PC BUILD - Anything i should change?

joshuaRAWR

Distinguished
Nov 14, 2012
23
0
18,510
I'm sitting on a budget of £800 (Can't go any higher than that)

And i've finally settled on this build, I'm just curious if the more experienced folk could offer some advice or would change anything about this build I plan on getting.

PCPartPicker part list: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/nQv9t6


CPU: Intel Core i5-4670K 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor (£151.99 @ Aria PC)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler (£24.25 @ Scan.co.uk)
Motherboard: ASRock Z87 Pro3 ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (£69.66 @ Ebuyer)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£59.98 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£63.00 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: Asus GeForce GTX 760 2GB DirectCU II Video Card (£179.69 @ CCL Computers)
Case: Zalman MS800 Plus ATX Mid Tower Case (£65.76 @ Scan.co.uk)
Power Supply: XFX 550W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply (£44.11 @ CCL Computers)
Optical Drive: Asus DRW-24F1ST DVD/CD Writer (£12.52 @ Amazon UK)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 (OEM) (64-bit) (£69.65 @ CCL Computers)
Total: £740.61
 
Solution
Great build! :) I can't think of much I would change, except maybe get a higher performing HDD or add in an SSD for your OS and a few games. They are not really needed but you would have a lot snappier performance in loading everything from the OS to games. For the games it would be faster load times, not higher FPS though.
Great build! :) I can't think of much I would change, except maybe get a higher performing HDD or add in an SSD for your OS and a few games. They are not really needed but you would have a lot snappier performance in loading everything from the OS to games. For the games it would be faster load times, not higher FPS though.
 
Solution

byza

Honorable
For a few extra pound you can get a[strike] R9 290x[/strike] 280x and Gigabyte G87HD3 or Asrock Pro 4. This way down the road could probably pick up another second-hand 280x for cheap and higher watt PSU and Crossfire them. As Sincreator mentioned, you could probably sneak in an SSD under your 800 pound budget too, a 120gb Samsung EVO puts it over by about 10 pounds, but would do for a boot drive and a few games.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-4670K 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor (£151.99 @ Aria PC)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler (£24.25 @ Scan.co.uk)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z87-HD3 ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (£73.04 @ Scan.co.uk)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£59.98 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£63.00 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: XFX Radeon R9 280X 3GB Double Dissipation Video Card (£190.66 @ Ebuyer)
Case: Zalman MS800 Plus ATX Mid Tower Case (£65.76 @ Scan.co.uk)
Power Supply: XFX 550W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply (£44.11 @ CCL Computers)
Optical Drive: Asus DRW-24F1ST DVD/CD Writer (£12.52 @ Amazon UK)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 (OEM) (64-bit) (£69.65 @ CCL Computers)
Total: £754.96
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
 

joshuaRAWR

Distinguished
Nov 14, 2012
23
0
18,510
The main problem i have is that I'm not very technical with the hardware of computers, I'm more of a software type of guy, most of what you just said Byza just went straight over my head! I greatly appreciate the reply though, would it be possible for you to break it down into lamen turns for me? As i have no clue what most of that is!
 

byza

Honorable
Yeah no problems.

The Radeon R9 280x is about two steps up on the graphics card level.
GTX760
R9 280
R9 280x and GTX 770 are about equal.

Crossfire is the technology used when you have two or more AMD Radeon (R9 270x, R9 280 etc) cards, but it's now used to infer the action of adding a second card. The same thing with Nvidia (GTX cards) is SLI.

The motherboard you originally chose doesn't have the ability to Crossfire or SLI, while the Gigabyte board I selected, or the Asrock Pro4 has Crossfire support (No SLI support but you wont need it if you go with an Radeon card). Even if you you don't think you want to add a second card now, you might change your mind down the road, so it's always nice to have the option.

Also note, in regards to Crossfire, both cards don't have to be the same brand. So if in a year and a half, you see someone selling a Gigabyte R9 280x for cheap you could put that in your rig, and it would work fine with your XFX R9 280x.

Now with regards to the PSU, the XFX 550W is perfectly fine for now, but if you did decide to Crossfire you would need a higher wattage power supply, probably around 800-850W. You could get this now, if you think this is the path you will follow, however you probably wouldn't lose too much money if you just decided to get a larger PSU later on and sold you current unit.

A lot of people think that a higher wattage power supply means they will use more power. The rating on the PSU is only it's potential draw, but it will only use what it needs to power the rig. Also PSU's tend to be most efficient around mid draw, so with your set up, an 800W would actually use less energy than a 550w (not much though).

Now with the SSD, as Sincreator mentioned, it won't improve the graphical performance of the computer, but it will make loading games and programs snappier. For example, in BF4 i'm usually one of the first three people into a map due to me loading the level off an SSD as opposed to a HDD, but other than loading faster, there is no real advantage.
Also some, mostly old, games display instructions on the loading screen. If you put these games on an SSD you never get time to read them, so put games like this on the HDD.

The Samsung EVO series is generally regarded as one of the best SSD's for the money, and satisfactory for what gamers need. There can be quite a lot of variance in read and write speeds and a lot of other mumbo-jumbo that I only very vaguely understand with SSD's, so unless you want to do your research, best to stick with the EVO.

I've linked a cheap 850w PSU and the Samsung EVO 120gb below for you to look at.
The power supply, I would probably put off for now given your budget and that you don't need it now. Besides, they will only get cheaper.
SSD's are awesome, and it's had to go back to HDD's once you get used to them. In some ways it's best to stay away from them because they are addictive. I'm now looking at getting a second one, because as new games come out I want to put them on the SSD, and it's a bit of a hassle moving games from my SSD to my HDD.

Power Supply: XFX 850W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply (£79.99 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Samsung 840 EVO 120GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£55.49 @ Amazon UK)

The slightly more expensive 120gb EVO on pcpartpicker just comes with a SATA cable and 3.5" bracket and screws. You'll get SATA cables with the MoBo so don't worry about paying the extra 5 pounds.

I hope this helps with explaining everything, any more questions just let me know. I knew less than you when i put together my first rig and the people here at toms put me on the right track.

By the way, when you plug in your MoBo, remember it actually takes 2 power cables. If you forget the sneaky one in the top corner, everything will power on but nothing with happen. You'll freak out, then when someone tells you, you'll be really embarrassed. Trust me.
 


The R9 280x would be a great card to pick if you also plan on playing Battlefield 4 due to AMD's Mantle support for the game.