Need a small unit to run Company of Heroes 2 - £500-£600

ojac · 6 Jun 2013 at 23:33

Hi there,

I'm looking for a system that i can run COH2 on and use for some casual gaming, it needs to be small form factor and ideally pretty quiet/ discreet.

I'm out of touch with the AMD vs Intel battle, RAM speeds etc so looking for some help/ advice.

The rig will be used pretty much just for gaming, so want it to be able to cope with COH2 and most modern games without breaking the bank.

Thinking £500-600 for a self build...

Got Win 7, keyboard, mouse and monitor...

Ideal if it could take more than 1HDD if i want to use it as a backup store for laptops in future, not a requirement.

Company of Heroes 2 system requirements (recommended)

CPU: 2.6 GHz quad core processor, Intel Core i5,or AMD FX 8000-series or better
RAM: 2 GB (4 GB for 64 bit Operating System)
Graphics: DirectX 11 card with 512 MB RAM, Nvidia 400 series or AMD 5000 series or better.
Operating system: Windows 7
DirectX audio card
12 GB hard disk space

Cheers...

Kill_Phil · 7 Jun 2013 at 09:55

thrown together a quick build, and would easily cope with COH2 as with many others.

Orcvader · 7 Jun 2013 at 10:25

phil_c_ said:
thrown together a quick build, and would easily cope with COH2 as with many others.

http://s14.postimg.org/v8eu6o8ch/build.jpg

No point in an APU if you're going to add discrete graphics.

Something with more CPU grunt:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Sapphire HD 7850 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £149.99
1 x Intel Core i5-4430 3.00GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail with FREE Grid 2 PC Game £149.99
1 x MSI Z87-G43 Intel Z87 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £91.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST1000DM003) HDD £52.99
1 x XFX Pro 550W Core Edition '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £49.99
1 x Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (BLS2CP4G3D1609DS1S00CEU) £43.99
1 x Xigmatek Asgard Pro Gaming Case - Black £32.99
1 x OcUK 20x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £14.99
Total : £601.02 (includes shipping : £11.75).

ojac · 7 Jun 2013 at 14:58

Thanks for both the responses, looks like the second one gives me about more oomph...

what would be the impact of doing something in a micro its case like this?

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-090-BX

kaku · 7 Jun 2013 at 15:35

Mini ITX boards are thin on the ground for Haswell at the moment. They cost a fair amount more (+£50) than the one specced in the build above too.

Orcvader · 7 Jun 2013 at 15:35

ojac said:
Thanks for both the responses, looks like the second one gives me about more oomph...

what would be the impact of doing something in a micro its case like this?

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-090-BX

It's not mATX, it's ITX, but luckily there seems to be a few ITX boards for Haswell. Reshuffled it a bit with a B85 based board (since the CPU can't be overclocked anyway):

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-4430 3.00GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail with FREE Grid 2 PC Game £149.99
1 x Sapphire HD 7850 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £149.99
1 x ASRock B85M-ITX Intel B85 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ITX Motherboard £69.95
1 x BitFenix Prodigy 'Yin' Mini-ITX Cube Case - White/Black £69.95
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST1000DM003) HDD £52.99
1 x XFX Pro 550W Core Edition '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £49.99
1 x Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (BLS2CP4G3D1609DS1S00CEU) £43.99
1 x OcUK 20x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £14.99
Total : £614.44 (includes shipping : £10.50).

ojac · 9 Jun 2013 at 00:11

Orcvader or anyone else,

What would you boost if you added another £100 to the build?

Change gpu only or more general upgrade across the board??

Puppetmaster · 9 Jun 2013 at 00:18

I would have thought a 4670K + a 7950 if its within budget.

Orcvader · 9 Jun 2013 at 00:24

Puppetmaster said:
I would have thought a 4670K + a 7950 if its within budget.

This. Upping to an i5-4670K + Z87 board + 7950 would be a great combination for gaming.

honosuseri · 9 Jun 2013 at 02:43

ojac said:
Orcvader or anyone else,

What would you boost if you added another £100 to the build?

Change gpu only or more general upgrade across the board??

Going tiny ain't cheap bud sadly

YOUR BASKET
1 x VTX3D HD 7870 Black Boost Edition 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £173.99
1 x Intel Core i5-3470 3.20GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £155.99
1 x Gigabyte H77N-WIFI Intel H77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Mini ITX Motherboard £89.99
1 x BitFenix Prodigy 'Yin' Mini-ITX Cube Case - White/Black £69.95
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST1000DM003) HDD £52.99
1 x Thermaltake Smart Series 530w Modular '80Plus Bronze' Power Supply £49.99
1 x Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (BLS2CP4G3D1609DS1S00CEU) £43.99
1 x OcUK 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £17.99
Total : £667.48 (includes shipping : £10.50).

This 7870XT can OC to match a stock 7950.

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-3570K 3.40GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - OEM £167.99
1 x **B Grade** Gigabyte ATI Radeon HD 7850 OC Windforce 2X 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card w/ Nexuiz, Sleeping Dogs & Dirt Showd (GX-100-GI) £129.95
1 x Gigabyte Z77N-WIFI Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Mini ITX Motherboard £103.99
1 x BitFenix Prodigy 'Yin' Mini-ITX Cube Case - White/Black £69.95
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST1000DM003) HDD £52.99
1 x Thermaltake Smart Series 530w Modular '80Plus Bronze' Power Supply £49.99
1 x Antec Kúhler H2O 620 Series 4 CPU Watercooler (Socket Intel LGA 1155 / 1156 / 1150 / 1366 / 2011 / AMD AM2 / AM3 / AM2+ / AM3+) £49.99
1 x Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (BLS2CP4G3D1609DS1S00CEU) £43.99
1 x OcUK 20x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £14.99
Total : £696.43 (includes shipping : £10.50).

This is overclockable however......I've had to spend £50 on a CLC, the OEM 3570K is £20ish cheaper to help pay for it but good value tower heatsinks aren't really an option as they may well over hang the PCI-E slot which we need for the GPU. The mobo is a bit more cash for the overclocking options but it's voltage locked which limits the OC, let's say 4.2Ghz is the best you could expect.

The GB 7850 is a reasonably good overclocker but it's B grade that's the best I could do to balance things out. For gaming the GPU is important and personally I think the 7870XT is the best bang for buck you can get. You could use the retail 3570K with it's stock heatsink paired with the 7870XT and worry about better cooling later but it will go over £700 slightly.....

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-3570K 3.40GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £189.95
1 x VTX3D HD 7870 Black Boost Edition 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £173.99
1 x Gigabyte Z77N-WIFI Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Mini ITX Motherboard £103.99
1 x BitFenix Prodigy 'Yin' Mini-ITX Cube Case - White/Black £69.95
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST1000DM003) HDD £52.99
1 x Thermaltake Smart Series 530w Modular '80Plus Bronze' Power Supply £49.99
1 x Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (BLS2CP4G3D1609DS1S00CEU) £43.99
1 x OcUK 20x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £14.99
Total : £712.44 (includes shipping : £10.50).

ojac · 9 Jun 2013 at 17:00

Awesome, thanks guys.

Time to finalise my cash and then work out what the most I can spend is... Thanks to all!!!