We on this forum also build our own PCs, some of the guys have built hundreds of systems.
Me I am quite lazy, I have only built 4 in the last year for my own personal use.
AMD Gaming Build ~£1600
- Thread starter markhaldane1
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We on this forum also build our own PCs, some of the guys have built hundreds of systems.
Me I am quite lazy, I have only built 4 in the last year for my own personal use.
I've only built a shameful 3 times this year 
@dave28, maybe you should have a better look around this forum before making assumptions and giving out (IMO) poor advice. A quick look at some of your previous posts, suggesting non-K chips, recommending i5's over i7's in a high end dual card rig are all pretty wrong. Go stick that non-clockable i5 in a system with a pair of 7970's and fire up BF3/4 and let me know how much it bottlenecks and stutters
You'd also be hard pushed to find many recommending XFX GPU's on this forum for various reasons, my main issue with the DD coolers is the **** poor VRM cooling
@dave28, maybe you should have a better look around this forum before making assumptions and giving out (IMO) poor advice. A quick look at some of your previous posts, suggesting non-K chips, recommending i5's over i7's in a high end dual card rig are all pretty wrong. Go stick that non-clockable i5 in a system with a pair of 7970's and fire up BF3/4 and let me know how much it bottlenecks and stutters
You'd also be hard pushed to find many recommending XFX GPU's on this forum for various reasons, my main issue with the DD coolers is the **** poor VRM cooling
Fractal Design R4 Case in Black
Intel Core i7 4770K Overclocked to up to 4.5GHz
Corsair H100i Liquid Cooler
2 manually RPM-controllable Fractal Design case fans*
Gigabyte Z87-D3HP Motherboard
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 3GB Graphics Card
16GB Corsair 1600 Memory (2 x 8GB)*
Samsung 840 PRO series SSD 256GB
2TB Seagate 7200rpm
HDD*LG Blu Ray RE-WRITER
750W Corsair Power Supply Unit*
Windows 8 64 bit*
Asus MX279H 27” Widescreen IPS Monitor
Razer Deathstalker Keyboard
Razer Abyssus Mouse
Creative A520 Speakers*
£2000
Take away the extras and save couple hundred!
I built a pc last November which cost more to build now lol! Prices have went up which is stupid. Only thing that has gone down is HDD price. You could get 7970s for 299 for asus and gigabyte but now they 350 min.
Intel Core i7 4770K Overclocked to up to 4.5GHz
Corsair H100i Liquid Cooler
2 manually RPM-controllable Fractal Design case fans*
Gigabyte Z87-D3HP Motherboard
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 3GB Graphics Card
16GB Corsair 1600 Memory (2 x 8GB)*
Samsung 840 PRO series SSD 256GB
2TB Seagate 7200rpm
HDD*LG Blu Ray RE-WRITER
750W Corsair Power Supply Unit*
Windows 8 64 bit*
Asus MX279H 27” Widescreen IPS Monitor
Razer Deathstalker Keyboard
Razer Abyssus Mouse
Creative A520 Speakers*
£2000
Take away the extras and save couple hundred!
I built a pc last November which cost more to build now lol! Prices have went up which is stupid. Only thing that has gone down is HDD price. You could get 7970s for 299 for asus and gigabyte but now they 350 min.
You can save 500 quid just by building it yourself and getting a more sensible graphics card, which when overclocked isn't far off the GTX780 anyway, not to mention an SSHD which offers much more capacity than an SSD and isn't too far off performance-wise:
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I've only built a shameful 3 times this year
@Dave28, maybe you should have a better look around this forum before making assumptions and giving out (IMO) poor advice. A quick look at some of your previous posts, suggesting non-K chips, recommending i5's over i7's in a high end dual card rig are all pretty wrong. Go stick that non-clockable i5 in a system with a pair of 7970's and fire up BF3/4 and let me know how much it bottlenecks and stutters
You'd also be hard pushed to find many recommending XFX GPU's on this forum for various reasons, my main issue with the DD coolers is the **** poor VRM cooling
Yes I advise non K chips for noobs, show me benchmarks that prove an overclocked i7 give a high frame rate boost over i5 4670 more that 15fps which is inconsequential because you can just jurn off shadow detail or whatever and work it out that way and save three figure sums of money. Also I base all my dual card advice on an upgrade to skylark and DDR4 when it comes out so the dual cards will not be bootlenecked in 24 months or so and you have not lost tons of cash on a fancy cooler and i7 you have to sell on ebay for 120 24 months down the line and upgrade a single card, so you lose tons that way.
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How can I save money by building myself when they are currently offering free build cost..? The 24 month collect warranty is a pretty big plus in my opinion. I've no idea why you are suggesting I won't have a warranty, Dave.
I chose that MSI board because it seems to be one of the only ones that comes with WiFi, and MSI have been around for years. I couldn't see either Gigabyte or Asus ones in the configurator that had WiFi.
I hadn't heard of TeamGroup either but I could switch out with HyperX or Ballistix.
Fair comment on retail windows!
I'm happy with the cooler in a decently air cooled case.
I don't know KFA2 either, but hey it's covered for 2 years in the system warranty!
Thanks weehamish! Your suggestions look very similar to what I had already for the core of the system, with some extras I don't really need. Any particular reason you recommend that case or mobo? The H100i isn't available on configurator builds, and the H80i has some reviews that says its very noisy.
Rich dog thanks for suggesting a spec for me, it looks a good price. But I am happy to pay more for OCUK to build it so that I get the 2 year system warranty rather than individual components 1 year warranties (I know some pieces come with extra years).
No one would recommend the Ultima Envy pre-build over a similar configuration then?
I chose that MSI board because it seems to be one of the only ones that comes with WiFi, and MSI have been around for years. I couldn't see either Gigabyte or Asus ones in the configurator that had WiFi.
I hadn't heard of TeamGroup either but I could switch out with HyperX or Ballistix.
Fair comment on retail windows!
I'm happy with the cooler in a decently air cooled case.
I don't know KFA2 either, but hey it's covered for 2 years in the system warranty!
Thanks weehamish! Your suggestions look very similar to what I had already for the core of the system, with some extras I don't really need. Any particular reason you recommend that case or mobo? The H100i isn't available on configurator builds, and the H80i has some reviews that says its very noisy.
Rich dog thanks for suggesting a spec for me, it looks a good price. But I am happy to pay more for OCUK to build it so that I get the 2 year system warranty rather than individual components 1 year warranties (I know some pieces come with extra years).
No one would recommend the Ultima Envy pre-build over a similar configuration then?
Caporegime
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Doesn't have to be an overclocked i7.
It could be an overclocked i5, and at what cost? Under less than 20 quid extra and you can gain an easy 35% performance in your CPU from overclocking.
It could be an overclocked i5, and at what cost? Under less than 20 quid extra and you can gain an easy 35% performance in your CPU from overclocking.
Caporegime
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Because the price of the system is costing more than the parts would to equal/better the spec.
What was your reasoning for using an i7 2600k with a GTX 660 ?
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Presumably for the 24 month collect and return warranty? Which to me is worth some extra cash.
If you tweak the build I give you its really good price. Its not ocuk but they may price match. Its probably the best build you can get for 2k imo!
People who are saying get 2500ks and stuff are just being retarded! Why buy old parts? Even more so on on 1600-1800 budget?
If I was you id get a haswell. The 6 core cpus are never used in much games and wont be for a while! Games rarely use 4 cores.
I5k is the over all best cpu for cash hyperthreading is overated tbh does very little for games. Peopoe who say i5ks bottle neck but i7ks dont are just silly. The only difference is hyper threading and I can only think of 1 game that uses it bf3. You will still not notice it in that game. If the i5k cant get the game smooth the i7k cant simple as that.
People who are saying get 2500ks and stuff are just being retarded! Why buy old parts? Even more so on on 1600-1800 budget?
If I was you id get a haswell. The 6 core cpus are never used in much games and wont be for a while! Games rarely use 4 cores.
I5k is the over all best cpu for cash hyperthreading is overated tbh does very little for games. Peopoe who say i5ks bottle neck but i7ks dont are just silly. The only difference is hyper threading and I can only think of 1 game that uses it bf3. You will still not notice it in that game. If the i5k cant get the game smooth the i7k cant simple as that.
Also to add I wouldnt bother with sound cards. Get a decent motherboard and onboard sound is great. I went from a £100+ creative labs sound card to onboard sound and cant tell the difference at all. The creative software is crap too causes more hassel then its worth!
Why non-K chips for 'noobs'?? If there ever was an easy chip to apply a light OC to, it would be a K series chip.
As for the bit in bold, read this: http://chipreviews.com/main-feature/main-news/frostbite-2s-limit-6-core-performance-in-battlefield-3
Granted its comparing a 6 core i7, but it still shows the substantial gains of more threads = more performance in frostbite (BF3/4) titles. Regardless of how new a 4C4T chip is, its still going to be hindered by the lack of thread count in thread dependant titles with multiple cards. I did some of this testing last week my self and was even able to simulate a bottleneck using 4C4T vs 4C8T.
If someone wanted me to spec them a multi card machine, an i7 would be the first thing I would add to the basket.
As for the Skylake & DDR4, its a bit of an invalid argument, no-one knows how they will perform, let alone the thread count of them, for all we know skylake i5's may come as 4C8T with the i7's as 6C12T, by that point the argument would likely be what is the bottleneck on a pair of 9970's.
Most of my PC is second hand so I get the best deals I can get. My cpu, mobo and RAM and cooler were 270 and the cooler was brand new.
Soldato
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Yea nothing is wrong if all games were ran in 6-8 threads or more, but that ain't the case...at least not until the new consoles are out.
The most CPU intensive games are mostly mmos and and strategy games, and in general they run in 3-4 threads or less. Considering these type of games won't get released on consoles, the chances are they will still not be optimised to use more than 4 threads in the future. Not saying there's no chance of that happening, but the chances of that happening would be far less likely than multi-platforms games.
The thing is an overclocked i5 can easy match or beat an overclocked FX-8 even in highly-threaded games such as Crysis 3/BF which use 6 or more cores on on gaming performance, but in games that use less cores than that, the AMD CPU would lag behind by quite a big margin...that's the biggest issue.
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So, if OCUK will make a few adjustments to the Ultima Envy I think that may be the best choice for me. Do many people on this forum own one? I haven't seen any reviews elsewhere on the web of the build.
I dont think many people buy ocuk prebuilds they are way over priced. Last time I asked how much it is to custom build they charge 100+ to build it and then more to oc for you. You really need try haggle with them I knocked 300 quid off my last custom build by just makeing etailers compete with quotes. I did ask ocuk but they couldnt go any cheaper.
So do that theres loads good places with quality service and customer support. But ocuk is one of the better ones its so easy to communicate with them.
So do that theres loads good places with quality service and customer support. But ocuk is one of the better ones its so easy to communicate with them.
Ok so like some people pointed out my first build plan had some flaws and I understand you dont want to build it yourself. Take a look at this new plan you could get a quote at a local PC shop on build cost. Last time I knew its about 60 quid :
i7 4770K
Asus Z87-PLus motherboard
RAM 16GB corsair vengence
OPTICAL DRIVE lite on or samsung
WINDOWS 7 or 8 premium.
CASE coolermaster HAF 922
PSU Corsair TX 750
GRAPHICS 3GB Gigabyte GTX 780 ( or 770/680 etc )
SSD samsung 840 pro 250GB
256GB Samsung 840 PrO
HDD seagate 2TB
3GB Gigabyte GTX 780 ( or 770/680 etc )
Building cost approx 60 ? not sure.
TOTAL APPROX AFTER BUILDING COST ADDED : 1640
i7 4770K
Asus Z87-PLus motherboard
RAM 16GB corsair vengence
OPTICAL DRIVE lite on or samsung
WINDOWS 7 or 8 premium.
CASE coolermaster HAF 922
PSU Corsair TX 750
GRAPHICS 3GB Gigabyte GTX 780 ( or 770/680 etc )
SSD samsung 840 pro 250GB
256GB Samsung 840 PrO
HDD seagate 2TB
3GB Gigabyte GTX 780 ( or 770/680 etc )
Building cost approx 60 ? not sure.
TOTAL APPROX AFTER BUILDING COST ADDED : 1640
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Fractal Design Case Define R4 Titanium Grey Usb3 Window
Fractal Design 140mm Silent Series R2 Case Fan
Intel Core i7 4770K 3.50GHz Socket 1150 8MB Cache Retail Boxed Processor
Phanteks PH-TC12DX CPU Cooler
WD Caviar green 2TB 3.5 SATA 6Gbs 64MB (x2 to be run in RAID0 array)
Samsung 256GB SSD 840 PRO
Asus GTX 770 Direct CU II 2GB GDDR5 HDMI DVI DisplayPort PCI-E Grpahics Card
Asus Z87-Pro Socket 1150 ATX Motherboard
Corsair 850W HX 80PLUS Gold Modular PSU
Corsair Vengeance Low Profile 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C10 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit
Lg Internal 24x Bulk Dvd-RW - OEM
A bit different, and self-build. Good option to consider? For reference, total is £1,500.
Fractal Design 140mm Silent Series R2 Case Fan
Intel Core i7 4770K 3.50GHz Socket 1150 8MB Cache Retail Boxed Processor
Phanteks PH-TC12DX CPU Cooler
WD Caviar green 2TB 3.5 SATA 6Gbs 64MB (x2 to be run in RAID0 array)
Samsung 256GB SSD 840 PRO
Asus GTX 770 Direct CU II 2GB GDDR5 HDMI DVI DisplayPort PCI-E Grpahics Card
Asus Z87-Pro Socket 1150 ATX Motherboard
Corsair 850W HX 80PLUS Gold Modular PSU
Corsair Vengeance Low Profile 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C10 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit
Lg Internal 24x Bulk Dvd-RW - OEM
A bit different, and self-build. Good option to consider? For reference, total is £1,500.
I always build with Matx boards as i know i wont crossfire/SLI, just upgrade when a new bunch of cards come out, could save you a bit of money and still be able to get a decent OC with the Haswell (most seem to be topping out temp wise lower than ivy anyway).
If you do that you only need a 650W PSU of a decent brand (could go lower but 650 is the sweet spot)
The cost of SSDs at the moment means that 500Gb are at a decent price, ive got 250Gb in both my machines and on my gaming one its almost full.
Ap.art from that a good spec but for £1500 i would be going socket 2011
If you do that you only need a 650W PSU of a decent brand (could go lower but 650 is the sweet spot)
The cost of SSDs at the moment means that 500Gb are at a decent price, ive got 250Gb in both my machines and on my gaming one its almost full.
Ap.art from that a good spec but for £1500 i would be going socket 2011