Finishing off an old gaming PC build

Tom_Tucker · 8 Jan 2015 at 11:44

Good morning.

I started building a gaming PC about 2-3 years ago but had to put the project on hiatus due to lack of funds.

It wasnt to be a high end machine but good enough to run the vast majority of games with little problems, nevermore would I see a game on steam and think "I'll never be able to play that."

I bought some of the parts already 3 years ago, case, RAM, PSU, DVD drive, HDD.

All that remained were the 3 most important parts impacting performance, Motherboard, CPU and Video card.

As I stopped buying I fell out of the loop of knowing the scale of whats high end and budget in terms of components.

Please could you guys help me out? I'll post what parts I was thinking of getting to finish this build now.

AMD Piledriver FX-8 Eight Core 8350 Black Edition 4.00GHz (Socket AM3+)
Gigabyte 990FXA-UD3 AMD 990FX (Socket AM3+) DDR3 Motherboard
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 970 WindForce OC 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card

Originally I was going to get an FX-6 6300 AMD CPU and a 7870 GPU but I think I'd do a lot better now with the above parts?
I was also going to get the UD5 version of the above motherboard but it seems to not be available on OCUK anymore. Whats the difference between UD3 and UD5?

Also, is that GTX 970 overkill in relation to the other parts? I was also considering
Sapphire Radeon R9 290 Vapor-X OC 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card
but I have no idea how the two cards compare, I was going purely by similar pricing.

The PSU and RAM that I have already are
16GB of corsair vengeance memory DDR3 1600MHz, is this outdated or ok?
Corsair 850AX Professional Series Gold 850W
I went a bit overkill with the PSU, but I did it with overclocking and future upgrades in mind.

I got a Fractal Design Core 3000 ATX case but I dont feel too happy with that choice now, I may go buy this one, but not right away.
Corsair Graphite 760T Windowed Full Tower Gaming Case - White

Sorry for the long post, all help is greatly appreciated!

Tom_Tucker · 8 Jan 2015 at 11:46

Forgot one thing!

a lot of the games I'd like to play tend to be very CPU intenstive. Things like Arma 3. Just thought I should mention this.

MagicBoy · 8 Jan 2015 at 11:55

If you want CPU performance and bang per buck then look at the Core i5. AMD just can't compete.

Idleman · 8 Jan 2015 at 12:00

How much are you looking to spend on Cpu,mobo and Gpu?

Tom_Tucker · 8 Jan 2015 at 12:47

MagicBoy said:
If you want CPU performance and bang per buck then look at the Core i5. AMD just can't compete.

Is there no AMD equivalent at all? The price difference is pretty big.

How much are you looking to spend on Cpu,mobo and Gpu?

Around 400-500, preferably under 600 if possible.

Thanks guys.

Idleman · 8 Jan 2015 at 13:10

EVGA same price as the GB but clocked a bit higher. Just get the 8320 and a decent cooler and overclock it.

YOUR BASKET
1 x EVGA GeForce GTX 970 SC ACX 2.0 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (04G-P4-2974-KR) £289.99
1 x AMD Piledriver FX-8 Eight Core 8320 Black Edition 3.50GHz (Socket AM3+) Processor - Retail £119.99
1 x Gigabyte 990FXA-UD3 AMD 990FX (Socket AM3+) DDR3 Motherboard £99.95
Total : £519.53 (includes shipping : £8.00).

Intel i5 maxs out your budget.

YOUR BASKET
1 x EVGA GeForce GTX 970 SC ACX 2.0 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (04G-P4-2974-KR) £289.99
1 x Intel Core i5-4690K 3.50GHz (Devil's Canyon) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £199.99
1 x Gigabyte Z97X-SLI Intel Z97 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £92.99
Total : £592.57 (includes shipping : £8.00).

Doomedspeed · 8 Jan 2015 at 16:51

Tom_Tucker said:
Is there no AMD equivalent at all? The price difference is pretty big.

Unfortunately the price gap is pretty well justified.

The AMD chips struggle with single threaded performance, so in CPU heavy games they fall apart (metaphorically). Its not 'all about the (amount of) core(z)'.

As idle specced you can grab an i5 and 970 for under £600. If you want a lower price the 290s are around £130 cheaper.

Deus Ex · 8 Jan 2015 at 16:58

+1 for going the intel route, it will just perform an awful lot better.

MagicBoy · 8 Jan 2015 at 17:43

Tom_Tucker said:
Is there no AMD equivalent at all? The price difference is pretty big.

Have some graphs : http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/697?vs=1261

The Intel is a better long term investment. Even the i5-2500 from nearly 4 years ago is a better general gaming CPU than the current AMD chips and consumes less power.

Tom_Tucker · 9 Jan 2015 at 21:44

Idleman said:
EVGA same price as the GB but clocked a bit higher. Just get the 8320 and a decent cooler and overclock it.

YOUR BASKET
1 x EVGA GeForce GTX 970 SC ACX 2.0 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (04G-P4-2974-KR) £289.99
1 x AMD Piledriver FX-8 Eight Core 8320 Black Edition 3.50GHz (Socket AM3+) Processor - Retail £119.99
1 x Gigabyte 990FXA-UD3 AMD 990FX (Socket AM3+) DDR3 Motherboard £99.95
Total : £519.53 (includes shipping : £8.00).

Intel i5 maxs out your budget.

YOUR BASKET
1 x EVGA GeForce GTX 970 SC ACX 2.0 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (04G-P4-2974-KR) £289.99
1 x Intel Core i5-4690K 3.50GHz (Devil's Canyon) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £199.99
1 x Gigabyte Z97X-SLI Intel Z97 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £92.99
Total : £592.57 (includes shipping : £8.00).

Thank you very much.

I think I will go with the intel i5 spec list you lined up, that's a lot cheaper than I thought it'd be.

I googled that Z97X motherboard in the intel list and read one review from someone who apparently experienced crashing and freezing issues from that board, even after updating the bios.
He didn't go into much detail so I doubt it's a legitimate problem, but since theres no reviews on the OCUK site I wondered what the consensus of it is?

Also is this different to some of the ones I found on google listed GA-Z97X ? Whats the difference between them?

With the EVGA GPU, a 4 star review on the OC site said,

Unfortunately, it does not come with a backplate pre-installed and the promotion to receive it FREE of charge from EVGA has already ended, although one can still buy it from various places...

This will be my first time building a PC (as you can probably tell) so I'm unsure but does that mean I'll need to buy the metal plate that goes against the slot on the back of the case? Didn't fully understand.

Lastly, does anyone here know what sort of level the i5-4690K is capable of in terms of gaming performance and multi tasking in general? I've not had the most powerful or fastest machines in the past so I dont have any personal point of reference in gauging what it'll be able to do.

Really appreciate the advice and guidance. Thanks all.

ED209 · 9 Jan 2015 at 22:23

just a note, I have that same GPU and its a really good card. it doesn't come with a back plate at all (well mine didn't)

the back plate would normally go on the back of the GPU where you normally see the gpu board but the above card doesn't have one

Doomedspeed · 10 Jan 2015 at 01:27

Any motherboard is prone to freezes (and stuff), a lot of the time it is not the boards problem but the memory/GPU ect...

Gigabyte do a lot of Z97X boards, the SLI is the lowest but is ideal for people who are overclocking and looking at SLI too. Anything above, in your situation is a waste of money.

A back plate isn't needed it's just for decoration.