It's been a while, somewhat out of the hardware loop :O

Scott Salisbury · 16 Nov 2011 at 21:48

Hey all,

The last time I looked at any hardware was back in early 2008 (when I built my current gaming system) and now I'm looking to upgrade, specifically for Battlefield 3

I already feel a little out of my depth with all of the options. I'm not asking for a full system spec but some advice would be great at the very least.

I have between £800-£1200 to spend on the core components aiming for the Intel i7 and nVidia, not interested in SLI. No drives or other peripherals required. Also not too interested in overclocking, but I do sometimes like to experiment with it.

After some reading, these were my first thoughts:

CPU:
- Intel Core i7-2700K 3.50GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155
- http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-397-IN&groupid=701&catid=6&subcat=1859

Motherboard:
- Asrock Z68 Extreme4 Gen3 Intel Z68 (Socket 1155)
- http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-054-AK&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1990

Seems to get good reviews but I'm not sure if the other Asrock options are worth considering. Some MSI/Gigabyte boards also look popular, recommendations welcome.

Graphics:
- OcUK GeForce GTX 560Ti 2048MB
- http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-175-OK&groupid=701&catid=1914&subcat=1341

The GTX 560Ti cards seem to be popular, but is it worth looking at GTX 570 or higher? I'd like to avoid overpriced cards for minor improvements but future-proofing is important too.

Memory:
This is where I'm clueless, I've read a couple of people mentioning that memory options are limited due to large heatsink fans, and that water cooling is worth considering. Any suggestions welcome, minimum 6GB.

Cooling:
I'd be temped by a water cooling solution if they're easy to install. Can anybody tell me the differences between the Antec Kúhler and the Corsair H60, H80 & H100? Are they just better as the price goes up? Quiet is also important.

Power:
My current system is using a Corsair HX 620 Watt Modular PSU, will this need to be upgraded or do you think I will be able to use this PSU for my new build?

Any advice or suggestions welcome

Thanks in advance,
Scotty

95thrifles · 16 Nov 2011 at 22:21

If youre after a machine for purely gaming then its not worth getting i7 as the hyperthreading is the only thing it offers over the i5 2500K and very few games can utilise this, its really not worth the premium, save yourself the cash

a 570 would be a better option IMO, 580 is quite a price increase for not much performance gain, though I just bought one

but 570 is about right if I were building a price/performance based machine right now

the 1155 socket uses dual channel RAM, so you want dual channel, 8 gig is fine, prices are very cheap, if you want to avoid heatsink issues get low profile stuff such as XMS3

Theyre handy for being compact waterblocks but I dont think they offer much more than decent air cooling, if youre not OCing, though it is very easy on new socket, just up the multiplier and maybe a dd a few more notches on the volts, then theres no need for anything more than a Gelid Tranquilo, and even that will handle moderate OCs well

PSU should be fine still

azibux1 · 16 Nov 2011 at 22:21

i5 2500K is better for gaming because you wont benefit from the i7's hyperthreading, since hyperthreading has not effect in gaming

It will save you some money too

EDIT: 95thrifles beat me to it

Scott Salisbury · 16 Nov 2011 at 22:44

Thanks very much to the both of you for the replies. I hadn't realised that about the i7, thanks for letting me know. I do use my machine for other stuff such as heavy photoshop/lightroom work and I encode HD video from time to time, will the i7 be a benefit for that kind of work?

Any thoughts on motherboard choice?

Thanks again,
Scott.

Scott Salisbury · 16 Nov 2011 at 22:53

95thrifles said:
a 570 would be a better option IMO, 580 is quite a price increase for not much performance gain, though I just bought one

Hehe

Which one did you buy? Is 1536Mb on graphics cards enough for modern games these days? Or is it worth aiming to get a bit more?

Scotty.

BigRazer93 · 16 Nov 2011 at 22:55

Scott Salisbury said:
Hehe Which one did you buy? Is 1536Mb on graphics cards enough for modern games these days? Or is it worth aiming to get a bit more?

Scotty.

1.5GB is more than enough for todays standards, VRAM is only needed at the high resolutions such as; 2560x????.

stulid · 16 Nov 2011 at 23:00

Scott Salisbury said:
Hehe Which one did you buy? Is 1536Mb on graphics cards enough for modern games these days? Or is it worth aiming to get a bit more?

Scotty.

There are quite a few reviews of modern games (BF3, Skyrim etc) and the Nvidia cards with less Vram are doing better than ATi counterparts.

GTX570 > 6950 2Gb
GTX580 > 6970

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/11/02/battlefield_3_single_player_performance_iq_review/1
http://www.guru3d.com/article/battlefield-3-vga-and-cpu-performance-benchmark-test/1
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/11/11/elder_scrolls_v_skyrim_performance_iq_preview/2
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/graphics/display/battlefield-3_4.html#sect2

azibux1 · 16 Nov 2011 at 23:04

Scott Salisbury said:
Thanks very much to the both of you for the replies. I hadn't realised that about the i7, thanks for letting me know. I do use my machine for other stuff such as heavy photoshop/lightroom work and I encode HD video from time to time, will the i7 be a benefit for that kind of work?

Any thoughts on motherboard choice?

Thanks again,
Scott.

If you do video encoding then you will benefit from the hyperthreading because that does utilise hyperthreading, unlike gaming

Not sure as I have not used the motherboard myself, but I have seen it recommended quite a few times on the forums

beejjacobs · 16 Nov 2011 at 23:06

YOUR BASKET
1 x MSI GeForce GTX 580 OC Twin FrozR II 1536MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £349.98
1 x Intel Core i7-2700K 3.50GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - OEM **Supplied with BattleField 3 PC Game** £251.99
1 x Asrock Z68 Extreme4 Gen3 Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £149.99
1 x OCZ ZT 750W '80 Plus Bronze' Modular Power Supply £89.99
1 x Corsair Hydro H80 High Performance Liquid CPU Cooler (Socket LGA775/LGA1155/LGA1156/LGA1366/LGA2011/AM2/AM3) £84.98
1 x Corsair Vengeance Blue 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMZ8GX3M2A1600C9B) £39.98
Total : £978.91 (includes shipping : £10.00).

the i7-2700K should overclock to 5Ghz without too much trouble, I know you don't want to but when they are so good at overclocking why not! 8GB of RAM, big heatsinks but with the watercooler that doesn't matter. 580 is a great GPU and will run BF3 nicely

What res are you running at? Only thing I'm not sure on was the PSU

BigRazer93 · 16 Nov 2011 at 23:07

Something like this would be suitable for your needs.

You PSU would be more than happy to run that machine, and still have plenty of power left over. You could change the cooler if you wanted to, but you wanted to try out some water-cooling. You could buy a normal 1TB drive to make it cheaper, however its still within budget.

fowler002 · 16 Nov 2011 at 23:09

harmony 'to the rescue'?

regarding motherboard

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-337-GI&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1990

I'm going against the others ans say get the i2700k

the hx620 will do just fine so no need to upgrade but if you feel like it

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-027-CS&groupid=701&catid=123&subcat= fully modular so only use the required cable, gold so saves electricity bill

cooler gelid tranquilo but if you have the budget go closed loop

if not going sli http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-250-AS&groupid=701&catid=1914&subcat=1010

what case?

ram if going closed loop http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-064-GS&groupid=701&catid=8&subcat=1517

mickyflinn · 16 Nov 2011 at 23:16

fowler002 the Gigabyte Z68X-UD5 Intel Z68 has had some average reviews.

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/Gigabyte-Z68X-UD5-B3-Motherboard/1274/8

http://www.overclock3d.net/reviews/cpu_mainboard/gigabyte_z68x_ud5_b3_review/10

beejjacobs · 16 Nov 2011 at 23:18

Scott Salisbury said:
Hey all,

The last time I looked at any hardware was back in early 2008 (when I built my current gaming system) and now I'm looking to upgrade, specifically for Battlefield 3

I already feel a little out of my depth with all of the options. I'm not asking for a full system spec but some advice would be great at the very least.

I have between £800-£1200 to spend on the core components aiming for the Intel i7 and nVidia, not interested in SLI. No drives or other peripherals required. Also not too interested in overclocking, but I do sometimes like to experiment with it.
)

Ben-Irvine93 said:
Something like this would be suitable for your needs.
...
You PSU would be more than happy to run that machine, and still have plenty of power left over. You could change the cooler if you wanted to, but you wanted to try out some water-cooling. You could buy a normal 1TB drive to make it cheaper, however its still within budget.

fowler002 · 16 Nov 2011 at 23:32

mickyflinn said:
fowler002 the Gigabyte Z68X-UD5 Intel Z68 has had some average reviews.

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/Gigabyte-Z68X-UD5-B3-Motherboard/1274/8

http://www.overclock3d.net/reviews/cpu_mainboard/gigabyte_z68x_ud5_b3_review/10

and the links to the good reviews?

mickyflinn · 16 Nov 2011 at 23:38

fowler002 said:
and the links to the good reviews?

lol

Mario · 17 Nov 2011 at 00:10

To OP - you should go for something like my rig in my signature
Unless you can get 2700K for few pounds more,but dont overpay,as its basically 2600K just OC'ed

As for vga - this week offer http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-250-AS&groupid=701&catid=1914&subcat=1010 - you wont regret it

16Gb ram for todays prices - good choice
You probably can get all you need for less than 1K

fowler002 · 17 Nov 2011 at 00:15

Mario said:
To OP - you should go for something like my rig in my signature
Unless you can get 2700K for few pounds more,but dont overpay,as its basically 2600K just OC'ed

As for vga - this week offer http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-250-AS&groupid=701&catid=1914&subcat=1010 - you wont regret it

16Gb ram for todays prices - good choice
You probably can get all you need for less than 1K

another person who doesn't read the previous replies? your suggested 570 has already been suggested, in my defence I was still tping when ben-irvine suggested it. whats your excuse?

the i2600k retail is currently £255, the i2700k oem is 252 and the i2700k retail is current £262. would you say it's not worth going i2700k? oh and the i2700k retail and oem versions comes with bf3 wheres the i2600k doesnt.

Mario · 17 Nov 2011 at 10:10

fowler002 said:
another person who doesn't read the previous replies? your suggested 570 has already been suggested, in my defence I was still tping when ben-irvine suggested it. whats your excuse?

the i2600k retail is currently £255, the i2700k oem is 252 and the i2700k retail is current £262. would you say it's not worth going i2700k? oh and the i2700k retail and oem versions comes with bf3 wheres the i2600k doesnt.

nope,i read perfectly
"Unless you can get 2700K for JUST few pounds more,but dont overpay,as its basically 2600K just OC'ed"

beejjacobs · 17 Nov 2011 at 12:04

Mario said:
nope,i read perfectly
"Unless you can get 2700K for JUST few pounds more,but dont overpay,as its basically 2600K just OC'ed"

Not quite, OCUK got a good first batch, so if you buy an OEM i7 2700K it is likely to overclock to 5GHz or more... Definitely worth a few more £ IMO

Scott Salisbury · 18 Nov 2011 at 13:25

Thanks to everyone for the amazingly helpful replies!

95thrifles said:
[...]
PSU should be fine still

Cheers for the info, the machine isn't just for gaming and don't mind paying a bit extra for a top end CPU, never know what the future will hold

beejjacobs said:
the i7-2700K should overclock to 5Ghz without too much trouble, I know you don't want to but when they are so good at overclocking why not! 8GB of RAM, big heatsinks but with the watercooler that doesn't matter. 580 is a great GPU and will run BF3 nicely What res are you running at? Only thing I'm not sure on was the PSU

Cheers for the spec & info, very tempted by the closed loop solution

Going to be running 1680x1050, at least for the foreseeable future as I've just recently invested in two 22" IPS panels, don't plan on upgrading them for a while.

Ben-Irvine93 said:
Something like this would be suitable for your needs. [...]

Thanks for that spec, looks really good. I really really like that case you've suggested! Seems really good value.

beejjacobs said:
[...]

Hehe, thanks for pointing that out. I know I asked for no drives or a full spec up, the reason being is I wanted to create more of a discussion rather than another "spec me up" thread, as I know we're all probably sick of those. But if people are happy to provide system specs then that's fine as I'm always interested in any other recommendations.

Mario said:
To OP - you should go for something like my rig in my signature

Thanks for the info, not really considered 16GB, I know I don't need that much right now but it is very cheap.

beejjacobs said:
Not quite, OCUK got a good first batch, so if you buy an OEM i7 2700K it is likely to overclock to 5GHz or more... Definitely worth a few more £ IMO

I definitely agree.

Thanks again for all your help,
Scott.