£1000 gaming build help

stulid · 28 Apr 2011 at 18:50

James J said:
seriously tempted by the 560gti SLI build but is there anything major I need to know regarding how to setup SLI? Also they are preorder (both makes at a decent price) so I might have to wait a while

Are they much quicker than say a 580gtx? Will be gaming at 1920x1080p for the for-seable future due to the prices of 2560x1440+ monitors still being quite costly.

They are due next week (friday).

if you order before wednesday, you can secure the prices of the other parts too, Gibbo said this about the prices - http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=19008137&postcount=4 - so they may go up in price.

to set up SLI, just insert both cards into the motherboard, connect a SLI bridge between them, and make sure you put power into all four power connectors on the card. the nvidia drivers will recognize the SLI setup and present some new options to play with.

As for the performance, yes they are faster than a GTX580, and your resolution is perfect for them

you may find the odd game where the drivers havent been optimised for the two cards, but driver updates and improvements will always bring more.

As you can see here - http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_560_Ti_SLI/23.html

Marvin · 28 Apr 2011 at 18:55

I find that a slightly worse single card is always better than SLI of two lesser cards. I had GTX460 SLI, which is slightly faster than a GTX480, but you can see how I felt on that -V.

If you were to get them for a 2560x1440 (or greater) monitor, then you'd find the memory an issue, as they're only 1GB per card. Which means that they're only really good for 1920x1080/1200, where a 6950 upwards is enough.

So, overall, I'd get a GTX570, 6950 2GB (especially the Twin FrozR III - dual BIOS too, so basically a 6970 waiting to be had

) or GTX480.

James J · 28 Apr 2011 at 19:10

well the next question is, how does 560gti SLI compare to 6950 xfire?

stulid · 28 Apr 2011 at 19:12

James J said:
well the next question is, how does 560gti SLI compare to 6950 xfire?

Cross reference this - http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/Radeon_HD_6950_CrossFire/21.html

against the SLI GTX560 link above, the test system is the same too.

do remember that the cards used are the 2GB versions at £200 each lowest price on OCUK.

James J · 28 Apr 2011 at 19:17

stulid said:
Cross reference this - http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/Radeon_HD_6950_CrossFire/21.html

against the SLI GTX560 link above, the test system is the same too.

According to the performance summaries the 6950 xfire is 17% faster than a 5970 at 1920x1200 whilst 560gti sli is 4% faster than the same card.

Overall 15% faster than a 5970 compared to 6% faster so pretty interesting. Extremely similar prices as well.

Gonna take an extra £300/400 out of my ISA and increase my budget to £1300/1400 ish and build/buy something which is gonna last a few years.

Marvin · 28 Apr 2011 at 19:18

There's no point in doing that with GPUs. Just sell/replace a single card every year and you'll get a much better deal.

Sure, do that with the 2600K, but just get a decent single GPU now, then when it starts to struggle, sell and replace with something faster.

stulid · 28 Apr 2011 at 19:25

James J said:
According to the performance summaries the 6950 xfire is 17% faster than a 5970 at 1920x1200 whilst 560gti sli is 4% faster than the same card.

Overall 15% faster than a 5970 compared to 6% faster so pretty interesting. Extremely similar prices as well.

Gonna take an extra £300/400 out of my ISA and increase my budget to £1300/1400 ish and build/buy something which is gonna last a few years.

Why are you comparing against a 5970, you can compare them against each other more easily.

I need to ask why you want to spend £300/400 more, when both setups provide silky smooth frame rates at resolutions higher than your TV?

James J · 28 Apr 2011 at 19:33

Ah didn't see that. Need to have a serious think on what to actually get. I don't want anything thats amazingly noisy but at the same time I'd like something powerful enough to last a few years without any problems at all.

In regards to your earlier build with the 560gti SLI, is it worth having raid 0 drives for storage and general games play (with a backup obviously which I already own). I'd love to just have a big SSD but the prices are just mental at the larger storage capacities.

I've used raid 0 a few years back and was really impressed with it but does it still require such archaic ways of installing it (aka via floppy disks still lol)?

stulid · 28 Apr 2011 at 19:35

James J said:
Ah didn't see that. Need to have a serious think on what to actually get. I don't want anything thats amazingly noisy but at the same time I'd like something powerful enough to last a few years without any problems at all.

In regards to your earlier build with the 560gti SLI, is it worth having raid 0 drives for storage and general games play (with a backup obviously which I already own). I'd love to just have a big SSD but the prices are just mental at the larger storage capacities.

I've used raid 0 a few years back and was really impressed with it but does it still require such archaic ways of installing it (aka via floppy disks still lol)?

HDD are fast enough not to need a RAID array, the best benefit is a SSD to hold the OS, and a few of the games, 60GB will hold win7 and around 5-6 games (depending on install size) so install the current games you play on it.

use the 500GB drive that comes with the win& bundle to store other games/Steam installation

James J · 28 Apr 2011 at 19:47

Gonna get myself a monitor also as i'm moving into a smaller house from september onwards so won't have the space for a 40inch tv as my monitor lol. I might be just going abit mental with the spec, which I'm defo guilty of to be fair.

stulid · 28 Apr 2011 at 19:52

One more thing if your getting a new screen, depending on which size your looking at?

most 24" (except the dell+HP at £400+) offer up to 1920X1080 res anyway, still less than the charts above.

even most of the 27" screens only go up to 1080, unless you start spending £500+ to get 2560x1440

if you multiply 1920X1080 = 2073600 pixels
if you multiply 1920X1200 = 2304000 pixels

So the cards have to do less work at 1080 resolution than the charts from techpowerup.

James J · 28 Apr 2011 at 19:58

stulid said:
One more thing if your getting a new screen, depending on which size your looking at?

most 24" (except the dell+HP at £400+) offer up to 1920X1080 res anyway, still less than the charts above.

even most of the 27" screens only go up to 1080, unless you start spending £500+ to get 2560x1440

Aye sadly I'm all too familiar with that. Gonna opt for a 22inch one (probably the iyama £135 one on here) as its the best of both worlds. I can't fit a huge monitor onto the desk I've got from september onwards so size limitations play a certain role here. No point going above that just to get larger pixel size for the same res to be honest.

Just done a little spec of my own which is this:

Code:

Product Name	Qty	Price	Line Total
	Intel Core i7-2600K 3.40GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor with FREE Operation Flashpoint Red River Game		£239.99
(£199.99)	£239.99
(£199.99)
	Asus GeForce GTX 560Ti 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card		£174.98
(£145.82)	£349.96
(£291.64)
	IIyama Prolite E2271HDS 22" Widescreen LED Monitor - Black		£139.99
(£116.66)	£139.99
(£116.66)
	Asus P8P67-M PRO Intel P67 (Socket 1155) DDR3 MicroATX Motherboard ** B3 REVISION **		£114.98
(£95.82)	£114.98
(£95.82)
	XFX Pro 750W Core Edition Power Supply		£72.98
(£60.82)	£72.98
(£60.82)
	G.Skill RipJawsX 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (F3-12800CL9D-8GBXL )		£71.99
(£59.99)	£71.99
(£59.99)
	OCZ Vertex 60GB 2.5" SATA-II Solid State Hard Drive (OCZSSD2-1VTX60G)		£71.99
(£59.99)	£71.99
(£59.99)
	Microsoft Windows 7 Bundle - Home Premium 64 Bit		£68.40
(£57.00)	£68.40
(£57.00)
Options applied to the above product:
Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 32MB Cache WD10EALX - OEM		£44.99
(£37.49)	£44.99
(£37.49)
	Corsair Hydro H60 High Performance Liquid CPU Cooler (Socket LGA1366/1155/1156/775/AM2/AM3)		£59.99
(£49.99)	£59.99
(£49.99)
	Coolermaster CM-690 II Lite Dominator Case - Black		£57.98
(£48.32)	£57.98
(£48.32)
 		Sub Total :	£1,077.71
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout)	Shipping :	£22.20
VAT is being charged at 20.00%	VAT :	£219.98
 	Total :	£1,319.89

Thoughts? Thanks everyone for the help thus far though. Its been very eye opening and useful!

stulid · 28 Apr 2011 at 20:00

For gaming a 2600K is completely not needed, it has Hyperthreading and a tiny bit more cache memory, thats it.

2500K vs 2600k - http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/288?vs=287 - is that worth £78?

And the motherboard you selected is a micro ATX size, a bit cramped.

I have tried to line them up so you can see the difference.

Theres more space between the two pci-e slots on the MSI board.

Marvin · 28 Apr 2011 at 21:56

Agreed with stulid, I'd not choose that board for SLI/Crossfire, and a 2600K is pointless over a 2500K unless you're doing lots of multi-threaded tasks, and gaming doesn't fit in there.

Also, the H60 is over rated, a decent air cooler is as good or better, and is cheaper.

On top of this, it's really not worth spending £400 on graphics cards, only to use them on a 1920x1080 screen that isn't of the best quality. At least get yourself a £200 Dell U2311H which is much nicer in image quality, colour clarity, build quality, the stand is great and all the other IPS benefits.

I'd probably spend a little less overall, go for one decent GPU for 1920x1080, a 2500K, save the extra and spend it on a replacement GPU when the current feels a bit sluggish. You're not watercooling, so replacing a GPU is ****-easy.

James J · 29 Apr 2011 at 02:01

Marvin said:
Agreed with stulid, I'd not choose that board for SLI/Crossfire, and a 2600K is pointless over a 2500K unless you're doing lots of multi-threaded tasks, and gaming doesn't fit in there.

Also, the H60 is over rated, a decent air cooler is as good or better, and is cheaper.

On top of this, it's really not worth spending £400 on graphics cards, only to use them on a 1920x1080 screen that isn't of the best quality. At least get yourself a £200 Dell U2311H which is much nicer in image quality, colour clarity, build quality, the stand is great and all the other IPS benefits.

I'd probably spend a little less overall, go for one decent GPU for 1920x1080, a 2500K, save the extra and spend it on a replacement GPU when the current feels a bit sluggish. You're not watercooling, so replacing a GPU is ****-easy.

Very good points made by both of you. Will go with the i5, an air cooler (recommendations?) And a solid single GPU instead + good monitor.

stulid · 29 Apr 2011 at 02:10

Good air coolers are

Akasa venom
Titan fenrir
Corsair A50
gelid tranquilo

With these coolers you need to be careful of the ram height, corsair xms3 fits perfect.

Marvin · 29 Apr 2011 at 02:14

James J said:
Very good points made by both of you. Will go with the i5, an air cooler (recommendations?) And a solid single GPU instead + good monitor.

Something like a Thermalright Silver Arrow, HR02 or MUX-120 are good bets, as are Noctua's D14 or U12P. If they're a little expensive, a Titan Fenrir is a solid performer too.

If you're pushed for space, look into an MATX build, like the one I posted above, or in a different case if it's not pleasant to your eyes (I know some have criticised the FT03 for looking a little like a bin or fridge).

As for a single GPU, GTX480, 6950 2GB or the GTX570, especially on the deals this weekend are good bets to last a good amount of time at 1920x1080. I'm using a single GTX480 at 2560x1600 (~twice the number of pixels of 1080p) and still can play 90-95% of games at full settings, and those that can't still look great anyway at slightly lesser settings.

Marvin · 29 Apr 2011 at 02:41

This is what I'd personally go for:

Monitor:

Dell Ultrasharp U2311H 23" Widescreen LCD Monitor - £229.99

Excellent all-round monitor with good colour and general image quality, Dell's bullet-proof warranty and build quality, and an excellent stand

GPU:

MSI ATI Radeon HD 6950 OC Twin FrozR III Power Edition 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card - £224.99

One of the best coolers fitted to a 6950, the shaders can be unlocked, so you essentially have a 6970 2GB. Overclocking is great, thanks to an increased voltage range from stock, and can reach over 1GHz on the core.

SSD:

Crucial RealSSD M4 128GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive - £174.98

über quick SSD that'll be big enough for W7 and Steam, plus your most used applications (web browser, anti-virus and so on). If you find that you like having most of your Steam library installed at once, you could use this tool to move games to the HDD.

HDD:

Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (HD103SJ) - £46.99

That's a lot of pron...

CPU:

Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - £163.99

Motherboard:

Asus P8P67-M PRO Intel P67 (Socket 1155) DDR3 MicroATX Motherboard - £114.98

Allows for SLI/Crossfire should you really want it later down the line. Otherwise get the normal (non-PRO) P8P67-M for £95.

RAM:

Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3X2K2/8GX) - £69.59

This is on Today Only to be fair, but similar deals pop up quite regularly. 8GB might prove a worthwhile future investment, and at current RAM prices, you might as well really.

Case:

Lian Li PC-A04B Aluminium Midi-Tower Case - Black - £86.99

Quite a bit smaller than most mid-towers, but can still fit the biggest GPUs, coolers and a fair number of HDDs. MATX only though

O/S:

Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit - OEM (GFC-00599) - £79.99

PSU:

Coolermaster Silent Pro Modular 700W Power Supply - £79.99

Excellent PSU, with modular cables for added neatness... Should be enough should you want to dabble with SLI/Crossfire in future on lower powered cards (6950 XFire will be fine on it), but with the size of the case, you don't want to be putting GTX480 SLI in there anyway...

Cooler:

Thermalright MUX-120 Black CPU Cooler (Socket LGA775/LGA1156/LGA1155/LGA1366) - £39.98

Much cheaper than the faux watercooling, and just as good

Sub Total : £1,093.73
VAT @ 20% : £218.75
Total : £1,312.48

sk82jack · 29 Apr 2011 at 03:06

Marvin said:
This is what I'd personally go for:

Monitor:

Dell Ultrasharp U2311H 23" Widescreen LCD Monitor - £229.99

Excellent all-round monitor with good colour and general image quality, Dell's bullet-proof warranty and build quality, and an excellent stand

GPU:

MSI ATI Radeon HD 6950 OC Twin FrozR III Power Edition 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card - £224.99

One of the best coolers fitted to a 6950, the shaders can be unlocked, so you essentially have a 6970 2GB. Overclocking is great, thanks to an increased voltage range from stock, and can reach over 1GHz on the core.

SSD:

Crucial RealSSD M4 128GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive - £174.98

über quick SSD that'll be big enough for W7 and Steam, plus your most used applications (web browser, anti-virus and so on). If you find that you like having most of your Steam library installed at once, you could use this tool to move games to the HDD.

HDD:

Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (HD103SJ) - £46.99

That's a lot of pron...

CPU:

Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - £163.99

Motherboard:

Asus P8P67-M PRO Intel P67 (Socket 1155) DDR3 MicroATX Motherboard - £114.98

Allows for SLI/Crossfire should you really want it later down the line. Otherwise get the normal (non-PRO) P8P67-M for £95.

RAM:

Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3X2K2/8GX) - £69.59

This is on Today Only to be fair, but similar deals pop up quite regularly. 8GB might prove a worthwhile future investment, and at current RAM prices, you might as well really.

Case:

Lian Li PC-A04B Aluminium Midi-Tower Case - Black - £86.99

Quite a bit smaller than most mid-towers, but can still fit the biggest GPUs, coolers and a fair number of HDDs. MATX only though

O/S:

Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit - OEM (GFC-00599) - £79.99

PSU:

Coolermaster Silent Pro Modular 700W Power Supply - £79.99

Excellent PSU, with modular cables for added neatness... Should be enough should you want to dabble with SLI/Crossfire in future on lower powered cards (6950 XFire will be fine on it), but with the size of the case, you don't want to be putting GTX480 SLI in there anyway...

Cooler:

Thermalright MUX-120 Black CPU Cooler (Socket LGA775/LGA1156/LGA1155/LGA1366) - £39.98

Much cheaper than the faux watercooling, and just as good

Sub Total : £1,093.73
VAT @ 20% : £218.75
Total : £1,312.48

Bored much?

+1

stulid · 29 Apr 2011 at 03:12

I would seriously consider this build

• The Nvidia™ GTX570® is massively powerful - http://www.anandtech.com/show/4051/nvidias-geforce-gtx-570-filling-in-the-gaps - and because its Nvidia you get the benefits of PhysX and CUDA

CUDA® ~ http://www.nvidia.com/object/what_is_cuda_new.html
PhysX® ~ http://www.nvidia.co.uk/object/nvidia_physx_uk.html

• The Samsung™ monitor is a full 24" in size and a great price for such a great screen

• Full size MSI™ motherboard that has plenty of expansion slots that even when you fit one or two large graphics cards with large heatsinks you can still use some.

• Corsair™ PSU which includes a legendary 7 year warranty and is one of the best in its class - http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/Corsair-HX750W-Power-Supply-Review/775/10

• The Seagate barracuda continues from its little brother the 500GB - http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/storage/display/500gb-hdd-roundup_18.html#sect0 which came out as the winner even against the Samsung F3, its cheaper too.

• Having personal experience with the Akasa™ Venom® with a Intel™ 2500K® CPU - http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18231861 - I can confirm that it is silent and a strong performer and was choosen by me after receiving acclaimed reviews.

• The Coolermaster™ CM690 MKII® is a class leader and has many unique features in its price range - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AubfqMN9XgE