~£750 Gaming PC (hardware newbie)

[zortis]

I hope to purchase and build this system within a week at best.

I'll be buying all my parts from 'cclonline.co.uk'.

I'd prefer to keep the price at around ~750, though if it requires I can push £900.

My aims for this system is to play games (Battlefield 3, Red Faction: Armageddon (Steam sale £3.74 ), Dragon Age etc.) at ULTRA settings, this may seem ambitious with my budget though bare in mind my monitor is only 1360x768 OR 1024x1280.

I have my eye >firmly< (no changing my choice) set on the i5 2500k and I intend to overclock to ~4.5GHz, or whatever I feel comfortable with.

As for graphics cards I'm not 100% sure, I was running a 5750 previously and could run games such as Battlefield Bad Company 2 at ultra with no problem (1024x1280 monitor).

These are the two I've been looking at:

http://www.cclonline.com/product/45520/HD-697A-CNFC/Graphics-Cards/XFX-AMD-Radeon-HD-6970-2GB-Graphics-Card/VGA1557/

www.cclonline.com/product/55590/90-C1CQ80-S0UAY0BZ/Graphics-Cards/Asus-AMD-Radeon-HD-6950-DirectCU-II-2GB-Graphics-Card/VGA0184/

2 questions on the graphics cards here:

1.) What's the difference between a 6950 and a 6970? It seems there's an £80 difference which is very good considering my budget, should I be paying an extra £80 for a negligible performance boost?
2.) Are these overkill for my 1360x768 monitor, would I settle fine with a 6870?

Now I have good choices on the main parts of a gaming PC, the CPU and Graphics card.
But I don't have a clue about motherboards or PSUs or any of that jazz!

I need to know compatible motherboards and PSUs and cases that can actually house my graphics card (the two I've looked at are HUGE).

I must know all details for a build, essentially you're building this system for me (sorry if it's a lot to ask).

*Long drawn out sigh*

Thank you.

 

[IThunderI]

to be honest i have the PCFormat Magazine here and its says on the front page how to buy a £300 graphics card for £200 and tht is because u can do some minor OC to a 6950 and pretty much get the exact performance as a 6970 thts my answer to question 1

and as for question 2 i would reccomend you get a 6870 over these two grphics cards not for performence reasons because the two 69** cards would blow the 6870 out of the water its just ther two 69** cards are based for extreme gaming at stupidly higher resoloutions such as 1980 * 1280

i have a 6870 and i playing games such as RAGE - MW3 - BF3 at 60 - 100+ FPS and thts at 1600 * 900 resoloution but if i was perfectly honest i would either choose the 6870 or upgrade your monitor

if u really wanted the a 6970 please choose the asus cu core because the xfx fan is really loud strust me lol

for your motherboard issue - Asus P8H67 is a good motherboard and u can sli in future when you get some spare money

and if u dont have any reccomendations for cpu coller i would most certainly recommend the Cooler Master V8 Processor cooler

and i would reccomend at least a 750w PSU for ur OC purposes just choose a 80 Bronze at least

 

[Silvune]

Agree that a 1360x768 or 1024x1280 resolution doesn't require any more than a 6870. You should only buy a 6950 or 6970 if you have plans or want to upgrade your monitor in future.

The P8H67 does officially support Crossfiring, but it would be sub-optimal. This is because the lane split would be x16/x4. And anything less than x8 on PCIe x16 2.0 does tend to bottleneck reasonably fast graphics cards.
There are also other limitations which are described at the bottom of the page here:
http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_1155/P8H67/#specifications

H67 motherboard don't support overclocking either.

My suggestion for a single card build:
Asus P8Z68-V LX £76
http://www.cclonline.com/product/67505/90-MIBH80-G0EAY0KZ/Motherboards/Asus-P8Z68-V-LX-Socket-1155-Motherboard/MBD0227/

If you do want the option to crossfire:
Gigabyte GA-Z68XP-UD3 £111
http://www.cclonline.com/product/64005/GA-Z68XP-UD3/Motherboards/Gigabyte-Z68XP-UD3-Motherboard/MBD0204/

Common parts:
i5-2500K £176

XFX Pro 650W Core Edition 80Plus Bronze £64
http://www.cclonline.com/product/43464/P1-650S-NLB9/Power-Supplies/XFX-Pro-650W-Power-Supply-Unit/PSU1233/
If you decide that you want to buy a 6970 anyway and want the option to crossfire it then an 850W unit would be better IMO, certainly 750W.

Corsair Vengeance LP 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 1600MHz CAS9 1.5V CML8GX3M2A1600C9B £38
http://www.cclonline.com/product/63462/CML8GX3M2A1600C9B/Desktop-Memory/Corsair-Vengeance-Blue-8GB-1600MHz-CL9-DDR3-Two-Module-Kit-Low-Profile/RAM0346/

Seagate Barracuda 500GB 7200RPM ST500DM002 £62
http://www.cclonline.com/product/66223/ST500DM002/Hard-Drives/Seagate-Barracuda-500GB-Hard-Drive/HDD1190/

Corsair Carbide 400R £80
http://www.cclonline.com/product/65335/CC-9011011-WW/Cases/Corsair-Carbide-Series-400R-Black-Mid-Tower-Gaming-Case/CAS0488/
Can take GPUs up to 31.6cm, so there are very few GPUs it cannot fit.

Zalman CNPS10X Performa £25
http://www.cclonline.com/product/26461/CNPS10X-Performa/CPU-Coolers/Zalman-CNPS10X-Performa-Ultra-Quiet-CPU-Cooler/CLR1030/

Any SATA DVD drive, if you need one ~£15

Total: £536/571

Do you need an OS? If so add ~£75 for Windows HP 64bit OEM.

So you just have to add the price of the GPU you decide to go for. Potentially increase the cost of the PSU if you want modular, a more efficient one or a more powerful one. Potentially increase/decrease the cost of the case if you can find another one you want more than the Corsair Carbide 400R.