Any suggestions for this build would be appreciated...

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Hey all, ive never built a PC before and i decided to give it a go and for past couple of weeks have been agonizing over various pieces and reading reviews of components ect to put together a new gaming rig for myself. My old PC is basically an antique on its last legs, im pretty poor but have been saving little bits here and there and hope to have £900-1000 for around Christmas/January. It has to include a decent monitor, mouse, keyboard and headset as all my old peripherals are as crappy as the PC there plugged into. The only salvage i can get from my old rig is the DVD drive as it died recently so the current one is kinda new however i like the idea of a blu ray player/dvd burner its hard getting that into budget. Anyways heres a pic of what im looking at for just a snip over £900 id appreciate any comments or suggestions and would be willing to stretch to £1000 max if people can recommend things that would give a genuine and noticeable boost in performance (games being the key here). Will this rig be able to tear up all the latest games on decent gfx settings? Is the power pack enough? an whats folks opinion of the monitor? Is it worth paying extra for a nicer case? Will this run cool or do i need any more cooling items such as CPU cooler?

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i'd go for one of the 1gb 460's rather than the 768 if you can afford it, and have a look at the 870/880 mobos from asus/gigabyte with usb3 and sata 6gb's.
 
Interesting website you got there, i was under the impression that at the moment pound for pound ATI have the edge any particular 460 you would recommend? one of the things i was considering for the £100 wiggle room i have is the radeon 5850 can nvidea top that bang for buck?

For no logical reason i could explain i have a preference for AMD and ATI :), but am open to rethinking this when its my desperately saved up cash about to be thrown to the wind.
 
Im aware of the 6 series coming out, it will almost certainly happen before i can afford this rig so im not to fussed. I doubt i will be able to afford the super new 6 series whenever it comes out but would be a nice bonus if the 5 series cards drop in price, who knows maybe i would be able to fit a 5870 into my budget when i actually order :)
 
Fair enough but tbh I don't see the point in specing out a rig when you won't be buying it for a few weeks except as a very rough guide to the price you want to pay. Set aside £150ish for the graphics card and decide what to get nearer the time.
 
Well i put together my build because i was gonna go for a finance option but they laugh at my feeble credit rating so now i have to wait, i figure i can have the money for December/January if i focus hard at saving up so till then im pretty obsessively keeping an eye on things and trying to get as much bang for buck as i can. Im gonna mostly be keeping my eyes on weekly/daily offers cause if any of the components im looking at getting have a great deal on a particular week i may snap up a few pieces individually in the mean time. But you are right, for now this is just a sorta guide to what im after and im interested in what people think of it leading up to actually spending my money its all subject to a lil editing in the mean time.
 
i was under the impression that at the moment pound for pound ATI have the edge

That was about right a good few months ago until nvidia turned the tables with the 460. That hasn't stopped 5850 being damn good vfm, but imho 5830 never really was and certainly isn't now with the 460. Of course you can never SLI on an AMD board but most people prefer single card anyway. You could spend a fair bit less on the mobo if you dont allow for future x-fire.
 
As i understand it the motherboard ive chosen cant xfire (thats a feature of 880/890s) and without going for a micro ATX that seems to be about as cheap as i can get from here, any particular mobo your thinking of?

From looking at the website stulid kindly linked the 5850 seems better performance than the 460 for about £20-30 more so i may go that route especially if the 6000 series does indeed drop the 5000 series prices a fair amount.
 
Hey Gantoris :)

Two components that leap out at me straight away . . .


I don't see the appeal of the above Gigabyte board myself, firstly its full ATX which is an older form factor now mainly reserved for people with lots of expansion cards to install or for people who want to have a MultiGPU set-up but the AMD 870 chipset only supports 16x/4x CrossFire which is not ideal? . . . secondly it doesn't have a IGP which is a handy bit of technology that is essentially thrown in for free with the other AMD chipsets? comes in handy when swapping out GPU's before you bought your new one or as a backup if your main GPU becomes faulty, the IGP keeps the show rolling as well as giving the board more scope in the future to become a basic HTPC setup or similar . . .

If Full ATX is important to you then for £2.00 extra you can get this AMD880G board below which offers improved PWM/Mosfet cooling and an IGP:

Asus M4A88TD-V EVO/USB3

£88.99 inc VAT

for £13.00 extra you can step up to a full AMD890GX board offering the same features as the GA-870A-UD3 above but full 8x/8x CrossFire along with better PWM/Mosfet cooling and IGP technology . . .

ASRock 890GX Extreme3

£99.99 inc

If full ATX is not important to you and you don't intend to use more than a single powerful GPU and don't feel like paying extra money out for SATA 6.0 Gb/s & USB 3.0 then the board below offers tremendous bang-for-buck

Asus M4A78LT-M 760G

£48.99 inc


Is it worth paying extra for a nicer case?

Coolermaster Elite 335

£29.99 inc
Yes its definitely "worth paying extra for a nicer case" :D . . . that Coolermaster Elite 335 is really a basic non Thermally Improved chassis which you can ditch from your spec and spend a few pound extra to get any one of these "modern" units below . . . a good Chassis is something you keep for a while so spend the litlle bit extra and get yourself a model which sits the PSU at the lower portion of the case and has a nice blow-hole at the top to expell the heat that rises! :cool:


Coolermaster Elite 370

£32.99 inc

Antec 200 Two Hundred

£34.99 inc

OcUK Medusa Case

£36.99 inc

Silverstone PS02B Precision

£39.99 inc

Coolermaster Elite 430

£41.99 inc

Silverstone SST-PS03B Precision

£42.99 inc

Akasa Freedom Xone

£42.99 inc

Antec 600 Six Hundred

£43.99 inc

Antec 300 Three Hundred

£48.99 inc
 
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Hey wayne thanks for the reply. The appeal of that motherboard was simply it being the cheapest one i could see with the features im after, im not completely committed to a full ATX board as im poor and unlikely to upgrade any time soon and/or get a second gfx card that said tho i didn't want to completely rule out any chance of expansion if circumstances change or i decide to maybe get a TV tuner (likely) card or sound card (unlikely) later. The IGP is not something that is even a factor in my considerations tho you do make some good points there.

If i went microATX what do you think of this one? http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-278-GI&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1782

The Antec 300 is the case i really do want tbh, for the same logic you have said even a few years down the line i could use it to rebuild a new PC so i may yet go for that one.
 
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