Gaming Build

[anacdahudee]

Hi All,

Just throwing in a build list I have been tinkering with for the past few months to gain reviews on and see if anyone has any ideas for improvements. This would be my second build so hopefully avoiding the idiot mistakes. Looking at purchasing after Skylake has come out, both to see the prices drop and what price point an equivalent Skylake processor would come in at.

Partpicker list: https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/user/ana...d/#view=wzPcCJ

CPU: i5 4590 3.3Ghz
I know usually most would recommend the K models but I'm not actually planning on overclocking and so this i5 seems a nice balance between price and performance. With the same reasoning I've been looking at sticking with the stock cooler, but I'd be interested to hear what others have to say on that.

Motherboard: MSI Z97 Gaming 3
Nice layout and colour scheme (not that I'd choose a board on that) and the newer edition of the Realtek audio chip. Not looking at having 2 GPUs so crossfire and SLI aren't really of interest though I've always followed the advise of spending a little more on motherboard than you may have to, just to ensure you have a good solid base for everything else.

Memory: I've currently got this set to a filter on part picker to basically pick out the cheapest set of 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3 1600 1.5V CAS 9 memory. Nothing beyond the expected here really.

Storage: Samsung 850 Evo 250GB
I generally dont use that much hard drive space having moved all my films and TV shows to a media PC so this simply needs to hold my OS, about 30GB of documents and music and game installs. Reviewers seem to be praising the Samsung SSDs at the moment, main question here is whether I should stump up a bit more cash and go for the 500GB model.

Video Card: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 970
The 3.5GB of vram is a tad concerning but all the updated reviews I've read seem to still count this as an epic card for the money. I currently have an AMD card and the driver support these days is pretty shocking and the power usage on the 970 is pretty low in comparison to competing AMD cards at this price point.

Case: NZXT S340
Normally I'd be one of those people that would say who cares about the case as long as it can hold everything and has fans, but I'm making an exception for this case. NZXT have stripped out the front 3.5 bays in favour of more space on the inside, seems to be a perfect match of the components I've picked and it looks really nice.

PSU: Corsair CX 500w 80+ Bronze
Nothing too exciting here, just aiming for a robust and safe PSU.

Wireless Adapter: TP Link TLWDN4800 PCIe card.
This is simply being transferred from my current machine, its fairly new.

Monitor: LG 24GM77 144Hz
Seems to be a fairly well priced TN 24 inch 144Hz monitor and comes fairly well recommended from the review sites. Just going with consensus on this one, apart from knowing I'd like 144Hz and it to be 24 inch im not too sure whats best.

[Fynriel]

The Corsair CX line is not that amazing from what I heard. Would do some more research there. CX is more intended for office PCs and the like.

[AGTDenton]

The Corsair CX line is not that amazing from what I heard. Would do some more research there. CX is more intended for office PCs and the like.

Granted its not amazing, but I've used a number of CX PSU's from the 430 to the 600 for budget gaming and office rigs. Got a few good deals on them and find them fairly robust. Put it this way they'll last and do the job, they run high end GPU's no problem and pretty quiet on idle.
That reddit post caused a lot of unnecessary scaremongering imo.

Video Card: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 970
The 3.5GB of vram is a tad concerning but all the updated reviews I've read seem to still count this as an epic card for the money. I currently have an AMD card and the driver support these days is pretty shocking and the power usage on the 970 is pretty low in comparison to competing AMD cards at this price point.

PSU: Corsair CX 500w 80+ Bronze
Nothing too exciting here, just aiming for a robust and safe PSU.

Just wondered which Gigabyte GTX 970 you are going for as the half sized ones recommend a 400W PSU, but the full size 970 recommends a 550W.

[anacdahudee]

Thanks both for the PSU advise. I've been burned by both low and high end PSUs in the past and so im rather cynical about all of them. The last expensive one I bought was about £70 and was a bequiet 600 watt that came with a 5 years warranty and it didn't last 6 months. That got RMA'd and replaced by the current Corsair HX650 which performs, but squaks endlessly. Sorting reviews for PSUs in my range on part picker has the CX500m and CS500m at the top, which is interesting.

Scan's choice seems a little brand limited at the moment, but there is a decent looking Cooler Master PSU: http://www.scan.co.uk/products/550w-...m-atx-v231-psu

I noticed you have a Enermax, AGTDenton, are they any good?

The graphics card I'm looking at is: http://www.scan.co.uk/products/4gb-g...es-dp-hdmi-dvi

Part Picker is currently reporting wattage usage of 73-313, so im guessing a PSU in the 500-550 range will be more than enough.

I'll thank both your posts as soon as I hit 15 posts.

[KeyboardDemon]

I just bought myself an EVGA G2 750W PSU after reading the review on JonnyGuru, they placed this above the Seasonic models but it came at a very reasonable price of around £92, this was still £20 more than the CX equivalents but so many people seem to be advising others to avoid CX units that I didn't want to take the risk for the sake of the difference in price.

You can get an EVGA G2 650w for around £75, this also does very well in the review at JonnyGuru, it scored 9.6 out of 10, if fully modular and has Gold rated efficiency.

[shaithis]

I just bought myself an EVGA G2 750W PSU after reading the review on JonnyGuru, they placed this above the Seasonic models but came it at a very reasonable price of around £92, this was still £20 more than the CX equivalents but so many people seem to be advising others to avoid CX units that I didn't want to take the risk for the sake of the difference in price.

I recently went with the 850W version of the same PSU after reading reviews and having the 3.3v rail go in my old Seasonic 700W and then my 850W Corsair HX unit (over ~3 years). The inverters that they use to step-down the 12v rail to 3.3v must be shockingly poor quality and looking at the tear-downs for them, they are!

The inverters on the EVGA PSUs looked a lot bigger (fwiw!).

[watercooled]

Seasonic never did an 850W HX unit, they've all been CWT though Seasonic did some of the lower-wattage models.

The only exactly 700W Seasonic I can find was the M12, but that was a traditional independently-regulated supply and didn't use buck converters to derive the minor rails. Which one did you have the problem with? (Just out of interest as I wasn't aware of it)

[AGTDenton]

I noticed you have a Enermax, AGTDenton, are they any good?

Yes I think so, I've had mid to high end Enermax PSU's roughly since '99 when my dad introduced them to me, stayed with them on my main rigs ever since. I only sold off the previous ones as they were not enough wattage for each new build as back then it seemed every new generation of CPU's and GPU's required more and more watts. They tend to score quite highly with Jonny Guru on the top end models, they can be considered overpriced, but you get many years use out of them so I think its not so bad if its one less thing you have to buy for the next rig, you'd be lucky finding a 500/550 in the same price bracket as the others. I've no intention of replacing this one any time soon 6 years going strong and been through its fair share of power cuts and voltage drops, the fan seems absolutely fine. They're identical to Seasonic which I have in another system, though the cables were very short even for a miniATX chassis, hopefully that's been addressed in later models.

The Cooler Master you linked to seems very adequate - its 650 model gets a good score with JG so I'd say you're in safe hands.
As I mentioned above, the CX600 I've used now for a few friends' gaming PCs and they've not been a problem, I've yet to see any epidemic of failures and the CX series has been going a few years now so they'd have surely pulled the range if it was seriously hurting the brand.

Remember you can always upgrade the PSU in the future so I wouldn't get too bogged down with it. Just don't go for brands that are £15 for 750W, you're asking for a blowout then!

[anacdahudee]

Yeh I imagine I will finalise the PSU when I come to actually buying and see what the best one I get for the money is. I'll keep an eye on the Enermax ones and may give them a try.

[Quinnbeast]

First post (and something of a brainfart):

I take the approach that if I'm going to throw money at mid/high end components (motherboard/GPU/CPU), I'll pick an equivalent quality of PSU. Granted; PSUs aren't sexy, but to my mind they're arguably the most vital aspect in having a stable system, more so than a specific model of motherboard or RAM etc. Motherboards based on the same chipset and brand are likely to be no more or less stable than one another unless you're heavily into overclocking, so over-spec'ing the motherboard can sometimes just mean paying for unused features. For example, do you think the Asus Z97-P does everything you need (£65)? It "only" has 4 SATA ports, but then my games machine doesn't normally double as a file server.

I've just had my MSI 780 fail on me (spectacularly so), but that's not to say I'm never buying high end MSI GPUs ever again. It happens. If you find the lower power usage of the 970 appealing, your PSU efficiency will generally have greater effect on total system power draw than any variation between one (similar spec) set of components and another, especially during long gaming sessions. Lower efficiency PSUs also contribute to system temperature a bit more. I suppose like any product range, it's all still a fairly incremental difference in real terms.

If you think you might want to load a few games onto the SSD, then that 256GB will start to fill up fairly quickly unless you're good at keeping your games list tidy (not something I'm capable of). I use a 2nd drive (standard HDD) for games and files, and leave the SSD for the OS and a few core apps. Twin 256BG SSDs would also work, and would be my preference over one 512 drive. If I'm installing/uninstalling frequently or need somewhere to dump downloaded files, I'd rather leave the OS drive in peace.

My understanding of the 970 memory issue is that they do have access to 4GB, but that the latter 0.5 runs slower. They remain one of the go-to cards on the market just now either way. After my 780 damn near bust into flames, the 970 will hopefully be the replacement.

[anacdahudee]

I'm still toying with ideas hence why my partpicker list has changed a bit since I posted the specs on here. Trying to find a happy medium of bang for buck (without going AMD and paying out in wattage), I'm also trying to settle on components I'm happy paying the price for.

For the motherboard apart from the standard ports and feature set you look at, I'm also looking at which version of the realtek audio chip it comes with. The Gaming 3 and the AS Rock Z97 Killer (currently eyeing up with a similiar feature set for £10 less) have the 1150, while the Z97-P has the 891. My current 2 year old board has the 887 so its not much of an upgrade, the new 1150 is supposed to make some real improvements and so i'd rather just go for a better audio chip than eye up a soundcard. I listen to and work with a lot of music as well as being a gamer and so the difference will more than likely be noticable to me.

As well as the 970 I have been looking at the 960, especially since they released a 4gb varient of it. The choice between the two will generally come down to the day of purchase and how much money I have got to play with. I have also taken the advise from others and gone for the CSM 500w Gold PSU, between folks on here and reviews it is accepted that it is a higher quality than the standard CS ones.

Im not sure with the SSD, like I said in my first post I generally dont have many files and keep on top of making sure Windows clears its update temp files and such. I also only tend to play 2-3 games at a time and uninstall them once I'm done and so it would come down to the games. Obviously if I'm installing GTA V then I'm not going to leave room for much else. I think based on your advise and others on here I'll probably keep a hold of my 1TB drive in this machine just in case space becomes an issue then I can just chuck it in if needed.

[ERU]

Have a look at this for the mobo:

MSI Z97 Gaming 5 Intel LGA1150 Z97 ATX Motherboard (1x DDR3, 6x USB3.0, 8x USB2.0, GBE, LAN, HDMI, DVI, VGA)

Currently £99.98

[ERU]

And if you go for a lower powered (to save inital ££s) GFX there is this:

MSI NVIDIA GTX 750 Ti OC Graphics Card - 2GB

£88.37

[Obie]

I own that LG 144hz and man oh man...You will not be sorry. It uses the same panel as the benq xl2420z and has among the lowest input lag (only 2'nd to the AOC G24PQU) and some of the best colours out of the box for a TN panel. I absolutely love this monitor. I had a Samsung s23a700d 120hz previously and this is way nicer for what it's worth

[anacdahudee]

I own that LG 144hz and man oh man...You will not be sorry. It uses the same panel as the benq xl2420z and has among the lowest input lag (only 2'nd to the AOC G24PQU) and some of the best colours out of the box for a TN panel. I absolutely love this monitor. I had a Samsung s23a700d 120hz previously and this is way nicer for what it's worth

Yeh I'm looking forward to it, im still on a standard 60hz 24 inch monitor so the difference is supposed to be fairly big.

[Obie]

Yeh I'm looking forward to it, im still on a standard 60hz 24 inch monitor so the difference is supposed to be fairly big.

I'm sure you've heard people saying an SSD is an amazing upgrade to any PC? It is don't get me wrong but the satisfaction I got from switching to 120hz was greater. Let me know once you're all setup, I'd love to hear what you think