Urgently Needed Gaming PC.

[grouch4568]

As the title says, my son needs this PC as quick as possible and is willing to go up to £1000 for the best gaming PC spec he can afford. Slightly over the budget is possible too but preferably at or below.

He wants at minimum a quad core or above cpu of either AMD or Intel. As long as it's decent, he doesn't care. I've no idea at all about motherboards so hoping for a good quality suggestion that overclocks nicely. Along with a cooler to keep the overclocked temps in check, plus TIM if it doesn't come with it.

The best graphics card possible for his games (mainly new games) to run at the highest settings. He uses a 24" 1080 monitor. He's not planning to go SLI or crossfire in the future either.

8-16GB of memory at fastest speed possible staying in budget.

An 120GB SSD and storage drive of 1TB or above. Hopefully higher.

Suitable wattage, quality brand PSU.

As for case, something around £50-60. If there's more budget available, a more expensive case up to budget.

He'll order the lot from here tomorrow if you tech guys can find a spec for the above. I had to keep lowering the graphics cards to get the SSD and visa versa, swapping CPU etc. Nightmare. I'll leave it to the pro's.

Could you please help me? I'm out of my depth here. The last pc I built new was a Q6600.

I'm still comfortable building them though. There's hope yet.

 

[grouch4568]

I look at pc hardware all day and couldn't decide and you post a spec in 22 minutes. jeez, I really am out of depth.

Thanks very much.

I'll look to see if there's more options from other users but that looks a great spec already.

He decided on this case with out telling me:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-117-TT&groupid=2362&catid=2044&subcat=

Will that cooler and graphics card fit do you know? I checked the cooler fits and it does but I can't find if the GPU will?

 

[grouch4568]

I forgot windows too. It could come in handy.

He doesn't need a keyboard and mouse or anything else like that though.

Revised absolute maximum of £1050 (he keeps changing his mind) so keep the K2 for its good performance with decent overclocks and maybe up the wattage on the PSU to be comfy with overclocks and maybe more drives etc added in the future. I'm probably wrong but perhaps 600 watt to cover all eventualities?

So far decided on:

1 x Gigabyte ATi Radeon HD 7950 Windforce 3X 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card with Crysis 3 & Bioshock PC Games £259.99
1 x Intel Core i5-3570K 3.40GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - OEM £161.99
1 x Thermaltake Overseer RX-I Full Tower Windowed Case - Black £109.99
Samsung Green (MV-3V4G3D/US) 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz 30nm Dual Channel Kit £35.99 x2 = 16gb
1 x Gigabyte Z77-D3H Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £79.99
Alpenföhn K2 Mount Doom CPU Cooler (Socket 775 / 1155 / 1156 / 1366 / 2011 / AM2 / AM2+ / AM3 / FM1 / FM2) £59.99
1 x Toshiba (7K1000.D) 1TB SATA 6GB/s 32MB Cache - OEM (DT01ACA100) HDD £59.99
1 x OcUK 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £18.98
1 x Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-Bit - OEM (GFC-02050) £71.99


Just which SSD to go for as there's 2 mentioned now. Which is the better drive do you think?

Plus, a bigger PSU but if you think the 550 watt would be good enough with the possible future extra drives and overclocks, we'll go with that one.

Thanks very much for the help so far btw. I appreciate it. Nearly there.

 

[grouch4568]

I might have to buy some TIM if I can't find mine but that spec looks perfect now. He's in bed now so we'll get that bought in the morning. You should get a commission.

Thanks very much for the help

 

[grouch4568]

I had to swap out the XFX PSU for a cooler master GX650 as today it was out of stock, but everything's ordered and due to arrive tomorrow.

Looking forward to building it and seeing what it can do. Hopefully the CPU will be a good 'un for overclocking.

Thank you all for the help.

 

[grouch4568]

Bugger! I was just going by memory of how decent they used to be. He'd been waiting for me to come home for hours to order it so I rushed into it. Told you I was out of my depth. I'm glad it's my son and not a customer. I'd be out of business quick.

Are you saying I should return it and swap to another brand? I will if I'm advised to. He's trusting me to source the best parts possible, so I don't want to let him down with such an important component.

Reading the review, I can't see what's wrong with it for a bronze rated PSU. The voltage dip is only minimal and 83% efficiency under heavy load. 86% at half load. Is it a personal preference thing with PSUs or is there really something wrong with it? A 5 year guarantee must mean something too.

 

[grouch4568]

You might have more of a job getting the cabling tidy due to it being non modular, but otherwise it looks like it's a decent psu

I'll stick with it then. I would have preferred modular but the nagging I was getting made me hurry up and order everything to shut him up. Kids huh?

I'll just annoy him by taking even longer with the wiring. All good things come to those who wait.

 

[grouch4568]

I've got it built now and thought I'd let you see how it went...while sneaking in a quick question about something I'm not sure about.

The question is, have I got the outside fan on the cooler on the wrong side? I'm getting around 26-27 idle, 50ish under load like this but it looks weird to me. If I moved it to the other side, it would still look weird unless there was a fan on both sides.

Scruffy but functional wiring. I got bored taking the twists out. My son loves it and he can't believe the speed difference over his old Q6600, DDR2 ram and 6670 GPU.

 

[grouch4568]

There's plenty of clearance with the Sammy ram. Tiny stuff. I'll swap it over tomorrow then.

Thanks for the answer.

 

[grouch4568]

Nice one. I'll do that too.

 

[grouch4568]

I tried putting it in the top slot but it was fouling on the sata cables. I'll try it again by moving some wiring about.

Thanks for letting me know.

 

[grouch4568]

Told you I was out of touch with new parts. Everything in my day had 1 PCIe or AGP slot, 2 DIMM slots and single fan coolers.

Ram, GPU and fans are now operating where they should have been so thanks for all the help. I got there in the end.

Unfortunately, I've got the desktop bug again now after moving to a 3D laptop a few months ago. I'm itching to build one for myself again now.