Gaming Rig Motherboard- Any Suggestions?

[OlUncleWedge]

At the moment I'm in the process of building a gaming rig. Since I'm on a budget of less than £800 I can't get the greatest gear. Could someone reccomend a motherboard to go with this proposed set up

Processor: AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition
Graphics Card: Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 4850 / 512MB DDR3 / PCI Express 2.0
Sound Card: Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio PCI Express Sound Card
Hard Drive :Western Digital (WD) Caviar Green WD10EVDS 1TB 3.5" Internal SATA Hard Drive
RAM: PNY PC3-10660 / 2GB / 1333MHz / DDR3 / 240pin CL9 DIMM / Computer Memory (x4)
CD/DVD:Optiarc AD-7200A-0B Internal IDE DVD+/-RW DL Writer Drive

I'm in a Cooler Master Elite 330 Case with a 700w PSU

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

What type of budget do you exactly have??

What parts do you already have??

Do you need a monitor and peripherals too??

Do you have a copy of an OS??

In you £800 budget is should be possible to fit in an HD5850. Also the Caviar Green is the wrong drive to be choosing as it is a drive designed mostly for storage purposes and hence is slower!! A Samsung F3 or Western Digital Caviar Black is much faster.

Also just choosing a DECENT PSU is important as a rubbish one WILL destroy your setup. An IDE DVD rewriter should also be around the same price as a SATA one too and unless you have a 64 bit OS the 8GB of RAM you have specified will not be recognised by Windows. BTW,4GB is more than enough RAM for gaming purposes and it would be wise to ad another 4gb when RAM prices have settled a bit.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Build spec:

AMD Phenom II X4 955 BlackEdition ~ £126

http://www.scan.co.uk/TodayOnly/Index.aspx

Gigabyte GA-MA790X-UD3P ~ £79

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/GIGABYTE-GA-MA790X-UD3P

4GB DDR3 RAM ~ £85

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/4GB-%...ered-CAS-9-DHX

Run the RAM at 1333mhz using lower latencies.

HD5850 1GB ~ £210

http://www.play.com/PC/PCs/4-/119031...d/Product.html

1TB Samsung HD103SJ Spinpoint F3 ~ £58

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/1TB-S...-89-ms-NCQ-OEM

Sony SATA DVD rewriter ~ £17

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Optia...SATA-Black-OEM

Antec 300 case ~ £40

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/143854

Corsair 650W TX ~ £71

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/135514

The total comes to around £686 excluding postage. You could probably add a sound card or some more RAM if required. I would look at the Asus Xonar D1 and DX instead of the Creative sound-cards as they are better for music AFAIK:

http://www.ebuyer.com/search?sort=pr...imit=10&page=1

Of course there is also money left in the build to get Windows 7 too if you do not upgrade the RAM.

[OlUncleWedge]

I've already purchased the PSU, which is a CIT 700UB Black Edition and the case. I checked out the PSU and it has decent reviews. Also it's compliant with all ATX motherboards and processors. I included the sound card in the price, and including postage, the entire set up I proposed came to £718. I don't need a monitor and peripherals as I already have a good set up on my current computer. I'll either be running the 32 bit Vista OS which I have lying about, or I may upgrade to Windows 7.

[OlUncleWedge]

I'll be upgrading to the 64-bit version of Windows 7

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

With 32 bit windows the maximum RAM you can address is 4gb including the graphics card. Also CIT do not make very good PSUs especially with 125W and 140W CPUs and higher end graphics cards. I have specced and built many PCs myself and would not recommend the make myself. Wattage is bot everything and even an OCZ 500W will run rings around a CIT 700W and costs around £45.

Cheap does not mean good and I have seen many people skimp on the PSU only to regret it a year or two later when it takes out their motherboard or graphics card!!

Even Dell and Medion use FSP PSUs in their desktops and these are much more expensive than equivalent CIT PSUs. Mesh use HEC which are better than CIT too.

Also games are less CPU limited. The HD5850 is much faster than an HD4850 too and has DX11 which will work under Vista and Windows 7.

[Pob255]

Yes that CiT psu was a mistake, £30 (play.com) for a 700w psu is not a good sign
The following connectors are an even worse sign
Connections:
20+4 Pin Main Connectors: 1
P4 4-Pin 12V Connectors: 1
4-Pin Molex Peripheral Connectors: 5
SATA Connectors: 2
Floppy Drive Connectors: 1
PCI-E connectors: 1 (via included adapter cable)

The small number of connectors, the lack of 4+4 eps (instead of the "P4 4-Pin 12V Connector") and pci-e connector shows this psu is not going to be able to sustain 700w

Skimping on the psu is asking for trouble and will probably cost you far more in the long run as cheap psu's do have the habit of taking out other components when they die.

the case cm elite 330 is a good cheap basic case.

I'd like to know where you found these reviews from, because I cannot find any.

[OlUncleWedge]

Sorry, review was the wrong word. Basically, the blokes at work who themselves have build quite a few machines reccomended it since they've had no problems with them apparently. Obviously now I know they had the wrong idea.
Anyway, aside from that, the new proprosed Spec:

AMD Phenom II X4 965 BlackEdition

Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 4850 / 512MB DDR3 / PCI Express 2.0 / Graphics Card

4GB DDR3 RAM

1TB Samsung HD103SJ Spinpoint F3, SATA 3Gb/s, 7200rpm, 32MB Cache, 8.9 ms, NCQ, OEM

Sony SATA DVD rewriter

Gigabyte GA-MA790X-UD3P, AMD 790X, S AM2/AM2+, PCI-E 2.0, DDR2 1333(OC), SATA 3Gbps, SATA RAID, ATX

Cooler Master 330 Elite


Corsair 650W TX


Think that should be good.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I would go with an HD4870 as it is 20% to 30% faster than an HD4850.

You can get one for around £90 to £100:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/169206

http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/p...TDI512MD5.html

http://www.dabs.com/products/xfx-hd4...ml?q=hd%204870

I still think if you can afford an HD5850 you should get one as it is faster than an Nvidia GTX285 and consumes less power too:

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2009/...o_card_review/

Also if you get Windows 7 you can use DX11 too as the HD5850 is a DX11 card. This means either better effects or increased framerates over using DX10:

http://www.driverheaven.net/articles.php?articleid=140

[OlUncleWedge]

Alright, thanks alot guys. I would've gone with the card you suggested to me, but on my current salary I can't afford, or justify spending £210 on a graphics card. Anyway, once I have it build I'll be looking to upgrade it and so forth.

[Pob255]

Are they gameing pc's? the moement you put a high end graphics card in a pc you're nearly doubleing the power draw.
Also if you plan to do any overclocking then you need clean stable power, which you'll get from a good psu.

As to the rest of your specs very nice.
Although you could happly drop down to a corsair 450w VX for that spec, less overhead if a later upgrade is done though.

CAT has sugested the new 5850 which is good but over twice the price.
IMO the 4850 is a great card for it's current price of around £70-80

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Alright, thanks alot guys. I would've gone with the card you suggested to me, but on my current salary I can't afford, or justify spending £210 on a graphics card

I know the feeling!! But I would get the HD4870 as the extra speed is worth it over the HD4850 for £20 more!!

Regarding power draw the HD5850 is around the same as an HD4870 or HD4890 so it is not massively more than an HD4850 TBH. This is because the HD5850 is a 40nm card.

Regarding the PSU the TX 650W will be good if you want to go Crossfire later on or get a higher end card. You could possible save some money go for a cheaper PSU like a 500W OCZ for around £45 but the TX 650W is a superior PSU for much more.

Also the Antec 300 for around £40 is an excellent case with good cooling.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

BTW,some of the bits are on offer on the Scan Today Only webpage. If you have 20+ posts on Hexus you can free postage on orders from Scan over £20 excluding VAT.

Also I would shop around for Windows 7 Home Premium as you can get it for under £70(beware of the upgrade version though). IIRC it should come with both 32 bit and 64 bit keys but I would check this out beforehand.

[Simon.The.Sloth]

Sorry, review was the wrong word. Basically, the blokes at work who themselves have build quite a few machines reccomended it since they've had no problems with them apparently. Obviously now I know they had the wrong idea.
Anyway, aside from that, the new proprosed Spec:

AMD Phenom II X4 965 BlackEdition

Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 4850 / 512MB DDR3 / PCI Express 2.0 / Graphics Card

4GB DDR3 RAM

1TB Samsung HD103SJ Spinpoint F3, SATA 3Gb/s, 7200rpm, 32MB Cache, 8.9 ms, NCQ, OEM

Sony SATA DVD rewriter

Gigabyte GA-MA790X-UD3P, AMD 790X, S AM2/AM2+, PCI-E 2.0, DDR2 1333(OC), SATA 3Gbps, SATA RAID, ATX

Cooler Master 330 Elite


Corsair 650W TX


Think that should be good.

Hi! Im also building a new rig within the next month or so, I like your specs, only one thing though - and I could be wrong so forgive me if I am! But that motherboard looks like it only supports DDR2 memory not DDR3? I could very well be wrong as im only going by the specs on scan.co.uk and havn't looked up any reviews.

Also have you considered going for an intel i5?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Crap!

The motherboard is DDR2! To the OP get this DDR3 790X based motherboard instead:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Asus-...SATA-3Gb-s-ATX

[OlUncleWedge]

Thanks for that Simon. I didn't realise that myself despite looking it over.