Proposed Gaming Spec - Help Please!!!

[The old woman]

My 14 year old son is planning his first build for Christmas. I am chipping in some money and he is paying the bulk himself.

This is the list he has prepared - would anyone be willing to take a look over it and alet me know if there is anything missing or not compatable and b see if there is any cost saving that could be done? If it come in at that price he will have literally nothing left at all.

I have no clue and he is not much better.......yet

Thermaltake Chaser A31 Snow Gaming Case Toolless USB3.0 x 2 Side Window White £70
Processor:Intel Core i7 4820K Quad Core processor(3.70GHz, 3.70GHz, 10MB)
£226.75
Motherboard:ASUS SABERTOOTH X79
£234.76
Memory:8GB KINGSTON HYPER-X BEAST DUAL-DDR3
£67.09
Graphics Card:2GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 750 Ti
£106.99
Hard Drive:Seagate 2TB 3.5" SATA 6GB/s HDD 7200RPM 64MB CACHE
£59.99
DVD/BLU-RAY Drive:24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER
£7-£10(Couldn't find specific part)
Memory Card Reader:INTERNAL 51 IN 1 CARD READER
£10-£12(Couldn't find specific part)
Power Supply:CORSAIR 550W VS SERIES VS-550 POWER SUPPLY
£59.43
Processor CoolingCouldn't find specific part or price)
£???
Thermal Paste:Thermal paste(Don't know specific name)
£3.99
Sound Card:ONBOARD9 CHANNEL 7.1
£10(Could'nt find specific part)
USB:4 port USB 2.0 INTERNAL PCI CARD + STANDARD USB PORTS
£7.99
Power CableCouldn't find specific part or price)
£???
OS:Genuine Windows 8.1 64 bit
£72.41
Total: £941.4

[kalniel]

That's a very odd specification. Going for a skt 2011 based build is more suited for servers and workstations, not a home computer.

You can get a faster and cheaper computer going for a desktop motherboard and CPU, for example a Z97 chipset motherboard and an Intel Ivy Bridge processor. Or save even more money at only a small impact on performance by going to AMD instead of Intel.

Some of that money could be spent on a better graphics card, though for casual use a 750ti is fine.

Processor cooling probably isn't needed (It already comes with the CPU)

Thermal paste isn't needed. (It comes with the CPU/cooler)

A separate sound card isn't needed. (It's built into the motherboard already)

A USB internal card isn't needed. (The motherboard will have plenty of sockets)

A power cable isn't needed. (It'll come with the power supply)

I'd estimate you should be able to get a good build at much closer to £400-500. If I have time tomorrow I'll have a look, but there are others who have already been doing this recently and will probably reply soon!

[The old woman]

Thanks - I'd also posted on another forum and got some help to reconfigure it a bit

I've now redone my son's list and now have the following:

Intel Core i5-4690K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor
Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler
Gigabyte GA-Z97X-Gaming 5 ATX LGA1150 Motherboard
Kingston Fury Black Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory
Mushkin Chronos 240GB 2.5" Solid State Drive
MSI Radeon R9 290 4GB TWIN FROZR Video Card
Thermaltake Chaser A31 Snow White ATX Mid Tower Case
Corsair CX 600W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply
Samsung SH-224DB/RSBS DVD/CD Writer
Microsoft Windows 8.1 (OEM) (64-bit)
£910

It's still right at the top of the budget so suggestions to trim it down a little would be appreciated. The £800-£850 mark would be better if we could manage that with a similar performance level.

Thanks again.

[Willzzz]

Does he already have a monitor?
What type?

The simplest way to bring down the price would be to go for a non K CPU that can't be overclocked.
Going down to 8GB RAM would also help.
The video card might be overkill too.
Getting an SSD is a great idea, but it would be useful to get a cheap hard drive too.

[The old woman]

Thank Willzzz - he links up to a 32" sony tv screen so no screen required and he has a gaming keyboard, mouse and keypad too.

This is the spec of the laptop he has, so he is wanting something with a bit better performance though he says the laptop is pretty good for what he is doing at the moment.

6 GB DDR3 Dual Channel 1600MHz (2 DIMMs)
8X DVD+/-RW Drive
Processor: Intel® Core™ i5-3210M (up to 3.1 GHz, 3MB cache)
1 TB SATA Hard Drive (5400 RPM)
Wireless : Intel 2230 Wireless Card + BT
MOD,LBL,DEO,ESTAR 5.0,1018
Windows® 8 64bit (Englilsh)
Graphics : 1GB AMD Radeon HD 7670M
Daughter Board for WLAN
Power Supply: 90W AC Adapter
Display: 15.6 inch High Definition LED Display (1366 x 768) with TrueLife

He has saved a fair bit of cash himself but being only 14, he has a finite income so I guess he is trying to get the best he can while he has the money as he will struggle to save up as much again in a short period of time.

[Domestic_Ginger]

Would you know the resolution on the tv? Lower resolution means a more powerful GPU would be wasted.

I would get:-
8gb ram
a smaller ssd and a convential HDD ~1tb.
How much is the PSU? there are some very nice models around atm.

He's a very lucky Boy

[watercooled]

That looks like a solid build but it should be possible to shave a bit off the price with a minimal impact on performance.
I agree with what Willzzz said, going for a non-k CPU would probably be a better choice, along with 8GB RAM.
To add to it, what sort of games would be system be expected to run, if this is known?
And as for the SSD, while they can be great to have, it's not necessarily what I'd put at the top of the list when budgeting a system; while they can improve game load times and things like general system responsiveness and boot time, they generally won't affect/improve the performance of games, and you obviously get far less storage for your money than a standard hard drive.

Also, since motherboards have negligible impact on performance, this would be another area to consider - that is really quite an expensive motherboard and again aimed at overclocking.

The CPU cooler isn't completely necessary either and is one more thing more aimed at overclocking; retail CPUs already come with a basic cooler which should be adequate for general use. This would only save something like 20 quid but again, it's something which you probably don't need to spend and isn't likely to make any real difference to the system.

Hope this helps, and feel free to ask any more questions.

[The old woman]

He is a very lucky boy! and a very good boy too.......or maybe he wouldn't be quite so lucky!

Tv resolution: HD Ready (1366 x 768). it's this one: KDL-32R423A - sorry, not allowed to post links yet.

The PSU listed is about the £55 mark.

Good idea re the ssd/hdd - what size ssd would you think then?

[Willzzz]

I'd suggest something along these lines for a total of around £700

CPU: Intel Core i5-4460 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor (£131.94 @ Aria PC)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-H81M-DS2 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (£36.05 @ Ebuyer)
Memory: Crucial Ballistix Sport XT 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£57.99 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Crucial M500 240GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£77.96 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£39.16 @ Aria PC)
Video Card: Asus GeForce GTX 760 2GB DirectCU II Video Card (£149.99 @ Ebuyer)
Power Supply: Corsair CSM 450W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply (£43.00 @ CCL Computers)
Optical Drive: Samsung SH-224DB/BEBE DVD/CD Writer (£10.46 @ Aria PC)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8 (OEM) (64-bit) (£74.14 @ Ebuyer)

http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/q9ZByc

[The old woman]

Thanks watercooled - I'll have a wee bit a tweak then and see where that takes us. The overclockable versions didn't sem to be a lot more than the non so I added them in just in case.....but I guess once you put it all together, £10-20 here and there starts to really add up.

He plays a lot of Minecraft and bought a huge bundle of games from Steam recently, I think mainly RPG type stuff? Has in the past played Skyrim etc.

He has an xbox 360 too and plays GTA on that I think. He also does a bit of proper architect type stuff (Sketchup?) and some 3d design modelling. His younger brother is a console junkie. (PS1/2/3 & 4, psvita, xbox 360 and asked for an xbox one for Christmas - also has a Dsi and 3ds an ipod, a smart phone and a laptop!) hence he has no savings to build himself a gaming PC

[Willzzz]

The CPU doesn't cost that much more, but then you have to add a CPU cooler and an expensive motherboard and the cost really starts to rise.

Outside of a few RTS games you probably won't notice anyway.

[The old woman]

Great thanks Willzzz. I'll have a look through that with him tomorrow when he gets back from camping in the pouring rain!

All this help is really appreciated.

I hope you will all be around on Christmas day when he starts putting it all together

[Willzzz]

Actually I'd save a few quid on the graphics card:

http://www.ebuyer.com/581413-msi-r9-...qPwaAuzn8P8HAQ

It's only a 720p display after all.
Mind you this would still do a great job on 1080p if he did change display.

[OldFartAtPlay]

If he is happy to overclock, get a pentium anniversary processor for less than 50 quid.

[g8ina]

And that is why this place rocks

Really nice to see our members helping a newbie, keep up the good work guys !

[DanceswithUnix]

Actually I'd save a few quid on the graphics card:

http://www.ebuyer.com/581413-msi-r9-...qPwaAuzn8P8HAQ

It's only a 720p display after all.
Mind you this would still do a great job on 1080p if he did change display.

*This* display is only 720p, but given how cheap 1080p displays are I think we can assume he will want to upgrade that before too long.

Having said that, the 270X isn't a bad card and a good way to reduce cost, but it isn't the sort of aspirational toy that a young lad will want at Christmas.

So I would say assume he will be wanting a nice monitor for his birthday (because I can see that coming) and remember that this is a gaming rig for a young lad, so if any component is going to be stupid and over-specified it should the the graphics card