Looking to start a new Gaming PC build - £2.5k- £3k budget - advice needed!

[Sacred]

So I'm looking yet again at building a new computer to replace my 7 year old current machine. The poor old girl is slowly starting to show signs of her age and playing games on her just isn't as smooth as it use to be. I'll probably end up either condeming her to the great PC heaven in the sky (aka the loft!) or sell it to a friend for £100 or so.

The main focus of the machine will be towards gaming, playing games like Skyrim (with texture mods and SweetFX), Elder Scrolls Online, Thief and other RPG style games. I won't be using it for anything like photo editing, bitcoin mining or any encoding work this will be a 99% gaming machine with minor uses for browsing the web and maybe the odd word processing now and again.

My limitations are around the £2,500-£3,000 price mark so I would be looking at a SSD for OS and a SSD for games with a septate HDD for music, movies and documents (Is it possible to have RAID configured SSDs? Are their noticeable benefits of doing so?). I don't have any licences left for windows so would have to include that in the cost. I already have a Dell 24" ultrasharp monitor, qpad keyboard and naga-hex mouse that I don't intend replacing (Well I would love to have a multi monitor set-up but can't due to space limitations, as for upgrading to a 100hz monitor, is it really worth it?). I'm probably leaning towards nVidia for GPU and Intel for CPU as from what I remember at current generation these outside the AMD/ATi offerings? I probably require some new headphone/gaming head set though as my current Roccat one has seen better days.

I'll be ordering the majority of my components from places like Scan, Overclockers or eBuyer (probably Scan due to the free postage) I'm still unsure as to if I should go for a full build on my own, a part build like the OC bundles offered by Scan or even a pre-build so its just a case of plug and play. I would be looking to order within the next 4-12 weeks, are their any major hardware releases on the horizon that I either should be waiting for because they will blow anything current out of the water or they will have a significant effect on pricing?

My only major problem is the size/space on offer for the case to sit. This makes me unable to use a full sized tower case instead the largest size case I could probably fit would be something along the lines of a Corsair 650D however I would be unable to open the CD drive without moving the case (although for the majority of the systems use as I will rarely use a CD drive) because of this I also wouldn't want to waste money on a bluray drive.

Hopefully the great community here will once again point me towards the right direction!

Thanks,
Sacred

[Wa1lock]

I would personally go for a single GPU setup in your case, the GTX Titan Black Edition should be right for Skyrim. These texture mods uses loooots of VRAM, so the six GiB would be great. In terms of the CPU you should get the i7 4770K and a good cooler (be quiet! Dark Rock 3 Pro). ASUS/ASRock would be a good choice for the motherboard; Gigabyte is okay too, but their UEFI is pretty bad. As PSU I would choose a 80PLUS Gold or Platinum model, for instance the be quiet! Dark Power Pro 10 750W.

If you want a really high end headset (it is unbelievable nice) you should look up the Beyerdynamic MMX300 / QPAD QH-1399 - I use the QPAD and I would never give it away. Running SSDs in Raid doesn't make a huge difference and there can be some problems (TRIM won't work in some cases).

Just a few thoughts on your PC.

[MrJim]

That's a huge budget for a 1200p gaming PC, especially as you've already got a monitor. Honestly, you should be able to put a top performing system together for around the £1k mark.

SSDs can certainly be put into a RAID array, but there is little practical speed advantage, outside of looking good in benchmarks.

I think if I had your budget I might look at a boutique built system with a 3 three year onsite warranty for peace of mind...

[Agent]

Gigabyte is okay too, but their UEFI is pretty bad.

Like what? The Gigabyte boards have been brilliant for me. Much better than the ASUS ones when it comes to the BIOS.
Heck, I'd go as far to say the GB boards have the better UEFI BIOS in my experience.

[mikeo01]

To be honest you may get away with spending less than 1K on it what resolution is that monitor? If it's 1080P an R9 280X would suffice. Higher up and you can still get an R9 290X for around £400, cheaper than the Titan yes but it'll be fine.

CPU wise depends, I5-4670K would suffice. The I7s offer you nothing for a gaming system.


SSD, 1x 250GB may be fine. Or even 128GB... depends if you really need the speed of the SSD for other things as gaming it makes zero difference. Only load up times are affected there.

[Wa1lock]

Like what? The Gigabyte boards have been brilliant for me. Much better than the ASUS ones when it comes to the BIOS.
Heck, I'd go as far to say the GB boards have the better UEFI BIOS in my experience.

I had the Gigabyte 990FXA-UD3 and the Gigabyte X79-UD5 here for a review; the UD3 was fine. It had nice, oldschool and good working BIOS. Then they sent me a new BIOS and I could not even boot anymore. Some Emails later they told me it was a bug in this BIOS, so the PC would not boot anymore. So they sent me a new beta BIOS and most things worked again. But on their website was even one week later the old BIOS with which your PC can't boot.

To be fair - I got the UD5 one week before Sandy-E was released. But the UEFI was so incredible buggy, nothing worked, the mouse stuttered, the OC settings did not work properly. (Got an ASUS P9X79 at the same time and the 3960X could make 4.5 GHz under air on it. On the GB board it did not boot when I went over 4 GHz. Same with a 3930K) I spent so much work on this review, because the UEFI of the UD5 was so bad and I had to do all two or three times. :/

Thats because I would not recommend GB boards, cause the BIOS/UEFI is pretty buggy. It is not just my opinion, in many german forums that is a well known fact.

@Topic
Of course you can get a badass gaming machine for way less than 2.5K-3K. But if you want to spend so much money you should definitely go for a 4770K, because many games are in fact take advantage of the SMT. For instance the Cryengine 3 performs way better on the 4770K than on the 4670K. And if you are playing RPGs you will play Kingdom Come without a doubt which is based on the Cryengine 3.

[jim]

If I was you... I wouldn't get two SSDs, for OS and games, I'd get one big one. There really isn't any benefit in RAID for gaming.

And I wouldn't spend £2.5-3k on the machine, I'd much rather spend £1k on the machine and put the £2k into a 4K Dell 32" monitor. But that's just me!

You'll be putting together a hell of a rig here!

[Sacred]

I've had a quick play about and this is what I've come up with so far.

Case:
£97.50 Corsair Obsidian Series 550D Black Quiet Mid-Tower Case

CPU and Cooler:
£199.95 Intel Core i7-4770K Retail
£74.10 Corsair H100i Hydro Series CPU Water Cooler

MOBO:
£124.87 Asus ROG Maximus VI HERO, Intel Z87

GPU:
£473.78 3GB EVGA GTX 780Ti Superclocked, 28nm, PCIe 3.0 (x16), 7000MHz GDDR5, GPU 980MHz, Boost 1046MHz, Cores 2880, DP/ HDMI

RAM:
£120.16 16GB (2x8GB) Corsair DDR3 Vengeance Pro Series Silver, PC3-17066 (2133), Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 11-11-11-27, XMP, 1.5V 	

PSU:
£66.50 650W Corsair RM Series CP-9020054-UK, Full Modular, 80PLUS Gold 92% Eff', EPS 12V, 1x135mm Fan, ATX v2.4

System Drive + OS:
£59.07 Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 32 Bit, SP1, Operating System, Single - OEM 
£53.12 128GB Corsair Force Series GS 2.5" SSD, SATA III- 6Gb/s, SandForce 2200, MLC, Read 560MB/s, Write 535MB/s, 92k IOPS Max 	
	
Additional HDDs for Games // Media
£223.60 480GB OCZ Vertex 460, 2.5" SSD, Indilinx Barefoot 3 M10, Read 545MB/s, Write 525MB/s, 95000 IOPS
£49.77 1TB WD WD1003FZEX Black, 3.5" HDD, SATA III - 6Gb/s, 7200rpm, 64MB Cache 

Optical Drives:		
£9.08 Samsung SH-118BB/BEBE Black 18x SATA DVD ROM - OEM

Wow I was majorly surprised at how much I can get for my budget! No where near the £2.5k - £3k mark at all.

I do have a few questions though, what am I looking for when it comes to controller for SSDs? As their seems to be a plethora of different types available and I'm going to assume they are not all on a level playing field. Are their any synergies that I should consider when choosing CPU, MOBO, GPU and RAM? Or am I safe in assuming everything I've chosen should work well together?

With having such a large amount of my budget remaining would it be worth investing in an upgrade from my current monitor? (Dell UltraSharp U2412M)


Thanks,
Sacred


EDIT: Prices shown exclude VAT

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I would spend less and upgrade slightly more often - that is the golden formula if you want a decent performing rig for years.

Remember,one year from now much faster 20NM top end GPUs will be out which will make today's high GPUs look a bit meh!

The GTX780TI is a waste of money IMHO. The Geforce Titan Black is a cheap compute card.The GTX780 and R9 290 would perfectly fine. If a game cannot run on them,a GTX780TI or R9 290X won't be really any better.

[Wa1lock]

You should get a 64 bit OS Otherwise you can only use 4 your 16 GiB RAM.

It does not make any sense to get two SSDs rather than one big SSD. In terms of the SSD I'd choose a Samsung 840 Pro or Evo. In any case don't take one with a Sandforce controller.

Cheers

[Sacred]

I'd much rather spend £1k on the machine and put the £2k into a 4K Dell 32" monitor. But that's just me!

If I had the desk space I would consider it, but I'm almost at my physical desks limits with a 24" monitor, I may be able to stretch to a 27" one but then I may feel like I'm watching tennis being sat so close having to look from one side of the screen to the other!

[mikeo01]

I would spend less and upgrade slightly more often - that is the golden formula if you want a decent performing rig for years.

Remember,one year from now much faster 20NM top end GPUs will be out which will make today's high GPUs look a bit meh!

^ This. Spend less upgrade often I definitely agree technology changes way too quickly for anyone to justify shelling out on the top of the range CPU (unless you need it for professional work).

[Sacred]

Take II

Case:
£97.50 Corsair Obsidian Series 550D Black Quiet Mid-Tower Case

CPU and Cooler:
£199.95 Intel Core i7-4770K Retail
£74.10 Corsair H100i Hydro Series CPU Water Cooler

MOBO:
£124.87 Asus ROG Maximus VI HERO, Intel Z87

GPU:
£363.78 3GB EVGA GTX 780 FTW with ACX, PCIe 3.0 (x16), 6008MHz GDDR5, GPU 980MHz, Boost 1033MHz, Cores 2304, DVI/HDMI/DP

RAM:
£120.16 16GB (2x8GB) Corsair DDR3 Vengeance Pro Series Silver, PC3-17066 (2133), Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 11-11-11-27, XMP, 1.5V 	

PSU:
£66.50 650W Corsair RM Series CP-9020054-UK, Full Modular, 80PLUS Gold 92% Eff', EPS 12V, 1x135mm Fan, ATX v2.4

System Drive + OS:
£87.70 Microsoft Windows 7 Pro SP1 64-bit English 1PC OEM DVD
500GB Samsung 840 EVO Basic SSD 7mm SATA 6GB/s 3-core MEX Controller Read 540MB/s, Write 520MB/s 98K IOPS	
	
Additional HDDs for Media
£35.98  1TB WD WD10EZRX Caviar Green, 3.5" HDD, SATA III - 6Gb/s, IntelliPower, 64MB Cache, 8ms, OEM

Optical Drives:		
£9.08 Samsung SH-118BB/BEBE Black 18x SATA DVD ROM - OEM 	

TOTAL = £1390.12 (exc VAT)

Hows that looking?

Am I looking for anything specific when it comes to the GPU cooling system as a lot don't seem to be using the reference model. Or am I over thinking things here?

Ideally I would like the system to be as quiet as possible hence the water cooling over just fans. This also was a consideration for the case too I often leave my PC on over night and its right next to my head where I sleep, so the louder it is the worse my nights sleep is!
Any thoughts on the case? I'm worried about how tall it is and am going to have to find a tape measure, if this case is too tall what other options would you guys recommend?


Thanks,
Sacred

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

You can still go cheaper,without reducing quality.

A cheaper GTX780 would do the same job and also ignoring the R9 290 is not a good option IMHO. Especially at higher resolution it seems to pull ahead a bit.

The motherboard is OTT,especially since there is far less motherboard dependence with Haswell,due to partial integration of the VRMs into the CPU itself.

Temperature is the main problem and even that can only be really solved by delidding if you want a larger overclck.

Better RAM can be had cheaper.

I would go with one of the Seasonic PSUs over the Corsair as they are better built for the same price.

I tend to prefer redundancy and long life over speed with SSDs - there is little realworld difference between them. The Crucial M500 will be a cheaper but decent choice and is a MLC drive with built-in redundancy.

I would get a larger media drive.

[kompukare]

I agree on the spend less now and upgrade more often. Especially the GPU.

If you are going to spend a big budget, I would probably get a better case as you'd be keeping that longer. Define R4 or Nanoxia Deep Silence are nice but probably too big for you. But there are some premium mATX/iTX cases now.

You should get a 64 bit OS Otherwise you can only use 4 your 16 GiB RAM.
Cheers

Fairly sure that MS stopped the nonsense with having different licence number for 32-bit and 64-bit. But yes, makes more sense to buy the 64-bit one first.

CPU-wise, Skyrim (and TES Online according to the PCGH preview) is all about single-threaded performance. So while for the likes of BF4, SB-E/IB-E can be worth it:


for Bethesda games Haswell is probably better. Expensive and probably poor value, but who am I to stop someone from indulging themselves?

[Wa1lock]

I would go with a be quiet! PSU, they are way better than the Corsair stuff. More secure and silent.

The SSD is fine.