first gaming pc... please help

[Devo234]

hi
ive always been a console gamer and have an embarrassingly large collection of consoles
but i really wanna start pc gaming due to hearing alot of good things about it.

but not too sure what to get. i already have a full hd 1080 moniter and windows 7. i dont wanna spend too much so budget is around £500 to £600

this is what i was thinking
Inwin mana 134 case
Phenom 2 x4 965 be deneb
Asus m5a99x evo
Asus 1gb Geforce gtx560ti Direct CU2
8gb crucial ddr3 ram
Cooler master hyper 212 evo
XFX P1-550S-XXB9 PRO550W Core Edition PSU
samsung spinpoint F3 1tb HDD

this comes too roughly £550 all prices from amazon uk.
any advice or opinions?
and lastly opening a tin of worms i will be overclocking so is it worth the extra money going i5 2500k?

thanks for any and all help

 

[seumasbeathan]

Let me see what I can come up with for that budget

 

[seumasbeathan]

https://www.aria.co.uk/myAria/Wish+Lists/£600+pc?operation=wishListMakePublic&listId=8

 

[Josh Weston]

My offering
As you can see, pretty identical to Seumas' when it gets down to the meat and potatoes of the rig

 

[ChrisGlobe]

Seems a few items have gone up in price since your list Josh

For £615 you could do this: https://www.aria.co.uk/WishList/GFc2BKBVx59JyN1P5pPouQ,,

No point getting a 2120 over a 2100 unless you can find it cheaper, the difference is negligible. Added a CPU cooler as the stock one has an annoyingly loud fan, if this won't bother you you can remove it. Gigabyte over MSI board as I prefer GB personally.

 

[Kanped]

I think if the rig is primarily focused on gaming, it might be better to forget about the SSD and upgrade to a 2500k or even 3750k processor?

An SSD will make your machine boot and load things faster but you won't see any actual in-game performance boost from it, so it's really up to yourself if you're willing to sacrifice load time for performance in-game.

I'd also say it would be worth your while adding a front intake fan if you go for the Antec case to improve air-flow in the system but that's a pretty minor expense (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Noctua-NF-P...ONMO/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1344857483&sr=8-2). I've had bad experiences with old rigs overheating but it may not be as relevant with newer components; you could see how you go without it and add it later if you need/want to.

 

[jamesriley94]

I think if the rig is primarily focused on gaming, it might be better to forget about the SSD and upgrade to a 2500k or even 3750k processor?

An SSD will make your machine boot and load things faster but you won't see any actual in-game performance boost from it, so it's really up to yourself if you're willing to sacrifice load time for performance in-game.

I'd also say it would be worth your while adding a front intake fan if you go for the Antec case to improve air-flow in the system but that's a pretty minor expense (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Noctua-NF-P...ONMO/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1344857483&sr=8-2). I've had bad experiences with old rigs overheating but it may not be as relevant with newer components; you could see how you go without it and add it later if you need/want to.

There's next to no difference between an i3 and 3570k in gaming as the games arent even coded to use the 4 cores...
Better to go for the SSD and get the far faster boot and game load times IMO

 

[Kanped]

Doesn't the i5 overclock to much better per-core performance, though?
(FYI, this is why it says 'Newbie' under my name; I wouldn't recommend listening to me over these guys, just throwing stuff out there )

 

[jamesriley94]

Doesn't the i5 overclock to much better per-core performance, though?
(FYI, this is why it says 'Newbie' under my name; I wouldn't recommend listening to me over these guys, just throwing stuff out there )

Yeh it does but modern processors are powerful enough to handle the games. There's very little difference between a stock i3 and an overclocked 3960x in gaming - unless you're going for quad 7970s so it bottlenecks the cpu or something similar.
For gaming it's better to really just spend the money on a graphics card than a processor - and you'd see a far bigger overall performance increase with an SSD over going for an i5 over i3.

 

[andrewmchugh]

Yeh it does but modern processors are powerful enough to handle the games. There's very little difference between a stock i3 and an overclocked 3960x in gaming - unless you're going for quad 7970s so it bottlenecks the cpu or something similar.
For gaming it's better to really just spend the money on a graphics card than a processor - and you'd see a far bigger overall performance increase with an SSD over going for an i5 over i3.

Doubtful SSDs offer nothing in games apart from faster loading times.

 

[Josh Weston]

I threw it in for overall system performance. Once you get an SSD, it's hard to imagine everything loading off a mechanical. And if you're going to only run a HDD, make sure to get a Caviar Black, or something.

 

[jamesriley94]

...?
Where did I say they improve gaming? I said overall performance.

And I'd still rather have the benefits of the faster load times in gaming, and the much faster boot times, than the negligible gaming performance increase between the i3 and i5

 

[ChrisGlobe]

^ Agree with that. A 2100 will give you a similar minimum FPS in most games as a 2500K will, unless you overclock the 2500K, of course!

However, for £600, an i3 is the best option, rather than compromising other parts of the system. There's a Z77 board in there, so an easy upgrade path is available.

 

[Devo234]

thanks for all the advice and tips guys.
so would it be worth ditching the ssd and putting that money towards an even better gpu?
ive asked for build advice on a lot of forums and its strange that every one so far has said i5 minimum except this one. i dont know much about the i3's if im honest. how are they for overclocking?

 

[ChrisGlobe]

You won't be able to overclock the i3 to any great extent, if at all. i5-2500K or 3570K if you want to overclock, but then you would have to lose the SSD or downgrade the GPU to afford it.

No point upgrading the GPU if you keep the i3 as it'll bottleneck.

The builds provided have been nice and balanced, rather than having any one component bottlenecking the others.

 

[jamesriley94]

They dont overclock.

i5 minimum? Does that mean someones recommended you an i7 at some point? :L

If you want the best performing computer at this present time, then i3, and go for the best graphics card you can. But once you start to use an SSD, you'll be blown away by the speeds of it - so here, we always recommend people to get them if they can afford it as it just makes living with the PC so much better.
People may say i5 over i3 because they'll try to future proof...

But - no one knows what direction games are taking - whether they're becoming more core intensive, or starting to use more than the 1 or 2 threads they currently do. Atm, games seem to be going onto the graphics cards more than stressing the cpu - for example, Diablo 3 will only stress out the first core of an i5 to around 70%, and the second core to around 20-30%. Meaning that there will be no performance difference whatsoever between the i3 and i5 - so you may as well just save the money and go for the i3...

Chris - no single card will bottleneck an i3. I'd even go as far to say you could run 7970s in Crossfire without any bottlenecking...

 

[ChrisGlobe]

Chris - no single card will bottleneck an i3. I'd even go as far to say you could run 7970s in Crossfire without any bottlenecking...

I wouldn't But then I've never tried!

Maybe if I re-phrased it to say "a 2100/2120 would limit future GPUs or upgrades including SLI/Crossfire" would be better

 

[Devo234]

okay thanks for the help and im assuming that ill get some good gaming performance for these builds...?

 

[ChrisGlobe]

Yep! Unless you're about to tell us you want to play Skyrim at 5760x2400 with a HD texture pack?

 

[Devo234]

They dont overclock.

i5 minimum? Does that mean someones recommended you an i7 at some point? :L

If you want the best performing computer at this present time, then i3, and go for the best graphics card you can. But once you start to use an SSD, you'll be blown away by the speeds of it - so here, we always recommend people to get them if they can afford it as it just makes living with the PC so much better.
People may say i5 over i3 because they'll try to future proof...

But - no one knows what direction games are taking - whether they're becoming more core intensive, or starting to use more than the 1 or 2 threads they currently do. Atm, games seem to be going onto the graphics cards more than stressing the cpu - for example, Diablo 3 will only stress out the first core of an i5 to around 70%, and the second core to around 20-30%. Meaning that there will be no performance difference whatsoever between the i3 and i5 - so you may as well just save the money and go for the i3...

Chris - no single card will bottleneck an i3. I'd even go as far to say you could run 7970s in Crossfire without any bottlenecking...

yh someone on an american forum said that its better to put more money in cpu and go i7 because because it will make up for the lack of gpu power...