Gaming rig '09

[robtotheb]

Wanting to build a new gaming pc. Budget £1000 (no monitor, keyb or mouse needed).

Top priority is obv gaming performance,
secondly I would like it to be pretty quiet and
Thirdly NOT that I will but it would be nice if it was compatible with OSX (this point is not very important, just throwing it out there as a cool extra!)

Any ideas on what I should go for? Thanks

[nibbler]

i7 860 ~ £215
Dx11 GPU ~ £250
EVGA Mobo ~ £170
ATCS 840 ~ £165
Cooler when released ~ £50
Corsair PSU ~ £126
4GB memory
~ £158

Hard-Disk ~ £68

£1044
Could probably get it down to £1k with cheaper memory but hey

[tonpal]

Just some thoughts....

CPU: Intel Core i5 750, S 1156, Lynnfield - £149.67 - Spending any more on an i7 really isn't worth it for gaming. Most games struggle to use 4 threads let alone 8.

M/Board: Gigabyte GA-P55M-UD4, Intel P55, S1156 - £130.58

PSU: 625W Enermax MODU82+ - £91.82

Memory: 4GB 2x2GB Corsair XMS3 Dominator DDR3 PC3-12800 (1600), CAS 8, XMP, DHX - £100.02

Case: Silverstone Fortress FT01B-W - £149.37 - Bit of a personal thing cases but there are a ton of good cases around this price to choose from.

Graphics: 1GB XFX HD 4870, PCI-E 2.0(x16), 3600MHz GDDR5, GPU 750MHz - £113.84 - You could wait for the new DX11 cards but you will pay a premium until Nvidia catch up with AMD.

HDD: 500 GB Western Digital WD5001AALS Caviar Black - £42.53 (Main drive)

SSD: 64GB Corsair, P62, 2.5" - £138.74 (Gaming Drive)

CPU Cooler, DVD Drives etc - £80

That lot comes to £996.57

I am sure I have forgotten something and if that is the case there goes the budget.....oh well...

[ed^chigliak]

A completely different way to blow 1k
q9450 £130
msi p45 £54
gpu 4870 512mb £67
gpu 4870 512mb £67
raven rv02 £114
silverpower 500w made by seasonic £45
ocz pc9200 ddr2 1.8v ram £60
dvd drive £18
128gb crucial indylinx SSD £225
128gb crucial indylinx SSD £225

£1005

[Pob255]

Thirdly NOT that I will but it would be nice if it was compatible with OSX (this point is not very important, just throwing it out there as a cool extra!)

A mac, only legal option for OSX.
However for £1000 they are not much good for gameing, the gpu's are too weak.

Personally I'd only spend about £600 on a high end pc

[robtotheb]

A mac, only legal option for OSX.
However for £1000 they are not much good for gameing, the gpu's are too weak.

Personally I'd only spend about £600 on a high end pc

Why only £600? Not worth spending the extra?

[staffsMike]

£600 - £700 is enough to build an awesome pc out of current components. I'm inclined to agree on not spending more than that.

The more you spend the more you lose and the more you spend over £700 the more you are wasting on very small gains. I would go for AMD X4, stick that in an 785G (probably mATX if it were me that way you can get a nice P180 mini for ebuyer).

£200 is more than enough on graphics which ever way to decide to go.

Plan for it to be quiet and efficient with decent case fans, PSU's and a decent graphics cooler (hopefully it comes with one). A decent case should take care of HDD noise (the P180 mini as above is fantastic by Micro ATX only).

If you want to spend the extra money, do so on a monitor or two

[Pob255]

staffsMike has pritty much summed it up.
After about £700 the gains you're getting in return for the money spent is far smaller.

Some things can tip the ballance as they are not really quantifiable, the Case being the main one.
You can eaisly spend £200 on a case which will not really "perform" any better than a sub£100 case, at the same time at the same time very expensive cases will often give you a raft of features that you'll never use.
However you cannot really quantify build quality and looks which will be major factors in different cases and can lead you to pic a far more expensive case or a cheaper one.

Untill we see some solid c2q vs phenonII x4 vs i5 it's hard to sugest one over the others.
atm the biggest thing i5 has going for it is the ability to use sli or crossfire on one motherboard, but if you don't want to replace/upgrade your graphics card regulary that shouldn't realy be an issue.

[oolon]

CPU: Intel Core i5 750, S 1156, Lynnfield - £149.67 - Spending any more on an i7 really isn't worth it for gaming. Most games struggle to use 4 cores let alone 8.

Core i7 is i believe a quad processor, i think you are confusing threads and cores, it has 4 cores but with hyperthreading has 2 threads per core, giving 8 threads.

[darkghost]

To take staffsMike's and Pob255's comments further...

A lot of people buy a PC aiming to get the best one they can afford, with the intention of keeping it for 3 to 4 years.
Previously (for arguments sake I'm generalising a lot here!) you could buy a £1500 rig that would run games on max settings for the first year, then most games on medium for the second year and by the third year you are running things on low to medium settings.
After three years the machine is hardly worth anything - so it has cost you £500 a year.

The trick is to buy a half-decent new one every 12 months or so. For example, instead of spending £1500, spec out a rig for £1000 that will still run all the current titles at decent speeds (although it won't handle very demanding games at high settings). Then after 12 months, sell it on for about £500 and then buy a new one again for £1000.

Of course we are now seeing components that allow you to put together a decent machine for well under £1000. It all depends if you want to get a decent case and PSU and upgrade components as you go.

If you are flogging on the machine every year, don't overspend on a case and PSU. Monitors, keyboards an mice are worth investing more on as you will keep these longer and get more use out of them. The biggest cost factor for a gaming PC is the native resolution of your LCD(s) and a suitable GFX card(s) to drive it(them).

IMO CPU wise, the sweet spot is i5 at the moment, unless you are into overclocking - whereby I think the jury is still out on how well the chips overclock on average.

[tonpal]

Core i7 is i believe a quad processor....

Quite correct. I am guilty of loose (incorrect or misleading even) use of terminology.

As far as spending more than £700 on a PC goes, staffsMike and Pob255 are quite right in that you can buy a perfectly good pc for that sort of budget. The one area that would push the budget beyond £700 is SSDs. I believe they offer a step change in performance and are worth considering if you have the money to spend. I will concede that they are still expensive and it is debatable if they yet represent good value.

[ed^chigliak]

Getting the build down to £700 and adding an SSD with either the intel or indylinx controller is how I would spend the 1k. You can loose like £50 off most of those choices and still be buying really great components and putting them in a nice box.

Struggling along with a once elite PC that is knocking on 3 years old doesn't appeal to me. I'm in the 12-18 months build something different camp.

[ajones]

Don't forget to include the dosh for the OS... What is it now, 70 for Win7 basic, 160 for Pro?

As for the graphics card debate, I'd wait another week until you see the benchies of the 58xx series, and guage then whether they're worth the premium over a slower (?) 48xx card. At least (depending of course on how often you intend to upgrade) you have a DX11 system.

[cobhc]

Ok, here's my attempt.

Case: Coolermaster HAF932 £119.59
Memory: 6gb Corsair XMS3 10666 £96.19
Cpu: Intel Core i7 920 D0 £206.05
Cpu Cooler: Noctua NH-U12P SE1366 £54.38
Optical Drive: Samsung SH-223B £16.43
Gpu: 1gb Asus GTX285
Motherboard: MSI X58M mATX £129.00
PSU: Corsair HX650W £90.85
HDD: 500 GB Hitachi HDP725050GLA360 £35.31

Which comes to £976.96.

I think spending more on the gpu and cpu, rather than an SSD is the way to go. The HAF932 along with the mATX board will make the build a breeze and will also make airflow really really good. I'd rather buy a machine like this now, and then add a SSD later down the road.

[Biscuit]

im with ajones. Seems daft5 to spend £1000 on a pc when a new componant is arriving any time now.

Wait it out for sure

[robtotheb]

Thanks for all the feedback.

I tend to keep my machine for 2-3 years and hand it down to my brother-in-law. Probably not the most friendly path for my wallet but that's not a huge concern. I have win7 (got it cheap on pre-order) and 2 nice monitors so its just the rig I'm after.

So the consensus seems to be that £700 is the current sweet spot for building a great rig? Roughly what speed increase would I get from spending the extra £300?

(ill wait for the new stuff if that's your suggestion, not in any mad rush to build)