£800-1000 Gaming PC

[caffelatte]

APPROXIMATE PURCHASE DATE: As soon as possible, within 3 weeks.

BUDGET RANGE: £800-1000 + £200 for monitor

SYSTEM USAGE FROM MOST TO LEAST IMPORTANT: Gaming

PARTS NOT REQUIRED: Keyboard, mouse, speakers, OS

PREFERRED WEBSITE(S) FOR PARTS:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/
http://www.ebuyer.com
Any others that deliver to UK

COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: England

PARTS PREFERENCES: No preference

OVERCLOCKING: Yes / Maybe - I have never OCed before but I would like to try with the new build for fun and a slight performance boost, nothing drastic though as i don't want to limit the lifetime or have any specific super-performance needs.

SLI OR CROSSFIRE: No / Maybe - Planning on a 5850 unsure whether i will SLI/Crossfire in future. Most likely will not unless it's worthwhile to run 2x 5850s before i upgrade to a new system.

MONITOR RESOLUTION: 1920x1080

ADDITIONAL COMMENTS: Would prefer (though it isn't essential) to have it as quiet as possible, so if water cooling is a viable option and would fit into the budget that would be welcome.

I'll most likely be using this same computer for 2-3 years and buying a new system when 3d/SSD/hex cores are affordable and hopefully selling this one.

I'm mainly looking for best performance for as long as possible for as cheap as possible (who isn't?) but i don't mind dropping settings as newer titles are released, so if i can save £200 for the sake of having to run next year's titles on medium i'd certainly consider it.

I'd also like to be able to run BFBC2 on high.

If anyone would nice enough to do an £800 and £1000 build with estimated FPS (in any program, just curious about performance difference) that would be very helpful to me, but i know that's asking a lot.


Monitor: Looking for a cheap 1920x1080 23.6 or 24" with =<5ms response time with a good warranty. I don't need too much help with this, just looking for any recommendations.

GPU: As far as I've worked out 5850s are the best bang for the buck, if there's anything better that will squeeze into the budget then i have no special attachment to the 5850.

 

[Silvune]

Ok, here is what I would call the bog standard, few upgrade options path:

AMD Phenom II X4 955 http://www.ebuyer.com/product/190673 £123

Gigabyte GA-MA770T-UD3 http://www.ebuyer.com/product/196403 £72

G-Skill 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 1600MHz/PC3-12800 Ripjaw Memory Kit CL7(7-8-7-24) 1.65V http://www.ebuyer.com/product/180490 £106

PowerColor PCS+ 5850 1GB http://www.ebuyer.com/product/199769 £229

Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB http://www.ebuyer.com/product/158860 £37

Antec Truepower New TP-550 http://www.ebuyer.com/product/159918 £70
Should also be enough for a single 5870.

Antec 300 http://www.ebuyer.com/product/143854 £44
Unless you have your eye on something else.

Samsung SH-S223 22X DVD±RW/RAM/DL Serial ATA Black Bare Drive - OEM http://www.ebuyer.com/product/145450 £15

Total: £696

If you want the option to crossfire, but again not have SATA 6Gbps:
Asus M4A79XTD Evo http://www.ebuyer.com/product/172846 £89

If you want a good power supply that can power two 5850s:
XFX 650W XXX Edition http://www.ebuyer.com/product/191826 £80

New Total: £723

As you can see this build leaves a good margin for you to get a good display (I'm not qualified to suggest one). An easy way to use up more of the budget is to get a 5870, which would be more capable of maxing games for the next 3 years than a 5850. You would need a 750W PSU if you wanted to be able to crossfire 5870s. According to this benchmark the 5850 can max BFBC2 with and without AA and still able to get a good framerate.

A slightly more powerful build:

Intel i5-750 http://www.ebuyer.com/product/194854 £156

Asus P7P55D-E Pro http://www.ebuyer.com/product/194854 £162

Total: £829 (Everything else would be the same.)

Intel i7-930 OEM http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-318-IN&groupid=701&catid=6&subcat=1272 £230

Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-235-GI £157

Patriot Viper 6GB 1600Mhz 8-8-8-24 1.65V http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-008-PA&groupid=701&catid=8&subcat=1389 £150

Total: £942

The difference between an the two Intel CPUs and the AMD Phenom X4 in gaming will not be significant, ~5fps sort of area. The Intels will be noticeably better in applications besides gaming, I also think their longevity will be better. Altho the AM3 platform will have new chips released for it for quite awhile yet, infact they are going to get hexacores very soon; I heard that they were getting launched today. It might even be worth waiting until they are available and just putting one of them in the AMD build above.
I think what I would do is make a very futureproof AMD build; get a hexacore and 890GX mobo, I think you would still be able to afford a 5870 that way as well.

Unfortunately ebuyer don't have a good selection of heatsinks atm. So you might have to switch to buying everything from another site.
These are the five heatsinks that I would recommend:

■Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus £20
Probably not the best option for quiet.
■Titan TTC-NK85TZ/V2 Fenrir £30
■Scythe Mugen 2 £39
Would need to buy a retention kit for LGA1156
■Prolimatech Megahalems Rev B £46
Would have to buy fans, thermal paste and AM retention kit with this one (if you stick with an AMD build). Probably the one I'd pick.
■Noctua NH-U12P SE2 £54

Sorry for not being very concise, hopefully I've shown you that you don't need to spend very much for what you need and highlighted your options.

 

[goldenthunder]

A very good guide, thanks.
I'm also interested in more or less the same PC build, but with a bit more focus on applications + GPU programming (OpenCL).

I think I would go then for the i5-750 configuration with the Ati 5870.
Is there any reason I shouldn't go for a Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD4 (http://www.ebuyer.com/product/179104) motherboard? Similar specs to the Asus P7P55D-E Pro. Are there special reasons for OC?

Also which 750Watt PSU would you recommend for the Crossfire(somewhere in the future) 5870 configuration?

 

[Silvune]

This is probably the cheapest good quality 750W PSU that could power two 5870s: Seasonic S12D 750W £93

I don't usually recommend that series of Gigabyte boards because you have a choice between SATA 6Gbps/USB 3 and a second graphics card. So as long as you don't use a device in either of those ports then the second card will be fine, but if you do then the second slot will reduce speed and bottleneck the card.

I would suggest waiting for benchmarks of the new AMD hexacores, as there is a chance they will be superior to the mainstream Intel quad cores.

 

[goldenthunder]

Thanks again.
So the Gigabyte board can get too full, if I want to use two graphics card. I will keep that in mind, since it might get a bit full in the end.

As for the CPU I will follow your suggestion and wait for the AMD hexacores...maybe by then the other components will be cheaper

 

[caffelatte]

After some thinking I've realized that I'd like 1 TB of space for music/apps/movies, would 2x500GBs be the fastest for that or is a TB drive fast enough? and would either of these changes require a bigger larger PSU? Or does that depend on other factors so much so that the HDDs are irrelevant.

I think the choices for me are either a budget system with a 5850, a budget+ system with a 5870 and upgrading sooner or spending a bit more and possibly getting an AMD Phenom II X6 Six Core 1055T 2.80GHz now and upgrading at a later date in the future.

Budget build:

AMD Phenom II X4 955 http://www.ebuyer.com/product/190673 £123

Gigabyte GA-MA770T-UD3 http://www.ebuyer.com/product/196403 £72

G-Skill 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 1600MHz/PC3-12800 Ripjaw Memory Kit CL7(7-8-7-24) 1.65V http://www.ebuyer.com/product/180490 £106

PowerColor PCS+ 5850 1GB http://www.ebuyer.com/product/199769 £229

Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB http://www.ebuyer.com/product/158860 £37 x2
OR
Seagate ST31000528AS 1TB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm 32MB Cache - OEM http://www.ebuyer.com/product/158798 £70

Antec Truepower New TP-550 http://www.ebuyer.com/product/159918 £70

MUGEN2 - Scythe Mugen 2 Quiet CPU Cooler http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Scythe-Mugen-2-Quiet-CPU-Cooler-for-478-LGA775-LGA1366-AMD-Socket-754-939-AM2-AM2plus-and-940 £40


Antec 300 http://www.ebuyer.com/product/143854 £44


Samsung SH-S223 22X DVD±RW/RAM/DL Serial ATA Black Bare Drive - OEM http://www.ebuyer.com/product/145450 £15

Which comes to £769 i believe.

Budget+ build:

Same as above but with:
Powercolor ATI Radeon HD 5870 "Dirt 2 Edition" 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-123-PC £310

Will this work with everything else in the above build and will it not be bottlenecked by the processor?

If so the system price is £850

Or the more expensive option of a

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-267-AM £166
AMD Phenom II X6 Six Core 1055T 2.80GHz (Socket AM3) with a 5870, i'm unsure of what mobo this would require so could someone please spec a build up?

 

[Silvune]

Yea a 1TB drive will be plenty fast enough, infact I think they are faster usually than 500GB drives. And you'd need about 10 harddrives to have to rethink power supply.

Yea that 5870 will work fine. An AMD 955 will not hold a 5870 back.

For gaming there doesnt seem to be much, if any benefit to getting a 1055T or 1090T, at least not in most of todays games. According to the product page of Gigabyte GA-770T-UD3, it supports 1055T as of bios F4. So you would probably have to update the bios yourself, but the point is that you don't have to make special considerations for the motherboard when considering the new hex cores as they are supported by older motherboards.

 

[caffelatte]

I'd like some advice about what GPU to get. My options are as follows:

Asus stock 5870 for £310
stock 5850 for £240
Toxic (overclocked) 5850 for £260

or

2x5770 for £235 and cross firing - If i went for this option which mobo and PSU would i need?

These are the cheapest prices I've found that are in stock.

My feelings about the GPU are that the 5850s are too overpriced/out of supply to warrant buying and i might as well go up to a 5870 for longevity for £70 more. If i could get a 5870 for £200 I wouldn't consider the 5870, but as there's a £70 difference between them i'm thinking why not go for the better one.

The other option is the 2x5770 which I think would perform somewhere around the same or slightly better than the 5850 but i have no idea which MOBO or PSU I'd need to cross fire it.

I was planning on getting Win7 32 bit Ultimate as my friend has a spare copy, does it matter that much compared to Win7 home 64 bit for gaming? I'd assume not as there's only 4 GB of RAM in my build.

Regarding RAM, I can get Corsair RAM and Crucial/ Ballistix RAM at trade price so is there any recommended I could use that's suitable for OCing? I haven't had time to start reading up about OCing yet and am clueless in all areas of it.

 

[Silvune]

For a motherboard with crossfire, this is probably the cheapest: Asus M4A79XTD EVO £85. For two 5770s a good 550W power supply would still be fine.
You are right that two 5770s in crossfire perform slightly superior to a single 5850 (when the games allows the two cards to scale properly - there are likely to be some games that don't like two cards). At your budget I would get a 5870. I usually look at the picture of the card to see what kind of cooler/fan it has on it; the larger the quieter and cooler it is likely to be.

A 64-bit OS allows you to utilize all the RAM in the system as well as the RAM in video card, with a 32bit OS the ~3GB it can address comes from the video card as well. There are also security benefits, with Win 7 64, which I don't understand. For those reasons I would suggest getting a 64bit OS.

For OCing the CPU it seems to be beneficial to get 1600mhz RAM, not sure if this applies to AMD systems tho, most people when talking about OCing, talk about Intel and I don't have any experience of OCing to confirm or deny the above. Try and make sure that the CAS/CL/Latency/Timings are low, around 7 and low voltage is preferable (more so when OCing the RAM). May I ask how much trade price is?

 

[asteldian]

Just another site worth noting is Scan.co.uk I love the set out of their site and use this to at least create my list of items then shop around for what is best price.

For silence I suggest: Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro version 2. This thing is real quiet and only about £16

For GPU I recommend either the 5850 or the 5870. The 5850 is still best performance/cost ratio but hard to find in stock.
I would strongly suggest keeping away from the 5770, it is a dainty little card but just does not have what it takes to last, the only way to make it worth while is to XFire it, and even then I suggest you are better off with the other cards. Not to mention both cards PLUS a more expensive mobo to do XFire, you certainly are not saving any money over a 5850. And should games come out without XFire being compatible and you have to wait for drive updates etc. XFire is just not as reliable as a decent single card.

 

[caffelatte]

I've decided upon the 5870 and the G-Skill Ripjaw RAM. The suppliers I was going to use didn't have any gaming RAM in stock other than some £150 corsair which was more than i wanted to spend (and slightly higher latency), plus the lifetime warranty of the G-Skill is a nice bonus.

I think I'll spend a bit of extra cash and future proof somewhat with having the capability to crossfire 5870s and so that's what I've tried to do with the setup below.

Ebuyer
CPU AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition 3.2 GHz Socket AM3 8MB £126
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/164047

Mob o Asus M4A79XTD EVO 790X Socket AM3 8 channel audio ATX Motherboard 85 http://www.ebuyer.com/product/172846

RAM G-Skill 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 1600MHz/PC3-12800 Ripjaw Memory Kit CL7(7-8-7-24) 1.65V £110 http://www.ebuyer.com/product/180490

GPU Asus 5870 £310
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/190978 (I won't be buying this from ebuyer, but it's this card)

HDD Seagate ST31000528AS 1TB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm 32MB Cache - OEM £62 http://www.ebuyer.com/product/158798

PSU Antec EarthWatts 750W Modular PSU - 80plus Certified 9x SATA 4x PCI-E £81
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/161664

HSF Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro rev 2  £17
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/176157

Case Antec 300 £44
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/143854

Disk drive Anything £15


So a few questions:

1) Will this all work together and run 5870s in crossfire in the future?

2) I opted for the cheaper fan as this was 1/3 of the price compared to the MUGEN Scythe 2 after delivery and paste, will my chosen fan be able to cool the CPU enough to OC to 3.6-3.8?

3) What's the cheapest mobo that can crossfire 5870s with USB3.0 / 6G Sata?

4) Is the Antec750W enough to xfire 5870s?

5) Any savings/improvements to be made or any other questions I should be asking?

 

[Silvune]

2. Yes I suppose it could, but the temps will not be as good as any of the other coolers I suggested.

3. This is the cheapest on ebuyer: Gigabyte GA-890GPA-UD3H £105 Motherboards with 800 series chipsets will all have SATA 6Gbps, USB3 isn't guaranteed on these boards so you will have to check.

4. No, that Antec is only rated for about 670 watts on the 12V rails. I would suggest this one instead: Seasonic S12D 750W £93

5. Get this processor instead: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/190673 as it is the newer C3 stepping/revision, so it will have slight improvements over the C2 version you linked, another bonus is that it is slightly cheaper. The C3 version will have the following manufacturer code: HDZ955FBGMBOX.
I would also suggest having a look at other cases to see if you like something else better. Double check that a 5870 will fit tho, either by asking me/on this forum, or checking reviews/pics of the inside of the case with components installed. Chances are it will but the 5870 is a long card, about 11 inches/28.5cm. So it will need about 2 inches/5cm of clearance past the motherboard, as ATX based motherboards are 9.6 inches wide.