My new gaming build?

[carlborrett]

I've been looking round a lot and this is the build I've came up with, with a budget in mind

AMD Phenom II X4 965 BE (going to overclock to 3.8ghz)

Samsung F3 spinpoint 1tb (always looking for deals and may change if there is one of same quality on offer)

Corsair Vengeance 2x4GB 1600mhz

Gigabyte 7850 2gb OC

Asus M5A78L-M/USB3 Motherboard (not sure about this either, any suggestions would be appreciated)

OCZ 750w/ OCZ 650w/ Corsair enthusiast v2 650w / 520w Antec Neo eco (not sure which, is you have any other suggestions, they would be appreciated)

Antec Three Hundred Midi case / Bitfenix survivor

I'm not to bothered about crossfire, so the motherboard and psu need not have crossfire capability. Would this run current games well at 1920x1080? Any improvements you think i should make?

[Chan]

Stick a SSD in, will make the biggest difference ever. ScanDisk Extremes are on sale atm @ scan, personally I wouldn't build any gaming pc without a ssd in it now days.

[carlborrett]

What do you recommend i put on the SSD? Just OS or games as well?

[Caveman]

I have Win7 and a few selected games on my 120GB SSD. (BF3, Skyrim and Cod:BO) if you put all your games on there you will soon find you have no space.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

What is your total budget?? Do you need a copy of Windows and any peripherals like a monitor??

[drharvey12]

I've just had a quick look on the AMD webiste and it recommends: ■500W (or greater) power supply with one 75W 6-pin PCI Express power connector for the 7850.

http://www.amd.com/uk/products/deskt...n-7850.aspx#/2

I generally prefer to go a bit above the recommended to allow for capacitor ageing over a few years and the larger PSU's are typically engineered better. I always stick to Corsair or Seasonic PSU's as I've never had an issue with them. I've heard that Antec are pretty good though but have no experience with them myself.

Something like this would be my pick but it depends on your budget for a PSU: http://www.scan.co.uk/products/600w-...et-fan-atx-psu

It comes with a 3 year warranty and is certified Crossfire ready so it will be fine for a single GPU setup. Nearly all the power is avaialbe on the 12v rail. I worked it out to be 552 watts so that should cover the GPU and other things easily enough with a bit to spare for overclocking the CPU / GPU if required.

If you wanted to go lower then this should be ok but I never like to go "cheap" on the PSU. Having all your components receiving the right amount of "clean" power is really important for system stability, especially if overclocking.

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/500w-...et-fan-atx-psu

For the extra few quid though I'd go for the slightly more expensive 600 watt version just in case you ever did want to add another card at some point in the future or in your next build even, given that the PSU should still be going after 3 years

[Edit: Just noticed a review or two whereby the XFX & Antec PSU's seem to be better in this price range. I always tend to get 1000w + PSU's so wasn't aware that Corsair are not quite as competetive at this price range. Corsair PSU's still seem to be ok though but possibly wait for CAT-THE-FIFTH to advise once you give him a budget.]

[carlborrett]

What is your total budget?? Do you need a copy of Windows and any peripherals like a monitor??

My total budget is around £500 but the lower the better, no screen or anything like that is needed

[Willzzz]

I've just had a quick look on the AMD webiste and it recommends: ■500W (or greater) power supply with one 75W 6-pin PCI Express power connector for the 7850.

http://www.amd.com/uk/products/deskt...n-7850.aspx#/2

I generally prefer to go a bit above the recommended to allow for capacitor ageing over a few years and the larger PSU's are typically engineered better. I always stick to Corsair or Seasonic PSU's as I've never had an issue with them.

The 500w that AMD recommends is already very generous, there is absolutely no need to go beyond 500w for a 7850 or even many more power hungry cards.

If you are buying from scan the MSI GTX660 is a much better buy than the Gigabyte 7850. Less than £6 extra, better performance and a free game.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Once the OP gets to 20 relevant posts,they can get free Scan postage.

If the OP is willing to buy the parts from two retailers,they should be able to maximise their budget.





The parts are from Scan and Amazon. Scan does special offers each weekday too:

http://www.scan.co.uk/todayonly/index.aspx

Amazon is also doing a free one month trial of Amazon Prime too and you get Nectar points on their purchases too.

The total comes to around £505. The Core i5 3350 and B75 motherboard cannot be used for overclocking but stock performance should be decent. The motherboard has 4 RAM slots and is ATX so there is plenty of space for expansion. The case also can take long graphics card if required too. The PSU uses Seasonic as an OEM. HD7850 2GB cards are known to be decent for overclocking and you get a free copy of Farcry 3 with the MSI card too. The only problem is that the Core i5 is not in stock ATM.

Another alternative is to go with an FX6300 and a 970 motherboard:

http://www.dabs.com/products/amd-fx6...%206300&src=16

http://www.dabs.com/products/gigabyt...d%20970&src=16

The FX6300 is a good allround CPU and can be overclocked. The Core i5 will be better in lightly threaded games,but in multi-threaded games should be OK. The motherboard is also decent - you could add a cooler at a later date when required.

There should be enough budget left to get the GTX660 suggested earlier:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/2gb-m...098mhz-cores-9

However,both the motherboard and graphics card are out of stock ATM.

[carlborrett]

Thanks alot, will be looking into this!

[scotty0100]

I can't recommend enough squeezing a SSD into this build if possible, once you go SSD you really can't go back to normal load times ;p You don't need a big one either (lol), only 64GB to put OS on there is good enough. It's just a little bit more awkward to add a SSD at a later date.