Enthuisiast/Gaming Rig on a £700 Budget!

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

If you want to save some more money this Asrock motherboard looks really impressive for under £90:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/219204

Here are more details about the motherboard:

http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.as...Specifications

Here is a review of the motherboard:

http://en.ocworkbench.com/tech/exclu...n-cores/all/1/

This article measures PCI-E scaling with the HD5870:

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/A...Scaling/1.html

[Callum1001]

Please don't think I ignored your advice, far from it! The only reason I had picked the 965 was because it was about £4 difference on Scan. It is indeed cheaper on Aria though. I had read that the newer 125w version of the 965 was more likely to reach 4GHz but I've yet to see a similar claim on the 955. So I'm still in two minds about that...

The CrossHair IV motherboard is very tempting for me, particularly because of the x16/x16 Crossfire. It does annoy me that they charge more for something which DOESN'T have onboard graphics though! The reference to AM3r2 for Bulldozer worries me a bit too. The trouble is, every little incremental price increase brings me closer to my original i7 build and there's still a little voice in the back of my mind that would like very much to have that build - not for the sake of e-peen but because my computer is 7 years old and I don't want to buy something that feels old when its fresh out of the box! That's why I was thinking of buying this one just for the interim and then buying a new one in the future. Of course I don't have a crystal ball and I might find that the current spec, plus an SSD later this year, plus the possibility of Bulldozer may mean I don't bother to sell in the end. It all depends on how things play out. Thinking of all these "what if" scenarios is the main reason I've not clicked the BUY button yet!!

I just upgraded to an i5 system with a 5850 (paid about £839 for it in total - details on my setup). I moved up from a system costing like £500 odd quid late 2008, so it was still good.

The performance upgrade was immense, there is no game I can't run on full settings (x8 AA etc). Bad company 2 150+ fps, Aion 250+ fps etc etc. I haven't been able to bring myself to try Crysis though, because that game brings any system to its knees.

I think once you start spending around the money we have there is about 0 real world difference between a £700 system and at £1200 system - apart from a better SSD. If your into benchmarking and epeens, then go for the £1200. If you got £2000+ to spend then yes, there is real world differences.

The 955 is 125w aswell - it is the 965 its just got the stock vcore/mutiplier set lower @ stock. You can get over 4ghz no problem with that chip. Just take a quick browse around http://www.overclock.net

If you want to feel a real difference right away, you gotta get an SSD. Trust me - Its pretty amazing the difference they make. I can get to my desktop and load up photoshop and dreamweaver in no more than 22seconds, my current work pc takes atleast a minute!

Also take into consideration whether you care about the asthetics of the pc aswell - I tried to get a colour scheme going through mine, although I wish I bought a modular psu now!

[scottismo]

Many thanks for your help guys; particularly CAT-THE-FIFTH and scaryjim. Your advice was prompt, detailed and overall great.

I wanted to let you guys know that I finally settled on a build and bought it earlier this week. I took some of the best aspects of my original i7 build and combined it with some of the ideas from this thread to come up with a computer that I'm pretty pleased with. Admittedly it is over the budget originally stated in this thread but it is a fair bit lower than what my i7 build may have been!

The spec is as follows:

AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 955 Black Edition 125W
Asus ATI Radeon EAH5850 DirectCU 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card
Asus ATI Radeon EAH5850 DirectCU 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card
Crucial memory 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800 Ballistix 1600 MHz RAM 8-8-8-24 Unbuffered NON-ECC 1.65V 256 Meg x 64
CROSSHAIR IV FORMULA - Asus Crosshair IV Formula, AMD 890FX, SAM3, PCI-E 2.0, DDR3 1600/1800/1866, SATA 6Gb/s RAID, ATX
850W Corsair 850HX PSU, ATX, EPS12V, Modular, UK Version
500GB Samsung HD502HJ Spinpoint F3, SATA 3Gb/s, 7200rpm, 16MB Cache, 8.9 ms, NCQ, OEM
Sony AD-7240S-0B 24x DVD±R, 12xDVD±DL, DVD+RW x8/-RWx6 ,12xRAM SATA, Black, OEM
Silverstone Fortress FT01B-W Tower Case Black Aluminum with Window w/o PSU

• I kept with the AM3 route (with possibility of future CPU upgrade) and saved a bit of money by getting the 955.
• I kept the idea of getting a case and power supply that I could keep for future builds.
• I decided to go with the top end AM3 board rather than the GX.
• I decided to go back to the idea of getting dual 5850s.

Now I know as previously discussed, two 5850s is a little bit overkill but I have a very simple reason for doing so. After talking to a few people who know nothing about computers and telling them why I was buying a new PC, I realised that primary reason was to play games. For me that meant running Crysis, Metro 2033 and all the upcoming DX11 games. The single GPU is great for all the current games but I felt that I shouldn't compromise on the one thing that's really going to make a difference. By saving money on the CPU, RAM and MOBO compared to the i7 build, I was able to purchase a second GPU and come in under the amount my friend paid for an i7 and a single 5870 so for me I feel I've managed to get better VFM (gaming wise). I could have spent the money on an SSD but as I mentioned previously, I plan to get a 3rd gen Intel for my personal Christmas present

Now, I built the machine on Friday and I'm really pleased with all the components and the case is great. Unfortunately, I've run into some hardware problems. Your help has been invaluable thus far and I hope that one of you guys might know a solution for my problem which I have posted below:

http://forums.hexus.net/help-technic...ml#post1923728

Once the build is ACTUALLY WORKING then I will give you guys some pics and maybe a few benches!