What do you think of my £500 gaming computer?

[koocha]

Hi all

I've been playing with the old Hexus XBOX challenge (create a gaming computer to rival an XBOX). The budget was £350 back then, and I've been playing with the build. I've upgraded everything and think I've got a very good gaming computer for under £500.

What do you guys think?

http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/user/koocha/saved/R87ypg

Here' the reasoning behind some of the parts:

CPU : Cheap and fast. Almost double the performance of my ageing Intel Q6600
Motherboard: Good connectivity - 4 x USB 2, 2 x USB 3, 6 x SATA, USB 3 header
Graphics Card: Good 1080p performance
Hard drive: 128GB SSD for booting and 750GB for storage
Optical drive: DVD writer. I don't think a Bluray drive is necessary with the fibre optic internet.
OS: Windows 8.1. Hoping there'll be a cheap/free upgrade from that to Windows 10

What are your thoughts? I think it'll wee on XBOX One / PS4 from a great height.

[Bonebreaker777]

Few things:

If I were you, I would double check the HDD and the RAM (both unavailable).

Also, try to group the products, as to buy from as few as possible vendors.

Take advantage of Flubit (potentially 5-15% discount) so Amazon can be cheaper even if it is initially £1-2 more expensive. Or Topcashback.

If you are going to over clock, look for a third party cooler.

Can check out prices at CeX as well. Last month I got an IB i5 for £70. RAMs are cheap also.

The PSU, case and GPU are all fine. SSD is very good (bought last month, done short review).

[koocha]

Thanks for the reply. The HDD and ram are showing as available for me.

I'm not too fussed about where I get it from as most of them are free postage.

I think it'll be a cheap beast.

[Bonebreaker777]

Thanks for the reply. The HDD and ram are showing as available for me.

I'm not too fussed about where I get it from as most of them are free postage.

I think it'll be a cheap beast.

The RAM is "Temporarily out of stock". The HDD is the same, "Out of Stock". The PSU would be better from Amazon/Flubit (cheaper). Otherwise I would say it is a very good configuration.

[abaxas]

You could save yourself 40 quid by ditching windows 8.1 and buying a windows 7 COA from ebay.

Then you could have a nice 256 gb SSD and a 2 TB spinny disk.

[koocha]

You could save yourself 40 quid by ditching windows 8.1 and buying a windows 7 COA from ebay.

Then you could have a nice 256 gb SSD and a 2 TB spinny disk.

That's a good idea. Legal?

The RAM is "Temporarily out of stock". The HDD is the same, "Out of Stock". The PSU would be better from Amazon/Flubit (cheaper). Otherwise I would say it is a very good configuration.

Oh I see. I've updated the configuration now. Thanks.

[abaxas]

100% legal.

Basically you'll get a windows 7 pro COA sticker which allows you to licence/activate windows 7 pro (the business one).

Worst case is a phone activation.

[Trenchcoat]

Usually the go-to processor for a modern mid-range AMD gaming build is the FX-6300.

[koocha]

Yeah, but I cant find a microATX AM3+ motherboard I like. FM2+ has a lot more choice, and for the extra £20 (33% of the X4 860k) there's not that much more performance

[Singh400]

I'd ditch both your choices for SSD and HDD. I don't trust Seagate at all, and would swap them out for a Western Digital disk. As for the SSD, I only have faith in Samsung SSDs. The rest looks good to me. Fractal is well chosen. I got one a few years back to replace my server case. It's incredibly well made and I like it a lot more than my Antec for sure.

[shakerist]

^^ THIS. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD STAY AWAY FROM SEAGATE

Ive had 2 hdds fail within a year from them, both ended up with click of death. I havent even bothered with warranty return. Just got a WD drive instead.

Check this out
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-...eptember-2014/

[MrRockliffe]

I'm sure that was disproved. They were keeping Seagate drives in the worst conditions, and HGST drives in the best, which reflects in the results. Seagate ones were often over heating etc and breaking down.

Out of 5 Western digital drives I've had, 4 have broken. Out of 3 Seagate ones I've had, none have. Still going strong.

There's no valid reason not to go with Seagate - everyone has different experiences with different companies, and at the end of the day we're talking about very delicate devices that can break just from the drive head moving too far. If kept in the correct conditions, all should last a good 3 years at least.

[DanceswithUnix]

I'm sure that was disproved. They were keeping Seagate drives in the worst conditions, and HGST drives in the best, which reflects in the results.

The survey is very much full of holes, on sample sizes, how long the drives had been in the estate etc. I think Backblaze summed that difference up though, the HGST drives are more expensive. I really don't think you need to look further than that.

If kept in the correct conditions, all should last a good 3 years at least.

If kept in good conditions, they should all last for the length of their warranty. That used to commonly be 3 years, but not so much any more. So just get one where the warranty doesn't suck.

These days I tend to get laptop format 2.5in drives. If you want up to 500GB they are very cost effective, and are lovely and quiet. Last couple have been WD Black 7200rpm drives, 5 year warranty.

If you really think you need 1TB for games, then 3.5in is probably still the way to go though.

[shaithis]

I'm sure that was disproved.

It isn't far from the truth though. I am currently seeing an absurdly high failure rate of Seagate drives in NASes. Basically if they last a year I expect them to die shortly afterwards, it's rare they are making it 2 years. Recertified replacements from Seagate don't seem any better either. Bad sectors, drop outs and death.

[MrRockliffe]

As above, I may follow that advice. My drives are really loud, and I'm going for a silent built in my next computer. May put the others in a NAS so I can access storage when I'm away

[DanceswithUnix]

It isn't far from the truth though. I am currently seeing an absurdly high failure rate of Seagate drives in NASes. Basically if they last a year I expect them to die shortly afterwards, it's rare they are making it 2 years. Recertified replacements from Seagate don't seem any better either. Bad sectors, drop outs and death.

I think they play the game well though. I would rather not buy Seagate, but it isn't so bad that I would never buy one of their products so they can't be *that* bad.

I notice they now own Sandforce SSD controllers, which seems a good match as I try not to buy those either

Are you using NAS rated drives? Normal ones can vibrate themselves to death in a NAS.