First gaming pc, any suggestions??

Buffwesty

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May 2, 2013
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Looking at building a gaming pc, with both performance and budget in mind. £800 would be my limit as i still have to purchase keyboard etc.

So for example is it better gettig a hybrid harddrive or a 7200 hdd? And how does the motherboard, cooling and power supply stack up?

And i wont be buying this pc yet as i am out of the country until june so i will wait for the haswell processors to come out. (Think im right?)

Just wondering what you guys think of this? Would be using it for games such as the fallout series and elderscrolls and maybe some browser based games. And is this setup ae to be changed when the system needs upgrading?

Thanks very much guys! :)

Specs and price from pcspecialist - £763

Case
ZALMAN Z11 PLUS BLACK MID TOWER CASE

Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i5 Quad Core Processor i5-3570K (3.4GHz) 6MB Cache

Motherboard
ASUS® P8Z77-M: MICRO-ATX, USB 3.0, SATA 6GBs, ATI®CrossFireX

Memory (RAM)
8GB KINGSTON HYPER-X GENESIS DUAL-DDR3 1600MHz, X.M.P (2 x 4GB KIT)

Graphics Card
2GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 660 - 2 x DVI, HDMI, - 3D Vision

Memory - 1st Hard Disk
500GB SEAGATE HYBRID SSHD Drive, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (5400 rpm)

Power Supply
CORSAIR 650W ENTHUSIAST SERIES™ TX650 V2-80 PLUS® BRONZE (£69)

Processor Cooling
INTEL SOCKET LGA1155 STANDARD CPU COOLER
 
keyboard, etc. can mean many things.

haswell may have problem as far as what power supply to get. read up on that.

yes, a drive with cache will speed things up a little.

when you're ready to buy and know exactly what components you will need, feel free to ask again. don't forget to give actual budget also.

should also consider a 2500k build.
 

RobCrezz

Expert
Ambassador
Looks good. The hybrid drives perform really well in my experience, however I would change it for the 750 version as it has double the solid state as the 500.

I would change the mobo for a ATX version of the P8Z77.

Also if you are getting a K series CPU, change the cooler for a Cooler master hyper 212 evo.
 

Buffwesty

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May 2, 2013
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So a hybrid drive is a good compromise between a hdd and an ssd?

I take it the i5's for the haswell will also be fine for gaming as the current ivy bridge ones?

The case says it has 4 fans (i think) is this enough?

Any other upgrades that may help this pc last a while before needing upgrading?

Thanks!
 

ZippyPeanut

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Dec 26, 2012
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Be careful with that motherboard: it does not appear to support SLI, and you’ve chosen an Nvidia GPU; if you ever want to expand and put another GPU in, you won’t be able to. Perhaps choose a different motherboard that supports SLI or choose and AMD GPU.



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