Help on new Micro ATX build please

schumi84

schumi84

schumi84

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Joined
5 Sep 2006
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West Ewell, Surrey
So, the time has come to build myself a new PC due to a new member of the family arriving which, in turn, is forcing me to downsize.

As a result, I have just bought myself a new case and so I am now looking for some new equipment to fill it.

I already have a decent PSU, RAM and Hard Drives and so I'm just looking for the Motherboard, CPU, CPU Cooler and GFX Card. My current card works just fine (AMD 5870), however it is starting to show its age a bit now and so I think it is time for an upgrade (I bought it pretty much at release).

My current hardware list looks like this:

CPU - Intel 4670K LGA1150 Retail - £179.99
Motherboard - MSI Z87M Gaming Series - £101.99
GFX Card - Sapphire R9 270X Vapor-X OC - £155.99

I'm really unsure as to which CPU cooler to go for as I currently have a Zalman CNPS11X cooling my Phenom 1090T and, for the price, has been fantastic but I have a feeling that 1) it won't be compatible with Haswell and 2) it is unlikely to fit in the Silverstone case.

The machine will be used for 95% gaming, CS:GO/Source, SC2, Diablo 3 and TF2 so not the most demanding of games, however with the new hardware I am more likely to look into buying some of the newer titles that have been released.

I have a 26" monitor running a maximum resolution of 1600x1200 so on the face of it, the new GFX card could well be a bottleneck, however if I could have any advice on the current build and CPU cooler then it would be very much appreciated.

Thanks very much in advance :)
 
danewesley said:
What's your budget?
Click to expand...

I haven't really got a set budget if I'm honest, I thought it was about time I treated myself but don't want to go overboard. It seems that between £400 and £500 should do it though.

Fulax said:
Is your CPU cooler one of these:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HS-058-ZA
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HS-062-ZA&groupid=701&catid=2330&subcat=2355

If so, it will fit the case. It will also fit the motherboard as the socket 1150 mounting mechanism is the same as 1155, which is on the compatibility list.
Click to expand...

It's the 2nd one on that list, I'll have to dig out the other brackets that it came with, if I still have them as that would be very handy :p

Idleman said:
YOUR BASKET
1 x VTX3D Radeon R9 280X 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £209.99
1 x Intel Core i5-4670K 3.40GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - OEM £169.99
1 x MSI Z87M Gaming Series Intel Z87 (Socket 1150) DDR3 Micro ATX Motherboard £101.99
Total : £491.57 (includes shipping : £8.00).

Click to expand...

I was thinking about bumping up the GFX card to the 280X, I assume I would notice a good improvement over the 270X? I have looked at benchmarks and it does look to be a very good value for money card and I suppose that if I can save money by reusing the CPU cooler then I could spend the extra money on the GFX card.

Thanks very much for the suggestion guys.
 
Hi again all.

I'm about to pull the trigger on the motherboard and CPU, however I have a question regarding the motherboard. I was wondering whether there would be any notable differences to me between the MSI board that I was originally going to go for and this Gigabyte one?

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-499-GI&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=2818

The specs seem largely similar and the Gigabyte uses the newer Z97 chipset, so what would the catch be for me going for this and saving £19?

For my own systems I have only used Gigabyte for the motherboard and find them very user friendly overall. Doing a bit of research on the interwebs hasn't turned up anything specific so I would be very grateful for any input here before I spend some of my hard earned :).

Thanks in advance everyone.
 
if you will be using just one GPU, I would recommend getting a mobo with a PCIe 1x on top. I would need it so my dedicated soundcard doesn't block the GPU airflow.
 
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