review my future build. budget/value

[pne1234]

here is my future build im planning to get in the next week. if anyone has any comments on it i would appreciate it. i have a flexible budget but im not at all interested in overclocking or sli. here are the specs

motherboard - MSI H170 gaming m3
cpu - intel i5-6600
cpu cooler - cryorig h7
ram - corsair vengeance ddr4 2133 16gb (2x8gb)
PSU - EVGA GQ 650 semi-modular
graphics card - EVGA 970 SSC (super super clocked)
Case - Coolermaster Mastercase 5

i already have a blu ray optical drive and a sandisk and crucial ssd which il just add on.

any comments, please tell. thanks.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I would probably wait until the new AMD and Nvidia cards drop in June. The PSU might be OTT too and so is the cooler.

[pne1234]

I would probably wait until the new AMD and Nvidia cards drop in June. The PSU might be OTT too and so is the cooler.

the psu wattage might be ott but i wanted a well known brand that is modular along with 80 plus gold certified, that was the one that came, i wanted to kind of future proof this pc for a good few years. regarding the gpu its a long time to go without gaming....

[stevie lee]

16gb ram:

2400 MHz is £54.72 https://www.scan.co.uk/products/16gb...16-16-16-39-xm

2133 MHz is £56.66 https://www.scan.co.uk/products/16gb...13-15-15-28-xm

swap to the faster stuff. its cheaper.


or even get the 2666 MHz for £58.66 https://www.scan.co.uk/products/16gb...16-18-18-35-xm
£2 more than the 2166 and 500 MHz faster.



depending on how flexible the budget is, the next speed up is £15 or so more.
the 3000 MHz for £70.37 https://www.scan.co.uk/products/16gb...15-17-17-35-xm

or the 2800 MHz for £66.42 https://www.scan.co.uk/products/16gb...14-16-16-36-xm

[pne1234]

16gb ram:

2400 MHz is £54.72 https://www.scan.co.uk/products/16gb...16-16-16-39-xm

2133 MHz is £56.66 https://www.scan.co.uk/products/16gb...13-15-15-28-xm

swap to the faster stuff. its cheaper.


or even get the 2666 MHz for £58.66 https://www.scan.co.uk/products/16gb...16-18-18-35-xm
£2 more than the 2166 and 500 MHz faster.



depending on how flexible the budget is, the next speed up is £15 or so more.
the 3000 MHz for £70.37 https://www.scan.co.uk/products/16gb...15-17-17-35-xm

or the 2800 MHz for £66.42 https://www.scan.co.uk/products/16gb...14-16-16-36-xm

ive already considered getting faster speed memory but the problem is the motherboard i have only supports mas 2133mhz.for motherboards to support highers mhz i would have to spend 30 quid more and for the sake of about 1-2 fps at the most it doesnt give me much value for fps. thanks for your reply.

[EndlessWaves]

the psu wattage might be ott but i wanted a well known brand that is modular along with 80 plus gold certified, that was the one that came, i wanted to kind of future proof this pc for a good few years. regarding the gpu its a long time to go without gaming....

Depending on your usage you may find the efficiency loss from the extra capacity undoes the couple of extra percent that gold certification gives.

Integrated graphics are pretty capable these days. They won't run the likes of fallout 4 but they will run a lot of less demanding brand new games, more than enough for a couple of months of enjoyable gaming.

ive already considered getting faster speed memory but the problem is the motherboard i have only supports mas 2133mhz.for motherboards to support highers mhz i would have to spend 30 quid more and for the sake of about 1-2 fps at the most it doesnt give me much value for fps. thanks for your reply.

I'd go for the faster memory even if the motherboard won't let you run it at higher frequency. This early on in DDR4's life there's a good chance you'll reuse it in future, and of course a motherboard can always fail.

Will you be using the features of that expensive motherboard? If not then a B150 (or even H110) based board isn't going to impact the computer's performance and often offers better value for money.

I would say £25 for a CPU cooler is about right though, although I certainly wouldn't spend much more than that.

[pne1234]

Depending on your usage you may find the efficiency loss from the extra capacity undoes the couple of extra percent that gold certification gives.

Integrated graphics are pretty capable these days. They won't run the likes of fallout 4 but they will run a lot of less demanding brand new games, more than enough for a couple of months of enjoyable gaming.



I'd go for the faster memory even if the motherboard won't let you run it at higher frequency. This early on in DDR4's life there's a good chance you'll reuse it in future, and of course a motherboard can always fail.

Will you be using the features of that expensive motherboard? If not then a B150 (or even H110) based board isn't going to impact the computer's performance and often offers better value for money.

I would say £25 for a CPU cooler is about right though, although I certainly wouldn't spend much more than that.

if i wait for the new gpu's and see if the prices come down, the new cards wont be affordable for me and most other gamers, and the time i wasted waiting for the prices to change i could of got the 970. its a bit of a dilemma and a trade off really, i was certain to get the 970 but now doubt is kicking in.

the frequencies of memory show to not have massive benefits in performance but i could still get 2400mhz and the m board would just show 2133 and i would have the potential benefit for the future with another m board.

i chose the h170 chipset as it has more usb 3.0 ports along with usb 3 headers. compared to the b150 chipset which i looked at doesnt have enough expansion for usb 3. plus theres only about a tenner difference in the b150 and h170 boards from msi

[wazzickle]

If you're going for budget/value as described in your title then 16gb ram is overkill as is your case and PSU.

It's not the best time to buy a new GPU if you're looking to future-proof and are after value, and it's not that long a time to go without gaming, assuming you have other interesting things in your life. Think of it like garlic - you can become desensitised to it, if you go without garlic for a while and then taste it again, it tastes stronger/great.

If it's a very small increase in price then you may as well get the faster RAM but I certainly wouldn't bother paying £10 more for a speed increase you won't be able to use until you get another machine.

[DanceswithUnix]

Well budget machines around here normally mean i3 vs Fx 6350 and 750ti vs R7 360. I would love to see what your list would be if you had a bit of money

TBH at that price point I don't think you can go too far wrong. My only consideration would be whether Freesync is of interest. The 970 is a stonking bit of kit, but the last time I saw one in action was playing Witcher 3 in screen tear hell because the user hadn't played with the settings to get it set up. I don't play with vsync settings, Freesync just makes it work.

[pne1234]

If you're going for budget/value as described in your title then 16gb ram is overkill as is your case and PSU.

It's not the best time to buy a new GPU if you're looking to future-proof and are after value, and it's not that long a time to go without gaming, assuming you have other interesting things in your life. Think of it like garlic - you can become desensitised to it, if you go without garlic for a while and then taste it again, it tastes stronger/great.

If it's a very small increase in price then you may as well get the faster RAM but I certainly wouldn't bother paying £10 more for a speed increase you won't be able to use until you get another machine.

the case has already been bought i wasnt going for any other case really. i was set to buy all my other parts for my new gaming rig but looks like il stick to my mediocre system for now.

[pne1234]

Well budget machines around here normally mean i3 vs Fx 6350 and 750ti vs R7 360. I would love to see what your list would be if you had a bit of money

TBH at that price point I don't think you can go too far wrong. My only consideration would be whether Freesync is of interest. The 970 is a stonking bit of kit, but the last time I saw one in action was playing Witcher 3 in screen tear hell because the user hadn't played with the settings to get it set up. I don't play with vsync settings, Freesync just makes it work.

haha well i meant budget and value interchangeably as i dont have an unlimited budget and equally dont want to spend 50 quid more on something that only gives a couple of fps benefit.

i looked at free sync and g sync monitors and is more of a case of letting that come down in price as its no interest in me.

i was all set on the 970 ssc but others are saying to wait as it will either bring the 970 price down saving money or will bring a new card out at the same price point but giving better performance for the same price, so its a massive dilemma.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

the psu wattage might be ott but i wanted a well known brand that is modular along with 80 plus gold certified, that was the one that came, i wanted to kind of future proof this pc for a good few years. regarding the gpu its a long time to go without gaming....

If I were buying a £250 card now,it would be the R9 390.

[DanceswithUnix]

i looked at free sync and g sync monitors and is more of a case of letting that come down in price as its no interest in me.

I'm not sure they are going to come down that much. You can already get a Freesync monitor for around £100, but it doesn't go that fast (I think it was 75Hz). For about £180 you can get a 1080p monitor that does Freesync up to 144Hz, and that is really just the cost of a decent gaming monitor with USB ports and a height adjustable stand.

Gsync is much the same, you are largely paying for a quick gaming panel but you also get to pay about £100 extra for the Nvidia add-in silicon to make it work.

Personally I don't think Gsync is worth the money, but I do think 144Hz is very nice for gaming, and a cheap gaming monitor is probably going to be Freesync these days because as the name implies it doesn't add cost.

[jag272]

Personally think the choice of case, while overkill now, is a good choice if you don't want to change cases in future if/when you throw money at more complex setups. As others have said, 8gb RAM is probably plenty, but I think for games at least were starting to see the most recent games recommend 16GB. They don't use anywhere near that still ofcourse, but I think in a year or two's time 16gb might be worthwhile. Will DDR4 make significant leaps in that time? Probably not, but its the risk you run.

Can't speak for that particular cooler, but my 212 evo has been great, and a quick google suggests the h7 is better than that in benchmarks and seems to be the same price, so i'd say go for it. PSU looks good too having checked out the jonnyguru benchmarking, personally I would spend the £10 extra to get the fully modular G2, but GQ seems plenty capable regardless, and if you don't care too much about cables then semi-modular is totally fine.

Completely agree with the sentiment about the GPU, at this point were simply too close to what should be a significant step up for GPUs due to the new process. As you say, it might drop the 970 prices too, however the 900 series have done a very good job holding their value, even with a new release around the corner, so while AMDs such as the 390 which is equivalent to the 970 will probably get cheaper, I don't think the price drops on the nvidia side will be anything earth shattering.

What I will say though is that the motherboard seems incredibly unbalanced. While I get that it is a new platform, that has near enough the same feature set as my Z87-G43 in regards to its back IO, crossfire only etc etc, and i paid £40 for that. The new platform will ofcourse be more expensive, but I'm pretty sure you could find a better deal on a mobo with more hardware capabilities for a very similar price. £90 not having SLI is a bit surprising, even if for a budget build youre not likely to use it. That said, you could take it either way, I'm 99% sure there'll be cheaper boards with the same physical feature set as that board, or for maybe a few £ more ones with more future proof capability like SLI.

That said, and as the others pointed out, i'd definitely call this value more so than budget, but then you did put both in your title.

[pne1234]

Personally think the choice of case, while overkill now, is a good choice if you don't want to change cases in future if/when you throw money at more complex setups. As others have said, 8gb RAM is probably plenty, but I think for games at least were starting to see the most recent games recommend 16GB. They don't use anywhere near that still ofcourse, but I think in a year or two's time 16gb might be worthwhile. Will DDR4 make significant leaps in that time? Probably not, but its the risk you run.

Can't speak for that particular cooler, but my 212 evo has been great, and a quick google suggests the h7 is better than that in benchmarks and seems to be the same price, so i'd say go for it. PSU looks good too having checked out the jonnyguru benchmarking, personally I would spend the £10 extra to get the fully modular G2, but GQ seems plenty capable regardless, and if you don't care too much about cables then semi-modular is totally fine.

Completely agree with the sentiment about the GPU, at this point were simply too close to what should be a significant step up for GPUs due to the new process. As you say, it might drop the 970 prices too, however the 900 series have done a very good job holding their value, even with a new release around the corner, so while AMDs such as the 390 which is equivalent to the 970 will probably get cheaper, I don't think the price drops on the nvidia side will be anything earth shattering.

What I will say though is that the motherboard seems incredibly unbalanced. While I get that it is a new platform, that has near enough the same feature set as my Z87-G43 in regards to its back IO, crossfire only etc etc, and i paid £40 for that. The new platform will ofcourse be more expensive, but I'm pretty sure you could find a better deal on a mobo with more hardware capabilities for a very similar price. £90 not having SLI is a bit surprising, even if for a budget build youre not likely to use it. That said, you could take it either way, I'm 99% sure there'll be cheaper boards with the same physical feature set as that board, or for maybe a few £ more ones with more future proof capability like SLI.

That said, and as the others pointed out, i'd definitely call this value more so than budget, but then you did put both in your title.

i like your assessment and the reasons for having each product which are the reasons i used for choosing them. regarding the motherboard i found, the chipset being new and with the additional usb 3 ports on the i/o and headers including the build quality is the reason for the price, i looked at similar motherboards on that chipset and found one at £75 but had less features, im not really that interested in the single card config so sli isnt really a concern for me but has the reserve of changing to amd for crossfire in the future.

[pne1234]

I'm not sure they are going to come down that much. You can already get a Freesync monitor for around £100, but it doesn't go that fast (I think it was 75Hz). For about £180 you can get a 1080p monitor that does Freesync up to 144Hz, and that is really just the cost of a decent gaming monitor with USB ports and a height adjustable stand.

Gsync is much the same, you are largely paying for a quick gaming panel but you also get to pay about £100 extra for the Nvidia add-in silicon to make it work.

Personally I don't think Gsync is worth the money, but I do think 144Hz is very nice for gaming, and a cheap gaming monitor is probably going to be Freesync these days because as the name implies it doesn't add cost.

its definately something for the future but i have just recently upgraded my monitor from a 22 inch to a 27 inch, still 1080p but has decent colours and all that jazz. i dont think the free sync or g sync justifies an upgrade and il just tolerate frame tearing in selected games