First time gaming build

[jbegg1987]

Hi,

After having read countless posts on this forum I decided it was time to dive in and ask for some help and advice. This is going to be my first time so please be gentle

For some time now I have been considering building myself a gaming PC. However I have many other expensive hobbies so I kept putting it off. Recently I had a very nasty climbing accident (I fell from 30 feet and my protection failed) which resulted in a very badly broken back. Luckily I never suffered any from of paralysis and I am now on the long road to recovery. Plus side of this is I now have quite a lot of free time so the custom pc is now top of the agenda

My main use will be for gaming but I am also a budding photographer so will be looking to do quite a lot of photo processing as well as other general tasks. My budget is around about £900, I can stretch this and obviously under budget would be great also! For the time being I'm looking to output to a HD TV and further down the line possibly dual monitors. I already have a copy of windows 7 and can make do with an old keyboard and mouse for the time being. I don't plan on overclocking right of the bat but imagine i will in the future and maybe even buy a second gpu for crossfire. I Think i Will become quite obsessed when i have started and will probably constantly be tinkering and upgrading however i would like a decent amount of longevity out of the machine if thats possible. After a lot of research I came up with this build on aria:

https://www.aria.co.uk/WishList/4l3_HqPZzv0hEBAu2b006Q,,

*removed external link*

What's everyone's opinion on this build? Would you recommend and adjustments?

Thanks in advance for your help!

 

[dragoonk]

Honestly, fo' the price, it looks very good to me. And you also picked the low profile memory, very good thinking . Good choice with the CPU and graphics... I have nothing to object... or advise you... I am sure you picked the optical drive and card reader cause you really need them. Any recommendation will lead you around the same type of products in about the same price range or more that will perform about the same, so i think you are good.

If you are planning to do some overclocking on the 3570k I'd recommend a NH-d14 cooler for a few pounds more... it's probably the best active air cooling solution out there. If you're not overclocking, then you are fine with the BeQuiet.

 

[jbegg1987]

Thanks for the quick response!

I had looked at that cooler and opted to save a bit of cash but if its as good as you say it is I will bump it up. I do plan n overclocking but not right off the bat.

Optical drive and card reader are there cause I do a lot of photography and to be honest the don't really add much cost in the grand scheme if things!

 

[dragoonk]

It is a great cooler, and quiet too. It can run your CPU at stock, with prime95 on, passively at normal temps with no issue. I think it's worth it, but that's my opinion.

I know you mentioned about your photography, and I knew you picked those for a reason... and they are far from being expensive yes.

 

[Ross_Kirkbright]

IMHO i would ditch that ssd and go for a samsung 830 Series for an extra £30

 

[dragoonk]

A lot of people are gonna come here and tell you to ditch one part and add an extra of a few pounds and get something supposedly better but that would mean an extra 500 pounds in the end. The cooler was justifiable as you want to overclock and it's just a few pounds more expensive than the one you first picked and better, everyone knows that. But 30 pounds more, I'd find to be unacceptable as the SSD you picked will perform just fine too.

 

[Master&Puppet]

A lot of good choices mostly. Here's a few things to consider:

An i7 would be better for your photo editing but that depends on how much you end up doing. To keep in your budget for now you'd have to sacrifice something (I'd suggest the cooler until you were actually ready to learn overclocking).

Be wary of the price of that RAM - £60 for 8gb of 1600MHz is steep! I wouldn't pay more than £40.

Love the Tahiti LE GPU choice

You've got an 120GB SSD which might not go far enough depending on the games you play and how many you want installed at one time. On a fresh copy on windows you can keep it under 40GB which gives you a max of 80GB to play on. That could be only 4 games. There are ways around this though but having a slower green drive as your HDD is not ideal for gaming if you ended up running them from there.

Also I haven't heard much either way about Verbatim's SSDs - it might be better to choose the Samsung 840 which is on Aria at the same price point.

Just things to consider

 

[jbegg1987]

I has looked at the i7 but from what I read most people seemed to prefer the i5 unless they were using it for things like high end video editing. My photography at the moment is pretty amateur. Do you think I would notice a sizeable difference if I got the i7 and do you think i would benefit from it in the long run? Would I get by using the stock cooler until I decide to overclock?

Yeah I am pretty chuffed with the GPU choice as well. Seems like a great performer, holding its own against most 7950 cards and at such a low price.

Would a SSD like this be a better substitute?

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/256g...rage-read-490mb-s-write-350mb-s-7300-iops-max

Thanks