Looking to build a good gaming rig,

pOint- · May 24, 2014

Approximate Purchase Date: Within this month

Budget Range: around £1000-£1500

System Usage from Most to Least Important: Gaming (mostly mmorpgs), surfing the net, editing pictures (an amateur photographer), watching Blu-ray

Parts Not Required: Keyboard, Mouse, Monitor, Speakers, OS

Preferred Website(s) for Parts: www.amazon.co.uk, www.dabs.com, www.ebuyer.com

Country: United Kingdom

Parts Preferences: Thermaltake Level 10 Snow Edition casing, Intel CPU, others are as necessary

Overclocking: Maybe, would love to try to OC but have no experience in it.

SLI or Crossfire: No

Monitor Resolution: Sony KDL-32BX400 - 32" BRAVIA LCD TV - widescreen - 1080p (FullHD), am using this TV for my PC as monitor.

Additional Comments: I would like to stick with the Thermaltake Level 10 Snow Edition casing as I like the look of it and it seems to give good air flow and good reviews, I’m aware that it is slightly expensive for a case.
Basically am looking for an Intel CPU, was thinking of i7 but many said its overkill for what I need, instead get an i5.
Thinking of the GTX780(This might be an overkill) or R9 290(heard the heat and noise is bad on this though the performance is good).
Would like a SSD as well, and a Blu-ray reader with DVD-R/RW.

Would you guys think it’s a good idea to get water cooling if I want to OC the CPU & GPU? In general I would like a rig that would be fast and quiet and smooth on gaming and as cheap as it would get (pretty much what the majority wants

). ANY kind of advise, upgrading, downgrading would be appreciated. Thanks in advance for the advise!

CTurbo · May 24, 2014

I do not recommend overclocking because it is an unnecessary expense. For a single 1080p monitor I would choose the 780 over the 290, but I would take the 290 at a higher resolution. The Sapphire Tri-X 290 in particular is no hotter or louder than a 780. It was not available for some reason. Maybe sold out? I also can't see any reason to spend any more money on a build unless you are going to go for an ultra high def monitor in the near future, or wanted more storage, or maybe if you wanted an 80+ Gold or Platinum psu.

PCPartPicker part list: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/3QlzB
Price breakdown by merchant: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/3QlzB/by_merchant/
Benchmarks: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/3QlzB/benchmarks/

CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1230 V3 3.3GHz Quad-Core Processor (£176.39 @ Aria PC)
Motherboard: ASRock H97 PRO4 ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (£74.59 @ Overclockers.co.uk)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1866 Memory (£57.79 @ Ebuyer)
Storage: Crucial M500 120GB 2.5" Solid State Disk (£50.15 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£35.94 @ Aria PC)
Video Card: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 780 3GB WINDFORCE Video Card (£376.99 @ Novatech)
Case: Thermaltake Level 10 GT Snow Edition ATX Full Tower Case (£164.59 @ CCL Computers)
Power Supply: SeaSonic EVO Edition 620W 80+ Bronze Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply (£63.74 @ Scan.co.uk)
Optical Drive: Pioneer BDC-207DBK Blu-Ray Reader, DVD/CD Writer (£38.64 @ CCL Computers)
Total: £1038.82
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-05-25 03:11 BST+0100)

IHaveDaBestPC · May 24, 2014

PCPartPicker part list: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/3Qm6S
Price breakdown by merchant: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/3Qm6S/by_merchant/
Benchmarks: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/3Qm6S/benchmarks/

CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1230 V3 3.3GHz Quad-Core Processor (£188.81 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-H97-D3H ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (£79.25 @ Dabs)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LP 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1866 Memory (£74.33 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Samsung 840 EVO 500GB 2.5" Solid State Disk (£199.99 @ Ebuyer)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£40.58 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 780 Ti 3GB Superclocked ACX Video Card (£509.98 @ Amazon UK)
Case: Thermaltake Level 10 GTS Snow Edition (White) ATX Mid Tower Case (£69.97 @ Amazon UK)
Power Supply: XFX ProSeries 750W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply (£98.99 @ Dabs)
Optical Drive: Pioneer BDR-209DBK Blu-Ray/DVD/CD Writer (£52.75 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £1314.65
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-05-25 03:26 BST+0100)

I think there's more than 2 variants of the case you preferred

CTurbo · May 24, 2014

Even though ^that^ is a faster and "better" build, it would not perform any better for your uses. It's basically a waste of £340

IHaveDaBestPC · May 24, 2014

CTurbo :

Some people say that it's quite worth going from 780 to 780 ti. But idk maybe i'll nevery be able to touch those high-end gpu, beside he can afford it because the budget range caps at 1500 pound

CTurbo · May 24, 2014

Yeah but he's gaming on a 1080p tv. The regular 780 is already overkill. The 780ti will not perform any better. Same thing with the 4770k. He could overclock it to 4.6ghz and it wouldn't perform better than an i5 4570. Just because his budget is high, doesn't mean he should waste money.

CTurbo · May 24, 2014

pOint, if you just WANT to spend £1500, this would be AWESOME. I just added a 2560x1440p monitor to my earlier build but switched the 780 for a 290x.

PCPartPicker part list: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/3QmRA
Price breakdown by merchant: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/3QmRA/by_merchant/
Benchmarks: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/3QmRA/benchmarks/

CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1230 V3 3.3GHz Quad-Core Processor (£176.39 @ Aria PC)
Motherboard: ASRock H97 PRO4 ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (£74.59 @ Overclockers.co.uk)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1866 Memory (£57.79 @ Ebuyer)
Storage: Crucial M500 120GB 2.5" Solid State Disk (£50.15 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£35.94 @ Aria PC)
Video Card: Sapphire Radeon R9 290X 4GB Tri-X Video Card (£418.96 @ CCL Computers)
Case: Thermaltake Level 10 GT Snow Edition ATX Full Tower Case (£164.59 @ CCL Computers)
Power Supply: SeaSonic EVO Edition 620W 80+ Bronze Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply (£63.74 @ Scan.co.uk)
Optical Drive: Pioneer BDC-207DBK Blu-Ray Reader, DVD/CD Writer (£38.64 @ CCL Computers)
Monitor: Asus PB278Q 27.0" Monitor (£434.58 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £1515.37

sora · May 25, 2014

IHaveDaBestPC :

The 780Ti isn't worth it... the 780 will suit the build just fine.

pOint- · May 25, 2014

First of all thanks for all the advise, i do quite like Cturbo's setup.
base on the infos that i've got from u guyz, i've done one of my own build:
http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/3QuDU

Would appreciate some advised on this. And there might be a possibility that i will consider a 2560x1440p in the future!

I've forgotten to mention the PC that i have now, I'll link what my current PC is and would u think the new setup is an improvement to my current ones? or could i keep some parts on my current PC and upgrade some of the components instead of getting one 100% full new rig. I still like to change the casing to the thermaltake level 10 GT tho! thanks!

CTurbo · May 25, 2014

Well I still think overclocking is unnecessary, but that is a very good build. That's not very much storage though.

pOint- · May 25, 2014

This is my current PC, it was from alienware like 5 years ago. It did come with alienware's own CPU built in water cooling.

pOint- · May 25, 2014

yea Cturbo, i have another current normal HDD 1TB so i just need to get a SSD for OS
just notice the ram were 533mhz, loll

CTurbo · May 25, 2014

533 = 1066mhz

pOint- · May 25, 2014

oh

think i might go with the xeon E3-1230 V3.

do u have any idea whatis the difference between the asrock H97 and the asus z87-A? ther's like £35 difference in them

CTurbo · May 25, 2014

The Z87 is older and supports overclocking and has SLI support. The H97 is newer and has every other feature you would need, and it will support the next gen Broadwell cpus. I would get the H97.

pOint- · May 25, 2014

ok, this should be my final builds. I've made some changes due to stock availabilty.
as i said i've already have a 1TB HDD for 2nd storage, and the optical drive i went for a BD-RW which isn't on the list of pcpartpicker.
and i've added another CPU fan which i don't think i need but should be a good addition. http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B008YTUN38/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=1N9J2V5KPLSFT&coliid=I22H3CARMZW66U

http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/user/pOint-/saved/4NDH

came out around £1100 on real time price.
any final suggestions?

CTurbo · May 25, 2014

Looks very good. If I was going to nitpick, I would say get a Crucial or Samsung ssd. I don't think I would get a Kingston unless it was WAY cheaper.

Looking to build a good gaming rig,

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