£1k Budget - New Build

Robi

Robi

Robi

Soldato
Joined
14 Apr 2007
Posts
3,469
Hello,

I sold my PC years ago after 1.6 died a lovely death, so I've been out of the loop for a long time. I want to get back into gaming, ideally for CS:GO, Overwatch, DotA2 and DoW3 when it eventually lands.

I've currently got a BenQ RL2755HM monitor for my PS4, and a SteelSeries pad. So I basically need everything. I'll probably sell the monitor as it won't be great for the PC, so the budget can stretch another £100 to £150 if need be.

Budget is £1000, can stretch to £1150 if required. I need the entire rig, including a gaming monitor, mechanical keyboard and mouse. The PC won't be used for anything other than gaming. When it comes to cases, I'd like something simple, aesthetically nice and with a window.

Your thoughts?
 
My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £1,114.86
(includes shipping: £28.02)
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If you need an OS also, stick a R9 380X in instead to help costs.
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Sorry, I forgot to mention, I don't need Windows. I'm gonna put together a build tonight and see what it lands at.

Couple of questions:

1. i5 is best bang for buck? What about i7?
2. 8Gb RAM minimum or is 16Gb really worth it purely for gaming?
3. I'm not going to be overclocking initially so what are the best aspects to look out for with motherboards?
 
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I would get the best PC possible now and keep the monitor you have for a bit and upgrade that as soon as possible to something good like a 144hz 1440p AHVA (IPS) or ultrawide 1440p. That way you would have a more future proof PC, and a good monitor eventually.
 
Robi said:
Sorry, I forgot to mention, I don't need Windows. I'm gonna put together a build tonight and see what it lands at.

Couple of questions:

1. i5 is best bang for buck? What about i7?
2. 8Gb RAM minimum or is 16Gb really worth it purely for gaming?
3. I'm not going to be overclocking initially so what are the best aspects to look out for with motherboards?
Click to expand...

1. Yes an i5 is still the best value cpu for a pure gaming pc.
2. You can go with 8GB, but Ram is very cheap so why not get 16GB for an extra £14 ?
3. The Z170 chipset is what you want as it has the most 'features'. Pretty much any should be fine for general overclocking. An alternative bundle would be the Gigabyte Z170XP-SLI.


My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £309.48
(includes shipping: £10.50)
​


​
 
Do be aware that the new Nvidia ranges of GPUs are to be launched imminently. Rumour says announcement / paper launch Friday, shipping for Computex in June.

With regard to CPUs, are you going to be playing Ashes of the Singularity? If so, go for an i7; otherwise save your money and go for an i5.
 
Strictly speaking for those games an overclocked dual core (Pentium or i3) would probably be plenty. An i5 is a nice upgrade "just in case".
 
Quartz said:
Do be aware that the new Nvidia ranges of GPUs are to be launched imminently. Rumour says announcement / paper launch Friday, shipping for Computex in June.

With regard to CPUs, are you going to be playing Ashes of the Singularity? If so, go for an i7; otherwise save your money and go for an i5.
Click to expand...

I don't have to order it now, so I can wait until June. I'm presuming the existing range of GPU's will drop in price?

No idea what Ashes of the Singularity even is.

With these motherboards, can you upgrade to an i7 if need be? As in, is the socket still the same? Daft question I know.
 
Current gpu's should drop in price.

Yes you can upgrade to an i7 such as the i7 6700K or a Kaby Lake cpu when they are released. They are not due out until the 2nd half of 2017.
 
My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £562.89
(includes shipping: £0.00)
​

I still need to do an immense amount of research into each individual part, but as a rule of thumb it seems that an i5-6600k is the best bang for buck.

For basics, how dow does the above look? That leaves me with around £600 for a GPU, monitor, keyboard, mouse and networked external drive. Rather than a 2nd HDD I would prefer something networked, as all of my media needs to be accessible across multiple devices (it won't be used on this PC to be honest, so no point having a local drive).

Couple of quick questions which will help massively:

1. DDR4 2133/2400/2666/3000 etc - which is the best value and realistically what should I aim for? For the price it makes sense for 16Gb but what speed?
2. AMD or NVIDIA for GPU - I genuinely don't even know where to start with this one.
3. SSD - anything I should look out for other than 6Gbps and the actual storage capacity?
4. PSU - anything I need to look out for other than how quiet it is and reliability? What about connections?
 
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Robi said:
4. PSU - anything I need to look out for other than how quiet it is and reliability? What about connections?
Click to expand...

Don't skimp on the PSU. HardOCP failed the 750W Corsair CX PSU, so I'd switch to something OEMed by Seasonic. If noise is important to you, you can get 400W to 520W silent - fanless - PSUs.
 
I think I'll focus on the key elements first; CPU + cooler, motherboard, memory, GPU, storage and PSU first. All the other bits will come down to personal preference to an extent.

My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £848.89
(includes shipping: £0.00)
​

That leaves me around £300-350 for a case, monitor, keyboard, mouse and external drive; which might be achievable if I skimp on a couple of the items.

As a core spec, how does that look?

It seems that the GTX 970 is extremely popular at the moment, which seems an obvious choice.
 
 
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I'm looking at the same sort of build but I'm going to wait for the gtx1070 at the end of the month.
 
Robi said:
Updated:

My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £789.89
​

Thoughts?

The motherboard gives me the option to add a second 970, which an't hurt.
Click to expand...


You would need a bigger psu for SLI. The XFX R9 390 is better value at £259.99.

The Corsair SSD is listed as pre order. Maybe ask customer services when stock is due or go with something else if you want everything at once.
 
How does the R9 390 perform against the 970?

Edit: Reviews seem to point towards to the 970 being the better performer, especially at higher resolutions. A small increase in price would be worth it overall no?
 
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Robi said:
How does the R9 390 perform against the 970?

Edit: Reviews seem to point towards to the 970 being the better performer, especially at higher resolutions. A small increase in price would be worth it overall no?
Click to expand...


In terms of performance they are pretty equal. Some games will favour the 970, and others the 390. Plus the extra vram on the R9 390 is nice to have.

As mentioned by Danny if you are waiting until June then maybe pick up one of the new Nvidia gpu's then, or wait for a price drop on current ones.
 
lee32uk said:
In terms of performance they are pretty equal. Some games will favour the 970, and others the 390. Plus the extra vram on the R9 390 is nice to have.

As mentioned by Danny if you are waiting until June then maybe pick up one of the new Nvidia gpu's then, or wait for a price drop on current ones.
Click to expand...

Do we have any idea of what the prices of the new GPU's are going to be, or what the range is? If the price of the 970 or 980 will drop significantly, or there is going to be a new card equally priced but with way better performance than the 970 - I'll wait.

Edit: "Nvidia has officially revealed the GeForce GTX 1080 and GTX 1070, based on its new Pascal architecture, offering an astonishing leap in performance and power efficiency over its existing 900-series Maxwell cards. According to Nvidia, the GTX 1080 is faster than two GTX 980s in SLI, shipping to users on May 27th at $599. Meanwhile, the GTX 1070 offers Titan X level performance for just over one third of the price - $379 - and is set to launch on June 10th"

I'll wait :)
 
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