Gaming Rig £2000 UK

[Rimfister]

Hi guys,

I'm looking to build a gaming system, i'm in the UK, that's pretty much all it will be used for. Looking to buy within the month.

Have a budget up to £2000. For everything, monitor, to speakers to headset.

I have no preference on brands, etc. I just want a beast of a system.

Any help and advice would be great, it's a lot of money and don't want to **** it up.

Thanks guys.

 

[Silvune]

If you really want to reach the ceiling of your budget:

CPU: Intel i7-930 2.8GHZ LGA1366 £240
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/193596

Mobo: Asus P6X58D-E X58 £180
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/219007

RAM: Crucial 6GB (3x2GB) DDR3 1333MHz/PC3-10600 Ballistix Memory CL7 1.65V £126
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/159927

GPU: Sapphire HD 5870 1GB GDDR5 £320 £320 x2 = £640
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/199644
Or
XFX HD 5970 Black Edition 2GB DDR5 £540
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/179863
Just one 5970.

PSU:Corsair CMPSU-750W HX Modular PSU £120
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/164950
Powerful enough for two 5870s and an OC on the CPU.

SSD: Intel X25-V 40GB £88
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/190701
For a boot/OS drive, maybe one or two games. You can drop this if you don't mind waiting for your OS to load up, or want to wait for the technology to mature.

HDD: Samsung HD103SJ Spinpoint F3 1TB OEM £55
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/173804
OR
Seagate ST31000528AS Barracuda 7200.12 1TB OEM £55
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/158798
For storage and other apps/games that won't fit on the SSD, or perfectly fine as an OS/boot drive.

Case: Coolermaster HAF 922 £81
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/164961

OS: Windows 7 64bit Home Premium OEM £78
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/173791

If you want to OC the CPU:
Some thermal paste: Arctic Silver 5 £6
A Prolimatech Megahalems £43 and a Scythe S-Flex fan, £13.

£1671 (most expensive items with aftermarket heatsink). Which probably doesn't leave you the ideal amount to get a really nice monitor, so you could take the 5970, a single 5870 or maybe a 480 if you not mind the heat, noise and power consumption of one (or two for which you'd need an 850W PSU) of those.

I do not know monitors well enough to give a definitive recommendation, but I think you should look at 22-24", 1680x1050 - 1920x1200 res. Try to find one with high contrast ratio (dynamic contrast is not the most reliable spec or sometimes even give good performance), low response time 2-5ms.

You could save some money by changing the CPU, mobo and RAM to the following.

Intel Core i5 750 2.66GHz Socket LGA1156 £168
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/172755

ASUS P7P55D-E PRO £170
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/194854

G-Skill 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 1600MHz/PC3-12800 Ripjaw Memory Kit CL7(7-8-7-24) 1.65V £102
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/180490

Which would save £106, which would be plenty to get all the other peripherals you need. The i5-750 would perform very similiarly to an i7-930 in gaming so might as well go for the i5. And 4GB is plenty for most gaming.

 

[Somebody_007]

that pretty much sums it up although I think raiding caviar blacks will give you very good performance and large capacities. Whereas the ssd is only marginally faster and very small. You could also raid f3's but they have slower response times.