New £1000 gaming build

[masscrazy]

Looking to buy a new gaming rig for about £900, the less I can spend the better. Most of it will be for gaming and desktop publising. No overclocking.

Looking at getting the following:

Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 2.8GHz

Asus P5E Pro.

Corsair TX 750W ATX SLI Compliant Power Supply (CMPSU-750TXUK) (future proofing, cos its got 4PCIE connections)

OCZ Obsidian 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 Dual Channel

Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 5870 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card

2 500GB AAKS WD HDD's

1 Optical Drive from Sony

Storm Scout Coolermaster case.

Or

i5/7?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

This is what I would get:

Phenom II X4 965BE ~ £140

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/AMD-P...he-125W-Retail

OR

Phenom II X4 955BE ~ £122

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/AMD-P...he-125W-Retail

MSI 790FX-GD70 ~ £126

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

This is a 790FX motherboard which can do symmetrical Crossfire at PCI-E 2.0 16X.

8GB 1600MHZ DDR3 ~ £193

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

HD5850 1GB ~ £211

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...odid=GX-010-C3

Coolermaster Storm 'Scout' Gaming Case ~ £70

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...odid=CA-175-CM

2XSamsung F3 500GB ~ £76

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/500Gb...-Cache-8ms-OEM

Sony AD-7243S-0B ~ £19

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Sony-...Labelflash-OEM

625W Enermax MODU82+ PSU ~ £88

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/625W-...uard-SafeGuard

An HD5870 is not worth the extra cost IMHO and you can always get another HD5850 1GB in the future if required. An HD5850 1GB consumes less power than an HD4870 1GB so a 650W PSU would be powerful enough for a pair of HD5850 1GB graphics cards.

The Crossfire capable P55 motherboards under £110 do asymmetrical Crossfire with one card running at PCI-E 2.0 16X and the other card at PCI-E 2.0 4X hence affecting performance. No P55 motherboard can do Crossfire at PCI-E 2.0 16X!

The total comes to around £905 to £923 excluding postage.

If you want to reduce the cost of the build get the following motherboard which does symmetrical Crossfire at PCI-E 2.0 8X:

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

This would drop the cost of the build to around £863 to £881 excluding postage.

AMD are also releasing 6 core processors for socket AM3 in the next few months too.

You can get free postage from Scan:

http://forums.hexus.net/scan-care-he...tup-guide.html

http://forums.hexus.net/scan-care-he...0-07-08-a.html

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Another alternative to an HD5850 1GB is a pair of HD5770 1GB cards in Crossfire. This configuration challenges an HD5870 1GB and some instances is faster:

http://www.legionhardware.com/document.php?id=862

A pair of HD5770 1GB cards is also cheaper than a single HD5870 1GB:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/1GB-P...-DL-DVI-I-HDMI