Help me build my next gaming PC guys....

[Fuel4Life]

Been a while since I’ve built a PC e.g. 2008. Though I have built a few since circa 1996…
This one is going to be my present to myself for Christmas. I have been off the PC scene for ages and even got "lost" and bought a PS3 (thinking it would satiate my appetite). However, the bug has bit again and there are a few new games I fancy. I have done lots of research and have read the sticky re asking for your help.

I put my pc future, in your hands:

Q1): What will PC be used for
A) Gaming only

Q2) Price range is £1000-£1100 ($1600-$1900). This excludes a monitor.
A) Price range is not “set in stone”, but I hope £1100 would be enough as a max

Q3) Buying from..
A) UK

Q4) Fanboy of…
A) Seagate over WD re reports on returns of faulty drives in 2011. Want Intel CPU.

Also 2 out of 3 SSD’s went faulty within 12 months regarding the 3 pcs I bought 2010 for my business. Weary of SSD’s (obviously) and would avoid unless someone can tell me it’s a different story in 2012/13?
Want a 27” monitor. See below.


Q5) What parts am I going to use that I currently own?
A) May consider using p180 case (p183?) that I have (currently houses, q6600 office PC), but would need to buy a new case for the office pc (which is no problem I guess). Also PSU in the same pc is could be reused (modular 750/850 psu, cant remember make but was over £100 and needed as gpu in office pc is 8800gtx)
All other parts happy to buy inc windows 7 (8?)

6) What have I read that influences me re build?
A) Read lots and lots about 120mhz monitors but all are TN. Been looking at Dell U2713 and also Iiyama g2773hs. Cant decide if 1080p and super fast response with poor colour at 120mhz is more important than 1440p that is yes slower but is IPS and has fantastic colour!
Obviously screen will dictate GPU but I do now know what card would be required to power a 1440p screen
Also read that Intel CPU is much better for games?

Q7) Overclock?

Would be cool I guess to buy a mobo/CPU/Memory combo that is already OC’d? I have never overclocked myself, though I have looked at it within the last week and it seems easy enough. The office computers have AMD955black CPU’s and the forums I read explained that increasing one notch of CPU voltage to within parameters of CPU and then cranking up frequency (and then taking it back when unstable etc etc,)would to the trick!
Not sure I am comfortable with this but would be happy to have a go for a small, say 10% increase. I would not want to go too far however.
I see lots of OC’d CPU’s available for sale especially 3570 i5’s and 3770 i7’s… but in all honesty I am happy to let someone else do this and pay them.

Q8)Plan to build before Christmas

Q9) No idea what “If this is for gaming, tell us what resolution and the settings you wish to have in games (max everything, high, medium, or low). Do you turn AA on and do you care about gaming technology with PhysX, CUDA, eyfinity, 3D, etc” means…… but I want full everything if I’m paying over £1000

Q10) Are there any specific technologies you want?
Specific technology is not important. What is paramount is that everything works in complete synergy and that there is not a component that is a bottleneck, that restricts other components, meaning money was wasted on unnecessarily fast components that are restricted due to the bottleneck.


I figured the above would be the way forward for help re the sticky as I was unsure what to ask you guys!

Please help. I will of course let you know my progress and how the build goes.

[Pabz0r545]

I'll try to answer a few questions here.

There are many reliable SSD's out there nowadays. Look into Samsung 830, Crucial M4, OCZ Vertex 4 and Intel 520 series. Samsung and crucial notable for their reliability.

FOr video card and monitor. You are going to need something powerful and quite possibly 2 cards to run your games maxed out at either 1440p or 1080p@120hz. You will really need to decide which monitor setup you run before you can decide your card. For 1440p most would recommend 7970 for the extra vram compared to a gtx 680. Quite possibly even 7950 or 7970 crossfire.

CPU and mobo. I would recommend looking into MSI Z77A-GD55 with the i5 3570k if you don't ever plan more then 2 gpu's. Great bang for your buck with the MSI motherboards. IME with gd65 and z77 mpower they are awesome overclockers and they have a physical overclock button the board which will 1 touch OC to 4.2 ghz for you. Plus my brother and 2 of my friends ahve the z77a-gd65 upon my recommendation. :)

[LoTech]

I would second the SSD for boot drive and 1 or 2 games. I have had a samsung 256 gb 830 for over a year now and no issues what so ever. I have just ordered a 840 samsung for another build, but cannot comment yet on reliability. As for HDD I like the seagates myself. Motherboards I like the Asus and Gigabyte and have never owned anything else so can't comment there. The 2 I have used in the past have been solid. As for PSU I use corsairs AX or HX and again no issues. Video cards I have some experience with as I GPY fold as well. I like eVga best of all no issues to date. I have fried a Gigabyte and asus card neither of which were OC'd. Warranty replaced them. CPU's I have been using the intels of late. Used to be a AMD fanboy back in the day of the 929 fx chips though. From what some of the guys say here, AMD is a fabulous bang for your pound. (hehehehe). With RAM I ususally stick with Kingston Hyper-X. For keyboards and mice I lean towards Logitech or Razor. For monitors, Samsung.
Just my 2 cents worth. Good luck with the build keep us posted.

[Fuel4Life]

After a good few hours diggingt around.

I came up with this:

Case: Coolermaster CM 690 II Lite Black Mid Tower Case
Motherboard Z77!: Gigabyte GA-Z77X-D3H Gen 3 Intel Z77 Chipset - SLI Support!
CPU: Intel Core i5 3570K Ivy Bridge 3.4GHz Quad Core 6MB Cache
CPU Coolers: Thermalright Macho Performance CPU Cooler
Overclocking - CPU: Optimized Overclock - 4.4Ghz - Within wider safety margins for balanced thermal & acoustic characteristics.
Memory - DDR3: 8GB Total (2x4GB) Corsair Vengeance LP 1600MHz, 2 selected
ATI Graphics - Multi GPU Crossfire Options Available: 3GB XFX Radeon HD 7970 925MHz GPU 2048 Cores 5500MHz GDDR5, 2 selected
Power Supply Unit: 850W Corsair Pro Series HX Modular 80PLUS Gold (Dual Graphics Cards)
Solid State Drives: *Solid State Drive Not Required*
System Drives: 2TB Seagate Barracuda SATA 6Gb s 7200rpm 64MB Cache
Optical Drive 1 - DVD Blu Ray: LiteOn IHOS104-6 BluRay & DVD Reader (Not writer)
Operating system: Microsoft Windows 8 64bit – OEM

No i7 after reading lots of posts that it offered nothing over i5 in that most games did not use its extra virtual cores (though the extra cache was a bonus, not worth extra
Also no need for more than 8gb for games and that anything over 1600mhz was not worth it

Most of the budget is 2 7970's: £1,397

I am still not convinced re SSD's and will wait a little longer (I am still too damaged by them lol)

I really appreciate the comments so far. For MSI boards I have ever used them only ever gigabyte and asus though I do like the sound of the overclock button

Cranking it back a little maybe:
Case: Coolermaster CM 690 II Lite Black Mid Tower Case
Motherboard Z77!: Gigabyte GA-Z77-D3H Intel Z77 Chipset
CPU: Intel Core i5 3570K Ivy Bridge 3.4GHz Quad Core 6MB Cache
CPU Coolers: Thermalright Macho Performance CPU Cooler
Overclocking - CPU: Optimized Overclock - 4.4Ghz - Within wider safety margins for balanced thermal & acoustic characteristics.
Memory - DDR3: 8GB Total (2x4GB) Corsair Vengeance LP 1600MHz
ATI Graphics - Multi GPU Crossfire Options Available: 3GB XFX Radeon HD 7970 925MHz GPU 2048 Cores 5500MHz GDDR5
Power Supply Unit: 600W Corsair Gaming Series 80PLUS Bronze (Single Graphics Card)
System Drives: 2TB Seagate Barracuda SATA 6Gb s 7200rpm 64MB Cache
Optical Drive 1 - DVD Blu Ray: LiteOn IHOS104-6 BluRay & DVD Reader (Not writer)
Operating system: Microsoft Windows 8 64bit - OEM

2nd build is one 7970 and so does away with sli ready mobo and smaller psu: £970

What do you think (steering towards Dell U2713HM for monitor), Also if I have it built I need to buy a psu and new case and not use my existing p180 and antech 750w modular?

[magiwizard]

Originally Posted by Fuel4Life

After a good few hours diggingt around.

I came up with this:

Case: Coolermaster CM 690 II Lite Black Mid Tower Case
Motherboard Z77!: Gigabyte GA-Z77X-D3H Gen 3 Intel Z77 Chipset - SLI Support!
CPU: Intel Core i5 3570K Ivy Bridge 3.4GHz Quad Core 6MB Cache
CPU Coolers: Thermalright Macho Performance CPU Cooler
Overclocking - CPU: Optimized Overclock - 4.4Ghz - Within wider safety margins for balanced thermal & acoustic characteristics.
Memory - DDR3: 8GB Total (2x4GB) Corsair Vengeance LP 1600MHz, 2 selected
ATI Graphics - Multi GPU Crossfire Options Available: 3GB XFX Radeon HD 7970 925MHz GPU 2048 Cores 5500MHz GDDR5, 2 selected
Power Supply Unit: 850W Corsair Pro Series HX Modular 80PLUS Gold (Dual Graphics Cards)
Solid State Drives: *Solid State Drive Not Required*
System Drives: 2TB Seagate Barracuda SATA 6Gb s 7200rpm 64MB Cache
Optical Drive 1 - DVD Blu Ray: LiteOn IHOS104-6 BluRay & DVD Reader (Not writer)
Operating system: Microsoft Windows 8 64bit – OEM

No i7 after reading lots of posts that it offered nothing over i5 in that most games did not use its extra virtual cores (though the extra cache was a bonus, not worth extra
Also no need for more than 8gb for games and that anything over 1600mhz was not worth it

Most of the budget is 2 7970's: £1,397

I am still not convinced re SSD's and will wait a little longer (I am still too damaged by them lol)

I really appreciate the comments so far. For MSI boards I have ever used them only ever gigabyte and asus though I do like the sound of the overclock button

Cranking it back a little maybe:
Case: Coolermaster CM 690 II Lite Black Mid Tower Case
Motherboard Z77!: Gigabyte GA-Z77-D3H Intel Z77 Chipset
CPU: Intel Core i5 3570K Ivy Bridge 3.4GHz Quad Core 6MB Cache
CPU Coolers: Thermalright Macho Performance CPU Cooler
Overclocking - CPU: Optimized Overclock - 4.4Ghz - Within wider safety margins for balanced thermal & acoustic characteristics.
Memory - DDR3: 8GB Total (2x4GB) Corsair Vengeance LP 1600MHz
ATI Graphics - Multi GPU Crossfire Options Available: 3GB XFX Radeon HD 7970 925MHz GPU 2048 Cores 5500MHz GDDR5
Power Supply Unit: 600W Corsair Gaming Series 80PLUS Bronze (Single Graphics Card)
System Drives: 2TB Seagate Barracuda SATA 6Gb s 7200rpm 64MB Cache
Optical Drive 1 - DVD Blu Ray: LiteOn IHOS104-6 BluRay & DVD Reader (Not writer)
Operating system: Microsoft Windows 8 64bit - OEM

2nd build is one 7970 and so does away with sli ready mobo and smaller psu: £970

What do you think (steering towards Dell U2713HM for monitor), Also if I have it built I need to buy a psu and new case and not use my existing p180 and antech 750w modular?

I7 is nice but if you're strictly gaming even an I3 will do. 7950s are more cost effective if you run crossfire there is absolutely no reason to go on 7970s especially if you're going on 1 monitor. even 1 7970 or 7950 will suffice for 1 monitor. Get the z77x - ud5h board its not that much more expensive and is an overall better board. BTW, if using AMD video cards its crossfire not SLI

As for the dual gpu thing its not even necessary on one monitor you're better off getting an SSD drive or better cpu / board unless you're playing games with heavy mods stick with one 7950.

[Fuel4Life]

Wouldn't have considered the 7950 but after reading reviews it looks like the way forward especialy with how easy it is to increase clock speed (according to the review I read, something I have never done or previously considered. Is it done with amd powertune?).

Thanks canuucks. To date I have learnt I dont really need i7 and that increasing clock speedss on 7950 is easy. That really is cash that can be spent elsewhere on the sytem. Brilliant.

Can you see any other ways of streamlining the sytem?

Ps I thanks to magiwizard. I see that there are lots of crossfire mobos available and I do not need sli.

II do not understand why I would want to spend more on a mobo above a std gigabyte or asus. What is the
advantage of a z77x - ud5h for instance?

Love you guys.

[Bond007]

I don't have a lot of time to comment, but I would recommend i5 3570k and hd 7950 as the main components.

[Fuel4Life]

I've uped my budget to £1500. This comes to £1410. Where should I spend the other £100 or so? Processor, MB or ??

Case: Antec P183 V3 Mid Tower - Acoustic Soundproofing!
Motherboard - Intel Z77 Chipset: Gigabyte GA-Z77X-D3H Intel Z77 Chipset
CPU: Intel Core i5 3570K Ivy Bridge 3.4GHz Quad Core 6MB Cache
CPU Coolers: be quiet! Dark Rock Pro - Performance CPU Cooler
Overclocking - CPU: Extreme Overclock - 4.6Ghz - Tuned to absolute safe maximum - Performance prioritised over acoustics.
Memory - DDR3: 8GB Total (2x4GB) Corsair Vengeance LP 1600MHz
ATI Graphics - Multi GPU Crossfire Options Available: 3GB XFX Radeon HD 7950 800MHz GPU 1792 Cores 5000MHz GDDR5, 2 selected
Power Supply Unit: 850W Corsair Pro Series HX Modular 80PLUS Gold (Dual Graphics Cards)
Solid State Drives: 120GB Intel 520 Read 550MB sec Write 500MB sec - SF-2281
System Drives: 2TB Seagate Barracuda SATA 6Gb s 7200rpm 64MB Cache
Optical Drive 1 - DVD Blu Ray: LiteOn IHOS104-6 BluRay & DVD Reader (Not writer)
Operating system: Microsoft Windows 8 64bit - OEM

[dandelioneater]

perhaps bump yourself up to a 256GB ssd with the extra money. Other than that, the build looks pretty good.

[Bond007]

Looks good. I would agree that if you want to spend the extra cash, then go to a bigger SSD, or a motherboard with more features (if you need/want them).