gaming build help

weeder

have a fair idea of what i want but ill stick up here anyway


1. What is your budget? [€550-600]

2. What will be the main purpose of the computer? Gaming and a bit of music production (bf3 and new games for a while at least)

3. Do you need a copy of Windows? [No]

4. Can you use any parts from an old computer? [hard and DVD drives, maybe a case]

5. Do you need a monitor? use a 19 inch hdtv at the moment but would like to replace with a 19 inch monitor, around €100 if possible

5a. If yes, what size do you need. [19']

5b. If no, what resolution is your current monitor and do you plan to upgrade in the near future? [1440x900] [Yes]

6. Do you need any of these peripherals? [No]

7. Are you willing to try overclocking? [Yes but probabaly not for a while, looking at a 2500k and ocable board anyway]

8. How can you pay? [cred card, paypal etc]

9. When are you purchasing? [Under the Tree for christmas day]

10. If you need help building it, where are you based? [Will Self build]

Monotype

This is from hardwareversand. You should be aware that they only take bank transfers.

Item|Price
Total build cost: €601.81 + €30 shipping
Intel Core i5-2500K Box, LGA1155|€185.73
ASRock P67 Pro3 (B3), Sockel 1155, ATX|€82.61
Sapphire HD6870 1G GDDR5 PCI-E DL-DVI-I+SL-DVI-D / HDMI / DP|€143.49
BenQ G2225HD|€100.98
4GB Kingston ValueRAM PC3-10667U CL9|€16.16
Super-Flower Amazon 80Plus 450W|€40.88
BitFenix Merc Beta|€31.96


It goes over budget when you add on the shipping. There's a handful of cheaper monitors with lower resolution but you're not saving much money. Reusing your old case would take off €30 to bring you to the budget (assuming that you have a compatible case).

If you're looking for any upgrades, you can get 8GB of RAM for €30. 4GB is plenty for games and you can upgrade down the line if you need to.
http://www1.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=44315
You might also like to consider a 550W PSU. 450W is enough for what you have and a small bit of overclocking but graphics upgrades would demand more.
http://www1.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=30069&agid=1628

FlyingIrishMan

Monotype wrote: »

This is from hardwareversand. You should be aware that they only take bank transfers.

Item|Price
Total build cost: €601.81 + €30 shipping
Intel Core i5-2500K Box, LGA1155|€185.73
ASRock P67 Pro3 (B3), Sockel 1155, ATX|€82.61
Sapphire HD6870 1G GDDR5 PCI-E DL-DVI-I+SL-DVI-D / HDMI / DP|€143.49
BenQ G2225HD|€100.98
4GB Kingston ValueRAM PC3-10667U CL9|€16.16
Super-Flower Amazon 80Plus 450W|€40.88
BitFenix Merc Beta|€31.96


It goes over budget when you add on the shipping. There's a handful of cheaper monitors with lower resolution but you're not saving much money. Reusing your old case would take off €30 to bring you to the budget (assuming that you have a compatible case).

If you're looking for any upgrades, you can get 8GB of RAM for €30. 4GB is plenty for games and you can upgrade down the line if you need to.
http://www1.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=44315
You might also like to consider a 550W PSU. 450W is enough for what you have and a small bit of overclocking but graphics upgrades would demand more.
http://www1.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=30069&agid=1628

They take Paypal too, you can also order through amazon and amazon take nearly everything

weeder

Nice monitor and just what i wanted to spend on one, the 600 wasnt supposed to include the monitor so you have a bit more to play with there.

8 gig of ram was my minimum when i set out to do this though so 8 it will be, its too cheap to get 4

Monotype

Grand, that gives you a bit more room then.
How about this so:

Item|Price
Total build cost: €572.03 + €30 shipping
Intel Core i5-2500K Box, LGA1155|€185.73
ASRock P67 Pro3 (B3), Sockel 1155, ATX|€82.61
BitFenix Merc Beta|€31.96
8GB-Kit G.Skill PC3-10667U CL9|€30.15
Super-Flower Amazon 80Plus 550W|€52.06
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 560 Ti, 1GB GDDR5, PCI-Express|€189.52

weeder

Looks good to me so, is the graphics card much better in terms of performance? theyve always baffled me a bit,prefer nvidia to ati though, other than that it looks quiet good.

Serephucus

Yeah, that 560Ti is about 10-15% better than the 6870, though that depends on resolution, games, etc.

weeder

planning on ordering in the next few days but a few questions, that card, whats the difference between it and the oc versions? I can just OC the basic one if i so wish anyway??

any other configs of components anyone has to show me before i go ahead?

Monotype

Overclocked graphics cards? They're usually just overclocked. Sometimes they have better cooling or have slightly different packages. It's usually not worth it unless it's a minimal difference in price, but you'd have to look for reviews of each card to see if there's anything else.

Serephucus

What you also have to remember, is that a lot of the pre-OCed graphics cards will have custom PCBs for better thermal/electrical performance or whatever (usually different editions, not so much with the plain OCed models). If you get one of these, they may very well not fit any aftermarket coolers.

You may not want to get one, and if you don't, then fire away, but if you're thinking about a Zalman-something, or a waterblock, in the future, then you'll most-likely want reference cards.

weeder

reference as in the non OC version? looking at the standard gigabyte version there that was recommended or the asus one.

Serephucus

Reference as in as per NVIDIA's/AMD's spec. As a rule, anything with a weird-looking cooler is custom (though not always the case.)

Stick up a link and I'll tell you if it's reference or not.

weeder

http://www3.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=45569&agid=707&lb thats what i was looking at as recommended, and its oc version which seems to be the same but a tenner more, im only going to be changing a cooler if the thing is over loud.


edit: also looking at a couple of different chipsets. z68 has been recommended to me, for only like a tenner more than the p67 board i was recommended is it a good idea? for the sake of a tenner if go for the better one but i havent looked into the differences in current chipsets.

Serephucus

There's nothing P67 offers that you can't get with Z68.

Z68 also gives you the ability to use the IGP, for video transcoding tasks, as well as RST, where you can use an SSD as a cache for a mechanical drive.

Monotype

I think this Z68 is pretty good as it also has PCI-E 3 (with any Ivy Bridge processor).
http://www3.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=52008
Z68 also allows you to use onboard graphics and Intel's SSD caching technology.