I'm building a new gaming PC for my kids and myself. I've been using Macs for 15+ years and haven't built or used a new PC since WinXP was released, so I've been reading up on new components. I think I've got a good base system spec'd out on PC Part Picker with the following components:
- Core i5-7600K
- MSI Z170A Pro motherboard
- 16GB of DDR4000
- 500W power supply.
However, I'm still lost in the world of GPU's. The kids mostly play WoW, Lego and Minecraft games, so nothing really intensive from a graphics rendering standpoint. However, I'd like to get involved with some of the newer FPS and role-playing games since my old XBox 360 is getting long in the tooth. For reference I've been looking at boards in the $150-$250 range. Mainly GTX1060/1050 and Radeon 470/480.
My question mainly comes down to price vs performance. Since I see that overclocking is possible with many GPU boards, are there less-expensive boards that can be overclocked to match the performance of an unclocked higher-end board? I realize I'll need to address the related cooling/power needs, of course. Water cooling will probably be in the mix, just because I think it's cool (ha, I made a pun) and the liquid cooled systems seem to be less noisy from what I've read. Then again, with my tinnitus, maybe the extra white noise would be nice. :)
Thanks for any input/advice. Things have come a long way since I built that 1ghz Pentium III with 512MB RAM, 40GB HDD and Invidia GForce 256. But it was a beast that kicked ass on Max Payne, Diablo II, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, and IL2 Sturmovik!