New Build - £1500 Budget - Noob - Help!

pfogarty

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Hi All,

Im looking for some help with my first build.

Background:

I recently moved over to Mac as I produce music and was seduced by stability. Im still very happy with that decision but really miss high level gaming. I want to build a separate rig for gaming and keep the music production on my mac book pro.

Facts:

• I have a flexible budget of around £1500. (Including peripherals), I would push this up if I need to.
• Looking for best gaming performance I can achieve for this, would be disappointed if I wasn’t maxing out.
• I need the pc to be as quiet as possible as it will live in my recording studio.
• I would like to try to overclock, I have never done this before but have watched some YouTube vids and it seems to be a relatively straight forward process to follow.

Questions:

• Should I incorporate a solid state drive?
• Should I wait for i9?
• Is gaming on a 30” any good? I’ve been considering an ultrasharp.
• Where is the best place to buy components in the UK?

What im really after is some suggestions on components, pro’s & con’s, what I can expect to achieve etc…

Would really appreciate any help, £1500 is a lot of money for me and I want to make good decisions.

Thanks a lot in advance.

 

shravankale

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1) You wont need a solid state drive...it's a matter of personal choice

2) Since you are looking forward for high end game u won't need an i9 6 core processor....only a few games utilise 4 cores, so an i7 will be a good choice or even the AMD Phenom II x4 955/965 will do good.

3)If u want to game on a 30" see that u have a realtively good graphic card....since it takes resources to blow up games on a 30"

4) Go for a ATI Raedon HD 5850/5870...

5)Use good cpu coolers since the stock peripherals SUCK....look up watercooling

6) Buy a minimum mid-size cabinet and a good 650 Watt power supply from Corsair or Antec
 
Some things to point out...

#3) shravankale is wrong on that. All that matters is the resolution. It takes the same amount of graphics power to game on a 21" 1920x1080 monitor as it does on a 50" 1080p HDTV.

#5) Also dead wrong. Air cooling is king. It's not only quieter, but it's a lot cheaper (like $30 vs. $200). In addition, the overclocking potential is about the same.

Now, here's my build. I'm in the US, so I have no idea where you should look these up, but just search the parts I list and let me know how much budget is left or how much needs to be cut. According to a straight conversion, that's about $2,300 US, so this should be in that range.

CPU: i7-920 $289
Mobo: Asus P6X58D Premium $310
CPU Cooler: Coolermaster Hyper 212 $30
RAM: G.Skill Pi Series 3x2 GB 1600 mhz CAS Latency 7 $180 (or similar 1600 mhz CL 7 sticks)
HDD: Samsung Spinpoint F3 1 TB $90 (or 500 GB model if you don't need that much space)
SSD: 128 GB $350. Not necessary, but you have the budget for one.
PSU: SeaSonice 850W 80+ Silver $150 (or similar 80+ Silver models from Corsair, Antec, Silverstone, PC Power & Cooling)
Case: HAF 922 $90
Optical: Cheapest SATA DVD burner $20
GPU: HD 5970 $650
OS: Windows 7 $105

Total: $2,264. If that's over budget, the first thing I would drop off is the SSD, or decrease it to an 80 GB model for about $100 less.
 

gracefully

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Just a quick note: MadAdmiral is probably referring to the Hyper 212 Plus. I am planning to get that cooler too. It's a good bang-for-the-buck cooler.

Is the monitor going to be factored in your budget? I suggest a good 27-30" 2560x1600 monitor, if you don't have one yet. Gaming on a high-def 1080p TV isn't too shabby, either.
 

pfogarty

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Hi , thanks a lot for your help. Really appreciate it.

Couple of questions:

What sought of performance could I expect from this build?

What sought of benefits will I get using a SSD?

Ive put your build together: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/viewcart.php Can you see this?


Thanks


















 
Performance will be at the highest level for the next several years.

Benefits of the SSD: faster boot times, faster loading times, using the PC is perceived as being much faster.

I can't see things in a shopping cart. Take a screenshot of it.

The bundle is pretty good. I would just double check the price for the comparable parts with the CM Hyper 212 Plus.
 

coldsleep

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All of MadAdmiral's advice is great.

To reiterate what he is saying about SSDs though, an SSD will make the system seem much quicker. It will boot faster, applications/games loaded on the SSD will launch faster, but it won't really provide any in-game benefits, other than levels loading faster. At your budget, it's one of the few remaining questions, as you can mostly afford to get the best price/performance tech for every component.

Some people will say that you might as well get it now, other people will suggest that you should wait a bit for them to come down in price. It's really a matter of whether or not you think you can use that money productively elsewhere.

If you have the option of going to a store that has display computers with both SSDs and traditional hard drives, I'd recommend doing that and see what you think. Reboot the computers, launch a ton of applications, and try to figure out whether it will make a meaningful difference for you.
 

pfogarty

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Great advice guys, thanks so much.

Here is my build so far, let me know your thoughts:
Asus ATI Radeon HD 5870 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £350.98

Corsair Reactor 120GB 2.5" SATA-II Solid State Hard Drive (CSSD-R120GB2-BRKT) £286.99

Asus P6X58D Premium Intel X58 (Socket 1366) DDR3 Motherboard £249.99

Intel Core i7 920 D0 Stepping (SLBEJ) 2.66Ghz (Nehalem) (Socket LGA1366) - Retail £205.99

Corsair XMS3 6GB (3x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C7 (1600MHz) Tri-Channel (TR3X6G1600C7) £182.99

Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium - Retail (Full Version) £99.99

Corsair TX 850W ATX SLI Compliant Power Supply (CMPSU-850TXUK) £98.99

Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (HD103SJ) £64.99

Coolermaster Hyper 212 Plus (Socket AM2/AM2+/AM3/775/1156/1366) £19.99

Samsung SH-S223B/RSMN 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black/Silver/Biege) - Retail £18.99

Total : £1,592.24



 
Looks good.

A note on the size of the SSD. SSDs like to have at least 20% free at all times. The OS takes up about 16 GB. You should only install the most used programs onto the SSD. Figure out how much room you need for those programs. If it's less than 48 GB, you can get by with an 80 GB version, which will save you a lot.
 

coldsleep

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Following on MadAdmiral's advice (as always), keep in mind that 120 GB is the raw size of the disk. I find it hard to recommend going lower than that if you're going to be putting more than 1-2 games on there for most users.

Since this is strictly a gaming machine, you could probably get away with an 80 GB drive, if you're not going to be web browsing, storing email, putting an office suite on there, etc. But if 120 GB is in your budget, go for it...having more space rarely hurts.
 
I don't personally think that the Coolermaster Hyper 212 Plus is the best option if you want quiet. According to a review on here the Scythe Mugen 2 was a better performer in that area.
Personally I would go for the Crucial M225 128GB as I have seen it in a few benchmarks now and it was always one of the best. Whereas I have not seen a review for that Corsair nor seen it in any benchmarks.
Some other sites you might want to look at are scan.co.uk, ebuyer and maybe novatech. These are sites I've used and been happy with. Nothing wrong with OCers tho.
Do you still need to get a case in there?
A 750W PSU is enough for two 5870s, so if you aren't planning on tri-firing them you could go down.