First build in nearly 10 years, need a 1440p gaming rig

Matt Van Dam

Matt Van Dam

Matt Van Dam

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Joined
4 Jun 2003
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1,275
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IOM - made in Stoke
Hi folks,

Haven't built a PC in about 8/9 years, which was a Q6600 rig and served me very well, however I strayed into Mac territory for general computing and returned to consoles for gaming.

However I'm now ready to ditch that trend and come back to the fold. I have a 1440p monitor so I'm speccing for 60FPS gaming (hopefully much higher) at that resolution. Budget isn't an issue, I had up to £2,000 to build a rig, which would have been a 1080TI/7700K build, however that seems overkill for my needs and I doubt I'll move up to 4K/VR for years to come.

So I'm looking for the right balance between performance and value for money. I'm open to an i5 variant (not interested in AMD for CPU or GFX) and prefer good quality products to cheaper alternatives.

A few things I'm absolute on;

- Phanteks Enthoo Evolv ATX Mid Tower Case (£153.95)
- 2 x small SSDs (one for boot, one for games), + 1 HDD for general storage
- AIO cooling (NZXT X52/62 Kraken, or Corsair H100i V2

No Optical drive required, but will need a WIFI solution as I don't have direct ethernet access to my router.

Any suggestions welcome, cheers.
 
Well it depends do you want to go used parts and get the best bang for the buck or new parts? If you are going used you can get an GTX 1070 for about 300ish, grab yourself the Asrock E3V5 Gaming OC and a used skylake I7 that is a non K as that mobo can overclock non-K CPU's or just get what I got which is the Xeon E3-1230V5 which is the Xeon equivalent to the 7700K but a lot cheaper. 16GB of DDR4 go for about 80 quid. If you are going the brand new route I would go with the R7 1700 with a nice Mobo and 16GB. Mix and match brand and used best way to do things. Two rules about buying used though never buy used power supplies or Hard Drives applies to SSDs aswell.
 
A couple of suggestions..

It's worth the small premium for a tempered glass version of the case. Looks really good in the flesh.

Secondly, with your budget I'm not sure a small SSD for the OS is a strict necessity. Why not get a quick m.2 drive with enough space for a few games and then spend the rest of the storage budget on either a couple of large mechanical HDDs or a larger SSD?

Also make sure you don't skimp on the PSU. A quality 550w will be sufficient for a single GPU build and if you're planning SLI then the 750w would be the way to go

My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £771.84
(includes shipping: £15.90)



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