£1000 gaming build help

James J · 28 Apr 2011 at 15:23

Got around about £1000 to spend on a gaming PC but need everything apart from a mouse and keyboard + monitor.

Gonna buy a 22/24inch monitor after 2 weeks from now so I'm using my 40 inch TV in the mean time via HDMI, so a graphics card with HDMI would be useful lol.

Not bothered about fancy cases etc and I need windows 7 + dvd drive etc also.

Any ideas?

James J · 28 Apr 2011 at 16:23

Interesting stuff. Might put another £200 or so to this and go for an SSD and 2600k

James J · 28 Apr 2011 at 17:10

is 560gt SLI actually decent? Sorry for my rather daft question but those are one of a tiny fraction of graphics cards I know sod all about :S

James J · 28 Apr 2011 at 18:48

seriously tempted by the 560gti SLI build but is there anything major I need to know regarding how to setup SLI? Also they are preorder (both makes at a decent price) so I might have to wait a while

Are they much quicker than say a 580gtx? Will be gaming at 1920x1080p for the for-seable future due to the prices of 2560x1440+ monitors still being quite costly.

James J · 28 Apr 2011 at 19:10

well the next question is, how does 560gti SLI compare to 6950 xfire?

James J · 28 Apr 2011 at 19:17

stulid said:
Cross reference this - http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/Radeon_HD_6950_CrossFire/21.html

against the SLI GTX560 link above, the test system is the same too.

According to the performance summaries the 6950 xfire is 17% faster than a 5970 at 1920x1200 whilst 560gti sli is 4% faster than the same card.

Overall 15% faster than a 5970 compared to 6% faster so pretty interesting. Extremely similar prices as well.

Gonna take an extra £300/400 out of my ISA and increase my budget to £1300/1400 ish and build/buy something which is gonna last a few years.

James J · 28 Apr 2011 at 19:33

Ah didn't see that. Need to have a serious think on what to actually get. I don't want anything thats amazingly noisy but at the same time I'd like something powerful enough to last a few years without any problems at all.

In regards to your earlier build with the 560gti SLI, is it worth having raid 0 drives for storage and general games play (with a backup obviously which I already own). I'd love to just have a big SSD but the prices are just mental at the larger storage capacities.

I've used raid 0 a few years back and was really impressed with it but does it still require such archaic ways of installing it (aka via floppy disks still lol)?

James J · 28 Apr 2011 at 19:47

Gonna get myself a monitor also as i'm moving into a smaller house from september onwards so won't have the space for a 40inch tv as my monitor lol. I might be just going abit mental with the spec, which I'm defo guilty of to be fair.

James J · 28 Apr 2011 at 19:58

stulid said:
One more thing if your getting a new screen, depending on which size your looking at?

most 24" (except the dell+HP at £400+) offer up to 1920X1080 res anyway, still less than the charts above.

even most of the 27" screens only go up to 1080, unless you start spending £500+ to get 2560x1440

Aye sadly I'm all too familiar with that. Gonna opt for a 22inch one (probably the iyama £135 one on here) as its the best of both worlds. I can't fit a huge monitor onto the desk I've got from september onwards so size limitations play a certain role here. No point going above that just to get larger pixel size for the same res to be honest.

Just done a little spec of my own which is this:

Code:

Product Name	Qty	Price	Line Total
	Intel Core i7-2600K 3.40GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor with FREE Operation Flashpoint Red River Game		£239.99
(£199.99)	£239.99
(£199.99)
	Asus GeForce GTX 560Ti 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card		£174.98
(£145.82)	£349.96
(£291.64)
	IIyama Prolite E2271HDS 22" Widescreen LED Monitor - Black		£139.99
(£116.66)	£139.99
(£116.66)
	Asus P8P67-M PRO Intel P67 (Socket 1155) DDR3 MicroATX Motherboard ** B3 REVISION **		£114.98
(£95.82)	£114.98
(£95.82)
	XFX Pro 750W Core Edition Power Supply		£72.98
(£60.82)	£72.98
(£60.82)
	G.Skill RipJawsX 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (F3-12800CL9D-8GBXL )		£71.99
(£59.99)	£71.99
(£59.99)
	OCZ Vertex 60GB 2.5" SATA-II Solid State Hard Drive (OCZSSD2-1VTX60G)		£71.99
(£59.99)	£71.99
(£59.99)
	Microsoft Windows 7 Bundle - Home Premium 64 Bit		£68.40
(£57.00)	£68.40
(£57.00)
Options applied to the above product:
Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 32MB Cache WD10EALX - OEM		£44.99
(£37.49)	£44.99
(£37.49)
	Corsair Hydro H60 High Performance Liquid CPU Cooler (Socket LGA1366/1155/1156/775/AM2/AM3)		£59.99
(£49.99)	£59.99
(£49.99)
	Coolermaster CM-690 II Lite Dominator Case - Black		£57.98
(£48.32)	£57.98
(£48.32)
 		Sub Total :	£1,077.71
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout)	Shipping :	£22.20
VAT is being charged at 20.00%	VAT :	£219.98
 	Total :	£1,319.89

Thoughts? Thanks everyone for the help thus far though. Its been very eye opening and useful!

James J · 29 Apr 2011 at 02:01

Marvin said:
Agreed with stulid, I'd not choose that board for SLI/Crossfire, and a 2600K is pointless over a 2500K unless you're doing lots of multi-threaded tasks, and gaming doesn't fit in there.

Also, the H60 is over rated, a decent air cooler is as good or better, and is cheaper.

On top of this, it's really not worth spending £400 on graphics cards, only to use them on a 1920x1080 screen that isn't of the best quality. At least get yourself a £200 Dell U2311H which is much nicer in image quality, colour clarity, build quality, the stand is great and all the other IPS benefits.

I'd probably spend a little less overall, go for one decent GPU for 1920x1080, a 2500K, save the extra and spend it on a replacement GPU when the current feels a bit sluggish. You're not watercooling, so replacing a GPU is ****-easy.

Very good points made by both of you. Will go with the i5, an air cooler (recommendations?) And a solid single GPU instead + good monitor.

James J · 29 Apr 2011 at 13:46

Sorry for the late reply guys, was at the girlfriends house before she disappears for a few days on some trip.

After looking at those benchmarks for the CPU the 2500k definitely seems like the better choice now and its faster than my dads i7 860 as well for games and even encoding etc so a no brainer there really. Still unsure about what cooler to get but it depends on the RAM I end up choosing I suppose although if you say the corsair XMS3 series stuff fits all I'll just opt for that instead. Unsure about which graphics card to go for also at the moment and the same with the monitor. Would I really notice much of a difference between an IPS and TN panel?

James J · 29 Apr 2011 at 14:00

stulid said:
If you do lots of photography work where colour accuracy is important then a IPS panel is superior, apart from that, they both cope with fast moving images without any ghosting and there is no input lag with them either.

So as a gamer, not worth it?

James J · 29 Apr 2011 at 16:01

Right getting abit closer to what I'm gonna settle on now guys. Been doing abit of reading around and the iiyama monitors are still extremely good build quality and seriously good for games, so opting for one of those over a samsung. Not decided exactly on which gcard to settle on yet but I've got the funds spare regardless in my savings account so no biggy really.

Product Name Qty Price Line Total
Gainward GeForce GTX 580 "GOOD Edition" 1536MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £347.99
(£289.99) £347.99
(£289.99)
Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor with FREE Operation Flashpoint Red River Game £161.99
(£134.99) £161.99
(£134.99)
IIyama Prolite E2271HDS 22" Widescreen LED Monitor - Black £139.99
(£116.66) £139.99
(£116.66)
MSI P67A-GD65 Intel P67 (socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard - (Sandybridge) ** B3 REVISION ** £132.00
(£110.00) £132.00
(£110.00)
Corsair HX 750W ATX Modular SLI Compliant Power Supply (CMPSU-750HXUK) £109.98
(£91.65) £109.98
(£91.65)
Crucial RealSSD M4 64GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive **INTRODUCTORY ONLY PRICE** £89.99
(£74.99) £89.99
(£74.99)
Corsair XMS3 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMX8GX3M2A1600C9) £79.99
(£66.66) £79.99
(£66.66)
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit - OEM (GFC-00599) £79.99
(£66.66) £79.99
(£66.66)
Coolermaster CM-690 II Advanced Dominator Case - Black £73.98
(£61.65) £73.98
(£61.65)
Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (WD1002FAEX) £66.98
(£55.82) £66.98
(£55.82)
Akasa AK-CCX-4002HP Venom CPU Cooler (Socket LGA775/LGA1155/LGA1156/LGA1366/AM2/AM3) £38.99
(£32.49) £38.99
(£32.49)
TP-Link 300Mbps High-Gain Wireless-N USB Adapter (TL-WN822N) £16.99
(£14.16) £16.99
(£14.16)
OcUK 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £14.39
(£11.99) £14.39
(£11.99)
Sub Total : £1,127.71
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £20.10
VAT is being charged at 20.00% VAT : £229.56

Total : £1,377.37

To note, the WD hard drive has some rather good figures behind it for performance, but I didn't see much on the availability of reliability. Added the wireless adapter on due to reviews and actually needing one to connect to my home network in this house and my next one and the monitor size of 22inches suits the desk size in my new place really well.

Opinions? Will everything there work properly together without any major ****ing about? lol

James J · 29 Apr 2011 at 16:03

stulid said:
A bit of both?

480s are meant to be extremely hot and noisy aren't they? Thats the only reason which has stopped me going for one (in the past also).

James J · 29 Apr 2011 at 16:08

stulid said:
Everything works, but a 22" screen is a little disappointing, even if the res is the same as a bigger one.

Yeah true and the 580 is probably overkill for the res. I keep hearing the age old argument of "future proofing" in my head which is making me look at the "best" components which I know for a fact isn't strictly needed, just a matter of telling myself that lol. And this is someone who built a core2duo system, overclocked it by 1.2ghz more than stock and stuck a 8800GT (g92) next to it and was laughing at my budget but awesome spec all those years back...!!! lol

James J · 29 Apr 2011 at 16:12

Does that build still have the HSF for the cpu in it or are you factoring in the retail one?

James J · 29 Apr 2011 at 16:16

stulid said:
It comes with a retail one.

Its just wrong when you started of at £1K, and its now nearly £1.4K

Very true. Is the retail one decent? Not used a reference HSF in a VERY long time (talking like nearly a decade here lol)

James J · 29 Apr 2011 at 16:38

stulid said:
Read this page - http://www.anandtech.com/show/4083/...-core-i7-2600k-i5-2500k-core-i3-2100-tested/3 - Anandtech used the stock cooler to get to a easy 4.4GHZ

Nice, thanks. Just gotta finalise what I'm doing now as the spec looks pretty solid to be fair. Gonna do a bit of measuring up just to make sure that the monitor etc will fit using the desk I've been lumped with from september onwards, otherwise it'll require a rethink or laptop route -.-

James J · 29 Apr 2011 at 18:35

Ordered!

Gone for pretty much what you said stullid but with the wireless adapter and an extra matching WD hdd for raid 0 as that will be my primary store for games. Thanks again for the help and if I have any issues setting it all up on tuesday/wednesday when it turns up, I'll post another thread lol. (fingers crossed I wont have any issues, although its been a very long time since I installed RAID 0 and when I did it was with a floppy disk drive lol)

James J · 29 Apr 2011 at 18:41

Item Qty Price
MSI GeForce GTX 570 1280MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card 1 £199.99
Dell Ultrasharp U2311H 23" Widescreen LCD Monitor - Midnight Grey 1 £191.66
Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor with FREE Operation Flashpoint Red River Game 1 £134.99
MSI P67A-C45 Intel P67 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard - (Sandybridge) ** B3 REVISION ** 1 £83.32
Crucial RealSSD M4 64GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive **INTRODUCTORY ONLY PRICE** 1 £74.99
Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3X2K2/8GX) 1 £66.66
Coolermaster CM-690 II Advanced Dominator Case - Black 1 £61.65
Microsoft Windows 7 Bundle - Home Premium 64 Bit 1 £57.00
Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB SATA 6Gb/s 16MB Cache - OEM (WD5000AAKX) 1 £24.06
OCZ StealthXStream 2 600W Power Supply 1 £42.49
Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB SATA 6Gb/s 16MB Cache - OEM (WD5000AAKX) 1 £24.06
TP-Link 300Mbps High-Gain Wireless-N USB Adapter (TL-WN822N) 1 £14.16
Sony Optiarc AD-7260S 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM 1 £12.99
Sub Total: £988.02
FREE SHIPPING (DPD Next Day) Shipping: £0.00
Total Vat: £197.6
Total inc Vat: £1185.62

That one. Looking forward to it all arriving in the various boxes as its kinda like christmas for geeks