€600 Gaming Build Opinions

ThatGuyHughesy · 28-05-2013 10:14pm #1

Hey there, I am hoping to order my build in the next week or so and was hoping for your opinions. If there's anything you would change please let me know.
I don't need an OS and already have an optical drive.
Trying to keep it around the €600 mark.
It'll be used mainly for gaming eg: LOL, TF2, BF3, LFD2 etc....
Thanks!

marco_polo · 29-05-2013 9:32am

The latest versions of the Seagate Barracuda is a good bit better than the WD Blue, and is even slightly cheaper.

If you can spare an extra €17-18 or so I'd bump up the motherboard to the full ATX ASRock 970DE3 and get the better/more efficient SF Amazon 450W PSU, but aside from that all looks good IMO.

ThatGuyHughesy · 29-05-2013 3:57pm

Ye I was a bit iffy about the psu so I'll definitely be changing it now.
Thanks for your input

Monotype · 29-05-2013 4:34pm

marco_polo wrote: »

The latest versions of the Seagate Barracuda is a good bit better than the WD Blue, and is even slightly cheaper.

That review is using a very much out of date WD Blue. Sure the 1TB Green is beating the 1TB blue.

WD10EZEX is the more recent one, and it's been out quite a while too. The Seagate and the WD have much the same overall performance. I've looked at the tests before - one does better in one sequential speed benchmark program, while the other does better with another program. One might have slightly better maximum speeds while the other has an edge with the average. Overall, very little difference between the two so I would go with whoever can offer the better price.
The only thing to watch out for is Seagate's older drives and the ones below 1TB capacity as their warranty is just a single year. At least they've been reasonable enough to increase their main lineups to 2 year warranties again.

marco_polo · 29-05-2013 10:07pm

Monotype wrote: »

That review is using a very much out of date WD Blue. Sure the 1TB Green is beating the 1TB blue.

WD10EZEX is the more recent one, and it's been out quite a while too. The Seagate and the WD have much the same overall performance. I've looked at the tests before - one does better in one sequential speed benchmark program, while the other does better with another program. One might have slightly better maximum speeds while the other has an edge with the average. Overall, very little difference between the two so I would go with whoever can offer the better price.
The only thing to watch out for is Seagate's older drives and the ones below 1TB capacity as their warranty is just a single year. At least they've been reasonable enough to increase their main lineups to 2 year warranties again.

Hmm I see, the WD10EALX is a good bit better alright, TBH I had just assumed that the roundup was using all the latest versions of the respective drives as it was quite recent, dated Dec 2012.

I feel bad for being overly biased towards the Barracuda now in suggested builds, I'll have to over compensate in the WD direction for the next while so.

Monotype · 29-05-2013 11:39pm

WD10EZEX, not WD10EALX, which is older.

To be honest, it's very difficult to keep track of both companies' hard drives.

For example, as far as I see, the 1TB Blue is a much newer revision than the 1TB Black (supposedly WD's top mainstream line), being a single platter drive and actually faster than the black. You'd think you're getting a better drive with the black. In fact, I think even the greens are beating the black drives.

Seagate are desperate for being misleading with their warranties and possibly even worse for having accurate descriptions for what they are selling. Their 7200.14 line (which weren't called that originally, but they seem to have renamed them that in continuation of their previous lines after everyone started calling them that) doesn't have a 500GB hard drive, so when you are buying that, you are actually buying from their 7200.12 series which is much slower and has only 1 year warranty AFAIK.
http://www.seagate.com/gb/en/support/internal-hard-drives/desktop-hard-drives/barracuda/
It would also appear as if the drives below 1TB don't have the 2 year warranty, although their details are so sparse that you'd actually have to buy one to find out and be sure.

Seagate do have the advantage with faster drives for larger capacities, as for some strange reason the blues only go to 1TB.

So in general, I'd go with -
WD for lower capacities; 1TB Blue/1TB Seagate 7200.14 for medium capacity; Seagate for fast high capacity or WD Red for NAS/server/longer warranty.

Alas, the day is gone when we had real choice and competition. I feel that both companies are screwing us over.

Sorry for going off topic ThatGuyHughesy. Let's see if I can contribute anything...
What about this board instead? Similar enough to the Asrock one, but it has a USB 3 header if you ever need any extra USB 3 ports. Also, possibly has better sound.
http://www.hardwareversand.de/DDR3/73366/MSI+760GA-P43+(FX)%2C+Sockel+AM3%2B%2C+ATX%2C+PCIe.article

ThatGuyHughesy · 30-05-2013 12:15am

No problem, was an informative read

Cheers for the contribution, I've always had a bias towards ASRock for mobos but I'm liking the MSI.
8 channel audio and is cheaper, the €3 I save could go towards the GPU

€600 Gaming Build Opinions

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