First time build

[chr1s5opherr]

Hello everyone,
Just joined said hello in the welcome section.

after being out of gaming for a good few years now for various reasons and making do with an antiquated pc still running on a first genration amd dual core, ive been seeing more and more games come out in the last year that im itching to play, Having always been PC fan mainly as i love fiddling and tinckering with things and I dont like the idea of not being able to upgrade my system, I have decided to go ahead with my first build, I have in theroy chosen most of my components but am still not set on the Motherboard or GPU, So with a budget of £600 witch i am already pushing just past heres what I have.

Xigmatek Asgard ATX Midi £30
AMD FX6300 black edition £113
Corsair 8GB 1600MHz CL9 DDR3 £45
PNY Geforce GTX 660 XLR8 2GB DDR5 £160
Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD £105
Samsung F3 HD103SJ 1TB internal Hard Drive £65
LG 24x SATA Bare Internal DVD Rewriter £11 ( wont be using this very much )
Be Quiet! CM BQT L8-630W PSU £75




EVGA GeForce GTX 660 Superclocked NVIDIA Graphics Card - 2GB £172
EVGA GeForce GTX 660 Superclocked+ NVIDIA Graphics Card - 3GB £168
POV/TGT GeForce GTX 660 Performance Boost NVIDIA Graphics Card - 2GB £167

I am not aloud to post links yet but all the cards are from SCAN will post the links once i have enough posts.

I am seriously considirng one of these cards instead, they are a little more expensive, as far as i can see the only diffrence is they are all overclocked and the 2nd one hs 3gb DDR5 instead of 2, I would like to know if this extra GB will be worth it, baring in mind im probably going to upgrade to 16Gb RAM, also is the only diffrence in the other 2 VS the PNY that they are overclocked, will I find any other diffrences when buying the same gtx 660 from diffrent manafactures, Im not to good when it comes to very technical specs so any help would be appriciated.

Also if anyone has any other reccomendations as to any other changes i could make to my hardware set up they would be appriciated, Currently the prices of everything i have is from amazon, I will probably buy all of it from amazon together to save on postage but if anyone knows where i can get these bits cheaper that would also be a help.

Im sure i will be making many more posts in the future as it gets closer to my build time as its my first build and will probably require some help here and there.

Thanks in advance to everyone.

Chris

[chr1s5opherr]

apologies, I have quite obviously posted this in the wrong section, If a mod could move it thanks

[Stubo]

If you're set on the 660 in particular I'd recommend Sapphire's attempt at the card.

The windforce fans are excellent and allow your card to maintain low temperatures while remaining quiet. Here is a review for the factory overclocked version of this card from Hexus.

[chr1s5opherr]

Thanks I am not set on the 660 but for under £170 it seems to be the best card I can Find. i will have look at the review cheers.

[Mehta23]

Motherboard is good,but you could save £30 and get a gigabyte or Asus one (DS3H or p8z77-vlx)

PSU: I'd try save a bit and get a cheaper XFX/OCZ one, that's probably better in the long run too.

Graphics card : I think the 660 is definitely a good card, although I'm not sure if the 7870 is better. I was told that pny aren't very good, but personally i would definitely favour any evga, Asus or gigabyte card.

For a gaming machine, 8GB of ram is plenty. If you look around, you might be able to get some ram for less than £40 (although prices have gone up for some reason)

Samsung hdd looks good, but a sea gate 1TB can be found for around £50. My 2TB barracuda is silent and runs 10°C cooler than my WD.

I'd recommend trying to squeeze in a small ssd (like a SanDisk 60GB), but you'll be fine without it.

[Stubo]

Since you're ordering from Amazon, the AsRock Z77 Extreme 4 is also an excellent choice at £103.46

[chr1s5opherr]

Hi the motherboard I have listed is Gigabyte
This one here, Have read quite a few good reviews about it
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/gigab...-%28x16%29-atx

im going to go for the 660 but after looking into it will get GIGabyte or evga one.
thanks for the reply.

[chr1s5opherr]

thanks for the reply, I like the look of that motherboard but I have decided on an fx-6300 for its perfomance per £, if im right that motherbord will only take intel cpus ?

[Stubo]

Ah yes, you are right! I must've glazed over the CPU while reading your post

I don't have much experience with AMD boards since I had an Athlon X2 4600+ so...as you were

[chr1s5opherr]

OK now i can post links heres my slightley revised setup.

I do like the windforce 660 but have found the EVGA 660 with 3GB RAM £165. witch seems a very good deal.

Xigmatek Asgard ATX Midi

AMD FX6300 Black Edition

Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3

Corsair 8GB 1600MHz CL9 DDR3

EVGA Nvidia GTX 660 SC 3Gb

Seagate Barracuda 3.5 inch 500GB

LG 24x SATA Bare Internal DVD Rewriter

Be Quiet! CM BQT L8-630W PSU

When you say OCZ is better do you mean reliability ? I Have heard of a good few OCZ psu's blowing and although im aware this is a small chance im prepared to pay a bit extra for something that has consistently good reviews

Any other money savind tips or just genral info much appriciated !

I have gone for a seagate 500gb its much cheaper and my current laptop 2 years old only has 500gb witch im not even close to using so seeing as i plan on getting an ssd in the future i should only need a 500gb,

[Willzzz]

I'd get a lovely Seasonic PSU:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/520w-...et-fan-atx-psu

Some OCZ PSUs are very good depends on model, I have one in my current machine.

[chr1s5opherr]

thanks that looks pretty good and is a tenner cheaper, Will 520w be enough for my system with room to upgade in the future a bit ?

[Mehta23]

OK now i can post links heres my slightley revised setup.

I do like the windforce 660 but have found the EVGA 660 with 3GB RAM £165. witch seems a very good deal.[/]


When you say OCZ is better do you mean reliability ? I Have heard of a good few OCZ psu's blowing and although im aware this is a small chance im prepared to pay a bit extra for something that has consistently good reviews

Any other money savind tips or just genral info much appriciated !

I have gone for a seagate 500gb its much cheaper and my current laptop 2 years old only has 500gb witch im not even close to using so seeing as i plan on getting an ssd in the future i should only need a 500gb,

I'm not saying that the be quiet won't be reliable - its a good up and coming manufacturer. To be honest, you should be fine with it just the XFX and Corsair are the big names, and for a good reason.

Seasonic is worth it, just that they're really expensive.

Re gpu : having 3GB vram is good, but will it ever get used? I have seen some reviews on some cards where the extra ram isn't actually used. JS.

500GB is good if kya enough. Just be warned that you may need more sooner or later and the price jump from 500GB to 1TB is pretty small.

thanks that looks pretty good and is a tenner cheaper, Will 520w be enough for my system with room to upgade in the future a bit ?

520w should be enough, unless you intend to sli. Remember that it's the current that matters, which on good psu's should be really high.

[Willzzz]

520w is plenty, what sort of upgrades are you thinking of. That Seasonic is actually cheaper than the be quiet.

3GB vram isn't needed, not for a 660, you could save almost £20 on this one:
http://www.dabs.com/products/pny-gef...83330000&src=3

[Mehta23]

I believe the jump to a 660Ti is supposed to be quite big in terms of performance. Might wanna see if you can find a good one :-P

I haven't heard much about PNY. I'll repeat what I said earlier : EVGA, ASUS, Gigabyte.

Msi make good cards. The only reason they're not high on my list was because of the whole incident with the PWM design on some of their cards. (a part which was designed to take 3A was redesigned to allow 9A,improving performance but lowering reliability and life)

[chr1s5opherr]

thanks for the replys, I have found a very nice xfx 650 core edition thats about a tenner cheaper so im going to go with that.
Dependin on quite how much i can afford i wil probably stick with the 500gb as i plan on investin in a decent 100+gb ssd after my build.
To be honest now you ask im not exactly sure what else id be upradin, just say in 3-5 years time if any of my components started to be bottlenecked by new games, so nothin major really.

I was originally going to go with the PNY 660 as its cheaper but have been advised that the EVGA's are better plus the one i have picked is over clocked aswell. I went for the 3GB as the 2GB EVGA is only £2 cheaper on amazon, although im pretty sure your right and it wont get used... not in this or next genration of games anyway, more surley cant be bad if they cost the same.