First Time Building

[zain6267]

Hi,
I've decided to build a PC and after looking around for a while have settled a some parts. However, I have a few questions about some of them and it would also be helpful if some people more knowledgeable than me about this kind of thing look over it and see if there's any way to improve it, drop the price, etc.
The parts I've seen are:

i5 3570k - http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B007RUZKK6/?tag=pcp0f-21
Gigabye GA-Z77-D3H Motherboard - http://goo.gl/aoL7U
Vengeance 2x4gb Memory - http://goo.gl/6uxTo
Sapphire AMD HD 7770 GPU - http://goo.gl/4IMw9
XFX ProSeries 450W Core Edition Power Supply - http://goo.gl/T7y5W (Will this be enough?)
Fractal Design Core 3000 - http://goo.gl/fdCv7 ( Is it worth Paying Extra for the Arc Midi?)
160GB Seagate Drive (I have this already)
OCZ Technology OCZ Vertex Plus R2 SATA 2 60GB - http://goo.gl/ahEto (Not sure about which one to get, or whether it is worth paying the extra for a Sata-III Drive, It's only for the OS)

Thanks for any help

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

What is the PC being used for??

[zain6267]

Gaming, but also documents and some video editing

[cptwhite_uk]

Total for your suggested build is ~£420.00

They're all reasonable choices, but you're obviously working to a budget. No doubt CAT will have some very wise suggestions in due course but as a suggestion I'd advise cutting some money where possible.

Firstly consider getting a decent mechnical drive over the SSD. I wouldn't really recommend the SSD for your budget range. I'm not convinced about the cheaper OCZ drives, I've seen too many issues with them. I might be wrong about this particular model though. If you're really keen to get an SSD, jump in with both feet and get a 120Gb minimum so you have some room to install all your apps, potentially room for video editing data and installing a couple of your current games there. 120Gb Kingston can be had for £75: http://www.ebuyer.com/411692-kingsto...sv300s37a-120g, also the speed of this drive is WAY ahead of the OCZ...check the read and write speeds for both drives in their descriptions...450Mb/s compared to 180Mb/s for the OCZ

If you opt for a newer high end mechincal drive look at the Western Digital Caviar Blue / Black range. This will likely be mch faster than your (presumably) old 160Gb current drive anyway. You should be able to get 500Gb for the same money as the OCZ SSD.

While I understand your desire to go for the Core i5 3570k, an excellent choice, but it's taking up 40% of your budget. I'm wondering if it's slightly out of your price range on this occasion. It might be sensible to go the AMD route ...you could get a 6 core piledriver* (edited) for £100 and put the rest to upgrading the graphics card to the HD7850 (which is a massive step up for the HD7770 ...see here)

This I suspect would give a system for more balanced performance. Performance is lower than the 3570k, but still very acceptable. and offers excellent bang per buck.

I've no issues about the case, love Fractal Design. I'm not sure sure about the PSU....I'll also recommend trying to get 500W from a decent brand minimum, 450W just seems a tad low, but, that's dependant on the GPU and CPU you choose. It might be acceptable.

Only thing you might want to consider is a 3rd party CPU cooler. Recommendation would be based what CPU you end up going for...so to summise:

* Consider forgetting the SSD for now, or buy something worth buying as per my link
* Consider going for AMD, to get better performance balance for your money
* Question mark over the PSU rating
* Considering upper the spec of the video card
* Consider buying a 3rd party CPU cooler

Edit: Having looked at some benchmarks, I'm going to withdraw my recommendation of the AMD chip. Stick with the 3570k and accept the increasec cost! Can you stretch the budget to £500?

[zain6267]

As it is, I'm stretching the budget from £400 as it is, and am only willing to go to £450. Is there any advantage over a WD drive over a Seagate Barracuda 500gb drive, which might shave some money off of the build costs?

[Ulti]

IMO, the XFX is a good PSU and it'll be more than enough. An i5 3570k + 7770 shouldn't draw more than 200W on max load, which is less than 50% of the rated output too.

Also will you be overclocking? If not then it's a waste of money to go with a Z77 board and the i5 3570k.

It's probably better to get a cheaper i5 such as the 3350P and a less expensive board and then go for a better GPU, such as a HD7850 as cptwhite_uk suggested as the difference between using a HD7850 is more than the difference between using a lower clocked i5 at stock. Even if you were to overclock it, I don't think the difference provided from the CPU upgrade would be better than the performance from a GPU upgrade.

Tl;dr: i5 3350P + HD7850 > i5 3570k + HD7770 and it should cost roughly the same.

EDIT: Some pricing figures:

i5 3350P (£137) + MSI B75A-G43 (£57) + Powercolor 1GB HD7850 (£132) = £326

Your original CPU (£169) + Mobo (£79) + GPU (£85) = £333

I do understand if you need better CPU power for video editing though as IIRC, video editing requires mostly CPU and RAM power.

If you don't mind second hand there's even a used i5 3470 for £115 on eBay, leading to another potential saving of £25. You can even get a cheaper motherboard than the one I've listed too. I've not used a MSI board in a while so not sure how reliable they are nowadays but I assume they're still good to go with.

[dacads]

I would pick up a B-Grade Seagate 1TB HDD from OCUK:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...id=671&subcat=

As for the SSD I would leave it out as the suggested Kingston uses the Sandforce controller which doesn't have a great reputation

[cptwhite_uk]

If you're in doubt of the sandforce controller read some reviews. I don't think this is an issue anymore, and kingston drives have a good reputation for stability.

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2013/..._ssd_review/10
http://thessdreview.com/our-reviews/...00-ssd-review/

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

What type of games are you running??

The FX6300 is a good budget CPU,especially if you intend to run more modern games. I would rather have an FX6300 and an HD7850 2GB,than a Core i5 and a HD7850 1GB,if you have a limited budget,especially if you intend to run games based on a modern engine. An example is Crysis3:

http://www.pcgameshardware.de/screen...Us-VH-720p.png

http://i.imgur.com/qQpVGOc.jpg

The FX6300 is Core i5 2500K level in that game which uses CryEngine3. Frostbite2 runs reasonably well on a FX6300,being in-between a Core i3 and a Core i5 for the MP part of BF3,and looking at the idTech5 benchmarks for the BD based CPUs,it should be around Core i5 level. I expect UE4 to do reasonably well too.

If you intend to run games based on older engines,the Core i5 will probably be better.

However,remember due to the much lower clockspeeds of the Core i5 3350P expect it to be between 10% to 15% slower than the Core i5 3470 and Core i5 3570K.

The FX6300 is around Core i5 level for video encoding and has not only AVX,but XOP and FMA3 and FMA4 support.

Edit!!



The parts come from Ebuyer. The graphics card is probably the best HD7850 2GB ATM and comes pre-overclocked to 1GHZ,which should put it close to HD7870 and GTX660 level AFAIK.

You will also get Bioshock Infinite and the new Tombraider with the HD7850 2GB:

http://sites.amd.com/us/promo/never-...eloaded.aspx#2

I would get this case:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/BitFenix-Mer...1757493&sr=1-1

I would also get the XFX PSU in the OP:

http://www.novatech.co.uk/products/c...n=PCPartPicker

The total should come to around £458.

You can get cashback on Ebuyer and Novatech purchases:

http://www.topcashback.co.uk/ebuyer/

http://www.topcashback.co.uk/novatech/

That should drop the price to under £450 AFAIK and you can also get Nectar points on Amazon purchases.

You can also sell the game codes too.

[zain6267]

Thanks for the advice,
Those parts look tempting, however, I've heard that AMD processors are not very good at the moment?
Also, how is this ssd? It's SATA-III?
http://www.ebuyer.com/386500-ocz-128...ign=b2c_monday

Also, how did you get 420 for the build? I got 500 When adding up?
Edit:
I've seen this SSD as well, and it's even cheaper. How does it compare?
http://www.ebuyer.com/288065-sandisk...dssdh-120g-g25
Also, how does the cash back site work? Is it trustworthy?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Thanks for the advice,
Those parts look tempting, however, I've heard that AMD processors are not very good at the moment?
Also, how is this ssd? It's SATA-III?
http://www.ebuyer.com/386500-ocz-128...ign=b2c_monday

Also, how did you get 420 for the build? I got 500 When adding up?
Edit:
I've seen this SSD as well, and it's even cheaper. How does it compare?
http://www.ebuyer.com/288065-sandisk...dssdh-120g-g25
Also, how does the cash back site work? Is it trustworthy?

What games are you wanting to play??

I forgot to add the 500GB HDD in the build:

http://www.ebuyer.com/272944-seagate...ive-st500dm002

The total is £345.64+£40+£32.90+£36.98 which is £455.52 plus you get cashback.

I would hold off the SSD first and save up some,and get at least a 120GB or 128GB one.

What most reviews don't tell you is that a gaming PC has two upgrade cycles,ie,the CPU and GPU. You need a balance and remember most reviews are using £300 to £850 graphics cards. You will usually hit a graphics card bottleneck first.

You first specification is seriously over balanced towards the CPU.The HD7770 is not really that great if you want to keep it for a while,and I expect you will be upgrading quicker than with an HD7850 1GB,which means more money spent.

Moreover,the HD7850 1GB might be OK now but as time progresses,you will see more and more games using more than 1GB. I would say an HD7850 2GB is the minimum graphics card I would get if you intend to run newer games.

[snedger]

Every PC build for me involved economising on and regretting getting, a budget PSU - whether integrated with case or add on.
And so many questions about self build issues on internet forums point to PSU problems not satisfying RAM, GPU or CPU voltage.
Down to choice . Personally I hope that I remember to turn off the bargain loving part of my brain next time.
I bought a top of the range GPU once and no games were really able to take advantage of it for ages - just look for when last years (or 2 years ago) GPU price plummets and snag it.
Just remembered, had an awful lot of trouble with HDD cooling. I would definitely get an as fast as affordable couple of raid 0 setup SSDs - small size not an issue - stick your photos on external HDD and just uninstal games not being played and put it and/or a backup in a fire proof safe.