How much for a Skylake-based system? Very rough and ready component selection from MSY and PC Case Gear.
CPU |
i5 6600 (modest) |
325 |
CPU |
i7 6700K (one-off cost for ongoing performance) |
519 |
Mobo |
Asus H170-PLUS |
169 (H170 PRO GAMING would be a solid choice too, at $230) |
RAM |
16gb of DDR4 2400MHz or whatever |
150 |
SSD |
Samsung 850 EVO M.2 120G/250G/500G |
99 / 135 / 243 |
Case |
Antec P280 |
169 |
PSU |
whatever |
100 |
OS |
Windows 10 |
??? |
If you want to cheap out a bit, you can tweak a few little things:
- Select a basic H170-based motherboard: Gigabyte or ASrock will be somewhat cheaper, but it still bottoms out around $150. The cheap Asus H170 board is $160 and it uses DDR3 RAM (widespread, cheap, will become "old" in ~2yrs)
- Use DDR3 RAM: it's cheaper and still very performant, just not future-proof. You can get 16gb of DDR3 for $115 at MSY, but will need to buy a mobo that takes it
- Use slower RAM: Baseline DDR4 RAM is 2133MHz speed, very slightly cheaper at about $140 from MSY
- SSD: you can cheap out a bit with a different brand SSD and maybe save $20
- Case: the P280 is a fancy noise-dampened case. You can pick a basic one and maybe halve the cost