[Tjlawton]

Hi all,

I'm looking at building my first gaming pc, I'll be using it for gaming and editing hd videos and was just wondering it you could tell me if these component will be ok for what i need it for,

CPU - AMD Phenom II X4 965 - £80.89

MOBO - Asus M5A78L-M/USB3 Motherboard - £48.66

HDD - Seagate 3TB 3.5 inch 7200RPM 64MB Cache SATA3 Hard Drive - £112.99

GPU - Asus AMD Radeon HD 6450 Silent Graphics Card - £33.12

SSD - Samsung 128GB 830 SSD - £77.98

PSU - Ace Black 650W ATX Power Supply - £13.95

DVD RW - Sony AD-7280S-0B 24x Internal SATA DVD - £13.99

CASE - CiT Vantage Type-R Gaming Case - £30.95

Windows 7 64 bit,

My Budget is around £600 can anyone please help,

Thank you

[STdrez625]

The case is probably a load of doo-wah :sick: .. get something better by the likes of antec or coolernaster. (silverstone ps07 is great, antec 300 series also)
The Power supply is (probably) an even greater pile of *&()*& than the case. 650w is just not that cheap.
Get a good quality "80 bronze" from antec or silverstone or other supplier (about £40+ for 500w)
Get a blu ray burner or at least a blu ray reader drive rather than a DVD, about £50+
Get a better gfx card, the more powerful the better eg 7850 for £180+ .. this will define the computer gaming experience.
Superfast memory is not good value. (1333.1600 good enough)
1/3 gfx card 1/4 CPU, remaining money spend on the ancillaries.

[EndlessWaves]

Originally Posted by Tjlawton

My Budget is around £600 can anyone please help,

The two major problems with that system are:

The graphics card. The 6450 is absolute bottom end and slower even than some of the latest integrated graphics. For a £600 gaming PC you want to be spending at least £100 on a Radeon 6850/7770 or Geforce 550ti which will give you at least 5x the performance, and probably closer to 10x.

The power supply. Cheap power supplies are simply a bad idea and are generally completely incapable of delivering what they promise within spec under normal conditions. You're not likely to need much unless you spent a big part of the budget on a card so a decent quality 350-400W for £30-40 will be fine. 80Plus certification is not a guarantee on quality, go by brands whose current or previous low end power supplies get good reviews (professional reviews that test it's claimed capacity, not just user ones or those that plug a system in and confirm it works).

Minor tweaks I'd consider are:

The CPU. The Phenom II X4 is an old processor and while it can just about keep up for video encoding (assuming you're not using quicksync) an i3 will be faster in gaming and almost as fast for encoding so if gaming is your priority I'd go that way.

The Case. It's not a big deal as it's not going to have any impact on the system but a nicer case is easier to build in and will feel less flimsy.


I think the advice to get a blu-ray drive is silly, they're a five minute job to fit so you might as well wait until you need one as prices will continue to come down.

[bryanchicken]

I'm not a massive expert on gaming builds but the 6450 is basically a HTPC card. You won't be able to play anything of note with decent settings with that.

To get in at £600 I would probably break it down like:
£100 - case and decent PSU
£150 - Graphics card
£40 - RAM
Motherboard: £80
CPU: £100-120
HDD: £80
SSD: £50 (i saw a 128gb for this price the other day)

That brings you up around £600 but it doesn't include Windows or an optical drive. I don't have an optical drive in my gaming pc as i mostly use steam and an external if needed.
It also doesn't include a monitor, decent mouse and keyboard. Do you need those?

I would go with Intel rather than AMD. If you can squeeze in an i5 2500K then fantastic otherwise an i3 will do you and also be upgradable in the future if needed.

[Tjlawton]

Would this Bundle be ok? and for the psu would this be ok?

[STdrez625]

You might want to factor in another £60 (total) for your choice of gaming keyboard and mouse. Ordinary mice tend to be non optimal for gaming, and can quickly fail under the strain.
Sadly the I3 chip mentioned is NOT upgradeable at all.. you would have to replace with a completely new chip, such as the I5 mentioned

[EndlessWaves]

The bundle is no cheaper than buying the parts separately, that sort of price for motherboard CPU and memory is also likely to leave you unable to meet your budget for the rest of the PC - assuming the 3TB drive and SSD are fixed requirements.

The PSU is decent.

[EndlessWaves]

Originally Posted by STdrez625

You might want to factor in another £60 (total) for your choice of gaming keyboard and mouse. Ordinary mice tend to be non optimal for gaming, and can quickly fail under the strain.

Only if you throw them across the room in frustration when you lose. 'Gaming' peripherals are mostly just for the funky colours, there are a couple of gaming specific features (often just on the high end models) but I doubt they're any better built than an equivalently priced model of a more relaxed design.

Originally Posted by STdrez625

Sadly the I3 chip mentioned is NOT upgradeable at all.. you would have to replace with a completely new chip, such as the I5 mentioned

I can't even work out what you mean here, no chips are 'upgradable' in themselves and you always have to replace them if you want the features of a higher end model.

[spyder viewer]

IMHO, SSD's are not must-haves but they are good to have eventually!

[LJx]

The first thing I would do is switch to intel, even a Pentium is preferable from my point of view than that Phenom. It costs less to and you can always upgrade to an i5 / i7 later on.
For £600 though you CAN build a complete i5 rig with a decent graphics card

[EndlessWaves]

Originally Posted by LJx

For £600 though you CAN build a complete i5 rig with a decent graphics card

Not with an operating system and the storage specified you can't, you might get to £650 if you cut everything else to the bone and assumed that the SSD model wasn't fixed but you'll generally be looking at £700, or even more to pair it with the sort of card an i5 system would usually have.

[Tjlawton]

Will this motherboard be good enough for what I want use my system for?

Asus P8Z77-V Socket 1155 VGA DVI DisplayPort HDMI 8.. | Ebuyer.com

[EndlessWaves]

Originally Posted by Tjlawton

Will this motherboard be good enough for what I want use my system for?

Asus P8Z77-V Socket 1155 VGA DVI DisplayPort HDMI 8.. | Ebuyer.com

Motherboards don't affect performance very much, you mainly want to buy on features. That is a popular model but if you don't need the extra features you could consider the P8Z77-V LX or P8H77-V LX.

[Tjlawton]

Which CPU is better the i5 2500k or the i5 3570k?

[EndlessWaves]

Originally Posted by Tjlawton

Which CPU is better the i5 2500k or the i5 3570k?

The 3000 series is newer and better.

[Tjlawton]

Is this any better?

CPU - intel I5 2500k

Motherboard - AsRock Z68 Extreme3

HDD - Western Digital 2TB

SSD - OCZ OCT1-25SAT2-128G

GPU - Asus AMD Radeon HD6770

DVD drive - Sony AD-7280S-0B 24x Internal SATA DVD Multi Writer Black Bare

RAM - Corsair CMZ8GX3M2A1600C9 8GB 1600MHz CL9 DDR3 Vengeance Memory Two Module Kit

With windows 7 64bit, I just need find a decent psu My budget is £650

Thanks

[brookheather]

The SSD is bottom end - for the same price get a Kingston V200 or pay a bit more and get a Samsung 830 or Crucial m4.

[Tjlawton]

Ok, what about the other components will they all work together. Can anyone recommend a decent psu to run it all.

Thanks

[Tjlawton]

can anyone tell me if this psu will be good enough to power my system?

My build is going be

motherboard - AsRock Z77 Pro4 Motherboard

cpu - Intel 3rd Generation Core i5-3570K

Ram - Corsair CML8GX3M2A1600C9 LP Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB)

GPU - Asus nVIDIA GeForce GTX 550 Ti

HDD - Western Digital 2TB

SSD - Kingston Technology HyperX 3K 2.5 inch 120GB

DVD RW - Sony AD-7280S-0B 24x Internal SATA DVD

Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit

[brookheather]

Yes - more than enough.

[Tjlawton]

Thank you

[brookheather]

If you don't need a modular PSU then this OCZ 500W PSU is half the price:

OCZ Technology 500W CoreXStream Series Power Supply (OCZ-CSX500W-UK) - BT Shop