First Big Budget Build - Advice Needed Ctd

[Sacred]

Continued on from my previous thread this is what I've come up with so far.


BUDGET: £2,000

MAIN PURPOSE: Gaming


External:

Case: Corsair Obsidian Series 650D All Black Mid Tower Case with SATA Dock & Side Window w/o PSU £136.38

Optical Drives: Sony AD-7800H Slot 8xDVD+/-R, 6xDVD+DL, 6xDVD-DL, DVD+RW x8, -RWx6, x5 RAM, Notebook, SATA, Black £26.86

SilverStone SST-FP58B, Bay Device 5.25": 1x slot loading slim optical drive and 4x 2.5” HDD/SSD, Black £11.83



Internal:

Processor: Intel Core i5 3570K,1155, Ivy Bridge, Quad Core, 3.4GHz, 5 GT/s DMI, 650MHz GPU, 6MB Smart Cache, 34x Ratio, 77W, OEM £169.38

Cooling: Corsair H100 Hydro Series Extreme Performance CPU cooler, S775/1155/1156/1366/2011/AM2/AM3 £76.92

Boot Drive: 128GB Crucial RealSSD M4, 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s SSD, MLC-Flash, Read 500Mb/s, Write 175Mb/s *New Version* £88.94

Data Drive: 2TB Seagate ST2000DM001 Barracuda 7200.14 SATA 3 6GB/s 7200rpm 64MB Cache 8ms OEM NCQ £84.83

RAM: 8GB (2x4GB) Corsair DDR3 Vengeance Racing Red, PC3-12800 (1600), Non-ECC, CAS 9-9-9-24, XMP, 1.5V £40.56

Power: 650W PSU, Corsair Pro Series Gold 9020006, Modular, 90% Eff', 80 PLUS Gold, SLI/CrossFire, EPS 12V,Quient Fan, ATX £108.78



Software:

OS:Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit SP1, Operating System, Single, - OEM £72.08

Office: Open Office £0.00


Total: £838.50*
*With Scansure



Hows that looking?


I'm still unsure on MOBO its a flip between the Sabertooth, Fatal1ty Pro and EVGA FTW Z77 boards any advice?

Lastly I'm also still needing to choose a GPU, I'm wanting to go with the nVidia GTX680 however I'm not too sure on brand I've always heard good things about EVGA are they up to scratch? If I was to go down the EVGA route would I be better off getting the standard, signature or holding out for the FTW range wich will probably ship with 4gb instead of 2gb RAM.

Thanks to everyone whos helped so far!

[Dr Krepz]

This looks like a great build, although I have a couple of suggestions for you.

1) If you are planning on overclocking, you might be better off saving some money on the CPU and going for an i5 2500k. The new Ivy Bridge chips can get very hot and only offer a small performance increase over Sandy Bridge. If you were to do this, you could also save some cash on your CPU cooler (the 2500k can hit very high clock speeds on air) and put all that into a better GPU.

2) All the motherboards you mentioned are fairly overpriced. I'd recommend any of the mid/high end ASUS boards.

3) Unless you're planning on running SLI, you simply won't need 4GB of VRAM so the FTW series card won't do you much good. I'd go for the EVGA Signature.

[Sacred]

Thanks for your reply

This looks like a great build, although I have a couple of suggestions for you.

1) If you are planning on overclocking, you might be better off saving some money on the CPU and going for an i5 2500k. The new Ivy Bridge chips can get very hot and only offer a small performance increase over Sandy Bridge. If you were to do this, you could also save some cash on your CPU cooler (the 2500k can hit very high clock speeds on air) and put all that into a better GPU.

2) All the motherboards you mentioned are fairly overpriced. I'd recommend any of the mid/high end ASUS boards.

3) Unless you're planning on running SLI, you simply won't need 4GB of VRAM so the FTW series card won't do you much good. I'd go for the EVGA Signature.

I was originally going to go with the 2500K as you've said the IBs seem to run somewhat hotter than SBs however after reading a fair few reviews and from what Cat-The-Fith said on an IB vs SB thread unless youre going for massive overclocks you're better off going for the IB because of its naitive support for the most recent features and RAM speeds.
What do you think? Taking into account my budget is £2,000 and I intend on spending as much of this 2k budget as possible.

This is where I'm really struggling, I just don't know what I want or even need from a MOBO. I'm not going to spend days on end tinkering on trying to squeeze every last mhz out of my processor but I do want to tinker a little bit and would like to try and get up to or around the 4.5ghz range.
I had a look at the Asus P8Z77-V and while it looks generally nice (I can't seem to see a firewire header on the mobo? or should I just leave FW in the past and not connect the one on my PC case as lets be fair hardly anything uses it anyway) its blue I feel like somne kind of child being so petty as to condem a board based on its colour but I was trying to go for a Red/Black or Red/Black/White theme yet for some reason almost every Z77 board is blue and I mean BRIGHT blue!

I'm a bit torn with GPU while I have no intention of using multi monitor setups I do play a lot of Skyrim with mods installed which can at times become quite choppy on my GTX460 this is compounded again by the results I get when playing SWTOR which I must admit I'm totally additcted to the games great but I see major slow downs when at fleet. I guess my worry is that I'll "settle" for say the GTX680 EVGA Signature 2gb edition but in just a few short months find that games are pushing my vRAM limitations which is one thing that can't easily be overcome not even with SLi (pretty much would mean getting a new GPU). While I know the GTX680 shouldn't have any problems with say D3 (5 days and counting!) I'm still worried I might hit the dreaded vRAM wall and suffer as a result.

Thanks again for your advice and I welcome any other comments from yourself or the rest of the community on the above build.

[Scainer]

I'd get a larger SSD as you will soon fill the 128GB without maintenance (OS + Apps).
Maybe 16GB ram seeing that the cost isn't to much (You wont need more than 8GB but it can't hurt)
If your going SLi in the future then bigger isn't going to hurt the PSU. (just like the RAM you will get away without upping it)
What about a monitor? 120Hz?

[Sacred]

I'd get a larger SSD as you will soon fill the 128GB without maintenance (OS + Apps).
Maybe 16GB ram seeing that the cost isn't to much (You wont need more than 8GB but it can't hurt)
If your going SLi in the future then bigger isn't going to hurt the PSU. (just like the RAM you will get away without upping it)
What about a monitor? 120Hz?

Thanks for the reply, would you just recommend the 256gb M4 or an alternative brand?

I did toy with the idea of more RAM as more is always better right? But after reading over and over articles and forum posts about modern DDR3 1,600 RAM I would see little to no increase in performance from a gaming perspective. As such I think I would rather save the £40-50 and spend it somewhere I'm going to get a little more bang!

You know I didn't think about that at all! Do you think something as simple as going for the AX850 instead of the AX650 would be a large enough increase should I wish to go down the SLi route in the future (taking into consideration I do intead on only playing using one VDU).

I've already got a nice 24" 60Hz monitor that I'll be using to game from so shouldn't need to get a new one anytime soon.

Thanks again

[Rookie1986]

Thanks for the reply, would you just recommend the 256gb M4 or an alternative brand?

I did toy with the idea of more RAM as more is always better right? But after reading over and over articles and forum posts about modern DDR3 1,600 RAM I would see little to no increase in performance from a gaming perspective. As such I think I would rather save the £40-50 and spend it somewhere I'm going to get a little more bang!

You know I didn't think about that at all! Do you think something as simple as going for the AX850 instead of the AX650 would be a large enough increase should I wish to go down the SLi route in the future (taking into consideration I do intead on only playing using one VDU).

I've already got a nice 24" 60Hz monitor that I'll be using to game from so shouldn't need to get a new one anytime soon.

Thanks again

Dont be silly, Windows 7 takes up between 15-20GB so a 128GB will be fine, heck I'm using a 64GB M4 with windows, ms office and anti-virus software on it with over 12GB remaining.

Your right about the RAM, I don't think many games even use up to 4GB so 8GB is plenty

A n AX850 will give you enough to overclock and SLI//Crossfire in the future, it's also a good long term piece of kit that u can use in a future upgrade build so IMO worth the extra money.

Keep your Dell U2412m, it's a lovely monitor and at that nice price where u can add one or even two more in the future to give u a good multi monitor display without breaking the bank or having two sub-par monitors and one high end one.

Build looks really good so far thought bro, sorry I can't help with the motherboard......... Sniper G3

[Scainer]

A solid 650w PSU should be fine (now and in the future), but the future is always changing and new cards might up their power requirements, so going larger would be prudent.

Having a small SSD is a compromise on price. The 256gb M4 is a fine choice. My primary drive currently uses 170GB. Yes I could remove stuff, or put stuff on a data drive, but why compromise performance if you can afford a larger SSD? Or are you suggesting a second SSD for games?
As a gaming rig, the likes of BF3 is 15GB+ so I suspect 128GB would soon be used up, so it is far from silly.

[Rookie1986]

Having a small SSD is a compromise on price. The 256gb M4 is a fine choice. My primary drive currently uses 170GB. Yes I could remove stuff, or put stuff on a data drive, but why compromise performance if you can afford a larger SSD? Or are you suggesting a second SSD for games?
As a gaming rig, the likes of BF3 is 15GB+ so I suspect 128GB would soon be used up, so it is far from silly.

My setup uses a 64GB M4 Boot Drive, 256GB M4 Games Drive and a 2TB Seagate Data//Games overflow drive. IF the OP was to consider adding a 64GB and 256GB SSD to his build then I would say that the best way to go.

OP did say his SSD was to be used as a boot drive, so I was assuming it was for Windows, Office, Anti-Virus, DVD Writing software and Drivers for his hardware and peripherals meaning 128GB should be enough. If we start talking about adding games to it then the sky or wallet in this case is the limit, ideally it would be nice to totally move over to SSD tech but since a reasonable sized SSD (500GB-1TB) is going to set you back anywhere up to £2000 it's just not an option for 99.9% of people//builds.

[Sacred]

External:

Case: Corsair Obsidian Series 650D All Black Mid Tower Case with SATA Dock & Side Window w/o PSU £136.38

Optical: Sony AD-7800H Slot 8xDVD+/-R, 6xDVD+DL, 6xDVD-DL, DVD+RW x8, -RWx6, x5 RAM, Notebook, SATA, Black £26.62

SilverStone SST-FP58B, Bay Device 5.25: 1x slot loading slim optical drive and 4x 2.5” HDD/SSD, Black £11.83

Fan Control: NZXT Sentry II 5.25; Touch Screen Fancontroller Meter £25.18


Internal:

MOBO: ASRock Fatal1ty Z77 Professional, Intel Z77, S 1155, DDR3, SATA III - 6Gb/s, SATA RAID, PCIe 3.0, DP/HDMI, ATX £185.72

GPU: 4GB EVGA GTX 670 Superclocked, 28nm, PCIe 3.0 (x16), 6008MHz GDDR5, GPU 967MHz, Boost 1046MHz, Cores 1344, £419.60

Cooler: Corsair H100 Hydro Series Extreme Performance CPU cooler, S775/1155/1156/1366/2011/AM2/AM3 £76.92

RAM: 8GB (2x4GB) Corsair DDR3 Vengeance Racing Red, PC3-12800 (1600), Non-ECC, CAS 9-9-9-24, XMP, 1.5V £40.56

CPU: Intel Core i5 3570K,1155, Ivy Bridge, Quad Core, 3.4GHz, 5 GT/s DMI, 650MHz GPU, 6MB Smart Cache, 34x Ratio, 77W, OEM £161.94

PSU: 850W PSU, Corsair Professional Series Gold 850AX, Modular, 90%Eff, 80 PLUS Gold, SLI/CrossFire, EPS 12V, Quiet Fan, ATX £145.02

System HDD: 128GB Crucial RealSSD M4, 2.5; SATA 6Gb/s SSD, MLC-Flash, Read 500Mb/s, Write 175Mb/s *New Version* £88.94

Data HDD: 2TB Seagate ST2000DM001 Barracuda 7200.14 SATA 3 6GB/s 7200rpm 64MB Cache 8ms OEM NCQ £84.65


Other:

Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit SP1, Operating System, Single, - OEM £70.88

Keyboard: Coolermaster CM Storm TRIGGER Mechanical Gaming Keyboard Cherry Switch Backlit Black £93.78

Mouse: Razer Naga Hex Gaming Mouse inc 6 MOBA (DOTA/LOL) / Action-RPG optimized mechanical thumb buttons perfect for any game £70.00


TOTAL: £1638


I've had a third play about on Scan and how does that look? I'm still £340 short of hitting my budget but after going over and over the build I really don't know where else I could spend the money. That aside how does the build look to your guys?

Thanks

[Rookie1986]

If your goal is to hit £2000 then drop the 670 and get a 690 its sure to bring you in around your budget

[Pob255]

I'm sure I posted this before but it seems not, must of forgot to hit the submit button

I'd consider swapping the Corsair Obsidian Series 650D for the Corsair Obsidian Series 550D
http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/chassi...n-series-550d/ (yes it not come out as good for cooling, but remember that's with all the vents covered, they really should of done two tests one with covers one without)
The chassis is based on the carbide rather than the graphite series, while it lacks two big 200mm fans, but it is designed to house the H100, it's got newer better features and personally I think it looks much nicer.
Plus it's about £20 cheaper.

[eagle123]

how about if you changed the operating system to windows 7 retail, am sure if you gonna upgrade then the retail version lets you use it 3 times, why not try the top of the range gigabyte motherboard the gi sniper, if you look at my pc specs i built mine and my budget was £2000 as well, as for gfx card i go for the 690, you got two of them but it occupies a single slot, for ssd try the force gt 120gb slightly faster i got the obsidian case too top case, plenty of room for components espeically the 6990 i had on mine !!, as for keyboard i went for the razer ultimate elite, for the storage try and get two of the hd, especially sata 3, you could plug both the ssd and the 1-2 tb hd on the intel port, it will also cache them so faster loading and smoother gameplay.

try out the hitachi DEATH STAR Range or better get the wd caviar black one i got one of them and a samsung spinpoint f3 as well

[Dr Krepz]

>gigabyte g1 sniper
no. just no.

>GTX 690
this would be overkill considering you are only using one monitor and it's only at 1080p and 60Hz. You won't even see the difference in frame rate. if you want to start using 3 monitors for gaming then you could use a 690.

>Force GT SSD
Completely unnecessary. The M4 is best in price/performance at the moment and the difference between the two is not really worth the price difference.

>Razer ultimate elite
HELL NO - are you crazy? Don't buy razer products - they suck. Get a nice mechanical keyboard. I recommend anything with either Cherry MX Red or Brown switches for gaming and good brands are Filco and Das Keyboard. This is a really good purchase - I could never go back to a regular keyboard after going mechanical. (just saw the keyboard you have chosen in your list - it's a good buy so stick with it!)

>Using the SSD for caching and not just as a boot drive
don't do this, especially considering that you are forking out for a nice 128GB SSD. Use it as a boot drive, don't forget to disable automatic defrag and enjoy it properly.



Basically, don't listen to anything this guy says.

The 670 is a great choice for you. I was actually coming back to this thread to recommend it but it looks like you're way ahead of me!
If you really want to make it to £2000 I'd suggest getting a 256GB SSD, or get two of them and run RAID 0 for INSANE SPEEDS!! You could always grab some decent audio kit as well. I can recommend some good speakers (I mean like audiophile level, beautiful sounding, bassy speakers) or headphones that will help you meet your budget and do a lot for the whole gaming experience.

Also, seeing as you have such a budget, I'd say it wouldnt be a bad idea to get at least one more monitor. After having dual monitors, I could NEVER go back to one and I'm actually considering getting a third soon.

[Bugbait]

Generally agree with Dr Krepz. Unless you're intending to upgrade your monitor soon (and it doesn't sound you are) then a single 670/680 or 7950/7970 should be more than enough. With any 77z chipset you could always go SLI/Crossfire down the road if needed. Again, 2Gig VRAM "should" be enough for 1200/1080 gaming. I can easily hit 1.8Gig VRAM for my setup but that's 1600 and using heavy textures, etc. (ie. Heaven benchmark).

I'd recommend a second or larger (second is better) SSD for gaming if you have the budget. Stick the OS and applications on one and high (resource) demand games on the other. I know for a fact that SWTOR benefits from a fast HD due to the inefficient way the client access resources. On the some lines, as a SWTOR player you could see real benefits from more RAM, ie 16Gig. Go to the SWTOR forums and search for RAMDRIVE or RAMDISK. Caching the game assets in RAM can benefit the performance, often greatly with performance directly linked to the speed of the hosting HDD.

Keyboards and other input devices are purely subjective but I'm personally not a fan of the Razer keyboards. They feel very "plastic" and my friends that have them hate them and have reverted to older, mechanical options. I've a fan of low profile, short travel mechanical keyboards for the "bigger laptop" feel. Been using an Enermax Aurora for years and it's the best keyboard I've used from a typing perspective. Ultimately is purely down to personal preference. Many of my friends own and love their Logitech G series keyboards for gaming but I can't stand the long travel, tall, rubbery feeling keys.

[eagle123]

guys thanks for your reply, with pc you tend to upgrade, when the performance lags, cpu and gfx cards tend to be replaced that why i built mine on the basis of every component highly rated by web reviews, with the dual gfx card sitting in a single slot, i agree that unless you got three monitors, or a large screen plasma or led tv better to stick with 670, 680, or the ati 7900 series, with razer keyboards its a personal opinion, but they built like a tank tho

[Phage]

+1 Corsair 550D