£700 Budget Gaming PC Build

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Chris92

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Sep 11, 2013
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Hey everyone. Recently, one of my friends has decided to build his first gaming pc. He already has a monitor, keyboard and OS, so this will not be included in the list. He is not interested in overclocking, which is why there is no CPU Cooler listed.

The budget is £700 with a view to buying as many parts as we can off Amazon.co.uk. After lots of research, we've managed to put together a list of parts. We were just wondering if all the parts are viable or not. The parts list is as follows:

Case: Antec One Midi Tower Case - Mini-ITX, Micro-ATX, ATX, 2 x USB 3.0 - £44.99 (Amazon UK)
Power Supply: Corsair Builder Series CXM 500W Modular 80 Plus Bronze Certified ATX/EPS PSU - £51.09 (Amazon UK)
CPU: Intel Core i5 4570 Quad Core Retail CPU - £155.90 (Amazon UK)
Motherboard: Gigabyte H87-HD3 Motherboard - £76.61 (Amazon UK)
RAM: Corsair CMY8GX3M2A1600C9R Vengeance Pro Series 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 1600Mhz CL9 - £65.29 (Amazon UK)
Hard Drive: Western Digital 1TB internal Hard Drive - Caviar Blue (3.5 inch) - £49.97 (Amazon UK)
Graphics card: Asus Nvidia GeForce GTX 760 DirectCU II OC 2GB GDDR5 Graphics Card - £198.96 (Amazon UK)
Optical Drive: Asus DRW-24B5ST Black Retail DVD Rewriter x24 Speed with Nero 10 and Power2Go 7 Software SATA (Scan Code: LN48925) - £16.78 (Scan UK)
Wireless adapter: TP-Link TL-WN822N 300MBPS High Gain Wireless N USB Adapter - £13.91 (Amazon UK )
Total cost: £673.50

My main concerns are:
1) Is the PSU sufficient enough? Would it be worth getting a more powerful one for future upgrades?
2) Will the motherboard support an Nvidia GPU?
3) Will the Intel CPU Cooler provide sufficient cooling?

Feel free to change any of the parts or come up with better solutions. Thanks for your time.
 
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Felcorn

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Jun 14, 2013
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1. For that card 500W is min. recommended so you will have no problems with PSU
2. Yes, any mobo will support any gpu these days.
3. Without overclocking you should have no issues (you will need case fans (front in, rear out) to keep everything cool, if you notice that case is warm on top after an hour of gaming, get moar fans).

Now, I doubt there is really any need for an optical drive these days, better opt for a thumb drive or something.
Also, that HDD. Computer will be SLOW. Better take one with less memory but more speed (caviar black) or at least take SSD as well to put programs in. There is no reason to build a PC like that and have it bottlenecked by hard drive.
 
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SamGriffiths

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Dec 12, 2012
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To much on CPU and mobo not enough on everything else.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: AMD FX-6350 3.9GHz 6-Core Processor (£105.11 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: Asus M5A97 R2.0 ATX AM3+ Motherboard (£59.00 @ Amazon UK)
Memory: Patriot Viper 3 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£51.93 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£41.40 @ Scan.co.uk)
Video Card: Asus GeForce GTX 770 2GB Video Card (£309.90 @ Amazon UK)
Wireless Network Adapter: Asus PCE-N10 802.11b/g/n PCI-Express x1 Wi-Fi Adapter (£14.50 @ Ebuyer)
Case: Zalman Z11 Plus ATX Mid Tower Case (£49.33 @ Scan.co.uk)
Power Supply: XFX 650W 80 PLUS Bronze Certified ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply (£65.58 @ Scan.co.uk)
Optical Drive: Samsung SH-224DB/BEBE DVD/CD Writer (£12.94 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £709.69
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-09-11 16:21 BST+0100)

This will run games at a much higher FPS. Just a tiny bit over, I hope that isn't a problem. What res is your friends monitor? If it's anything below 1080p save to money and get a GTX 760, maybe spend it on a nice 120GB SSD.
 
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CommentariesAnd More

CommentariesAnd More

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Apr 2, 2013
853
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11,160
Get this -
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i5-4670K 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor (£179.99 @ Aria PC)
Motherboard: MSI Z87-G43 ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (£88.98 @ Amazon UK)
Memory: Kingston Blu Red Series 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£47.04 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£48.36 @ CCL Computers)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 760 2GB Video Card (£206.11 @ Scan.co.uk)
Wireless Network Adapter: TP-Link TL-WN881ND 802.11b/g/n PCI-Express x1 Wi-Fi Adapter (£13.99 @ Amazon UK)
Case: BitFenix Merc Alpha (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case (£32.90 @ Amazon UK)
Power Supply: XFX 650W 80 PLUS Bronze Certified ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply (£65.58 @ Scan.co.uk)
Optical Drive: Lite-On iHAS124-04 DVD/CD Writer (£12.98 @ Novatech)
Total: £695.93
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-09-11 16:25 BST+0100)

This is much better , has OCing headroom , better GPU , and most importantly a much capable PSU.
 
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CommentariesAnd More

CommentariesAnd More

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Apr 2, 2013
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PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: AMD FX-6300 3.5GHz 6-Core Processor (£83.99 @ Aria PC)
Motherboard: ASRock 990FX Extreme3 ATX AM3+/AM3 Motherboard (£81.84 @ Dabs)
Memory: Kingston Blu Red Series 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£47.04 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£48.36 @ CCL Computers)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 770 2GB Video Card (£319.98 @ Scan.co.uk)
Wireless Network Adapter: TP-Link TL-WN881ND 802.11b/g/n PCI-Express x1 Wi-Fi Adapter (£13.99 @ Amazon UK)
Case: BitFenix Merc Alpha (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case (£32.90 @ Amazon UK)
Power Supply: XFX 650W 80 PLUS Bronze Certified ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply (£65.58 @ Scan.co.uk)
Optical Drive: Lite-On iHAS124-04 DVD/CD Writer (£12.98 @ Novatech)
Total: £706.66
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-09-11 16:31 BST+0100)
This is a much better option if GPU power is concerned. The GTX 770 + FX 6300 will be a good combo as well.
 
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SamGriffiths

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Dec 12, 2012
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This is also a good option, depending on what games he's going to play and his res.

Just so you know the EVGA, the MSI and the Asus 760 are pretty much on par with each other, so much so that I would go with the cheapest. This is wrong, please read my next post.
 
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CommentariesAnd More

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Apr 2, 2013
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But the EVGA ACX Cooler is much better than MSI's cooling solution and at par with the ASUS's DirectCUII.
 
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SamGriffiths

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Dec 12, 2012
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I was wrong about what I said, they are not on par, the MSI is far better than the EVGA and the Asus is also falling slightly short of the MSI.

Taken from TechPowerUp's reviews of all three cards
MSI, 100% load, 69c, 27 dbA. Highest OC Max. GPU Clock: 1180MHz Max. Mem Clock: 1960MHz http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/MSI/GeForce_GTX_760_TF_Gaming/31.html

Asus, 100% load, 68c, 33 dbA Highest OC Max. GPU Clock: 1175MHz Max. Mem Clock: 1840MHz
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/GeForce_GTX_760_Direct_Cu_II_OC/26.html

EVGA, 100% load, 72c, 38 dbA Highest OC Max. GPU Clock: 1220MHz Max. Mem Clock: 1840MHz
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/EVGA/GTX_760_SC_ACX_Cooler/31.html
 
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CommentariesAnd More

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Apr 2, 2013
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Did you bother to see the clock rates of the Core GPU ?
 
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Chris92

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Sep 11, 2013
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Am definitely impressed with some of the part lists that you two have suggested.

@Felcorn
Are you sure that HDD would be slow? Would there be a significant different in speed if we put a Western Digital Caviar Black in the build?

@SamGriffiths
I was surprised that you managed to fit a GTX 770 into that build. My only concern is with one of the parts that you picked. How come the Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB is £41.40 on Scan.co.uk? Isn't that overpriced, considering the amount of storage space and that it's only got a 16MB Cache? Compared to the one I suggested, it has 64mb Cache and 1TB of storage. Have I missed something?

@CommentariesAnd More
Hmm, what kind of difference would I see if I went with an i5 4670k instead of a AMD FX-6300? I'm not too familiar with AMD CPUs, what would be the Intel equivalent of an AMD FX-6300?

As far as I'm aware, at the moment, he will be running this build on quite a small monitor, 19". I think the resolution was 1366x768. My guess is that he'll probably upgrade to a single 1080p monitor in the near future. The games which he plays today aren't too GPU intensive. RTS and RPG games are definitely his preferred type of games. An example of this would be Starcraft 2. He would also like this build to last quite a while. He's currently on a laptop playing games at 10-20 fps, so I'm certain he won't mind lowering some settings if need be.
Hmm, so what I see at the moment is two options. Either go for the AMD CPU and get a GTX 770. Alternatively, go for an Intel i5 CPU and get a GTX 760. Also, looking at the part lists that have been suggested, PCI-Express Wi-Fi adapters seem to be the better choice then.
 
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SamGriffiths

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Dec 12, 2012
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@Chris92 None of those games are to intanisve, personally I'd go FX-6350, Asus or MSI 760 and a nice SSD. Yes, I didn't see that good deal on the 1TB Blue =P

This is what I'd go for, you could change the case to what ever you want but it's a nice case that runs quiet, has good airflow and is cheap.
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: AMD FX-6350 3.9GHz 6-Core Processor (£103.96 @ Scan.co.uk)
Motherboard: Asus M5A97 R2.0 ATX AM3+ Motherboard (£59.00 @ Amazon UK)
Memory: Patriot Viper 3 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£51.93 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Samsung 840 Series 120GB 2.5" Solid State Disk (£73.99 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£64.80 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: Asus GeForce GTX 760 2GB Video Card (£198.96 @ Dabs)
Wireless Network Adapter: Asus PCE-N10 802.11b/g/n PCI-Express x1 Wi-Fi Adapter (£14.50 @ Ebuyer)
Case: Zalman Z11 Plus ATX Mid Tower Case (£49.33 @ Scan.co.uk)
Power Supply: XFX 650W 80 PLUS Bronze Certified ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply (£65.58 @ Scan.co.uk)
Optical Drive: Samsung SH-224DB/BEBE DVD/CD Writer (£12.94 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £694.99
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-09-11 17:39 BST+0100)

@Commentaires yes I did, the EVGA was at 1072/1502 and the MSI was at 1020/1502, 52MHz on the core clock to me is not worth 3c and 9dbA. And like OP said, his friend has no plans to OC so the OC headroom of the EVGA is redundant.
 
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