£500 Gaming Machine?

Dunks

Dunks

Dunks

Soldato
Joined
31 Oct 2004
Posts
8,703
Location
London
Hey guys, I'm currently in the market for spending £500 on a gaming desktop to replacing my aging laptop, the only problem is these days I know nothing about what the best buys are, and what I should be looking for!

Any help on what the best components would be is very much appreciated :)
 
 
Last edited:
Yes it is sorry, forgot to say! I have OS, monitor, mouse and keyboard etc covered.

And thanks for the build spec, will check it out in more detail!
 
 
The H61 is not great has no SATA 3.
Drop he optical drive and get a z77 MB.
Incrauze said:
YOUR BASKET
1 x **B Grade** HIS HD 7950 IceQ BOOST 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (H795QC3G2M) with FREE Sleeping Dogs, Nexuiz, & CODMW2 PC Games £169.99
1 x Intel Core i3-3220 3.30GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £92.99
1 x Corsair Builder Series CX 500w Modular '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply (CP-9020059-UK) £54.98
1 x **B Grade** Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (S (HD-257-SE) £45.00
1 x **B Grade** Gigabyte H61MA-D3V Intel H61 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £42.00
1 x Patriot Viper Xtreme 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C8 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (PXD38G1600LLK) £39.95
1 x NZXT Source 210 Elite Midi Tower Case - Black £39.95
1 x OcUK 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £19.99
Total : £518.95 (includes shipping : £11.75).

Click to expand...
 
neocon said:
The H61 is not great has no SATA 3.
Drop he optical drive and get a z77 MB.
Click to expand...


That H61 board has two SATAIII ports controlled by a Marvell chip, so it is there, but a native SATAIII port from a Intel chip like the Z77 board I spec'd will be better.

http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4089#sp
Chipset:
  1. 4 x SATA 3Gb/s connectors (SATA2 0/1/2/3) supporting up to 4 SATA 3Gb/s devices
Marvell 88SE9172 chip:
  1. 2 x SATA 6Gb/s connectors (GSATA3 0/1) supporting up to 2 SATA 6Gb/s devices
  2. Support for RAID 0 and RAID 1
Click to expand...
Still not as good as my spec though.
 
Yeah, DVD drive isn't a major issue, plus I'll get free shipping (I think?) so can factor that into the price :)

Looking good so far guys, I'm thinking of maybe going for a lesser CPU than the i3 and going for an i5 next month. But not sure!
 
You do get free delivery so the spec I did is £509.96.

Getting a Z77 board is a sensible move and if you do get a "K" series CPU you will be able to OC it nicely (say around the 4GHz mark with a stock cooler and then 4.5GHz or higher with a bigger cooler)
 
Excellent, thank you! I was thinking of going second hand via the MM, but unsure due to warranty and things breaking!

Plus you do have to love a huge delivery of big shiny boxes :)
 
Some guy was moaning about SATA3 on another forum
Absolute LIES about SATA-3 and that why the low score! I spent £40 for SATA3 setup instead of SATA2 i was gunna get, wasted money!! ...Gigabyte advertise board as "High Speed SATA-3 with Super-Fast 6Gbps link speed" - but this is NOT the case as it uses rubbish Marvell 9172 chipset, your 550MB/s SSD drive will Max out at 370MB/s and IOPS. Latency & write speeds worse than SATA-2..!! most people who have these end up using SATA-2 and get 295MB/s read & better writes, Latency and IOPS than SATA-3 (Marvell) - to get TRUE SATA-3 speeds you need a P67 or Z77 board that has native Intel SATA-3 ports built right into the chipset - the marvell ones use a PCI-E x1 Lane (500MB/s) but cant even deliver that..!!
Click to expand...

I think you need an Ivybridge for SATA 3 , right?
 
Last edited:
Absolute LIES about SATA-3 and that why the low score! I spent £40 for SATA3 setup instead of SATA2 i was gunna get, wasted money!! ...Gigabyte advertise board as "High Speed SATA-3 with Super-Fast 6Gbps link speed" - but this is NOT the case as it uses rubbish Marvell 9172 chipset, your 550MB/s SSD drive will Max out at 370MB/s and IOPS. Latency & write speeds worse than SATA-2..!! most people who have these end up using SATA-2 and get 295MB/s read & better writes, Latency and IOPS than SATA-3 (Marvell) - to get TRUE SATA-3 speeds you need a P67 or Z77 board that has native Intel SATA-3 ports built right into the chipset - the marvell ones use a PCI-E x1 Lane (500MB/s) but cant even deliver that..!!
Click to expand...

hehe that's kinda funny
 
tbh go with Stulids build, although Incrauze's build does have a 7950 the I3 and h61 is going to limit the computer a bit, a 7850 is a grand g-card i have one and it can play nearly every game on ultra only one i have found so far that it can't run on ultra is Arma 3 cause it gets below 30fps on 1080p
 
How about these three and then choose your graphics card, case and HDD.

The Z77 has

- 2x SATA 6Gb/s (Intel) With RAID Support
- 4x USB 3.0 (2 external / 2 Internal)

Plus you can buy an i5 K chip at a latter date and you'll be able to OC it

Intel Core i3-3220 3.30GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail Intel Core i3-3220 3.30GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £92.99
(£77.49) £92.99
(£77.49)
MSI Z77A-G43 Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard MSI Z77A-G43 Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £73.99
(£61.66) £73.99
(£61.66)
Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMZ8GX3M2A1600C9) Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMZ8GX3M2A1600C9) £47.99
(£39.99) £47.99
(£39.99)

Is there any benefit to having higher clocking RAM?
 
Last edited:
The higher clocked RAM is obviously cheaper and faster, so a no-brainer.

The MSI board is voltage locked/limited, so overclocking is limited.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom