Spec gaming build £500

 
 
YOUR BASKET
1 x MSI GeForce GTX 660 OC Twin Frozr 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £167.99
1 x Gigabyte Z77-D3H Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £83.99
1 x Kingston HyperX 3K SSD 120GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Drive (SH103S3/120G) £64.99
1 x Antec P280 Super Midi Tower Case - Gun Metal Black £64.99
1 x Corsair Enthusiast Series TX550M High Performance 550W '80 Plus Bronze' Modular Power Supply (CP-9020001-UK) £59.99
1 x Intel Pentium G850 2.90GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £50.39
1 x GeIL Black Dragon 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (GD38GB1600C11DC) £23.99
Total : £516.32 (includes shipping : FREE).



The G850 has plenty of poke for the price. It's cheap enough that you can "justify" writing it off for a 2nd hand i5K down the road and overclock it. Few games currently use quad cores effectively, so spending less on the CPU now means you can get a better base to build on later.

The MSI G43 has no voltage adjustment so I would favour this Z77-D3H mobo. The 660 GPU has cuda support to assist the CPU with other software suites (adobe, video encoding/editing) as well as HDAO lighting and PhysX support for games like Borderlands or Batman.

PSU is modular, keeps the inside nice and tidy and improves airflow. Case is very nice and a bargain, there are slightly cheaper alternatives. Managed to get an SSD in the spec and the Geil RAM can overclock quite well and is good value whilst on offer.

Hope this helps
 
honosuseri said:
YOUR BASKET
1 x MSI GeForce GTX 660 OC Twin Frozr 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £167.99
1 x Gigabyte Z77-D3H Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £83.99
1 x Kingston HyperX 3K SSD 120GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Drive (SH103S3/120G) £64.99
1 x Antec P280 Super Midi Tower Case - Gun Metal Black £64.99
1 x Corsair Enthusiast Series TX550M High Performance 550W '80 Plus Bronze' Modular Power Supply (CP-9020001-UK) £59.99
1 x Intel Pentium G850 2.90GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £50.39
1 x GeIL Black Dragon 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (GD38GB1600C11DC) £23.99
Total : £516.32 (includes shipping : FREE).

Click to expand...

Brilliant. I was trying to fit in some of those pieces, but i wasn't sure how cheap you could go with the CPU.
 

The 660 is a better GPU obviously and also has the extra benefits I mentioned earlier over the AMD GPUs. If you search on youtube you can find a few rigs using the G850 and even more budget orientated GPUs but still giving console performance a kicking.

The i3 is often what most people would suggest. It is better but also twice the price. If you are clever with your money and keep an upgrade path in mind you can do pretty well on a £500 budget. The case you want to last for ages really and a good PSU will be with him for years as well with their long warranties.

I could have used the i3 and dropped the SSD I suppose, that's also an option and adding a SSD later is arguably easier.
 
Quick question Hono why did you link that video when it uses a 6870 and we are all reccomending 7850's / 660's etc. Or is it because it uses a Pentium CPU?
 
That mission is awesome.............Shhhhh your mouths lol

It's to show/prove the CPU is gaming capable and people always bitch about BF3 needing a quadcore, that dual cores aren't good enough. Yes the system had a 6870 but I already said the 660 is a better GPU.

He is stating 40-60FPS which lets be honest is acceptable with a lesser GPU. That system is on par with my HTPC (555BE @4.1Ghz with a 460) which I still think is "ok". I'm not quite ready to invest in replacing the GPU just yet, or the CPU to be honest. I can believe his claimed results are true.

I clearly spec'd a 660 over the 7850 and pointed out why i prefer to use nvidia tech and how it helped boost the humble pentium CPU. It might lose quicksync support over the i3 but CUDA can help the G850 instead.
 
YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-3570K 3.40GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £184.99
1 x MSI GeForce GTX 660 OC Twin Frozr 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £167.99
1 x Gigabyte Z77-DS3H Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £75.98
1 x Zalman Z9 Plus Tower Case with Fan Controller - Black £54.98
1 x OCZ CoreXtreme 500w '80 Plus' Power Supply £32.99
1 x GeIL Black Dragon 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (GD38GB1600C11DC) £23.99
Total : £540.92 (includes shipping : FREE).



A bit over, but this is a proper gaming build and I think its worth spending extra..

There is nothing wrong with PSU apart from it not being modular, but with zalman case you can tie all unwanted cables behind mobo.
 
Lazder said:
YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-3570K 3.40GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £184.99
1 x MSI GeForce GTX 660 OC Twin Frozr 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £167.99
1 x Gigabyte Z77-DS3H Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £75.98
1 x Zalman Z9 Plus Tower Case with Fan Controller - Black £54.98
1 x OCZ CoreXtreme 500w '80 Plus' Power Supply £32.99
1 x GeIL Black Dragon 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (GD38GB1600C11DC) £23.99
Total : £540.92 (includes shipping : FREE).



A bit over, but this is a proper gaming build and I think its worth spending extra..

There is nothing wrong with PSU apart from it not being modular, but with zalman case you can tie all unwanted cables behind mobo.
Click to expand...

I have a Z9 case. There isnt much room between the mobo tray and the back panel. I am very glad I used a modular PSU with it, I can struggle to slide the side panel on to be honest. Had I needed to hide all the extra cables they would have to sit in the HDD bay and frankly block the front air intake pretty badly. Bacon has the case too, I'm sure he would echo my thoughts on cable management from his experience with it.

EDIT

The offers change tomoz anyway so these specs are only to give a rough idea of how to proceed. If he wants the i5K, I would do this but it's getting nearer to £600. Of course now we argue that an aftermarket heatsink would be wise to overclock it which is further expense ;)

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-3570K 3.40GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £184.99
1 x MSI GeForce GTX 660 OC Twin Frozr 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £167.99
1 x Gigabyte Z77-D3H Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £83.99
1 x PC Power & Cooling Silencer Mk III Series 500W '80 Plus Bronze' Modular Power Supply - White £59.99
1 x BitFenix Shinobi USB3.0 Gaming Case - White/Blue £39.98
1 x GeIL Black Dragon 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (GD38GB1600C11DC) £23.99
Total : £560.93 (includes shipping : FREE).

 
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