Looking for help on new build please

Luggs

Luggs

Luggs

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Hey all, my mobo has died (was 6 years old) so looking to do pc upgrade and was hoping for some help in selecting components. Totally gaming focused PC, a little amateur photo/video editing occasionally.

I have tried to do lots of research rather than make this a “spec me a system for £xxx post” but this has resulted in a rather long post, so please bear with me…

Firstly, I am happy with these choices, but open to suggestions:
CM HAF X case £130 (old but still best GPU cooling on Bit-Tech website)
Ballista Mk-1 Mouse £50 (best gaming mouse for price in PC Gamer review)

Salvageable components from current PC:
Keyboard
Optical drive
2 x Seagate Barracuda 7200 500Gb HDD (photo/video storage)
Corsar HX620W PSU (Is this OK? Again its about 6 years old IIRC but still going strong)
Asus GTX 560 Ti (This is about 2 years old so I’m hoping to get more life out of it yet…)

So shopping list for new components:
CPU + Cooler
Mobo
SSD (big enough for Win7 64b and 2-3 MMO type games would 128Gb be OK to save £££?)
RAM (4Gb or 8Gb? Is there massive performance dif? Guess RAM is fairly cheap atm)

Trying to base decision purely on best price/perf combo but like most PC enthusiasts, cosmetics are close second importance! Black/Red combo to match HAF X case an advantage. (Damn those Asus RoG boards look nice but I don’t understand a single benefit listed against them lol).

Budget upto £800 but if I don’t need to spend that much… (new keyboard maybe required in the future)

Now I saw this spec in a another post for someone who has a bit more budget that me...

THEIR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i7-4770K 3.50GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £275.99
1 x Samsung 250GB SSD 840 EVO SATA 6Gb/s Basic - (MZ-7TE250BW) £148.99
1 x Gigabyte Z87X-D3H Intel Z87 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £131.99
1 x Patriot Viper "Black Mamba" Generation 3 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-17000C11 2133MHz Dual CHannel Kit (PV38G213C1K) £65.99
1 x Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo CPU Cooler (Socket 775 / 1150 / 1155 / 1156 / 1366 / AM2 / AM2+ / AM3 / FM1 / FM2) £26.99
Total : £649.95

So I went through and basically selected the next item down that was a little cheaper:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i7-4770 3.40GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £249.95
1 x MSI Z87-G45 Gaming Series Intel Z87 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £124.99
1 x Samsung 120GB SSD 840 SATA 6Gb/s Basic - (MZ-7TD120BW) £83.99
1 x Patriot Viper "Black Mamba" Generation 3 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-17000C11 2133MHz Dual CHannel Kit (PV38G213C1K) £65.99
1 x Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo CPU Cooler (Socket 775 / 1150 / 1155 / 1156 / 1366 / AM2 / AM2+ / AM3 / FM1 / FM2) £26.99
Total : £551.91

(tl;dr) Would the above work with the components listed that I hope to salvage from my old PC?

Also, am I definitely better off stretching to the lower end i7 / Haswell combo rather than buying higher end i5 kit? I want to future-proof as much as possible but am not into buying latest stuff for the sake of it.

Really appreciate any/all help & suggestions.
Many thanks in advance,
 
 
Thanks RJC and Shiari for the quick replies, sorry should have said that I prefer to stick to 1 GPU at a time.

So you'd reccomend i5 over i7 - is there much of a performance gap? I have been reading what I can find but most goes over my head.

I will probably upgrade the GPU to the best I can afford for £200 in 18-24 months, so I just want to make sure the CPU/mobo does not bottle-neck my future GPU.

Thanks very much for your help, you guys on this forum are a godsend for us non-technical gamers!!
 
Of course for video encoding and similar heavy processing tasks an i7 would beat an i5 in performance. For gaming though an i5 will do just fine, very little if any difference. If it fits within the budget, I'd recommend i7 over i5 for more than just gaming, though either will serve you well in any case. Go for the K series CPU at least and the Z87 series boards so you have the option of overclocking as well. You'll need a high end cooler to get the most out of overclocking though.
 
Thanks Shiari, I have not braved overclocking yet, but keep reading it is getting easier to 'do it yourself'. Would the coolers suggested above be up to the task should I wish to o/c in the future?

Again, thanks for the help.
 
Quick addition here, looks like the cause of my mobo failure was due to the heatwave we had here in the UK (how often do we get to say that!!) as my old case is pretty poor at cooling. Should I consider budgeting for a fan controller so that I can bump all the fans up to max if it ever happens again?

Any suggestions for a fan controller that will work with the HAF X case? IIRC it has 4 big fans as standard? I see they can range from £20ish up to £50+ so not sure what the difference is apart from the touch screen option on more expensive units.

Anything else I should consider that will help with overall cooling? I'm basing case decision purely on bit-tech performance charts for cooling gpu/cpu.

Thanks,
 
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