Yeah my external drive is 3.0. I think I'll go for 250gb SSD instead, £28 more for over double the space. It'll help a lot especially if I'm dual booting.

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?

Slimebeast said: 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?

Nice case! I like the red.

I ended up going for 450W as the website tells you if there are any compatibility issues with your build, so I put in a GTX 1080 on 450W PSU and it didn't complain (took it out for purchase though :p). I might make the switch to PC's, but most likely it won't be my full gaming platform, I like a lot of the Sony exclusives and will probably want to get away from the PC monitor if I've been working at it all day.

I've already got a PC setup, using my laptop as a desktop and then decided to go for this because my laptop isn't up to it anymore, I've got this monitor:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00YQKTGR8/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Agreed id drop the liquid cooling and extra fans as stated above. 3 Upgrades i would reccomend
1. Up the wattage on the power supply. When you get a GPU in the future you dont want to run out of wattage. Id reccomend you bump it to atleast 650w or even 800w. The PSU is the single most future proof component you can buy and dont need to be replaced often as long as it can put out enough power.

This one is more personal preference. I dont like running my Power supplies very heavy because often they get hot when under near load and some can be noisy. Plus as power supplies age the wattage they put out tends to drop off. I always reccomend to NEVER skimp on a power supply and buy a bit more than you need. While you could probably get away with 550w having more just gives you more options in the future without having to worry about whether or not your power supply can run a specific graphics card or accessory. And the price difference isnt very much at all. Generally less than $25 difference between 500w power suplies and 800w power supplies all things being equal

2. Get more storage space. 250 Gb is going to go fast. I have a 400 GB intel 750 drive and its always full. You can get a couple regular hard drives for cheap and use them for storage.

3. Get a GPU the Radeon RX 480 looks really promising at only $199. Youd be suprirsed how many programs can be GPU accelerated anymore and at only $199 theres really no reason not to get one!