Gaming Rig choices for a complete novice

Noobie1987 · 4 Nov 2011 at 00:05

Hi guys - at the risk of being completely flamed on the forums I am going to pose the following question.

Please can you give some much needed advice to a complete novice on hardware selections on a PC gaming rig?

I have a budget of around £1,500.00 to spend on a complete PC gaming setup (monitor, Rig, Keyboard, mouse, speakers), I aim for the following things - High end gaming all settings maxed out, lots of RAM (minimum 8gb), the best graphics possible, big hard drive for movie storage, possibly a blu ray drive.

At the moment I am purely a console gamer however tried out a friends gaming pc was blown away by the graphics on crysis 2.

So yeah advice please

Stoner81 · 4 Nov 2011 at 00:39

YOUR BASKET
1 x MSI GeForce GTX 580 OC Twin FrozR II 1536MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £383.99
1 x Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - OEM £173.99
1 x BenQ EW2420 24" Widescreen LED Monitor - Black £155.99
1 x Crucial RealSSD M4 128GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive £154.99
1 x MSI Z68A-G45-G3 Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £114.98
1 x Logitech G19 Gaming Keyboard and FREE Logitech G500 Gaming Mouse £112.99
1 x Antec CP 850W Modular Power Supply £104.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (ST1000DL002) £101.99
1 x Cooler Master HAF 922 Case - Black £85.99
1 x Corsair XMS3 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMX8GX3M2A1600C9) £49.99
1 x Creative T3130 2.1 Speaker System (51MF0395AA003) £39.98
Total : £1,512.94 (includes shipping : £27.55).

Stoner81.

stulid · 4 Nov 2011 at 00:42

^
PSU is a custom shape for a few select Antec cases.

Select a better quality board such as the GD55.

£6 more for the retail CPU which has 3 years of warranty and more importantly a heatsink.

stulid · 4 Nov 2011 at 00:54

Bored so here,

I hope you dont need an OS?

Noobie1987 · 4 Nov 2011 at 01:25

Thanks guys really appreciate the advise,

On a side note just a few more things I would like to clarify, like what are the benefits of having two graphics cards, two hard drives (as i can see from your shopping basket you opted for a SSD)

monitor wise I think i may get this for xmas therefore allocating a bit more money to the budget

again many thanks

beejjacobs · 4 Nov 2011 at 01:46

If you were gunna buy near Christmas, best to wait til nearer the time as prices will change and things come out. SSD as a boot drive will reduce boot time and make windows more responsive. Generally if you can afford it a good idea.

Two graphics cards is good to increase performance but requires a powerful PSU and good case, best to get a good single card setup generally.

Noobie1987 · 4 Nov 2011 at 14:29

so basically the above selections you guys have advised, once built would that machine monster games like battlefield 3 crysis 2 etc?

stulid · 4 Nov 2011 at 14:41

Noobie1987 said:
so basically the above selections you guys have advised, once built would that machine monster games like battlefield 3 crysis 2 etc?

Yes it would, the 6970/GTX580 are doing very well in BF3 at really high resolutions,
http://hardocp.com/article/2011/11/02/battlefield_3_single_player_performance_iq_review/5

like what are the benefits of having two graphics cards, two hard drive

Two graphics cards just means more, more frames per second, higher detail settings, still playable at silly high resolutions.

The SSD is a very fast storage device to run the operating system from and a game or three depending on installation size.

Use the HDD for the rest, storage.

Noobie1987 · 4 Nov 2011 at 18:37

Brilliant after all the advice you guys have given im tempted to push my budget a bit further. I mean the whole two graphics card system sounds briliant but surely there is a down side to it?

one other thing I was considering with an increased budget is a 27" OLED monitor would there need to be any changes such as more memory on the graphics cards, RAM etc?