First Build €1400, Noob needs help

Robert ninja

Ok lads, here's a list I've been working on but it's my first time building so would really like to hear some support. I've not added prices since I'm buying from all over the place and a lot of times it doesn't have Euro as a price and some parts I can only buy from sites with US dollars. My budget is €1400 give or take some shipping fees, and I can't really go over that budget unless it's only a small bit and for something worth it.

CPU: Intel Core i7-3770K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor (using provided cooler)
Motherboard: Asus P8Z77-V PRO ATX LGA1155 Motherboard
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LP 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory OR G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1866 Memory
Storage: Sandisk 64GB 2.5" Solid State Disk OR Samsung SSD 840 Pro 128GB SATA 6Gb/s
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive
Video Card: Sapphire Radeon HD 7950 3GB Video Card
Case: Fractal Design Arc Midi R2 (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case
Power Supply: SeaSonic M12II 850W 80 PLUS Bronze Certified ATX12V / EPS12V

Feel free to modify or even completely re-do this list since I'm not really dead set on anything although I do like I the case and CPU I've picked. I tried using some of the sites that combine all your parts and give you a price (hardwareversand & PCpartpicker) but they both always lack one or two things the other has so meh. Would like opinions on where to buy though, US stores are usually cheaper but unlikely they all ship to this dot on the map.


Budget: €1400 like I said, can't go over it really unless it's for something I'd be a noob to ignore.
Windows: Yep, windows 7 to be exact but can be convinced of 8 since I don't know much about it.
Purpose: Video editing, animation (rendering), modern gaming
Peripherals: Already have monitor etc, though I really have no clue about wireless things (for wireless internet). Wouldn't mind some advice on that.
How soon: No rush, but while I'm young.
Location: Leitrim Aka the west of nowhere ヽ（´ー｀）┌

Tij da feen

Quick note about US prices is that they don't end up cheaper than here as you'll get hit by customs when they get here and will most likely end up more expensive.

Item|Price
Intel Core i7-4770K Box, LGA1150|€319.00
MSI Z87-G43, ATX, Sockel 1150|€104.99
16GB-Kit G.Skill Ares PC3-12800U CL9|€113.34
Samsung SSD 840 Pro 128GB SATA 6Gb/s|€120.74
Seagate Barracuda 7200 1000GB, SATA 6Gb/s|€57.74
FRACTAL DESIGN Gehäuse Arc R2 Midi Tower|€89.92
ASUS HD7950-DC2T-3GD5-V2, AMD Radeon HD 7950, 3GB, PCI-Express|€308.83
be quiet! SYSTEM POWER 7 600W|€67.50
Shipping|€18.99
Total|€1201.05

Here's roughly the same parts that you have selected there but I'd recommend adding a CPU cooler on top of this if you plan on overclocking at all since these Haswell chips run hot. Also can you tell us what the current resolution of your monitor is?

Robert ninja

Of course, how could I forget customs. They dump a huge charge on anything worth more than 50 quid if I remember correctly? Sheesh, thanks a lot for reminding me. That build you showed looks grand to me, might go with that mostly. For the CPU cooler, the one provided isn't enough? I don't understand this stuff very well, are there two coolers I need or something?

As for the monitor... the thing is I'm kind of going to be using 3. One I have no idea what Res, then there's my 1080 TV, then I have a 1600x900 acer that I bought yonks ago but never even opened. I think the one I don't know the Res for is the best though as I got it off my sis' old gaming PC build and I remember it being great for it, will check the specs when I can (it's a bit hard to get to right now).

tuxy

The CPU cooler that come with the CPU will do but you would need something better if you wanted to overclock. Overclocking the new intel CPUs is very easy and very low risk(practically none)
DO you think you will want to overclock, you can expect to get about 30% more performance from the CPU.

The graphics card supports 3 monitors but you may need some adapters depending on what connections the monitors use. Luckly he adapters are inexpensive.

BloodBath

Here's a build similar to what I knocked up for someone else with similar requirements to your own.

Just changed yours a little since you don't need the monitor and changed to sli 660's.

Item|Price
Intel Core i7-4770K Box, LGA1150|€319.00
16GB-Kit G.Skill Sniper PC3-14900U CL9-10-9-28|€118.08
MSI Z87-G45 Gaming, ATX, Sockel 1150|€134.99
Samsung SSD 840 120GB SATA 6Gb/s|€81.99
Seagate Barracuda 7200 2000GB, SATA 6Gb/s|€80.84
Thermalright HR-02 Macho Rev.A (BW)|€40.48
Nanoxia Deep Silence One Dark Anthracite, ATX, ohne Netzteil|€94.35
be quiet! SYSTEM POWER 7 700W|€80.13
2 x Gigabyte GeForce GTX 660 Windforce 2X, 2GB GDDR5, 2x DVI, HDMI, DisplayPort|€344.38
MS Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit SB-Version Englisch|€85.04
Shipping|€18.99
Total|€1398.27

Eboggles

BloodBath wrote: »

Here's a build similar to what I knocked up for someone else with similar requirements to your own.

Just changed yours a little since you don't need the monitor and changed to sli 660's.

Item|Price
Intel Core i7-4770K Box, LGA1150|€319.00
16GB-Kit G.Skill Sniper PC3-14900U CL9-10-9-28|€118.08
MSI Z87-G45 Gaming, ATX, Sockel 1150|€134.99
Samsung SSD 840 120GB SATA 6Gb/s|€81.99
Seagate Barracuda 7200 2000GB, SATA 6Gb/s|€80.84
Thermalright HR-02 Macho Rev.A (BW)|€40.48
Nanoxia Deep Silence One Dark Anthracite, ATX, ohne Netzteil|€94.35
be quiet! SYSTEM POWER 7 700W|€80.13
2 x Gigabyte GeForce GTX 660 Windforce 2X, 2GB GDDR5, 2x DVI, HDMI, DisplayPort|€344.38
MS Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit SB-Version Englisch|€85.04
Shipping|€18.99
Total|€1398.27

When getting such a slick motherboard along with some stylish RAM, would it not make more sense just to pony up an extra 2x€20 and get the ASUS 660s? There's nothing worse than having your nice black / red build ruined by an awful turquoise PCB (I'm looking at you, Sapphire!).

BloodBath

You could I guess. I was just trying to stay in budget.

-edit-

It's €30 extra per card and they are lower clocked.

Robert ninja

Wait, are you guys talking about the colours of things? Because I really don't care what the inside looks like, I'm not rich enough to care.

As for the parts, would it be wise to mix and match from the two proposed builds here, as well as the original one I conjured?

BloodBath

It depends on what you are mixing up.

Tea_Bag

thread of the day in the B&U forum!

hello boards! we help you make cheap computers that are better than dell/alienware/everyone. friendly too

Tea_Bag

why not go for a single 7970??

beerfart

Heres why

http://lanoc.org/review/video-cards/5953-nvidia-gtx-660-sli-performance?start=1

tuxy

Tea_Bag since you run a multi GPU nvidia setup maybe you could give some positives and negatives of your experience.

Looking at frame rate graphs gtx 660 sli > gtx 780
But I know it's not that simple

Tea_Bag

660SLI will rock no doubt, but at 1080p (if the monitor is even that), anything above 60 is wasted anyway. the 660's however will continue to depreciate, especially with 700 series out now. when you want to upgrade, you have to sell both and replace. high cost, nuance to resell. if you had bought a 7970 at the start, you'd have a few more options left over to CF or sell/upgrade. it also holds value well as its a flagship

then there's the potential SLI driver problems. Ive been running CF and SLI rigs for a while now, and ive never had a real problem with anything, but i do know of others who had to manually disable CF/SLI to get a game to run.

Ive no problem recommending dual GPU rigs, but only when you've a good reason to. Ive also learnt the leason of buying 2x middle tier GPU's and having to upgrade later

beerfart

I think it will work out cheaper. 344 euro for two 660's which will greatly outperform a single 7950 for around the 280 mark. I'm sure the 660 Sli will be good for at least two or three years or more and surely the GTX 700's will have come down in price and could get two for for the 350 mark or so two or three years down the line. I was reading SLI is much better than crossfire. It works out better in the end i'd say for a better gaming expierence

Tea_Bag

beerfart wrote: »

I think it will work out cheaper. 344 euro for two 660's which will greatly outperform a single 7950 for around the 280 mark. I'm sure the 660 Sli will be good for at least two or three years or more and surely the GTX 700's will have come down in price and could get two for for the 350 mark or so two or three years down the line. I was reading SLI is much better than crossfire. It works out better in the end i'd say for a better gaming expierence

Ok how about this:

660Ti SLI is around 15% faster than a 7970. if you OC'd the 7970 a little you'd narrow that to ~5%.

i'd put money on it that the 7970 will last at least as long, if not longer, than the SLI in gaming quality. support for the SLI config's will drop off, but the 7970 will be supported for some time longer. Sure AMD isnt even releasing anything else this year!

at the end of its life, the 7970 will still be worth more than the 660's (cause who'd buy a pair of middle tier EOL cards)

BloodBath

Tea_Bag wrote: »

660SLI will rock no doubt, but at 1080p (if the monitor is even that), anything above 60 is wasted anyway. the 660's however will continue to depreciate, especially with 700 series out now. when you want to upgrade, you have to sell both and replace. high cost, nuance to resell. if you had bought a 7970 at the start, you'd have a few more options left over to CF or sell/upgrade. it also holds value well as its a flagship

then there's the potential SLI driver problems. Ive been running CF and SLI rigs for a while now, and ive never had a real problem with anything, but i do know of others who had to manually disable CF/SLI to get a game to run.

Ive no problem recommending dual GPU rigs, but only when you've a good reason to. Ive also learnt the leason of buying 2x middle tier GPU's and having to upgrade later

That makes no sense at all. The 660's will depreciate a lot less than anything from the 700 series. As has been pointed out already if you are going multi gpu you should go sli so a 7970 now and later should not be an option. Until I see frame latency tests showing crossfire to not be **** I will never recommend it.

660Ti SLI is around 15% faster than a 7970. if you OC'd the 7970 a little you'd narrow that to ~5%.

It's more like 30% and the 660's can be overclocked too.

i'd put money on it that the 7970 will last at least as long, if not longer, than the SLI in gaming quality. support for the SLI config's will drop off, but the 7970 will be supported for some time longer. Sure AMD isnt even releasing anything else this year!

at the end of its life, the 7970 will still be worth more than the 660's (cause who'd buy a pair of middle tier EOL cards)

No it won't.

Tea_Bag

I really have never had a problem with AMD's CF. i ran a 6950CF rig for some time, and ran it at 1080p and 1440p and i racked up a few hundred hours fps with them. I have 0 problems recommending them again. ive friends running 7770CF, 6970CF, 7870CF and a 7970CF. no complaints.

look, im basing my argument on future proofing alone. stick to Nvidia, it doesnt matter, buy get the single best card you can afford.

tuxy

I think bloodbaths point is that with 660 sli(about €170 per card) you are looking at performance(at least on paper) comparable to a single 780(€650), that's over €300 saving right away. Sure it limits you in other ways but that kind of upfront saving is difficult to ignore.

It will depend on many factors and I still don't think multi GPU is for everyone.

BloodBath

It's good to hear from people actually running CF and SLI but the tests don't lie and CF is just horrible in a few games. It may have been improved with drivers recently but I haven't seen any tests to confirm this.

660's are one of the only Nvidia cards that are priced in accordance with performance compared to Amd cards so there's good value there.

The simple facts are sli scales and performs better than crossfire. 2 x 660's will outperform a 680 or 7970 by quite a bit. You won't have to upgrade as soon as you would with either of those cards. They will depreciate less.

Gumbi

Indeed, it is fairly uplifting to hear it,

Slutmonkey57b

What's the point in advocating overclocking, then recommending a €300 cpu to do it with? Surely overclocking is "buy cheap and fiddle"?

For the multi-gpu crowd, how well do those setups work on the op's non-gaming use scenarios? What apps is he using for animation, and what is driver support like for that?

Furthermore, he's planning on using 3 screens all apparently with different resolutions/refresh rates. Isn't that a bit mad? Isn't eyefinity miles better than nvidia's implementation?

BloodBath

That €300 cpu is the cheapest latest gen i5 that will overclock. The only processor that is better value is amd's 8320 but it won't have as much performance. In multi thread it's not far off though once overclocked. For gaming it lags behind a bit. It also uses about twice the power when overclocked.

You could save €200 there if you wanted though.

Usually if the software supports cuda it benefits a fair bit up to a certain point then falls off. I don't know if it can make use of both cards. There is very little difference in the boost between a cheap 650ti and a 680gtx from what I've seen. I guess it depends on exactly what software and version.

Nvidia's multi display is just as good at this stage afaik.

marco_polo

Mix and matching independent monitors is fine for normal desktop work, its only an issue you were looking to game across all three screen at once.

Slutmonkey57b

BloodBath wrote: »

That €300 cpu is the cheapest latest gen i5 that will overclock. The only processor that is better value is amd's 8320 but it won't have as much performance. In multi thread it's not far off though once overclocked. For gaming it lags behind a bit. It also uses about twice the power when overclocked.

You could save €200 there if you wanted though.

Usually if the software supports cuda it benefits a fair bit up to a certain point then falls off. I don't know if it can make use of both cards. There is very little difference in the boost between a cheap 650ti and a 680gtx from what I've seen. I guess it depends on exactly what software and version.

Nvidia's multi display is just as good at this stage afaik.

Haswell isn't a massive step up in CPU power from Ivy Bridge, though. Why not split the difference and go for a ~200 Ivy or sandy bridge, then overclock for the ~15-20% performance gap?

While benchmarks for multi-gpu are fairly well established for gaming, I'm not aware of a lot of effort that's gone into benchmarking those solutions for professional apps like editing or rendering. And given that a large proportion of the benefits of multi-gpu require driver-level awareness, I'd be hesitent to make recommendations.

BloodBath

It's a 4770k not a 4670k. It can handle 8 threads. The ivy equivalent 3770k is cheaper but by only around €20.

As I've pointed out already gpu acceleration in most of the programs I've seen don't benefit much from high end cards over mid range ones so it doesn't matter if it doesn't use both cards.

Slutmonkey57b

Sure it does. If you're paying for two mid-range cards, and it's not using the second one, you're wasting money!

BloodBath

That would be true if he wasn't also using the pc for gaming. The card's offer better price/performance than a single high end card and if those programs don't perform much better with a single high end card vs 2 low end ones then what use is it?

indough

which programs is the op using?

Robert ninja

marco_polo wrote: »

Mix and matching independent monitors is fine for normal desktop work, its only an issue you were looking to game across all three screen at once.

I'm not using all monitors for gaming - I'll be using my Samsung 32" HD TV (1080p) for gaming, unless that's not a good idea?

indough wrote: »

which programs is the op using?

I've been out of work and without a PC for so long that I don't even know what the latest programs are called but essentially I'll be using 3D modelling programs, latest photo editing like Photoshop and whatever the latest FLASH animation programs are called. There's other programs I'll be using but nothing special and nothing that needs a high end PC for.

Moving on from that, lads - I've been reading your discussions on what graphics card(s) I should be buying and there isn't much closure on that. I've heard you mentioning it would be cheaper and just as good if I bought 2 older type graphics cards and did 'crossfire', correct? I was hoping to keep my build simple enough. But there's a lot of debate in here about what I should be doing and I got to say I'm a little overwhelmed and unable to make a judgement because I don't understand most of what you're arguing about.

tuxy

What people were talking about was getting 2 cheaper cards rather than 1 expensive card. These can be linked together in SLI (Nvidia version of AMDs crossfire) . This can get you more performance for your money. However there is more setup involved for this and not every game will support it ( although most major releases will)

To keep think simple you could just go for 1 powerful card. I recommend Nvidia as they have better support in Video edditing apps right now compared to AMD (although this is changing)

So my advice would be go with Bloodbaths build which is good but replace the 2x gtx 660 with one of these

http://www.hardwareversand.de/2048MB/64931/Gigabyte+GeForce+GTX+660Ti+OC%2C+2GB+GDDR5%2C+2x+DVI%2C+HDMI%2C+DisplayPort.article

Or if the Gtx 670 is not much more expensive over there go for that.

You will be happy with it, high settings 1080p on all the latest games out right now and for ones to be released for quite some time into the future.


BTW a single large TV is good for gaming just once you are not sitting too close to it

Robert ninja

Thanks for clearing that up, tuxy. I think I'll take your advice and go with Bloodbath's build minus the graphics card.

Two things, however. Out of the motherboards proposed by Tij da feen and Bloodbath, which one should I get? From what I can tell, they're both fairly similar aside from colour scheme.

The proposed motherboards: http://www.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=79686&agid=2241 and http://www.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=79672&agid=2241

And lastly, from the cases in both proposed builds, which would be better?
http://www.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=77677&agid=631
http://www.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=68207&agid=631

Slutmonkey57b

Generally speaking, there's not a lot of differentiation between motherboards at the ~€100 level, it's really about build quality (unlikely to go wrong with Asus, gigabyte or asrock) and bios layout (only important if you like to overclock). You have to start spending much more money if you want to worry about what board a has over board b. The only thing you do have to look out for is sli support, not all boards have it.

BloodBath

Msi has a new Uefi and it's pretty nice. The boards have been getting solid reviews as well. Someone has a 4.8ghz overclock on Haswell using that g45. No point paying for the g45 though unless you are going dual cards. You are paying extra for that feature.