Gaming PC

Washington Irving

Hey guys,
Looking to buy a gaming PC in the next few weeks. Would like to play the likes of Battlefield 3 and Skyrim at max settings. Have a budget of about E900. Need a copy of Windows and a monitor too. Put this together, its a little over budget but I could get Windows cheaper on Software4Students. What you guys think


Total build cost: €967.74 + €30 shipping
Intel Core i5-2500K Box, LGA1155 €185.73
ASRock P67 Pro3 (B3), Sockel 1155, ATX €81.59
8GB-Kit G.Skill PC3-10667U CL9 €31.61
Samsung SpinPoint F3 1000GB, SATA II (HD103SJ) €139.00
Samsung SH-222AB bare schwarz SATA €15.21
ASUS EAH6950 DCII /2DI4S/1GD5, AMD Radeon HD 6950, 1GB, PCI- Express €224.16
Super-Flower Amazon 80Plus 550W €52.07
BenQ G2220HD €108.11
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit (SB-Version) €78.65
Xigmatek Asgard, ATX, ohne Netzteil, schwarz €31.61
Rechner - Zusammenbau €20.00

Markd250

Personal experience: the EAH6950 in my build runs quite hot in an Asgard case. It's a very big card, and causes airflow trouble.

It might be worth picking a slightly larger case, or an inverted setup like the BitFenix Outlaw.

I'm sure the gurus on here will point you in the right direction.

Washington Irving

Thanks, I'll keep that in mind

Markd250

Also, hard drives are selling at hugely inflated prices at the moment after the floods in Thailand.

There is a guy on Adverts selling refurbished 500gb hitachi drives for €20, if you can pick up one of those it would save you enough to put an SSD in too!

Serephucus

I wouldn't have said anything other than what Mark has already mentioned. Other than a bigger case to handle that truly monstrous three-slot cooler, and a second hand HDD for storage (for the moment), you're looking good.

Washington Irving

Would this case be ok? or this

1337'th post :cool:

Markd250

Hindsight again here: a case with a bottom-mounted PSU might be a better combination with that GPU. What do you think of this? Or this?

The other case that I think looks nice and would be a decent buy is the Shinobi, but it's a few quid extra.

Washington Irving

Think I'll go with that Thermaltake one, thanks for the help
Will all the necessary cables for the monitor etc. be included? just making sure

Markd250

No problem. Between the fan in that case and the Superflower PSU, you will get a nice blue glow from your computer!

I doubt the monitor comes with a DVI cable, which is what you will need to connect the GPU. I bought a dual link DVI-D cable with my build, they are quite cheap on HWVS. In fact, a single link cable will do, and is maybe €1 cheaper!

The other cable you will need is for the PSU, it comes with a european two pin plug. You can pick one up from Power City (or somewhere similar) for a fiver. Other than that you should be good to go!

Edit: You really should think about an SSD if you can pick up a cheap HDD, the Crucial M4 is the one that is most recommended here, and it really is fantastic for load/boot times.

Edit2: How about a cooler for the CPU? Are you planning to overclock it?

Washington Irving

Might try overclocking in future, may go for a CPU cooler now if its not too expensive cause I've already gone over budget. This is how it looks now, added an SSD and went with the 24" monitor instead of 22"

Total build cost: €981.17 + €30 shipping
Thermaltake V4 Black Edition ohne Netzteil €36.71
Rechner - Zusammenbau €20.00
Crucial M4 64GB SSD 6,4cm (2,5") €95.54
Intel Core i5-2500K Box, LGA1155 €185.73
ASRock P67 Pro3 (B3), Sockel 1155, ATX €82.61
8GB-Kit G.Skill PC3-10667U CL9 €30.15
Super-Flower Amazon 80Plus 550W €52.06
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit (SB-Version) €79.68
BenQ G2420HD €141.78
DIGITUS Dual-Link DVI-D Kabel 2m €16.99
ASUS EAH6950 DCII /2DI4S/1GD5, AMD Radeon HD 6950, 1GB, PCI- Express €224.69
Samsung SH-222AB bare schwarz SATA €15.23

Markd250

Honestly I'd struggle to pay €140 for that HDD, considering it cost €40 2 months ago. There is a guy on adverts selling 250gb drives for a tenner each, maybe try to pick up two of those? You can always add another drive next year when prices are more normal.

In terms of the cooler, the Artic Cooling Freezer 13 Pro is a good bet. It's out of stock til next week though.

If you are getting HWVS to build your computer, be aware that they probably won't put in the GPU or the cooler, to prevent damage during transit.

Edit: You got rid of the hard drive - good idea!

Washington Irving

Just ordered it there . How difficult is it to install a graphics card? Is it just a case of sliding it in and connecting a few wires?

Eamonn Brophy

Saul-Goode9 wrote: »

Just ordered it there . How difficult is it to install a graphics card? Is it just a case of sliding it in and connecting a few wires?

You put it into the slot, screw down the screw on the end of the case and connect any power connectors that it needs. It's pretty easy man, don't worry about it.

Make sure you un-install old drivers before you put in your new card if you're upgrading from an old card.

Washington Irving

Got the PC today, trying to activate Windows but it won't connect to the internet. I've put in the broadband username and password but when I click connect I get an 'Error 651' message. Not sure what to do
On Eircom BTW

yoyo

Saul-Goode9 wrote: »

Got the PC today, trying to activate Windows but it won't connect to the internet. I've put in the broadband username and password but when I click connect I get an 'Error 651' message. Not sure what to do
On Eircom BTW

Turn on broadcast SSID on the eircom router, and connect that way, if your using wired then it sounds like an eircom issue and not yours, I think eircom1 and broadband1 are the DSL un/password combinations but not 100% sure on that!

Nick

Washington Irving

Using wireless, have the SSID turned on but still no luck. Wireless working fine on the laptop. The Error message says:

'Connecting through WAN miniport (PPPOE)
Error 651: The modem has reported on error.
If you continue to receive error messages, you can enable logging for analysis'

yoyo

Saul-Goode9 wrote: »

Using wireless, have the SSID turned on but still no luck. Wireless working fine on the laptop. The Error message says:

'Connecting through WAN miniport (PPPOE)
Error 651: The modem has reported on error.
If you continue to receive error messages, you can enable logging for analysis'

Do you have Mac address filtering enabled by any chance? Never seen that error before but looks to me like a modem issue, a factory reset of the modem may be no harm either

Nick

Washington Irving

Apparently thr problem lies with the raspppoe.sys file, you have to rename but it won't let me

yoyo

Saul-Goode9 wrote: »

Apparently thr problem lies with the raspppoe.sys file, you have to rename but it won't let me

I wouldn't go messing with Windows yet, I've not come accross this issue before tbh. What modem/router you got?

Nick

Washington Irving

Got the connection working, thanks
One more question, how do I set the primary hard drive? If I try to install anything it automatically goes to the SSD. How would I set it so that programs go straight to the HDD?

yoyo

Saul-Goode9 wrote: »

Got the connection working, thanks
One more question, how do I set the primary hard drive? If I try to install anything it automatically goes to the SSD. How would I set it so that programs go straight to the HDD?

What was the issue in the end? And yes you can move the program files directory, its some simple Registry Editing

Nick