Decent Budget Gaming PC

[ninjamoose1985]

Approximate Purchase Date: ASAP (Unless waiting is worthwhile e.g. Ivybridge/upcoming GPUs)

Budget Range: Approx. £600-800

System Usage from Most to Least Important: Gaming, Movies, Internet, Office tasks

Parts Not Required: Keyboard, mouse, monitor, speakers

Preferred Website(s) for Parts: www.aria.co.uk, www.ebuyer.com, www.microdirect.co.uk

Country: UK

Parts Preferences: i5 2500k CPU (Unless it's worth waiting for IB), Z68 motherboard, would like to include a Blu-Ray drive, no other specific preferences.

Overclocking: Maybe minor overclocking

SLI or Crossfire: Maybe in the future - just depends on future availability/prices etc.

Monitor Resolution: 1920x1080

Additional Comments: Would like the case to have dust filters! Other than that, I'm not too fussed. I'm just looking to replace my current PC which is dying a slow death (I think the HDD is on the way out so feel I might as well just replace it!). I'd like it to be a decent upgrade to what I've got currently -

Motherboard: ASUS M3A78-T
CPU: Phenom II X3 720 2.81GHz
Memory: 4GB DDR2
GPU: 1GB Radeon HD 4870
HDD: 500GB
Also DVD RW drive

Any help greatly appreciated!
dy selected with descriptively labeled links for parts.

 

[tlmck]

Your CPU and z68 choice is excellent. No real need to wait for Ivy other than the prices on Sandy may drop a bit further. For motherboards ASUS and Gigabyte are fine. Just pick the model which has the features you want. And the low end is just as good quality as the high end.

8gb DDR3 1333(2x4gb) quality ram will be fine. You don't really need fancy heat spreaders and such. What ever you can get the best deal on. Mushkin, Kingston, Corsair, OCZ, Crucial, and Gskill are favored brands. Of course 64 bit Windows to go along with it.

For your chosen resolution anything what you already have is not bad, speed wise, and it will be helped by the new CPU. It is, however, limited by DX10.1 instead of the newer DX11 standard. If this is an issue, then you would want a newer card. You might wish to wait for the newer AMD 7900 series cards to fully populate the channel before getting a new one. Here is a Tom's chart that will show you where you stand currently. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/fastest-graphics-card-radeon-geforce,3085-7.html

Cases are more of a personal preference, but anything along the lines of an Antec 300 Three Hundred will be fine. Filter kits can be had separately for nominal cost.

For power supply, it would really depend on the vid card and whether you really plan on more than one card. Definitely get at least 80 plus certified PSU. If it is not certified, avoid it. For a single card, anything in the 500-600 watt range is fine. For dual cards you would start at 750w Bronze certified and go up from there once again depending on the cards.