First Gaming Build

Tij da feen

1. What is your budget? €1,200 including everything

2. What will be the main purpose of the computer? Going to be high end gaming on the machine and also running VMware occasionally.

3. Do you need a copy of Windows? Yes but I'm a student so I'll get it from softwarefromstudents.

4. Can you use any parts from an old computer? Can't use anything, it's a completely new build.

5. Do you need a monitor? Yes

5a. If yes, what size do you need. 24'

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

6. Do you need any of these peripherals? Keyboard/Mouse/Wireless Card/Speakers

7. Are you willing to try overclocking? Yes. I've read a few guides on it and it seems fairly easy to do with the 2500k.

8. How can you pay? Bank Transfer/Credit Card/Laser

9. When are you purchasing? After the New Year

10. If you need help building it, where are you based? I'm based in Cork but I reckon I should be able to build it. If any issues crop up I know I'll just be able to post here.


It's going to be my first build and I've speced one as following and just have a few questions and of course want people to have a look over and make sure it's all good.

I've left the HDD out for now because of the prices. I'll manage to get by on the SSD and my external and laptop will do for temp storage for now.

Item|Price
Total build cost: €1,051.79 + €30 shipping
8GB-Kit Corsair XMS3 PC3-12800U CL9 |€31.82
Cooler Master 690 II LITE Midi-Tower |€68.33
Intel Core i5-2500K Box, LGA1155 |€195.78
Sapphire HD 6950 Dirt3, 2GB GDDR5 PCI-Express |€231.64
Samsung SH-222AB bare schwarz SATA |€15.58
ASRock Z68 Pro3 Gen3, Sockel 1155, ATX |€98.93
Crucial M4 64GB SSD 6,4cm (2,5") |€95.54
Super-Flower Amazon 80Plus 650W |€68.69
ASUS VW247H |€154.50
Gigabyte GM-M6980 Pro Laser Gaming Mouse |€22.55
SteelSeries Gaming Pad - SteelPad QCK mini |€5.12
Scythe Mugen 3, für alle Sockel geeignet |€32.99
Logitech LS21 2.1 Speaker System |€21.24
LogiLink Wireless LAN 150 Mbps USB 2.0 802.11n |€9.08


First of all is there a point on going for the 2Gb Vram over the 1Gb Vram?

Will 650W be enough for Crossfire down the line considering the fact that I'll be overclocking the i5 high enough?

Should I wait it out for the 7000 series, I know there isn't much point to keep waiting for new hardware because I'd never get a PC.

Is there much advantage in stepping up to the CM 690 II advanced over the lite?

Also is it just me or have the prices of everything been creeping up for the Christmas period. I recall that monitor costing €140 a few weeks ago and the 2500k is about €15 more expensive. Are the prices likely to drop after the Christmas period?

Thank you in advance for the help.

Monotype

Since you're buying in the new year, it would be no harm to wait to see if any more news for the 7000 series shows up. Prices often do go up just before Christmas, they might go back down a little. Hopefully CPUs will go down a little as Intel are due to release a new series in the first quarter (should be compatible with your board).
I would go with 1.5V RAM instead as there's usually less issues.

Serephucus

I'm with Mono on this; might as well wait until the new year to see how prices shape up. What you have looks good though. The only thing that pops out at me is the PSU; if you're not planning on a second card, you can drop it to the 550W variant.

Also - and this is purely personal preference - I'd be more inclined to go with something like this for the case; never been a fan of the 690 for whatever reason.

Edit: just saw that last bit of your post there. Yeah, you should be grand with 650W.

Tij da feen

Thanks for that lads. I'll wait for more information on the Ivy Bridge and the 7000 series, if anything else it'll hopefully drive down the prices of the 6000 series and the Sandy Bridge.

I might go for that CM Silencio case. I like the simplistic look of it while it's still looking like a Black Monolith. Thanks for the advice and I'll post in this again once it gets closer to the time.

ShadowHearth

i just wonder: will there be even a point to upgrade from sandy to ivy?

Most games are punishing GPU, not CPU. I really dont see any of my games give too much of stress to 2500k

marco_polo

ShadowHearth wrote: »

i just wonder: will there be even a point to upgrade from sandy to ivy?

Most games are punishing GPU, not CPU. I really dont see any of my games give too much of stress to 2500k

Not really it is basically just a die shrink of the same archititecture, so it will be more incremental improvement than revolutionary leap forwards. I'd be waiting for for Haswell at least.

Serephucus

ShadowHearth wrote: »

i just wonder: will there be even a point to upgrade from sandy to ivy?

Most games are punishing GPU, not CPU. I really dont see any of my games give too much of stress to 2500k

IMO, Ivy Bridge is the ideal server/HTPC part. Very low power consumption, and great graphics performance too.

There's no real point in upgrading to IB from SB though, you're right. You might be looking at some better overclocks - more parts hitting 5.0, for example - and a few degrees lower temperatures, but that's about it.

Tij da feen

ShadowHearth wrote: »

i just wonder: will there be even a point to upgrade from sandy to ivy?

Most games are punishing GPU, not CPU. I really dont see any of my games give too much of stress to 2500k

I'm wondering that too but even if there is no point on going to ivy but it should drive down the prices of the sandy. Of course Ivy will support pcie-3 but there's still a good bit of life left in pcie-2 so I can't imagine the price increase will add too much of a performance increase.

Really I'll just be hoping for the 7000 series to come out early 2012 and that it'll be a good balance between price and power.

Monotype

Not worth waiting for upgrades from Sandy Bridge as everyone else says, but keeping future options open are always good. They might release a really nice hexa or octa core.

I think the 7000 series will get launched pretty soon. I think they were planning a December launch but it wasn't quite ready for mass distribution. They've shown up in laptops already.