£1300 to spend on new gaming rig, advice needed?

[M1lkyBarKid]

Hi guys,

I last built a PC about 5 years ago so I am completely out of touch now and need a bit of direction, should be ok after that. I have about £1300 to spend on a new gaming rig and would like to know what direction to go i.e.

Nvidia or ATI?
Motherboard (pin set)
Intel or AMD?
Dual graphic cards or single?
Good suppliers?
Cooling?

Thanks, any help is appreciated.

Steve

 

[sillypepper]

Hi guys,

I last built a PC about 5 years ago so I am completely out of touch now and need a bit of direction, should be ok after that. I have about £1300 to spend on a new gaming rig and would like to know what direction to go i.e.

Nvidia or ATI?
Motherboard (pin set)
Intel or AMD?
Dual graphic cards or single?
Good suppliers?
Cooling?

Thanks, any help is appreciated.

Steve

hi buddy

1) nvidia/ ati i find ati to usually have the slightly more power efficent gpus compared to nvidia but there isnt really much in the brands, just look for the best graphics card from both companies in the respective price bracket.

2) motherboards, if you going with amd then the current socket is AM3 that supports DDR3 ram, and the same with the intel socket is that it supports DDR3 aswell, the i3/i5 and i think i7 run all on a 1156 socket.

3) intel/amd, intel generally perform better in games at any price point, however when your building value sysytems like me amd provides the best bang for buck, i would use intel myself in your circumstances.

4) id personally recomend a single gpu configuration, as your essentailly getting more for your money as your not spending double on two gpus that dont always yeild a substainial increase in fps, however there are others who swear by them

5) good suppliers, there was a list floating around on here but generally scan, overlcockers, ebuyer are the ones that i have used and found to be good, however im sure others will flock to the thread with their own list of preferred merchants

6) hmmmm ive never tried it myself but i might recommend watercooling at your budget, however its always best to buy a case thats big enough to support wc anyway as then youll have more room to work and stand a better chance of hiding those pesky cables however air cooling can yeild decent cooling and keep a quite resonably overclocked system cool while being reasonably quiet, but watercooling allows you to take your oc and noise levels to next level.

anyway hope this helps and ill try and have a poke around the internet at a couple of specs and see what i come up with.

Andrew

 

[M1lkyBarKid]

Thanks Andrew, that is superb.

 

[sillypepper]

right... not sure if this helps but if i had that money right now i would spend it on this bunch of parts

case Scan.co.uk: Coolermaster HAF X Black Tower Computer Case - RC-942-KKN1-GP

cpu cooler Scan.co.uk: Akasa AK-CCX-4002HP Venom CPU Cooler

cpu Scan.co.uk: Intel CPU i7 930 Quad Core Processor - BX80601930

gpu x2 Scan.co.uk: XFX HD 6870 ATI - AMD Radeon Graphics Card - 1GB - HD-687A-ZNFC

ram Scan.co.uk: Corsair Memory Dominator 6GB DDR3 PC3-12800 (1600) Triple Channel Desktop - CMP6GX3M3A1600C8

mobo either Scan.co.uk: Asus Sabertooth TUF X58 Motherboard, USB 3.0, SATA III - SABERTOOTH X58 or Scan.co.uk: Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R Intel X58 Express 1366 Motherboard

psu Scan.co.uk: Be Quiet BN125 Dark Power Pro P8 900W Modular Power Supply (PSU)

brings total to 1191 however i myself would be tempted to drop the ati cards in favour of the new nvidia 5** whatever but there no benchmarking data i could find that backed it up, ive left hard drive out as im not sure weather ssd + larger hdd would be better that two hdd in raid, also no optical drive but id choose a bluray drive and a seperate dvd rewriter, although if its just a gaming pc then dvd will suffice ( i watch all my movies on or thorugh a pc ) and then there os whihc i would choose to go for win 7 home preimium although if you were after the more advanced features of the higher versons of windows 7 then there cool too, oh and there loads of variations on the case and the motherboards, i just like shiny and colourful stuff, you could also chance the cpu to the other i7's that work off the 1556 socket for expample Scan.co.uk: Intel CPU i7 860 Quad Core Processor - BX80605I7860
and go with one of the highly capable 1556 mobos, and if you wanted to save some money you could get an Scan.co.uk: EVGA NVIDIA GTX 470 Graphics Card Superclocked - 012-P3-1472-ER just keep one for the while and use the money towards nvidia 3d vision if thats your kinda thing, anyway thats the best i could come up with but im sure others will be posting soon and will probably smooth out the edges of that build (as i still think myself that it could be improved)

anyway hope this help in some way

Andrew

 

[M1lkyBarKid]

That is fantastic Andrew, amazing stuff, you have put some real effort into this and for that I am very grateful. If my budget could raise to £1400 - £1500 would you include anything else instead?

 

[sillypepper]

ill have a think about it and see if i can come up with a newer, faster and more value for money build, ill try and get back to tomorow

Andrew

 

[Zaim7890]

Hi mate, i'd go for something like this:

https://www.aria.co.uk/WishList/KugzWw9fE2pEhSxkokr0Og,,

you didn't mention if you needed a monitor, mouse, keyboard, speakers, OS, dvd drive etc

You could wait for AMD's new 6970/6950 graphics cards, but two 6870's are excellent.

 

[M1lkyBarKid]

Thanks Zaim, I didn't know you could create wishlists on Aria, clever stuff. I am not too worried about peripherals, I going to concentrate most of my cash on a new build.

 

[Invertigo]

If you get a case with good cooling, 2 GTX470's can yield greater performance than 2 6870's when overclocked. The Be Quiet psu recommended above is more than capable of running them, and 470's tend to get around a 15-25% gain from overclocking, whereas 6870's gain about 5-10%. Also, you can pick up 470's for £165 now HERE, possibly even cheaper elsewhere.

 

[Zaim7890]

If you get a case with good cooling, 2 GTX470's can yield greater performance than 2 6870's when overclocked. The Be Quiet psu recommended above is more than capable of running them, and 470's tend to get around a 15-25% gain from overclocking, whereas 6870's gain about 5-10%. Also, you can pick up 470's for £165 now HERE, possibly even cheaper elsewhere.

That maybe true but the power consumption on two 470s is high especially when oc'd. I Suppose if you don't mind the extra heat and power consumption 470's would be good. but imho it may be worth waiting for the new AMD 6950/6970