Final suggestions for a £1200 gaming PC

[MumboJumbo]

with £1200 you can get a phenomenal gaming rig that will last you ages.

to fit it in the £1200 budget i had to get a much cheaper case. i picked the HAF912 because its a great case, and its kinda similar to the HAF X

YOUR BASKET
2 x Asus ATI Radeon HD 6950 OC 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £209.99
1 x Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - OEM £161.99
1 x MSI P67A-GD53 Intel P67 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard - (Sandybridge) ** B3 REVISION ** £109.99
1 x Crucial RealSSD M4 64GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive £99.98
1 x Pioneer BDR-205 12x BluRay RW / 16x DVD±RW Drive - Black (OEM) £99.98
1 x Antec TruePower New Modular 750W Power Supply £89.99
1 x Coolermaster HAF 912 Plus Case - Black £55.98
1 x Corsair Hydro H50-1 High-Performance CPU Watercooler (Socket LGA775/1155/1156/1366/AM2/AM3) £54.98
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (ST31000528AS) £42.98
1 x Corsair XMS3 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMX4GX3M2A1600C9) £35.99
Total : £1,171.85 (includes shipping : FREE).

not quite sure how ive got free shipping, but it would probably be around £20-£25 for this lot

Why would you buy the Antec 750w true power? That makes no sense at the price it's being sold at the xfx core 850w is substantially better and cheaper. Antec psu's are nothing special unless on a tight budget.

480GTX > 6950. Granted the 6950 is less powerhungry though so that does make it desirable when doing sli/crossfire.

Personally would stretch up to the MSI P67A-GD65. I run one and they are good boards.

As i've stated before 64gb ssd really does not go far at all. Can't see the point in getting an ssd which pretty much just lets you boot up 30 seconds faster as put the OS and 3/4 games on it and it's full. Or 3 games and some apps like chrome etc. Might not even hold that.

As stated before, personally would stick to air cooling for a sandy bridge as you just don't need the water cooling nor the extra hassle.

At 1.2k personally I'd get 8gb just because it's hardly much more and you just might as well have it. In my opinion, obviously not a necessity.

 

[Reaper 392]

Why would you buy the Antec 750w true power? That makes no sense at the price it's being sold at the xfx core 850w is substantially better and cheaper. Antec psu's are nothing special unless on a tight budget.

its definitely better, but its about £30 more than the antec. i would have gone for the xfx 750W, but it was out of stock

480GTX > 6950. Granted the 6950 is less powerhungry though so that does make it desirable when doing sli/crossfire.

went for the 6950 for that reason entirely. you would need a 900W PSU for those cards in SLI, and there simply wasnt room for that in the budget. also, the 6950 'flashed' is pretty darned close to the 480

Personally would stretch up to the MSI P67A-GD65. I run one and they are good boards.

i have no experience with these boards, but i couldnt justify the extra cost of the 65 over the 53 from what i knew: http://www.overclock.net/intel-motherboards/916189-official-intel-p67-sandy-bridge-motherboard.html

As i've stated before 64gb ssd really does not go far at all. Can't see the point in getting an ssd which pretty much just lets you boot up 30 seconds faster as put the OS and 3/4 games on it and it's full. Or 3 games and some apps like chrome etc. Might not even hold that.

agree with you there 100% this is the area i would spend more money on if there was more available

As stated before, personally would stick to air cooling for a sandy bridge as you just don't need the water cooling nor the extra hassle.

now you come to mention it...
gelid tranquilo would be a much more sensible option

At 1.2k personally I'd get 8gb just because it's hardly much more and you just might as well have it. In my opinion, obviously not a necessity.

why? the OP said he would be gaming. no games on the market will use up 4GB of ram, so why spend money on something that will go completely unused for over a year. replacing RAM is also extremely simple, so if he finds he does need more ram in a couple of years, then it will almost certainly be a lot cheaper to do it then

 

[MumboJumbo]

its definitely better, but its about £30 more than the antec. i would have gone for the xfx 750W, but it was out of stock

I believe you are talking black edition. I'm talking core edition. It's like £80. Absolute bargain but it's not modular so need to do cable management and not have a tiny case.

went for the 6950 for that reason entirely. you would need a 900W PSU for those cards in SLI, and there simply wasnt room for that in the budget. also, the 6950 'flashed' is pretty darned close to the 480

True true.

i have no experience with these boards, but i couldnt justify the extra cost of the 65 over the 53 from what i knew: http://www.overclock.net/intel-motherboards/916189-official-intel-p67-sandy-bridge-motherboard.html

OCUK has never been good at pricing mobos . It's not that big of a difference else where. Having said that the P67A-GD53 is still a great board, MSI have done really well this round of mobo's. I just rather spend the bit extra personally, the P67A-GD53 doesn't have as good heat sinks etc. Not really a biggy though.

agree with you there 100% this is the area i would spend more money on if there was more available

It really is quite disappointing that SSD's are taking so long to come down in price because the tech just keeps going forward and new things cost more. I thought by this time I'd be able to pick up a 120gb for £100 but it appears not even close!

now you come to mention it...
gelid tranquilo would be a much more sensible option

I only recently noticed these. They do look pretty good, though I'm not sure of how they compare to thermalrights offerings. I have a titan frio and with the fans on low I'm still not hitting over 60 degrees at 4.5GHZ on a 2500k, dead quiet too as a result.

why? the OP said he would be gaming. no games on the market will use up 4GB of ram, so why spend money on something that will go completely unused for over a year. replacing RAM is also extremely simple, so if he finds he does need more ram in a couple of years, then it will almost certainly be a lot cheaper to do it then

Depending on what ram you get it won't be so simple. I have corsair vengeance as it can be had a lot cheaper away from ocuk and with my titan frio I can't use more than 3 slots, not helped by the fact the fact that my ram has tall heat sinks. To upgrade from 4gb to 8gb you'd have to effectively buy an 8gb set. But I do agree with you, it's not needed for games but if you plan on keeping your pc for a long time it might be worth picking up. I've maxed 4gb before on my old pc and games like metro are already hitting over 4gb. When you can get 8gb of XMS3 ram for under £70 just seems like a shame not to get it for an extra £30 when £30 out of £1200 is nothing.

 

[Reaper 392]

Depending on what ram you get it won't be so simple. I have corsair vengeance as it can be hard a lot cheaper away from ocuk and with my titan frio I can't use more than 3 slots, not helped by the fact the fact that my ram has tall heat sinks. To upgrade from 4gb to 8gb you'd have to effectively buy an 8gb set. But I do agree with you, it's not needed for games but if you plan on keeping your pc for a long time it might be worth picking up. I've maxed 4gb before on my old pc and games like metro are already hitting over 4gb. When you can get 8gb of XMS3 ram for under £70 just seems like a shame not to get it for an extra £30 when £30 out of £1200 is nothing.

i didnt realise games were already getting that close to 4GB. buying an 8GB set when it was needed was what i was thinking the OP would do, rather than use 4 sticks.

i guess once again ive tried to squeeze a £1300 PC into a £1200 budget

 

[MumboJumbo]

i didnt realise games were already getting that close to 4GB. buying an 8GB set when it was needed was what i was thinking the OP would do, rather than use 4 sticks.

i guess once again ive tried to squeeze a £1300 PC into a £1200 budget

It's not a bad spec, it's the best one seen so far. Just my personal preferences. I doubt everyone would agree with me, but I don't have the best concepts when it comes to saving money. I just keep upping my budget till it fits what I want. When it comes to pc parts, sometimes spending the extra £30 on a gpu or cpu or what ever can actually make a big difference or save you money later.

When I hit 4gb before on my old pc I did have a lot of things open. It's not common practice and over 4gb certainly isn't needed most the time but windows is a lot nicer with 8gb. It caches a lot more, currently I average 3gb of usage even when doing hardly anything as if you have more ram windows uses it. I wouldn't be surprised if within the next 2-3 years games start being able to push over 4gb more often, like I said metro can use up to 8gb.

 

[Moodle]

Once again thanks for all of the help. Taking all of the info into consideration I have come up with this :

forgot to tell you but I already have a Blue ray RW I can use

 

[maj]

Pretty much spot on imo but I would go for a modular PSU.

 

[Moodle]

Just one more question for you all ! If I want to go crossfire 580 later on next year will I be able to do it without any problems ? Im really confused about the whole 16/16/8 type stuff

 

[MumboJumbo]

You'll want a 950w psu like the corsair TX for that. Tbh I wouldn't do that I'd go sli 480GTX. Will cost £400 vs £380 for a single 580GTX when the 480GTX is very close to the 580GTX

 

[Moodle]

I was going to pick the 480 but was worried by the heat / power / noise . Especially with 2!!!

 

[MumboJumbo]

Well if you ever wanted to do 580GTX you'll want a 950w psu really or at least 900w. Therefore why not just get one of those psu's anwyay with 480gtx in sli. It will blow everything away they are very powerful cards and seriously very close to the 580GTX. I'm talking like between 5-10fps. So sli 480gtx is vastly superior to a single 580GTX.

If you had a very well cooled case I'd get two gigabyte SE or SOC versions. They would be very quiet and cool the gpu's well but dump all the heat in the case so need a good case to remove it.

Failing that get one SE/SOC and another referance design.

 

[Reaper 392]

if you already have a blu ray drive you can use, that will give you a lot more cash to work with.

ive included a DVD RW drive in there, because a lot of blu ray players arent as good with DVD's as dedicated DVD drives. (hell, it was only £15)


YOUR BASKET
2 x Asus ATI Radeon HD 6950 OC 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £209.99
1 x Crucial RealSSD M4 128GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive £185.99
1 x Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - OEM £161.99
1 x MSI P67A-GD53 Intel P67 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard - (Sandybridge) ** B3 REVISION ** £109.99
1 x Antec TruePower New Modular 750W Power Supply £89.99
1 x Corsair XMS3 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMX8GX3M2A1600C9) £69.59
1 x Coolermaster HAF 912 Plus Case - Black £55.98
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (ST31000528AS) £42.98
1 x Gelid Tranquillo CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940/AM2/AM2+/AM3/LGA775/LGA1155/LGA1156/LGA1366) £26.53
1 x Samsung SH-S223C/BEBE 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £14.99
Total : £1,193.00 (includes shipping : £12.50).


and if you want the 480's:
(had to go non modular for the PSU)

YOUR BASKET
2 x Gigabyte GeForce GTX 480 SUPER OC 1536MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £219.98
1 x Crucial RealSSD M4 128GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive £185.99
1 x Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - OEM £161.99
1 x MSI P67A-GD53 Intel P67 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard - (Sandybridge) ** B3 REVISION ** £109.99
1 x XFX Pro 850W Core Edition Power Supply £79.99
1 x Corsair XMS3 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMX8GX3M2A1600C9) £69.59
1 x Coolermaster HAF 912 Plus Case - Black £55.98
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (ST31000528AS) £42.98
1 x Gelid Tranquillo CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940/AM2/AM2+/AM3/LGA775/LGA1155/LGA1156/LGA1366) £26.53
1 x Samsung SH-S223C/BEBE 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £14.99
Total : £1,204.50 (includes shipping : £13.75).

 

[MumboJumbo]

Wouldn't want to put 480GTX sli on 850w psu. It's possible but not the best of ideas, some places say you can do it and others say you're cutting it too fine. It's your call either way but the jury is out on it. I would suggest CF due to the lower power consumption but if you ever want to go 3d you'll want nvidia and sli is always begging for 3d .

Nice addition of the 128gb ssd.

:EDIT:

Years ago when I last built a pc before they did free shiping my shipping was closer to £40, how comes it's so cheap now huh?

 

[stulid]

Once again thanks for all of the help. Taking all of the info into consideration I have come up with this :

forgot to tell you but I already have a Blue ray RW I can use

^
Buy this,

but put this RAM in it - http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-290-CS&groupid=701&catid=8&subcat=1517

The retail CPU has the longer warranty as explained before, a stock heatsink(could be useful if you sell the cpu on and keep the Gelid) and a free game( which you could sell to recoup costs) for £8 more.

And your done.