£700 build without graphics

Karathez

Karathez

Karathez

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24 Feb 2014
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716
Main purpose of the rig will be Gaming at 1080p@120Hz, mainly mmo's/fps. Teso/rift/shootmania/path of exile I'm mostly playing atm, maybe titanfall. Got all the peripherals I need, so this is just for the tower.

The reason I'm going amd this time is for the extra cores, with mantle & directx low level api & more games finally going multicore this is what swayed me back to amd, together with intels minor upgrades for premium prices policy. I cant fault my q6600 its been fantastic & lasted a very long time, probably twice as long as previous cpu's, both intel & amd ones.

Trying to build with one eye on the future to keep my options open, hence the board to have sli/xfire in case I want to add a second card later.

Parts so far:
YOUR BASKET
1 x Kingston HyperX 3K SSD 240GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Drive (SH103S3/240G) £149.99
1 x AMD Piledriver FX-8 Eight Core 8320 Black Edition 3.50GHz (Socket AM3+) Processor - Retail £109.99
1 x Gigabyte 990FXA-UD3 AMD 990FX (Socket AM3+) DDR3 Motherboard £101.99
1 x SuperFlower Golden Green HX 650W "80 Plus Gold" Power Supply - Black £79.99
1 x TeamGroup Vulcan ORANGE 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-19200C11 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit (TLAD38G2400HC11CDC01) £55.99
1 x Xigmatek Aegir SD 128264 CPU Cooler £37.99
1 x Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB SATA 6Gb/s 16MB Cache - OEM (WD5000AAKX) HDD £37.99
1 x LG GH24NSB0 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £19.99
Total : £603.53 (includes shipping : £8.00).



Motherboard - would it be worth getting the ud5 version for the better power regulation? I know a lot of people recommend asus boards, but I've had a friend who is a far lighter user than me have 3 asus parts die on him ( 2 mobo's & a gpu ) so I would be constantly worried about it keeling over if I went asus.

Psu - does this one have enough to add a 2nd gpu later? wont be going beyond 2 if I do even get 2.

Heatsink - back when I built this one the true heatsink was the only one like it, now they all look the same - want to push this as far as possible on air, gone for this one as I've read its nice & quiet.

Ram - Will this ram be ok? cant find it in the memory support list for this board, but I see it recommended often on these forums.

Case - Rant time! which ..... ..... .... decided that ALL cases should have the ports on the top?, like a lot of people I have my tower on the desk, & I dont want cables dangling everywhere like my pc is having a bad hair day! basically I'm looking for a case up to £80 with usb3.0 ports down low, ideally on the front but side would be ok, a front intake, and plenty of room inside for a big heatsink, if its got noise reduction thats a bonus. Dont want one that looks like the designer was on drugs either ty ;) Just something fairly plain, coloured lights I'm fine with. /rant over

Paste - Got some Artic silver I've had since this build, good enough/still usable or get some new?

Budget is a little flexible but I dont want to go crazy either, with the case as things stand it would be around £700, this is without graphics for now.

Thanks in advance.
 
Karathez said:
Psu - does this one have enough to add a 2nd gpu later? wont be going beyond 2 if I do even get 2.
Click to expand...

Depends on which GPUs you go for. That 650w is a good one which will handle two 270X's. Good 750w will handle 2 x 280X. And for 2 x 290 you'd want a good 850w minimum. You can get away with less, but that will probably limit overclocking CPU and GPUs.



Karathez said:
Heatsink - back when I built this one the true heatsink was the only one like it, now they all look the same - want to push this as far as possible on air, gone for this one as I've read its nice & quiet.
Click to expand...

OcUK have just got a bunch of Scythe heatsinks in stock that look interesting. No idea how they perform, just thought I'd mention it, as they have a good rep with fans.


Karathez said:
Ram - Will this ram be ok? cant find it in the memory support list for this board, but I see it recommended often on these forums.
Click to expand...

It will work (unless it happens to be a bad batch). Often recommended because the price is great. Not the best quality (have to fork out extra for that, Avexir for example is very good right now) but good enough, and the brand of RAM won't make much difference to performance. Just set the highest speed your mobo officially supports and enable XMP settings for that speed, in the BIOS. Then you can tinker with increasing the speed later on if you like.
 
 
Thanks for the replies, decided to take the mount doom heatsink instead of the xigmatek, one thing worries me though, in this vid:


I know its not quite the same cooler, as its the noctua but they are around the same size, with it covering the ram will there be problems with heat on the ram because of this?

As for the psu I'm a little confused now, one says it will do 2 x 270, one says it will do 2x280, I should have clarified, if I bought the card now I would go for a 280x, so needs to be able to power 2 of those, though as I'm waiting to see what maxwell brings I shouldnt need more power than 2x 280x would require.

I guess no one knows of a usb3 case with the ports down low? ( the antec has them on top :()I've spent days looking at every case I can find, & cant find one anywhere, even tried looking at some manufacturers I'd never heard of before.
 
Ok I've had to give up looking for a case with usb3 on the bottom they just dont exist.

So favourite atm seems to be the http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-129-BX&groupid=2362&catid=1850

This should be enough room to take the mount doom fan? it doesnt list the actual cpu heatsink clearance but the overall case width. Also will I need to buy a 2.5 adaptor for the ssd or does the case or ssd come with them?
 
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Unfortunately I've just had an email back from oc & they cant guarantee the board will be rev 4, any alternatives apart from asus that are good for overclocking?
 
Tired of trying to figure out what to do about the motherboard, edited this spec from altrewins in another thread to suit personal preferences, any comments?

YOUR BASKET
1 x MSI Radeon R9 290 Gaming Edition 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £319.99
1 x Intel Core i5-4670K 3.40GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £179.99
1 x Kingston HyperX 3K SSD 240GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Drive (SH103S3/240G) £149.99
1 x Gigabyte Z87-HD3 Intel Z87 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £82.99
1 x Cooler Master 690 III Advanced Midi-Tower - Window Pure Black £79.99
1 x SuperFlower Golden Green HX 650W "80 Plus Gold" Power Supply - Black £79.99
1 x TeamGroup Vulcan ORANGE 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-19200C11 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit (TLAD38G2400HC11CDC01) £55.99
1 x Alpenföhn K2 Mount Doom CPU Cooler £49.99
1 x Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB SATA 6Gb/s 16MB Cache - OEM (WD5000AAKX) HDD £46.99
1 x LG GH24NSB0 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £19.99
1 x Arctic Cooling MX-2 Thermal Compound (4g) £6.98
Total : £1,082.50 (includes shipping : £8.00).





As a reminder I want to push the cpu as far as possible on air, & it will be used mostly for gaming at 1080p@120Hz
 
Karathez said:
Tired of trying to figure out what to do about the motherboard, edited this spec from altrewins in another thread to suit personal preferences, any comments?


As a reminder I want to push the cpu as far as possible on air, & it will be used mostly for gaming at 1080p@120Hz
Click to expand...


The Samsung 250 is £20 cheaper. No good reason to go for the Hyper-X instead, right now, especially after you tweak it in Samsung Magician to increase speeds (if desired):

YOUR BASKET
1 x Samsung 250GB SSD 840 EVO SATA 6Gb/s Basic - (MZ-7TE250BW) £129.95




The OEM CPU is £10 cheaper. It has a 1 year warranty. Processor failure is rare but, okay, perhaps you'll want the 3 years with the Retail version anyway:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-4670K 3.40GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - OEM £169.99




The choice of a HDD with only 500GB, for that price, has to be questioned, especially when the SSD is 250GB. Most people use the HDD to back-up the SSD data and for additional storage room, which you therefore wouldn't have much of. If you're doing something else with it, please ignore this heads-up. Even so, you can save £11 by getting the following one instead (out of stock at the moment but mentioning it anyway, as sometimes things are back in stock immediately, other times not, you'd have to inquire to OcUK about it):

YOUR BASKET
1 x Toshiba (7K1000.D) 500GB SATA 6GB/s 32MB Cache - OEM (DT01ACA050) HDD £35.99




So you could possibly save up to £41 (plus a few bob more by changing optical drive), without affecting performance at all, which would let you include a motherboard that will overclock slightly better. Whilst still keeping the case etc you like.

If what you want is to push the CPU as much as possible on air, then apportion more towards a mobo than at present, to help you attempt to do just that. You may get a poor overclocking chip, who knows, plenty of Haswells are it seems. But if you do land a decent one, then the mobo won't hold you back from squeezing the max out of the chip.

Also, are you still thinking of a possible CrossFire in the future? You'd need a more powerful PSU for 2 x 290.

For what you say you're aiming for, and for gaming at 1080p@120Hz, I'd go for something like this:


YOUR BASKET
1 x Gigabyte Radeon R9 280X Rev2.0 WindForce 3X OC 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £259.99
1 x Intel Core i5-4670K 3.40GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - OEM £169.99
1 x Gigabyte Z87X-OC Intel Z87 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £157.99
1 x Samsung 250GB SSD 840 EVO SATA 6Gb/s Basic - (MZ-7TE250BW) £129.95
1 x Seasonic M12II EVO Edition 750W '80 Plus Bronze' Fully Modular Power Supply £79.99
1 x Cooler Master 690 III Advanced Midi-Tower - Window Pure Black £79.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 2TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST2000DM001) HDD £59.99
1 x TeamGroup Vulcan ORANGE 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-19200C11 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit (TLAD38G2400HC11CDC01) £55.99
1 x Alpenföhn K2 Mount Doom CPU Cooler £49.99
1 x Pioneer 24x Internal DVR-221LBK DVD Rewriter - OEM £17.99
1 x Arctic Cooling MX-2 Thermal Compound (4g) £6.98
Total : £1,083.85 (includes shipping : £12.50).




Covered for CrossFire as well, with an excellent PSU.


**Use Checkout Discount Code GIG10 For 10% OFF** (Gigabyte Z87X-OC Intel Z87)
 
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First thanks for the detailed response danny:

500Gb is plenty for me, when you consider my games/os will be on the ssd, avoiding seagate drives after having 2 fail in a year, I went for wd for reliability.

Been looking into the oc board but it has an issue that big heatsinks such as the mount doom are very very close to touching the graphics cards, strange that they should make a board so good for overclocking but not think about the size of heatsinks, guess they thought anyone paying that kind of money would go water cooled.

Thought about getting a megahelms after 8pack recommended them on the official z87x-oc thread, but if you add on 2 good fans to that your up to about £80 which is close to water cooled territory, & I've already gone over budget badly, the 290 is just to good an offer to miss out on when you check the fps difference between that & 280x.

That said here is my latest & hopefully final attempt:

YOUR BASKET
1 x MSI Radeon R9 290 Gaming Edition 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £319.99
1 x Intel Core i5-4670K 3.40GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £179.99
1 x Gigabyte Z87X-UD3H Intel Z87 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £131.99
1 x Kingston HyperX 3K SSD 240GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Drive (SH103S3/240G) £119.99
1 x Cooler Master 690 III Advanced Midi-Tower - Window Pure Black £79.99
1 x Seasonic M12II EVO Edition 750W '80 Plus Bronze' Fully Modular Power Supply £79.99
1 x TeamGroup Vulcan ORANGE 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-19200C11 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit (TLAD38G2400HC11CDC01) £55.99
1 x Alpenföhn K2 Mount Doom CPU Cooler £49.99
1 x Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB SATA 6Gb/s 16MB Cache - OEM (WD5000AAKX) HDD £46.99
1 x LG GH24NSB0 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £19.99
1 x Arctic Cooling MX-2 Thermal Compound (4g) £6.98
Total : £1,106.89 (includes shipping : £12.50).



Pretty much set as I want it, the only question is over the motherboard now.

Hoping this motherboard will be good enough to hit 4.5 with the mount doom (chip permitting), comparing the pics on the website it looks to have a lot more room before the graphics slot. I have seen others posting with 4.5 on this motherboard & it gives me sli & xfire for the future.

Really hoping to order this before monday, to make sure I get the 290 while its on offer, & so I have a chance of building it before next weekend (teso launch)

Apologies if this post seems a bit disjointed, havent been able to sleep trying to get this figured out.
 
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If you are worried about size of K2, Prolimatech megahalems is a bit smaller but similar in performance. You can find some pics in my log, link in sig.
 
Karathez said:
I have seen others posting with 4.5 on this motherboard & it gives me sli & xfire for the future.

Really hoping to order this before monday, to make sure I get the 290 while its on offer, & so I have a chance of building it before next weekend (teso launch)

Apologies if this post seems a bit disjointed, havent been able to sleep trying to get this figured out.
Click to expand...

Nah you explained well, mate. Cheers. Looks good then. I see the Hyper-X 250 has dropped in price below the Sammy again lol. Nice one.

For XFire, get yourself the Seasonic 850w, which is on offer today for only £10 more than the 750w.
 
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