First Budget Gaming Build (£600)

[jag272]

Hi there, been working on this build the last week or so and I'm pretty happy with where it is currently but while I've come to realise future proofing is pretty difficult I'd like to leave at least some room for doing so. I'm looking to be able to run current games well and for a while in the future even if I end up having to knock down settings while leaving room for upgrades where required. Since Skylake will apparently be a new chip and Broadwell apparently wont have much relevance to desktop, H87/Z87 seems best for now.

Current Build:
CPU - i5-4670k / Xeon E3-1230v3
MOBO - ASRock H87 Pro4 / MSI Z87-G43 (Not gaming edition)
RAM - 8GB 1600MHz CAS11 Corsair XMS3 (1x8gb)
Storage - 1TB WD Blue
GPU - MSI GTX 760
Case - Corsair Carbide 300R
PSU - XFX Pro 550w
Case Fans - 3x Arctic F12 PWM
- 2x Standard fans included with case.

Currently I have no plans to overclock as with all the testing it seems rather time consuming. I would go for the standard 4670 if it was cheaper for this reason but it seems wherever I look the prices are the same or the K is cheaper at this point.

The Z87 motherboard is in there incase I do decide to go overclock in future but I've heard bad stories regarding MSI boards while planning this build so picking a budget board from them has me a little concerned, any experience would be appreciated there.

As for the rest, in future naturally the PSU and GPU will be getting upgraded, the PSU is sufficient for now. I also plan to put in another stick of ram later down the line, decided to go with 2x 8gb sticks incase I do get the overclock board as I hear the Hyper 212 Evo has a tendency to cover the first ram slot, probably not an issue with XMS3's small heatsink but being cautious there.

I'm mainly trying to see if I can trim anything down in order to up from the 4670k to the Xeon, if I end up not overclocking the xeon seems like a much better choice if i can redirect £30 since were finally starting to see multithreading get used. I'm having trouble deciding what I can move though, only viable option seems to be swap from the 300r to the 200r to save £15 and go over budget to upgrade but the temperature measurements I saw on another website seem to be quite significantly different. In combo with this I could remove the 3x Arctic F12s and rely on the two included fans which would provide me enough money for the xeon but i'm not sure I trust 2 stock case fans.

Any advice on potentially better parts for the price or what I can shift around to get the xeon for hyperthread (or if thats even worthwhile) would be greatly appreciated. Again I currently have no plans to overclock but since both the H87 ASRock board and the Z87 MSI board are pretty much identical price I would probably go for the MSI for futureproofing if they are reliable. Currently I'm right on the edge of my £600 budget at £595 so I'm primarily looking for what could be swapped round unless something is really worth going over budget for. I did consider AMD 8320/8350 previously on this budget but Intel seems the better path until multithreading is more common.

[starkyller]

change the memory for 2*4GB

[DanceswithUnix]

If you are not overclocking, I don't see why you need all those case fans. I can't remember the last time I had more than 2 in a build. One of mine in the Antec 300 just failed, so I unplugged it. No biggie, it isn't summer any more so I think I have a few months to get a new one.

[MrJim]

Personally I think I would go for a Z97 board, even if you're not planning to overclock now - it'll give you the option to do so later on should you wish to do so, & will give you the option for SATA Express or M.2 SSDs too. On that subject, I'd budget £75 for a 256Gb SSD...once you'd tried one, there's no going back to conventional hard disks For gaming purposes, 2x4Gb RAM now would make more sense, as Starkyller says.

[kalniel]

I disagree about the RAM - if you're planning on buying another 8gb stick soon it doesn't make sense to buy 2x4gb now, and it's not going to have a major effect on gaming running 1 stick in the meantime.

[jag272]

Ye on the RAM front I'm definitely planning on sticking to the 1x8gb and buy another 8gb stick sometime soon. Looked at a dual channel vs mismatching channel RAM benchmark somewhere, I forget the source, but the difference seems unlikely to be too noticable for just gaming. And as you said kalniel, if I'm getting another stick soon any noticable difference will be negated soon enough when I buy the 2nd stick anyway.

And thanks for the advice regarding the fans Unix, may trim it down to just one extra fan as a top casefan if other people also agree.

On the topic of the Z97 board, is MSI reliable enough, I figure its most likely vocal minority and most people have no reason to complain about them but it seems easier to find complaints regarding MSI than gigabyte/asus/asrock so I'm a little cautious about them.

Also, any advice regarding the 4670k vs Xeon E3-1230?

As for SSD I have plans to get one in future but currently plan to hold off until Windows 10 upgrade before I get one, I don't see it as essential currently, this will definitely be a 2 part build. First round to get the basic build, second round to optimise it.

[mikeo01]

Keep an eye out on CEX and eBay for used CPUs such as this one: I7-4770K.

I always recommend them purely because CPUs are pretty strong and the chances of getting a faulty one is slim. That said you can make good savings on used CPUs. After all if this PC is used purely for gaming you only need a decent CPU to handle the engines and logic the Xeon 1230V3 is simply an I7-4770 without the IGP. The 4670K is clocked a tiny bit higher so they will perform the same really except when multithreading is in full swing (in which case the 1230 has hyperthreading). Or you overclock the 4670K.

Gaming, the Xeon won't do anything any better than the 4670K will (at stock), but seen as things are becoming more multithreaded if you can find a 4770/1230 cheap enough then why not. Unless you have good cooling heat will become an issue when you start overclocking the Haswell chips. (is the 4670K Haswell refresh? Can't remember).


You'd have to throw some cash into cooling if you'd want to overclock however. But these chips don't output massive amount of heat at stock so as long as your video card has enough cooling (next to a vent? Fan close by?) then I wouldn't worry. Plus the GTX 760 runs cool. Though I would suggest a 280 because it'll be cheaper and run in between a GTX 760 and a GTX 770, closer to the GTX 770 though. More performance for your cash.

Heck if you want to save money opt for the 270X, thats in same league as the GTX 760 and cheaper


I'd personally not bother with the Z97 chipset unless there are features you want. A good Z87 (if you go the K route) or a good B85 (some nice MSI gaming ones there) will suffice. There would be a new socket by time you'd want to upgrade your CPU probably.

Just throwing my opinion out there

[jag272]

Hmmm, hadn't considered eBay and other preowned sources as an option, I'll definitely keep that in mind. And ye currently the chance of me overclocking is slim, my only concern with the Xeon (or 4770 for that matter) is that we're just barely starting to see multithreading starting to really benefit, from the devs that are known for building there games that way. Makes me wonder if we'll see that from more devs now or if were going to be stuck with a few select devs doing it and then multithreading still being "wasted" on most other devs.

Ultimately thats trying to predict the future though so its hopeless trying to guess either way. AMD GPUs might be something to consider too, could potentially go for a slightly cheaper AMD gpu and use that saved money to get the xeon for multithread, chances are I'll end up upgrading the GPU soon anyway at the rate they develop. My only concern with AMD is drivers since I've had Nvidia thus far but then its not common to hear bad things about AMD cards, I may have to investigate that a bit more so thanks for the suggestion.

Looking at prices briefly sapphire 270x 2gb is £120, current 760 I'm looking at is an MSI one for £150. Lowest 280 is at £145 so wouldnt save me enough to get the xeon. I'll look up some 270x vs 760 benchmarks though, might well be worth the change over.

[Bonebreaker777]

CEX has none at the moment (4770 or 1230).
eBay sold in the past Xeon 1230v3 for £115-175.
i7-4770/i7-4770k went for £160-200.

Also,I would say the 270x is slower by 10-15% that a 760.
But also 15% cheaper (£120 vs £144). You loose an adequate amount of performance compared to the financial savings.

[jag272]

Ye had a look around benchmarks myself, in my budget the 760 definitely looks to be the best price for performance, 280 is about equal for cheapest options, could possibly still save a bit of money and get slightly better performance but at that point its probably pretty negligible unless AMD's drivers are just as capable as Nvidia.

I may just go slightly over budget to buy the xeon, its just still very hard to predict where multithreading is going to go, regardless of that the 4670k is probably still a solid choice for a while anyway. I'll definitely keep an eye out for xeon on ebay too though, considering theyre built for servers theyre probably being resold because of an upgrade rather than any sort of fault.

I've now scrapped one fan from the build, potentially 2, trying to decide if its worth going top and back exhaust with one front intake or buy an extra fan for front intake to basically equalise it. I know the differences of positive and negative pressure, is there any particular advantage of equal?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I was recently in a similar situation as a mate,and told them to get a R9 280 instead. Reason?? The R9 280 has more VRAM,and with the newer high end AMD and Nvidia cards sporting 3GB to 4GB VRAM and some newer games pushing the VRAM requirements,I would not consider a GTX760 so much now despite being a happy GTX660 owner myself.

This R9 280 is £129.99 from Amazon:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/SAPPHIRE-AMD...eywords=r9+280

Its this one:

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/sapphi...iew-33025.html

This one costs more but comes with £20 to £30 of game vouchers:

http://www.novatech.co.uk/products/c...0gaming3g.html

[jag272]

Ahhh yes, the VRAM is an aspect of it I hadn't considered actually. And nice, that one didn't get picked up on pcpartpicker's pricing list, I'll definitely keep that one in mind. How are AMD's drivers in comparison to NVidia in regards to performance and stability? While I've been using AMD CPUs up until now I haven't tried their GPUs.

Looking at the benchmarks on Tom's the 280 seems like the better deal, will probably swap that out if the drivers are just as good.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The drivers for the R9 280 are pretty mature now,so you should be OK. Will be receiving the card soon for my mates build,so should get to see what its like.

[jag272]

Ahhh nice, let me know how it is if you get it before I'm buying parts, I'm probably gonna hold off buying for another week or so just to make sure I'm happy with it. Meanwhile gonna have a look around google at driver reports about it.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Well that R9 280 deal is coming in and out of stock,so keep an eye on it. Gibbo at OcUK hinted on a sub £200 R9 290 recently and OcUK had a KFA2 GTX780 with the latest Borderlands game for under £200 until it sold out.

[jag272]

Ye trust me, I've started watching stock like a hawk. Everything was fine earlier in the week and now suddenly the PSU, case and fans went out of stock on Amazon, found different sources though. Will definitely keep an eye on it.

As far as googling drivers, it seems like both sides are on a pretty equal playing field now which is great to hear, just need to see if theres any particular Nvidia features I use that AMD doesn't have, since I can't think of any to name off the top of my head that's probably a no.

Edit: Seems like the biggest difference between the two other than the savings is PhysX, pretty much anything else isn't relevant to me or AMD has an equivalent of. Might have to pass up on PhysX then if I do take the 280, I doubt the CPU would handle it, though admittedly if I spend the savings on a Xeon I could probably shift PhysX over to hyperthreading but I imagine it will still hit performance quite hard.

Admittedly, perhaps I shouldn't be considering PhysX on lower end cards like this anyway, though it'll vary on a case by case basis depending on game I guess.