Some Hardware advise please :)

BazMcG

Hey all, merry christmas!

Well this new year I plan on finally building my first proper gaming rig! I have posted before a couple of times gathering ideas and have sort of came up with a final build. Just wanted to give it to you wise people to have a look at it and ensure I am buying correctly.

Ok the deal is, I can get an OS no problem so thats not an issue, keyboard and mouse is fine and dont worry about an optical drive. I do need a monitor however and I do plan to overclock the CPU. At some stage I will get an SSD when I get a bit more cash.

Heres what i have so far:

MONITOR - BenQ G2410HD Widescreen Monitor 24 inch
MOBO - MSI SKT 1156 P55-GD80
CPU - Intel Core i5-750
RAM - OCZ 4GB DDR3 1800MHz
PSU - OCZ StealthXStream 700w Silent SLI Ready Power Supply
GRAPHICS - Asus GeForce GTX 260 576Mhz 896MB PCI-Express 2.0 DVI
CASE - Antec 300 Case
HDD - DiamondMax 23 3.5" 500GB SATA 16MB Internal Hard Drive
FANS - 120mm Scythe Kaze Jyuni 1900RPM Slipstream X2 (Front of case)

I need a CPU cooler, I plan to overclock the i5 to about 3.5ghz so I dont know exactly what I need, and wasnt sure if the likes of the Prolimatech Megahalem would fit in the case.

Cheers in advance. Baz

marco_polo

BazMcG wrote: »

Hey all, merry christmas!

Well this new year I plan on finally building my first proper gaming rig! I have posted before a couple of times gathering ideas and have sort of came up with a final build. Just wanted to give it to you wise people to have a look at it and ensure I am buying correctly.

Ok the deal is, I can get an OS no problem so thats not an issue, keyboard and mouse is fine and dont worry about an optical drive. I do need a monitor however and I do plan to overclock the CPU. At some stage I will get an SSD when I get a bit more cash.

Heres what i have so far:

MONITOR - BenQ G2410HD Widescreen Monitor 24 inch
MOBO - MSI SKT 1156 P55-GD80
CPU - Intel Core i5-750
RAM - OCZ 4GB DDR3 1800MHz
PSU - OCZ StealthXStream 700w Silent SLI Ready Power Supply
GRAPHICS - Asus GeForce GTX 260 576Mhz 896MB PCI-Express 2.0 DVI
CASE - Antec 300 Case
HDD - DiamondMax 23 3.5" 500GB SATA 16MB Internal Hard Drive
FANS - 120mm Scythe Kaze Jyuni 1900RPM Slipstream X2 (Front of case)

I need a CPU cooler, I plan to overclock the i5 to about 3.5ghz so I dont know exactly what I need, and wasnt sure if the likes of the Prolimatech Megahalem would fit in the case.

Cheers in advance. Baz

Personally I would swap out the following.
Diamond for a Samsung F3 500Gb. (Best HDD currently on the market and well priced)
OCZ PSU for the HX650W modular Corsair PSU. (Don't rate the OCZ units too highly)
An ATI 4890 for the 260 GTX (Much better value and performance).

BazMcG

Hey marco_polo, thanks for replying, Yeah was looking at the 4890 before and for some reason I thought the gtx benched the games better, but i just compared them again and your spot on its quite a bit better, I'll deffinately swap that out.

Will the 4890 work ok with my mobo?

The samsung f3 looks pretty good, is this the one you are talking about? http://www.ebuyer.com/product/173804

I'll check out some alternatives to the PSU. Thanks

marco_polo

BazMcG wrote: »

Hey marco_polo, thanks for replying, Yeah was looking at the 4890 before and for some reason I thought the gtx benched the games better, but i just compared them again and your spot on its quite a bit better, I'll deffinately swap that out.

Will the 4890 work ok with my mobo?

The samsung f3 looks pretty good, is this the one you are talking about? http://www.ebuyer.com/product/173804

I'll check out some alternatives to the PSU. Thanks

No problems with the board and the card, and that is the drive I was talking about. It is the best HDD out there and very closely priced to its competitors as a bonus. It comes in a 500GB versions for about 40 if you are trying to shave a few quid off.

I know the modular HX650corsair is pricey enough, you could probably drop down to a 550W PSU unless you will be adding another GPU down the line, (non modular if budget is a problem) like the Corsair VX550W for example.

BazMcG

Yeah the whole system is getting close to £900, I'm going to just buy the components a few at a time to spread the cost out. Well I got an idea of what to look at now, thanks for the advice, I'll see how the bak is over the new year and make a final decison on the PSU and some extras cheers!

C.D.

With regards to the OCZ PSU, the GameXstreme (or whatever *funky* spelling they use) is quieter than the StealthXstreme. I have a GXS myself and after two years the cheap 120mm fan's ball bearing wore out and it sounded incredibly loud- opened it up (warranty voided) and spliced the wires to replace the fan with a quieter one. This is not an isolated incident- plenty of other people have reported noise issues with these PSU's.

Would also reccommend the Corsair PSU mentioned above, excellent reviews everywhere.

If you are bothering to get quiet case fans, I'd get the Sapphire 4890 Vapor-X model over a normal 4890- I initially thought it was marketing rubbish- but I read good reviews and decided to give it a shot and it is definitely the quietest performance GPU I've had. Under load (read: gaming) your GPU tends to be the one of the noisiest component.

If you are planning on overclocking in the future, don't bother buying a CPU cooler until you are actually overclocking- the stock cooler will happily keep your CPU temps under control.

dog_pig

marco_polo wrote: »

Personally I would swap out the following.
Diamond for a Samsung F3 500Gb. (Best HDD currently on the market and well priced)
OCZ PSU for the HX650W modular Corsair PSU. (Don't rate the OCZ units too highly)
An ATI 4890 for the 260 GTX (Much better value and performance).

For what reasons do you not rate OCZ power supplies highly?

Leman_Russ

dog_pig wrote: »

For what reasons do you not rate OCZ power supplies highly?

For the same reason we don't rate Opel Astras as a better racing car than a Ferrari Enzo.

Each brand has it's niche where it's good and bad. OCZ make bad PSU but good Ram. Corsair make Awesome PSU, Ok Ram and poor WC sets (The H50 is a pile of garbage :P) and Antec... well... I'll stop now before the mods hit me again

dog_pig

Leman_Russ wrote: »

For the same reason we don't rate Opel Astras as a better racing car than a Ferrari Enzo.

Each brand has it's niche where it's good and bad. OCZ make bad PSU but good Ram. Corsair make Awesome PSU, Ok Ram and poor WC sets (The H50 is a pile of garbage :P) and Antec... well... I'll stop now before the mods hit me again

That is an absolutely ridiculous analogy.

What are you basing your view that OCZ make bad PSUs on? Your humble opinion?

Please don't make terrible, baseless assertions and pass them off as advice to the OP when there are many reviews of OCZ power supplies available that rate the units very highly.

To the OP: you'd be wise viewing some of the 'advice' given here with caution

Jock Strap

Leman_Russ wrote: »

I'll stop now before the mods hit me again

And yet you still thread-spoil....

C.D.

dog_pig wrote: »

That is an absolutely ridiculous analogy.

What are you basing your view that OCZ make bad PSUs on? Your humble opinion?

Please don't make terrible, baseless assertions and pass them off as advice to the OP when there are many reviews of OCZ power supplies available that rate the units very highly.

To the OP: you'd be wise viewing some of the 'advice' given here with caution

I think I sit in between both of your polar opposite views. They are certainly by no means the worst PSU's and are definitely a cut above most of the no-name cr*p out there. The Game and Stealth Xstreme lines have issues withthe fans being noisy (I own one and it is well documented).

They don't have a patch on the Corsair HX/TX line however, which are very very nice PSU's. Certainly a strong contender for my next one.

Leman_Russ

Jock Strap wrote: »

And yet you still thread-spoil....

How is "Buy Corsair because they are better than OCZ" thread spoiling?

Jock Strap

Leman_Russ wrote: »

How is "Buy Corsair because they are better than OCZ" thread spoiling?

"Buy i5 because it's better than all".
"that Case/PSU/Cooler/mobo is great coz it's the one i have" is the general theme of your posts. It's great to be proud of your build. It really is. But your build isn't perfect for everyones needs or budget. And you come accross as failing to realise this.

That is all.

Leman_Russ

Jock Strap wrote: »

"Buy i5 because it's better than all".
"that Case/PSU/Cooler/mobo is great coz it's the one i have" is the general theme of your posts. It's great to be proud of your build. It really is. But your build isn't perfect for everyones needs or budget. And you come accross as failing to realise this.

That is all.

So you deny that the i5 is the best Price performance CPU atm?

marco_polo

dog_pig wrote: »

For what reasons do you not rate OCZ power supplies highly?

http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews&file=print&reid=24

If you only really needed a 400-500W psu then the 600-700W Stealth/Gamer lines are ok.

Jock Strap

Leman_Russ wrote: »

So you deny that the i5 is the best Price performance CPU atm?

I'm actually getting one myself. However, that would not stop me recommending AMD or a Core 2 processor if it were more suited to a build.

Just 10 minutes ago you posted:

Leman_Russ wrote: »

Too bad, you want AMD, thus I do not liek u :P

Such comments have been made by you too frequently for them to be funny. He was loooking at AMD because he wants to stick to a budget - a phenom2 would be a dream compared to his AMD XP2400+, no need for an i5.


I am not discussing this further. PM me if you feel you need to.