First Time Build - Budget 500-650£ - Help With Spec

richwellings · 24 Nov 2013 at 17:06

Hi,

I am tired of paying for excessive service charges when I purchase computers, therefore, I have decided to attempt building my own gaming pc and cut the middle man out. Having read about and watched various videos regarding the build, I feel fairly confident about handing the build process. The issue that concerns me is selecting hardware components that are compatible with each other and that are of decent value for performance, this is where I need help. Could somebody please recommend a case, power supply, motherboard, CPU, memory, video card, storage and optical drive for my following requirements.

I am intending to use my new computer for casual gaming and film watching. I would like my new pc to run games smoothly and make them look good, so a decent graphics card is required. Ideally 8gb of RAM atleast and crucially have a Blu-Ray player, a large hard drive is not essential (max 1TB). Monitor, OS & other peripherals are NOT NEEDED.

Any advice would be appreciated, cheers.

Rich

stulid · 24 Nov 2013 at 17:12

YOUR BASKET
1 x HIS HD 7950 IceQ BOOST 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (H795QC3G2M) **FREE SHIPPING** £209.99
1 x AMD Piledriver FX-6 Six Core 6300 Black Edition 3.50GHz (Socket AM3+) Processor - Retail £89.99
1 x Pioneer BDC-207DBK 8x BluRay ROM / DVDRW SATA-II Optical Drive - Black (OEM) £55.99
1 x BitFenix Shadow Tower Case - Midnight Black £54.98
1 x BeQuiet Pure Power L8 500W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply - With 120mm Silent Wing Fan Built in £53.99
1 x Patriot Intel Extreme Masters 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (PVI38G160C9K) £53.99
1 x Gigabyte 970A-DS3P AMD 970A (Socket AM3+) DDR3 Motherboard £53.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST1000DM003) HDD £45.95
1 x Alpenföhn Matterhorn Pure Edition CPU Cooler £29.99
1 x Pioneer 24x Internal DVR-221LBK DVD Rewriter - OEM £17.99
Total : £666.84 (includes shipping : FREE).

This HIS 7950 give the whole basket free delivery for you.

YOUR BASKET
1 x Gigabyte Radeon R9 270X WindForce 3X OC 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card with BattleField 4 PC Game Included £161.99
1 x AMD Piledriver FX-6 Six Core 6300 Black Edition 3.50GHz (Socket AM3+) Processor - Retail £89.99
1 x Pioneer BDC-207DBK 8x BluRay ROM / DVDRW SATA-II Optical Drive - Black (OEM) £55.99
1 x BitFenix Shadow Tower Case - Midnight Black £54.98
1 x BeQuiet Pure Power L8 500W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply - With 120mm Silent Wing Fan Built in £53.99
1 x Patriot Intel Extreme Masters 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (PVI38G160C9K) £53.99
1 x Gigabyte 970A-DS3P AMD 970A (Socket AM3+) DDR3 Motherboard £53.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST1000DM003) HDD £45.95
1 x Alpenföhn Matterhorn Pure Edition CPU Cooler £29.99
1 x Pioneer 24x Internal DVR-221LBK DVD Rewriter - OEM £17.99
Total : £628.44 (includes shipping : £8.00).

Different GFX card that comes with BF4.

ExRayTed · 24 Nov 2013 at 17:16

YOUR BASKET
1 x HIS Radeon R9 270X IceQ BOOST 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card with BattleField 4 PC Game Included (H270XQ2G2M) £155.99
1 x AMD Piledriver FX-8 Eight Core 8320 Black Edition 3.50GHz (Socket AM3+) Processor - Retail £119.99
1 x Asus M5A97 EVO R2.0 AMD 970 (Socket AM3+) DDR3 Motherboard £89.99
1 x Corsair Builder Series CX 600W V2 '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply (CP-9020048-UK) £59.99
1 x TeamGroup Vulcan RED 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-17100C11 2133MHz Dual Channel Kit (TLD38G2133HC11ADC01) £59.99
1 x Pioneer BDC-207DBK 8x BluRay ROM / DVDRW SATA-II Optical Drive - Black (OEM) £55.99
1 x Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache WD10EZEX - OEM ** Single Platter ** HDD £49.99
1 x Antec VSK4000 Midi-Tower Case - Black £27.95
1 x Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Rev 2 CPU Cooler £19.99
Total : £649.46 (includes shipping : £8.00).

richwellings · 24 Nov 2013 at 17:18

Speaking to friends that have built their own computers in the past, most of them have a real preference to Intel processors, is there any sense in that?

stulid · 24 Nov 2013 at 17:20

richwellings said:
Speaking to friends that have built their own computers in the past, most of them have a real preference to Intel processors, is there any sense in that?

In your budget range AMD rule the roost.

BF4 for example - http://i.imgur.com/O5axjN5.jpg

richwellings · 24 Nov 2013 at 17:26

OK, thanks very much for the quick replies, very useful.

richwellings · 24 Nov 2013 at 21:39

I have a couple more questions if you could help me out.

1. What can I use to give me an internal WiFi receiver? I forgot to add that on my requirements.

2. How much flexibility is there on case choice, I am looking for something 'see-through' and with a bit more wow-factor haha

Am I able to use any case with the parts you have suggested?

Thanks in advance!

ExRayTed · 24 Nov 2013 at 22:27

1 - If you can find anywhere that has these in stock then get one. Very good for the money.

TP-Link adapter

2. There are plenty of very good looking cases but nice things tend to cost more. I've always liked the cases below, but case choice is always subjective. Bear in mind that the Parvum is MATX.

YOUR BASKET
1 x Parvum Systems S1.0 MicroATX Case - Black with Green £139.99
1 x Silverstone TemJin TJ09 Windowed Big Tower Case - Silver (SST-TJ09S-W) £114.95
1 x Corsair Carbide 540 High Airflow ATX Cube Case - Black (CC-9011030-WW) £105.95
1 x Corsair Carbide 300R Mid Tower Windowed Case - Black (CC-9011017-WW) £78.95
Total : £472.90 (includes shipping : £27.55).

fowler002 · 25 Nov 2013 at 02:40

taking stulids specs and going the intel route to show you the price difference

YOUR BASKET
1 x HIS HD 7950 IceQ BOOST 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (H795QC3G2M) **FREE SHIPPING** £209.99
1 x Intel Core i5-4670K 3.40GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £185.99
1 x Gigabyte Z87-D3HP Intel Z87 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £109.99
1 x Pioneer BDC-207DBK 8x BluRay ROM / DVDRW SATA-II Optical Drive - Black (OEM) £55.99
1 x BitFenix Shadow Tower Case - Midnight Black £54.98
1 x Patriot Intel Extreme Masters 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (PVI38G160C9K) £53.99
1 x BeQuiet Pure Power L8 500W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply - With 120mm Silent Wing Fan Built in £53.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST1000DM003) HDD £45.95
1 x Pioneer 24x Internal DVR-221LBK DVD Rewriter - OEM £17.99
Total : £788.86 (includes shipping : FREE).

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-4670K 3.40GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £185.99
1 x Gigabyte Radeon R9 270X WindForce 3X OC 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card with BattleField 4 PC Game Included £161.99
1 x Gigabyte Z87-D3HP Intel Z87 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £109.99
1 x Pioneer BDC-207DBK 8x BluRay ROM / DVDRW SATA-II Optical Drive - Black (OEM) £55.99
1 x BitFenix Shadow Tower Case - Midnight Black £54.98
1 x Patriot Intel Extreme Masters 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (PVI38G160C9K) £53.99
1 x BeQuiet Pure Power L8 500W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply - With 120mm Silent Wing Fan Built in £53.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST1000DM003) HDD £45.95
1 x Pioneer 24x Internal DVR-221LBK DVD Rewriter - OEM £17.99
Total : £750.46 (includes shipping : £8.00).

the motherboard comes with a free cpu cooler

richwellings · 25 Nov 2013 at 07:22

The Corsair Carbide 300R case is beautiful, I think I will go with that one!

Thanks for the Intel equivalents, very handy

stulid · 25 Nov 2013 at 07:53

Have a look at the BitFenix ghost too.

Seems it is quieter than the 330R - http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph7236/57151.png

EdgeDs · 25 Nov 2013 at 07:56

Really unless you go high end intel ie i7 amd will have something that will keep up for less money so you wont be miissing out.
You will soon have the advantage of mantle with that graphics card which will give even more performance for free