My Gaming Computer
Last December, I ended up pulling off building myself a gaming rig with the latest Intel Coffee Lake i5 CPU (my system requirements do not warrant an i7 at this time) and NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 1070 Ti that was released a month prior. This is my main computer for everything that I do, such as playing the latest PC games, emulating video games from the past, doing work on this website/blog posts, virtualization, and doing college work.
Technical Specifications
CPU: Intel Core i5-8600k 6c/6t @ 4.3 GHz
Cooling: Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo
GPU: EVGA NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Ti FTW2
RAM: 16 GB DDR4 Dual-Channel @ 2666 MHz
Motherboard: ASUS TUF Z370-PLUS GAMING
PSU: Seasonic Focus Gold 750 W
Storage: SanDisk 240 GB SSD, Toshiba 240 GB SSD, WD Blue 1TB HDD, Toshiba 1 TB HDD
Case: iBuyPower Slate (2x Glass Panel) Case
Operating System: Windows 10 Education (equivalent to Enterprise, license key retrieved from college)
Keyboard: Logitech G910 Orion Spectrum Romer-G Mechanical Gaming Keyboard
Mouse: Logitech G300 Optical Ambidextrous Gaming Mouse
Monitor: Lenovo L24q 23.8-Inch 1440p Monitor (primary, used for gaming), HP 23es 23-Inch 1080p Monitor (secondary, used for Discord, HW monitors, & music controls)
Headset: Turtle Beach X12
Some of the components that I currently have for this computer I did not get when I initially built this machine. These components include the SanDisk 240 GB SSD (I had used the Western Digital as my main HDD for the OS), the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Ti (I was going to use my brother’s GTX 960, but he needed that card back), and the Lenovo 1440p Monitor (which I decided to purchase to push my 1070 Ti). I had also acquired an SSD from my brother. His SSD from Toshiba failed, which led him to end up purchasing a replacement SanDisk SSD from Best Buy. Coincidentally, we were able to get a replacement HDD from Toshiba, which I had ended up acquiring for this build.
In the near future, I have some upgrades planned for this build. The first upgrade includes the switch from air cooling to an AquaChanger closed-loop liquid cooling solution for the CPU, which I plan on overclocking in the near future. The next upgrade that is planned to occur on this build is the replacement of one of the HDDs from a 1 TB to a 3-4 TB HDD to allow for storage of additional games.
In total, this build cost around $1700, that includes $1400 for all components in the Gaming Rig including and $300 in displays. More information about my gaming rig, along with the breakdown of pricing can be viewed on PCPartPicker.
If you are looking to build a rig that is similar to mine, I do have a few pointers. First, I had bought the graphics card at a time where they had been at their regular MSRP. With the increase of popularity in cryptocurrency and the increase in demand in graphics cards due to an increase in cryptocurrency mining, the graphics card prices will be at minimum 25% higher than they were before the cryptocurrency craze of January 2018. Second, DDR4 RAM prices are still at a pretty high point and had been since late 2016. In fact, I had paid almost $200 for 16GB of DD4 RAM at the time of purchase. Lastly, the case that I have from iBuyPower I had ended acquiring from a friend of mine when he upgraded his case. Keep in mind that this case can only be acquired when you purchase a computer from iBuyPower and cannot be purchased standalone. Feel free to comment on this blog or on PCPartPicker if you have any questions about my computer or want tips from me on how to purchase components for PC building or building a PC.
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