Fresh build gaming PC upto £1500 budget

Gyr

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Hello
With an increasingly wobbly PC at home and the new Total War trailers making my "Conquer the Ancient World!" mouse hand twitch I've decided to look into to new gaming rig. I'd appreciate any thoughts and comments on my starting point below.

It should get very high settings for current and upcoming games, I'd like to upgrade for the next few years easily when needed by adding an additional GPU in SLi. I hope the below build should also be fairly quiet and up to some swift photo/video editing. I'm moderately flexible on my budget, upto £1500, and have marked out the current components list from Scan:

CPU: Intel Core i7 3820 3.6GHz Quad Core + Hyperthreading 10MB Cache
(with an optimized overclock to 4.3GHz - anyone with experience of their overclocks before and is it worth going for the extreme oc in terms of increased performance and noise? Or even cut back to one of the cheaper bundles?)

CPU Coolers: Corsair H80 Hydro Series

Motherboard: Asus Rampage IV GENE R.O.G Intel X79 Chipset - uATX

Memory: 16GB (4x4GB) Corsair Vengeance LP DDR3 1600Mhz

SSD: Corsair 240GB Force Series GS SSD

Case: Corsair Obsidian Series 550D Black Quiet Mid-Tower Case, Brushed Aluminium, USB 3.0, ATX w/o PSU


This is where I need a bit more advice:

GPU: 2GB EVGA GTX 670 - 1344 Cores 915MHz 6008MHz GDDR5
(can I fit an additional one to SLi happily in this case when it is needed?)

PSU: A 650W PSU should be happy with one gtx670 but looking to upgrade with an additional 670 would require how much more grunt from the PSU? And should I get the more powerful one now, or trade in the 650W at upgrade time?

Would appreciate any thoughts and comments. Thanks!
 
Hi mate,

This isn't an answer to your question, but I'm also thinking of getting an extra 670 card.

Maybe you could help me, when I install a game on my PC where do I install it. My ssd is only 60gb and I have a 2tb hard drive. Confused

Regards Paul
 
The Sandy Bridge E i7-3820 is a poor choice, it's slower than the newer and cheaper Ivy Bridge i7s. It only makes sense to go for Socket 2011 if you're doing demanding enough photo/video work to justify the six core processors.

I wouldn't bother to pay to have the CPU overclocked a small amount either, those sorts of deals are only worth it when you're talking about speeds that only some chips will do otherwise you're literally just paying for someone to spend 30 seconds in the bios setting the speed.

I'm not familiar with the case but it's generally card lengths that are the problem so if it's got enough room for one GTX 670 two are unlikely to be a problem.

Two stock GTX 670s will hit 300-330W maximum (source) so a 650W PSU may be sufficient depending on your final CPU choice and how much you overclock it (as well as the specific 650W PSU you chose of course).
 
Thanks EndlessWaves, for your thoughts. I'll have a closer look at my CPU needs and getting into my own overclocking.

Also, that review of two GTX 670s in SLI really looks convincing as a good gfx option in terms of performance and power consumption.

Cheers!
 
Hi mate,

This isn't an answer to your question, but I'm also thinking of getting an extra 670 card.

Maybe you could help me, when I install a game on my PC where do I install it. My ssd is only 60gb and I have a 2tb hard drive. Confused

Regards Paul

Hi Paul,
Take a look at the article link from EndlessWaves about two 670s, far more info about that. It's better than I can do!

Also, I believe you have a few options for the cramped ssd:
1) Free up space on the 60gb ssd by uninstalling less used programmes and games first, and make sure all your data - music, videos etc is on the 2tb drive. Useful if you want quick load times.
2) If that isn't possible then you will have to set the install directory manually to a partition on your 2gb drive when you install the game. Gives slower load times but not so bad for games. Here is link for doing it with Steam.
3) Get a bigger ssd and migrate to roomier home!

Good luck!
 
Arma 2 looks crap on my PC, I've seen a guy on YouTube whose gaming rig is 2 years old and it looks stunning. Surely this game should run well on mine. And I still can't get on a Dayz server. ****** right off.

Help guys
 

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