Spec me a SSD gaming rig

jayextreme

jayextreme

jayextreme

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Joined
14 Sep 2010
Posts
253
Dear all,
It's my first post here so apology if I cross any "hidden" rule here.

Basically I'm looking to spend GBP700ish to buy a decent gaming rig, I'm a blizzard fanboy so would want my machine to run SC2 and D3 with max settings. I have a 24" dell mon. I will use the ssd for OS only.

Been looking really hard to decide between amd and intel, however i guess with my budget range i wont be able to afford intel.

Many thanks for your kind help!
 
Not being funny but with a budget of £700 I wouldn't bother wasting money away on a SSD just get a the Samsung Spinpoint 1Tb F3 which is bloody quick in it's own right, loads of capacity and dirt cheap.

SC2 seems to work well on Nvidia hardware especially when AA is enabled and I would also advice you give this a read before making any final decisions.

As a basic outline of a build I would get a Core i3 530, 4Gb of ram, Windows 7 Home Premium, a GTX 460 1Gb, Corsair 600watt PSU, 1Tb Samsung Spintpoint F3 hard drive and a Lancool K-62 Mid Tower case, a 3rd party CPU cooler. That should all be achievable for £700 and shoud run SC2 like a dream.
 


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£99.66 over budget. I FAILED!

I think that the fact you want an SSD to improve
performance will actually kill performance in other areas
if u want to stay below £700

im not good at the "bang for buck" specs ill leave it to the PROs

:cool:
 
Im looking forward to diablo 3 :D

Do you need everything or do you have a case/psu/hard drives already and OS??

phenom 2 x4 955 £117:49
Gigabyte GA-890GPA-UD3H AMD 890GX £105:99
Patriot Viper 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C7 1600MHz £80
Arctic Cooling Freezer Xtreme Rev.2 High Performance Quiet CPU Cooler £28 (although the stock cooler is quite good if you need to save money)
HIS ATI Radeon HD 5850 iCooler V 1024MB £199
or
Asus GeForce GTX 460 1024MB DirectCU £173
Kingston SSDNow V-Series 30GB 2.5" SATA-II Solid State Hard Drive £59 (not huge or massively fast but cheap and will hold your OS and a couple of games)
 


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£65.29 over budget!

if you can stretch to this it could be a winner, but unless you
reduce your cpu or gpu which is BAD! your
not gonna get an ssd in.

gl:cool:
 
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@Freddie1980:
Yes I quite agree with you that saving ssd would make my budget much more flexible. I probably would end up spec one without.

@dfour:
thx for the amd build, was about to request one as well. I will build this from scratch so need everything basically.

@Freddie1980:
many thanks for the image uploaded, clear and concise :D. I quite like the build with GBP76 extra. Can people explain to me why coolermaster CM-690 is chosen over any other cheaper case, e.g. antec 300?

Also thanks for every other people who give valuable suggestions to drop SSD option. I used my lab's computer which has SSD and I just absolutely love its performance, however I do understand that SSD won't make ur game runs @ higher FPS. Just personal choice really ;D

Cheers guys.
 
There are savings to be made here.
The Antec 300 is a fine case and on offer this week at about £43 i think.
OCZ ModXStream Pro 500w Silent SLI Certified Modular Power Supply is a little cheaper and should provide enough juice for your needs- £57
MSI GeForce GTX 460 Cyclone 1024MB is at £176.24 and has a slightly better overclock than the Gigabyte listed above. Personally, I would go for the EVGA 1024 card at £172.71 with its 10 yr warranty and overclock it myself!

So thats around about £36 of savings which I would use to upgrade the SSD listed to the Crucial RealSSD C300 64GB at £111.99. Waaay faster and more capacity. I would also rather get the Intel i5 760 over the AMD, but I accept that that puts you over budget.

In fact I would go further and say I really dont think the Intel X-25 V-Value is worth considering in any system. Look at its read and write speeds:
Read: Up to 170MB/sec
Write: Up to 35MB/sec

Vs the Crucial's
Read: Up to 355MB/sec
Write: Up to 70MB/sec.

The OCZ Vertex 2E 60GB is also worth considering with speeds quoted as:
- Maximum Read: 285MB/sec
- Maximum Write: 275MB/sec
- Sustained Write: 250MB/sec

You've said you want the PC for gaming so I would urge you to go with the Crucial RealSSD C300 over the OCZ vertex 2E, as you will be reading from the drive more than writing to it.
 
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JimboJet said:
In fact I would go further and say I really dont think the Intel X-25 V-Value is worth considering in any system. Look at its read and write speeds:
Read: Up to 170MB/sec
Write: Up to 35MB/sec

Vs the Crucial's
Read: Up to 355MB/sec
Write: Up to 70MB/sec.

The OCZ Vertex 2E 60GB is also worth considering with speeds quoted as:
- Maximum Read: 285MB/sec
- Maximum Write: 275MB/sec
- Sustained Write: 250MB/sec

You've said you want the PC for gaming so I would urge you to go with the Crucial RealSSD C300 over the OCZ vertex 2E, as you will be reading from the drive more than writing to it.
Click to expand...

Wow didn't know that different SSD can vary so much in speed! Thanks for the lecture, I think ideally I'm looking into spend GBP 800 to achieve SSD now.
Cheers,
 
Actually very close to doable on your old £700 budget with decent SSD, CPU and GPU...

EVGA GeForce GTX 460 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £172.71
Intel Core i5 760 2.80GHz (Lynnfield) (Socket LGA1156) - Retail £146.86
OCZ Vertex 2E 60GB 2.5" SATA-II Solid State Hard Drive (OCZSSD2-2VTXE60G) £111.61
Asus P7H55-M/USB3 Intel H55 (Socket 1156) DDR3 microATX Motherboard £79.99
Corsair XMS3 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMX4GX3M2A1600C9) £76.36
Samsung SpinPoint F3 500GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (HD502HJ) £32.99
Corsair CX 400W ATX Power Supply (CMPSU-400CXUK) £32.99
Xigmatek Asgard Midi Tower Case - Black £28.99
Samsung SH-S223C/BEBE 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £13.99
Sub Total : £592.78
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £11.75
VAT is being charged at 17.50% VAT : £105.79
Total : £710.32

If you have a little more to spend get a decent cooler for OCing and maybe up to 5850 or 470
 
That PSU in Liampope's spec should be enough but I'd go for a larger one few just a few £s more to save money at a later date. I'd also opt for the Crucial SSD over the Vertex for gaming.
 
That PSU will be more than enough, even with a 5850 in there, so no real need to change it if the budget is tight. You'd have to get a molex adaptor though to provide an extra 6/8 pin for the GPU, as according to one review it only has one 6pin. If you had a little more to spend on a 500 or 600W PSU that would be a tidier solution and last into some later upgrades though.

Good shout on the SSD - I failed to notice the much higher read speed on the crucial.
 
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whats the point in an ssd if your a blizzard fanboy and your only using your ssd for os? once your in game it wont make a difference.

id get a c300 though and install os and some games/apps.
 
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