Asking for recommendations...

[Ttaskmaster]

Hi all,

As promised in my intro, I'd like to ask around for some component suggestions to use in my new desktop build. Main use will be as a gaming rig, with Star Citizen and similar as the level of gaming I'm looking at.
I'm fairly new to self-builds and while I know roughly the sorts of things I'll want, I'm not overly familiar with the range of components or which ones are better than others.

I'll definitely be retaining my Corsair 500R case and likely keeping my HD6950, although a 7970 may be coming my way soon.


So would anyone mind offering recommendations for:

- RAM: 16GB DDR3, min 1600MHz
- PSU: min 800W
- SSD: 120 or 240GB
- HDD: x 2, best speed/capacity for price. Looking for at least 4 TBs overall.
- USB: PCI-E expansion, ideally USB3.0, as many ports as possible, internal port a bonus.


I know some of this may depend on my chosen Mobo & CPU, but therein lies a slight difficulty... I'm upgrading to whatever surprise a friend of mine has found for me. He was initially talking an i5 2500K on a Z68 1155 board, but says he now has a better 'surprise'.
The only hint I got was that it has 6 cores - The only one I can think of would be an AMD Piledriver FX on a AM3+ board.


So yeah, based on those very vague specs, what would people recommend?

Many thanks,
Tasky.

[kalniel]

Why such an enormous PSU, when you're only running up to a 7970 on it?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Your mate might mean a six core Intel Core i7 chip.

[Ttaskmaster]

Your mate might mean a six core Intel Core i7 chip.

I looked at those but at those prices, I doubt it. The FX Piledrivers are all =/>£100.

Why such an enormous PSU, when you're only running up to a 7970 on it?

I only have a 400w right now and most product configurators recommend at least a 750w. I figured 800w would be affordably adequate, as well as allowing for any additional I may require if I decide to overclock stuff or upgrade in the near-ish future.

But then I'm nowhere near an expert on these things!
This is just an initial consideration of what I thought I might need.

[herulach]

A decent 4-500W PSU will be enough, personally I wish I'd dropped the extra on a 750/800W one when I put my system together, as I know fancy SLI as an upgrade path, however, if you don't then a good qaulity 500W will be fine.

[Ttaskmaster]

That was my thinking - I may end up Crossfiring something if the prices come down a bit.

[Amarrd]

I'm a fan of corsair ram, love the look of their vengeance low profile stuff and they overclock pretty well too.

What kind of budget are you looking at overall?

[Ttaskmaster]

If I buy one component each month, I can probably afford to drop a couple hundred quid on each. Not amazing, but should get me something respectable, right?

[Ttaskmaster]

Right - Turns out it is indeed a six-core AMD Piledriver - FX-6 6350 Black Edition, on an Asus M5A78L-LE ATX AM3+ socket Mobo with 760G chipset.

Unfortunately, this Mobo version does not have a USB3.0 header, so a bit bummed about that.
The M5A78L-M-LE does have it, so I might see about a swap... unless I find an expansion card with a 19-pin internal header for the USB3.0 front panel.

Meantime, the CPU has a standard clock of 3.90GHz, with the potential overclock of at least 5GHz... apparently!
Either way, it beats the pants off the 2.4GHz on my old Q6600!!

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Can you pay your mate a bit more and get a better motherboard?? It uses an old chipset and also the design will be limited for overclocking.

If you want a mild overclock look at these ones:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Gigabyte-970...s=gigabyte+970
http://www.amazon.co.uk/M5A97-R2-0-M...words=asus+970

If you want bigger overclocks look at these ones:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/M5A97-EVO-R2...words=asus+970
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/gigab...FWTHtAod0ngA_w

BTW,my mate has an FX6300 and it was an upgrade over both a Q9300 and an Athlon II X3 overclocked to 4GHZ.

[Ttaskmaster]

I'll speak to him tonight.

The deal was basically replacing my Q6600/775 with a nicer Mobo & CPU, in a straight-swap for the rotting corpse of my motorcycle that unfortunately karked it last year.
He builds rigs for clients, so has a number of components knocking around at any given time. I suspect he went for this because it has an IDE header and I'm still using an old DVD drive, but even that will change soon, as I understand these things use a SATA or internal USB interface now?

TBH, I have no idea about motherboards and what to look for, what is good/better/best. I know to check which headers it has and that the CPU socket is the right one. That's pretty much it. I even had to Google to make sure it was 'IDE' I meant in the paragraph above!

As for overclocking - Haven't even started learning about that yet. I may not even need it...