Looking for a new gaming PC, £1200 budget at the most.

[NE-Hops]

Hey guys,

As the title says, i'm looking for a new pc with a HEAVY focus on gaming. I've got some sort of idea as to what I want but i'm stumped as to graphics cards and which i should buy, i'm open to any and all suggestions!

Here's what I had in mind:

AMD FX 8350 Black Edition
Corsair H100i Extreme Water Cooler
Gigabyte 990FXA-UD5
4GB of RAM (I figure I can upgrade this when I have the ££'s)
Crucial 120GB M500 SSD
A 2TB HDD
750W Corsair CS PSU (For upgrades in the future)
Fractal Design ARC Midi R2
OS: Windows 8.1

I was thinking of going for an R9 290, but I hear it runs REALLY hot and i'm unsure! So yeah, if you guys could offer your opinions i'd be really happy.

I don't need a monitor, got a crappy old 15'' one that'll do for a while and i plan on picking up a dirt cheap keyboard and mouse combo.

Thanks for any suggestions, guys!

 

[NE-Hops]

Yeah, but i'd prefer it to be £100 cheaper if at all possible and include Win 8.1. £1,200 is as much as i can literally stretch my budget to without surviving off of beans for the next few weeks

 

[NE-Hops]

Ah, really? If there's a refresh, I may as well just wait just a few more weeks. I'm pretty new to PC's, been a console gamer all my life but I really want to make the switch. I mean, there's only so much abuse you can take from 12 year old's over XBL/PSN before you call it quits.

I noticed OCuk has a pre-built section that you can customise, I didn't know this was a thing! It's pretty appealing to me as i've never built a PC and i'm lazy... How much more expensive would it be to just have them build a similar rig as the one above?

Also, why is it Intel > AMD? It's just something i've never grasped...

Thanks for taking the time to throw together some specs, guys!

 

[NE-Hops]

Intel i5 gives better performance than any AMD processor.

That's just an example ^
I am using Intel i5-4670k

I thought this was just for CPU intensive games, obviously I'm wrong.

 

[NE-Hops]

I think it is mostly dependant on the GPU currently but games are now starting to make use of CPU's hyperthreading etc. Intel have better single core speeds so performance is better overall. I think the OP would be more than happy with AMD for the CPU coming from a console but for a bit more future proofing and overall performance Intel is definitely the way forward.

You guys know a hell of a lot more than me, Intel it is then.

 

[NE-Hops]

Okay guys,

With the new z97 boards out, can someone give me an idea of which is the best for my price-point?

Also, is the refresh really worth waiting for? I believe I read that there's no 'k' editions being released until later in the year.

Cheers