Gaming only spec for a mate

sw1ft

sw1ft

sw1ft

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13 Aug 2008
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220
Managed to convince a mate that PC > Console and now he wants a build, I'm gonna put it together and potentially OC it with him but he only wants to spend £600 tops.

He will most likely begin by playing CA:GO to begin with until I can get him onto an RPG (Skyrim, ME3 probably) and all will be played on a 1080p tv. He has a laptop and a mac for everything else (design, bit of vid editing and general browsing/word processing) but neither will play games.

If possible a decent mouse and keyboard included would be nice, but if that money greatly improves spec I can just give him my old ones for the time being.

Only real request is an inoffensive case and an SSD.

Cheers
 
slightly overbudget

YOUR BASKET
1 x Club3D HD 6950 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (CGAX-69548A) w/ Nexuiz & Dirt Showdown PC Games £161.99
1 x Intel Core i3-2120 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £95.99
1 x SanDisk Ultra SSD 120GB 2.5" SATA II Solid State Hard Drive - (SDSSDH-120G-G25) £62.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB SATA 6Gb/s 16MB Cache - OEM (ST500DM002) £52.99
1 x Gigabyte H61MA-D3V Intel H61 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £47.99
1 x XFX Pro 450W Core Edition '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £41.99
1 x Xigmatek Asgard Pro Gaming Case - Black £34.99
1 x GeIL Dragon 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (GD38GB1600C11DC) £33.59
1 x Microsoft SideWinder X4 Gaming Keyboard - Retail (JQD-00006) £29.99
1 x Logitech G400 3600DPI Gaming Mouse (910-002279) £19.98
1 x OcUK 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £12.98
Total : £610.46 (includes shipping : £12.50).

 
YOUR BASKET
1 x Club3D HD 6950 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (CGAX-69548A) w/ Nexuiz & Dirt Showdown PC Games £161.99
1 x Intel Core i3-2120 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £95.99
1 x Samsung 128GB SSD 830 Desktop Series SATA 6Gb/s KIT with Norton Ghost - (MZ-7PC128D/EU) £84.98
1 x Gigabyte Z77-D3H Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £82.99
1 x OCZ ZS Series 550W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £49.99
1 x Xigmatek Asgard Pro Gaming Case - Black £34.99
1 x Xebec HTPC/Console Handheld Keyboard £34.99
1 x GeIL Dragon 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (GD38GB1600C11DC) £33.59
1 x Microsoft Xbox 360 Wireless Controller - PC / Xbox 360 (JR9-00010) £27.98
1 x OcUK 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £12.98
Total : £635.48 (includes shipping : £12.50).



Went over slightly. I did add a wireless keyboard with built in trackpad, the Xbox controller comes with the wifi adapter so he can use the pad for some games (skyrim to mention one)
 
tamzzy said:
you didnt add in a hdd (but i dont know if that's really needed or not)
Click to expand...

I know i didn't. He needs to store the OS and a few games, the SSD should easily be big enough for that. I thought the idea was to build a "console killer" and still have the convenience of playing from the sofa.....maybe i'm wrong but we can alter things as we go, till he finds a spec he likes :)
 
No HDD is fine, as honosuseri says its meant to be a console killer, albeit 4x the price it should be 4x the power/gaming experience.

Is the i3 up to extended periods of gaming (my mate has had about 6 xboxs from RROD, he plays it lots!) because if not, I could lend him an old keyboard and mouse to get him a better spec and then when he needs better peripherals he can get them?

He does need an OS but the win8 idea sounds good, I'll convince him that's best.
 
Well, he 'needs' none, I can lend him a mouse/keyboard, he's got everything else already and will use win8 until release then choose for himself.

All I mean is, if the extra money used for peripherals will drastically improve the spec then that's worth it, but if the difference is negligible then he'd most likely prefer to have a new mouse and keyboard.
 
YOUR BASKET
1 x HIS HD 7850 IceQ X 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (H785QN2G2M) w/ Nexuiz & Dirt Showdown PC Games £184.99
1 x Intel Core i3-2120 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £99.95
1 x Samsung 128GB SSD 830 Desktop Series SATA 6Gb/s KIT with Norton Ghost - (MZ-7PC128D/EU) £84.98
1 x Gigabyte Z77-D3H Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £82.99
1 x XFX Pro 450W Core Edition '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £41.99
1 x Xigmatek Asgard Pro Gaming Case - Black £34.99
1 x GeIL Dragon 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (GD38GB1600C11DC) £33.59
1 x OcUK 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £12.98
Total : £590.57 (includes shipping : £11.75).



similar to hono's build above, but i removed the peripherals to make way for the 7850 (arguably a better gpu than the 6950)
i prefer the xfx 450w, its seasonic quality at 40quid. bargain, really.
and also within budget
 
Excellent thanks! Looks perfect for him, roughly what sort of fps can we expect from the games I mentioned? He will be chuffed to bits at how fast it will boot and start so I doubt he will be crying over tiny fps gains, and under budget means he can buy me a beer for building the thing!

Is there potential for overclocking here as well? He doesn't understand it but everybody knows how quickly that can of worms can be opened!
 
All games are on max settings <Edit 1920 x 1080 resolution>
ACR - 40-60
SC2 - 40 in 4v4 battle
WoW - 80 (non-dungeon/raid)
ACII - 60
Bastion - 60
Divinity II - The Dragon Knight Saga - 40-60
Fallout: New Vegas - 60
Magic 2012 - 60
Orcs Must Die! - 150-180
Portal 2 - 150, spikes of 250-300
Section 8: Prejudice - 54 on benchmark level, 60 during normal gameplay
Serious Sam 3 - 45-70, average 60
Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Conviction - 60

can overclock the 7850, but not the i3 unfortunately, you'll need to get the i5 3570k to overclock, which would cost an extra 80 quid on top
 
I have no problem with the XFX PSU, I do spec it sometimes. It's not in stock though and this has been the problem i've found. I've actually paid for that PSU 2 or 3 times just to get a call to say they dont have it in stock and had to find an alternative.

YOUR BASKET
1 x Club3D HD 6950 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (CGAX-69548A) w/ Nexuiz & Dirt Showdown PC Games £161.99
1 x ASRock Z77E-ITX Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Mini ITX Motherboard £123.98
1 x Samsung 128GB SSD 830 Desktop Series SATA 6Gb/s KIT with Norton Ghost - (MZ-7PC128D/EU) £84.98
1 x BitFenix Prodigy Mini-ITX Cube Case - Arctic White £64.99
1 x OCZ ZT 550W '80 Plus Bronze' Modular Power Supply £59.99
1 x Intel Pentium G840 2.80GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £54.95
1 x GeIL Dragon 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (GD38GB1600C11DC) £33.59
1 x OcUK 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £12.98
Total : £597.46 (includes shipping : FREE).



Again I've gone over (you dont get free P&P YET) but this is a mini-itx build. The mobo is currently out of stock but that shows how popular it is combined with this case ;)

My HTPC/console killer is a PhenomII 555BE (@4Ghz) and a nvidia 460 (@850-900mhz). It absolutely destroys the Xbox360 or PS3 (i own both), remember that consoles are locked to 30FPS the PC can exceed this :)

I've used the pentium G840. It's technically not as good as the i3 but it is half the price. Doesn't sound like he needs the quicksync support from the i3 either. As it's cheaper it's easier to justify "writing it off" much later should he want to do an upgrade to an i5K (second hand buy would be good) and overclock.

I'm sure you are starting to hate me and might think im being awkward, I've kept my explanations brief so you can ask questions. If we can get you to 100 posts you qualify for free P&P and by then you should know enough to comfortably spec yourself :) Ok £10 doesn't sound like much of a saving but that can make the difference between having a modular PSU or not ;)
 
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wow, I never thought of underspeccing the cpu to an acceptable level to improve all the other components, allowing for a relatively cheap but hugely beneficial upgrade at a later date.

I guess it's the sort of thing that experience shows, I would have gone for top spec everything within budget but when it came to upgrade time, it would have cost more...

thanks a lot honosuseri, I will forward him the spec and see what he thinks, is there any headroom for OCing on that cpu? or will it be ok to run the games mentioned at a reasonable level to begin with?
 
also, mini-itx build is a genius idea as he was only saying the other day that having a huge tower next to his tv/in his room in general would just annoy him!

I'm not expecting this build to happen straight away so the free postage deal should be within reach organically, rather than me having to post loads of spiel in order to get it.
 
You're welcome bud. As you can see there is quite a lot to consider when you want to balance things out.

The offers changed today so my earlier spec will have gone up in price :( Still it gives him something to think about though. Mini-itx as you can see isn't cheap but if he likes the idea of it we have something to work towards :)
 
sw1ft said:
I'm not expecting this build to happen straight away so the free postage deal should be within reach organically, rather than me having to post loads of spiel in order to get it.
Click to expand...

you should aim to get the free p&p it helps with getting the best bang for your budget, cuz offers change every week (and day) so with free p&p you can get the best items 1 piece at the time when they are on offer
 
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