I actually am pretty tech savvy when it comes to computers (studying Computer Science after all HAHA). Just based on raw specs alone you've got a really good price on that machine. What's going to cost a pretty penny is the OS if it doesn't come pre-installed. Were you thinking of running a recent version of Windows on the machine? Not only that, I don't know if you have any software that you could use for it. At the bare minimum you need an OS, an antivirus program, and all of your art processing programs.

Hmm It just comes with linux (The price they charge for Windows 10 is as bit crazy, so I´m just getting a license somewhere else) I already have my art stuff ready but I think I still need and antivirus. Any ideas? O:

Thanks for the advice :)

I use Eset myself, which is a pretty good program. Costs just about $100 for a couple years service. Definitely heed what  TheAnon is saying too, the last thing we want is a bad interaction between hardware.

Be aware that your art stuff may not play well with Linux either so be sure to check compatibility. Worst case scenario is sourcing a copy of Windows from somewhere.

Ok! I´ll check what I can do! Thanks for the advice! :D

Linux doesn't need antivirus, and if you end up with Windows 10, it comes with Windows Defender built-in already that does a really good job.

I used to use avast but AVG antivirus has a free edition and both seem to work fairly well.

I would try to avoid mixing amd with an intel cpu...they don't play nice sometimes.

I think its just AMD in general, always unstable, strong maybe, but always unstable compared to Nvidia

Most shitty fucking unstable drivers.

I disagree strongly with both of these comments.

I have had nothing but a series of problems with nvidia cards. Every nvidia card I've gotten in the past five years has had driver stability issues, bluescreens, GPU crashes, etc. I realize that not everyone has had these issues and I've had some bad luck, but I haven't had these problems with any AMD GPUs, and the price to value of AMD is much higher.

AMD's drivers were AWFUL five years ago. But the current generation of drivers is stable, really nice to work with, and has no problems that I've seen running with intel CPUs (I don't buy anything but intel CPUs and none of my intel/AMD computers have had issues).

All of this is of course anecdotal. But, I also work in game development, so I've used a fair number of PCs with different video cards, and the AMD ones have without fail been more stable for me, both at work and at home.

Its pretty much always been:

Nvida sacrificing power for stability

AMD sacrificing stability for power

Then over the years both companies trying to fix the issues that their brands are known to have so that they're more balanced but the tendancies still remain. They're more even now than ever before but sweeping generalizations are safe to make but at the same time you have to realize that nothing is going to be issue-free, both sides are going to have issues, nothing is immune to issues.

Well, for me at least, there's also the fact that nvidia is pretty much nonfunctional on Linux and have made zero effort to make their drivers work on linux or support the open source community in making better linux drivers... so after trying to get a few linux machines to work with nvidia cards, I've pretty well banned nvidia from my house at this point. :/

That's probably not relevant to CuddleHooves, though, I imagine.

Still. I have had, in the past ten years, WAY more nvidia stability problems (even on Windows) than I have had AMD stability problems. (And I've also had the opposite impression with regards to power... nvidia is usually at the top of the benchmarks list in every generation, but the price per FLOPS/FPS is way worse than AMD.)

Still. Don't think this is a good place for an nvidia vs AMD religious war. I just want to point out that experiences with nvidia and AMD vary from person to person and card to card, and CuddleHooves should research the specific cards they're considering, check benchmarks and reviews, and... generally be prepared for the possibility that either one could turn out to be a dud if they're unlucky, or turn out to be great. If AMD were really so universally bad people would have stopped buying AMD cards and they'd be out of business, so at least some people aren't having stability issues. :)

K there's a few things you need to explain.

1 - Most important question = What are you wanting to do with the PC? Play games? Drawing programs for art? Both?

2 - You need an operating system - like windows 7 or windows 10 to install on the PC, if you already have a cd with win 7 or win10 then you can save money by using what you already have or else you'll need to buy one.

3 - Have you ever used a PC that has 2 monitors? If not and you can afford it - buy 2 monitors, you won't regret it.

4 - I personally would not go with Radeon graphics cards. I used Nvidia for 6 years and had no real problems, but when I got a new PC and used Radeon - it was the most powerful graphics card I have used to date but it came at a cost of PC crashes/freezes. Radeon is much more unstable compared to Nvidia in my experience. This is just my personal experience though.

1- Yeah the plan it´s use it for both art and gaming
2- I was planing on getting a license for Windows 10
3-Not really, but part of the idea of getting a desktop is being able to use a pen display for art I got a while ago since it´s basically impossible to use on a laptop.
4- I totally prefer stability over better graphics, any specific Nvidia card you could recomend? O:

Thanks for the advice!

As the others have said - go with Windows as you want compatibility, but you were already going to do that anyway.

Even if you're using the PC to be a display for your tablet I'd still reccommend trying 2 monitors - once you use 2 you won't go back to using 1 - its really good to have 2 monitors -for example you can have a screen in front of you with whatever you're doing or drawing on that main screen - and have an identical monitor right next to it sitting on the side and it can have references on it or music or whatever so you don't have to keep going back and forth between everything on 1 screen, it'd be really nice to just look over to the left or right and see stuff there trust me :)

What you need to buy depends exactly on what you're using so we're gonna have to dig deeper.

1 - What art program do you use?
2 - What games do you want to play?

Once you figure those out you can figure out how much power you need and what parts to buy.

But if you were going to spend 700 USD anyway you'll get a really excellent PC. Thing is - nobody ever usually needs a PC worth insane amounts of money because a PC worth 700 USD should be able to do almost anything anyone could want to do for drawing/gaming no matter what art/games you're using.

Haha Okies, I guess I could give it a try in the future then, but for now one display will have to do it.

1- I mainly use Clip Studio paint, but I want to be able to use PS more comfortably too.
2- And well, I guess I could say up to current gen things (Overwatch, Fallout 4, ect.)

Yeah I think the most important thing is making an investment that could last for a while doing a nice job without the need of big upgrades in the near future.

Just to echo my above comment... I've had the opposite experience with nvidia vs. radeon. Haven't had a good nvidia card that didn't come with bluescreens and crashes in over 5 years, and the one I had before that that was stable couldn't do OpenGL applications at any framerate above 5 even when the same games in DirectX mode would render at 100+ fps. But with several radeon cards, I've had no issues at all.

Ultimately any manufacturer of any type of chip will put out some good cards and some duds. So the thing to take from my comment is not 'nvidia is bad', but 'don't dismiss radeon based on anecdotes, because both companies put out some good cards and some bad'. But, between the two, a bad radeon card will cost you less to replace than a bad nvidia card.

You have to realize that having the job of being a dev - you're going to encounter more issues with anything than any average user, whilst anecdotes are almost worthless the strengths and weaknesses of both brands isn't anecdotal.

Except I've heard different people say opposite strengths and weaknesses for the two brands. It really is more of a religious war. I'm not trying to say AMD is better than nvidia, or the other way around. What I'm trying to say is that both brands have their merits and both brands have their stability issues in different ways, and for every incident I've seen of AMD stability issues, I've seen one of nvidia stability issues, too.

The one and only thing I think AMD excels at beyond nvidia is value per dollar. So for my money, if both of them have stability issues (and both do, though their stability issues present differently and neither one has stability issues with all of their cards, even of the same model - one nvidia 970 may perform flawlessly, another may crash daily, same for AMD), I'd rather take the risk that will cost me less if it does turn out broken.

Also, for the record, the vast majority of my nvidia issues have been in my personal machines while gaming. Most of my work computers, I've requested to switch out to AMD cards after the nvidia cards started acting up.

You've been anything but fair in your comparisons between the two brands, all you've done is insisted that Nvida gives you more trouble than AMD and havn't said anything else outside of that.

Because you've spoken for nvidia already. I'm not trying to be unfair, I'm trying to present the side of the argument that is not already present. Were you arguing that all nvidia cards were unstable, I would be making the same case that that statement is unfair toward nvidia.

I am NOT sharing my experience with nvidia to say all nvidia cards are awful. I'm sharing my experience to say that users of both brands have had negative experiences and it's unfair to either brand to completely remove them from the list of options based on a single person's experiences with it. (And I apologize if I did not get that point across properly; that's my fault, I should have been clearer.)

Alright so I'm not going to build the whole thing for you but I'm going to just point out the important things that you need to get if you want the best lag-free experience in games like Fallout 4.
It seems your art program doesn't really need much at all so we're going to focus on what you need to play games with no or the least amount of lag and to get good FPS on high graphics.

1 - Get an SSD instead of a Hard drive, or get both - Fallout 4 has cancerous bad load times but installing it on an SSD takes away some of the pain and makes it okay or bearable. Also installing windows to the SSD means your PC will be turned on and at the desktop ready to go in about 5-7 seconds. What you can do is install your games and windows to the SSD and any other games or programs that you want good load times on to the SSD, and put all other stuff that doesn't need to load fast on the Hard drive. MOST things you install to an SSD will have basically instant load times and things that normally have bad load times will be much much better. Try to get a 128 GB or 256 GB SSD and then get a 1 or 2 TB hard drive to put anything else on, like music/pictures/old games that don't need new technology to go fast.

2 - Make sure your processor is at least i5. If you want everything to be fast or good, making the processor anything under i5 will mean you're wasting your money on other things when the slow processor slows everything down with itself. I used to have an i7 and it was awesome, but now I only have an i5 and its okay - if you can't afford an i7 get an i5.

3 - Graphics cards: I'm not going to reccomend any 1 specific one but take a look at this list
http://www.144hzmonitors.com/best-g.....ics-card-2016/

This list does show the one you were going to get on it as "Best Budget Graphics Card", but to be honest when you want a PC that will be good for like, at least 4-5 years for the graphics, then you want to spend some money else your stuff is going to get out of date. I would go with either of the "Best value for money" cards, they are more expensive but the difference matters when you're playing new games on high graphics settings, if you get best value for money you will be able to put everything at the highest graphics settings and should have no lag for years.

Just make sure you get a power supply that the graphics card needs too, that website should show how much you'll need too.

Oh and RAM is really cheap so either get 8GB or 16GB, I think 16GB is really good and doesn't cost much and will make a big difference

Oh and I strongly suggest getting Windows 10 to run all of this, trying to run it on older OS like Windows 7 might not work.

Okies! After a better search I actually found something with those specs for a similar price!

Thanks again for your advice! :D

Np, I take it you're opening up commissions because you need a little bit more for it? xD

Also, are you getting someone to build the PC for you and then deliver it to you? Because you'll want to get professional advice on it and for someone to double check that its all compatible and will work etc

Haha Kind of xD

And put everything together before sending the pc! :)

If you're using it for gaming, you need an i5 processor at least. My experience with those things taught me that an i5 will let you squeak by on some higher end games. The i7 is much more expensive, but last time I checked, the best i5 is like $100 cheaper than any of the i7 processors, and apparently works almost as good. I have no first hand experience with the one I read up on, since I decided to overcompensate in the graphics department when building my PC. I was tired of struggling to get games work.

TL;DR: Do NOT cheap out on the processor. A more powerful one will save you many headaches in the future.

I agree with this. The i3 will likely be an issue. The i5 is the best value for the money - the i7 is only marginally better than the i5 in most respects, but is much more expensive, so the i5 is going to be the best performance per dollar spent. Of course, that's only relevant if you have enough dollars to spend, but if you can fit it in your budget, I would definitely agree it's worth the extra cost.

I would definitely check the prices against newegg.com for the same parts. Newegg isn't /always/ the lowest price, but they're usually among the lowest, and typically when other places beat them, I still usually go with Newegg because of their shipping, return, and customer service policies. I've had a lot of good experiences with them and I trust them.

That said, if you're not comfortable putting the parts together yourself, you should expect a bit of a higher price for the service of actually installing everything. So, if that price is within ~$50-$75 or so of what you can get buying the parts individually on newegg, I'd say it's probably a pretty good price.

Eh, the video card is a little weak, and honestly I wouldn't recommend going below an Intel i5 if you can possibly avoid it. Also, that's _way_ more power supply than you actually need. A setup like that only needs 400w tops, maybe less. If you're getting a great deal on the 600w, or you're planning on upgrading, then go ahead, otherwise I'd say sink a bit more into processing power, and a bit less into electrical power. That said, other than price, there's no downside to getting a stronger power supply than you need (well, no significant downside. If you want to get really technical, start looking into power curves and efficiency).

Oh. One other thing. I would highly recommend avoiding Seagate for your hard drive. Seagate is notorious for having very short average lifespans, and there's plenty of data to back that up; I can provide it if you're interested. There are some models of Seagate drives that perform AMAZINGLY well, and some that are just absolutely AWFUL, and not really anything between - I wouldn't get a Seagate unless you have researched the failure rates on that exact model and found it to be one of their good ones, unless you are getting multiple Seagate drives in a mirrored RAID setup, which I'm going to assume is not something you're planning to maintain. Seagate drives are super cheap if you're keeping your data mirrored and prepared to replace them regularly, but if you're only going to have one drive, HGST cannot be beat for reliability - again, plenty of data to back that up from multiple sources!

Highly recommend considering an HGST drive. If you can't find one within your budget, Western Digital, Toshiba, or... basically any brand but Seagate will be safer than Seagate. With Seagate you run a high risk of early hard drive failure and losing all your data.

But, if you're willing to buy two drives and have them set up in RAID 1, you can probably safely buy seagate drives, since it's unlikely they'll both fail at the same time - provided when failure occurs, you replace the one that failed quickly.

He probably doesn't even know what RAID is, like most people wouldn't even know what a RAID array is unless they're into tech.

That seems likely, but I don't like to make assumptions. :) But in any case, if they don't know what RAID is or how to set it up, my recommendation is to avoid Seagate.

My big problems are the GPU (video card) and processor. While yes for the price it's a good deal, you need a better GPU and at LEAST an i5 if you want to game.

I echo this sentiment.

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu_value.html
This is a great resource for getting a general idea of how much you can get a card for, sorted by benchmark rating vs price

The GTX 960 is a really powerful card, if you're willing to put out 160 dollars. You might even watch for better sales, it's been getting cheaper and cheaper now that the 1000 series is out.

I would suggest an i5 - or even an AMD with higher specs. Look for quad core primarily (since most modern games are optimized for multiple cores) and try to get at least 3ghz (or higher!)

I was able to get my hands on a better pc with the specs I see around here as the best for my budget! So yay haha x3

Thanks for the advice! :D

I'm glad you found what you were looking for :3 Hope you enjoy it!

If you do any major gaming I would go with nVidia if possible. There was a bit of a snafu with amd when one games graphics engine wouldn't work on the amd video cards infrastructure. Also, I'd recommend either an i5 or if. I'd also be careful about mixing ram chips. Sounds like you have either an 8 GB and a 4 GB mixed together or you have 3 4gb ram modules. The latter is fine but mixing an 8 and a 4 in past experience has shown some strange bugs.