Need some feedback on a build please folks

Viarum

Hi there,

This is my first time building a gaming PC and I'm doing it on a fairly tight budget. My question really is whether the following line up of parts are roughly in line with each other, with no bottlenecks of power etc occurring.

If anyone has any suggestions or tweaks on the build I'd be glad to hear. I'm buying a lot of the stuff from U.S. companies and getting them posted in a box from a friend there. I'd buy the case, power supply, motherboard and processor from the UK.

Gigabyte GA-970A-DS3 AM3+ AMD 970 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard
€59.30

AMD Phenom II X4 965 AM3 3.4Ghz 512KB 45NM 125W 4000MHZ
€92.75

Kingston Technology HyperX 16 GB Kit (4x4 GB Modules) 16 Quad Channel Kit 1600 (PC3 12800) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM KHX1600C9D3K4/16GX
€60.87

MSI Radeon HD 6850 1 GB DDR5 2DVI/ HDMI/DisplayPort PCI-Express Video Card, R6850 CYCLONE PE/OC
€122


OCZ Technology 64GB Vertex 4 Series SATA 6.0 GB/s 2.5-Inch Solid State Drive (SSD) With Industry's Highest 85K IOPS And 5-Year Warranty -VTX4-25SAT3-64G
€65.20


Cooler Master eXtreme Power Plus 500w Power Supply (RS500-PCARD3-US)
€29.40

Cooler Master CM Storm Enforcer
€84.95


Totalling €514.47.


Cheers folks!

Serephucus

RAM is muchos overkill, 8GB would be fine. Get whatever's cheap, makes no difference.
PSU isn't a great brand. Try something like this instead.
Bit much to be spending on a case, have a look at the 200R from Corsair, or the Merc from Bitfenix.
OCZ's SSDs are fairly muck these days. Go with the Crucial M4 or Samsung 830.
You might also want to consider a 7000 series card, unless you can get the 6850 very cheap or something.
Have a look at an Intel build as well. A lot of the time even cheap dual cores will beat AMD quad cores. An i3 3220(?) should fit nicely.

Other than... everything (:P) it looks good!

marco_polo

OCZ SSDs also have developed a terrible rep in the past few years, look for a 64GB Samsung 830 or Crucial M4 if possible.

Also 8Gb Ram would be plenty for a gaming PC. No point dropping an extra €30 on a tight budget for an extra 8Gb of RAM you will likely only need a good few years down the line (If even then).

PSU is fairly meh as well, I'd spend less on the case and a little more on the PSU.

Finally I'd be looking at a something like a HD 7850 instead of a HD6850, preferably a 2GB if you can afford it but the 1GB is fine if not. The only game I know of that exceeds 1Gb VRAM usage @1920X1080. is a fairly heavily modded Skyrim.

Viarum

Thanks for the replies guys, I appreciate it a lot. I've pretty much redone the build since. Would the following set up look pretty solid for a mid range pc? Would there be any scope for a small amount of overclocking on it? Thanks again, the info is really helpful to me!

1) Motherboard
Asus P8Z77-V LX2 Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard [P8Z77-V LX2]
£62.49 ex VAT

2) Processor
Intel Core i3-3220 3.30GHz (Ivy Bridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor
£64.72 exc. VAT

3) GFX Card
GIGABYTE WindForce Radeon HD 7850 OC 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card
£124.16 exc. VAT

4) Hard drive
2TB Western Digital Caviar Green WD20EARX 3.5" SATA III Hard Drive
£59.50 exc. VAT

5) PSU
520W Seasonic M12II-520 80PLUS Bronze Modular Power Supply
£50.99 exc. VAT

6) RAM
8GB (2x4GB) Corsair Vengeance Jet Black Low Profile 1600MHz CL9 DDR3 Dual/Quad Channel Kit [CML8GX3M2A1600C9]
£31.66 exc. VAT

7) Case
Cooler Master CM Storm Enforcer Black Midi Tower Window Gaming Case
£59.99 exc. VAT

£453.51 : €559.82

challengemaster

Overclocking has changed quite a bit in recent years, and moved from changing FSB to changing the multiplier. Intel copped on to it's popularity (=money) and offers specific CPU's which are "unlocked" for overclocking - The K series. If you see a K after the CPU - eg. i5 3570K - it can be overclocked.

They also made it so every CPU that isn't a K series, you can't overclock. Unfortunately for you, there is no K series version of the i3, so there's virtually no scope for overclocking.

Because you can't overclock, you could look at swapping the Asus Z77 board for a ASRock H77, it might be cheaper. Difference is - H77 boards don't allow overclocking. Not an issue without a K series CPU, though.

Apart from that, it looks good.

the_syco

Viarum wrote: »

I'm buying a lot of the stuff from U.S. companies and getting them posted in a box from a friend there.

If it's a nice big box, customs may open it and f**k you over with tax.

Viarum wrote: »

Kingston Technology HyperX 16 GB Kit (4x4 GB Modules) 16 Quad Channel Kit 1600 (PC3 12800) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM KHX1600C9D3K4/16GX

Unless you're using the likes of Photoshop with very large images, 8GB's should do you, esp if you're on a tight budget.

Throw the €30 saved from the RAM into a better SSD. Have a 120GB Corsair Force GT myself.

Serephucus

Yeah, if you're not overclocking (which has been covered above that you can't with that CPU) then a H77 board is best. It gives you everything - RAID, iRST, etc. - of a Z77 board, just not the overclocking support.