Spec me a gaming rig

LtMatt

LtMatt

LtMatt

Caporegime
Joined
12 Jul 2007
Posts
44,730
Location
United Kingdom
Building a rig for a friend, it's been a while so I'm a little rusty. He has a budget of £1000 and these are the following conditions.

Must use a Radeon GPU and a FreeSync display. (1080P/1440P/4K)
Must have 16GB of memory.
Intel or AMD CPUs are fine.
Case with a window would be nice, but not essential.
512MB-1TB SSD preferred.
 
My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £1,092.86
(includes shipping: £0.00)
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Cant you sort your mate out with a sweet AMD gfx deal?
 
 
Thanks both, food for thought there. I forgot to mention he'll need a mouse and keyboard, basic and comfortable will do.

£1000 doesn't really get you as much as i thought it would.

Stulid, no i can't unfortunately.
 
This PC is for a PC novice. He will not be doing any overclocking, i just want to try and set him up with something cool, quiet, fast with a FreeSync display and an AMD GPU.

I am going to put a RX 480 8GB version into his build, so i have saved some money for that. Total amount of money available is £1000-£1200, but the closer to £1000 the better. Ideally i want him to have just one big SSD drive to keep things quick and simple rather than kitting him out with a small SSD and a slow large HD for games.

I stuck with Asus for the Motherboard as I'm familiar with their boards, but o would consider other boards as there will be no overclocking of the CPU. I also stuck with Superflower for the PSU as I'm familiar with their quality PSUs. I went for a non modular PSU as i believe the Phanteks case (cheers stulid) will allow me to hide the cables.

Appreciate any advice you can offer on this build, if i can speed things up a little with different parts, or save some money here or there on alternative products.

Here is what I've come up with.

SKrC9Ff.jpg
 
https://toptechcashback.com/gb/en/pages/cpumb/qualifying

So if you do get a 6600K then you get cashback with various boards, making it better value than a 6400.


My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £878.82
(includes shipping: £0.00)
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£24 cashback.
 
Good find on the memory and the Motherboard, CPU bundle. A red and black theme sounds goods and will go with the 480. Think i prefer the memory i picked due to the colour, though you found a good deal on the Corsair.

Not digging the CPU cooler, was hoping for a Corsair with red leds but that bumped the price up.

Is the cashback easy to get or do they make you wait a certain time and jump through hoops?
 
You have to wait like 30days after you purchase and claim before 60days or something like that.

Its all in the T+Cs in that link.

I also think its valid when a CPU+board are bought together at same place+date.
 
Just to update the thread and add closure, this weekend i built the rig. Ended up going with the specs below as he was too lazy to bother with the cashback and would not be overclocking.

NeHLJ9F.jpg

Total order value

£1,013.81

Had trouble getting the XMP profile to work at 3200Mhz. I assume the CPU IMC did not like it as voltage bumps to DRAM and the IMC made no difference. Had to settle for 3000Mhz and CL13, which was fast enough.

H60 was complete overkill for the CPU, even at the slowest fan speed temps barely breached 55c unless under Prime 95 FFT.

RX 480 installed and running nicely at stock with a small undervolt and running 75-85c with fan speed at 70% or lower.

Was impressed with the LG FreeSync widescreen monitor. Did have an issue with a few games and benchmarks putting black bars down the sides and was unable to find a solution at the time of testing. Thankfully all modern games seemed to support the 2560x1080 resolution better.

Big up to Stulid, i was really impressed with the Phanteks £45 case, i might use this in personal rigs going forward. Great case for cable management and a Window to boot.
 
Last edited:
BIOS is upto date?

Later ones mention "improved RAM blah blah blah" and use the red slots first.
 
stulid said:
BIOS is upto date?

Later ones mention "improved RAM blah blah blah" and use the red slots first.
Click to expand...

Yeah first thing i did once i had issues, no dice unfortunately and used the red slots. Not a biggie as the difference in performance seems to be negligible.
 
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