Review first build specs

tomselleck101

Hello! This is my first build and I was hoping somebody could give it a quick review.

I'm not really interested in getting an SSD or a fancy case. The only that I really wanted was a PCI 3.0 compatible board with the option of getting a second card when the price drops.

€1200 was my target for maximum price.

Any suggestions / alterations are welcome.
Item|Price
Asus GeForce GTX 770 1058MHz 2GB PCI-Express 3.0 HDMI DirectCU II|€390.31
Asus Intel 4th Gen Gamer Bundle (Includes Z87-PRO, Core i7-4770K & 8GB Vengeance Pro Memory)|€593.59
Corsair 600W Builder Series CX Series CX 80+ Bronze ATX Power Supply|€61.00
Toshiba 1TB SATA 6GB/s 32MB 7200RPM 3.5" Hard Drive|€57.62
Best Value 999 Modded Case with USB 3.0 & Fan Control Red Fans|€32.69
Shipping|Free!
Total|€1,135.21

1. What is your budget? < €1200 would be nice

2. What will be the main purpose of the computer? Gaming, Rome 2 total war at the moment

3. Do you need a copy of Windows? Nope

4. Can you use any parts from an old computer? Just the DVD drive I think, it's a Dell from 2005 so the case is probably useless

5. Do you need a monitor? Not right now

5b. If no, what resolution is your current monitor and do you plan to upgrade in the near future? 1280 x 720, Haven't decided on upgrade yet

6. Do you need any of these peripherals? Nope

7. Are you willing to try overclocking? Yep

8. When are you purchasing? ASAP

Tij da feen

Item|Price
Intel Core i5-4670K Box, LGA1150|€205.95
ASRock Z87 Extreme3, Sockel 1150, ATX|€112.34
8GB G.Skill PC3-12800U CL11-11-11-28|€66.50
MSI N770 Twinfrozr 2GD5/OC, 2GB DDR5|€346.42
be quiet! SYSTEM POWER 7 700W - bulk -|€80.60
Nanoxia Deep Silence One Dark Black, ATX, ohne Netzteil|€94.19
WD Caviar Blue 1TB 6Gb's|€53.74
Samsung SSD 840 EVO Basic 120GB SATA 6Gb/s|€92.07
Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO - Intel/AMD|€29.22
Shipping|€18.99
Total|€1100.02


This is my 2 cents. Downgraded from an i7 to an i5 as the marginal performance increase, imo, is not worth the bones of 100 quid.

I also went ahead and put in an SSD as it's crazy to spend this much on a PC and not get one.

Also put a decent case in as this will be important for temperatures, especially if you plan on putting a second 770 in there at some point.

Look at a monitor upgrade soon as well since at that resolution a computer that costs half as much as this could run games on full settings.

raymix

I am really sceptical on your choice of GPU, there are much better price-performance GPUs out there that would make more sense, like 670/7950/7970, especially with all the crazy deals going on overclockers and similar websites.

And you might want to actually consider upgrading to a proper monitor considering the money you are going to spend. A single 650 ti boost would easily hold 720p on ultra and cost 3 times less.

Also check out Aerocool VS-92 (comes in black or white) case, much better cooling and has cable management. This is much better choice if you are trying to save on PC case. White case comes with tinted glass door, ordered one yesterday myself.

SSD is pretty much a must atm. Take a look at Samsung 840 EVO series, they have premium speeds at low costs. Kingston V300 are also very fast and affordable.

For HDD, i'd suggest looking at Baracuda 7200.14 or WD Caviar blue. I can't find benchies atm, but afaik Baracuda was tiny bit faster. Newer WD Green 2-3TB drives also has very descent speeds despite being only 5k rpm.

For CPU, if you are thinking of playing Strategy games or simulators, stick with Intel i5. i7 is an unnecesary overkill, unless you plan to do something extremely productive on your PC in which case you wouldn't probably even be asking for advice.
A Xeon even a server CPU is also very good choice if you don't want to overclock and want those 8 threads (check out e3-1230v2, going cheap atm, will require socket 1155 motherboard).
AMD CPUs will however slash down costs by ... A LOT, at a cost of minor performance drop to a point where it makes no sense, but again - depends on a game... popular choices are 6300, 6350, 8320 and 8350 (will require AM3+ socket motherboard)

For extra fans (if required) aerocool sharks are pretty awesome, but you might want to add a fan control if you use more than 2, more fans = more noise, and case cooling itself has diminishing returns due to ambient room temps... so no point running them all on max speed.

Gumbi

770 for ~400 quid is horrible value. 90% plus of it's performance for 200 pounds (225 euro) HIS 7950 on Overclockers.

Tij da feen

Yeah. I had it in there as a placeholder. Meant to remove it and put in this. It'll be much cheaper to add in a 2nd one down the line then.

tomselleck101

Thanks for the replies, this benchmark site is what is bugging me, CPUs / GPUs, it seems to place a 4770k quite a bit ahead of a 4670k. And the same for a 770 with a 7950.

I was kinda hoping to make the build a tad future proof so I thought getting a 4770k made sense as developers begin to work with more threads...

Edit

Just saw a post bloodbath made about overclocking a 7950 to essentially become 770, which sounds good enough for me

tomselleck101

Alright I'm pretty much settled on the following ( thanks Tij ), I wouldn't mind going up to and slightly over €1000 if anybody has a suggestion (GPU / CPU wise prayhaps?)

Item|Price
ASRock Z87 Extreme3, Sockel 1150, ATX|€105.19
8GB G.Skill PC3-12800U CL11-11-11-28|€63.26
be quiet! SYSTEM POWER 7 700W - bulk -|€75.35
WD Caviar Blue 1TB 6Gb's|€50.61
Samsung SSD 840 EVO Basic 120GB SATA 6Gb/s|€86.69
Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO - Intel/AMD|€27.78
HIS HD 7950 IceQ X² Boost Clock iPower GDDR5 3072MB DVI/HDMI/2xMiniDP|€229.56
Nanoxia Deep Silence One Dark Black, ATX, ohne Netzteil|€94.19
Intel Core i5-4670 Box, LGA1150|€183.26
Shipping|€18.99
Total|€934.88

BloodBath

Change to a 4670k and add a decent cpu cooler. Either the cm 212 evo or the thermalright hr-02 macho.

The standard 4670 can't be overclocked. Well not properly at least.

I'd go for the extreme 4 board as well. It's only €10 more and has 2 extra sata-600, better vrm's and a better audio processor.

tomselleck101

BloodBath wrote: »

Change to a 4670k and add a decent cpu cooler. Either the cm 212 evo or the thermalright hr-02 macho.

The standard 4670 can't be overclocked. Well not properly at least.

I'd go for the extreme 4 board as well. It's only €10 more and has 2 extra sata-600, better vrm's and a better audio processor.

Done! No extreme 4's in stock and delivery time is unknown :[, any other sites selling them for around the same price?

BloodBath

Not that cheap no. It's €140 on Amazon but won't be in stock for a week.

It's not a big deal anyway. I didn't realise it wasn't in stock and that you were ordering straight away

tomselleck101

Went for this in the end, thanks for ya'll help!!

Item|Price
16GB-Kit G.Skill PC3-12800U CL11-11-11-28|€126.84
ASRock Z87 Extreme3, Sockel 1150, ATX|€105.19
be quiet! SYSTEM POWER 7 700W - bulk -|€75.35
HIS HD 7950 IceQ X² Boost Clock iPower GDDR5 3072MB DVI/HDMI/2xMiniDP|€229.56
Intel Core i5-4670K Box, LGA1150|€196.84
Nanoxia Deep Silence One Dark Anthracite, ATX, ohne Netzteil|€90.52
Samsung SSD 840 EVO Basic 120GB SATA 6Gb/s|€86.69
Thermalright HR-02 Macho Rev.A (BW)|€39.46
WD Caviar Blue 1TB 6Gb's|€50.61
Shipping|€18.99
Total|€1020.05

I used a voucher from here to get €20 off.

raymix

tomselleck101 wrote: »

Thanks for the replies, this benchmark site is what is bugging me, CPUs / GPUs, it seems to place a 4770k quite a bit ahead of a 4670k. And the same for a 770 with a 7950.

That website is a good resource, indeed. However, keep in mind that information found there only applies to stock speeds for both CPU and GPU. Once you start overclocking, it's whole different world and numbers. There are websites where people actually compares benchmarks with all kinds of different hardware configurations, the Futuremark website comes first in mind. They use almost all possible configurations you can think of from stock to heavy overclocks, from single GPU to quad SLI, etc.

tomselleck101 wrote: »

I was kinda hoping to make the build a tad future proof so I thought getting a 4770k made sense as developers begin to work with more threads...

There is no such thing as future proof, sorry.

Example: Haswell just came out, big hype and all, around christmas new generation of AMD and Intels coming out, so yeah...

Buying a monitor? 120hz? QHD? 4k? Big wuss, Nvidia G-sync coming out, big thing actually, keeping frames above 60 won't be a requirement. Most of monitors on the market atm won't get upgrade. AMD gonna have to come up with something fast to beat this.

AMD releases Mantle - a low level API that will increase speeds of applications further because of nature of hardware level APIs (such as assembler for example) unless nVidia comes out with similar solution, getting AMD card will be a nobrainer...
.. now the choosing game can begin.

Anyway, the way I see it is - buy what you currently want to satisfy your needs and a budget, later you just follow the tech as it evolves and keep checking benchmarks/comparisons and see if the upgrade is viable for your requirements and budget. Selling replaced component will be much easier since it's not that old and will help with the cost of replacement. Think of your purchase as a deposit that slowly loses its value and the more expensive the item the faster it will lose it.

SterlingArcher

The new build is looking much better, a more solid all around build.

I think you underestimated the value of a good case, keeping temperatures and annoying noise levels down. But you got a good one in the end.

And you will be glad of the SSD. No two ways about it.

Enjoy your rig, game on.

tomselleck101

One last thing! Are there any obvious cables I will need to assemble everything? i.e for fans / power ??

BloodBath

You should be fine. You will get 2 sata cables with the board for the 2 drives. If you add any more drives get more satas.

I just noticed you're using an old 720p monitor. You should really upgrade this now. That pc will be wasted on an old 720p monitor.

You don't need 16gb of ram for gaming. 8 is more than enough.

Either of these should do nicely.

22"

24"

Genghiz Cohen

Everything should be included.

Do run out and pick up a set of those little cable ties, the ones that are like 4 Inches long. Great for tidying cables.