Potential PC build

bennydragonboy

bennydragonboy

bennydragonboy

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19 Oct 2009
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Berkshire, UK
It has been around a decade since I last built a computer, I have had a couple of portable systems since then, I am currently using a Lenovo G555. Anyway, I think it is about time that I had built myself a gaming machine again, so here we are.

I have a fairly good idea what I want already, but I am open to suggestions if you have any, and of course tell me if I am forgetting anything. Here goes nothing...

OcUK Tech Labs - Xigmatek Asgard II Midi-Tower, black/silver - Noise Dampened £49 http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-035-XG&groupid=2362&catid=2297

Akasa Venom 750w Modular '80 Plus' £72 http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-055-AK&groupid=701&catid=123&subcat=2466

Asus M5A99X EVO R2.0 AMD 990X £110 http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-559-AS&groupid=701&catid=1903&subcat=2046

AMD Piledriver FX-8 Eight Core 8350 £150 http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-336-AM

MSI Radeon R7 260X OC £114 http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-228-MS&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=1866

Kingston HyperX Predator 8GB (2x4GB) PC3-19200C11 2400MHz Dual Channel Memory Kit £80 http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-135-KS&groupid=701&catid=8&subcat=1387

Seagate Barracuda 2TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache £75 http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-255-SE&groupid=701&catid=14

SanDisk Pulse 128GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive £68 http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-007-SD&groupid=701&catid=2104

Asus Xonar DGX 5.1 PCI-Express Sound Card with built in Headphone Amp £22 http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=SC-015-AS

OcUK BDRW 15x SATA £69 http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CD-005-OK&groupid=701&catid=10&subcat=314

Tenda 300Mbps Wireless-N PCI Adapter £14 http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=NW-002-DN&groupid=46&catid=1597&subcat=1622

Alpenföhn K2 Mount Doom CPU Cooler £60 http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HS-020-AL

£5 x3 (£15) Xigmatek Orange Line 120mm White LED Fan http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FG-007-XG&groupid=701&catid=2331&subcat=4

£4 x3 (£12) Akasa Fan Filter - 120mm http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FG-043-AK

Total cost: About £910

I may opt to just use the AMD stock CPU cooler, I'm not sure just yet. Also note that the R7 260X is intended to be a temporary card, as I hope to get something like the R9 290X when more money is available.

I am actually a fair bit short of the £910 right now, but I should have that by the end of the year.
 
YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-4670K 3.40GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £185.99
1 x Gigabyte Z87-D3HP Intel Z87 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £109.99
1 x Samsung 120GB SSD 840 EVO SATA 6Gb/s Basic - (MZ-7TE120BW) £86.99
1 x Antec High Current Gamer 620W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £79.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 2TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST2000DM001) HDD £74.99
1 x Corsair Carbide 330R Silent Mid Tower Case - Black £74.95
1 x OcUK BDRW 15x SATA Internal - OEM £69.95
1 x Adata XPG Xtreme v1.0 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-17100C10 2133MHz Dual Channel Memory Kit (AX3U2133XC4G10-2X) £69.95
Total : £774.22 (includes shipping : £17.85).



that's without a gpu, however if you're not buying till end of the year come back for a spec then as prices change. do you need a blue ray? if not you can cut it down to a dvdrw for £15.
 
YOUR BASKET
1 x HIS HD 7950 IceQ BOOST 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (H795QC3G2M) **FREE SHIPPING** £209.99
1 x Intel Core i5-4670K 3.40GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £185.99
1 x Gigabyte Z87-D3HP Intel Z87 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £109.99
1 x Be Quiet Power Zone 650W Fully Modular Power Supply £89.99
1 x Samsung 120GB SSD 840 EVO SATA 6Gb/s Basic - (MZ-7TE120BW) £86.99
1 x Toshiba 2TB 7200RPM SATA 6GB/s 32MB Cache - OEM (DT01ACA200) HDD £68.99
1 x TeamGroup Vulcan ORANGE 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-19200C11 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit (TLAD38G2400HC11CDC01) £65.99
1 x Corsair Carbide 200R Compact ATX Case - Black (CC-9011023-WW) £49.99
1 x TP-Link 300Mbps Wireless N PCI Express Adapter (TL-WN881ND) £16.99
1 x OcUK 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £14.99
Total : £899.89 (includes shipping : FREE).




7950 is a great card which should last you a while.
PSU will allow for a 290x if you decide to get one.
Motherboard comes with a decent cooler.
Carbide 200R is a better case than the one you specced.
Samsung Evo SSD is much better than the Sandisk.
 
lee32uk said:
7950 is a great card which should last you a while.
PSU will allow for a 290x if you decide to get one.
Carbide 200R is a better case than the one you specced.
Samsung Evo SSD is much better than the Sandisk.
Click to expand...

Hmm, yeah my friend has an HD7950 and seems happy enough, although he is mainly a console gamer. Still it is something I will consider, for sure.

About the case, the one you suggest has no noise dampening, which detracts me from it.

The Samsung Evo is certainly a faster drive, but it costs quite a bit more than the Sandisk Pulse, and is faster than I will need anyway.
 
I thinik buying a 'stop-gap' card new is a false economy.

Lets say you buy the 260X (which i wouldn't). It costs you around £115, then you'll buy a 290X for £450 lets say.

You be able to sell your card for around half to 2/3 of the price you bought it for.. you would have spent over £500 on a £450 card.

Whereas if you get a card secondhand for £60 (lets say) you'll proably only lose a £10 selling it on again.

You see what i mean?
 
Hmm, yes, there is that.
If I do decide to grab a secondhand card for now, what should I go for?
Also, if I do still decide to buy a card new, what would you suggest there?
Theoretically I could wait some more, but, I really do not like waiting...

Additional: I am contemplating saving a little more and just getting an R9 280X, I am fairly sure I can live with that card, haha.
 
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Yeah, I think that's what I will do. One of the few things I am still wondering about is the processor and motherboard, I definitely want to go AMD, but I want to be able to futureproof in terms of upgradability.

There is a lot of speculation that the AM3+ socket will not be getting any new processors for it, and there has been no confirmation or denial from AMD yet as far as I know, so an FM2+ socket motherboard could be a better option.

However, AMD APUs and motherboards are not particularly expensive anyway, so perhaps I should stop worrying and just go for what is best now. Later down the line, I can change motherboard if necessary, I suppose.
 
fowler002 said:
why do you want to go amd for the cpu?
Click to expand...

Well the kind of things I will be doing on the system, chiefly gaming, do not require the most expensive CPUs on the market. AMD has good price-performance, as it always has, and while I admit they would do well to become more energy efficient--that aspect does not affect me too much.

That aside, I just have a much greater respect for AMD than I do Intel, largely due to AMD's support and development of open source technologies. I do not even want to bring up the darker side of why I do not like Intel, but I am sure you can find some examples through search engines.

Doomedspeed said:
It sounds like you've just talked yourself out of going AMD then?
Click to expand...

Not quite, I mean, I am looking at AMD and Intel now and wondering. I still have my morality and loyalty to the former though, despite knowing that their CPU side has been subpar for a while now, but is the difference in CPU performance so great that I should jump ship to Intel? That is the question, and for my own usage scenarios, I think the answer is probably no.

So if the answer is indeed, no, then where does that leave me? I can either go ahead with getting an AM3+ board, knowing that I will likely stay with the FX8350 for the entire lifespan of the system, assuming that no new architecture chips are released for the socket of course. Or I can look at FM2+ motherboards and APUs, have lesser performance than FX8xxx in the short term, but know that I will be able to upgrade the chip later on.

First of all, I need to look at some benchmarks for A10 Richland and Kaveri APUs vs the FX-8350 CPU. Kaveri is not out till February though, which is the only reason I mention Richland. Although, I am fairly certain that the FX-8350 will kick current gen APUs' arses by quite a considerable amount, and possibly next gen too.

However, I do occasionally emulate, and do not deny that recent Intel processors have been much better in emulation of PS2 for example. So that is a possible pro to going Intel, and because of that, I might consider some of their chips.

I don't know, specify an Intel CPU and tell me why I might choose it over an FX-8350.
 
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fowler002 said:
well if you look at bench marks for gaming performance intel chips are clock for clock better than amd, is that not reason enough?
Click to expand...

I know Intel has better clock for clock performance, but if you look at what actually matters most in regards to gaming, which would be the FPS.

If you build two systems as identical as possible, one with Ivybridge and the other with Piledriver architecture processors, everything else (GPU, RAM, etc.) the same. On average the difference in FPS between the two, will be negligible, I am talking like 1-5FPS better on the Intel system.

So when considering the actual cost of the two processors, you see that the Intel only gives you a few more frames per second, and therefore justifies getting a less powerful overall processor--because it loses almost nothing in most games.

I know there are exceptions, where the CPU is used much more heavily than the GPU, and obviously on those games Intel at the moment is going to have a great advantage. Really though, we shouldn't be seeing this, it comes down to lazy coding by developers...look at all the power modern GPUs have, developers should use it! Anyway, yes, that is the exception.
 
bennydragonboy said:
I know Intel has better clock for clock performance, but if you look at what actually matters most in regards to gaming, which would be the FPS.

If you build two systems as identical as possible, one with Ivybridge and the other with Piledriver architecture processors, everything else (GPU, RAM, etc.) the same. On average the difference in FPS between the two, will be negligible, I am talking like 1-5FPS better on the Intel system.

So when considering the actual cost of the two processors, you see that the Intel only gives you a few more frames per second, and therefore justifies getting a less powerful overall processor--because it loses almost nothing in most games.

I know there are exceptions, where the CPU is used much more heavily than the GPU, and obviously on those games Intel at the moment is going to have a great advantage. Really though, we shouldn't be seeing this, it comes down to lazy coding by developers...look at all the power modern GPUs have, developers should use it! Anyway, yes, that is the exception.
Click to expand...

well considering the current intel cpu is haswell not ivybridge your comparison falls flat on its face ;)
yes haswell is not that big a leap in performance over ib but as the saying goes 'every little helps' ;)
and by clock to clock performance I was getting at the fps performance(i.e. with both cpus at the same/similar clock speed the intel has the higher fps), should have said that I guess.
 
fowler002 said:
well considering the current intel cpu is haswell not ivybridge your comparison falls flat on its face ;)
yes haswell is not that big a leap in performance over ib but as the saying goes 'every little helps' ;)
and by clock to clock performance I was getting at the fps performance(i.e. with both cpus at the same/similar clock speed the intel has the higher fps), should have said that I guess.
Click to expand...

I've not looked at the numbers for Haswell, but I doubt they differ much from Ivy, and both of them are 22nm as well. Whereas Piledriver is 32nm, like Sandy is too, which is what it was meant to be competing with.

Steamroller and Excavator cannot come fast enough, the delays have allowed Intel to get even further ahead. It is a shame, personally I think AMD should have skipped Steamroller and gone straight to Excavator, but that won't happen now.

As I said, the "higher FPS" that Intel has is in most cases about 1-5FPS more, than what you would get in the same system with an AMD FX processor. Unless you are actually saying that it is right to downclock the AMD chip, below its stock clock speed, which would actually not be a fair benchmark at all!
 
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