£1,300 gaming PC build

[sazza34]

I was thinking about building this PC:

Case
COOLERMASTER HAF 932 FULL TOWER GAMING CASE

Processor (CPU)
AMD PHENOM II X4 965 (3.40GHz/8MB CACHE/AM3) - BLACK EDITION

Motherboard
ASUS® M4A87TD/USB3: DUAL DDR3,SATA 6.0GB/s, USB 3.0

Memory (RAM)
8GB SAMSUNG DDR3 DUAL-DDR3 1333MHz (4 X 2GB)

Graphics Card
2GB ATI RADEON™ HD 5970 PCI EXPRESS - DirectX® 11

Memory - 1st Hard Disk
1TB WD CAVIAR GREEN WD10EARS, SATA 3 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE

1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM

Memory Card Reader
INTERNAL 52 IN 1 CARD READER

Power Supply & Case Cooling
1010W Quiet 80 PLUS Quad Rail PSU + 120mm Case Fan

Processor Cooling
COOLIT ECO A.L.C

Operating System
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit



Just a couple of questions, Would this PC be able to play the latest games at high graphics settings? and also would the cooling be sufficient to the Processor and the Graphics card.

Thanks

 

[rainvie1]

RAM: try corsair, gskill, mushkin

HDD: get a spinpoint f3 1TB

PSU: way too big, look at 750W and 850W, corsair preferably

Cooling: this will work, but you are better off with an H50; if you arent going to majorly overclock go with air cooling: dark knight or mugen2 would be slightly cheaper and probably work better.

with that CPU and GPU, youre good to play anything, depending on your display resolution the 5970 might be overkill. personally, with a budget like this I would get an intel CPU, but the one you have there is great.

 

[Zorginator]

I was thinking about building this PC:

Case
COOLERMASTER HAF 932 FULL TOWER GAMING CASE

Processor (CPU)
AMD PHENOM II X4 965 (3.40GHz/8MB CACHE/AM3) - BLACK EDITION

Motherboard
ASUS® M4A87TD/USB3: DUAL DDR3,SATA 6.0GB/s, USB 3.0

Memory (RAM)
8GB SAMSUNG DDR3 DUAL-DDR3 1333MHz (4 X 2GB)

Graphics Card
2GB ATI RADEON™ HD 5970 PCI EXPRESS - DirectX® 11

Memory - 1st Hard Disk
1TB WD CAVIAR GREEN WD10EARS, SATA 3 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE

1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM

Memory Card Reader
INTERNAL 52 IN 1 CARD READER

Power Supply & Case Cooling
1010W Quiet 80 PLUS Quad Rail PSU + 120mm Case Fan

Processor Cooling
COOLIT ECO A.L.C

Operating System
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit



Just a couple of questions, Would this PC be able to play the latest games at high graphics settings? and also would the cooling be sufficient to the Processor and the Graphics card.

Thanks

How do you not have an SSD in there with that budget? It's a sin.

I second rainvie1s comments, except for the cooling. The H50 isn't the best money can buy. It's a great closed water cooling system, but can be beat by high end air cooling.

Also I'd look in to multi GPU configurations with your budget and maybe i5 750 or i7 930

What games do you play and what resolution?

 

[Zorginator]

This is what I'd suggest. £5 overbudget, sorry.

Your build will bottleneck the 5970 slightly. The 965 won't be able to keep up with the 5970.
This set up contains 2 Palit Sonic Platinum GTX460s in SLi. These 2 cards are really well binned so you can overclock them further than the factory overclock. The factory overclock provides stock GTX470 performance and the GTX 460s are known to scale very well in SLi. 2 Sonic Platinum GTX 460s will give more performance than 1 GTX 480 and should also put the heat on the 5970.

The CPU cooler in my build isn't the best, you can mildly overclock it with ease on it though. Should be able to keep it to 3.5Ghz/3.6Ghz mark.

The SSD will be a god send. Fast boot and load times. It won't improve gaming performance but everyday tasks will drastically speed up.
Use the 1TB drive for your movies/music/large games. Use the SSD for the OS and most often used applications.

 

[sazza34]

Thanks for the help

 

[sazza34]

Ok another Question, what processor intel or amd will not bottleneck the 5970?

 

[sp12]

965 is mega overpriced, get a 955 for 20$ less or a 1055t (if you're willing to OC) for 20$ more.

 

[asteldian]

I would actually be looking at:
i5 760
Asus P7P55D E Pro
4gb 1600mhz G Skill CL7 RAM
Samsung Spinpoint F3 1tb HDD
Dark Knight Cooler
HAF 922

For GPU I would either be looking at 2 x GTX460 (cheapest and will out do 2 x 5850s and I believe come close to the performance of a 5970), or 2 x 5870s or even 2 x GTX470s.

The cost of this build would easily come under budget so the choice of cards is really up to you. I personally would not go with a 5970, but then I don't like the 2 cards in one designs
PSU 750W Corsair

 

[Zorginator]

The 1055t isn't very good for gaming. It's about 10% - 15% poorer than the i7 920 depending on the game. Those are at stock speeds. This is due to games being unable to take advantage of the 6 cores. For gaming he is best off with Lynnfield, however I can't see that being support much longer with 1155 on the horizon so 1366 is probably the best bet. Worst comes to worst he'll be able to make do with 970 if prices ever drop in the future.

I agree with the 2 x GTX 460, they're the best bang for buck cards out there. I'd def. recommend the Sonic Platinums though, they're supposedly very highly binned.
Personally I think you could get better coolers for your money than the Dark Knight.
Sources: http://www.anandtech.com/show/3674/amds-sixcore-phenom-ii-x6-1090t-1055t-reviewed/9

 

[Zorginator]

Ok another Question, what processor intel or amd will not bottleneck the 5970?

It's not the manufacturer per se. It's the chip they produce. The 965 will bottleneck the 5970 ever so slightly but you'd get the same performance out of 2 GTX 460s in SLi OC and an i7 930 OC. The i7 930 will also perform better in many other areas compared to the 965.

Also no one has mentioned this, but 8GB is major overkill.
6GB is overkill for gaming tbh.

 

[rainvie1]

if you really want to go with the 5970, get an i7 930 x58 build.

 

[Silvune]

Could we have some evidence that a Phenom II X4 965 would bottleneck a 5970? And surely if it did a little overclocking would take care of it. And even if it did bottleneck it, it's not like you'd have crappy framerates.

OP, it looks a lot like your buying off PCSpecialist.co.uk, have all these people talking about self build options convinced you to build it yourself? You do get a lot more for your money building it yourself.

 

[asteldian]

I almost bought from pcspecialist once. They were less limiting in choices than many places, but they were too damn expensive

 

[sp12]

If you're going to OC get the 1055t over the 965. It's a full 2 revisions better and overclocks better as a result. High-k material, better binning, better heat (50% more cores at same TDP).

And if the 1055t isn't very good for gaming, the 965 won't be more than 3% better at best.

 

[spac18]

at this moment, lga 1156 and lga 1366 are the only choices for optimal gaming performance.

 

[spac18]

This build is from scan.co.uk. Just add a cpu cooler and you willbe ready to go.
750W Corsair CMPSU-750TX, SLi, Single 12V Rail, Quiet & Cool 80%+ Eff £97.50

LN26794
6GB (3x2GB) Corsair XMS3 Classic, DDR3 PC3-12800 (1600) Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 8-8-8-24, 1.65V £131.52

LN28746
1TB Samsung HD103SJ Spinpoint F3, SATA 3Gb/s, 7200rpm, 32MB Cache, 8.9 ms, NCQ, OEM £44.87
Samsung SH-S223C/BEBE 22x DVD±R, 12x DVD±R, DVD+RW x8/-RW x6, SATA, Black, OEM £13.74
Intel Core i7 930 D0 SLBKP Bloomfield 45nm, 2.8 GHz, QPI 4.8GT/s, 8MB Cache, 20x Ratio, 130W, Retail £222.27
Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R Rev 2, Intel X58, S1366, SLi/Xfire PCI-E 2, DDR3 2200<, USB3 & SATA 6Gb/s £149.42

NZXT Tempest EVO, Black, Midi Tower Case w/o PSU £79.55
60GB OCZ Technology Vertex 2E, 2.5" Sandforce SSD, MLC-Flash, Read 285MB/s, Write 275MB/s £129.00

2x1GB Palit GTX 460 Sonic Platinum, 4000MHz GDDR5, GPU 800MHz, 336 Cores, 2x DL DVI-I/ HDMI/ D-Sub £374.78
If you can wait for two weeks, then you will get i7 950 at the same cost of i7 930. It has higher multiplier, so overclocking will be easier.