Buying (Or building) a decent gaming PC

[opel80uk]

I would also like to know how opel80uk getting on building his system if your reading this

Hey Simon. Just to let you know I got on fairly well. A couple of minor problems like cables not inserted properly but nothing major at all and the PC has been up and running for nearly a week now and touch wood no problems.

I didn't realise how easy it would be. The only nerve racking bit came with putting on the heatsink for the CPU as you need to use quite a bit of force, same for the RAM and the graphics card.

Very satisfying when it's all done.

Best of luck and let me know how you get on!

[DeludedGuy]

That's a really intresting round up and the thermal images show something very important
That being that while so many coolers are focused on the gpu the power required by these cards is reaching the point where a simple aluminium heat sink stuck on the PWM chips is just not enough.
(I've actually noticed a simular thing on my 9800gtx, the back of the pcb where the PWM chips are gets very toasty)
I'm surprised that no one has run a heat pipe down to the PWM chips yet.
And why are so many still running 80mm fans when they could eaisly fit a 92mm on there, the fan cost shouldn't be majorly different and the extra air/reduced noise would be worth it.

Considering the size of the cpu coolers we stick on, I'm still surprised at how small gpu coolers are, high end gpu's and their PWM curcits are getting ever closer to puting out just as much heat as a cpu.

Agree.

I'm finding it very difficult to choose a GPU for my SFF build, needs to be powerful yet almost silent, its something GPU manufactures seem to be forgetting about. The Golden Sample is a nice card, but too expensive.

[Simon.The.Sloth]

With regards to the motherboard:

scan.co.uk/Products/Asus-M4A79XTD-EVO-AMD-790X-AM3-PCI-E-20(x16)-DDR3-1333-1600-1800-SATA-3Gb-s-ATX

That offers two x16 pci-e slots for all the crossfiring action you'll ever want (and probably won't need imho )

And I'm always one for modular PSUs:

scan.co.uk/Products/520W-Corsair-HX-Series-Modular-PSU-ATX-EPS12V-whisper-quiet-5-year-warranty

Helps keep it nice and tidy, helps airflow too.

One thing though, I would not get the 4890 at this moment in time because you can have a 4870 for under £100 now and there isn't a huge performance difference between the two. You can even get two 4850s and have them in crossfire for £150 which would destroy the 4890 in terms of performance. Oh and DX11 cards are just round the corner. Just a thought

Otherwise the build looks awesome and I'd be happy to go ahead with it.

edit: oh and in case you were wondering, the 520w psu will handle crossfire with room to spare.

edit2: ahhh cooler!

scan.co.uk/Products/Arctic-Cooling-Freezer-7-Pro-v2-S1366-A1156-S775-AM3-AM2plus-AM2-939-Up-to-130-Watts!

Cheap and cheerful and gets the job done!

Thanks Zhaoman, and everyone else for their input!

Looks like its going to be a few more weeks now before I can get round to ordering the components due to an unexpected drain on income. But it's ok because it gives me more time to sort things out. As you say im going to go for the 4870 (unless the new DX11 cards come out and within my reach in regards to pricing), as well as the 520w psu and arctic cooling freezer 7, so thanks again for that.

Thanks aeonf242 for pointing out the better harddrive which I'll be going for.

Heres my new specs

AMD Phenom II X4 955 BlackEdition
520W Corsair HX Series Modular PSU
Asus M4A79XTD EVO, AMD 790X, AM3
4GB (2x2GB) Corsair XMS3 Dominator DDR3
1GB Sapphire HD 4870 Vapor-X
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro v2
1TB Samsung HD103SJ Spinpoint F3
Sony AD-7240S-0B 24x DVD±R, 12xDVD±DL, DVD+RW x8/-RWx6 ,12xRAM SATA
Coolermaster CM-690 V2 Dominator


Its all looking rather good to me now . How about that Coolermaster case for £60 (inc vat), is that still a good case to go for in that price range?

Thanks again guys