Budget Gaming build

[flux1234]

Hi guys, i'm looking to build a computer for gaming for around $600 (£550) My build looks like this so far but i'm wondering if i should change parts or improve on certain areas:

Intel I5 2400 [£145]
MSI Z68-G43 (Gen3) [£80]
Crucial Ballistix Sport 4GB [£15]
OCZ Agility 3 60GB [£70]
MSI Twin Frozr II 560Ti [£175]
Bitfenix Merc Alpha [£30]
Corsair TX 650W [£70]

Comes to £585 this is acceptable as prices are fluctuating.
However i know very little about a few things and need help.
1) What makes good RAM for this build? Is CAS latency a factor?
2) I understand that the 2400 can be overclocked to about 3.6GHz, can the mother board help this process or are there others that make this easier?
3) Is there anything else i need to change?

All advice welcome thanks

 

[jessterman21]

Some thoughts:

1) Speed isn't much of a factor when paired with a SB CPU - and latency is never that much of a factor
2) Hit up the 2500K - easier to overclock
3) Are you getting a data drive too? The 60GB will be gone before you can blink.

I love that case btw.

 

[flux1234]

Some thoughts:

1) Speed isn't much of a factor when paired with a SB CPU - and latency is never that much of a factor
2) Hit up the 2500K - easier to overclock
3) Are you getting a data drive too? The 60GB will be gone before you can blink.

I love that case btw.

Hmm the 2500k is just out of my budget as im already stretching it by £35 and another £35 would be over the limit plus i would need a CPU cooler, i am going to upgrade to a full hard drive once the prices have gone down, i would rather be a bit tight on space for a month or two and pay alot less and get better speeds then pay more but have all the room and upgrade to an SSD later.

I could take the 2500K, if i go for a cheaper motherboard and cheaper graphics, do you know anything about cheaper graphics and motherboards that a good enough to keep up high performance?

 

[blazorthon]

The i5-2500K is the cheapest Sandy Bridge CPU that supports overclocking more than about 5%.

The i5-2400 will have similar gaming performance to the i5-2500K in any situation without a very high end graphics solution because games tend to not be CPU bound at lower quality settings/resolutions.

I don't think the GTX 560 ti is nearly fast enough to be bottlenecked by the performance of any quad core Sandy bridge part. It is similar to the Radeon 6870 in gaming performance and dual core Sandy Bridge or quad/six core AMD solutions are both adequate for a 6870. Quad/six core parts from anything made by Intel since (and including) Core 2 quad CPUs is adequate for the 6870 if I'm not mistaken.

 

[blazorthon]

My point is do not trade better CPU performance for worse video performance because the video performance is much more important for you with your chosen parts.

 

[flux1234]

The i5-2500K is the cheapest Sandy Bridge CPU that supports overclocking more than about 5%.

The i5-2400 will have similar gaming performance to the i5-2500K in any situation without a very high end graphics solution because games tend to not be CPU bound at lower quality settings/resolutions.

I don't think the GTX 560 ti is nearly fast enough to be bottlenecked by the performance of any quad core Sandy bridge part. It is similar to the Radeon 6870 in gaming performance and dual core Sandy Bridge or quad/six core AMD solutions are both adequate for a 6870. Quad/six core parts from anything made by Intel since (and including) Core 2 quad CPUs is adequate for the 6870 if I'm not mistaken.

Yeah thats what i was thinking and the reason i planned it this way,

two things still,
Do i need an aftermarket cooler if i plan on the slight overclocking?
What graphics card should i buy? (around 560ti performance) which one is the best of the group?

 

[azeem40]

Hyper 212 EVO is a cheap aftermarket cooler. In general, the Radeon 6870 is a comparable GPU to the 560Ti.

 

[blazorthon]

Hyper 212 EVO is a cheap aftermarket cooler. In general, the Radeon 6870 is a comparable GPU to the 560Ti.

Agreed on both points.

 

[flux1234]

Agreed on both points.

Yeah it seems so, i think im gonna change to 560 ti to the sapphire 6870 or equivalent.

 

[flux1234]

Hyper 212 EVO is a cheap aftermarket cooler. In general, the Radeon 6870 is a comparable GPU to the 560Ti.

Yeah that's the one i had in mind, however if i do minor overclocking i doubt i will need it

 

[blazorthon]

Minor overclocking is easily handled by the Hyper 212 Evo even up to well over 4GHz with the i5-2500K and i7s 2600K and 2700K.

Even if you don't overclock much, well I don't like to use stock coolers on anything above stock speeds (sometimes I still get a cheap aftermarket cooler) so the Evo is still a great choice.

The 6870 is a high end product that is priced so aggressively even budget builds can grab one so it is probably one of the best high and mid end price/performance cards if not the best one out there.