First time building a Gaming Rig, would love some advice!

Redtama

Redtama

Redtama

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8 May 2017
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5
Ok so I've never built a gaming rig before. I'm a complete noob but I have been given some advice by a friend and his top tip was to come here and ask the wonderful people on the overclockers forums for some feedback on my basket :). I'm going for a high-end rig solely for gaming.

Currently in my basket I have:
Total: £1341.54

Before I even set about picking parts I had already decided that about £1300 would be my budget, so I'm not far off. But obviously I would love to save money wherever I can.

Some specific questions I have:

1. I gather that the RAM and CPU don't matter that much for gaming so I perhaps I can save money there by getting some cheaper parts. Are the CPU or RAM overkill? If so, what would you recommend?

2. With the RAM, is it fine to get just 1x8GB? Or should I buy in pairs so 2x4GB for example? Somewhere in the back of my mind I feel like I've been told that RAM works best in pairs but I might be imagining it. :p

3. I am totally clueless when it comes to motherboards. I have pretty much just arbitrarily picked a reasonably priced one that's compatible with the CPU. What should I be looking out for here? My friend mentioned something about whether or not the motherboard comes with good audio capabilities but honestly I am just overwhelmed by all the acronyms and technical jargon at this point! xD If anyone can recommend a more suitable/cheaper motherboard that would be great!

4. I've also got no idea about cooling but after reading around a bit it sounds as if the cooling that comes with the case (2 fans) and the cooling in the GPU should suffice as long as I don't overclock like a crazy man. Is that right?

5. I've left the SSD there on its own with a HDD because I just don't think I'll need more than 250GB for quite some time. If I ever do need more space I can always add a HDD or another SSD in the future right. Does that sound reasonable?
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I don't need a keyboard and mouse as I already have them.

Any further comments or suggestions are more than welcome. I need all the information I can get before I part with this rather large sum of cash.

Thank you in advance! :)
 
So glad I asked here! Can't believe how great this feedback is!

Thank you so much for pointing out the problem with the PSU. I wouldn't have known based off the reviews on the shopping site I was looking at.

To answer some of your questions:

I will be playing FPS games but I'll be playing anything and everything to be honest. I'm especially looking forward to Red Dead Redemption 2! Typically I've played a lot of DOTA 2, CS:GO and Rocket League but I have often tried to play more taxing games but have given up because I can only get 20FPS. I'm currently playing a lot of the early access of Player Unknown's Battlegrounds (very similar to ARMA 3 since it originally started as an ARMA 3 mod). I'' also be playing Star Wars Battlefront 2 when it's out.

One crucial thing I forgot to mention is that I would really like this thing to be capable of handling VR games for an HTC Vive which I plan on buying down the line (maybe when they release the Vive 2 if that happens within the next couple of years). So I think that's one reason to go with the 1080 over the 1070. Or would the 1070 still be fine for that? I don't wanna spend the extra £150-200 if it's really not that worth it but I feel like for VR games it might be.

I suppose my budget is £1500. But if I can get something really solid for less then I'm not going to push the price up to my £1500 budget for just marginally better results. I would prefer to put any money saved toward something else.

lee32uk said:
As mentioned above that psu is awful. Don't risk your components with a time bomb like that.

The Antec psu below wouldn't be my 1st choice (EVGA G2/G3 or SuperFlower Leadex/II would be better) but it is pretty cheap at present on here and it is a Seasonic made unit, so 1 million times better than the not so Ace 600W.

The spec below is just a guideline of what you can get if you go for a Ryzen build. Obviously if you are shopping around you might find better deals, but we can only advise you on parts selected from OCUK.


My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £1,336.82
(includes shipping: £15.90)



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Click to expand...

Thanks for this suggested build. I do actually really like the white case I put in the OP but the case size is another thing I'm clueless about seen as I've never done this before, I don't know how well everything fits in and, whilst smaller seems better, I think I would prefer to have a bit more room to work with cables 'n' stuff. Plus, did I mention that I really like that white case? :D

I'm not romantic about Intel so I'm perfectly happy to go with the AMD Ryzen CPU and Motherboard you've suggested, but if I'm getting an ATX case instead of a Micro-ATX then should I get a different motherboard? I only ask cuz it says Micro ATX in the motherboard's name but maybe that's still fine to put in an ATX mid-tower.

Thank you so much for all your help. What an amazing community!
 
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Again, thank you for all the feedback. I am really learning a lot from you guys.

I want to crack on with gaming asap so would rather not wait for next AMD cards tbh.

I have another question:

Why would I buy this: https://www.overclockers.co.uk/giga...ocket-am4-ddr4-atx-motherboard-mb-557-gi.html
as opposed to this: https://www.overclockers.co.uk/giga...am4-ddr4-micro-atx-motherboard-mb-559-gi.html

Is it just that the ATX version has a couple extra PCIe connectors? For my build, with a single GPU would I fine to get the microATX board and save myself ~£25?
 
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