Gaming Build Spec Check Please!

npfman · 24 Dec 2011 at 10:13

Hi peeps,

My mums computer went U/S a couple of weeks ago and on a whim i bought the following setup

Intel Core i3-2100 3.10GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £79.99 1 £79.99
Lian Li PC-A04B Aluminium Midi-Tower Case - Black £72.49 1 £72.49
Gigabyte H61M-USB3 Intel H61 (Socket 1155) Motherboard £41.66 1 £41.66
OcUK GeForce GT 430 1024MB GDDR3 PCI-Express Graphics Card £41.66 1 £41.66
Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3X2K2/8GX) £34.99 1 £34.99

Put it all together and wasnt really happy with the performance, so i am looking at rebuilding it and hoping it will play Crysis 1 and the new C&C Generals 2 when it comes out, i really like the case but its quite noisy so will be looking for some quieter 120mm fans, i already have a 640gb Samsung M7 2.5" drive and will be looking for an SSD for the OS (Windows 7 64bit i already have) and programs games and such. Ive only really built AMD systems before with (Gigabyte Mobos always) and i dont know if the new bulldozer is any good?,

I have an HTPC setup with a LLano which i am impressed with. I also have a spare CX430 PSU lying about but i dont know if it will be powerful enough for the following build? Also i have no idea about graphics cards anymore, guy i work with reccomended the 560ti is it?

AMD Bulldozer FX-4 Quad Core 4100 Black Edition 3.60Ghz (Socket AM3+) Processor - Retail **£10 CASHBACK** [FD4100WMGUSBX ] - £94.99 inc VAT

Gigabyte 970A-UD3 AMD 970A (Socket AM3+) DDR3 Motherboard [970A-UD3] - £86.99 inc VAT

Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3X2K2/8GX) [KHX1600C9D3X2K2/8GX] - £29.99 inc VAT

Scythe Ninja 3 High Performance CPU Cooler (Socket LGA775/LGA1155/LGA1156/LGA1366/AM3/AM2/AM2+/939/940) [SCNJ-3000] - £39.98 inc VAT

Crucial RealSSD M4 64GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive (CT064M4SSD2) [CT064M4SSD2] - £82.99 inc VAT

and also a graphics card, i dont mind spending a bit extra money to get better quality components (Gigabyte, ASUS etc)

Cheers

Nick

edit i already have a monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers

95thrifles · 24 Dec 2011 at 10:21

npfman said:
i dont know if the new bulldozer is any good?

In a word no

If you can afford it then something like this would be good

YOUR BASKET
1 x MSI GeForce GTX 560Ti OC Twin FrozR II 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £215.99
1 x Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - OEM £173.99
1 x Gigabyte Z68AP-D3 Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £84.98
1 x Crucial RealSSD M4 64GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive (CT064M4SSD2) £82.99
1 x Gelid Tranquillo CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940/AM2/AM2+/AM3/LGA775/LGA1155/LGA1156/LGA1366) £25.99
1 x Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3X2K2/4GX) £19.99
1 x Akasa AK-FN058 Apache Black Super Silent 120mm Fan - 4 Pin PWM £13.99
Total : £629.93 (includes shipping : £10.00).

Get however many fans you'd need/want

npfman · 24 Dec 2011 at 10:37

That looks quite reasonable, i suppose i will have to finally go intel haha, cheers!

1 thing the Lian-Li Case i have has USB 3.0 on the front and a 20 pin connector coming from it to plug into the motherboard, the board i have at the moment (which is going back) doesnt have a 20pin connector for it and i used the adapter which came with case which makes it into an 8 pin or whatever so its only USB 2.0, is there a special name for that connector or how would i tell if this motherboard has it? Sorry to be picky

Also the monitor i have is both HDMI and DVI, whats the best option to go for as the Graphics card has both outputs?

Cheers again much appreciated

Nick

Stoner81 · 24 Dec 2011 at 10:42

HDMI and DVI are the same in terms of output since they are both a digital signal so just use whichever you can for your set up. I use a DVI-HDMI cable for my system.

Stoner81.

Surveyor · 24 Dec 2011 at 10:48

npfman said:
Also the monitor i have is both HDMI and DVI, whats the best option to go for as the Graphics card has both outputs?

They're the same image quality so it doesn't matter from that perspective.

HDMI will carry an audio signal so if your monitor has speakers, and you want to use them, go HDMI.

DVI is just easier to use.

HDMI may require more messing around with as some GPUs treat anything connected by HDMI as an AV device rather than PC. Nvidia GPUs may send out the wrong colour signal (on most models this is correctable on the Forceware drivers) and AMD models may scale incorrectly (again, correctable on the Catalyst drivers).

That last bit courtesy of PCM2.

fowler002 · 24 Dec 2011 at 14:59

the samsung m7 is a laptop drive not technically for the desktop but seeing as the current prices of hard disks are high guess you use what you can.

will you just be taking out the i2100, motherboard and graphics card and putting in the new bits? if so you don't really need more ram if you're on a tight/ish budget tho for £30 if you can afford it.

npfman · 24 Dec 2011 at 17:00

Yeah basically ill just be installing this into my old case.The M7 640GB is just spare hard drive i have left over from my HTPC, is 4GB of RAM not sufficient for this setup? I havent sent any of the stuff back yet as i am offshore but back on the 28th, would the 8GB i already have work with that motherboard?.

What sort of power will this system pull?, will i need a new PSU or will my 430w one do it?

Sorry about all this the last time i built a gaming rig was for Half-Life2 back in 2004 haha

Cheers again

Nick

npfman · 25 Dec 2011 at 19:43

Sorry to bump but i wanna order it with the 5% discount and not sure if a 430w PSU will run the following setup if not what PSU would anyone reccomend, cheers again, not sure what id do without this forum haha

YOUR BASKET
1 x MSI GeForce GTX 560Ti OC Twin FrozR II 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £215.99
1 x Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - OEM £173.99
1 x Gigabyte Z68AP-D3 Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £84.98
1 x Crucial RealSSD M4 64GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive (CT064M4SSD2) £82.99
1 x Gelid Tranquillo CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940/AM2/AM2+/AM3/LGA775/LGA1155/LGA1156/LGA1366) £25.99

Tibbz2 · 25 Dec 2011 at 19:54

npfman said:
Sorry to bump but i wanna order it with the 5% discount and not sure if a 430w PSU will run the following setup if not what PSU would anyone reccomend, cheers again, not sure what id do without this forum haha

YOUR BASKET
1 x MSI GeForce GTX 560Ti OC Twin FrozR II 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £215.99
1 x Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - OEM £173.99
1 x Gigabyte Z68AP-D3 Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £84.98
1 x Crucial RealSSD M4 64GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive (CT064M4SSD2) £82.99
1 x Gelid Tranquillo CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940/AM2/AM2+/AM3/LGA775/LGA1155/LGA1156/LGA1366) £25.99

I think you would need at least 550W to run that card...

fowler002 · 25 Dec 2011 at 20:08

Tibbz2 said:
I think you would need at least 550W to run that card...

not only that but think the cx430 only has a single pci-e connectore, the 560ti needs 2.

tho you'd want a 650w psu http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-004-XF&groupid=701&catid=123&subcat= is on offer and cost similar to the decent 650w psus so as long as you're not bothered about it being non-modular its a very good price for it.

with the 750w psu you may want to go for the gigabyte z68xp-ud3 motherboard for £15 more as it'll allow for sli in the future.

the 8gb you already have will work with the z68 motherboard so you don't need to get any more ram.

Tibbz2 · 25 Dec 2011 at 20:09

Ah yes very true...

npfman · 26 Dec 2011 at 09:55

Excellent cheers for the replies, jus looked at the 750w PSU and in the review the guy has said this.

However I did want to write this review as just a tiny warning to any first time PSU buyers: the product description lists this as having 'Fixed ATX12V / EPS12V: One 4+4-pin'. Which doesn't quite tell the whole story, it has a 4+4 pin, but in the 8 pin configuration it will only fit a EPS connector.

Which might well be obvious for anyone familiar with power supplies reading the description, but if you're a newbie like I was it's worth noting that if your motherboard's CPU power supply has an 8pin ATX connector you will probably want to buy a 4pin ATX to 8pin ATX adaptor with this PSU. Which OCUK sells for a couple of pounds.

and with the UD3 Motherboard you suggested how will i tell if i need the adaptor?

Cheers again

If alls ok i will order it today :-)

fowler002 · 26 Dec 2011 at 12:18

npfman said:
Excellent cheers for the replies, jus looked at the 750w PSU and in the review the guy has said this.

and with the UD3 Motherboard you suggested how will i tell if i need the adaptor?

Cheers again

If alls ok i will order it today

I'm no expert so no idea what the guy who wrote that is on about, all I known is that I have 2 psus bought over the past few years which have 4+4pins rather than 8pin and have worked fine on the motherboards I've used.
shouldn't be a problem on the ud3 motherboard as far as I can tell.

npfman · 26 Dec 2011 at 13:55

Cheers fowler, all ordered now, will post some pics when its all built :-)

, cheers again

npfman · 26 Dec 2011 at 18:54

Just checked my Lian-Li case is only mATX which is a bit poo as its really nice so need some advice on a case before 11.59 :-(