New Gaming Rig

Avyroochy

Avyroochy

Avyroochy

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Joined
14 Mar 2010
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21
Sup boys and girls!

I am going to be building my first games rig and I am super duper excited. This will be the first time I have ever attempted this and I have picked out the parts.

The only things which I have not listed yet is the motherboard, PSU and DVD drive.

I will only be using the rig for pure gaming and word processing. That is it, no encoding, rendering, video editiing or any technical stuff.

What Motherboard, PSU Wattage do I need for a rig of this sort. I might be doing some overclocking, but not straight away. Also I would like a Crossfire motherboard just incase I want to add another 5870 down the road.

Here is a full list of the parts and if anyone can give us any pointers that would be fantastic.

Coolermaster cm690 ii advanced case
WD Caviar Black 500gb HDD
ATI 5870 Sapphire GPU
XMS3 6gb of Ram 1600mhz
Zalman CNPS9900A Heat Sink
AMD Phenom ii x 4 3.40 Ghz
Intel 80gb SSD

Thanks a lot
 
The Phenom II runs its RAM in dual channel so you should look at getting 2X2GB or 4X2GB of RAM. TBH, I would get the X4 955BE 125W C3 version which has the box code HDZ955FBGMBOX and is available for £122 from a well know retailer.

I would also look a cooler like the Titan Fenrir or Corsair H50.

Regarding motherboards it depends on how much you want to spend on this.
 
A good motherboard for that is a asus M4A89GTD pro/usb.

It uses the latest amd chipset, has USB3 and SATA6Gbps.
it also does crossfire at 8x pci express.

A really nice psu that is on special offer for £83 is the antec new truepower 650w.

It has modular cables which are very long, and has two 6+2pin pci and two 6pin pci express connectors which is ideal for two ati5870.

Lastly I notice you want 6gigs of memory, the phenomII only has a dual channel memory controller so it needs pairs of memory, either 4gigs or 8gigs in your case.
 
Hi there, Welcome to the OCUK forums :D

Do you have an overall budget in mind for your new rig? I assume you will be needing everything ie. Tower, monitor, OS, mouse, keyboard, speakers and microphone - would that be correct?

As you will be gaming I would suggest the Phenom II X4 (like you picked) or the i5. Personally I would swing towards the i5 as it is more powerful, cooler and more overclockable - however it is slightly more expensive.


I'll go through a spec for a good i5 gaming rig and give you some brief expainations of the choices:

CPU: Intel i5 750, good solid CPU, true Quad core and clock-for-clock much faster than the Phenom II. Here is a review.

Motherboard: Gigabyte P55 UD5. Lovely motherboard, great overclocker, good warranty with gigabyte and crucially has x8x8 crossfire - which is what you want.

GPU: Wait. The 5870 is a wonderful CPU and I would happily recommend it for a gaming machine, but on March 26th Nvidia will release their new Fermi graphics card and the market will change (AMD have been top dog for graphics for months with little competition and relatively high prices). Once review of Fermi are out, launch prices are known and AMD's response is determines - then would be a very good time to buy.

RAM: This stuff. Its fast and good value and works great with an i5/p55.

PSU: This is a great PSU, plenty of power, high efficiency and great quality. Its cables are also modular so it should make building/maintaining easier. It will also handle 2 5870s in crossfire happily, though Fermi in SLI would be a different matter.

Case: The Coolermaster you picked is great, spot on.

CPU cooler: It depends on how much overclocking you plan to do. This (plus this fan) would be my high-end recommendation. But to be honest, getting a 4.2GHz overclock will not give you any benefit in games, if you got this you will still be able to achieve a nice overclock and not break the bank.

SSD: The Intel SSD you picked is great, though please bear in mind that it costs almost £200 and the only time you will feel a benfit in games is when loading and installing games.

HDD: The Samsung F3 is a great drive and very quick due to its 500GB platters. If you feel you will need more space, the 1TB version is only £23 more.

Optical Drive: This one is grand. however, if you want to watch Blu-ray films this would be my suggestion.

OS: Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit OEM if you are gaming this is pretty much the only OS to get. It has all the cool windows 7 features you need and allows you to address all your RAM.


Hope that helps. I'll give you some recommendations for the other kit once you tell us what else you need and what your budget is.
 
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Regarding the asus M4A89GTD pro there are the two versions. The first is the asus M4A89GTD pro which has SATA3 and no USB3 and then there is the asus M4A89GTD pro/USB3 which has SATA3 and USB3 support. If you don't need USB3 and SATA3 there is the ASUS M4A79XTD EVO for around £80 to £90.

There are also the 790FX based motherboards but these start at £130+ and offer Crossfire at PCI-E 2.0 16X/16X.

OTH, PCI-E 2.0 8X should be fine with an HD5870 1GB:

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/HD_5870_PCI-Express_Scaling/25.html

AMD are also releasing the Phenom II X6 next month and a new quad core called the X4 960T. It will be interesting to see how well the X4 960T performs and how much it will cost.

BTW,the Core i5 based build suggested earlier also looks very nice.
 
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Wow guys great responses in short amount of time.

Im looking to spend about a £1000 on a high end gaming PC. Ive got the monitor, speakers and keyboard already. Thanks

A question though which is the better CPU for games Intel or AMD. I was under the impression that AMD was, from reading various stuff on the internet and what not.

Would it be worth it to wait for the Phenom II X6 or go witht the X4 or Intel i5?

Also I didnt know that the 6gb would be pointless on an AMD. Thanks for pointing that out.
 
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Avyroochy said:
Wow guys great responses in short amount of time.

Im looking to spend about a £1000 on a high end gaming PC. Ive got the monitor, speakers and keyboard already. Thanks

A question though which is the better CPU for games Intel or AMD. I was under the impression that AMD was, from reading various stuff on the internet and what not.

Would it be worth it to wait for the Phenom II X6 or go witht the X4 or Intel i5?
Click to expand...

The X4 960T looks quite interesting especially since the new Phenom II X4 and X6 processors are rumoured to have a Turbo Boost like functionality as seen with the Intel Core i5 and Core i7 processors.

Anyway the Core i5 750 will be still available next month so if the new AMD processors don't meet your expectations you could always get a Core i5 or even a Core i7 based computer.
 
get the X4, you can always get a six core chip later on when they become more mainstream, and prices don't remain so high.

the amd six core chips will pop straight into a AM3 board, sometimes they might need a bios update.

intel i5 as far as I'm aware has no hex core cpus coming or planned.
 
stulid said:
get the X4, you can always get a six core chip later on when they become more mainstream, and prices don't remain so high.

the amd six core chips will pop straight into a AM3 board, sometimes they might need a bios update.

intel i5 as far as I'm aware has no hex core cpus coming or planned.
Click to expand...

Would the six core chip support 6gb of RAM?
 
Fermi is delayed by a week, making its arrival the first week of april, ati refresh is right behind it.
 
Personally I've been looking at the Gigabyte motherboards with the 890 chipset. Seem to have all the features good build quality and a decent price. Not sure how important it is but I think the bandwidth between the north and southbridge is twice that of the previous generation...
 
Thought I would just revive my old thread instead of posting a new one.

Anyways im all set on my components and just wanted one of the veterans to give it a last look over and see if anything can be changed before I hit the order button.

Ive decided to go AMD over Intel and wont budge on my decision.

Here are the 'final' list of components.

AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition 3.4GHz Socket AM3 8MB L3 Cache 125W Retail Box Processor

Sony AD-7240S 24x DVD±RW DL & RAM Internal SATA Black Bare Drive - OEM

Gigabyte GA-770TA-UD3 AMD 770 Socket AM3 Gigabit LAN 8 Channel Audio ATX Motherboard

Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro rev 2 Socket 775, 1156, 1366, AM2, AM3 Heatpipe CPU Cooler

XFX HD 5850 1GB GDDR5 HDMI DVI Display Port Out PCI-E Graphics Card With Alien Vs Predator Game

Coolermaster cm690 ii advanced

G Skill 4gb 1600Mhz RAM

Samsung F3 1TB HDD

Coolermaster 700W Silent Pro


I was wondering will the HSF kind of obstruct the memory slots. For example if I add an additional 4gb in the future tallying it up to 8gb.

The PSU, should I go with the Coolermaster or the Corsair HX series I am already 50 quid over budget and I know one of the fundemental rules of PC building is never skimp on a quality PSU but saying that Coolermaster are a recognised brand and all the reviews of the Silent Pro have been very positive. If someone here owns a Silent Pro they could give us their opinion on how it performs.

Regards
 
Can't comment about ram getting in the way of the cooler.

Do get a Corsair HX or Antec new truepower 650w.
 
I'd drop the Phenom II down to a 955, you can just bump up the multiplier by 1 to get the 965 speed.
 
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