Vexzarium

I think I may have gone a bit overkill here... especially on the TDP. https://pcpartpicker.com/p/cJV423 Only did this to see what could be done with AMD.

Thanks for the info. I intend to OC, and have heard great things about Asus MOBO's. Actually trying to piece this together as we speak with a Z97 Asus Mobo. The CPU fan I've chosen is well reviewed and is perfect for the LGA 1150 socket, but I've concerns about if fitting in a Micro ATX case. Also have concerns about using a Micro ATX Mobo to begin with. This CPU(i5-4690K) & GPU (GTX 960) seem to both be very power efficient. So I think I'll shoot for a 550W and hope it works well. What scares me is the wattage used by the GPU at peak when it's under heavy load. Nvidia suggests a minimum of a 400W PSU, but this is not the Reference model of the GTX 960. So it is likely to peak at a bit higher. In case you guys can't tell, I'm meticulous and don't want to click that order button until I'm certain I've gotten it right.

What PSU wattage would be sufficient, under load, for an i5-4690k and a GTX 960? I've had a second guessing, I do not want an AMD CPU. ;) So to save some cost, I'm going to use this $25 case: Rosewill And add a bronze certified PSU. But I'm not certain of the wattage I'd need. Seems that the i5-4690k has a lower TDP(Before OC) than the AMD counterparts, and the GTX 960 seems to be very power efficient as well. I'm also uncertain of whether or not the PSU will fit in here properly and if the GPU will fit under that expansion cage. Also nervous to try and fit: CPU-Fan in here. Edit: This never panned out ;)

I'll start with the HDD for now and add an SSD in a few weeks. The HDD should get me going and be there for simple storage when I add the SSD. After much debate, I haven't been able to work out adding Intel into this build for pure cost reasons. I'd have to add a better CPU fan and the MOBO's seemed to be much more on the costly side. And coming from an i3 to another i3 seemed like torture to me(even though the i3 I have now hyperthreads and is pretty smooth). I also debated the GTX 960 vs R9 270x 4GB edition... and it would be a tear in my heart to choose the Radeon over my beloved Nvidia... but I might for the VRAM and similar pricing. I'm going to sleep on this one. But the good news is I involuntarily raised my Budget from $800 USD to $900 USD.

I think for asthetics, I prefer the Corsair anyway, and I'll have USB 3.0's on the front to boot. Both are around the same price and well equipped cases, but the Corsair suits me better.

I'm attempting to work with what you've given me, as I prefer Intel over AMD. Actually hunting for a LGA 1150 MOBO as we speak (read: type). Then onto a Gold PSU. Is there a difference between GDDR5 & DDR5? The GPU you suggest is DDR5. But it looks like I'm thinking too much into these little details.

I'm very thankful for your assistance.

Updated OP.

The only really reason I like Amazon is "Buyers Confidence", as in I've always dealt with them with no issues. And I'd hate to have to buy from multiple sources. To be honest, I've sat here staring at my monitor for the better part of the last 48 hours trying to build something reasonable for under or around $800 USD w/ OS and before tax... So basically $900 USD or less total. and I'm not sure if it's possible. Not with MOBO's, cases, and other components taking up so much of the budget. Almost wondering if a prefab is the way to go.

You must be getting led to different results from what I've put together by the links, I'll update with screenshots instead. I also did not pick any merchants because I intend to pay a bit more to go through Amazon rather than buy from a million different places. Also, I think I may be paying too much attention to PassMark, the GTX 960 has a good score for the price, making it one of the best price:performance cards based on PassMark's ratings. But I do see that the R9 290 is superior, and have been weary of the 128bit memory of the GTX 960

I've actually been leaning towards the i5-4690k all day. But, I have to cut back the costs, 1k is too high.

I'd like to scratch AMD all together anyway, as I've always trusted the Intel/Nvidia combination. I'm not sure what the difference betweer the FX 8320 and the 8320E are, I think the E version is lower TDP. I'll be looking into my preferred combination today. I actually composed the build in the OP by using pcpartpicker.com, so at least I know I was on the right patch to begin with. ;)

It's so tough to pick these components... I keep landing around $900. I was trying to stay under $800. lol

Originally was going to give my current system to my GF, but plans changed. We decided to instead sell it to a friend and put the money towards a better rig. This is my first attempt at this. I do have a natural ability at this genre of things but was hoping this would be a good place to get some feedback. Edit: Build is 100% completed with benchmarks and photos updated: Meet "Uthgerd"

I can attest to the above poster. Be very careful what you try, some programs WILL allow you to make the mistake of cloning a larger drive to a smaller one and you may, almost will, encounter a massive problem with the new drive. I used the same program moving up to a SSD and all I had to do was, create a bootable recovery partition on a flash drive, the I shrank my HDD to less than what the SDD was and then ran EaseUs. Not sure if you need to check "Optimize for SSD" but I did anyway. Be sure to click "Shutdown after completion" (wording may vary) and remove the old drive before booting back up. After all booted back up, I also extended any unpartitioned space on my SDD and ran through the files to make sure nothing extra was left lying around just to clean things up a bit. Then I wiped and reformatted the old HDD, a 5400rpm clunker, after I ran on the new SSD for a few days and was sure there were no issues. Now it can clunk all it wants to as it's slow speeds wont hurt basic storage much. ;)

Could I extend the OP's question a bit? Some mods in the STEP:Core line-up are no longer available or somehow have vanished. In this case, I assume using the STEP:Core Patch is still the right choice?

Kind of in the same boat. I liked the ENB but after playing for a bit the FPS got the best of me and I opted to drop it and return to Step:Core 2.2.9 + CoT & ELFX + the ini tweak for shadows striping for a 55-60fps experience and similar lighting quality minus the nice shadows from ENB.

I'd definitely say your system is at least a step, if not half of the steps to High Hrothgar, above my system. I'd also say that I'm likely being held back by my dual core i3, even though it is a rare hyperthreading i3, and have an i7 for this socket in mind for upgrading. None the less, I reverted my ini's back to the step recommended and I'm allowing the ELEP ENB & ELFX take tare of the shadows and lighting issues of this great game. Thank you for the suggestion, it has saved my game and is worth the FPS hit, which is not always so dramatic as seen in those screenshots. That was just a point of interest as it was one of the more dramatic spots where the possible performance hit could be seen by other STEP users.

So here's the verdict of my test/experiment with ELEP ENB & ELFX: STEP:Core 2.2.9 w/ ELEP ENB & ELFX STEP: Core 2.2.9 w/ Only ELFX ELEP ENB looks awesome with ELFX, but as seen in the screenshots, there is a decent performance hit that comes with it. Take note of the MSi/Riva on-screen display in the top left corner. But my verdict? I'm running it! It looks amazing. Take notice to tree shadows and in particular, for a good example, the purple mountain flower located at the bottom left.

So it would appear that the Striping issue is along the same lines of Z Fighting? Somewhat hardware specific and nearly impossible to create a universal fix. Sadly, taking a look at my ini's in MO, I found that the suggested ini tweaks were already in place and appear to come from running on "Ultra-High". The only thing that was not was the fShadowBiasScale. And that would be because I had already adjusted it in an attempt to eliminate the striping. Also, raising fShadowBiasScale like I did may be a creator of terrible "extra" shadowing upon a characters face. Which is almost as unfun as the striping. Sadly, not sure if my system can handle ENB based on what it looked like was required for "RealVision". And on a side note, I'm oddly glad to hear that it's a game issue and not my hardware. Edit: I've resolved the Interior/Exterior Shadow Striping in a better way by accident. I looked into RealVison ENB to attempt running it on top of STEP:Core and, no, no way I can run ENB(15-30fps vs 50-60fps w/o ENB). In uninstalling RV I also had to repair my ENBoost, which led me to the updated guide in 2.2.9. I used the "Injector" Version with the updated enblocal.ini tweaks. I also kept CoT, CoT Patch, and ELFX. And patched all conflicting STEP:Core mods for CoT. Also kept the SkyrimPrefs.ini tweak of: fShadowBiasScale=0.75Still averaging around 50-60fps with a VRAM usage of around 1900mb/2048mb. And RAM usage of around 5000mb. Whomever updated the ENBoost is a godsend. With CoT and ELFX, I appear to be getting better fps with a more demanding set of mods. Thank you.

Not sure if this is a "bug" by definition or if it's more of a suggestion from a very new forum member, also unsure if it's been mentioned before, but I'll shoot it your way anyway. After I get STEP:Core all installed, outside of a few additional preferential mods, the only two things I have no choice but to change is adding this tweak: SkyrimPrefs.ini:[Display]fShadowBiasScale=0.75The default on Ultra(at least for me) is: [Display]fShadowBiasScale=0.15And with the default, there is a horrid amount of Exterior Shadow Striping with no lighting mods installed. The possibilities between 0.15 and 0.75 do not suppress the striping, seems to hit the sweet spot of suppression and performance at 0.75. This ini tweak does not fix the Interior Shadow Striping, and it is even worse than Exterior, inconveniently I'm unaware of the proper .ini tweak to fix it. So I always resort to this mod: Skyrim Shadow Striping FixThere is another variant by another author of this mod that fixes the exterior striping as well as the interior, but I've found that it interferes/conflicts with the USKP so I just combine the ini tweak for exterior and the aforementioned mod for interior, and even with my sub par system, I get great results and an insignificant performance hit. With that said, could these two alterations be added to section 1.D.2. and section 2.D. respectively? Or maybe just the .ini tweak for exterior and a proper .ini tweak for interior shadow striping to section 1.D.2? Again, if I'm out of line for putting this here, or if it's a shortcoming of my hardware, please do tell.

Hello, the name is Phil. Been a Console Gamer for 20+ Years and finally made the conversion to PC(The "Next Gen" boxes failed to impress me). TES:V Was my all time favorite game on console and naturally had to have it on PC... that and the entire anthology... and TESO. So getting to the point, STEP has helped me massively in understanding the proper methods to modding TES:V. And I'd like to thank this community for that. STEP:Core is about as much as my system can handle. But coming from an Xbox 360 copy of TES:V running at Medium-Low, 720p, @ 25fps to a PC copy running Maxed out, 1920x1080, 60fps would have been enough for me... let alone a beautifully modded version of the game @ 45-60fps. I'm not running anything special in the hardware department but this community has allowed me to see this great game in a different light even with basic hardware. Thanks! P.S. I should probably admit that I found this while searching for something for TES:V similar to a beautiful overhaul that was done for TES:III. Edit: New Custom Rig. So I'll be maxing out all of the glorious mods available to me. ENB's here we come!