£400 Rig?

[HolyFruitLoops]

Hm would it be worth spending the extra money on a better model i5? and I think I'll stick to the Z77 chipset and pay the extra?

Right I'm confused on which GPU to get now

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

If you intend to overclock any decent amount you would need a better Z77 motherboard,a K series CPU and an aftermarket cooler too. This Core i5 has slightly higher Turbo:

http://www.ebuyer.com/387256-core-i5...-bx80637i53470

This one is around £10 cheaper though:

http://www.ebuyer.com/393559-intel-c...bx80637153350p

The main difference is the cheaper Core i5 runs at between 3.1GHZ to 3.3GHZ and the £10 more expensive runs at 3.2GHZ to 3.6GHZ,so is a bit faster,but if you want to save some money even the cheapest Core i5 is a decent CPU for the price for a gaming rig IMHO.

[HolyFruitLoops]

is it really worth the extra cash for the better version of i5? Will it be noticeable?

Should I stick to the Sapphire 7850 GPU? or is there better for the budget?

[Bonebreaker777]

Extra £10 for the performance difference? I personally would say no, most likely you would not notice the difference, but the little performance difference could mean for you in a certain game the difference between fluid motion and laggin (on certain settings of course).

The Sapphire 7850 GPU is good enough, the cooler looks a lot like MSI Twin Frozr II or Gigabyte coolers (dual fan system).

Can't remember where I saw the list with VGA/GPU manufacturers RMA experience, so I can't say how good or bad Sapphire is.

[HolyFruitLoops]

Right I think I've come to a decision, this is my drafted build..




Any tips on improvements or a better build for the same price?

Thanks for ALL the support guys, I'm slowly learning!

[Bonebreaker777]

Better for same price only if you really shop around, I would say.

Will you do it your self? I mean to build it up? If yes and you are not shy taking pictures, would you mind to document the whole process? You could post it here on the forums and could be a valuable experience to work with this particular items.

P.S.: Try to look real deep into your pocket, for a extra £10 you can have DOUBLE HDD, 2TB instead of 1TB.

Otherwise good luck.

[HolyFruitLoops]

Yeah gonna give it a go at building it, might have to get the odd bit of help but I'm sure I can do it, so of course I'll take pictures along the way, start ordering parts tomorrow once the money's in the bank and hopefully be built within the next 10-14 days

[c12038]

Until the end of the month you can Windows 8 upgrade for around £25. If you install one of the Windows 8 Preview verisons you should be able to upgrade from that. What sort of games do you run and what sort of non-gaming applications do you use??

This windows 8 upgrade offer finishes 1st Feb 2013 >>>>> http://hexus.net/business/news/gener...-1st-february/ Soooo sorry

[HolyFruitLoops]

Right guys, Will I need to buy any Sata cables? If so how many and what sorts?

Thanks

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

This windows 8 upgrade offer finishes 1st Feb 2013 >>>>> http://hexus.net/business/news/gener...-1st-february/ Soooo sorry

Which is the end of the month?? The prices rise on the 1st of February.

[DanceswithUnix]

Right guys, Will I need to buy any Sata cables? If so how many and what sorts?

Thanks

You normally get a few Sata cables included with a motherboard.

[DanceswithUnix]

I'm not seeing a DVD drive in there?

I sometimes use an external USB DVD or Flash drive for OS install these days, but you might still want some sort of optical drive.

Edit to add: I wouldn't stress too much over performance choices of this system btw, from my experience the best of laptops suck in performance compared to even a fairly cheap desktop so whatever you get is going to be an upgrade

[HolyFruitLoops]

After a bunch of hassle with Santander I've finally ordered my parts, hopefully be here by next Thursday and start the build on Friday.

Thanks for every bit of help and guidance!

[HolyFruitLoops]

Another quick question guys, when I take my PC home in the summer I'll need to use wireless network, will a PCI wireless network card be better than a USB or are the USB just as good?

[HolyFruitLoops]

Woah Novatech deliver fast, PSU and HDD already here!

[DanceswithUnix]

Problem with wireless cards is if the antenna are on the card so if you don't get a good signal you have to move the whole damned PC.

You need the antenna on a cable (which costs more and may lose signal strength), or have a USB adaptor on a USB extension lead cable so you can move the adaptor, or use a WiFi access point working in client mode and an ethernet cable leading to your PC from that.

Alternatively, I find the 500Mb/sec homeplug AV mains boxes work rather well. I gather the old ones were a bit rubbish.