Help buying a new PC

[Slimebeast]

oodles2do said:

I've decided that I need to invest in a new PC, I currently have a near 5 year old laptop that is running an i3-2310m 2.1 Ghz and 8GB RAM, it copes with day to day tasks but doing some more intense activities with my Uni work and the CPU usage goes into the mid - high 90's.

I plan on buying a new PC that will be primarily for non gaming (already have a PS4), but it'll be nice to have the option to put in a GPU and immediately be able to play some games.

Here is the current spec I have come to:

 

	Case NZXT PHANTOM 240 WHITE GAMING CASE
	Processor (CPU) Intel® Core™i5 Quad Core Processor i5-6600 (3.3GHz) 6MB Cache
	Motherboard ASUS® Z170-P: ATX, LG1151, USB 3.0, SATA 6GBs
	Memory (RAM) 16GB HyperX FURY DDR4 2666MHz (2 x 8GB Kit)
	Graphics Card INTEGRATED GRAPHICS ACCELERATOR (GPU)
	1st Hard Disk 250GB Samsung 850 2.5" EVO SSD, SATA 6Gb/s (upto 540MB/sR | 520MB/sW)
	Power Supply CORSAIR 550W VS SERIES™ VS-550 POWER SUPPLY
	Processor Cooling PCS FrostFlow 100 Series High Performance CPU Cooler (£24)
	Thermal Paste ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND (£9)
	Extra Case Fans 2x 120mm Black Case Fan (configured to extract from rear/roof) (£9)
	Sound Card ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
	Wireless/Wired Networking WIRELESS 802.11 AC1300 867Mbps/5GHz, 400Mbps/2.4GHz PCI-E CARD (£29)

 

This PC would be dual booted with Linux and Windows with Linux being the primary OS. I already have the peripherals needed.

 

Any advice on whether this spec would be good to doing non gaming activities for a good few years would be great. The site has the option for water cooling for the CPU and I've put in quite a big power supply so that if I add a GPU in the future it would be able to cope. Do I need the extra fans on the case?

Adding liquid cooling would add about £40 to the price, currently it's at £659 and I wouldn't want to spend anymore than £700. I don't really know anything about motherboards either, I picked the first option and the website hasn't said anything would be incompatible even when adding a GTX 1080 just for testing.

Thanks in advance!!

Nice case. Reminds of mine:

But yours is better cos it has a bigger window:

 

I got my first SSD drive in 2014, being very sceptical whether I would really feel a difference, but they are amazing for games. The loading times are soooo fast. I always have a handful of the games I play the most at the time installed, the rest on the HDD. Only £75 for that 250GB Samsung EVO 850 SSD is so much worth it.

And I agree that putting in a Radeon RX 480 for less than £200 (or less than £150?) would be perfect for you because you will feel the urge to start buying cheap games from Steam right away, trust me, and it'll be nice to play them with good graphics even if PS4 is your main gaming platform for a couple of years still, until you realize that PC gaming is what you want to focus on.

A 550 W PSU is perfect if you want to make sure you can upgrade to a monster GPU in the future.

What monitor do you have?