Building a PC for the first time

Remote_zero · 15 Sep 2012 at 12:28

Hi there, just joined this forum after having it recommended to me by a guy i kinda know. I've been bugging him with questions about building a pc for a few weeks now, and i think he got a bit fed up with it, as he pointed me to you guys.
So it looks like I'm going to be bugging you guys instead now, hope that's ok?
I've decided I'm going to build myself a gaming PC, I've no real experience in this area, but I've heard it's not as hard as it sounds and I'm generally pretty good with stuff like this, so I thought i give it a go.
I've been researching like crazy for a while now, so i kinda know the basics of what i need and what not. I've bought myself a case, and cpu fan after recommendations off the guy i was bugging. And i also bought a ssd and some RAM after seeing them massively reduced, they had alright reviews and were pretty cheap so I'm happy with them, even if there not the best components in the world.

Anyway, enough rambling.
I'm looking to purchase some more parts to get my PC up and running.
I need a CPU, motherboard, power supply and a HDD. I think can spend up to £500 on these parts.
What do you guys think i should go for?
Anything else you need to know?

Remote_zero · 15 Sep 2012 at 12:55

From memory, I'm at work at the min.
Fractal arc midi case
Coolermaster 612 CPU cooler
2x4gb Kingston hyperx genesis ram
120gb Kingston hyperx 3k SSD
I think that's right, I will double check when I get home.
I don't need an OS.

Remote_zero · 15 Sep 2012 at 13:00

I'm going to save up some more for my graphics card, want to get a good one.
Will have a look at your recs later, need to do some work. Thanks though.

Remote_zero · 15 Sep 2012 at 19:10

Back from work, onto the more important things.

First of all, thank you for the responses, i really appreciate the help. Great community you've got here.

Just to confirm, and to try out this basket posting tool, here are the components i already have.

YOUR BASKET
1 x Kingston HyperX 3K SSD 120GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Drive (SH103S3/120G) £112.99
1 x Fractal Design Arc Midi Tower Case - Black £79.99
1 x Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3X2K2/8GX) £39.95
1 x Cooler Master Hyper 612S CPU Cooler (Socket LGA1366/1156/1155/775/AM3/AM2+/AM2) £32.99
Total : £280.02 (includes shipping : £11.75).

I'm guessing they'll do the job as nobody's said otherwise. I'm surprised at the prices of the Kingston parts, i paid £65 for the SSD and £28 for the RAM.

The i5 3570k and the Seagate HDD seem to be no-brainers. As far as the rest goes, it looks like i need to decide if i'm going to get a second graphics card in the future, something to think about. I was planning on getting a GTX670 if that makes any difference.
I was recommended Corsair PSU's but haven't seen and mentioned here, also heard OCZ are decent. Presuming i go for 750w, how do these compare to the ones mentioned in above posts?

YOUR BASKET
1 x Corsair Enthusiast Series TX750M High Performance 750W '80 Plus Bronze' Modular Power Supply (CP-9020003-UK) £94.99
1 x OCZ ZT 750W '80 Plus Bronze' Modular Power Supply £89.99
Total : £196.98 (includes shipping : £10.00).

Im going to look at the motherboards more closely and see what i think, they are all cheaper than ones i've been looking at so thats good.

Remote_zero · 15 Sep 2012 at 20:23

All the boards mentioned are from Gigabyte, are they the only ones worth considering?
I thought Asus were supposed to be pretty good.
Out of the boards mentioned I think the UD3H suits me best.

Remote_zero · 15 Sep 2012 at 21:02

There seems very little difference to my eyes, a few more usb headers, eSATA, an extra fan header, the ud3h has displayport, but I'd be using the outputs on the GPU anyway, right?
Am I missing something or are they pretty much the same?
It's in my nature to go for the more expensive options, I often need convincing not to burn my money on stuff I don't need.
As far a monitors go, I'm after a nice 120hz for Xmas,will be using a random generic screen my girlfriend has, or my tv until then.

Remote_zero · 15 Sep 2012 at 21:04

Just to prove a point, I've been looking at the UD5H.

Remote_zero · 15 Sep 2012 at 21:29

Ok, I kinda bypassed those as being insignificant, but now I think about it I suppose it really helps if you tinker a lot, which I'm prone to doing.
Really appreciate all the help here guys.