£500 - £600 Gaming PC

[Hicks12]

Friend is ditching his imac(didnt think this would happen !) and wants me to build him a new system for ~ £500 -£600, no monitor is needed and no O/S is needed as he has access to MSDNAA. Ive been out of the loop for a bit now so im not 100% sure on the best setup. I doubt there will be overclocking but if it needs it I will sort it for him, something like an i5 at 3.3ghz --> 4ghz is fine if needed, needs only a relatively ok HSF iirc.

For gaming pretty much 100% and a bit of work (hes doing business management, spreadsheets nothing else really), the games range from CSS, League of Legends, Starcraft 2, Torchlight 2, Shogun 2, Civ 5, Age of empires, and a host of other games so a wide variety but it wont be crysis or Arma, will be run at 1920x1080p, or so he tells me but it would be nice if there was power for the 1600p just encase he doesnt like moving down as he is coming for a 27" imac (although the imac struggled at 1600p he had to drop it down all the time!).

So far ive got this build

CPU: i5 3570k ~£169 --> i5 3450 ~ £143
Motherboard: Asus P8Z77-V ~ £120 ---> Gigabyte GA-Z77-D3H ~£80
GPU : AMD 7870 ~£178 / Nvidia GTX660 ~£177
RAM: 8GB 2x4GB DDR3 1600Mhz 1.5v, corsair ~£30 or crucial
Storage: 1x 128gb M4/Samsung 830 - Both ~£75 + £25 for HDD (ive had a new one sitting here for him )

PSU: 630w Be Quiet BN182 modular 88% effciency ~£63
Case: Undecided, he wants something sleek not all fancy lighting but id say it would be <£50

Total price : £710, needs to drop alot so guess the 3750k should go down to the 3450?Lose overclocking but its a fair bit cheaper then a cheaper motherboard, is the gigabyte any good? Im looking for a board that is solid in booting speed and stability, my asus p8z68-v is brilliant apart from its incredibly long POST and other things, it means booting takes longer than it should, hoping gigabytes dont have this flaw!.

So that brings it down to £644, what should I drop next? Case recommendations at £30? And maybe a cheaper psu?.

I havent looked elsewhere just wanted to get a rough pricing from scan so if you guys know of any bargains at other retailers let me know .

Any helps appreciated!.

[Willzzz]

Yeah you can definitely save on the PSU, 500W should be fine, about £40 for a non-modular, or just a lower wattage version of what you originally specced:
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/530w-...-quiet-fan-atx

Both the 7870 and 660 are going to struggle on certain games @ 1600p. Shogun 2 would be tough for both cards.

[Hicks12]

Bargain, I should reiterate that it will 80% be 1080p but just a bit of power for 1600p would be nice, he wouldnt mind playing on medium gfx, he plays all games on low as his imac cant handle it so anything will be a massive improvement haha!. I have been looking at the 7850 and it seems like a better deal at only ~£140 its a big saving and still have quite good power, looking at anandtech it seems pretty damn smooth on everything he will play and ive had a look at the cpu and its better than my i5 2500k at stock so that should be plenty for him! Looking good although now it seems it is time to search all etailers for the best price .

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I would ditch the SSD for now and add it at a later date. You can always clone the installation from the hard drive,and I would try to get a 256GB one so you can put a few games on it too.



The parts are from Aria and they have the Core i5 3570K for only £150. However,not many are left,so be quick!!

I would get this HD7950 3GB:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/3gb-m...dmi-2x-mini-di

The build should come to around £625 including your hard drive.

Edit!!

Here are a few other cases I would look at too:

http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Compo...roductId=48831

http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Compo...roductId=47783

http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Compo...roductId=50314

http://www.aria.co.uk/SuperSpecials/...roductId=50820

http://www.aria.co.uk/SuperSpecials/...roductId=50825

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Amazon also seem to have the Core i5 3570K for the same price:

http://forums.hexus.net/current-barg...zon-co-uk.html

[Hicks12]

Thanks Cat, hes not here yet (ordering it with him tonight) so assume that i5 will be gone by then. I will say that the 7950 is overkill for him, way overkill! He would get better performance improvement from an SSD than the 7950, if im honest he will most likely run at medium gfx for everything as hes never one to splash on the eyecandy .

The 7850 seems vastly superior to my GTX460 and ive had no issues with any of the games he plays, he will certainly get many years from it . The 3450 is also on offer at £130 (i totally forgot about Aria so thanks for pointing it out ).

So far have this

Will probably get the 7850 elsewhere as its probably a terrible cooler, the MSI one seems to be everywhere and looks good . Ill get parts on amazon as the motherboard is the same there, the samsung 830 is only £74 and plus amazon support is second to none .

Is this bequiet better than the OCZ? http://www.scan.co.uk/products/530w-...an-atx-v23-psu I know BQ are solid and I dont recall having much faith in OCZ .

This 7850 http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...odid=GX-179-MS bargain slightly cheaper on scan but no eta .

What do you think? Cant give you feedback on the cases but they do look nice to me, im hoping he agrees .

edit: Ah i see your new post, well didnt notice that I looked earlier but the price went back up to £179, for £10 more its well worth it! Added to the new list.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I would get the Gigabyte SKT-1155 Z77-D3H as it looks to be a decent budget motherboard for overclocking. The problem with Be Quiet! is that it is hard to say what OEM they use. They seem to use either HEC or FSP for cheaper units,but more importantly can use a hodge-podge of capacitor brands,and sleeve bearing fans. The OC ZS 550W is a Sirfa made uniit,which does get good reviews,uses decent capacitor brands and also uses a sleeve bearing fan. If you don't trust it still,I would look at the XFX PRO 550W or the Antec HCG520 which are Seasonic made units.

Anyway,I think you should look at these two modular units:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/525w-...uard-safeguard

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...23&subcat=2179

That Enermax unit looks fantastic for the price,and the second unit is made by Seasonic IIRC.

[Samwood]

I would heavily suggest getting a 2GB 7850 rather than the 1GB selected. Based on my experiance with my 6950 (a very similar card performance wise) a lot of games use over 1GB at the settings levels I use. For a £100-150 component an internal bottle neck is the last things you want.

[Hicks12]

Sorry cat you replied after I ordered it, i read the JG review and it said it was loud, I saw the Bequiet mentioned on the forums with the guys at bequiet responding and it was recommended a few times but as you say it is a cheaper design however the actual implementation is better i think interms of actual cooling etc so it should last awhile, it was on scan today only @ £44 so I went for it, should be plenty for him!.

In the end we agreed and ordered the following (he wanted an ssd )
CPU: Intel i5 -3770k @Amazon £149.99
Motherboard: Gigabyte SKT-1155 Z77-DS3H - Did consider the non S version first of all but it seemed identical apart from the audio chip, the S uses realtek while the D3H uses via and I cant fault realtek, plus it was £10 cheaper @Amazon £70.26
Ram: 8gb 2x 4GB ddr 3 crucial ballistics, think I bought the wrong ones... amazon had a set at £29 thought it was the same but the 1600mhz version is £27... darn it , will have to sort it out asap!.
GPU: 2GB MSI Radeon HD 7870 Overclocked @Scan £178.54
PSU: Be quiet 530w Pure Power e7 @ Scan £44
Case: AeroCool Sixth Element White Midi Tower @ Aria £63.74 (he likes it, looks pretty nice will have to see in person!)
Storage: 1 x Samsung 830 128gb @ Amazon £74 (+£25 for 500gb HDD)

~£635 which aint bad, the other 7850s were £155 at amazon as the one at scan was OOS with no eta so i asked him if he would pay more for the 7870 and this looked like a pretty good buy at £178 with a 3 year warranty .
Total:

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The D3H has a 6+2 phase VRM with heatsinks, whereas the DS3H has a 4+2 phase VRM without heatsinks. If you are really not that bothered with getting a high overclock out of the CPU,I suspect it would not matter so such. That Enermax modular unit for £59 is really worth the extra IMHO!

[Hicks12]

unfortunately scan already have shipped it, far to expensive to return it , its a bit of an extra really! And yeah it wont be overclocked much at all, if anything as the stock speeds are plenty for him . I would struggled to convince him to spend extra as hes already over his £600 budget and if the PSU ever does go I have a reliable Xclio here that he can use, pretty sure it wouldnt take anything with it as its not one of those stupidly cheapy ones .