£600 - £700 build for BF3

PhillyDee · 26 Sep 2011 at 20:45

£600 - £700 build for BF3 and similar . . . .

Brother is looking for a build for BF3. Has an ageing PC (E2160 which I overclocked to around 3.2ghz at the time).
Looking at buying it thursday, so spec away please!

Already has a decent ATX case, so will be going in there. No peripherals or monitor required (22" samsung, may upgrade to a 24" 1080p at some point), already has win7 retail.
Wants 8gb ram, why get 4 when you can have 8!
dvd-rom, cpu, mobo, ram, graphics card. And anything else I may have missed off! Hes not bothered about overclocking, but wants it to run cool, so an aftermarket hsf would be preferred.

I know you lot have some great bargain finds, so will be able to best the system I quickly specced for him.

Reaper 392 · 26 Sep 2011 at 21:01

will you be able to recycle the old DVD drive, hard drive or PSU? (as long as the DVD and HDD are SATA then they're all good).

olivier renault · 26 Sep 2011 at 22:33

Assuming hard drive and optical recycle, and getting a PSU Xfire ready...

YOUR BASKET
1 x HIS ATI Radeon HD 6950 IceQ X Turbo 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card with FREE Dirt3 & Deus Ex PC Games £209.99
1 x Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail with FREE TrackMania 2 Canyon PC Game £167.99
1 x Asus P8Z68-V Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £131.99
1 x Lepa B-Series 750W '80 Plus Bronze' Modular Power Supply £74.98
1 x Corsair Vengeance Blue 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMZ8GX3M2A1600C9B) £43.99
1 x Thermalright MUX-120 Black CPU Cooler (Socket LGA775/LGA1156/LGA1155/LGA1366) £26.99
Total : £667.92 (includes shipping : £10.00).

Can get a 6970 or a GTX 570 I suppose. 570 will require a 850W PSU I'd recon. Room for an optical, although surely he can re-use? Has to be SATA.

Memory should fit as the cooler is not very wide and has clearance under the fan. Else getting some low profile ram like XMS3.

mickyflinn · 26 Sep 2011 at 23:02

Gtx 570 psu reccomendation 550-watt power supply with a minimum of 38 amps on the +12 volt rail. So 850w would be good for sli

Reaper 392 · 27 Sep 2011 at 01:47

mickyflinn said:
Gtx 570 psu reccomendation 550-watt power supply with a minimum of 38 amps on the +12 volt rail. So 850w would be good for sli

i cant seem to find anywhere that gives the actual power consumption of the card, but its physically impossible for it to use more than 225W without breaking ATX standards, as it uses two 6 pin PCIe power cables and the power from the motherboard, so 750W will be more than enough for two 570's in SLI (along with all the other stuff the computer uses.

the only reason we've been recommending 850W for SLI 570's is that the OCZ 850W 80+ gold rated PSU is £95, and will save the extra money on the electric bill

PhillyDee · 27 Sep 2011 at 10:18

Nah, the first system was built on a budget, and reused the IDE optical, and the hard drive is only a 320gb iirc.
PSU is an OCZ 500W, and will also be getting replaced. The old pc, is becoming a new build for parents, to replace the p4 they already have, so its best for a new psu as well!

Is it worth getting the moptherboard, it has onboard graphics which will never be used!

Thanks!

olivier renault · 27 Sep 2011 at 11:45

Well, you can get a P8P67 Pro / non-pro for £122. But basically, that sort of price range is good. The P8Z68-V is a good board and a good price, period. All those boards appears very similar in design.

It also depends if you are into overclocking, you also have the Z68XP-UD3 that has less overclocking potential, but will do the job just fine. Also support 8x8x SLI / XFire. You can drop the cpu cooler for later as well and stay stock for a while. Then you can fit an optical and a hard drive.

mp260767 · 27 Sep 2011 at 11:49

PhillyDee said:
Is it worth getting the motherboard, it has onboard graphics which will never be used!

always useful if you need to trouble shoot a possible graphics card problem.

it's not a reason to choose a mobo, but nice to have as backup if theres little to choose between 2 motherboards.

PhillyDee · 27 Sep 2011 at 12:28

Its getting ordered on Thursday (he does not have the funds tillthen) so hopefully the TWO gods will be kind!

If there is little price difference, fair point!

Reaper 392 · 27 Sep 2011 at 12:53

mp260767 said:
always useful if you need to trouble shoot a possible graphics card problem.

it's not a reason to choose a mobo, but nice to have as backup if theres little to choose between 2 motherboards.

the onboard graphics means you can also use lucid virtu, which should save some money on the electric bill

if you want an entirely new PC (except for case and win7) for £600-£700 then i'd go for this:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail with FREE TrackMania 2 Canyon PC Game £167.99
1 x OcUK GeForce GTX 560Ti 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card **Supplied with FREE Batman: Arkham City PC game** £165.59
1 x Gigabyte Z68XP-UD3 Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £99.98
1 x Antec TruePower New Modular 650W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £64.98
1 x OcUK H²Flo Extreme Liquid CPU Cooler with Two Gelid Silent 120mm Quiet Fan (Socket LGA1366/1155/1156/775/AM2/AM3) £58.00
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 32MB Cache - OEM (ST31000524AS) £47.99
1 x Corsair Vengeance Blue 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMZ8GX3M2A1600C9B) £43.99
1 x OcUK 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £16.99
Total : £665.51 (includes shipping: FREE).

obviously this could change around a bit when the deals change over, but this is the general area your looking at