£600-£700 Gaming Build

BitFenix Spectre Plain BLACK 120mm Fan - £11.98*

Bitfenix Nova Midi Tower Case - Black Window - £26.99*

SuperFlower Golden Green HX 550W "80 Plus Gold" Power Supply - Black - £59.99*

Asus GeForce GTX 960 TURBO OC 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card - £161.99*

TeamGroup Elite 8GB (2x4GB) DDR4 PC4-19200C16 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit - Black (TPKD48GM2400HC16DC01 - £38.99*

Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo CPU Cooler - £29.99*

Seagate Barracuda 500GB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 16MB Cache - OEM (ST500DM002) HDD - £36.95*

Gigabyte Z170XP-SLI - Intel Core i5 6600K Bundle **£20 Saving** - £293.98*

Total order value - £660.86* (not including shipping)

this should be just right for your budget
sorry i dont know how to post those links properly as i am completely new to posting :)
 
Ok, so I have ordered the case and the CPU/board bundle from OCUK and they're due to arrive in the next couple of hours. The SSD & HDD are sitting under the Christmas tree, so we're well on the way. :D

As Snookums said earlier in the thread, having been watching a bunch of videos and reading articles, I am now getting the itch to OC. Yeah, I know, you told me so. :p

For now, I will just go with the board's auto OC, but may look to tweak things later, if I feel confident. Though, nothing overly hardcore.

So, with this in mind, I am now considering closed loop water solutions over the EVO 212. I know the EVO will handle some light OC well, but I like things to be icy cool.

I am looking at the Kraken X61 and the Corsair H110i GT. Both will fit in the roof of the NZXT H440 2015 case, as far as I can tell. Most seem to recommend the Corsair, but many say it's very loud....although I'm wondering if the supposedly very good sound proofing on the H440 will negate enough of that excess noise. I'm not bothered about some noise, but I don't want it to sound like a vacuum cleaner.

What would folks recommend?

Also, will the upgrade in cooling mean that I will have to up the PSU?


My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £845.22
(includes shipping: £14.70)
​


​
 
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Brocky36 said:
Ok, so I have ordered the case and the CPU/board bundle from OCUK and they're due to arrive in the next couple of hours. The SSD & HDD are sitting under the Christmas tree, so we're well on the way. :D

As Snookums said earlier in the thread, having been watching a bunch of videos and reading articles, I am now getting the itch to OC. Yeah, I know, you told me so. :p

For now, I will just go with the board's auto OC, but may look to tweak things later, if I feel confident. Though, nothing overly hardcore.

So, with this in mind, I am now considering closed loop water solutions over the EVO 212. I know the EVO will handle some light OC well, but I like things to be icy cool.

I am looking at the Kraken X61 and the Corsair H110i GT. Both will fit in the roof of the NZXT H440 2015 case, as far as I can tell. Most seem to recommend the Corsair, but many say it's very loud....although I'm wondering if the supposedly very good sound proofing on the H440 will negate enough of that excess noise. I'm not bothered about some noise, but I don't want it to sound like a vacuum cleaner.

What would folks recommend?

Also, will the upgrade in cooling mean that I will have to up the PSU?


My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £845.22
(includes shipping: £14.70)
​


​
Click to expand...

Anyone?
 
Gaming4Life said:
you could just get the Cooler master evo 212 for that overclocking, and you wouldn't have to up the psu
Click to expand...

Gaming4Life said:
But what you could do is go onto ************ uk and check the specs if it will all fit :)
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply, Gaming4Life.

Interesting. I have an EVO on my current rig, which isn't OC'd, and it is decent....but I get the feeling that I would have to have a bit more cooling power, if I do OC. As the Devils Canyon CPU has good potential OC-ability, I would eventually (read: when I feel a bit more OC confident) like to push it a fair amount. So you still think that air will be ok?

After trawling through the PSU section, I found a post pointing to a PSU calculator. Ran my stuff through that - with the cooler set to the Kraken - and it suggested a 500W, but then I noticed that I had not included the three front fans that my case has. With those added, it suggested 600W, so adding the water cooling will also come with an extra £10 for a 650w SuperFlower.

I'll run it through PartPicker, though.
 
Gaming4Life said:
But what you could do is go onto ************ uk and check the specs if it will all fit :)
Click to expand...

Ok, so even with the Kraken added, PartPicker doesn't flag up an issue.

Checked a couple more PSU calculators. Set the CPU clock speed at 4.5Ghz and the VCore at 1.29v (This was purely a rough guess at what I could be looking at from the i5 4690k Devil's Canyon, so go easy if I am way out :p ). I wasn't sure if the calculators took into account the fans on the Kraken, so set it with 3x 120mm (front case intakes) and 3x 140mm (2x radiator and 1x case exhaust) fans. The highest calculator gave a recommended wattage of 468w....but then suggested I buy a 750w Corsair unit. :rolleyes:

So am I right in assuming that I will be ok with the 550w?
 
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Just ordered the last of the parts for my build. :D

Got everything except the SSD (which Santa is bringing me) from OCUK and I'm very excited to start my first full build. I might even take a few pictures along the way and post them up here.

Here's what I've settled on.


My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £1,006.20
(includes shipping: £14.70)
​


​



A bit over my initial budget, but what the heck. Hopefully it'll be worth it, once it's rigged up and running.

Thanks, everyone for your help. *thumbsup*
 
Woot! :D


abqp9f.jpg
 
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Well....we have lift-off!

The build went pretty much perfect. I almost had a bit of a rage when I came to install the SSD & HDD and didn't have any SATA cables....but realised after about 10 minutes that they were the first thing I took out of the motherboard box and had stuck them to one side.

For me, the trickiest part was attaching the cables and figuring out what went where. Especially the tiny connectors for the power/reset switches and their LEDs. I then spent at least an hour checking everything multiple times before I figured I was just making excuses to myself. Fact was, I couldn't build up the confidence to push the button. Once I did, it was spot on with all fans going and the CLC gurgling into life with idle temps at 28c on the pre-applied thermal paste on the H110i GT. Success!!

So far, I have just updated the BIOS, installed windows, installed the network card driver and then grabbed the latest chipset, audio and Nvidia drivers. I'll do some more later.

One thing I couldn't figure out, is how to get Asus AI Suite 3. I'd have thought it'd be listed in the support section for my board, but it isn't. Anyone got a link?

Also, are there any little tricks or tweaks that I should do in BIOS? Anything that may not have been set as standard? I do hope to go a bit more in-depth with overclocking, but I think I will just go with the Asus 5-way optimisation wotsit and see where that takes me. Am I right to assume that's done from within AI Suite 3...?
 
Nice parts list you went with there, and only around 40% over original budget :P Can you post up some pics of the finished build, really like the look of that case :)
 
Lankoss said:
Nice parts list you went with there, and only around 40% over original budget :P Can you post up some pics of the finished build, really like the look of that case :)
Click to expand...
Yeah, I will do.

I started off taking plenty of pictures but it kinda fizzled out once I got to the connecting everything up stage, as I was more concerned about getting everything right.
 
lee32uk said:
The AI Suite software is under 'Utilities' Just select your operating system from the drop down list.

http://www.asus.com/ca-en/Motherboards/Z97KCSM/HelpDesk_Download/
Click to expand...
Thanks, lee.

It actually wasn't. Not for Windows 10, at least. Selected Windows 8 and got it from there.

I may actually get rid of it. The auto OC it did was very unstable, as can be seen in this thread and FanXpert is also useless at this point, as can be seen in this thread.

Overall, though, everything went well. I've not played any games on it yet, as I have been tuning and stability testing, but I can't wait to get going on it.

Much thanks to all that have helped me from my initial build query to this point. Your help has been worth a great deal to me and I intend to hang around for a while, as this seems like a great community. Also to OCUK for great service, good deals and free Harribo. Interwebz Milky Bars are on me!!

A few pic's;

9qz62r.jpg


1678n0m.jpg


I decided to mount the rad this way - push exhaust. I'm sure some will say that it's wrong, but from most accounts, the difference between push and pull for rads is next to nothing. Mounting it this way means that I will get very little dust build-up between the fans and the rad and I will just need to give the underside of the rad a quick wipe every now and then. It also means that the nice silver Corsair trim can just be seen through the window. Much better to look at than the fan housings.


Not a terrible job of cable management for a first-timer, I think.

nf0ll0.jpg



Shame the power connector for the Strix GTX 970 spoils it a little by being plugged in the front?

aca3a0.jpg


Overall, I think I didn't do too badly. Hopefully it performs as good as it looks!
 
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