£600 gaming/work build

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26 Dec 2012
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Hello,

The title is pretty self explanatory and seeing as it is coming into the sales season I will be taking advantage! I have done some searching around the forums and cannot find a rig similar enough to copy as most people have bits they want to re-use.

I am coming into this completely fresh without anything really - the only bits I have got are the mouse/keyboard and can most likely get hold of a copy of Windows (if you want to include it in you can but it is definitely not an essential).

I will be using it for gaming and for work - I am a front end developer by trade so this won't effect much but I am just including it if you can think of any niceties!

I will also be connecting to the internet through an ethernet cable so wifi is not an issue if this makes any difference.

Edit: I would eventually like to get two monitors going as well but this won't happen for a while. For the time being a 22" would be perfect.

Thanks for any help, it is much appreciated!
 
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AMD alternative:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Gigabyte ATI Radeon HD 7850 OC Windforce 2X 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card w/ FARCRY3, Sleeping Dogs & Dirt Showdown PC Games £155.99
1 x Samsung S22B300BS 22" Widescreen LED Monitor - Glossy Black £99.98
1 x AMD Piledriver FX-6 Six Core 6300 3.50GHz (Socket AM3+) Processor - Retail £99.95
1 x ASRock 970 Extreme4 AMD 970 (Socket AM3+) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £74.99
1 x Antec VP450P 450W '80 Plus' Continuous Power Supply £41.99
1 x Patriot Viper "Black Mamba" Generation 3 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-15000C9 1866MHz Dual Channel Kit (PV38G186C9K) £41.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB SATA 6Gb/s 16MB Cache - OEM (ST500DM002) £41.99
1 x Xigmatek Asgard Pro Gaming Case - Black £32.99
1 x Asus 24x DVD±RW DRW-24B5ST SATA ReWriter - Black (Retail) £17.99
Total : £622.85 (includes shipping : £12.50).




The i3 3220 and FX6300 trade blows in games (the AMD will end up faster if overclocked) and if your work software can take advantage of the extra cores it may be better for that too.

If you can put down the extra £100 for an i5 then ignore AMD but at this price point it makes an interesting alternative. :)
 
Intel is the right platform to be oon, as upgrading your Rig goes. On Am3+ theres nowhere to upgrade where as the 1155 board supports the i5 and i7 so you can upgrade massively if you wish to..

The i3 isn't overclockable but the i5 will be, so if you want to go for an i5 (even in the future) its worth getting a z77 board..
 

I'm liking the look of this one so far but want to swap out the:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MO-174-SA for http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MO-189-SA.

Also I don't think I will need a TB of space so was thinking of getting:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-252-SE which others seem to be suggesting.

This saves around £40 - could you see this going towards anything else in the above setup to upgrade or should I just pocket the saved £40? Unfortunately I am on a tight budget so I can't push for the i5.

Thanks for all the help so far, really appreciated!
 
Yes and no, depending on the time between upgrades. It's almost certain that an upgrade in 2-3 years would require a new motherboard.

Going for an i5 now would certainly lengthen the time between upgrades so the next socket would be fully established when upgrade time comes around again. However, i3 vs FX - as software becomes increasingly able to utilise multiple cores and threads - the AMD processor may be able to stretch out an advantage over the i3 to the point that the next upgrade would be to a new socket too rather than to an i5 and then a new socket.
 
Yes and no, depending on the time between upgrades. It's almost certain that an upgrade in 2-3 years would require a new motherboard.

Going for an i5 now would certainly lengthen the time between upgrades so the next socket would be fully established when upgrade time comes around again. However, i3 vs FX - as software becomes increasingly able to utilise multiple cores and threads - the AMD processor may be able to stretch out an advantage over the i3 to the point that the next upgrade would be to a new socket too rather than to an i5 and then a new socket.

From what i've read the FX's have more cores (obviously) but the i3's (and so on) are "better threaded" as it were. To be honest, it's took us this long to move to dual core optimization and with haswell in march (i think) new sockets are fast approaching.
 
YOUR BASKET
1 x Gigabyte ATI Radeon HD 7850 OC Windforce 2X 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card w/ FARCRY3, Sleeping Dogs & Dirt Showdown PC Games £155.99
1 x BenQ GW2250HM 22" Widescreen LED Professional Monitor - Black £99.98
1 x Intel Core i3-3220 3.30GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £83.99
1 x MSI Z77A-G43 Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard - FREE Alpenföhn Civetta Cooler!! £69.98
1 x Toshiba (7K1000.D) 1TB SATA 6GB/s 32MB Cache - OEM (DT01ACA100) £54.98
1 x XFX Pro 450W Core Edition '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £43.99
1 x Patriot Viper "Black Mamba" Generation 3 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-17000C11 2133MHz Dual CHannel Kit (PV38G213C1K) £39.95
1 x Xigmatek Asgard Pro Gaming Case - Black £32.99
1 x Asus 24x DVD±RW DRW-24B5ST SATA ReWriter - Black (Retail) £17.99
Total : £616.34 (includes shipping : £13.75).



Gone over a little but stay with me as I explain.......

We have the Z77 mobo here, it's voltage locked which isn't ideal for overclocking an i5K but you can't afford that CPU really on this budget. Not being able to adjust the voltage stops you going for the high overclocks but you should manage say ~4.2Ghz if you did the upgrade down the road to even the i5 2500K 2nd hand. It does come with a cooler which is better than the i3s stock jobbie.

The RAM is actually too fast really for the 1155 socket, however as RAM has a lifetime warranty it does make sense to buy the fastest kit you can afford. It's £5 more than the 1600mhz kits, so you can save a little cash here if you wish.

PSU is a rebranded seasonic so is of excellent quality, 5 year warranty as well which is nice. Has more than enough power to run the GPU which has a 3 year uk based warranty and some nice free games. You can't OC the i3 CPU but we can talk you through OC'ing the 7850 to get more bang for your buck.

The HDD is 1TB, I know you think that's too high but in my experience it's better to have more than be left wanting, doubling the capacity for the sake of £10 is a no brainer in my eyes. Please note it has double the cache (and warranty) of the 500GB drive you like. Although my buddy Idleman has 64MB of cache on his HDD but that's £5 more than my choice. I figure mine is a nice compromise between the two no?

The BenQ I have used is a nice price for 22inch. It's a VA LED panel, they produce a good black and tend to have good brightness. An IPS panel would be more cash and offer better colours but we are trying to balance things to the budget here. READ THIS it might well help you make a decision yourself on the screen and always look for reviews

Another option might be to consider a 2nd hand GPU. Now you don't get access to our MM sadly but we see the 1GB 460 and the 6850 go for ~£50, I have the 1GB 460 which overclocks well too (mines at 900mhz). Whilst not as good as the 7850, it's on par with the 6870 when oc'd and it is MUCH cheaper this way and with nvidias new drivers I'm still finding it capable for gaming. Nvidia also adds CUDA support, which many software suites can use to speed themselves up with, so that £50 is making a nice double whammy upgrade over the CPUs internal graphics.

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-3570K 3.40GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £167.99
1 x BenQ GW2250HM 22" Widescreen LED Professional Monitor - Black £99.98
1 x MSI Z77A-G43 Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard - FREE Alpenföhn Civetta Cooler!! £69.98
1 x Toshiba (7K1000.D) 1TB SATA 6GB/s 32MB Cache - OEM (DT01ACA100) £54.98
1 x XFX Pro 450W Core Edition '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £43.99
1 x Patriot Viper "Black Mamba" Generation 3 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-17000C11 2133MHz Dual CHannel Kit (PV38G213C1K) £39.95
1 x Xigmatek Asgard Pro Gaming Case - Black £32.99
1 x Asus 24x DVD±RW DRW-24B5ST SATA ReWriter - Black (Retail) £17.99
Total : £542.86 (includes shipping : £12.50).



You now have the i5K CPU which you can overclock and also has a better IGP than the i3 3220. The IGP is used by quick sync to boost video encoding (its like CUDA just not as widely supported) so it's nice that you have the HD4000 IGP and a quad core CPU. There is ~£60 in change to help buy a 2nd hand GPU if you can find one. Swapping the GPU later on is going to be much easier than doing a CPU upgrade ;)
 
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Thanks for the great advice!

I have moved over to your suggestion but the power supply at the moment is out of stock - is there any other you would suggest so I can buy everything this week?

Thanks
 
The antec Idleman suggested is also ok. Maybe get in touch with OCuk and ask the ETA on the XFX (it does say due soon). You can place an order even when items are out of stock, they simply dispatch the entire order once everything is back in. Oh and you are most welcome :)
 
That is a nice touch that OCuk wait for the whole lot to be back in.

Would you suggest waiting for the XFX then? I am in no hurry for when it arrives, so a wait would not bother me if the XFX is much more efficient than the antec.
 
Well the XFX is a popular unit mate. Has slightly more amps on the 12V rail than the antec (36 rather than 30 on the antec). If you want it ordered now the antec is ok by all means
 
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