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Help deciding €800-€1000 Rig

  • 19-03-2014 4:24pm
    #1
    YGKing
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 12 ✭


    Hi there all,

    So I've been researching PC components for the guts of a year now, tempting myself with the prospect of buying/building a new desktop the whole while. I picked parts for a friend and helped with the build process, so I do have some experience.

    I came into a bit of money a few months back, and have been trying to avoid spending it frugally. I am however approaching breaking point as far as my will goes. Ideally, I'd like to keep my budget under 1000euro, the lower the better. What I'd like is bang for buck, which unfortunately is against my usual instinct to buy premium quality.

    I bought myself a laptop with sizeable gaming performance about a year and a half ago. My old laptop was on its last legs and it was either spend ~1000euro on a good laptop that could do me for work and handle gaming at a decent level or spend that a desktop which I wouldn't be able to take to college/work with me. I settled for the laptop. Since then, I received a Surface 2 tablet for a birthday/Xmas which has effectively replaced my laptop as a college mobile workstation. During the last month or so I have been heavily contemplating selling the laptop and building a desktop.

    So after that wall of text, here follows my summary of what I'd like from a gamingrig.

    Firstly and foremost, I would like to have something that gives a significantenough performance upgrade from my laptop. The specs of which are below;


    3rd gen Intel Core i5-3320M processor (2.60GHz/3.30GHz)
    NVIDIA GeForce GTX 640M LE (2gb) hybrid graphics
    12gb ram
    500gb HDD


    I currently use my laptop primarily for 1920x1080p gaming on a 23" screen. The titles I play mostly at the moment are WoW, Diablo 3, the Witcher 2, Wildstar (beta), Hearthstone, Skyrim and Guild Wars 2. I get <30fps on nearly all of these at medium-high graphics, my GPU is nearly always totally 100% maxed out and runs at 60-75C. The laptop fan is also extremely loud and distracting. I hope to play games such as the Witcher 3 and Dark Souls 2 in coming months/year.


    I have two builds in my mind. The first is more aimed at getting maximum performance vs budget and comes in at €830 (amazon prices). The second one is catering to my love of premium products that I know will last (and look snazzy to boot!), but I'm finding it difficult to justify it to myself.


    Here's the first.
    CPU: AMD FX-8320 3.5GHz 8-Core Processor (£105.59 @ Aria PC)
    Motherboard: Asus M5A99X EVO R2.0 ATX AM3+ Motherboard (£89.98 @ Amazon UK)
    Memory: Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£63.49 @ CCL Computers)
    Storage: Samsung 840 EVO 250GB 2.5" Solid State Disk (£99.99 @ Amazon UK)
    Video Card: Asus GeForce GTX 760 2GB Video Card (£186.98 @ Dabs)
    Case: Corsair 200R ATX Mid Tower Case (£45.90 @ Amazon UK) Power
    Supply: Corsair CX 600W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply (£53.28 @ Amazon UK)
    Total: £645.21 (Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.) (Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-03-19 15:53 GMT+0000)


    And the second;
    CPU: Intel Core i5-4670K 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor (£161.99 @ Aria PC)
    CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler (£25.45 @ Scan.co.uk)
    Motherboard: Asus Maximus VI Hero ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (£146.98 @ Ebuyer)
    Memory: Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£63.49 @ CCL Computers)
    Storage: Samsung 840 EVO 250GB 2.5" Solid State Disk (£99.99 @ Amazon UK)
    Video Card: Asus GeForce GTX 760 2GB Video Card (£186.98 @ Dabs)
    Case: Fractal Design Define R4 (Black Pearl) ATX Mid Tower Case (£76.99 @ Amazon UK)
    Power Supply: Corsair CX 500W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply (£45.98 @ Amazon UK)
    Total: £807.85 (Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.) (Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-03-19 16:06 GMT+0000)


    I have a few preferences as far as hardware goes. I'm quite fond of Asus, I like their feature set on their Mobos. I don't really want to downgrade from an SSD in either of the above builds as I'd rather avoid the hassle of migrating my system in future, and would rather work with a more limited capacity while I wait till I have some more cash for another HDD. I'd like to keep a gtx 760 or equivalent as the minimum for graphics.


    In both cases, I would be overclocking down the line. I have it in my mind that I would upgrade the stock cooler in case 1 when I have a bit more spare cash or if I feel I need to push the performance sooner than planned or if the thing is too bloody loud.


    So what I'd really like help with is understanding just what the difference between these two potential setups is. To my knowledge and understanding, in case 1 vs case 2 I am effectively saving ~€200 euro by reducing the overall quality of the components (mobo and case in particular) as well as the silence of the machine, and a (considerable?) dip in processing power (a lot of games I currently play benefit from Intel vs AMD (Skyrim/Wow etc), but I like the idea of AMD hyperthreading being increasingly more useful in the real world). Case 2 is my ideal build (minus perhaps a gtx 770, but I feel that would be pushing the budget too far). I feel it maximises component longevity and silence which are both important to me, but does that improvement in component quality increase the lifespan/future-proofing/OC-potential enough to warrant the extra €200?

    Many thanks to all of you that bothered reading through this gargantuan opening post.


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