Building Gaming PC, Ideas for Specs ?

HamZaDaG

HamZaDaG

HamZaDaG

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Hi there, I'm Hamza and I'm new to the forums. I plan on building my 1st ever gaming PC, hopefully finished by Christmas :)

For the whole system I have a total of £900, and was planning to use £700 towards the Base Unit. I have come up With this system so far.

GPU: Sapphire HD4870X2 2GB (£300)
CPU: Intel Q6600 or Intel QX6700 (£120 or £160)
RAM: OCZ 4GB PC2-8000 Platinum XTC 1000MHZ (£40)
HDD: Samsung HD502IJ SpinPoint F1 500GB Hard Drive (£40)
Disc Drive: Samsung DL/DVD RW with Lightscribe (£15)
PSU: OCZ 780W ModXStream Modular PSU (£60)
MOBO: I dont Know !!
Case: Antec 900 or Thermaltake Armor MX VH8000BWS Black (£70-£100)

Total so Far £645-£715 :mad:

I have a couple of questions which I'm hoping you experts can answer :D

Can someone suggest a CHEAP motherboard that is compatible with those parts, i.e Crossfire, LGA775, 1000 MHZ Ram etc please?

Will a 4870X2 even fit inside an Antec 900 (Taking in mind that this will be my 1st build so tight fits might be difficult for me) and which case is better for cooling ?

Is it worth shelling out the extra £40 for the QX6700 (Taking in mind that I do plan to overclock A LITTLE) ?

Thanks for reading, and reply soon please. If I've made a silly mistake somewhere or asked a dumb question, please remember that I am VERY new to this and would appreciate some guidance :)
 
Hello and welcome. :)

So does that £900 need to include a monitor?
What size monitor will you be using?

I think the 4870x2 will be wasted on anything under a 24" monitor. With your budget I think it would be best to get a GTX260-216 card and spend the rest of the money on a decent CPU, motherboard, RAM and PSU.

I will make you a proper spec when you tell me what monitor you will be using and what the PC will be used for.
 
Hi, the PC will be used primarily for gaming, and for music, videos + internet browsing when I'm not gaming.

Oh and Yes it's £900 with the monitor. I was planning on buying a 20"-22" samsung monitor for when I'm not gaming, and using my Samsung 42" 1080p Plasma TV for when I am gaming :D.

Also would spending the extra money for the 4870X2 make the PC more futureproof, or just make it better at higher resolutions at this time ?
 
HamZaDaG said:
Hi, the PC will be used primarily for gaming, and for music, videos + internet browsing when I'm not gaming.
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None of those things really make good use of the Quad core CPUs at this time, though they will more in the future.
Depending on how long you plan to keep this new build it might be worth going for a dual core CPU such as the E8500.

HamZaDaG said:
Oh and Yes it's £900 with the monitor. I was planning on buying a 20"-22" samsung monitor for when I'm not gaming, and using my Samsung 42" 1080p Plasma TV for when I am gaming :D.
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I don't know what gaming would be like on your Samsung 42" 1080p Plasma TV so you might want to check that out first. You can get a decent 23-24" gaming monitor for around £200.
I recently bought a Dell S2409W monitor for £200 and it's very nice, excellent for gaming. Dell also just bought out a 23" version of that monitor for a little less and it's resolution is still 1920x1080.

HamZaDaG said:
Also would spending the extra money for the 4870X2 make the PC more futureproof, or just make it better at higher resolutions at this time ?
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It would definitely make it more future proof, however, spending almost £400 on a graphics card right now is not a good idea (IMO). Check out the Graphics Cards section of these forums here; http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/forumdisplay.php?f=3
There is talk of a bunch of new nVidia and ATi cards being released sometime next month, so spending that money now might be a bad idea.
Personally I'd either wait until January and see if these new cards are any good, or go for a GTX260-216 now if you can't wait, which will be able to play all games on high settings even at 1080p/1920x1080.

Here is a spec I just made with comments below it;

28jvby0.jpg



I chose the E8500 CPU but it's up to you if you want to get a Quad core or not. If you do, just swap it for the Q6600, they are the same price.

Do you plan to overclock the CPU?
If not, just stay with 6400 RAM. If you do want to overclock it as much as possible, then go for some 8500 RAM.

The Dell S2309W is meant to be a good monitor for the price and it is 1920x1080. It will be great for gaming but if you still plan to use your TV for gaming then you might want to chose a different monitor with 16:10 aspect ratio as it would be better for browsing, etc.

The Zotac GTX260-216 is a great price at £206 and as I said above will be able to play all current games very well.

I left the Antec 900 case as you spec'd it in your first post. Personally I think it's butt-ugly, but each to their own. ;):D Lian Li make excellent aluminium cases which are worth looking at.

And finally I chose the Zalman 600W PSU which will power the above rig fine. I would personally choose the Enermax Modu82+ 625W which can be had for around the same price but OcUK no longer stock it. :(
 
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Hmmm. Seems like I have a lot to think about at the moment :D

Also, I WAS planning on buying a 4870X2 for £300, new. For this much would you still consider it ridicolous to pay for a graphics card at that price, do you think i should spend that £100 on other parts or do you think £300 would be reasonable ?
 
HamZaDaG said:
Hmmm. Seems like I have a lot to think about at the moment :D

Also, I WAS planning on buying a 4870X2 for £300, new. For this much would you still consider it ridicolous to pay for a graphics card at that price, do you think i should spend that £100 on other parts or do you think £300 would be reasonable ?
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£300 is a very good price for the 4870X2 but If you can I'd still recommend finding out if these new Nvidia and ATI cards are actually due in January. If they are it would be worth waiting to see what they're like, how much they cost and if the new cards will drop the price of the 4870x2.
 
I would go for the Gigabyte EP P45-UD3P.

Asus make good boards but this is why Gigabyte are better.

1) It's Cheaper.
2) It will do exactly the same job, infact better when using Quad 45nm CPU's IF overclocking to it's maximum potential.
3) It has a UK RMA base if anything goes wrong takes a few days were as Asus RMA takes 6-8 weeks.
4) The Gigabyte UD3 series are shipped with the latest chipset Revision A3 as opposed to Asus's A2 Revision.
5) Engineer/Tech Official support from Gigabyte via Gigabyte Official Forum @ Tweaktown + Gigabyte UK Forum
 
Nelly said:
I would go for the Gigabyte EP P45-UD3P.

Asus make good boards but this is why Gigabyte are better.

1) It's Cheaper.
2) It will do exactly the same job, infact better when using Quad 45nm CPU's IF overclocking to it's maximum potential.
3) It has a UK RMA base if anything goes wrong takes a few days were as Asus RMA takes 6-8 weeks.
4) The Gigabyte UD3 series are shipped with the latest chipset Revision A3 as opposed to Asus's A2 Revision.
5) Engineer/Tech Official support from Gigabyte via Gigabyte Official Forum @ Tweaktown + Gigabyte UK Forum
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It's cheaper than what? The Asus P5Q Pro is a good ~ £20 cheaper than the Gigabyte board but I do agree, it is a very good board.

EDIT: Just realised you were probably replying to the post above yours recommending the P5Q Duluxe board? If so then the Gigabyte is definitely worth it over the duluxe.
 
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GSDog said:
It's cheaper than what? The Asus P5Q Pro is a good ~ £20 cheaper than the Gigabyte board but I do agree, it is a very good board.
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Was referring to the Asus P5Q Deluxe - h'mm the Gigabyte EP45-UDP is actualy £30 cheaper now, Asus put prices up again.

I forgot about the price here, its espensive here for the board I mentioned above.
 
Yeah really similar spec to my first build man!
I chose the Q6600 Go stepping version in the end, ideal for overclocking...not that it needs it!
Antec 900
OCZ 4gb PC-8500
MSI P43 Neo-F motherboard
Samsung F1 1TB hdd
Nvidia 9800gtx
Dell 22"
Arctic Power 700W PSU
And a slightly better Arctic cooling freezer pro 7 CPU cooler *think thats what its called*

Good luck with it!
 
Big fan of the P5Q range here, the build quality with all the solid Japanese capacitors is second to none, plenty of people have pushed them happily beyond 500mhz (2000mhz fsb), 8 phase power on the top boards, genuinely useful ExpressGate.
Go for the pro and enjoy.
 
Hello again guys. Unfortunately I saw a good price on a 4870X2, and I had to get it (and yes I know there is a GTX 295 being released in January, but I found that out about a day after I bought the card, and I still don't regret buying it :D). I now have about £450 to spend on the other components. I've decided on the following parts so far:

CPU: Intel Q6600 £145
RAM: OCZ 4GB PC2-8000 Platinum XTC 1000MHZ (£40)
HDD: Samsung HD502IJ SpinPoint F1 500GB Hard Drive (£40)
PSU: OCZ 780W ModXStream Modular PSU (£60)

Now this is where I need more help from you geniuses :) Basically I have no idea which motherboard to get, I've seen some of you guys talk about the P5Q-Pro, and I can get it for around £100. But I was hoping for something slightly cheaper. I also heard you talk about a gigabyte motherboard as a cheaper alternative, but unfortunately I couldn't find it anywhere :P So could someone please recommend me a motherboard :)

Also, I'd like a case to fit this all in (of course :P). I chose the Antec 900 in my pre build as it is pretty cheap, however I've heard it is an extremely tight fit for a 4870x2, are there any cheaper cases that you recommend. I particularly like the look of the Thermaltake Armor MX VH8000BWS, but its quite abit more expensive than the antec case and I don't even know if its bigger :P

Thanks once again for reading, if it all sounds like jumbled up rubbish, excuse me, as I'm very tired right now :D

Edit: Also, I do plan on overclocking the CPU. I read that 'Tobymcpherson' bought an Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro, would it be worth buying this for an extra 15 quid ?
 
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