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1. monkeygourmet
   Member

   After posting earlier regarding my dissapointment surrounding the current situation with consoles, i have decided to build a gaming PC.

   I've got about £1000 to put into over the course of a few months (buying a few parts each month.)

   The problem is i would like to know which bits i should be aiming for.

   Requirements are:

   No Moniter (will be plugged in to the TV)

   As 'future proof' as poss (something that should run Unreal 4 engine well plus games like Star Wars 1313 and Watch Dog

   Fairly decent looking case as it's going in my lounge

   I am currently looking at getting:

   i7 processor
   16gb corsair ram
   Nvidia GTX 680 Keplar GPU with 2gb of ram, 4gb if poss
   Smallish Solid state drive and bigger standard HD
   Sound card?
   Motherboard?

   Any help / tips or advice would be much appriciated thanks!

   Posted 11 months ago #

2. G1GAHURTZ
   Member

   You're better off asking at the forums, here: http://www.hardocp.com/

   Many more experts and PC builders there...

   Posted 11 months ago #

3. freedoms_stain
   Moderator

   Don't buy things piecemeal, save up the cash and buy everything all at once. Prices fluctuate all the time and more likely than not things you buy in month 1 will be cheaper by the time you buy your last component several months later.

   Aside from that you might end up paying an excessive amount in shipping that way. Most component retailers don't offer free shipping unless you buy a pretty high value order from them, so it's better to work out where the best prices are and make as few individual orders as possible.

   Talking about what exactly to buy is pretty irrelevant if you're moths out from making your purchases, but if you're looking at spending £1000 then you're going to end up with a pretty 1337 machine.

   Just as a primer I recommend you take a look at tomshardware.com or .co.uk , every month they publish a list of the best gaming GPU's and CPU's at various price points from budget to luxury, it's a decent start when considering which components are worth the asking price. They also do monthly builds at target price points which is worth having a look at.

   As a general rule, buy the best quality motherboard and PSU you can afford. Gigabyte, ASUS and ASrock are good mobo brands, Corsair are pretty much the top gaming PSU manufacturer.

   Posted 11 months ago #

4. G1GAHURTZ
   Member

   Yeah, Tomshardware is good.

   There's also scan.co.uk, that you might find usefull for buying stuff, because they do some high end bundles.

   Posted 11 months ago #

5. monkeygourmet
   Member

   Thanks for the quick replies! :)

   Looks like it's prob better to save and buy it in one chunk then. I'll check those sites out and see what other people are using at that price point.

   I really like the look of the GTX 680, it really seems like it offers a truely 'next gen' experience at the moment compared to the amount of power it gobbles!

   Posted 11 months ago #

6. viralshag
   Member

   I would agree with Freedom that buying everything in one go is the best option and like he said with £1k to spend without the need for a monitor or anything, you're looking at a beefy machine indeed.

   I only spent around £600 on my machine with a 570 and it's been running pretty much everything superbly, how future-proof it is I'm not sure - because I'm not a total benchmark forum reading nerd. :P

   Although saying that, my mobo (I think) has died and I just got a replacement today. I'm very much a mid-range PC gamer... I buy most things from ebuyer as their deliveries are normally excellent.

   Posted 11 months ago #

7. freedoms_stain
   Moderator

   Doing some pricing scouting, you're not getting a 680 and an i7 for £1000.

   Realistically, both are in the excessive power bracket.

   a 580 and an i5 are more doable and still more than enough power to last you years. In fact tomshardware are not recommending anything over an i5 for gaming right now unless you really feel like spending money you don't have to.

   You could probably manage i5 + 680, but you'd be compromising on other arguably more important parts of the rig, and would probably make the SSD infeasible.

   The i5+580 combo should allow you enough room in your budget to maintain all round quality in your rig rather than having 1 or 2 high end pieces and bottlenecking them or compromising them with lesser components. The LGA1155 socket allows the potential for a future i7 upgrade should it become necessary - but I don't think it will.

   If you're going to insist on i7 + 680 I think you're going to have to stretch another £500 (possibly more) into your budget.

   just ballpark

   i5 ~£165
   mobo ~£150 (give or take, there's wiggle room there)
   580 ~£300 (depends on the model, range 230-350)
   PSU £60-£100 (this depends on how much raw power you need, 600W is enough for this rig as it stands even if you add another HD at a later date)
   SSD ~£70 (60GB)
   HDD ~£80 (1TB)
   RAM £40-£110 depending on type and amount, (8 or 16GB, lower quality or superior imo 8GB is really more than enough for gaming atm, I'd shoot for better quality 8GB safe in the knowledge that you can always add more cheaper later - so roughly £60 or £70)

   Depending on what you spend on the variable price ranges that would leave you about £100-200 for an optical drive, a case and any other extras you may need (you don't strictly need a discrete sound card as most motherboards have on-board, and good motherboards in the range you should be looking at should have good enough sound).]

   edit: if you can fit it in consider an after-market cpu heatsink/fan, you can get one much quieter and more efficient (giving you overclock possibilities on K series i5 cpu's) for less than £20.

   Posted 11 months ago #

8. Giskard
   Member

   For the graphics card, you could just roll with a nVidia 560Ti, they are quite cheap and extremely good. Also, an i5 processor should be enough. And I don't recommend an SSD. Waste of money imho.

   Posted 11 months ago #

9. viralshag
   Member

   I've go an i5 760 and a gtx 570, I got the gfx card when it first came out so it's a bit old and the price was higher but like I said, my machine has run really well (to my surprise) up until now.

   I'm just hoping my CPU hasn't fried along with the mobo... Thanks for that info DSB :p

   Posted 11 months ago #

10. Christopher Jack
    Member

    You can get the i7-3820 for £200, 2011pin motherboard for less than £140, the GTX 680 for around £480 which would leave you with £180 to spend on everything else, you could settle for 8GB of RAM for £30, £50 for a cheap case & respectable PSU, leaving you £100 for the HDD (or) SSD of your choice. If you look around hard enough, you may find an affordable SSD just to use for your OS for £40~ & 1TB HDD for £60~. You could always settle for a lesser GPU if you wish to improve the other aspects.

    These prices, I grabbed from my local, walk in retailer & then simply converted to GBP, you should be able find superior prices online with ease & squeeze in your 16GB of RAM instead & maybe even an awesome looking case- something I'm not too fussed about but if I can afford the superior looking one, I'll ofc grab it.

    Posted 11 months ago #

11. freedoms_stain
    Moderator

    ^Your conversions don't convert to our market prices.

    the i7 3820 is more like £230 and the cheapest 2011 mobo is around £150 with no real world advantage over a £165 i5-2500K and a £100-130 mobo for a gaming rig in essentially the foreseeable future.

    Also, I'd seriously seriously advise against getting any cheap case+PSU deals, chances are both will be garbage, and since the PSU is pretty much the only thing in your rig that can kill everything else if it dies the wrong way then I'd say it's worth investing in a good one. I probably wouldn't spend less than about £30 on the case either. Cheap cases often don't have great airflow or are too small to accommodate some of the mammoth GPU's on the market.

    Posted 11 months ago #

12. Christopher Jack
    Member

    I wasn't talking about a cheap case AND PSU, i was saying cheap case & a decent PSU such as Asus. & by cheap, I never mean quality, just affordable but obviously less stylish.
    Also, if he insists on having an i7 for future proofing, there are several that use a 1155pin board & you pick them up for around £35.

    Posted 11 months ago #

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