£5k Budget, help please.

Diwrnach said:
Still a little concerned about screen tear with 7970's though.
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Then maybe go for a pair of GTX 670's or 680's (get the 4GB versions if running hi resolutions over a multi monitor setup ;))... PhysX also looks nice with the handful of games that support it (more so with Borderlands 2 :)).
 
I like these threads cos they are a bit pie in the sky, if I was going balls out on a PC from this site i'd build something like this:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel 520 Series 480GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive - Retail £419.99
2 x KFA2 GeForce GTX 670 EX OC 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £399.95 (£799.90)
1 x Intel Core i7-2600 3.40GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £239.99
1 x Asus Z77 Maximus V Formula Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £204.00
1 x Seasonic 1000w '80 Plus Platinum' Modular Power Supply £194.99
1 x Silverstone Fortress FT02 USB3.0 Case - Black (SST-FT02B USB 3.0) £189.98
2 x Western Digital Caviar Green 3TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (WD30EZRX) £121.99 (£243.98)
2 x Corsair Vengeance Low Profile 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C10 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CML16GX3M2A1600C10) £74.99 (£149.98)
Total : £2,460.50 (includes shipping : £14.75).



Then go nuts with whatever is left over for screens, watercooling and peripherals.
 
Diwrnach said:
Wow thanks a lot guys, so much to check on. Only just got home from work and had a skim through the whole thread since I last posted and must say this threads advice and another I have elsewhere I am swaying towards dual 7970, banking the money saved and looking at next gen cards when they appear maybe.

Also someone who thought I was trolling a bit, I am not at all I am in the process of selling my house and moving, so will have a reasonable amount of spare cash available, and as I spend so much time on my PC figured why not blow some on a top notch PC, the one I have now was around £1200 when I built it and has lasted my a good 5-6 years and is only now starting to struggle, if I can repeat that with this one I see that as a good investment considering the amount of hours enjoyment it will give me.
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i think its difficult to spec a pc with a decent budget without knowing what its going to be used for, just saying gaming isnt enough because it depends which games.
pc's these days have become kind of specialist and you gear them towards what you use them for, the gfx card setup, the storage, the screens, the size of the case etc

i think if you decide what you will mainly use the pc for, you will get better advice on what you actually need for now and a little while into the future
the amount of money isnt a big deal i think, people spend a lot more on other hobbies, and if you are going to have it built up for you its nice not to be disapointed :)
 
Well I am a general gamer, I play most genre and can't really build it with specific games in mind really, I play everything, Batman, BF3, World of Tanks, looking at playing GW2, maybe some other mmos in the future, maybe some EvE, all sorts really.
 
Oh and no pie in the sky sldsmkd, not sure why some people find it hard to believe I am looking on spending 5k on a PC.

Work hard for my money, run my own business, managed to buy my house outright by the age of 27, I will also be spending similar cash on a motorbike, nearly 2k on a fish tank and probably close to 10k on a workshop in my garden to build custom motorbikes and streefighters.

Work hard and play hard.
 
trying to make it a build thread, but I have quite a few reply's trying to make it seem I am not serious with this post and felt the need to defend my position.

have anything constructive to add? or?
 
Diwrnach said:
Well I am a general gamer, I play most genre and can't really build it with specific games in mind really, I play everything, Batman, BF3, World of Tanks, looking at playing GW2, maybe some other mmos in the future, maybe some EvE, all sorts really.
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ok thats cool. id call that a casual gamer yeh
i think you will enjoy 3 screens, or even a 1440p
 
How about,

Intel® Core™ i7-3960X Extreme Edition Six Core 3.30 GHz water cooled,
16GB RAM,
7970 x 3 water cooled,
Asus Rampage IV Extreme Intel X79 Chipset motherboard,
Thermaltake Level 10GT Full Tower Wide Body Gaming Case,
2TB HDD,
CoolerMaster 1000watt Silent Pro M2 Modular Gaming Power Supply, SLI/Crossfire ready,
Corsair Force Series 480GB (240GBx2) Raid 0 Extreme Performance solid state HDD.

Overclock the hell out of it.

Comes in around £3500, leaving £1500 for monitors, speakers, mouse and keyboard.
 
Diwrnach said:
Oh and no pie in the sky sldsmkd, not sure why some people find it hard to believe I am looking on spending 5k on a PC.
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I don't doubt or care if you are planning to spend whatever silly money on the PC. It's pie in the sky for everyone else. I frankly quite enjoy speccing up silly expensive PCs, hell I even scratched that itch once and bought one. It was great for a year or two then, nothing special.

Hypothetically building a PC with gold plated hot and cold running hookers is always fun.
 
Regarding 690's
You're missing something very important, VRAM and AA.

GTX 690 SLI is fast. Nobody would be stupid to doubt that. But the applications it can be used for is limited by its limited VRAM. A single GTX 690 runs 2560x1600P above 60FPS and that's the maximum resolution a GTX 690 can be effective at. So that in its self renders a second card useless.

The card can't run surround resolutions at maximum settings with 5760x1080P or above because such resolutions in todays badly optimised/heavily AAed games require above the 2012mb limit. And that's why as such an expensive product it's considered useless.

It's one thing to win benchmarks on a single screen at 720P and 1080P with a VRAM limited system but once you start running your native surround resolutions the benchmarks won't even load. Heaven on my GTX 690 system I had would not even load at 3880x1920 and it won't on yours either.

And that's what im getting at. GTX 690 is the pinnacle of video game hardware and pushing the boundaries of graphics card design but it has a flaw and that's the memory each GPU has available to it. Nobody wants to pay £800 or even £1700 on GPUs and the same on monitors to run them without all the eye candy turned up. Max settings include AA and playing without AA isn't pushing anyone's boundaries. It's a giant cop out. Especially when three 4GB GTX 680s Are far cheaper and easier to find.

I don't doubt you have great frame rates in games like BF3 but once you turn AA on your GTX 690 SLI will fall flat on its face. I know mine did and it really upsets me that no review site has even mentioned this or tested it properly. Because on maps like Strike at Karkand in BF3 I was using a minimum 1900mb VRAM with AA off, HBAO off and motion blur off because I had to cut down on VRAM. The level would hit minimums of 50 in some areas but as soon as the VRAM limit was hit itd halter to 20FPS and be unplayable.

It's great to have the speed the GTX 690 has but it means nothing once the card hits it's VRAM limit which happens often when it's running a surround set-up. For this reason GTX 670/680 4GB SLI is better in everyway than any GTX 690 set-up. Which is a shame because the GTX 690 is the most beautiful piece of graphic card engineering to date as far as I'm concerned.

Once you start going over a resolution of 1920*1080/1200 you will start to hit the VRAM limit once you turn everythimng on max and mods will add even more to this VRAM limit,however at 1920 res the 690 is fantastic but again 2 in sli is a waste,trust me ive been there and i owned 2 when they came out,sold it after because of what i explained above.

I hope you follow what I'm trying to get at.
 
PFS said:
Regarding 690's
You're missing something very important, VRAM and AA.

GTX 690 SLI is fast. Nobody would be stupid to doubt that. But the applications it can be used for is limited by its limited VRAM. A single GTX 690 runs 2560x1600P above 60FPS and that's the maximum resolution a GTX 690 can be effective at. So that in its self renders a second card useless.

The card can't run surround resolutions at maximum settings with 5760x1080P or above because such resolutions in todays badly optimised/heavily AAed games require above the 2012mb limit. And that's why as such an expensive product it's considered useless.

It's one thing to win benchmarks on a single screen at 720P and 1080P with a VRAM limited system but once you start running your native surround resolutions the benchmarks won't even load. Heaven on my GTX 690 system I had would not even load at 3880x1920 and it won't on yours either.

And that's what im getting at. GTX 690 is the pinnacle of video game hardware and pushing the boundaries of graphics card design but it has a flaw and that's the memory each GPU has available to it. Nobody wants to pay £800 or even £1700 on GPUs and the same on monitors to run them without all the eye candy turned up. Max settings include AA and playing without AA isn't pushing anyone's boundaries. It's a giant cop out. Especially when three 4GB GTX 680s Are far cheaper and easier to find.

I don't doubt you have great frame rates in games like BF3 but once you turn AA on your GTX 690 SLI will fall flat on its face. I know mine did and it really upsets me that no review site has even mentioned this or tested it properly. Because on maps like Strike at Karkand in BF3 I was using a minimum 1900mb VRAM with AA off, HBAO off and motion blur off because I had to cut down on VRAM. The level would hit minimums of 50 in some areas but as soon as the VRAM limit was hit itd halter to 20FPS and be unplayable.

It's great to have the speed the GTX 690 has but it means nothing once the card hits it's VRAM limit which happens often when it's running a surround set-up. For this reason GTX 670/680 4GB SLI is better in everyway than any GTX 690 set-up. Which is a shame because the GTX 690 is the most beautiful piece of graphic card engineering to date as far as I'm concerned.

Once you start going over a resolution of 1920*1080/1200 you will start to hit the VRAM limit once you turn everythimng on max and mods will add even more to this VRAM limit,however at 1920 res the 690 is fantastic but again 2 in sli is a waste,trust me ive been there and i owned 2 when they came out,sold it after because of what i explained above.

I hope you follow what I'm trying to get at.
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Not looking at getting a 6xx series for a while, but nice bit of information, thanks :)
 
Kellogz said:
Thanks for this, was considering the 690 SLIs in the future, makes me want to reconsider and just stick with my cross 7970s plan.
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At the end of the day it all depends on what resolution your gonna be running at,the higher the resolution the more VRAM that you will need,at 1920 resolution the 690 is brilliant for any game you throw at it.
 
As per some other folks. I'd also consider dual 690's a bit pointless. I think anand did some testing and there's a noticeable lack of improvement as you add more.

If we are simply going to throw money at a build as it's available stick the big revodrive in there. It will make the machine fly in a much more noticable way than the 2 extra GPU cores will.

Revodrive, 2x moderately good 500GB SSD's in raid 0 on a Z77 board. i5 chip. 16GB RAM (you do NOT need more for gaming. With about 3 GAMES running it's hard to break 8GB even) etc. Build a decent machine rather than something for the price.
 
Lets be honest, my build beats all :D Surprised no one bought up EVGA dual CPU mobo....

I`d get water loop though.. instead of h100
YOUR BASKET
2 x MSI GeForce GTX 690 4096MB PCI-Express Graphics Card £899.99 (£1.00)
1 x EVGA SR-X Dual Socket (Socket 2011) Motherboard £559.99
1 x Asus VG278H 27" TRUE 120Hz 3D Widescreen LED Monitor with NVIDIA 3D Vision 2.0 Glasses - Black £469.99
2 x Intel Core i7-3930K 3.20GHz (Sandybridge-E) Socket LGA2011 Processor - Retail £459.95 (£919.90)
1 x Cooler Master Cosmos II Ultra Tower Case - Black £269.99
1 x PC Power & Cooling Silencer Mk III 1200W '80 Plus Platinium' Modular Power Supply £219.98
2 x OCZ Vertex 4 256GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive (VTX4-25SAT3-256G) £169.99 (£339.98)
2 x Corsair Hydro H100 Extreme Performance Liquid CPU Cooler (Socket LGA775/LGA1155/LGA1156/LGA1366/LGA2011/AM2/AM3) (CWCH100) £85.98 (£171.96)
1 x Seagate Barracuda 2TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST2000DM001) £65.99
3 x TeamGroup Xtreem LV 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-17000C11 2133MHz Dual Channel Kit (TXD38G2133HC11DC01) £35.99 (£107.97)
Total : £4,925.72 (includes shipping : FREE).



Raid SSD

I mean 2 690 is a bit pointless now, but in about a year it will become handy.

I wonder how 2 3930k will be used in games though...
 
Last edited:
Mercutio said:
As per some other folks. I'd also consider dual 690's a bit pointless. I think anand did some testing and there's a noticeable lack of improvement as you add more.

If we are simply going to throw money at a build as it's available stick the big revodrive in there. It will make the machine fly in a much more noticable way than the 2 extra GPU cores will.

Revodrive, 2x moderately good 500GB SSD's in raid 0 on a Z77 board. i5 chip. 16GB RAM (you do NOT need more for gaming. With about 3 GAMES running it's hard to break 8GB even) etc. Build a decent machine rather than something for the price.
Click to expand...

As I recall revo drive is all about giving simmailr SSD performance but with high storage?? So it is not as good as SSD but just better value for gb
 
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