PC upgrade

For graphic cards, maybe wait until the prices normalize again, hopefully they will go back down soon enough, as mining already went down.

The good thing is that the graphic card is the one component you can replace without much problem.
Open the PC... stick it in... add the power cable... close the Pc... done.
opening the packaging is more complicated

Isnt it better an older gen i7 than a newer i5? Not sure but I have an i7 and somebody I know has a brand new i5 and mine has higher score despite being a 3770k lol, mabe on single core stuff.

Quote from Michael

Isnt it better an older gen i7 than a newer i5? Not sure but I have an i7 and somebody I know has a brand new i5 and mine has higher score despite being a 3770k lol, mabe on single core stuff.

Thats a difficult question.
If you compare a I5 with a previous generation I7 it is very likely that the old I7 will win in a performance comparison. Thats because the performance gain between each generation is just 10-20% while at the same time the difference of the clock speeds between i5 and i7 also is around that percentage (mostly a bit higher).
Thats why the I7 7700k performs slightly better than the I5 8400.
Another factor you have to take into consideration is the amount of cores and threads.
That makes it hard to compare gen7 with gen8 CPUs. The 8th gen increased the core number so the general rules that an old I7 is better than a new i5 isnt valid in all the cases.
The 8600k is performing better than a i7 7700k if you look at singlecore and multicore performance equally. But if you just take the singlecore performance the i7 7700k will be faster than the 8600k. Its a +/- 5% difference depending on what you are looking at.

The 7700k should in theory also be a bit more expensive than a newer 8th gen I5.
For gaming the i7 7700k is still a beast because games usually rely on singlecore performance but if you ask me these times are going to change now that Intel has meanstream CPUs with more than just 4 cores.
While the 7700k is still more expensive than a newer i5 CPU the prices for the mainboards should be significantly lower for the i7 because it uses series 200 boards (e.g. z270).
But that also might be a disadvantage. These z270 board are actually outdated. There are no new CPUs compatible with these kinds of boards anymore. If you decide for an old i7 you also have to accept that you can not do any future upgrades without also getting a new mainboard.
The i5 CPU and the z370 board would at least give you the chance to do future CPU upgrades.
e.g. you could upgrade from 8400 to 8700k or maybe even upgrade to a 9th generation CPU.
Once you decided for an old i7 you dont have these options without buying a new mainboard aswell.

Also you need to consider that you can use faster ram on the 8th gen i5 (at least the native CPU support for that RAM increased -> overclocking is a different topic).

Another difference specifically between old 7th generation CPUs and the 8th generation CPUs is that the 8th gen have a "per core clock speed". That means that you can set clock speeds for every core individually. That was not possible for the 7th generation CPUs.
Thats an advantage of the new CPUs when it comes to overclocking or using of the turbo clock speeds.

The difference between 8400 and 8600k is simply explained.
The 8600k has higher clock speeds which result in 12-13% higher performance, it has a few additional instruction sets (mostly to improve memory management and security) and can be overclocked. I think it also has a higher clock speed on the graphic controller but well... nobody really uses that.
That comes a the cost of a higher energy consumption and the somewhat higher price. Oh and yeah... you need a cooler. Further checks if your current cooler is enough for that would be needed.

Nice local shop you got there

what GPU did you pick and whats your total cost gonna be?

Those 960's and 970s will never run out of style apparently....

biggest problem price related is RAM and graphic cards.
The prices for RAM literally doubled within just a few months and same applies to mid tier graphic cards due to bitcoin mining

currently the problems with meltdown and spectre also puts pressure on the prices since especially server components will be needed to compensate the performance losses on current hardware. I guess that hits RAM prices significantly harder than graphic cards since servers actually dont need these.

my advice regarding the SSD.
Use it for windows and use it for programs. You can use it for games if you notice that the load times on the HDD are extremely long. But keep in mind that this is a relative small SSD that you will mainly need to keep windows and programs fast. Use the HDD as storage and for games which dont have large loading times. I think Elite does not have long load times (at least not that I am aware of)... only the initial load screen with the rotating ship.
NEVER defrag your SSD.
Set the windows page file to be exclusively on this SSD and deactivate it for the HDD.

I am sure this PC will serve you good for many years to come.

isn't there a Newegg type website for Europe?

As a hint for SSD speed, it gets slower the more u fill it up (unlike HDDs), and not sure but maybe as well with active usage, so OP's tips to not put long loading games on it and keep it clean is for more reasons than it looks like. As well as not formatting on a SSD or such, even with TRIM and stuff especially for SSD it's not really needed. Had to use SAMSUNG tools to get mine to work better again, but its not at full speed anymore. Been many years though since I have it.

Never let a ssd get Full. SSDs have limited Rewrite capacities for every bit and relocate newly written data to empty space instead of overwriting old bits. That is done to increase the lifetime of the SSD. If the ssd is too full it keeps writing temp data over and over into the same sectors which eventually get damaged.

So never let ur ssd get full. Consider it an operational drive but not a storage drive.

I looked on Newegg and even mid-range Radeon cards well selling upwards of 300-400. I did some research and the reason why new graphics cards are so expensive. And it's kind of a "duh" when you hear it but it's because of the cryptocurrency mining. A buddy of mine has 8 RX580 graphic graphics cards strickly for Ethereum. And even still, most online retailers are limiting "1 per customer" in addition to being sold out of every "reasonably" priced GPU's. Maybe this thread will help recommend EU Online computer part retailers What's the Newegg of the EU? - Ars Technica OpenForum

Then you got the huge mining operations where they'll have scores of graphics cards.

In other words, assholes like this guy are why upgrading a GPU is expensive

What a shithead lol