New gaming rig for £1100-1300

patagoniant

patagoniant

patagoniant

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Hi there.

I'm looking to get a full new system including monitor (but excluding mouse/keyboard/speakers) for somewhere in this price bracket. Primarily for gaming, but also for a spot of video editing / processing here and there. It's not out yet, but I'd be looking to run Fallout 4 with the fanciest graphics I can.

Looking through some of the threads on here, it seems like X99 will give better bang for my buck than Skylake, but would that be at the expense of less upgrade potential in a year or two?

I'm also wondering if I'll get 1440p performance in my price range, or if I should look at 1080p for now and add a second monitor and GPU in a year or so when I've had a chance to save up some more? I was thinking of just one of each for the time being.

I'm not averse to water cooling if that'll allow a bit more overclock or quietness.

Thanks for any help with this!
 
Hi,

I came up with this - It's very graphics card heavy but I feel it's a good idea to try and cram a GTX 980Ti into your budget, it is an amazing card for how much it costs. For the £50-100 less on the graphics card you won't get anywhere near the same performance.

You could save £250 now, on a GTX 970, and add another in a few months time, but you will need a slightly better power supply for that. I believe in getting the maximum GPU for your budget at the time, so it's up to you!

YOUR BASKET
1 x Inno3D GeForce GTX 980Ti Herculez OC 6144MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (N98TV-1SDN-N5HNX) £515.99
1 x Dell UltraSharp U2515H 25" QHD IPS Professional Widescreen LED Monitor - Midnight Grey £259.99
1 x Intel Core i5-4690K 3.50GHz (Devil's Canyon) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £179.99
1 x Gigabyte Z97X-SLI Intel Z97 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £89.99
1 x Samsung 250GB 850 EVO SSD 2.5" SATA 6Gbps 32 Layer 3D V-NAND Solid State Drive (MZ-75E250B/EU) £79.99
1 x EVGA SuperNova G1 650W '80 Plus Gold' Modular Power Supply (120-G1-0650-XR) £66.95
1 x Seagate 2TB SATA-6Gb 7200rpm 64MB (1 Year Warranty) £53.99
1 x Corsair Vengeance Pro Silver 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Memory Kit (CMY8GX3M2A1600C9) £49.99
1 x Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo CPU Cooler £24.97
Total : £1,338.35 (includes shipping : £13.75 Ex.VAT).



It does not include a case, though - I don't like suggesting those as they are a very personal preference, but it shouldn't cost more than £50 (a little extra £100 on your budget for a lot of performance with the 980Ti)

I don't believe anything on the product list is inherently bad, however I have no knowledge on Seagate HDDs.

If the "spot of video editing" is a bit more major, you could opt for the 970 now, add another later and pick yourself up an i7-4790k:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Dell UltraSharp U2515H 25" QHD IPS Professional Widescreen LED Monitor - Midnight Grey £259.99
1 x Intel Core i7-4790K 4.00GHz (Devil's Canyon) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £259.99
1 x Gigabyte GeForce GTX 970 WindForce OC 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (GV-N970WF3OC-4GD) £257.99
1 x Gigabyte Z97X-SLI Intel Z97 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £89.99
1 x Samsung 250GB 850 EVO SSD 2.5" SATA 6Gbps 32 Layer 3D V-NAND Solid State Drive (MZ-75E250B/EU) £79.99
1 x EVGA SuperNova G1 650W '80 Plus Gold' Modular Power Supply (120-G1-0650-XR) £66.95
1 x Seagate 2TB SATA-6Gb 7200rpm 64MB (1 Year Warranty) £53.99
1 x Corsair Vengeance Pro Silver 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Memory Kit (CMY8GX3M2A1600C9) £49.99
1 x Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo CPU Cooler £24.97
Total : £1,160.35 (includes shipping : £13.75 Ex.VAT).



Edit: Not sure if you need Windows, should have asked!
 
Last edited:
Thanks for getting back to me.

Assuming I went for a 980ti as the GPU, where do you think the bottleneck would be in terms of gaming performance?

Would stretching the budget by an extra £100-150 to go X99, i7 and DDR4 have a significant impact?

And finally, if I was to go SLI in a year or two, would I need much more wattage from the PSU?
 
patagoniant said:
Thanks for getting back to me.

Assuming I went for a 980ti as the GPU, where do you think the bottleneck would be in terms of gaming performance?

Would stretching the budget by an extra £100-150 to go X99, i7 and DDR4 have a significant impact?

And finally, if I was to go SLI in a year or two, would I need much more wattage from the PSU?
Click to expand...

Hi again :)

Unless you are running a really old processor, the bottleneck will always be within the GPU. I'd probably go as far to say as SLI 980Tis would not be bottlenecked via the i5-4690k - It's a really good processor, especially if you ramp it up to 4.3-4.5GHz which should be achievable for the average chip.

As for going X99 - Games at the moment (most, at least) do not utilise hyperthreading nor 4-6 cores. As I previously mentioned, if your video editing is more than doing it periodically, or your daily workload is intensive, then I would advise going X99. It also depends how long you want the system to last, if you are aiming for 4-5 years via the CPU, which I would not say is too optimistic given the current rate of progress, I would say the 5820k is a solid choice as the cores will prove useful for any games utilising DX12 from 2017-ish onwards.

If you were to choose option two, you will need to up the PSU to around about 800W to be comfortable I'd say. I did originally mean to do that but I guess I forgot.

One reason I suggest getting a 980Ti now is the fact in two-or-so years time when a 980Ti is no longer extremely good, you can just pop another one in as it should have dropped a significant amount in price. However, if you choose to go SLI 970s straight off the bat, this is no longer an option as 3 way SLI does not scale as well as 2 way.
 
Rowlii said:
Hi again :)

One reason I suggest getting a 980Ti now is the fact in two-or-so years time when a 980Ti is no longer extremely good, you can just pop another one in as it should have dropped a significant amount in price. However, if you choose to go SLI 970s straight off the bat, this is no longer an option as 3 way SLI does not scale as well as 2 way.
Click to expand...
Thanks again! That sounds like an excellent suggestion as far as the 980Ti goes.

How does this combination look?

YOUR BASKET
1 x Inno3D GeForce GTX 980Ti Herculez OC 6144MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (N98TV-1SDN-N5HNX) £515.99
1 x Dell UltraSharp U2515H 25" QHD IPS Professional Widescreen LED Monitor - Midnight Grey £259.99
1 x Gigabyte Z97X-SLI - Devils Canyon Core i5 4690K Bundle **£12 Saving** £257.98
1 x EVGA SuperNova G2 1000W '80 Plus Gold' Modular Power Supply £134.99
1 x Samsung 250GB 850 EVO SSD 2.5" SATA 6Gbps 32 Layer 3D V-NAND Solid State Drive (MZ-75E250B/EU) £79.99
1 x Fractal Design Define R4 Midi Tower Case - Black Window £79.99
1 x Seagate 2TB SATA-6Gb 7200rpm 64MB (1 Year Warranty) £53.99
1 x Corsair Vengeance Pro Silver 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Memory Kit (CMY8GX3M2A1600C9) £49.99
Total : £1,453.13 (includes shipping : £16.85 Ex.VAT).



The PSU is almost certainly overkill for that setup, but should allow for plenty of future upgrades. The heatsink you suggested is unfortunately out of stock - any good alternatives you'd recommend for the 4690K?
 
It looks good! There's nothing I'd particularly change. The PSU is indeed overkill but if you do plan to pop another 980Ti in your build, you have the power there already.

The 4690k apparently holds up well with 2x 980Tis at higher resolutions, so I think you are fine there, at least until games start utilising CPU power a lot more.

Considering your budget (which I've already increased by a fair amount, sorry) I would say that's the best possible out of it :)
 
I was going to pick that monitor myself, but it's Acer. I am not particularly fond of Acer monitors due to their awful QC, nor are a lot of people on these forums. Just a word of warning :)
 
How about a Skylake build ?

The cpu/board is a bit more expensive, but you can cut the psu down to 850W which will still allow for SLI.


YOUR BASKET
1 x Inno3D GeForce GTX 980Ti Herculez OC 6144MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (N98TV-1SDN-N5HNX) £515.99
1 x Gigabyte Z170XP-SLI - Intel Core i5 6600K Bundle **£20 Saving** £303.97
1 x Dell UltraSharp U2515H 25" QHD IPS Professional Widescreen LED Monitor - Midnight Grey £259.99
1 x XFX XTR 850W '80 Plus Gold' Fully Modular Power Supply £99.95
1 x Fractal Design Define R4 Midi Tower Case - Black Window £79.99
1 x Samsung 250GB 850 EVO SSD 2.5" SATA 6Gbps 32 Layer 3D V-NAND Solid State Drive (MZ-75E250B/EU) £79.99
1 x Corsair Vengeance LPX 8GB (2x4GB) DDR4 PC4-19200C14 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit - Black (CMK8GX4M2A2400C14) £55.99
1 x Seagate 2TB SATA-6Gb 7200rpm 64MB (1 Year Warranty) £53.99
1 x Alpenföhn Matterhorn Pure Edition CPU Cooler £29.99
Total : £1,500.07 (includes shipping : £16.85 Ex.VAT).

 
Thanks for the other suggestions lee and t-rex.

With budget-bloat striking for the 980ti, I can't push it any further for the Skylake CPU/Mobo combination (even though it's not much extra). I've also had a bad experience with Acer in the past, which puts me off that monitor even though it's 27" rather than 25".

I've taken the plunge now based on what Rowlii suggested - can't wait to get gaming in 1440p!
 
I'm sorry! I feel bad.

You will not regret the performance of the 980Ti though, it's a beastly card.
 
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