£2200 to spend

Jenz

Jenz

Jenz

Associate
Joined
14 Aug 2005
Posts
627
Location
Northampton
But struggling as to the myriad of options!

Please suggest a high end gaming rig with a preference for:
SSD main drive, don't need any more storage as have a NAS and a 1tb data drive to go in
27inch monitor - fancy the dell 2711 or 2x24inch could work but I fancied 2560x1600
Need OS but not keyboard and mouse
Unsure on graphics card, have always had nvidia but 7970 looks sweet
Would prefer i7 but i5 is option, not an AMD fan
Play wow, do a lot of video encoding and photoshop, Starcraft 2 and eventually diablo 3, may play sky rim and swtor.

Quite liked the manosaur mk2...

Don't need a keyboard or mouse (have k90 and naga mmo)

I was tempted by the 27inch iMac with SSD hence the budget. Screen quality is very important as I love those apple screens.

Thoughts?

Kind regards Neil
 
if your gaming the only options are really 1 screen or three screens. the reason is that if your gaming over two screens the middle of the gaming area will be the bezels of each screen, which is a massive pain, especially for FPSs.

if your doing a serious amount of photoshop and video editing i would be tempted to recommend a 3GB GTX 580 for the benefits of cuda and an i7 2600k. if your not doing it very much then i'd say go for the i5 2500k + 7970.

are you planning on building this yourself? it will save you a heap of money if you do, and is surprisingly easy

*edit*
are you planning on watercooling your graphics cards in the future?
(it will affect my choice of case)
 
 
Semi serious on video editing.

I don't intend to watercool the graphics card, though I saw that some of the oc tech lab kit was in my price range.
 
mickyflinn said:
YOUR BASKET
1 x Dell UltraSharp U2711 27" Widescreen LCD Monitor - Midnight Grey £599.99
1 x VTX3D ATI Radeon HD 7970 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £467.99
1 x Intel Core i7-2600K 3.40GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £239.99
1 x Crucial RealSSD M4 128GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive (CT128M4SSD2) £154.99
1 x Corsair Obsidian 650D Gaming Midi Tower - Black £145.99
1 x Asrock Z68 Extreme4 Gen3 Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £144.98
1 x Antec CP 1000W Modular Power Supply £119.99
1 x Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-Bit - OEM (GFC-02050) £79.98
1 x Corsair Vengeance Low Profile 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CML8GX3M2A1600C9) £39.98
Total : £2,020.52 (includes shipping : £22.20).

Click to expand...

This is good, but that PSU only fits in some Antec cases

"NOTE: This PSU only fits into the Antec P183, Antec P193 & Antec 1200 Gaming Cases."
Click to expand...

So, I'd get this PSU instead:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-000-XF&groupid=701&catid=123&subcat=1497

Also if you are editing I'd double the RAM for 16GB
 
mickey, that power supply doesnt fit in the case. its a soecial one designed for a select few antec cases.

since i'm honestly not sure if you should go for a 3GB 580 or a 3GB 7970 i'll put the 7970 in there because that is clearly the better choice for gaming at the res of this monitor (2560x1440), but feel free to switch it out for the GTX 580. you wont need to change anything else in the build
7970 vs 580: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/508?vs=517

heres my recommendation
YOUR BASKET
1 x Dell UltraSharp U2711 27" Widescreen LCD Monitor - Midnight Grey £599.99
1 x OcUK ATI Radeon HD 7970 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £419.99
1 x Intel Core i7-2600K 3.40GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £239.99
1 x Crucial RealSSD M4 128GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive (CT128M4SSD2) £154.99
1 x Asrock Z68 Extreme4 Gen3 Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £144.98
1 x XFX 850W XXX Edition Modular '80 Plus Silver' Power Supply £122.99
1 x Silverstone Raven 3 RV03B-W Full Tower Windowed Case - Black/Gold £109.99
1 x Kingston HyperX Genesis 16GB (4x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual/Quad Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3K4/16GX) £79.99
1 x Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-Bit - OEM (GFC-02050) £79.98
1 x Antec Kúhler H2O 920 High Performance Liquid CPU Cooler (LGA775/LGA1155/LGA1156/LGA1366/AM2/AM2+/AM2+/AM3+) £74.99
1 x OcUK 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £17.99
Total : £2,072.51 (includes shipping : £22.20).

if you want to add a second card in crossfire all you need to do is slot it in and it will work.
same goes for extra monitors. all you need for eyefinity gaming is a massive amount of cash for two more monitors and i am pretty sure you will need an active displayport adapter for one of them


if you fancy watercooling the graphics cards in the future, change the case to this one:
1 x Corsair Obsidian 650D Gaming Midi Tower - Black £145.99

if you get posting on the forums you will save yourself £22.20 + VAT on that £22.20 because if youve been a member for ov er a year and have 100 posts you can link your forum account to your shop account and get free shipping. its probably worth doing because the graphics card wont arrive till the end of january, and i have no idea when the case will arrive because its out of stock
 
Last edited:
Reaper 392 said:
if your gaming the only options are really 1 screen or three screens. the reason is that if your gaming over two screens the middle of the gaming area will be the bezels of each screen, which is a massive pain, especially for FPSs.
Click to expand...

I think 2 screens can be useful in some cases for gaming, multi clienting a MMO would be the main one I feel, also having a 'utility' screen can be useful for hanging on a forum or wiki'ing stuff while playing on your main screen.
 
As you do serious video or photo editing, some sort of calibration device for the screen wouldn't go amiss - great as the Dell is, it will benefit from calibration. A Spyder for example, though OC don't sell them. The other goodie for that sort of activity is a tablet. The Wacom ones are excellent.
 
YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i7-3930K 3.20GHz (Sandybridge-E) Socket LGA2011 Processor - Retail £499.99
1 x VTX3D ATI Radeon HD 7970 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £467.99
1 x Hazro HZ27WC 8-Bit 27" LED Widescreen Professional Glass Monitor - Black £431.99
1 x MSI X79A-GD45 Intel X79 (Socket 2011) DDR3 Motherboard £149.99
1 x Corsair Force Series 3 120GB SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Drive (CSSD-F120GB3-BK) £125.99
1 x XFX Pro 850W Core Edition '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £94.99
1 x Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-Bit - OEM (GFC-02050) £79.98
1 x Noctua NH-D14-2011 Dual Radiator CPU Cooler with PWM Fans (Socket LGA2011) £72.98
1 x Cooler Master CM-690 II Lite Dominator Case - Black £63.98
2 x Corsair XMS3 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMX8GX3M2A1600C9) £39.98 (£79.96)
1 x Sony Optiarc AD-5280S 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £18.98
Total : £2,113.48 (includes shipping : £22.20).



have you considered a 2011 CPU? will be great for your editing work. i also picked this monitor because it was cheaper and is led so better contrast and brightness
 
This why I love OC and this forum, what great help. Many, many thanks.

are you planning on building this yourself? it will save you a heap of money if you do, and is surprisingly easy
Click to expand...
I would have OC build it but the cost I didn't include in the £2200. £2200 was the cost of the iMac so I am seeing what I can get as a PC instead. The imac has a 6990M 2GB GPU so I was seeing what I could get in PC that was better?

The second screen option was for multi-screen and having an off to the side second screen rather than needing 3 screens.

No one suggested any of the main OC pre-builds. Are they not as costeffective or feature packed?
 
You can save some money by doing it yourself but sometimes you want something that just works out of the box so to speak. I've always self built and have had very few Dead On Arrival items. But just recently I've had 2 faulty motherboards that have rendered my PC useless for a few weeks while the RMA's are being sorted out.

With the prebuilt system, especially a watercooled rig, you want the peace of mind and satisfaction that its been built by experts and tested before being shipped.
 
Absolutely agree. I can build them myself but decided this time that I would leave it to the pros.
 
Jenz said:
Reason I ask about OC prebuilds is because I was looking at:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FS-222-OE

Swapping GPU for 7970, swapping HDD for Corsair M4 256GB SSD and adding the Dell Screen?
Click to expand...

If you'd rather not build it yourself that's a good system, with a custom waterloop and with those proposed changes is very similar to Reapers (very good) spec above. It might be worth asking them how much to build that spec? You don't HAVE to choose one of their systems, they will build nearly anything (For a price) if you ask.
 
I had looked at the OC Tech Labs Tundra system with an SSD and a 7970, I would need to go down to a 24inch screen though with that one?
 
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