Gaming pc build advice.

Steviemoyne

Item|Price
Budget: €600, could be higher by the summer when I plan to build.

Super-Flower Amazon 80Plus 450W | €42.87

ASRock 970 Pro3, AM3+, ATX|€61.94

Windows 7 Home Premium | €81.38

Samsung DVD-RW Drive | €16.93

BitFenix Merc Alpha | €31.91

AMD FX4170 4.2GHz Socket AM3 | €116.36

Hanns.G HL190APB | €83.19

XFX Radeon HD 7850 860M Core Edition, 2GB | €167.63

8GB-Kit Corsair XMS3 PC3-12800U CL9 | €46.94

Total exl shipping|€649.15

Robbed some of this from DaLad. That gfx card is a tasty find, so cheers.
Added in some additions from Marco_polo, much appreciated.

As far as motherboard goes I would like it to be able to handle a maximum of 32mb ram for the possibility of upgrading and be able to take two graphics cards again for the possibility of upgrading.

Fairly sold on going with AMD for processor, and possibly an AMD graphics card too. Been advised to go for an nvidia since my software design course is said to be going down that route in later years, however I would much prefer matching brands with the processor and card and don't want an intel chip if I can avoid it.

Ram again I have been advised (by a lecturer who pre built his machine to run game physics engines to extremes , at my best guess I'd say he's got a €4000+ machine to play with in his office) to get 16gig in 4x4.

And for graphics card suggestions do note I want a HDMI port.

I do note I'm getting close to my budget. I can go over, but would prefer only spending 600.

Any advice very welcome.

BloodBath

No offence but your lecturer probably isn't as clued up as he likes to think he is. Unless he's running a socket 2011 system with a 6 core/12 thread cpu then having that much ram and having 4 sticks of it will do nothing at all.

With your system you won't need that much ram or 4 sticks of it. It won't have any effect on physics performance. Cpu cores and threads are the main thing for that. Your lecturers advice is probably sound if you also have 2-3 grand to spend.

Sarz91

BloodBath wrote: »

No offence but your lecturer probably isn't as clued up as he likes to think he is. Unless he's running a socket 2011 system with a 6 core/12 thread cpu then having that much ram and having 4 sticks of it will do nothing at all.

With your system you won't need that much ram or 4 sticks of it. It won't have any effect on physics performance. Cpu cores and threads are the main thing for that. Your lecturers advice is probably sound if you also have 2-3 grand to spend.

^^
+1

Even with a 6 core/12 thread cpu on a 2011 board 16 gigs won't make a huge difference. I've a few friends working in CAD labs with a few working with 2011 boards and most of them have said that anything over 12 is overkill for CAD intense programs. At the end of the day, most of us here will be using free software which is a scaled down version of the full retail release. In my opinion and from talking to other Mechanical Engineers 8 gigs is well enough. In saying that I might be wrong. The program he's using might need a horrible amount of RAM but I'm just speaking from experience.

Steviemoyne

Well I was just going by what he said. Thought he might know something I don't. By that thinking I might as well just go for 2x8. I wouldn't mind splashing out on the ram a bit, even if I leave one stick sitting where it us for future use with upgrading.

Any suggestions on the missing entries?

marco_polo

Since you need a monitor and windows your budget is effectively around the 420 mark, so 16GB of RAM would take up about 1/5 of an already tight budget.

i think we can do better than a 1366X768 monitor as well

If you fill in this we'll be able to put something decent together.

As an example since you don't need a hard drive you'd be looking at something like this on that sort of budget.

Item|Price
BitFenix Merc Alpha|€31.91
Super-Flower Amazon 80Plus 450W|€42.87
ASRock 970 Pro3, AM3+, ATX|€61.94
8GB-Kit Corsair XMS3 PC3-12800U CL9|€46.94
AMD Phenom II X4 955 Box, Sockel AM3, 125W|€74.09
Sapphire Radeon HD 7850, 2GB GDDR5, lite retail|€163.74
Shipping|€18.99
Total|€440.48

Steviemoyne

Hope this helps. Selections above look nice, I would love to go for a higher clock speed CPU however somwhere around the 4.2Ghz mark., as far as budget goes I'm willing to exceed it on the CPU and graphics card. Going to go ahead and add in the tower, psu, motherboard and ram into the build. Left motherboard blank just in case
Suppose I was living a dream thinking Ram was cheaper than that. 1/5 of my budget is a bit high.

1. What is your budget? [€600+] Staying as close as possible to the €600.

2. What will be the main purpose of the computer? Gaming, Guild Wars 2, Minecraft (tekkit lite), And let's just throw in Skrim as a possibilty too.

3. Do you need a copy of Windows? Yes

4. Can you use any parts from an old computer? Hard Drive, mouse, keyboard, speakers.

5. Do you need a monitor? Yes

5a. If yes, what size do you need. 19" preferably. I plan to use the HDMI connection on the card to hook up to my HDTV as needed.

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

7. Are you willing to try overclocking? No.

8. How can you pay? Paypal, credit card etc...

9. When are you purchasing? Between now and August 30th, in short...no rush.

10. If you need help building it, where are you based? Don't need help with the build.

marco_polo

Its not all about the GHz though as that can't really be used to compare CPUs of different architectures, at 75 euro the 955 BE is a much better gaming CPU than the FX4170, certainly better value and should easily overclock to 3.7 GHz+ which would make it equivelant to the 980 in the reviews below.

http://www.techspot.com/review/608-hitman-absolution-performance-benchmarks/page6.html

http://www.techspot.com/review/642-crysis-3-performance/page6.html

The most important component in a gaming system is the GPU by far. Although since 20 inch and under tend to only go up to about 1600X900 resolutions a HD7770 would suffice over the HD 7850. With that in mind I'd revise to the following which I think is about as good as i can do for 600. Its all very upgradable so nothing to stop you swapping out the CPU and GPU in a few years.

Item|Price
MS Windows 8 64bit (SB-Version) Englisch|€84.90
ASUS VE208T|€107.22
BitFenix Merc Alpha|€31.91
Super-Flower Amazon 80Plus 450W|€42.87
ASRock 970 Pro3, AM3+, ATX|€61.94
8GB-Kit Corsair XMS3 PC3-12800U CL9|€46.94
AMD Phenom II X4 955 Box, Sockel AM3, 125W|€74.09
Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO - Intel/AMD|€28.99
Gigabyte Radeon HD 7770 OC, 1GB GDDR5, PCI-Express|€107.09
Shipping|€18.99
Total|€604.94

In terms of RAM, only the Ultimate editions of windows will support more than 16GB or RAM anyway, which would blow another huge chunk of your budget over the home/pro editions so you have to settle for a long term goal of 16GB which is loads for pretty much any conceivable desktop task anyway.

Steviemoyne

Above build looks great. Will go with that. 604 incl shipping is an excellent price so thanks for that. Plus 16.93 for a dvd drive, which will probably come along somewhere a lot cheaper if I look around.

So thanks Marco I'm in better shape then when I started putting a shopping list together, that's for sure.

Crunkussion

Well since the order is over €500 you can in the code V4XUF4HN3R at the coupon screen to get €10 off when you order, so that DVD drive would really only end up costing you €6.93

Steviemoyne

Crunkussion wrote: »

Well since the order is over €500 you can in the code V4XUF4HN3R at the coupon screen to get €10 off when you order, so that DVD drive would really only end up costing you €6.93

Cheers for that, I'll be doing as much penny pinching as I can...possibly throw a little more at the build then.