Crunch Time -Will This Cut It?

[agbyrne]

(ALL PRICES IN AUSTRALIA $$)
I really would like to build a pc for BF3 and TOR but i am on a strict budget on the account i am saving for a house and in the process of getting my pilots license.

Will this do? After watching many youtube beta videos with people playing Caspian Border with a 560ti on High i think it is the right card for me?

I have around $100 to spare so any recommendation will be good, I will be playing at 1080P – Will this do or should i just stick to it on Console?

Any help or comments will be AWESOME!

AVAILABILITY PRICE QTY TOTAL
Antec Three Hundred Case $59.00
Gigabyte GA-990FXA-D3 Motherboard $145.00
AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition $135.00 (upgrade to BD later)
MSI GeForce GTX 560 Ti Hawk 1GB $275.00
G.Skill Ripjaws F3-12800CL8D-4GBRM (2x2GB) DDR3 $49.00
Corsair GS-600 Power Supply $105.00
Samsung SpinPoint F3 500GB HD502HJ $45.00
Samsung SH-222AB SATA DVDRW Drive $22.00
BenQ GL2240 21.5in Widescreen LED Monitor $135.00
Logitech MX518 Gaming Optical Mouse $35.00
Microsoft Wired Desktop Keyboard 600 $22.00

Sub-Total: $1027.00

Cheers!!!

 

[Wisecracker]

G.SKILL 2GB F3-12800CL7D-4GBECO
G.SKILL 2GB F3-12800CL9D-4GBXL
G.SKILL 4GB F3-12800CL8D-8GBECO
G.SKILL 4GB F3-12800CL9D-8GBRL
G.SKILL 4GB F3-12800CL7D-8GBRH

These are the G.Skill sticks on the GB GA-990FXA-UD3 QVL list (at least, on the 'America's' version)

I've got a UD3 I'm breaking in. It's a great motherboard but the BIOS needs some work. Beta BIOSs pop up from time to time over at Xtreme Systems -- rumors are further updates will not be forthcoming until BD comes out.

On 'Auto' your CPU will default to 1.475v - LOL

I unlocked and OC'd an X3 Rana 450 to 15x250MHz without a sweat (with C&Q enabled). Temps never went above 60c (max on the Rana is 70c). The issue was (and is) whenever the computer goes to sleep, the OC is lost. It also happens when you reboot Best temp readings come from the GB EasyTune utility

It's a dual-BIOS board -- I think the work-around to the reboot deal is to verify each BIOS has the same config. I'm going to test-drive that theory tomorrow.

I'm also going to pop-in a Phenom quad and give it a spin.

Hope I didn't skeer yah off

 

[Why_Me]

http://www.spotit.com.au/buy/101440_ASRock_Z68_Extreme3_Gen3_MB__LGA1155.aspx $139.00
ASRock Z68 Extreme3 Gen3 Motherboard

http://www.bttech.com.au/intel-core-2500k-p-247038.html $215.00
Intel Core i5 2500K CPU

http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=16142&cPath=226#getprice $139.00
Antec High Current Gamer 750W Power Supply HCG-750

http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=193_1193&products_id=16578 $249.00
MSI GeForce GTX 560 Ti Twin Frozr II OC 1GB

 

[Wisecracker]

AsRock can't carry GB's water

Here is the XS GIGABYTE 9xx AM3+ thread. Post #207 explains how to manually update the backup BIOS.

He read the manual :lol:

 

[diellur]

You should be fine there, although I'm not sure about High settings...BF3 is meant to be a drain, but of course we won;t know for sure until it is released.

If you're on a budget, why don't you wait until the game is released? You can get the immediate fix by getting it on console (you mentioned that...do you have a console already?) and then see what PC builds are playing it and how they're performing. It'll remove a lot of the guess-work, and you might be perfectly happy playing it on the console anyway.

Good luck with the PPL. I tried for it a while ago but it was just too expensive!

wisecracker...while your comments are valid, it's also a thread derailment. The OP is asking about a build, not OCing potential of a particular board.

 

[Why_Me]

AsRock can't carry GB's water

Here is the XS GIGABYTE 9xx AM3+ thread. Post #207 explains how to manually update the backup BIOS.

He read the manual :lol:

Seeing how you chose to give advice in this forum, that Asrock board hit's 4.8Ghz with a $50 h/s. That's something that Gigabyte AMD board will never do unless maybe the person was using liquid nitrogen. So next time you decided to put your two cents in on something, have your facts straight first.

http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?Model=Z68%20Extreme3%20Gen3 <----- ASRock Z68 Extreme3 Gen3

http://www.asrock.com/microsite/PCIe3/ <---- PCI-E 3.0

@ the OP. With your budget I would seriously look at a Sandy Bridge build. That psu and board I posted allows you to add another one of those cards later on in SLI. Also that cheaper MSI card I posted can easily be over clocked using the free MSI Afterburner proggy.

It's like this. If you choose to race cars, the choose the fast car available to you are your just screwing yourself and flushing your money away.

 

[Wisecracker]

Using Alt+F12 (as noted in the above link) at boot to backup the main BIOS works like a charm on the GA-990FXA-UD3. It also dropped the VCore on *Auto* from 1.475v to 1.4v. Still a bit high for my tastes, but I'll worry about under-volting some other time.

The dual eSATA port multiplier also works great. It's quite impressive checking out those 16 HDDs on my external boxes.

89w at idle with an HD4850 -- a modern card should bring that down nicely. I got OCCT stable first shot at 16x250MHz -1.408v - 53c - IMC/NB at 2500MHz - C&Q enabled (on a $20 Hyper TX). Slight VDroop to 1.392v quite infrequently.

Re-booted and ran CB11.5 (4.62) at 13.5x300MHz, RAMs at 1200MHz & IMC/NB at 2250MHz. Didn't bother optimizing anything, but I did manually set memory timings to SPD settings ("Auto" settings dropped them below recommended and I didn't want to eff with 'em maybe throwing errors).

PhII 965BE, GB GA-990FXA-UD3, Crucial 2x2GB DDR3 1333 & CM Hyper TX -- $305US

Bzzzzinga! :lol: Up next: I'm gonna test drive a 1055T. If I had some DDR3 1600 I betcha I could run 13.5x300MHz with the RAMs divider at 5.33.