My First Gaming Build

TallPaul1878

TallPaul1878

TallPaul1878

Associate
Joined
21 Oct 2012
Posts
2,332
Hello Forum Members. I've finally gotten round to building a gaming rig. I intend to play a variety of games from FPS to racing to RTS. It's a slow burner build, I just buy parts as and when I can.

Anyway, it will be situated in the living room and hooked up to a Panasonic 42" Plasma 3D TV. So obviously I'll be running games at 1080p. I want to make use of the 3D and want to be in the high/very high settings.

So far I have:

Coolermaster HAF 912 case
Corsair 600W PSU
OCZ Agility 3 120GB SSD
Seagate 1TB HDD
Generic DVD Burner.

My budget for remaining parts will be £600. Not including OS. I was thinking of:
Nvidia GTX 670
Ivy Bridge i5
Z77 Mobo
8GB RAM

If anyone can make any suggestions please go ahead. I have a preference for Nvidia but if you can give good reason to go with an alternative Radeon then go right ahead. Many thanks in advance.
 
 
I think you will find that you might have to game at 720P because of the limitation of HDMI 1.4

On my Samsung 3DTV @1080p the refresh rate is 24Hz. FPS are locked to the refresh rate, so at 1080P no matter what GPU you have you can't even get 30 FPS. To get 60Hz or more importantly 60FPS I have to set the screen to 720P.

YOUR BASKET
1 x MSI GeForce GTX 670 OC Twin Frozr Power Edition 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (N670GTX PE 2GD5/OC) £311.99
1 x Intel Core i5-3570K 3.40GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £184.99
1 x Gigabyte Z77-D3H Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £83.99
1 x GeIL EVO Leggera 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-17000C11 2133MHz Dual Channel Kit (GEL38GB2133C11DC) £35.99
Total : £628.36 (includes shipping : £9.50).



You can add a heatsink later.
 
Last edited:
Thanks for the suggestions. I probably won't do an overclock straight away. Maybe when I get it all up and running then I'll do it.

I wasn't aware I'd struggle to get 1080p. The manual for the tv claims it'll do 1080p from a PC. Is that just because of the 3D?

I'll be getting the parts in 2 purchases. The cpu, mobo, ram first to get it up and running and then the gpu once I've sold my console.

Oh and I'll be more able to get away with breaking the budget that way. I can blame it on shipping haha. What the missus doesn't know and all ;-)
 
TallPaul1878 said:
Thanks for the suggestions. I probably won't do an overclock straight away. Maybe when I get it all up and running then I'll do it.

I wasn't aware I'd struggle to get 1080p. The manual for the tv claims it'll do 1080p from a PC. Is that just because of the 3D?

I'll be getting the parts in 2 purchases. The cpu, mobo, ram first to get it up and running and then the gpu once I've sold my console.

Oh and I'll be more able to get away with breaking the budget that way. I can blame it on shipping haha. What the missus doesn't know and all ;-)
Click to expand...

Yes mate, I have to set it to 720P for the Xbox if I want to use that for 3D too otherwise the FPS just sucks.

That said gaming in 3D even at 720P looks pretty swish, especially when you aim down a gun sight.
 
I have a PS3 and played Uncharted 3 and Killzone 3 in 3D. It does add to the game when you have rockets fired at you and burning embers floating in front of your face. But you get a pronounced drop I quality. You get a lot of ghosting and you seem to be unable to snipe at distance because the tiny image just gets blurred.

I assume the GTX670 will have no issues playing 3D then at high settings??
 
670 is a beast of a GPU

My HTPC/console killer is only an AMD 555BE (@4.1Ghz) paired with an OC'd 460. BF3 for example will love your proposed set up :)
 
That's great news then. I play BF3 on PlayStation and just feel short changed. I've been playing Borderlands 2 and when I saw the Phys X I just wanted it. The debacle that was Skyrim on PS3 kind of sealed it for me. It's all the crazy mods I'm missing out on too. Look at Day Z and the super high def textures on GTA4. I can't wait.
 
I go on the Xbox for a bit of drifting on Forza 4. My bro plays BF3 on a PS3, I've helped him rank up a bit but I find the "pop in" to be really bad, considering the age of the consoles they do pretty well. I don't expect the next gen consoles to really surpass my current HTPC though if I'm honest.

Your setup will far surpass what I am running. You will be able to rip movies to the internal storage in silly time. I averaged 20mins for a 2hr DVD film with the i5 2500K. That's a 2 pass encode on the fly from the DVD drive, quicksync enabled and CPU clocked @4.4Ghz.

Have a look at XBMC for a startup application for media playback, I find it faster than using the smart tv, it's very customisable too. I have all the "catchup tv" channels added to my setup for example as well as some other decent streaming channels. If you have a smartphone there is a free XBMC remote app, Gmote is a way of using your smartphone as a basic keyboard and mouse which is a free app too ;)

If you have a problems, you know where to find us for help. I'd love to see a build log if you had the time to do one. Be great to see some pics and hear your experiences :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom