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Kyleo92

Kyleo92

Kyleo92

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Joined
13 Sep 2013
Posts
73
Location
Leicester
Hey guys looking at getting my first build within the next week or so, have got my choices narrowed down, but cannot for the life of my decide on these three Cards!

YOUR BASKET
1 x Gainward GeForce GTX 770 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £299.99
1 x KFA2 GeForce GTX 680 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £259.99
1 x KFA2 GeForce GTX 670 EX OC 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £259.99
Total : £831.97 (includes shipping : £10.00).




My original plan was to go with the 670, my budget with £1k all in.. A rough look at my basket (delete graphics card where applicable)

YOUR BASKET
1 x KFA2 GeForce GTX 670 EX OC 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £259.99
1 x Intel Core i5-4670K 3.40GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £179.99
1 x Samsung 250GB SSD 840 SATA 6Gb/s Basic - (MZ-7TD250BW) £149.99
1 x MSI Z87I Intel Z87 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ITX Motherboard £113.99
1 x Microsoft Windows 8.1 64-Bit DVD - OEM (WN7-00614) £71.99
1 x BitFenix Phenom Mini-ITX Cube Case - Midnight Black £69.95
1 x Patriot Viper "Sapphire Blue" 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-17000C11 2133MHz Dual Channel Kit (PV38G213C1KBL) £69.95
1 x Corsair 2013 Edition Gamer Series GS 600W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply (CP-9020063-UK) £65.99
1 x BitFenix Alchemy Cable Bundle - Blue £28.45
Total : £1,022.88 (includes shipping : £10.50).




What would you recommend? Also, anything you think I should change with my build?

Won't be doing any overclocking until i've got a CPU cooler and a couple of other bits. Will extend the blue and black theme from the inside to the outer case, change the Bitfenix logo to blue, take those feet off and spray them blue and maybe spray the top grill blue.

Anybody else looking at getting the Phenom, any problems I should know about... PSU sizes, CPU cooler size?
 
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Im a bit confused by your idea..

Why do you want a bling rig in a case where you will struggle to see all your beautiful wares (even if it did have a window)?

Its a Mini-ITX case so PSU cabling will be messy as it is let alone adding the extension cables.. and add into the fact the itx case mounts the board flat so it wouldn't look to great anyway..

If you want a bling rig id do something like this:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Sapphire Radeon R9 280X Vapor-X OC 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Card £239.99
1 x Intel Core i5-4670K 3.40GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £179.99
1 x Antec High Current Gamer 750W Modular '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply (0-761345-06223-7) £99.95
1 x Gigabyte Z87M-D3H Intel Z87 (Socket 1150) DDR3 Micro ATX Motherboard £95.99
1 x Corsair Obsidian 350D Windowed Micro ATX Case - Black £94.99
1 x Samsung 120GB SSD 840 EVO SATA 6Gb/s Basic - (MZ-7TE120BW) £86.99
1 x Microsoft Windows 8.1 64-Bit DVD - OEM (WN7-00614) £71.99
1 x Patriot Viper "Sapphire Blue" 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-17000C11 2133MHz Dual Channel Kit (PV38G213C1KBL) £69.95
1 x Corsair Hydro H100 Extreme Performance Liquid CPU Cooler *Manufacturer Refurbished Unit - 90 Day Guarantee £41.39
1 x BitFenix Alchemy Cable Bundle - Blue £28.45
2 x Prolimatech Blue Vortex Blue Wings 120mm Fan £10.99 (£21.98)
Total : £1,052.17 (includes shipping : £17.10).



I managed to fit you a CPU cooler in too..

Its also Xfire ready.

The 280X is on-par with the 7970GE and cheaper, not far off (if a bit better)
 
I agree with Dacia here, why do you want a bling rig if your not going to be able to see it?

I do like that spec that Doomedspeed as done for you also, if you wanted to colour match it all then you could look at one of these, personally I would go with the Silverstone unit but this does goes with a massive cost increase.

YOUR BASKET
1 x Silverstone Strider Gold Evolution 750w '80 Plus Gold' Modular Power Supply (ST75F-G) £129.95
1 x Seasonic G series 550w '80 Plus Gold' Modular Power Supply £79.99
1 x Corsair 2013 Edition Gamer Series GS 600W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply (CP-9020063-UK) £65.99
Total : £287.93 (includes shipping : £10.00).

 
Thanks ethel,

Just realised i made a mistake, the board won't really enjoy Xfire so a 750W PSU is very OTT. (I had the gene in the basket before, working on a red scheme, but then i was swayed. :D)

Id personally go for the Seasonic PSU on ethels list. :D

... Nice to see you again 'Big-E'.. :D
 
snips86x said:
you can get a mofo which support SLi/xFire.
Click to expand...

:eek:

You don't mean 8-Pack do you? :D

Seriously: The only decent Xfire mATX motherboards are the Gene and sniper, though they come with there own colour scheme, Red and Green (respectively).. thats why i steered clear..

On the OEM front, the Retail offers 2 extra years warranty, than the OEM, just a peace f mind thing. :D
 
Doomedspeed said:
:eek:

You don't mean 8-Pack do you? :D

Seriously: The only decent Xfire mATX motherboards are the Gene and sniper, though they come with there own colour scheme, Red and Green (respectively).. thats why i steered clear..

On the OEM front, the Retail offers 2 extra years warranty, than the OEM, just a peace f mind thing. :D
Click to expand...

That was supposed to read mobo! Lol

I know you get more warranty, but the death of a CPU is 1 a lot. Look at the overclocked chips here on the forums, old Phenoms and 755s still going strong.

Bur yes, I get your point.
 
Thanks for the reply guys, yeah I see what you mean about the bling and ITX with messy cabling. Maybe I will look at M-ATX Phenom instead.

The main reason I'm picking the Phenom is that it's pretty much identical to everything I have within my TV set up, my AV unit is matte black with black and chrome feet.

Also, without sounding narrow minded most of the current crop of games on my Steam are PhysX optimised hence the Nvidia route however if I won't notice a mad difference I would happily try AMD.
 
Thats fair enough. you may aswell use the phenom M.. Though i still don't see the need for inside bling, such as cables and the like.

Colour coding is nice but no need to make it hard for yourself.. As tidy cable in that case will be tricky anyway.

Are you sure about the PhysX thing? Not many games truely benefit from PhysX anymore..

The 280X is a great option especially with This new 'Mantle'.. :D
 
Doomedspeed said:
Thats fair enough. you may aswell use the phenom M.. Though i still don't see the need for inside bling, such as cables and the like.

Colour coding is nice but no need to make it hard for yourself.. As tidy cable in that case will be tricky anyway.

Are you sure about the PhysX thing? Not many games truely benefit from PhysX anymore..

The 280X is a great option especially with This new 'Mantle'.. :D
Click to expand...

Yeah I'm probably being too particular for my own good when its not really needed, If I'm having it as part of my TV unit then windows and blue lights are only going to distract me when gaming and movies, I'm certainly going to look into the 280X as an option :)

Haven't got the largest gaming library, but out of curent(ish) games, I have both Batman Arkham's, Borderlands 2, and Metro 2033 and LL which 'use' PhysX but I'm running a mac which doesn't benefit from these at all (Note. haven't even played the Metro games on PC, had them on Xbox and hate the Lag and slow texture loading)

I will have a look around an update my findings on here :)
 
Been looking at some Mods for the Prodigy/Phenom.. And I'm thinking of doing this with a Phenom case..

0_a6490_ca70dcd0_XL.jpeg.jpg


Love the mirrored glass use of the side panel, and with it being dark and reflective I could get away with not so perfect cable management of M-ITX :)

Settled on a GTX 770 probably going to go with the EVGA SC one.


PS.. Yus! I have been granted access to commandeer the spare room as its now sat empty :D Gaming Room FTW:D
 
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Updated basket,

Gonna go with this for my cheeky steambox, thanks for all your help guys!

Chuffed that the 770 prices have dropped, and getting the 90 day trial of Windows 8.1 has saved me around £100 on my final build!

Getting ordered end of this week, fingers crossed prices stay the same!!

And got a quote on some glass and to be cut for my side panel... £12!! Bargain!!

YOUR BASKET
1 x EVGA GeForce GTX 770 Superclock ACX 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (02G-P4-2774-KR) £275.99
1 x Intel Core i5-4670K 3.40GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £169.99
1 x Samsung 250GB SSD 840 EVO SATA 6Gb/s Basic - (MZ-7TE250BW) £149.99
1 x MSI Z87I Intel Z87 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ITX Motherboard £113.99
1 x BitFenix Phenom Mini-ITX Cube Case - Midnight Black £69.95
1 x Corsair 2013 Edition Gamer Series GS 600W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply (CP-9020063-UK) £65.99
1 x TeamGroup Vulcan GOLD 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-19200C11 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit (TLYD38G2400HC11CDC01) £65.99
1 x Microsoft Xbox 360 Wireless Controller - PC / Xbox 360 (JR9-00010) £29.99
1 x Corsair Flash Voyager Slider USB3.0 Pen Drive - 16GB (CMFSL3B-16GB) £10.79
1 x OcUK Mega Mat Medium Elite Tactical Gaming Surface £9.95
Total : £975.20 (includes shipping : £10.50).

 
That's some serious nvidia loyalty right there, why not an AMD card?

P.S. If there's any concerns to be had with the Phenom, mine would be cable management, Bitfenix seemed to do a better job of this with the Prodigy.

Hardware Canucks - Phenom mini ITX Review

Hardware Canucks - Prodigy mini ITX Review

Reviews are may seem a little harsh in some areas, but there's always going to be downsides to a smaller form factor build(it's a case of tradeoffs though and i'm sure you know that already). On the positive side, both cases can support WC or provide decent space for larger heatsinks and larger graphics card, your options are pretty open with both cases(it's why i'm considering them for my upcoming build also - and i'm swayed toward mini ITX myself because i think the design is better than the mATX versions of the case).
 
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TooMuchCheese said:
That's some serious nvidia loyalty right there, why not an AMD card?

P.S. If there's any concerns to be had with the Phenom, mine would be cable management, Bitfenix seemed to do a better job of this with the Prodigy.

Hardware Canucks - Phenom mini ITX Review

Hardware Canucks - Prodigy mini ITX Review

Reviews are may seem a little harsh in some areas, but there's always going to be downsides to a smaller form factor build(it's a case of tradeoffs though and i'm sure you know that already). On the positive side, both cases can support WC or provide decent space for larger heatsinks and larger graphics card, your options are pretty open with both cases(it's why i'm considering them for my upcoming build also - and i'm swayed toward mini ITX myself because i think the design is better than the mATX versions of the case).
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply :)

I was very close to going for the Gigabyte R9 280X but when I saw the Nvidia Price drop and Holiday bundle it looked great value for money for me :D

And its best to have an Unbiased review as apposed to a fanboy review! I like the idea of a Mini-ITX build, Its quite simple as its my first one and my needs with my build are pretty simple :) I prefer the ITX inside to the M-ATX.
 
Quick update, getting this ordered tomorrow morning,

One quick question..

Would my PSU be ample enough for what I have selected? Made a couple of small changes on the ram and swapped the GPU for a Gainward 770 2gb Phantom but I'm not planning on adding much other than a AIO Water cooler and a bigger intake fan in the future.

Excited on doing my first build :D :D
 
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