Critique Build ~ £600

[dancharlton9]

MSI HD 7850 Twin Frozr III OC 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Cards w/ FARCRY3 & Sleeping Dogs PC Games £149.99

AMD Piledriver FX-8 Eight Core 8320 Black Edition 3.50GHz (Socket AM3+) Processor - Retail £125.99

PC Power & Cooling Silencer Mk III Series 600W '80 Plus Bronze' Modular Power Supply - White £69.98

ASRock 970 Extreme3 AMD 970 (Socket AM3+) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £65.99

Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST1000DM003) £59.99

Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-15000C11 1866MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1866C11D3P1K2/8G) £35.99

BitFenix Merc Beta Gaming Case - Black £29.99

Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo CPU Cooler (Socket Intel® Socket LGA1366/1156/1155/775/AMD Socket FM1/AM3+/AM3/AM2+/AM2) £26.99

 

[dancharlton9]

The closer to £575.00 the better if at all possible.

The one thing I wondered was going for a 550watt PSU rather than 600?

 

[Bacon?]

You would be better off with something like this:
YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-3570K 3.40GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £173.99
1 x MSI HD 7850 Twin Frozr III OC 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Cards w/ FARCRY3 & Sleeping Dogs PC Games £149.99
1 x Gigabyte Z77-D3H Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £79.99
1 x PC Power & Cooling Silencer Mk III Series 500W '80 Plus Bronze' Modular Power Supply - White £59.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST1000DM003) £59.99
1 x Xigmatek Asgard Pro Gaming Case - Black £32.99
1 x TeamGroup Elite 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (TED38GM1600HC11DC01) £28
Total : £599.03 (includes shipping : £11.75).

 

[dancharlton9]

Thanks Bacon, any reasoning behind the switch to Intel? Heard the AMD would overclock pretty well and compares well to the i5.

Cheers,

D.

 

[Bacon?]

AMD can overclock well however it will increase power consumption and by the look of it keeping a high overclock stable on a PD will decrease its lifetime by quite a bit and decrease how much you can overclock it.

Also the I5's have a higher IPC an overclocked i5 will still be better than an overclocked PD.

Here are some stock results:

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/701?vs=698

 

[dancharlton9]

Thanks!

If I stuck with the AMD and chose not to overclock would I be good with 500W rather than 600W?

 

[Bacon?]

Yep 500W what would be enough, any particular reason for the PD though?

 

[dancharlton9]

I guess its more through experience, when I have built systems previously it's always been Intel due to the cost difference.

Any view on not going for an FX-8 and instead going for a quad/six core and overclocking?

 

[dancharlton9]

always been AMD I should say.

 

[Bacon?]

The i5 is the better chip.

 

[LukieBoy007]

Go for an i5 instead of the bulldozer.