1-1.3k gaming PC

[dkmech]

I am going to spoil myself for my birthday with a new gaming PC, although this one isn't completely spent it's starting to struggle occasionally and will be turned into a steam machine/streamer. It has done well considering it's 7 years old and only had a graphics card upgrade (to be honest I was amazed it was this old when I got round to checking it's age).

I've started by looking at scan's 3xs systems and configured something like the spec below. I am starting to think though that due to some of the component selection limitations some of the choices may be slightly sub optimal (e.g. equivalent items available cheaper if different brand for example), so if I can save a significant amount with a self build then I guess I'd consider doing that (money saved could go into the upgrade pot for a new gpu in a few years). I've not looked at hardware for ages though and am particularly confused by the current RAM selection (so many frequencies and latencies to choose from). Any advice would be appreciated. I am hoping to build something fairly quiet as well as powerful.

Fractal Design Define R4, Various, Steel/Plastic, 232x523x464 (WxHxD in mm), 2x USB 3, 2x USB2, Headphone & Mic [R4 in Black Pearl]
£74.70 inc VAT
Asus Z97 Motherboards [Asus Z97-P, 4 SATA 6Gbps, 1 PCI-E M.2, SATA RAID, ATX]
£58.76 inc VAT
Intel Core i5 4690K, Haswell Refresh, Quad Core, 3.5GHz, 3.9GHz Turbo, 6MB Cache [Overclocked - CPU professionally overclocked up to 4.6GHz.]
£187.38 inc VAT
Corsair Hydro H100i GTX cooler with dual SP120L fans
£92.52 inc VAT
8GB (2x4GB) Corsair Vengeance Pro, 2133MHz, CAS 11-11-11-30, 1.5V [Red Heatsink]
£66.96 inc VAT
4GB EVGA GTX 970 SSC ACX2.0, 1190MHz GPU, 1664 Cores, 7010MHz GDDR5 [Single Card.]
£262.80 inc VAT
550W Corsair RM, Modular, Silent, 80PLUS Gold - Any Single Graphics Card
£77.46 inc VAT
500GB Samsung 850 EVO, Read 540MB/s, Write 520MB/s, 97K IOPS
£139.98 inc VAT
[2TB Seagate Barracuda, 7200rpm, 64MB Cache]
£56.64 inc VAT
Samsung SH-224FB - 24x DVD Reader & Writer
£11.98 inc VAT
Microsoft Windows 10 Home 64-bit
£73.20 inc VAT
Total £1257.17

[EndlessWaves]

There are sites these days that allow configuration from components in shops. They're not great for choosing specific components because their listings tend to be patchy but they're a good way to quickly tot up prices and get a rough idea of what costs what.

One of the most popular is PC part picker, and putting those components into it suggests a price of around £950 for an equivalent system: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/hgQmzy

You're always going to pay a little more for a pre-built machine but £300 is a little on the high side. I'd probably replace the CPU cooler with a £25 one, cut out the DVD drive and cut down on the case so it's closer to £850.

Intel are expected to release new Skylake CPUs within a week or two, so I won't say anything specific now as it may well be obsolete soon.

Basically you want:

CPU: i5 or i7. Currently the 2011-3 i7-5820k looks mildly attractive too, but is likely to become less so.
Motherboard: Buy on features, if you want to overclock you'll need to pay extra for the Z chipset model.
Memory: 8GB is sufficient, but 16GB may well be needed long term. Speed and timings are irrelevent unless things change drastically with skylake. Buy whichever is fastest at near the lowest available price.
Cooler: I'd generally just buy a £25 air cooler, that'll be quiet and keep the lid on an average overclocked chip. Closed loop and low profile coolers have their niches though
Case: Your choice. Downsizing is popular, but don't assume all Mini-ITX cases are small because the motherboards are. Many of the popular ones (bitfenix prodigy, node 304, Elite 130) are in fact larger than the smallest Micro ATX cases like the Sharkoon CA-M.
Storage: SSD is essential. On that budget I'd spend £120 on a 500GB model. Add a hard drive if you need more space.
PSU: Power consumption and price has come down so it's very easy to overspend. 500W is more than enough for the majority of gaming computers.
Graphics card: Pick your monitor first. With a wide spread of resolutions and screen setups and two competing variable refresh rate technologies (VESA's DisplayPort Adaptive sync and nVidia's proprietary G-sync) it's not the case that there's a single obvious card to go for.

There have been rumours of Windows 10 not receiving a successor for a while and with Retail copies being almost the same price as OEM ones (unlike Vista) it's worth buying the nice boxed retail version that can be transferred onto future machines.

[dkmech]

Thanks for that. Does give me food for thought. £300 is a worthwhile saving, looks like it's worth doing myself then.

[Marcvs]

Thanks for that. Does give me food for thought. £300 is a worthwhile saving, looks like it's worth doing myself then.

1. Where are you based?
2. Are you planning on overclock...

[dkmech]

1. Swansea, UK
2. Yes

[artcon]

I'm not an expert on RAM, but I'd say anything above 1866Mhz isn't worth it, and go for either CAS 9 or 10 (I think the difference would be minimal in real life situations, but obviously benchmarks would show those differences). 8GB isn't a lot of RAM but of course YMMV. If you really do only need 8gb then I'd get just a single stick of 8gb ram as opposed to 2x4gb, as then your expansion options will be greater without having to chuck the 2x4gbs.

Unless you're planning on overclocking straight away then a Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO would be a much cheaper solution. But there's also nothing wrong with the cooler you chose, I've seen a lot of builds use it and it's certainly popular, so if it's in your budget then why not.

As EndlessWaves suggested, PCPartPicker is great, I used it when I built my first computer a few weeks ago and it made things a lot easier. You can see things like popular CPU coolers, RAM etc. See other builds and what components people have used together.
And yeh, Skylake is just being released. It uses a new socket, new RAM (DDR4) so prices for that CPU and those things are higher since it's all shiny and new. But it's worth reading up on and at least be aware of so you don't have buyer's regret and think that you should've bought the latest technologies.

[Marcvs]

Are you only going to game on the PC - What about streaming/encoding other things?

For gaming ram makes no real difference unless you are in the ultra low end (APU) segment. Also get Pro over home...

[Marcvs]

Also DONT buy Seagate HDDs

[Marcvs]

EDIT: Accidental Double POST

[artcon]

I'm not an expert on RAM, but I'd say anything above 1866Mhz isn't worth it, and go for either CAS 9 or 10 (I think the difference would be minimal in real life situations, but obviously benchmarks would show those differences). 8GB isn't a lot of RAM but of course YMMV. If you really do only need 8gb then I'd get just a single stick of 8gb ram as opposed to 2x4gb, as then your expansion options will be greater without having to chuck the 2x4gbs.

Unless you're planning on overclocking straight away then a Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO would be a much cheaper solution. But there's also nothing wrong with the cooler you chose, I've seen a lot of builds use it and it's certainly popular, so if it's in your budget then why not.

As EndlessWaves suggested, PCPartPicker is great, I used it when I built my first computer a few weeks ago and it made things a lot easier. You can see things like popular CPU coolers, RAM etc. See other builds and what components people have used together.
And yeh, Skylake is just being released. It uses a new socket, new RAM (DDR4) so prices for that CPU and those things are higher since it's all shiny and new. But it's worth reading up on and at least be aware of so you don't have buyer's regret and think that you should've bought the latest technologies.

[Obie]

You could get a 4790k and an air cooler for not much more than that H100 + 4690k so I'd recommend an air cooler for that cpu.

[dkmech]

The most power hungry thing will be gaming and the only bit of streaming would be to this current PC downstairs via steam to play on telly.

I am currently leaning towards this:
http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/62Nyzy

[EndlessWaves]

I am currently leaning towards this:
http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/62Nyzy

I'm guessing 8.1 OEM is standing in for Windows 10 Retail?

Generally I'd say that's a pretty reasonable system. It's not the maximum performance you can get for your money, but going for newer technology support at the expense of a small amount of performance is a perfectly reasonable tradeoff.

I'm not a great fan of closed loop coolers and unless you need their particular advantages (more secure mountings) they're a lot of money for just a few degrees of improvement.

Samsung don't have the best reputation for support. Both of the units in The Tech Report's SSD endurance test failed while claiming they still had plenty of life left and their previous 840Evo model has had a couple of attempts in updates so far to fix a problem with old files becoming slow.

About the only Samsung SSD I'd buy personally is the SM951 and that's because it doesn't have any close competitors yet.

[dkmech]

Yeah, Windows 10, although not sure if much point to go for retail as I end up keeping my previous pcs for a while and they have to keep some sort of windows on. I am assuming a certain amount of upgrading is permissible... I expect this will have to last me 5-7 years with an interim upgrade.

I am also considering http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/part/noctua-cpu-cooler-nhd14 as an alternative cooler as mounting the 240mm rad in this case is a little counter productive unless you go changing where both hdd cages are.

I've heard good things about the samsungs before - what would you recommend in a 500gb size?

[artcon]

Yeah, Windows 10, although not sure if much point to go for retail as I end up keeping my previous pcs for a while and they have to keep some sort of windows on. I am assuming a certain amount of upgrading is permissible... I expect this will have to last me 5-7 years with an interim upgrade.

I am also considering http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/part/noctua-cpu-cooler-nhd14 as an alternative cooler as mounting the 240mm rad in this case is a little counter productive unless you go changing where both hdd cages are.

I've heard good things about the samsungs before - what would you recommend in a 500gb size?

That's a good cooler. In case you didn't know, there's an updated version, the NH-D15, without a massive difference in price and performs a bit better. But the problem with good air coolers is they get quite big and heavy so just be careful of RAM clearance. You can adjust the fan height though, and the Kingston RAM is pretty low profile.

[EndlessWaves]

Yeah, Windows 10, although not sure if much point to go for retail as I end up keeping my previous pcs for a while and they have to keep some sort of windows on.

The Windows 8 policy of allowing OEM licences to be used as personal use licences now no longer holds (they changed it with the 8.1 release in fact). The current licence agreement states you can only go for an OEM licence if you're building the machine to sell to someone else, otherwise you need to pay a couple of quid extra for the retail version.

I am also considering http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/part/noctua-cpu-cooler-nhd14 as an alternative cooler as mounting the 240mm rad in this case is a little counter productive unless you go changing where both hdd cages are.

Why such a high end cooler? I'd go for something mid-range, £20-30. The Coolermaster Hyper 212 Evo at £25 is popular at the moment.

The benefits of spending three times as much seem minimal. You might get another 100Mhz out of the CPU, then again you might not.

I've heard good things about the samsungs before - what would you recommend in a 500gb size?

Which ever company you prefer support-wise really. They hardware is so close you're never going to notice any difference.