Am I overdoing this?

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King Bong

King Bong

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Jul 29, 2013
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Hi guys. I am currently looking to purchase a custom built PC for gaming reasons mostly as I want to distance myself from console gaming due to this being quite limited.

However I want something that will last. I'm happy to keep upgrading it and i've just come into a little bit of money so i'm happy to splash out.

I am using Cyber Power to build it and have based my set up on running Skyrim (which I hear is quite demanding) as best it can get.

I have selected the following set up:

Case : Xion Predator 970 Gaming series w/ 2 External HDD Bays

Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 2 GB 16X PCIe 3.0 Video Card

Motherboard: MSI X79A-GD45(4D) Intel v79 Chipset
Memory: 16GB Corsair
CPU: Intel Core i7-3960X (Overclockable) Quad Core 3.60 GHz 10MB Intel Smart Cache

Hard Drive: 1Tb SATA-III 6.0 Gb/s Cache 7200RPM

Optical Drive: 24C Double Layer Dual Format DVD+R/+RW + CD-R

Sound: HD on-board 7.1 Audio

CPU Cooler: Be Quiet Shadow Rock Pro CPU Fan w/ 4 direct heat pipes

Hard Drive Cooler: Vigor iSURF II Hard Disk Drive Cooling System

Monitor: 24" TFT Active Matrix CD/LED Display (1920X1080 2ms)

Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit Edition

Network: Onboard 10/100/1000 Gigabit LAN port (Standard)

Price: £1200

I want to reduce the price as much as I can. Can anyone please advise me of anything that I can downgrade or class as a 'nice to have' rather than a requirement?
 
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babernet_1

babernet_1

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May 8, 2012
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PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i5-4670K 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor (£179.99 @ Aria PC)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler (£22.85 @ CCL Computers)
Motherboard: MSI Z87-G45 Gaming ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (£116.06 @ Aria PC)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LP 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£101.67 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Samsung 840 Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Disk (£145.00 @ Ebuyer)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£49.32 @ Scan.co.uk)
Video Card: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 770 2GB Video Card (£329.98 @ Dabs)
Case: Cooler Master HAF 912 Plus ATX Mid Tower Case (£59.89 @ Scan.co.uk)
Power Supply: SeaSonic M12II 650W 80 PLUS Bronze Certified ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply (£83.58 @ Scan.co.uk)
Optical Drive: Lite-On iHAS124-04 DVD/CD Writer (£13.15 @ Amazon UK)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8 (OEM) (64-bit) (£69.59 @ Aria PC)
Total: £1171.08
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-07-29 18:35 BST+0100)

Here is a far superior build. The GTX 770 will give you far better graphics, the CPU is very fast for gaming. I included a large SSD for your operating system and games so they will load very fast.
 
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P

Power eater

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Jul 27, 2013
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Youw wanted a build. This is what you want, nuff said man great Gaming pc
 
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King Bong

King Bong

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Jul 29, 2013
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Was thinking the same. Im trying to keep the budget as close to £1000 as I can. Although I appreciate the effort made to match my current price, which babernet's price is still lower I might add. Any recommendations here guys? Can I downgrade and still get a shit hot performance (probably not as good). I can upgrade later. Still want to have an awesome gaming experience but did not want to go over the £1000 mark by much. I'd say maximum, roughly, £1050? Any ideas?

To be fair, in regards to budget for the future do you feel its a good idea to splash out straight up? Baber's se up looks amazing (just done research). for the 200 extra I fork out, Is it completely worth it in the long run or am i being far too tight here lol?
 
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Power eater

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Jul 27, 2013
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by the time youll need to upgrade youll have more than enough money for it, unless you earn 0.005 $ a day. even 0.5 bucks will get you the upgrade in 3 years. this shouldnt bother you unless your a fast big spender.
your good to go.
 
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babernet_1

babernet_1

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May 8, 2012
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You could cut out the Samsung SSD and put up with normal hard disk drives for a while. Later, you can always upgrade to a SSD. A SSD will have little change in games, just will load them faster and the computer will boot faster. Many, many people just love their SSD's so you will want one in the near future.

Yes, go Windows 7 if you want. Windows 8 is faster and newer and more virus resistant. When Windows 8.1 comes out in a month or so it will be a real winner.
 
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C

Cpt Underpants

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Jun 29, 2013
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Babers sytem looks great, there's a few things I'd comment on.

The first thing you should do here to save money is drop 16gb of ram to 8gb. No game will come close to needing more than 4, let alone 8, let alone 16!! 16gb is if you're a high end hd video editor (and make money doing it). Those applications can eat up as much memory as you provide. Not games, they use very limited amounts relatively speaking. You could go as low as 4 gb but we're enthusiasts on these forums so 8gb is the usual standard. To reiterate, you'll see absolutely no impact on gaming performance dropping down to 8 gb memory. Literally none.

Gaming is typically bottlenecked by the gpu first and then the cpu if it's reeeeeeally shotty compared to the gpu. between the 4670k and 770 you'll have excellent balance and synergies, so I wouldn't worry. But if you wanted to save more cash this would be the next place I would shave a bit off, as for ~$150 (and ~20% performance) less you can get a gtx 760 which will work great. The 770 is great but is the point where diminishing returns on gpu's really ramp up, so this is a judgment call you'll have to make.

You could also shave ,aybe $50 if you went to the Ivy Bridge 3570K instead of Haswell. Haswell performs (slightly) better than IB at stock settings, but runs much hotter and thus cannot reach as high stable overclocks as IB. Oh and the 10-15% performance Haswell has over IB is mostly from its iGPU, something you wont ever be using, so it isn't very much better at all (~5%, check out the Toms reviews and cpu rundown), and like I said you can overclock your 3570K beyond any edge the 4670K might have at stock.
 
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babernet_1

babernet_1

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The 16GB ram really comes in handy with a SSD. You can make a large RAM drive and use that for paging and an internet cache. This will save wear and tear on the SSD and give you even greater speed. But 8GB is the minimum. The biggest, latest and greatest games now can approach 8GB. 16GB will provide some future proofing for a few dozen pounds.
 
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Cpt Underpants

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The gains to SSD speed are marginal, as the vast jump is from getting an SSD at all. Certainly some games use lots of RAM, but there is no argument for NEEDING more than that. It is a luxury, and we all love luxuries, but in this case where a few dozen pounds is exactly what we're trying to shave off the price tag, it is the luxuries where you make your first cuts. And "futureproofing" with ram is rediculous. That's like buying 5 Tb of storage today because I'm futureproofing all my storage needs. point is you buy it when you need it, not before. This logic applies to memory, because like storage space, the price will always be going down (you can point at recent price volatility but this is a blip in the radar of decades of consistently falling prices) and so it is extremely foolish packing up on memory (and storage for that matter) too far in excess of what you currently need.

Regarding SSD endurance, check out the Toms article where they reviewed a handful of SSDs and systematically wrote and re-wrote them simulating years of usage in a few months of constant tests. Guess what they found, the drives lasted more than 3 times the IOPS they were rated for. My point is the rest of your computer will be falling apart by the time your SSD fails because you didn't have the marginal efficiencies of memory paging/caches (an article was written about this recently too, which I think you must have read, and the benefit of having 16gb ram for this "SSD endurance" business was not so significant that it is a clear decision or anything for new builds, so don't try and sell it like one, it is another luxury pure and simple. NOT NECESSARY if you don't wanna spend the $$).
 
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King Bong

King Bong

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Jul 29, 2013
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Ok guys/girls, After some assessment I managed to get it down to a reasonable price.

See below:

Case: CoolerMaster HAF 912 Mid-Tower
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 2 GB 16X PCIe 3.0 Video Card
Motherboard: MSI X87-G43 Intel Z87 Chipset, ATX Mainboard w/ 4 RAM slots, 7.1 Audio
Memory: 8Gb Corsair XMS3
CPU: Intel Core i5-4670K 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor
Hard Drive: 1Tb SATA-III 6.0 Gb/s Cache 7200RPM
Optical Drive: Liteon IHOS104-06 4X Blu-Ray ROM Player
Sound: HD on-board 7.1 Audio
CPU Cooler: CoolerMaster Hyper 4125 CPU Fan w/ 4 x Direct Contact Heat Pipes
Mouse: Logitech MK120 USB Keyboard
Keyboard: Logitech MK120 USB Mouse
Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit Edition
Network: Onboard 10/100/1000 Gigabit LAN port (Standard)
Power Supply: CyberPower 500W Gaming Power Supply

Total before review £926.40

I haven't included a Monitor, any recommendations?

Also what do you think of the set up as a starter? I am trying to keep the price as low as possible and dont wanna go overboard for a starter rig. Anything I can improve here? I'm really taking this slow and still researching but how do you feel this will fare with today's standard of gaming? I plan to upgrade it further as time goes on and as the passion grows. I don't need sound as I have surround sound anyway with my PS3. If I can get the price down further that'll be great. I want to use CyberPower as a friend of mine did research for a month and decided this was the best option and still raves about it.
 
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J

JavaSun

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Jul 30, 2013
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Eek, an i7 with a 660 for gaming? I really recommend you take an i5-3570(k) or 4770(k) and with the money you save change the 660 to a 760.

Lastly, for just gaming get 8GB RAM, unless you render a lot then stay with the 16GB
 
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JavaSun

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Jul 30, 2013
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Okay, excuse me then. I didn't read the entire thread because it was just so long.
 
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