Yet another computer building thread

[Danny252]

I've recently come into a fair bit more money (yay for well-paying summer jobs!), and being the nerd I am, I can't think of anything better to do with it than get a nice, decent gaming rig for the first time in a long time.

My budget is ~£900/1000 at most. I'd rather not go for totally bleeding-edge things, so if keeping it to "good" hardware rather than "awesomez!" keeps it below that price, all the better!

I've had an eye on laneford's thread, but I'd rather not hijack it. So, here goes:

CPU - you lot seemed pretty in favour of the i5 2500K (~£150).

Motherboard - Z77s seem to be the favourite. Probably go for the Z77 Extreme 4 (~£100).

GPU - GTX 670s/680s were mentioned, but these seem to be the newest gen and still fairly expensive. The GTX 560 TI doesn't look bad - ~£190 for 2GB. Some have also recommended the Radeon 7850, ~£180 for 2GB. There seem to be a million and one different versions of GPUs - are most of these pretty identical except for the pretty picture on the side and the colour of the fan?

RAM - Corsair's a good one, 2x4GB at 1600MHz at ~£40 seems good.

PSU - Corsair 550W Modular, as per the other thread, seems good. ~£70.

HDD - Already got a good selection of these floating around that I can reuse.

SSD - It sounds like getting one of these for the OS is well worth considering. How does a Samsung 128GB for ~£80 sound? Put off just a 64 GB one as those come up to £55, spending 50% more money for 100% more space only seems to make sense.

Optical Drive - Seems you can get a DVD-RW for £15 these days.

Keyboard/Mouse - Will any old £15 one be nice enough to use? Got enough mice lying around to keep a cat happy for years.

Case & Cooling - Cooler Master 335U + Hyper 212 EVO? £35+£30

Wireless - Plug-in card for the mobos I'm looking at, ~£20. Brand?

Windows 7 Home Premium (£60)

That brings us up to £805 so far, with a few bits yet to be added in.

[Sakkura]

CPU - If the 2550K costs any more than the 2500k, you can safely ignore it. It's just a 2500k minus the IGP, and who wants to pay more for less?

MOBO - Tom's Hardware recently reviewed a bunch of mid-range Z77 motherboards here, I suggest you look it over and compare the local prices (the article recommendations are based on US prices):
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...mark,3254.html

GPU - GTX 560 Ti is a really nice card, overclocks well. I'd pick it as long as prices are reasonable. If you want something beefier but don't feel like shelling out for a GTX 670 (uber card, uber pricy), the Radeon HD 7850 is your guy.
One thing though - Nvidia are launching their new midrange cards soon - sometime in August according to most reports. May or may not be worth waiting for, your call.

RAM - 16 GB is overkill for gaming, 8 GB is plenty with lots on top. 1600 MT/s seems to be the sweet spot at the moment, you sacrifice very little performance compared to faster memory and don't pay a huge premium over slower memory.

PSU - that's a bit overkill for one graphics card. Stick with the reliable brands (Corsair, Antec, Seasonic, maybe XFX & OCZ) and get a ~550W PSU instead. Unless the 650W one is just as cheap anyway... a little extra doesn't hurt, as long as you don't overdo it (running your system on a 750W+ PSU could ruin efficiency, but 650W is close enough).

SSD - that sounds pretty nice. You don't just get more space, you (usually) also get better performance with the bigger drive, at least up to a point.

Case - really depends a lot on your priorities. But the Cooler Master Storm Enforcer is a good case with plenty of good features at a still reasonable price. I like it so much I just bought one. :p

Cooling - case cooling will depend on the case. For the CPU, a Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo is what most would recommend for very good cooling at a modest price.

Keyboard/Mouse - use whatever works for you. You can upgrade these whenever you like, or keep them for practically as long as you like.

Wireless - a few motherboards will have it, otherwise an add-in card does the trick.

Windoze 7 Home Premium 64-bit is what you want, yes. If you buy full retail you get both 32-bit and 64-bit, if you buy OEM (which you're not supposed to) you only get either 64-bit or 32-bit.

[Sakkura]

And a piece of general advice regarding PSU, case, keyboard, mouse, headset/speakers, optical drive, and monitor(s): These don't have to be tied to the system they were originally used with. You can reuse them, sometimes more than once. It may be worth it to pay a little extra and then not have to buy a new unit next time. Though it does depend on what you do with the system you replace (if you're passing it along to a younger brother or whatever, you won't be able to reuse much).

[Mistabashi]

I'd agree that that PSU is overkill for that system. Personally I have an XFX 550w (made by Seasonic) which you can pick up for ~£50. It's not modular, but unless you're building a smaller form factor system that shouldn't be much of a problem.

With regards to the GPU, there's a fair difference between the 560 and the 560ti so I'd aim for the latter.

Cases are so much down to personal prefence that it's impossible to recommend something without more info; namely what sort of styling you're looking for and what form factor you want (ATX, micro-ATX, even ITX can be perfetly fine for a gaming system).

[Grizzly]

With your budget, I recommend the 7850
When pickung up a PSU, don't just go for the watts and all. Go for the reliability. Seriously.A PSU that goes down has the chance of taking the entire system with it, and that's pretty nasty.

[Danny252]

CPU - If the 2550K costs any more than the 2500k, you can safely ignore it. It's just a 2500k minus the IGP, and who wants to pay more for less?

Righto, the 2500K it is then

GPU - GTX 560 Ti is a really nice card, overclocks well. I'd pick it as long as prices are reasonable. If you want something beefier but don't feel like shelling out for a GTX 670 (uber card, uber pricy), the Radeon HD 7850 is your guy.
One thing though - Nvidia are launching their new midrange cards soon - sometime in August according to most reports. May or may not be worth waiting for, your call.

I'm shying away from AMD at the moment, as the impression I've got recently is that Nvidia has pulled ahead, especially in terms of support/drivers. How true is that?

RAM - 16 GB is overkill for gaming, 8 GB is plenty with lots on top. 1600 MT/s seems to be the sweet spot at the moment, you sacrifice very little performance compared to faster memory and don't pay a huge premium over slower memory.

I'll look into getting some of the faster stuff. If I go 8GB, would it be better to get 4x2GB (less to replace if one goes dodgy) or 2x4GB (leaves room for adding an extra 2 sticks in future)? Memory generally seems fairly reliable, so being cautious may be unwarranted?

Cases are so much down to personal prefence that it's impossible to recommend something without more info; namely what sort of styling you're looking for and what form factor you want (ATX, micro-ATX, even ITX can be perfetly fine for a gaming system).

Not looking for anything flashy or with LEDs all over it - just something fairly plain to shove under my desk - a nice boxy black thing is pretty much all I want. Had a look around Cooler Master's site and the Elite 335U is about what I'm going for, and it fits Sakkura's Hyper 212 EVO cooler. Will a case on its own come with a couple of fans (I assume I want more than the CPU cooler) or will I want to order a couple of these myself?

Wireless - a few motherboards will have it, otherwise an add-in card does the trick.

Seems the Mobos I'm looking at lack it. TP Link and Linksys seem to be the two big names for wireless add-in cards - both good?

[Olero]

Not sure if you are going for a CPU cooler as well, but if you are, the Be Quiet! Dark Rock Pro works like a charm in my system. Do mind that a CPU cooper + high memory sticks = impossible to mount on most motherboards. Either look for motherboards that have a good layout that makes it possible, or buy (the slightly more expensive) low profile memory sticks.

As for the cases; I have a very very large one (the Silverstone Fortress FT02) which both is great and a pain. It's great for placing stuff and cooling it all (it has a lot of big fans and a creative yet smart airflow, due to the "backpanel" being the toppanel). But it's very big and heavy and was quite expensive

If you have money left, a bigger SSD is a good option. But that entirely depends on how much big stuff you plan to put on them. Since I have slow internet connection, I like to keep most of my games on my SSD (the also affordable and so far reliable Crucial M4), which fills it up nicely. But it's still a big sum of money...

[Sakkura]

I'm shying away from AMD at the moment, as the impression I've got recently is that Nvidia has pulled ahead, especially in terms of support/drivers. How true is that?

I'll look into getting some of the faster stuff. If I go 8GB, would it be better to get 4x2GB (less to replace if one goes dodgy) or 2x4GB (leaves room for adding an extra 2 sticks in future)? Memory generally seems fairly reliable, so being cautious may be unwarranted?

Not looking for anything flashy or with LEDs all over it - just something fairly plain to shove under my desk - a nice boxy black thing is pretty much all I want. Had a look around Cooler Master's site and the Elite 335U is about what I'm going for, and it fits Sakkura's Hyper 212 EVO cooler. Will a case on its own come with a couple of fans (I assume I want more than the CPU cooler) or will I want to order a couple of these myself?

Seems the Mobos I'm looking at lack it. TP Link and Linksys seem to be the two big names for wireless add-in cards - both good?

AMD is fine, at least when it comes to graphics cards not at the extreme high end (or at the gap between the 6870 and the 7850 - where Nvidia has the 560 Ti). I used Nvidia exclusively until two years ago, have been on the AMD side since. I've honestly not noticed the difference... well the driver control panel looks different and has some different doohickeys, but... it just doesn't matter in 99.9% of the cases.

RAM - I would get two sticks of 4 GB. Half as many sticks, half as many that could potentially fail. Think it's slightly cheaper too. And it's always nice to have an extra couple of slots ready in case you do later end up wanting 16 GB.

Case - some come with fans, some don't. The Cooler Master Elite 335 U doesn't come with any preinstalled fans, but has several slots where you can install fans bought separately. I would at the very least buy a front intake fan for it. An exhaust fan at the back is also very useful (some cases have exhaust fans at the top, that works just as well as long as you rotate the CPU cooler to match).
Things I'd look for are USB 3.0 front panel plugs if you want convenient USB 3.0, and that the PSU mounts at the bottom. If there are air filters over the PSU intake and front air intake, that's a nice bonus. As for the rest, do google the cases you're thinking about for reviews, they often look at stuff that is harder to tell from a spec sheet - like how much room is there for cable routing.

Wireless - Not really something I know much about, always just wired my desktop to a router. But Linksys is known for making quality wireless routers, so I don't see why they shouldn't make quality wifi cards too.

[Danny252]

I think we've managed to sort most things then - I might wait until mid-August to see how those new NVidia graphics cards look (or, more likely, look and see how much cheaper the old ones get!), as I won't have much time to put things together until then.

Quite nice to see that it came in a bit cheaper than I'd expected, I didn't really appreciate how much cheaper it was to build your own (alternatively, how inflated laptop prices are).

[Eric]

Worth noting that if you ever upgrade your GPU to something which uses PCIe 3.0, you'll be better off with the i5 3570K. (Which is a similar price to the 2500k anyway.)

[Finicky]

Main difference between the diff gpu brands is quality of the cooler and warrenty, very rarely also a more reliable pcb.

There are a few brands with horrible support if something breaks and some with dingy coolers that make more noise than the stock AMD/nvidia coolers (and the stock ones are BAD already).

[Sakkura]

I think we've managed to sort most things then - I might wait until mid-August to see how those new NVidia graphics cards look (or, more likely, look and see how much cheaper the old ones get!), as I won't have much time to put things together until then.

Quite nice to see that it came in a bit cheaper than I'd expected, I didn't really appreciate how much cheaper it was to build your own (alternatively, how inflated laptop prices are).

Well, switching from a laptop to a desktop gives bigger savings than switching from a prebuilt to a homebuilt desktop.
Also, latest rumors/leaks about the new Nvidia cards are very promising; apparently, the GTX 660 Ti will simply be a GTX 670 with a narrower memory bus, but substantially cheaper.

Worth noting that if you ever upgrade your GPU to something which uses PCIe 3.0, you'll be better off with the i5 3570K. (Which is a similar price to the 2500k anyway.)

It's not really that important, because you'd be very hard pressed to saturate the bandwidth of a 16-lane PCIe 2.0 slot with current hardware. But it's still nice to be future-proofed. For the record, most of the graphics cards on the table here do support PCIe 3.0 (Radeon HD 7750+ all support it, as do Geforce GTX 670+, and almost certainly the upcoming GTX 660/660 Ti).

[Eric]

It's not really that important, because you'd be very hard pressed to saturate the bandwidth of a 16-lane PCIe 2.0 slot with current hardware. But it's still nice to be future-proofed. For the record, most of the graphics cards on the table here do support PCIe 3.0 (Radeon HD 7750+ all support it, as do Geforce GTX 670+, and almost certainly the upcoming GTX 660/660 Ti).

I thought he was going for the 560ti, which is PCIe 2.0? Anyway, if he still is, there's a pretty nice deal over here for the 560ti 448 Cores at £155.

But yeah, I'd definitely go for the 3750K, especially when the price difference is less than £15 compared to the 2500K. Unless you plan on heavily overclocking (over 4.5GHz), where the 2500K is probably the better choice.

[Danny252]

Not entirely decided on 560TI vs 7850, and the latter does have PCIe 3.0 (plus I'm keeping an eye out for NVidia's new cards)

Are we talking the 3750K or the 3570K? I suspect the latter, as Intel don't think the former exists.

[Eric]

'tis indeed the latter.

[Mohorovicic]

FYI, there is something like 100+ pages long thread on nvidia forums about 560 Tis failing in one way or another. It seems to mostly affect the OC versions, even factory OC.