Gaming Rig - Circa £1000

S33A · 9 Aug 2013 at 15:01

Hi,

Following on from my previous post, I am looking to pick up a new gaming rig this weekend based on the following specs:

I currently play mostly WOW along with BF3 (BF4 when it releases), Crysis, Starcraft and would like to be able to play these at maximum settings.

I won't be needing Keyboard, Mouse, DVD Drive, Monitor (I have some 24" samsung's although old I cannot justify changing them at the moment), and I will be keeping for the moment my ASUS 5970 purely as it's (IMO) sufficient until I can stretch to a newer card.

I also run a Antec 1200 case atm, happy to upgrade, but it's in good condition so not a necessity. Importantly, though, I'm a little OCD on being tidy, so having a modular psu is ideal.

Let me know your thoughts on CPU, Memory (is 16Gb worth it over 8Gb purely when the rig is for gaming), Motherboard (thinking an Asus Z87 Sabertooth, but happy to take opinions), boot drive (I have plenty of 1Tb / 2Tb support drives).

Budget is circa £1000

cheers in advance.

DaleTheWhale · 9 Aug 2013 at 15:09

16GB is not needed for gaming what-so-ever, so stick with 8GB. you seem to have the majority of what you need really. Although i'd switch the 5970 out.

S33A · 9 Aug 2013 at 15:22

With memory, I have been out of the loop for quite a while. looking through the options, there seams to be everything from quad channel to dual channel, within reason, what is worth the cash?

Flying_Hellfish · 9 Aug 2013 at 15:27

With the cash you could surely look at a new GPU, if the system is for gaming.

I would also make sure to fit an SSD in the spec.

Doomedspeed · 9 Aug 2013 at 16:04

This will look amazing, within the £1000 budget (as your collecting)

YOUR BASKET
1 x MSI Geforce GTX 770 Gaming Edition 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £319.99
1 x Intel Core i5-4670K 3.40GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £197.99
1 x MSI Z87-GD65 Gaming Series Intel Z87 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £161.99
1 x Samsung 120GB SSD 840 EVO SATA 6Gb/s Basic - (MZ-7TE120BW) £86.99
1 x Akasa Venom 750w Modular '80 Plus' Power Supply £79.99
1 x Patriot Venom Red 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-19200C10 2400MHz Dual Channel Memory Kit (PV38G240C0KRD) £65.99
1 x Prolimatech Black Megahalems CPU Cooler £49.98
1 x Corsair SP120 Performance Series High Pressure - Dual Pack (CO-9050008-WW) £25.99
Total : £988.91 (includes shipping : FREE).

New GPU, ready for SLI and overclocking.

Nice red/black colour scheme.

teppic · 9 Aug 2013 at 16:08

With keeping the current graphics card I'd wait for AMD's new GPUs and get BF4 bundled too.

S33A · 9 Aug 2013 at 17:01

What are your thoughts on the cpu? Given I play mostly wow would I benefit from an I7 or is it simply not worth the cash over the I5 (both being haswell ofc)

Roady · 9 Aug 2013 at 17:14

S33A said:
What are your thoughts on the cpu? Given I play mostly wow would I benefit from an I7 or is it simply not worth the cash over the I5 (both being haswell ofc)

Unless you have a need for Quad channel RAM (you don't) and more than 4 cores (you don't) then the only plus for a lower end i7 compared to a higher end i5 is the increase in cache. Gaming you gain more from the higher clock speed of a top end i5 (+OC) than you do from the increased CPU cache of an i7.

S33A · 9 Aug 2013 at 17:28

Another question would be the psu? will 750 be enough or do i need more to future proof it?

teppic · 9 Aug 2013 at 17:30

The i7 will give moderate increases in games that can use over 4 cores, nothing in WoW. It's difficult to justify the price jump.

A good 750w PSU will be ok for Crossfire/SLI, so it's already future proofed.