currently a bit cheaper than the 6500 on amazon.

[gupsterg]

Yes the i5 6600 is better, higher base & turbo frequency, it tends to be normally £175 ish IIRC.

Link:- i5 6500 vs 6600

Also keep an eye on HUKD computers section.

Taking more of a look at say a DDR4 8GB Kit (2x4GB) I'm thinking 16GB is more economical? Cheapest I can see 8GB kit is either this Patroit Viper 1600MHz or Crucial 2133MHz.

Where as £60 get you Kingston HyperX Fury 16GB 2400MHz kit.

This was sort of how I ended up with a 16GB DDR3 2400MHz kit, besides as I occasionally run VMs I deemed the extra RAM as useful.

250GB SSD is ample IMO, I have Win7 x64 with MS Office plus other apps/utils and its half full. I keeps games/photos, etc on a 2TB HDD.

I also have a DVD drive, as I have some old software/system backups that I occasionally access.

Regarding the Asus PCE-N15, cheapest I can find is £14.50, I was able to bag this Gigabyte GA-WB867D-I (is Intel 7xxx chip, I use drivers from them) for about £20. Is AC card, so perhaps handy if you get a better router in future plus has bluetooth.

[iusprimaenoctis]

Great, thanks for all the advice and information. I ended up going with the 6600 and 16gb (2x8) Corsair @ 2400, as it was cheaper than the 2133 (strange...) I considered upgrading my wifi card but I expect to use ethernet when I move in a couple years anyways.

I just installed the driver from Nvidia directly, but do you have any idea whether I should bother with any of the software that came with the video card?

But, so far, everything is working fine and looks great. Maximum settings for everything runs smooth!

I had a hard time getting it to do HDMI on first boot. The motherboard had DRAM led on until I switched the ram sticks with each other (in the same exact positions). The motherboard's usb3 won't read my usb3 external drive (Seagate Goflex 3tb). It doesn't show up in device manager or anywhere...but it works if I put it through usb2. I have a similar problem with my MacBook Air.