The Great Distracto Part III: Components

Guys, I did it. I actually picked out parts for Distracto, and purchased them. Pulling the trigger on big purchases is hard for me because I'm always worried the price will drop in the near future (this is why I love buying at Best Buy when I can).

The following is the list of parts that will comprise the Great Distracto. Some of these were already determined, because they were stolen from Gamemurder (CPU, memory, and video card) and some were otherwise left over from other projects (SSD, Windows license, monitor), but the others were purchased specifically for this process.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

Type	Item	Price
CPU	Intel - Core i5-6500 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor	$194.79 @ OutletPC
CPU Cooler	CRYORIG - C7 40.5 CFM CPU Cooler	$26.90 @ OutletPC
Motherboard	MSI - Z270I GAMING PRO CARBON AC Mini ITX LGA1151 Motherboard	$131.88 @ OutletPC
Memory	G.Skill - Ripjaws V Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-3200 Memory	$109.99 @ Newegg
Storage	Samsung - 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive	$89.99 @ B&H
Video Card	EVGA - GeForce GTX 970 4GB FTW ACX 2.0 Video Card
Case	Phanteks - ENTHOO EVOLV SHIFT Mini ITX Tower Case	$118.98 @ Newegg
Power Supply	Corsair - SF 450W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular SFX Power Supply	$89.34 @ Newegg
Operating System	Microsoft - Windows 10 Pro Full 32/64-bit	$189.00 @ B&H
Monitor	Asus - VZ279H 27.0" 1920x1080 60Hz Monitor	$195.86 @ Amazon
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total (before mail-in rebates)	$1176.73
	Mail-in rebates	-$30.00
	Total	$1146.73
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-12-15 13:12 EST-0500

Since I stole some of Gamemurder's parts, of course, I had to replace them. The processor we already went over before. I went with an Intel Core i7 7700k CPU which will allow us to do some overclocking if we want, and give us higher default clock speeds if not. For RAM, I went with G. Skill Trident Z RGB 16 GB. I hear the RGB makes it a lot faster. Okay, that's a lie. But it does look really cool.

I wasn't planning on upgrading the graphics card right away, but we ended up getting an awesome Christmas present from my parents - the Asus GTX 1080 ROG Strix. It would have been another year before we could have done that upgrade, so thanks again mom and dad!

As for prices, many of the list prices are nuts, and way higher than what I actually paid thanks to Black Friday - but don't fret - after Christmas sales can be really good for components as well. The only things I bought for full price were the case and the power supply (PS, today only newegg has that same Power Supply for more than 1/3 off - it's refurbished, but a great buy if you need a teeny tiny PSU). The memory in particular was marked way down for Black Friday sales, and one note on memory: computer people always repeat this mantra of "memory is so cheap right now anyway" - it's something people started saying way back, before I built my first computer and that was more than a decade ago, and now that it's not true anymore, I guess people just still say it out of habit. Despite the fact that I bought it much cheaper than MSRP, memory was still the second most expensive item that I bought, beaten out only by the CPU (of course the video card was also more expensive). You can look at the price history of any DDR4 memory on pcpartpicker.com and you'll see what I mean. We bought the above Ripjaws RAM for $50 two years ago. Today the best price is $110. Do not buy RAM unless it's on sale. Use the pcpartpicker.com tool to make sure your price is decent. Newegg always has some kind of RAM on sale - find the one that's the good buy.

As for my other parts, I made a lot of picks based on aesthetics. That Phanteks case is bigger than what I intended to get, but it's still about half the size of my last micro ATX case and it's also freaking gorgeous. It also required a small size SFX power supply. There aren't a lot of manufacturers out there making them, and Corsair and Silverstone are the two highest rated. It was basically a coin flip - either one would be a good choice. Fractal Design also includes an SFX power supply with their Node 202 case, and that's a far more economical choice, but I'd just won Nanowrimo and decided to splurge a bit on some tempered glass.
The CPU cooler isn't the best rated cooler there is, but when you're trying to fit things into a slim case, you give up some thermal options. It's a slim cooler and the fan looks cute. Since it's going to be front and center on the phanteks case, that's important to me. It's still not as important as keeping safe temperatures, but I can buy a liquid cooler if that ever becomes an issue.

The motherboard was tough for me. I had pretty much decided on the Asus Z270i - essentially the Asus version of the board I ended up buying, but I don't really intend to overclock, so I wasn't sure I needed to spend the money on it (it would have been more than my RAM!) so I was keeping a Gigabyte H270 board in mind as well. It doesn't have all the features of a Z270 board, but was significantly cheaper. In the ended, I found the MSI board - on sale for $20 less than the Asus and with a $30 mail in rebate, which made it only $10 more than the Gigabyte, despite being the higher-powered Z270 chipset. People are serious about brand loyalty in computer building, and I've kind of accidentally slid into an Asus bubble, but my first ever build was on an MSI board and it treated me well for years - in fact, I used that desktop for almost a decade before we built Gamemurder to replace it. It couldn't game, but that wasn't exactly the 10 year old motherboard's fault, right?

Coming up next: I recorded myself putting together the build, but I don't know how to edit video yet, so don't expect that at least until after I move in the new year and get myself a nice office space set up. However, I might be able to extract some stills to show the steps through a build before that. If nothing else, expect some pics of the sweet accessories I got to go with Distracto. Gamemurder hasn't been very game-murdery in the past, but I can damn sure make certain that Distracto lives up to its name!