Under £400 Gaming PC?

OCAspire

OCAspire

OCAspire

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26 Jun 2012
Posts
51
Hi Everyone,

I have never built a PC before but have studied IT for years and have a real interest so I wouldnt say that I am a beginner by any means but at the same time dont know everything! ;).

I have set myself a budget of £400 to buy a PC (Excluding GPU, I am planning on buying the GTX 550ti or GTX 560 later on), I just want to ask people with real experience about whether the parts will be good and everything is compatible!, so the list that I have now is:


Processor - 2nd Generation Intel® Core™ i5 2320 3.00GHz Socket LGA1155 - Please only state OCUK's prices.

Motherboard - MSI H61MA-E35 (B3) Intel H61 (Socket 1155) Motherboard - Please only state OCUK's prices.

Power Supply - Corsair CX 600W V2 ATX2.2 80 PLUS® Power Supply -
Please only state OCUK's prices.

Hard Drive - Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB 16MB Cache Hard Drive SATA 6Gb/s <8.9ms 7200rpm - OEM - Please only state OCUK's prices.

RAM - G.Skill Ripjaw 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C9 1333MHz Dual Channel Kit - Please only state OCUK's prices.


Total - Please only state OCUK's prices.


I havent decided on a case yet but am open to suggestions on EVERY component :). This PC will be used for gaming, I mainly want to play games like Skyrim and Battlefield 3 at HIGH with great FPS at 1080p. I am aware that the GPU will be pulling a lot of the weight here so is the 550ti or 560ti suitable for the job?. I already have the OS disc, Monitor, keyboard and mouse.


Thanks a lot Guys!! :)
 
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Hi and welcome.

Hows this,


YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i3-2120 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £89.99
1 x XFX Pro 550W Core Edition '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £59.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB SATA 6Gb/s 16MB Cache - OEM (ST500DM002) £59.99
1 x Gigabyte H61MA-D3V Intel H61 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £47.99
1 x Corsair XMS3 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMX8GX3M2A1600C9) £43.19
Total : £313.14 (includes shipping : £10.00).




• The PSU is made by Seasonic who are one of the best PSU manufacturers.
• Motherboard has USB3.0+SATAIII


Do not get a 550ti, they are not that fast, a GTX560ti is good though.


Finally, can you edit out the prices as they are not from OCUK.
 
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Hi, thanks for the welcome and quick reply!! :).

That is looking great price wise, leaving me room for the 560ti. A few questions though, I have heard that Battelfield tends to be quite a CPU intensive game, would the i3 handle this with ease or would the i5 be a more suitable option for the future?. What are your thoughts on a case? :)
 
For the same price as a GTX550ti you can get a HD6850, which is considerably faster. I suggest you either go for that or a 560ti as a £150 option. Once you get close to £200 nothing less than a 570 or 7850 is worth the price.
 
T345 I dont know why but I have a thing about wanting Nvidia GPU's! haha :P.

Opstrat: Quite an expensive case!, anything more around the £30 range?, doesnt have to have all the bells and whistles! :)
 
OCAspire said:
It does really look amazing but the price is a big thing, is it worth £26 more for a case? :)
Click to expand...

In its favor it does include a number of fans fitted as standard, a temperature display with temperature probe and a simple fan controller.
 
stulid said:
In its favor it does include a number of fans fitted as standard, a temperature display with temperature probe and a simple fan controller.
Click to expand...


Excuse the noob question but are these fans powered by Molex or do they have to be plugged in to the MOBO fan headers?. I ask because I believe the MOBO only has 1 extra fan header.
 
 
Just to answer a couple of your questions.

The i3 CPU will play BF3 pretty well but WILL dip to around 35 - 40 fps on the odd occasion of heavy fighting on 64 player maps, otherwise it seems to use both proper cores and the 2 virtual cores that the CPU possesses with it's hyper threading so it's not bad for a dual core CPU.

Secondly the Z9 case is very good for the money, and the 3 LED fans all connect via 3 pin connection, with the black and white fan located at the rear of the case as standard using a molex connection. I would recommend this as a good starter case with lots of nice touches, and after owning some cheaper cases in my less experienced years I would certainly pay the extra for something like this case at the very least.
 
From experience you don't need that many fans in a PC case, especially for a chip that can't be overclocked. If you arrange a case properly you'd be surprised how much heat that the PSU fan can remove for example. I'd suggest that you simply plug in the fan at the rear of the case which will give a push-pull configuration and keep the CPU cool.
 
Stulid: Sorry about posting competitors prices. That setup looks great!. Would I be correct in saying that CPU on that MOBO allows it to be overclocked? (not that I will be overclocking!).
 
OCAspire said:
Stulid: Sorry about posting competitors prices. That setup looks great!. Would I be correct in saying that CPU on that MOBO allows it to be overclocked? (not that I will be overclocking!).
Click to expand...

The 3570k can be overclocked in that motherboard (if it does not, then it may need a BIOS update). I will also re-iterate, the 550ti is not worth the silicon it is etched on. 560 and above if you absolutely have to have an Nvidia card.

GPUs to buy:

<£100 - HD6850/GTX460 (if you can get one)
<£150 - HD6850/GTX560
<£150-200 - GTX560ti
£200 - HD7850/570
 
Thanks for the reply Jon!. Honestly my budget was £100 for a GPU but I dont feel that it would be a very good investment to get the 550ti now as you say. I will up to £150 and get the 560ti, is there much of a performance difference between the 560ti and the 7850?
 
I have decided to go with Stulid's i5 IvyBridge build.

A few quick questions:

1. I have heard that the BIOS may need to be updated with the new IvyBridge processors, if this is true how would I do that?.

2.If Im not going to overclock would it be a better and cheaper option to go with a Core™ i5 3450 3.10GHz and a H61 MOBO?

3.Will this MOBO support the i5's HD4000 Onboard Graphics?



Thanks a lot Guys!! :)
 
1) It will work out of the box with the Ivybridge CPU, even the first release BIOS supported it, if by some random act of god it doesn't, then I believe you can get the BIOS updated by Gigabyte uk.

2) Maybe.

3) Both Gigabyte boards listed have a range of display connectors at the rear to utility the CPU's onboard GFX core.
 
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