Gaming & Rendering PC

[BenJ]

I've put this spec together for my brother after a quick read on the forum and 3 years since I've been on the scene...so I'm interested in any improvements that can be made!

Used for gaming and 3D animation work. Will overclock it and I'd like to make it a little cheaper if possible but not if it's at a big expense to performance.

Case will be a Fractal Design R4 but O/C's don't seem to stock it.

 

[BenJ]

opps had 2 g/c and 2 m/b's lol

Is z97 available (they all showed pre order?) and what's the diff between Z87 and Z97?

 

[BenJ]

Cheers bud. I'll perhaps wait a bit for the Z97 and haswell refresh.

How did you link to your basket like that btw

 

[BenJ]

There is a reason OC stopped stocking them - IIRC while they were very responsive about sorting issues/RMAing, etc. quality control dropped through the floor on the cases coming out the factory - no idea if they are back to normal levels now or not.

Oh really, I love my FD R2, that's the only reason I went for the R4 for him. Is there a new case on the scene that's got the noise dampening, cable routing and dust prevention that the FD R4 has?

I would go with the new noctua d15 cooler, the phantek fans can be quite noisy when they rev up.

Oh ok, I read it was quiet when the fans were on low. Whats the current favourite for low noise/decent cooling performance? Just somthing that'll handle the cpu being at say 4.5ghz and running for long periods in a day doing rendering and gaming and such.

 

[BenJ]

He also has a Corsair 650w modular PSU in his current build. I was wondering could I make use of it since it's only a few years old. Would that power a radeon 280 or Geforce 770 plus all the other bits and bobs? Guessing a 290 is out of the question as that says 750w min

 

[BenJ]

I cant see any model numbers on there, is this enough?

 

[BenJ]

Yes, that should be fine.

Ta

I think that could be a HX650 anyway good PSU made by Seasonic A single 280X or 290 will run fine with that psu.

Ha wasn't sure if HX was enough, was expecting some long model code that would mean somthing to someone.

A 290? Oh that's good, may consider that instead of a 280 or 770 then. Why do 290's state 750w min psu on the product description if a 650 will do btw?

See this thread for the basket app:

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18371076&highlight=browser

Or if you are using chrome:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ocuk-shopping-cart-viewer/empfloiadabicdlgahhamannadefhehj

Thanks, I'll get that

 

[BenJ]

Thanks for the info and specs folks.

From the various posts I'm thinking somthing like this (Note: changed SSD to 500gb as he needs bigger than 250).

YOUR BASKET
1 x Powercolor Radeon R9 290 PCS+ OC 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £329.99
1 x Intel Core i7-4770K 3.50GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - OEM £233.99
1 x Samsung 500GB SSD 840 EVO SATA 6Gb/s Basic - (MZ-7TE500BW) **£18 CASHBACK £215.99
1 x Gigabyte G1.Sniper Z97 Intel Z97 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £128.99
1 x TeamGroup Vulcan RED 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 PC3-17100C11 2133MHz Dual Channel Kit (TLD316G2133HC11ADC01) £119.99
1 x Be Quiet! Dark Rock 3 CPU Cooler £54.95
Total : £1,093.49 (includes shipping : £8.00).



Went for the sniper as other people seemed to recommend it in the Z87 version. The write up on the heatsink sounds good, I hate loud fans. No idea on the RAM quality but seemed a popular choice.

Only thing now is, do I wait for this Haswell refresh that someone mentioned in a month or two.

 

[BenJ]

If he's doing 3D animation is 500GB going to be enough or would a smaller SSD and a 1-2TB HDD/RAID array make more sense?

should have mentioned he has like 4tb of mechanical drives already (split between 3 hds)

The ssd will purely be for windows, games, program's etc, no storage

 

[BenJ]

If you're doing 3d rendering i'd recommend an nvidia card, slightly slower in games but less crashy drivers in 3d apps.

That's interesting to know, perhaps the 770 is back on the cards