Building my first gaming rig. Budget £1800-£2000. Little help?

[Tigercat114]

As the title says I'm building my first gaming rig. I have got £1800 saved up but I'm happy to pay up to £2000 if needs be. Basically I'm pretty new to the game, I haven't build anything before in my 20 years on this earth, PC wise that is. I've always played games on my PC, I just like having the best FPS, with nice smooth gameplay. I usually just go to my local store and pick up a prebuilt system but I've realised just how much I'm getting ripped off!

So is there anyone out there who could recommend decent builds for around my price? A few things that I would like to include would be a 4GB GTX690, and a good (if possible silent) coolent system.

Usually I would just think more is better, but I've come to understand that 16GBs of RAM is probably overkill for what the PC is going to be used for. I will however in the future like to edit and process gameplay footage for YouTube. Also I fancied an i7 processor, I've looked into the 3930K 3.2GHz but again I'm unsure if this is overkill for what I'm using the PC for.

Storage wise I'm still a little confused. I wan't to obviously install a lot of games on this thing, and with a few of them being MMO's they take up some space. Is it worth getting a 1TB 7200 HDD and use a SSD alongside it, or just use the SSD?

Motherboard wise I have read that some Z77 boards have great potential for gaming, but I've been drawn over to the ASUS Rampage Extreme series.

If anyone has any good recommendations for serious gaming then let me know, as you can probably tell I need a canny bit of advice, also please excuse my ignorance towards these components, my knowledge isn't fantastic. I'm looking to build this before Christmas, thanks!

 

[Someone Somewhere]

Do you need a screen? OS? EDIT: Keyboard/mouse either?

 

[Tigercat114]

Nope, already bought those peripherals previously. Might look into a 3D monitor/glasses but I'm not majorly interested in that right now. Would be cool to at least have the option to use 3D later on down the line.

 

[Someone Somewhere]

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i5-3570K 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor (£172.20 @ Amazon UK)
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-D14 65.0 CFM CPU Cooler (£56.07 @ Ebuyer)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z77X-D3H ATX LGA1155 Motherboard (£98.92 @ Amazon UK)
Memory: Corsair XMS3 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£29.98 @ Dabs)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£70.82 @ CCL Computers)
Storage: Samsung 830 Series 256GB 2.5" Solid State Disk (£134.99 @ Ebuyer)
Case: NZXT Phantom 410 (Black/White) ATX Mid Tower Case (£89.99 @ Overclockers.co.uk)
Power Supply: XFX 850W 80 PLUS Bronze Certified ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply (£89.99 @ Overclockers.co.uk)
Optical Drive: Samsung SH-222BB/BEBE DVD/CD Writer (£12.23 @ CCL Computers)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 (64-bit) (£71.64 @ Scan.co.uk)
Total: £826.83
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)

With a pair of these: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Gigabyte-Radeon-Edition-GDDR5-PCI-Express/dp/B008VJXX2Y/ref=sr_1_3?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1350557506&sr=1-3

The other option is a GTX690, but the 2x 7970GHz is more powerful. What screen resolution do you have? Those will probably max out any game ever made @1080p, and be screaming fast for several more years.

EDIT: The case is a bit of a placeholder, as it's really your taste that determines which you'll get. Replace it if you want.

 

[Tigercat114]

Wow thanks for the help! My resolution is 1920x1080. I'll have to look into the case/card options.

 

[Someone Somewhere]

You could get another two 1080p screens and do an Eyefinity. Might need to get 7970s instead to drop the price a bit though.

 

[Someone Somewhere]

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i5-3570K 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor (£172.20 @ Amazon UK)
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-D14 65.0 CFM CPU Cooler (£56.07 @ Ebuyer)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z77X-D3H ATX LGA1155 Motherboard (£98.92 @ Amazon UK)
Memory: Corsair XMS3 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£29.98 @ Dabs)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£70.82 @ CCL Computers)
Storage: Samsung 830 Series 256GB 2.5" Solid State Disk (£134.99 @ Ebuyer)
Case: NZXT Phantom 410 (Black/White) ATX Mid Tower Case (£89.99 @ Overclockers.co.uk)
Power Supply: XFX 850W 80 PLUS Bronze Certified ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply (£89.99 @ Overclockers.co.uk)
Optical Drive: Samsung SH-222BB/BEBE DVD/CD Writer (£12.23 @ CCL Computers)
Monitor: Dell U2312HM 23.0" Monitor (£165.95 @ Amazon UK)
Monitor: Dell U2312HM 23.0" Monitor (£165.95 @ Amazon UK)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 (64-bit) (£71.64 @ Scan.co.uk)
Total: £1158.73
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)

Add this to the pair of these: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Gigabyte-Radeon-Edition-GDDR5-PCI-Express/dp/B008VJXX2Y/ref=sr_1_3?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1350557506&sr=1-3&tag=vglnk-uk-c83-21
Just under 2000, and you don't need any DP>DVI adapters.

EDIT: Not sure if Eyefinity likes driving displays of different types with the same resolution. Needs research.

 

[Tigercat114]

Don't have enough room for anything bigger than a single 23" monitor I'm afraid, there's literally no space on the desk. Would there be much benefit in getting an i7 6 core over the i5 quad core you have suggested?

 

[division_9]

With that budget you could get a HD 7990/GTX 690 if you wanted. Personally I'd prefer to stick to one single good card as opposed to two cards in SLI/CF as driver issues creep me out a little.

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/56819-hd-7990-review-powercolor-s-devil-13-a-17.html

 

[division_9]

Don't have enough room for anything bigger than a single 23" monitor I'm afraid, there's literally no space on the desk. Would there be much benefit in getting an i7 6 core over the i5 quad core you have suggested?

I'd say not very much, all but the newest games spawn enough thread to use 6 cores. If you really want to improve on CPU performance I'd go no further than a i7 3770k.

 

[Someone Somewhere]

None at all (for gaming). Some for general computing eg video transcoding or photo editing. The i5 is still blazing fast (especially when OCed), but the 3930k would be faster still.

You could get a nice 120Hz screen though, or something else eg good speakers, or a nicer case.

 

[djscribbles]

An i7 doesn't buy much performance in gaming over an i5. GPUs are usually the bottle neck anyway.

A single 7970 or 670 would give you great performance. Pack a solid PSU (such as the one recommended by Someone Somewhere (lol)), and a Crossfire/SLI motherboard to give you an upgrade path if you need it, once the 670/7970 are old hat you can get one on the cheaper side.

The 7990 and 690 are just SLI/CF on a single card (2GPUs on the card). The advantage to these setups is that you have less noise and heat over traditional SLI/CF. The 680 is a minor improvement (5 to 10% I believe) over the 670, and the general consensus is that it's not worth the extra 100$.

On the other hand, your budget will allow you to go overboard if you want to spend it all. I don't think it is necessary to spend that much on a PC, but that is just my opinion.

 

[Tigercat114]

With that budget you could get a HD 7990/GTX 690 if you wanted. Personally I'd prefer to stick to one single good card as opposed to two cards in SLI/CF as driver issues creep me out a little.

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/56819-hd-7990-review-powercolor-s-devil-13-a-17.html

Yeah I've also heard about slight issues when it comes to the drivers. Still undecided whether to just get one good card or not. I think i'll end up with a 4GB GTX90.

 

[Tigercat114]

None at all (for gaming). Some for general computing eg video transcoding or photo editing. The i5 is still blazing fast (especially when OCed), but the 3930k would be faster still.

You could get a nice 120Hz screen though, or something else eg good speakers, or a nicer case.

That's the tough decision. I mean my monitor is average, as are my speakers. I think if you look at keeping the pc for the long haul the 3930k is probably better; as the years pass it'll keep up. The 3930k does look tasty, but if you look at gaming as of today it doesn't make much sense when I can get a i5 and OC it as they are still performing great and the i7 at this stage seems overkill.

 

[Alex Simms-1311785]

I have a great build in mind but please tell me the placed where you will purchase these items.