Working on a gaming build

[dcgregg]

This will be a staged build due to cost, but I want to ditch this Packard Bell Easy Note TS11SB Laptop and build my own computer. The computer I want to build will be for games and general computing (Such as Skype, Youtube uploading etc).

I appreciate all feedback given, Thank you!

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU:  AMD A10-7850K 3.7GHz Quad-Core Processor  (£126.90 @ Aria PC) 
Motherboard:  MSI A88XM-E45 Micro ATX FM2+ Motherboard  (£46.66 @ Scan.co.uk) 
Memory:  Crucial 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory  (£60.85 @ Amazon UK) 
Storage:  Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  (£41.99 @ Aria PC) 
Video Card:  MSI Radeon R7 250 2GB Video Card  (£57.99 @ Ebuyer) 
Case:  Cooler Master K280 ATX Mid Tower Case  (£29.99 @ Aria PC) 
Power Supply:  Corsair Builder 750W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply  (£69.30 @ Scan.co.uk) 
Optical Drive:  Samsung SH-224DB/BEBE DVD/CD Writer  (£12.83 @ Scan.co.uk) 
Total: £446.51
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-02-22 13:10 GMT+0000)

Hopefully this will be usable in April, then will be buying the Screen etc in May as I do not want to use Credit, I would rather buy parts when I get Paid.

Will this be a nice Gaming system?
I have already bought the case. It looks pretty cool!

[Pob255]

PSU is major overkill, a good 400-450w psu would be plenty for that system.
http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/graphi...mantle/?page=4
eg http://www.scan.co.uk/products/450w-...n-atx-v231-psu or http://www.scan.co.uk/products/400w-...active-pfc-oem

Normally I'd say don't bother with a graphics card as weak as the r7 250 for gaming, however it has one thing going for it in that it works really well with the igp of the A10-7850k and I'm guessing that's what you're going for.

You're still not going to get massive performance out of it, as money is tight I'd suggest considering 2nd hand, a 7950, 7870 or gtx 660 would still give good performance, should be better than the a10-7850k+r7 250 combined performance.
Heck even the old gtx560ti is a solid card

One advantage of your setup is breaking up the purchases, you can just get the a10-7850k now and run on the igp graphics and get the r7 250 later to add onto it.
The down side is that not all games like crossfire so some are not going to perform well.

Overall I think you might be better off with an FX 6350 http://www.scan.co.uk/products/amd-f...he-125w-retail and a good 970a motherboard http://www.scan.co.uk/products/gigab...e-20-(x16)-atx
with more money put on the graphics card

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Do you have a copy of Windows??

Are you going to overclock??

If you are not going to overclock I would get the following:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/AMD-FX6300-E...eywords=fx6300
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Gigabyte-970...s=gigabyte+970
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Crucial-BLT2...words=8gb+ddr3
http://www.novatech.co.uk/products/c...oc-2gd-ga.html
http://www.amazon.co.uk/XFX-ATX-550-...words=xfx+550w
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Samsung-SH-2...words=sata+dvd
http://www.amazon.co.uk/1TB-inch-Int...ywords=1tb+hdd

The total comes to around £434 and includes a copy of BF4 and excludes the cost of your case.

If you include the cost of the case it comes to around £464.

You can get a cheaper R9 270 without a copy of BF4 to drop the price a bit more.

I assume you have a monitor,keyboard and mouse too.

[dcgregg]

@Pob255 Thank you, I have looked at this again and I agree a 700W PSU is not needed, I have gone with your first suggestion of PSU. However having seen the benchmarks on Hexus review vs that of many other reviews, the A10-7850k seems to be great when it uses R 250. I agree, some games such as Tomb Raider runs better just with the APU.
And yes you are correct about breaking up my purchase.
I have taken your suggestions on board and continue to look into it

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

An FX6300 and a R9 270 would be a better choice for gaming though. My GTX660 is similar speed and I can run plenty of games at 1680X1050 at decent settings including Crysis3.

[dcgregg]

Sorry Cat-The-Fifth, when I posted, I had not seen your reply, I am looking at it now and will reply

@Cat-the-fifth.. that was similar to my draft plan I had and is still very worth considering too and yes I have windows 8 on a flash drive. Now it's making me really think on it.

[Pob255]

Pretty much the other option I posted, although personally I'd spend a little more on the motherboard the 970A-DS3P has a weaker VRM than the 970A-UD3P which is why I suggested that board.

I'll be interested in CAT's opinion on the FX6300 vs FX6350 though.

[dcgregg]

An FX6300 and a R9 270 would be a better choice for gaming though. My GTX660 is similar speed and I can run plenty of games at 1680X1050 at decent settings including Crysis3.

How about this?

Motherboard : Asus M5A97 R2.0
CPU : AMD FX 6 Core 6350 Piledriver 3.9Ghz (turbo 4.2Ghz)


The Number of Cores: 6
The Number of Threads: 6
Frequency: 3.9 GHz
Maximum Turbo Frequency: 4.2 GHz
L1 Cache: 3 x 64 KB (shared)
6 x 16 KB (data)
L2 Cache: 3 x 2MB
L3 Cache: 8 MB
Execute Disable Bit? Yes
64-bit Support? Yes
Cooling : Standard AMD Retail Cooler (wont be using stock cooler)
Memory :8GB DDR3 1600mhz Corsair Vengeance Memory
£234.84

Pretty much the other option I posted, although personally I'd spend a little more on the motherboard the 970A-DS3P has a weaker VRM than the 970A-UD3P which is why I suggested that board.

I'll be interested in CAT's opinion on the FX6300 vs FX6350 though.

hmm, the GA-970A-UD3P isn't that much expensive either. I guess the GA-78LMT bundle might be out of the question lol

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The Asus EVO is £69:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/M5A97-EVO-R2...words=ASUS+970

Regarding the FX6350 and FX6300,I know mates who have them. The FX6350 is kind of a pre-overclocked FX6300 and with a reasonable motherboard and cooling I expect both should overclock a similar amount.

However,the FX8320 is only around £6 to £7 more:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/AMD-FX8320-E.../dp/B009O7YU56

[MrRockliffe]

VRM is only an issue if he's overclocking.

On a budget, you can't beat the FX6300 and an R9 270(x) - only real difference between the two is stock clocks.

However. I'd be inclined to wait a little until you have all your money - that way you know what you have to spend. Otherwise you might have everything except ram and hard drive and only have 30 quid to spend.

It might also be worth buying second hand.

[jonesi100]

I'm running an i7 4770K and GTX760 on a 400w PSU - you just need the extra PCIe power cables

I would recommend a 128GB SSD boot drive. For £60 it will make the biggest difference to your PC performance.

[Jonj1611]

Why all the double posts?

[Bonebreaker777]

Why all the double posts?

Maybe easier to rack up the first 20x posts? ;-)

VRM is only an issue if he's overclocking.

On a budget, you can't beat the FX6300 and an R9 270(x) - only real difference between the two is stock clocks.

However. I'd be inclined to wait a little until you have all your money - that way you know what you have to spend. Otherwise you might have everything except ram and hard drive and only have 30 quid to spend.

It might also be worth buying second hand.

Overclocking was never thrown out in this thread as an idea, but if he will not OC, he might as well take advantage of the minimal price difference between a 6core and a 8core CPU and go for the later, where the lack of the OC can be partially compensated by the extra cores, wherever it is applicable.

The GPU would be the R9 270(x) indeed, but we didn't hear yet what games he likes to play at what resolution. He could maybe even go for the R9 265 for even better price/performance ratio?

Second hand is always a option, agreed. But is buying new, don't forget CASHBACK. May save up for a SSD in the process

[peterb]

Why all the double posts?

New poster not got the hang of the editor - but I have fixed it for him - 'cos we're nice like that

[dcgregg]

Maybe easier to rack up the first 20x posts? ;-)



Overclocking was never thrown out in this thread as an idea, but if he will not OC, he might as well take advantage of the minimal price difference between a 6core and a 8core CPU and go for the later, where the lack of the OC can be partially compensated by the extra cores, wherever it is applicable.

The GPU would be the R9 270(x) indeed, but we didn't hear yet what games he likes to play at what resolution. He could maybe even go for the R9 265 for even better price/performance ratio?

Second hand is always a option, agreed. But is buying new, don't forget CASHBACK. May save up for a SSD in the process

First sorry about the double posts and thank you Peterb my posts look a lot better. I am not sure what you mean about 20x posts? When I was posting there was a reply by the time i posted and then i tried to reply to that one too, anyway thank you again Peterb.

Overclocking is indeed an option, I have been watching some YouTube videos today and I am pretty impressed with what I have seen.

Now game and resolution wise, anything would be better then my current setup (Packard Bell Easynote TS11SB Laptop, 1.90ghz, 4gb ram) which just turns itself off 5 mins into most games...
I am interested in playing things like DayZ or similar titles, rpg's etc etc. I am not a huge fan of fps but dont mind them now and then.
The Kavari stole my attention but that is probably because it is new.

[jonesi100]

thanks Peter - yeah, maybe I didn't have enough coffee this morning