New Build in two months

Tiberia

Tiberia

Tiberia

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Joined
28 Apr 2007
Posts
54
Location
Cornwall, UK
Hi all, I am planning on building a new gaming rig in about two months time. My current rig has been slowing down a lot recently, and tbh it's not impressed me since I built it 3 years ago as I had to cheap out on a few of the components.

I have a 32" HDTV that I am using as a monitor so it will be gaming at hi-res (planning this computer for Skyrim), originally my budget was £800, but I seem to have slipped over that a bit lol, planning on still using my current rig for a media hub (got 3TB of HDD) so if any way of bringing my total spend down will invest in a new mouse as I already have spare keyboard. Also since my last build I haven't kept that upto date with new releases so if I have overlooked anything, it would be much appreciated. Here is what I have come up with so far;

MSI GeForce GTX 560Ti Twin FrozR II 1024MB GDDR5 Graphics Card £173.99

Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) LGA1155 Processor OEM £155.99

Asus P8Z68-V PRO Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £149.98

Antec Dark Fleet Series DF85 Gaming Enclosure - Black £132.98

Cooler Master Silent Pro Modular 700W Power Supply £92.99

Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM £72.98

G.Skill RipJawsX 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Chan £59.99

Akasa SATA-III 100cm Rounded DAYGLO Blue Data Cable £6.98

Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound (3.5g) £6.98

Akasa 8-Pin 30cm PSU Extension Cable £4.79

Akasa 20/24-Pin 30cm PSU Extension Cable £3.98

Intel Official i7 CPU Cooler (Socket 1366) £0.98

Sub Total : £718.85

Shipping : £12.50
VAT : £146.27
Total : £877.62

Thankyou in advance for any responses
 
Well two months is a long time, so that spec could change massively by then.

But heres some better changes for you,

PSU - http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-039-OC&groupid=701&catid=123&subcat=1098

RAM - http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-094-KS&groupid=701&catid=8&subcat=1517

HDD - http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-082-SA&groupid=701&catid=14&subcat=1279

And buy a Retail CPU so you get a cooler (that fits;)) and extra 2years warranty.
 
Thanks for the quick reply. Yeah I know things will change in that time, just thought I would at least get an idea of what I should be looking at.

The timings on the GSkill are smaller, if its because of the price, two months time will look at whats on offer at that point. Or was there another reason to go for the Kingston?

Yeah that is a nice PSU, only selected the other one as it is modular and my current rig (sitting in an Antec 900) is a jungle atm. Although bit annoyed the Antec Dark doesnt have a removable MB tray.

Why the samsung HDD? (I was actually looking at a Samsung originally as they seemed to score well on tests, but then started looking about and noticed the 6GB/S HDDs and the Western with 64MBs of Cache)
 
Timings and speed make no difference to Sandybridge performance,

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/memory/2011/01/11/the-best-memory-for-sandy-bridge/1
If you're the type of person that runs dozens of applications all at once, then a higher memory frequency does help, particularly when you're running demanding software. However, our testing shows that memory rated at over 1,866MHz doesn't give much extra performance. Worse still, in some applications only 1,333MHz memory gives a performance penalty, meaning that 1,600MHz memory is fine.
Click to expand...

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/memory/display/sandy-bridge-ddr3.html
Therefore, we believe that inexpensive DDR3-1600 SDRAM with not very aggressive timings would be the most reasonable choice for contemporary LGA1155 systems: in our opinion, memory like that offers the best price-to-performance ratio today.
Click to expand...

The OCZ is mostly modular too - http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews&op=Story&reid=167

The F3 is just as fast for less money.
 
Cool, will change to the F3, £30 difference already. As for the RAM I meant the latency rather than the frequency, but either way I cant see it making to much of a difference to performance so I will go for whatever will be on offer in 2 months times. Will switch back to the retail version of the CPU as well. Can't wait, will be be a really big improvement, current rig;

e6300 @ 2.4GHz
2GB DDR2
Geforce 8500GT
 
lol, in regards to the PSU, didn't even notice the OCZ was modular until you said, ended up having to look at the pic as doesn't mention it in the description (unless I am being blind lol)
 
gdgd, what do you think of the GPU? some people seem to be leaning towards the ATI cards on the forums saying they give best bang for buck, I have owned both in the past (prefer GeForce my self), obviously don't want to blow the budget (hence the card I have selected), but as it is a gaming PC and will be running a 32" screen will it be sufficient?
 
yup, tv/monitor size doesnt matter, its the resolution that matters, only really need the 2GB Vram of 69xx if you play at reall high resolutions.
 
that is correct, 1920x1080, was running it at that for a while with the current rig, but it struggles sometimes while just internet browsing and watching films lol
 
looking at Asrock Z68 Extreme4 Intel Z68 at the same price as Asus P8Z68-V PRO Intel Z68, any pros/cons for either?
 
The asrock has a few things in its favour.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=mb-051-ak

tomshardware put it ahead of the asus and gigabyte,
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews...s-p8z68-v-pro-gigabyte-z68x-ud3h-b3,2939.html


All the other reviews for it suggest its awesome,
http://www.kitguru.net/components/m...k-z68-extreme-4-intel-z68-motherboard-review/
http://www.pureoverclock.com/review.php?id=1300&page=1
http://www.bcchardware.com/index.ph...=view&id=10269&Itemid=40&limit=1&limitstart=4
http://thessdreview.com/hardware/asrock-z68-extreme-4-the-best-equipped-z68-motherboard-13/

The support thread is great,
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums...d.-Share-your-experiences-OCs-amp-tech-issues


\or do you have an extra £10 and some patience for waiting? - http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-054-AK&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1990
 
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*stulid* not planning on the build for a couple of months so if its worth waiting for that motherboard I may as well get that one, what is going to make that motherboard better than the others?

*RiseAgainst* yeah was thinking of getting an aftermarket, although not to sure atm, without bothering to go look it up right now does anybody no of hand what clock speeds you can get to on stock cooling, bearing in mind when I currently overclock I never change the stock voltage (simply because I don't want to get carried away and **** up my system for the sake of that "little bit more" lol).
 
Also in the picture of that MB what is the separate little board shown as well as the box and MB in the main picture?
 
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