£700 Gaming Build!

Some really don't like non-modular PSUs. It means you have cables to tidy up. The 912 case has some room where you can tuck away those cables, like in the lower hard drive bay, or even the little 2.5'' SSD bay by the PSU. It's no big deal IMO with modern cases (bottom-mounted PSUs).

Cable management is part of the fun of a build anyway :) Look up the neweggtv 'Build a PC' videos on youtube if you want a step by step tutorial on building a computer. Really good and on the money. Worth 80 mins of your time, or just part two and three, part one is looking at the components.
 
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olivier renault said:
Some really don't like non-modular PSUs. It means you have cables to tidy up. The 912 case has some room where you can tuck away those cables, like in the lower hard drive bay, or even the little 2.5'' SSD bay by the PSU. It's no big deal IMO with modern cases (bottom-mounted PSUs).

Cable management is part of the fun of a build anyway :) Look up the neweggtv 'Build a PC' videos on youtube if you want a step by step tutorial on building a computer. Really good and on the money.
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Right, I'll stick with that PSU which means my build is more or less done. Just have to wait a week or two for the funds to come in and then the fun will begin!

Can't thank you enough for your help! :):):)
 
Final Build

YOUR BASKET
1 x HIS ATI Radeon HD 6950 IceQ X Turbo 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card with FREE Dirt3 & Deus Ex PC Games £199.99
1 x Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £159.98
1 x Asus P8Z68-V Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £131.99
1 x Cooler Master HAF 912 Plus Case - Black £69.98
1 x OCZ ZS Series 650W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £55.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB SATA 6Gb/s 16MB Cache - OEM (ST3500413AS) £30.98
1 x Kingston HyperX Blu 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9AD3B1K2/4G) £19.99
1 x LG GH22NS70 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £16.99
Total : £708.83 (includes shipping : £19.10).




Also if anyone has any other suggestions regarding the build, please let me know!

Thanks a lot! (:
 
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YdLeet said:
Looking at the builds above and considering I want to overclock what is the minimum power PSU I should be looking to get, 750W?
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750w will give you adequate headroom for future overclocks or gpu upgrade.
You just never know when you might be needing more juice as gpu's are getting more and more power hungry. I am personally using a 1000w and I would not be happy to go under 700w.
 
olivier renault said:
They about on par. If I would have to choose, I would go for a 6950 2GB, or a 560ti 1GB. Depends on the games, but the 6950 is slightly faster in games not biased towards Nvidia. 2GB ram is a nice thing to have, if you play proper PC games and not console ports. It's a bit OTT at the moment but who knows what the future brings. I would suspect Rage will really love a lot of Vram :)
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+1

Indeed, the extra vram will or at least theoretically make things faster.
 
YdLeet said:
But other than that, nothing?
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Nope. non-modular PSUs can be as high quality as modular PSUs (TX850, Antec HCG620, ...). If you want a semi-modular PSU, there is the Antec TruePower 650, nice Seasonic unit, with some modular cables for extras (PCI express, SATA cables). It's got a lot of power on the 12V rail (CPU and GPU).

In the neweggtv videos, he uses a HAF922 (I think) and shows what to do with a non-modular PSU.

Not so long ago, you could get a HCG620 for under £60. That would have been ideal for your build :) I got one as backup.

Power consumption of an overclocked i7 and 6950. This is at the socket, but tab well under 400W. The OCZ puts out 550W on 12V, and is efficient, so I don't see any problems with it.

I pull 420W with Furmark+Prime95, a 1055T overclocked (power hungry) and a 560ti. That's at the plug. Around 320W gaming.
 
PakJai said:
750w will give you adequate headroom for future overclocks or gpu upgrade.
You just never know when you might be needing more juice as gpu's are getting more and more power hungry. I am personally using a 1000w and I would not be happy to go under 700w.
Click to expand...

I don't 100% agree with this. The 6950, 5850, and a 4870 uses about the same juice. The 580 is less power-hungry than a 480 (and less heat and noise). GPUs are getting very efficient, as the manufacturing process gets smaller.

IMO, for single GPU, a good 650W is all you need.
 
olivier renault said:
I don't 100% agree with this. The 6950, 5850, and a 4870 uses about the same juice. The 580 is less power-hungry than a 480 (and less heat and noise). GPUs are getting very efficient, as the manufacturing process gets smaller.

IMO, for single GPU, a good 650W is all you need.
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I think you misunderstood me a little. When I said gpu upgrade, I meant possible sLi or Crossfire which often exceeds 650w. I doubt a 650w would be too happy handling two gtx 590's or two ati 6990's.

For a single card yes I'd agree with you, but I was being safe and was considering various upgrade options and skimping on the psu isn't something that I'd like to recommend.
 
haha
who would ever want to buy 2xGtx590s or 2xHd6990s ?
850w should cover most SLI/CF upgrades except the two cards above, but they should count as quad-sli anyway as they have 2 cores on each card.
 
Jony27 said:
haha
who would ever want to buy 2xGtx590s or 2xHd6990s ?
850w should cover most SLI/CF upgrades except the two cards above, but they should count as quad-sli anyway as they have 2 cores on each card.
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I actually considered getting two 6990's but changed my mind due to lack of availabilities and the fact that the new series is now just around the corner :D
 
PakJai said:
I think you misunderstood me a little. When I said gpu upgrade, I meant possible sLi or Crossfire which often exceeds 650w. I doubt a 650w would be too happy handling two gtx 590's or two ati 6990's.

For a single card yes I'd agree with you, but I was being safe and was considering various upgrade options and skimping on the psu isn't something that I'd like to recommend.
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I highly doubt I will ever want to go as far as running 2 GPUs in SLI or XFire, so the 650W will suffice.

I don't think I need 2 Graphics cards when 1 can happily run all the games on the market, no?
 
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YdLeet said:
I highly doubt I will ever want to go as far as running 2 GPUs in SLI or XFire, so the 650W will suffice.

I don't think I need to 2 Graphics cards when 1 can happily run all the games on the market, no?
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It really is up to you, be it 650w or 750w. The difference in price is about a tenner but the headroom you get in return for opting for a 750 is a lot. Personally, I will not skimp on the PSU but if that tenner can be better used elsewhere to improve the system, then perhaps it is worth you considering. I also agree with olivier renault about running single cards, it is less troublesome unless you really want to go for the extreme :)
 
PakJai said:
It really is up to you, be it 650w or 750w. The difference in price is about a tenner but the headroom you get in return for opting for a 750 is a lot. Personally, I will not skimp on the PSU but if that tenner can be better used elsewhere to improve the system, then perhaps it is worth you considering. I also agree with olivier renault about running single cards, it is less troublesome unless you really want to go for the extreme :)
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Yes definitely, this is my first build after all, so I'm learning as you guys weigh out the pros and cons! :)

Also are you implying that I don't have much headroom with the 650W even though I will be running 1 GPU? If that's the case I will definitely consider getting a higher power PSU.
 
YdLeet said:
Looking at this: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-057-OC

I may as well pay the extra £6 for an extra 100W.

Would you guys recommend the PSU in terms of reliability?
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Any psu with a "80 Plus" is good.

I was thinking since you said running more than one card isn't your thing, you can make a good saving by opting for a cheaper motherboard without the sLi or Crossfire features.
You will most likely be running off a single card, the option to run two or more is probably not needed.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-167-MS&tool=3

MB-167-MS_200.jpg


6nywc2.jpg


If you take both mine and Oliver's ideas and combine it together, you actually have yourself a beastly build well within your budget of £700. If you want to go further, you can even go for the windowed version of the BitFenix case and add a better cpu cooler :)
 
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Can't say I am a fan of OCZ, but the reviews are good. They seem to have stepped up, but still not quite in the same league as Antec / Corsair / Enermax. Note that they use Sirtec instead of FSP for building their PSUs, and that itself is a good sign. Also don't discount the value of support. Corsair, Antec and Enermax have good support, but having to send a busted PSU abroad for exchange is quite expensive (it's supported by OcUK for a year, then after it's the manufacturer's problem). I don't think there is one particular company that shines in that respect, Corsair seem to be good though.

The 750W will give you the option to Xfire later on, provided the motherboard allows you to without too much trouble. MSI should release an angled QuickConnect connector for fixing that frankly ridiculous problem of the front panel headers.

As for the motherboard, there is more to just SLI / XFire. It's got decent VRM power and cooling for overclocking. IMO, the GD53 is worth the extra tenner over the other boards.
 
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