Looking for advice about a New Build

RedXIV

Hi Guys, Trying to learn about building a PC as it seems an awful rip off to pay for a pre built one from Dell. Looking for as much help and advice as you can give me!

1. What is your budget? [~€900]

2. What will be the main purpose of the computer? [Gaming - Just after discovering Steam (i know, i know) and have picked up a few, most graphically demanding one I've got so far is The Witcher. Would like to be able to play modern games if possible?]

3. Do you need a copy of Windows? [Yes]

4. Can you use any parts from an old computer? [No, Old computer going to son]

5. Do you need a monitor? [Yes]

5a. If yes, what size do you need. [22-24]

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

6. Do you need any of these peripherals? [Need the works]

7. Are you willing to try overclocking? [Yes - but very new to it]

8. How can you pay? [Bank Transfer/Visa Debit]

9. When are you purchasing? [Probably not for another few months - looking for advice now]

10. If you need help building it, where are you based? [South Dublin. - hope to not need this but good to know if there is ]

Cheers!

Genghiz Cohen

Right, here's my attempt.

Item|Price
8GB-Kit G.Skill PC3-10667U CL9|€36.71
Seagate Barracuda 7200 2000GB, SATA 6Gb/s|€100.93
Super-Flower Gamer Edition 600W|€54.48
Club 3D Radeon HD 7850 royalQueen, 1GB GDDR5|€192.54
Logitech G400 Gaming Mouse|€27.91
Intel Core i5-2550K Box, LGA1155, ohne integrierte Grafik|€195.88
ASRock P67 Pro (B3) Sockel 1155, ATX|€78.54
BitFenix Merc Alpha|€31.57
Shipping|€18.99
Total|€737.55

Not too sure about the mobo and graphics card.

Plus €185 for a Dell 2312.

Plus a keyboard (~€50), but that's a more personal thing I think.

Total is €972. Sure the kids don't have to eat everyday. ;p

Eboggles

I'd go with something like this:

Item|Price
Intel Core i5-3450 Box, LGA1155|€177.37
ASRock H61M/U3S3 (B3), Sockel 1155, mATX|€56.09
8GB-Kit G.Skill PC3-10667U CL9|€36.71
HIS HD 7850 GDDR5 2048MB DVI/HDMI/2xMini DP|€223.43
LiteOn iHAS124-19 schwarz SATA|€19.94
Super-Flower Amazon 80Plus 450W|€40.92
Seagate Barracuda 7200 500GB SATA 6GB's|€60.66
BitFenix Shinobi Midi-Tower USB 3.0 black, ohne Netzteil|€55.82
Shipping|€18.99
Total|€689.93

That's just the desktop, you'll still need peripherals.

RedXIV

Cheers for the replies so far guys. I'd sooner go with the bigger HDD but other than that, I'm going to confess a general level of ignorance of your choices

Anything I should be looking out for in particular? is one of these obviously better than the others? :pac:

Skylinehead

Genghiz Cohen wrote: »

Right, here's my attempt.

Item|Price
8GB-Kit G.Skill PC3-10667U CL9|€36.71
Seagate Barracuda 7200 2000GB, SATA 6Gb/s|€100.93
Super-Flower Gamer Edition 600W|€54.48
Club 3D Radeon HD 7850 royalQueen, 1GB GDDR5|€192.54
Logitech G400 Gaming Mouse|€27.91
Intel Core i5-2550K Box, LGA1155, ohne integrierte Grafik|€195.88
ASRock P67 Pro (B3) Sockel 1155, ATX|€78.54
BitFenix Merc Alpha|€31.57
Shipping|€18.99
Total|€737.55

Not too sure about the mobo and graphics card.

Plus €185 for a Dell 2312.

Plus a keyboard (~€50), but that's a more personal thing I think.

Total is €972. Sure the kids don't have to eat everyday. ;p

Wouldn't go for the P67 boards these days, Z68 if Sandy, Z77 if Ivy. Also, no point in the 2550k ahead of a 2500k/3570k. Graphics card is good, but I think it's worth it to spend an extra 20/30 quid on the 2GB version, 1GB is low these days.

Genghiz Cohen

Skylinehead wrote: »

Wouldn't go for the P67 boards these days, Z68 if Sandy, Z77 if Ivy. Also, no point in the 2550k ahead of a 2500k/3570k. Graphics card is good, but I think it's worth it to spend an extra 20/30 quid on the 2GB version, 1GB is low these days.

I went with the P67 because it's one of the cheaper overclockable boards on HWVS.

2550 gets slightly better benchmarks and is slightly cheaper.

Max Payne pushes my 570 to max memory, so yeah the 2GB version is probably a good call.

Monotype

Does your son go to school/college; i.e., you could avail of a student license for windows.

Here's what I think:

Item|Price
Super-Flower Amazon 80Plus 450W|€40.92
Club 3D Radeon HD 7850 Coolstream Edition, 2GB GDDR5|€212.82
ASRock Z77 Pro4-M, Sockel 1155, mATX|€86.69
Seagate Barracuda 7200 2000GB, SATA 6Gb/s|€100.93
BitFenix Merc Alpha|€31.57
LG GH24NS bare schwarz|€17.63
8GB-Kit G.Skill PC3-10667U CL9|€36.71
Intel Core i5-2500K Box, LGA1155|€197.66
BenQ G2255|€100.98
Good Connections DVI-D 24+1 Anschlusskabel 1m|€4.99
Shipping|€18.99
Windows 7 Student edition|€55
Total|€905

Um... you'll need to fit in a keyboard and mouse too. If you had more money, you could get a 3570K and a better monitor but I cut them to get closer to the budget. I think the 2550K is a stupid processor and I think a Z68/Z77 is worth the extra tenner - but you'd need 3XXX series CPU to avail of all the features. I also think that an overclockable CPU such as the 3570K and 2500K is definitely worth the money with this kind of budget. Alternatively, you could get a cheaper CPU and upgrade later, allowing you to spread funds around to other areas.
'K' means the CPU is overclockable, but you need a higher end motherboard with chipsets P67, Z67 or Z77. Z77 is the newest. Ones beginning with 'H' like H61, H67 and H77 are not for overclocking.

I'd go for the Superflower amazon series over the gamer edition series - 450W is plenty for this. That's a pretty good looking hard drive for the money Genghiz. I thought it would be a green drive when I saw the price. I suppose Seagate's scabby 1 year warranties allow them to push a lower price (I know I've said this loads of times at this stage).
The 7850 1GB is an interesting card but I still wouldn't recommend it without reviews. Pay the extra €20 for 2GB.
I'd prefer the Bitfenix Beta over the Alpha but it's out of stock, so we'll go with the Alpha. Only difference is extra fan holes but there's loads already on the Beta.

These kinds of builds would allow you play any game at very high settings.

Given that you're new to steam, I'll give you a few words of warning advice. Steam is a rip-off most of the year around and you should always shop around for your stuff. Their Summer and Easter sales are good and sometimes the sales throughout the year can be good. Don't be blinded by any of the sales as you can still sometimes get some of the stuff cheaper. However, it's hard to compete when they reduce games to levels like €2.
I'd certainly check other sites for hard copy prices - www.amazon.co.uk or places like zavvi/play.com etc. Check out www.find-games.co.uk for hard copy price comparison. Shipping can vary.
For digital games, one fantastic site I'd keep my eye on is www.gog.com. This is actually run by the same group who made The Witcher. It's mostly older games that they have but they have some newer ones too and are pushing to get more. What makes this site impressive is that all the games are DRM free and you don't have someone controlling your games à la steam. Throughout the year, I'd certainly watch closely for any deals coming up on www.humblebundle.com. There's been some truly excellent games showing up here - they're DRM free and you get steam keys so you get the best of both worlds. Oh yeah, they usually provide copies that will run on linux and mac as well. www.amazon.com are a good place for digital downloads now and again, getting better in the past year. You have to put in an American address though, but since they don't deliver anything there, you can make it up. Many of their titles use steam keys which can be activated on steam and are cheaper than steam themselves - even during sale time. Others are DRM free - they had a load of Ubisoft (who used to have appalling DRM) titles during the year for $5 for two which were DRM free - some big titles only about 2 years old or so and less than €2 each. Greenman gaming has been getting popular with some good deals on offer too, but I haven't used them myself.

Eboggles

That's a massive post...

Monotype

It looks even longer on a netbook. I just hope it gets read and is worthwhile!

RedXIV

Monotype wrote: »

It looks even longer on a netbook. I just hope it gets read and is worthwhile!

It'll get read a few times! Jesus that's an incredible post. Thanks a million for taking the time to do it for me. Really appreciate the dumbed down stuff, feel like I can get to grips with it now.

Yeah the only reason I'm on steam now is for the sale. Will check out the rest of them later as well. Thanks again for epic post for a noob

Genghiz Cohen

Why not the 2550k Mono?

Monotype

The main reason is the lack of integrated graphics. I know you said that you get slightly better results, but I assume that's because there's less of a chip present or functioning - probably Intel's way of shifting duds now that I think of it. This might not seem much of a deal with a system that has a graphics card but it's very handy for troubleshooting or even for reselling. You might move it to a different system later. It makes a bit more sense with a P67 motherboard as you recommended, but for the sake of a tenner's difference between the two components (motherboard + CPU), you get integrated graphics which can be used separately or in hybrid forms, the possibility of SSD caching and a USB 3 header. There's also PCI-E 3 if you use an Ivy Bridge CPU. None of these are great features by themselves, but together they add up and I think that the extra USB 3 ports showing up in Z77 boards will be very useful.

Genghiz Cohen

Would the 450W be enough when OCing?

RedXIV

And with Genghiz Cohen's post in mind, is there a huge price jump from the 2XXX series CPU's to the 3XXX series? This build will be expected to last at least 5 or 6 years so might as well build something that will stand the test of time?

Skylinehead

RedXIV wrote: »

And with Genghiz Cohen's post in mind, is there a huge price jump from the 2XXX series CPU's to the 3XXX series? This build will be expected to last at least 5 or 6 years so might as well build something that will stand the test of time?

20 quid. Well worth it in my opinion, even if the performance difference is minimal - much better integrated graphics, which will improve resale value.

RedXIV

Skylinehead wrote: »

20 quid. Well worth it in my opinion, even if the performance difference is minimal - much better integrated graphics, which will improve resale value.

Can't see it being resold but for 20 quid, you can hardly go wrong can you?

OR is that the start of "I'll just add an extra few quid to each of these to upgrade..."

I suppose I'll always be able to upgrade the parts individually after this anyway?

Skylinehead

RedXIV wrote: »

Can't see it being resold but for 20 quid, you can hardly go wrong can you?

OR is that the start of "I'll just add an extra few quid to each of these to upgrade..."

I suppose I'll always be able to upgrade the parts individually after this anyway?

It's a trap, this business. I started off with a 2500k/7850, it progressed to 3570k/GTX 670/H100 with replacement fans/a motherboard speaker (gimmicky or what :pac:)/mechanical keyboard/modular PSU very quickly!

Eboggles

Skylinehead wrote: »

It's a trap, this business. I started off with a 2500k/7850, it progressed to 3570k/GTX 670/H100 with replacement fans/a motherboard speaker (gimmicky or what :pac:)/mechanical keyboard/modular PSU very quickly!

You have no willpower . I'm still on a 6850 .

Skylinehead

Eboggles wrote: »

You have no willpower . I'm still on a 6850 .

To be fair, my original build had VAT included. When I figured I could get the VAT off, I was hardly going to spend less :pac:

Procrastastudy

The 3570K has a better integrated graphics and PCI-E 3.0 support on a Z77 Mobo there are a couple of very good reasons to go to this build imo.

At the bottom end you get decent integrated graphics performance. Noting thats going to make you go wow but enough to see you though on the odd game here and there.

At the mid range (6870 - 7850) you can use the VirtuMVP to boost your frame rates and stop 'tearing' in games. I *think* the 2500K can do this as well but the iGPU isn't as powerful.

I've also noticed something personally but yet to confirm it with anyone else. In eyefinity you can get green flicking in some games. The iGPU seems to counter act this some how in some games.

A word of warning the VirtuMVP doesn't work with all games but the software is pretty good for turning it off in the ones that don't.

At the top end PCI-E 2.X drops down to x8 per card in SLI / Xfire. True we arent at saturation of PCI-E2.x yet but I'm willing to bet we'll see it pretty soon in SLI/xfire setups. PCI-E 3.0 gives double the bandwidth of PCI-E 2.x so an 8 lane PCI-E 3.0 slot is like a 16 lane PCI-E 2.x slot.

The disadvantages over the 2500K is cost of chip and mobo and it runs hotter when over-clocked due to a stupid design decision. You won't get as high a frequency out of a 3570K but it does run clock for clock faster meaning you don't need to. It also means the 3570K is slightly faster at stock. Not that anyone runs them at stock for very long. I'm very happily sitting here at 4.3Ghz on less than stock voltages.