My new rig for games design & gaming! (And maybe GW2 :>)

[Sleeb]

Hey guys! I’ve begun the strangely fun process of building a rig that I plan on buying early next month. As expected it’s for your general gaming, with some sub-d modelling and having multiple programs open at the same time (photoshop, maya/max, Zbrush, UDK, to name a few of the more demanding ones). I'd like for the rig to be relatively quiet, although cooling would be more of a priority for me.

I feel like I’ve got the specs down minus a few things, so I figured I’d run it by you guys here at OC to finalize everything and make sure I’m getting the best bang for my buck The budget is around 1100-1200 pounds, give or take a little bit.

Heres the specs:

Motherboard : sabertooth z77 – I’ve had horrible luck with mobos in the past so figured id spend the extra bit and get a supposedly reliable one

CPU : Intel i5 2500k or i5 3570k – The building site that I’m going to supply free, safe overclocking and they provide an OC to 4.6GHZ. I don’t know if this is for both cards, I’d imagine so! I can’t really chose between these CPU’s, the 3570k is £8 more than the 2500k which seems fair considering its barely that much better apparently. So I figured it’d be worth it, but I know nothing lol.

CPU cooler : Corsair H80 Hydro Series High Performance CPU Cooler

RAM : 8Gb Corsair Vengeance 1600mhz DDR3

Graphics Card : 2GB EVGA GTX 670 – I’ve seen that Nvidia are releasing a 660Ti sometime in August, so I don’t know if it would be worth waiting for that card or just going ahead with this one.

PSU : 650W Corsair Enthusiast

SSD : 120GB OCZ Vertex 3 – I have a choice between this and a Corsair Force 3 and a Crucial M4. From what I’ve seen the OCZ seems to be the best of the 3, all are priced similarly

HDD 2 : 1TB Seagate Barracuda

Soundcard : Asus Xonar DGX 5.1

Case : Corsair Obsidian Series 550D or the Corsair Carbide Series 500R – I’m open to any case really, I haven’t looked around much yet but these 2 caught my eye and are supposed to have good heat management.

So there you have it, if you guys have any advice or recommendations I'd be extremely grateful to hear it. The only thing I’d expect to upgrade is the graphics card after a few years, I want the majority of this PC to last in the long run

Cheers

 

[seumasbeathan]

Spend the extra £10-20 and get a 3570k, do not go with the ocz ssd and get an msi z77a-gd55/65

 

[PetrolHead247]

If your doing intensive tasks like you've listed it might make more sense to go 2011 socket and get an i7 3930K

 

[jamesriley94]

Spend the extra £10-20 and get a 3570k, do not go with the ocz ssd and get an msi z77a-gd55/65

I swear we get this same thing every single day. Always me, you and Josh Weston giving exactly the same advice to everyone asking for build advice

Yes, I agree with Seumasbeathan...go for Ivybridge, dont get the Sabertooth as you're just paying more for the 'thermal armor' which is a massive gimmick anyway. The MSI boards are some of the best around, and all the Z77 boards are just as reliable as each other, you cant go wrong with any.

 

[jamesriley94]

Also, lose the sound card. The one you've chosen wont really show any benefit over the on board sound, so you either need to spend like £60 on one, or not bother at all. I take it due to the i5 you cant afford the 3930k so forget that. Potentially try to squeeze out a 3770k out of your budget if you can, but I dont really think it's needed.
As mentioned, dont get the OCZ SSD, get a Crucial M4, or Intel 520.
And for the extra £5 as it'll fit in the case, you may as well go for an H100 instead of the H80

 

[Sleeb]

Spend the extra £10-20 and get a 3570k, do not go with the ocz ssd and get an msi z77a-gd55/65

Cheers for the reply, I'll go with the 3570k then. Why should I not get the ocz SSD? Reliability or general speed?

I'm taking a look at the msi gd55 mobo now, it seems very similar to the sabertooth, only £50 cheaper which isn't bad.

EDIT - Wow thanks for all the replies so far guys. My apologies for not searching enough regarding the ivy vs. the sandy, after posting I saw a thread on page 1 asking the same question! the Ivy it is

The soundcard is £20 more on the site, but If it isn't changing much, I could dump it, also get the cheaper MSI gd55 and then I could afford the Intel Core i7 3770K. I'll look into this cpu. Will the hyperthreading and 8MB cache make a noticable difference over the i5?

Again cheers guys, you're all fantastic

 

[jamesriley94]

Cheers for the reply, I'll go with the 3570k then. Why should I not get the ocz SSD? Reliability or general speed?

I'm taking a look at the msi gd55 mobo now, it seems very similar to the sabertooth, only £50 cheaper which isn't bad.

They're very unreliable.

 

[seumasbeathan]

Roughly how much games design and other cpu intensive stuff are you going to be doing?

 

[Sleeb]

Roughly how much games design and other cpu intensive stuff are you going to be doing?

The programs listed at the top are the demanding ones really. I might go with 12GB RAM for baking lights. The 3770k looks like the cpu of choice for some of my uses, and its only £70 more than the i5's, which equals out if I go with the MSI mobo.

I'll drop the OCZ and look for more SSD's, the 128GB Crucial M4 has a strangely low write speed of 175 mb/s compared to the other two which are 500 mb/s. I'll see If I can get the Intel 520

Also at £5 the h100 CPU does seems worth it

Again thanks for the help guys!

EDIT - Regarding the Graphics card, I've seen that the 670 is barely worse than the 680, and can match the Radeon 7970 in some cases, so is it the no brainer here?

 

[seumasbeathan]

Yeah go with the 3770k, ram is very cheap these days so theres no harm in going with 12gb, Yeah the 670 is a bang for the buck card, its very good for the price, although you may want to have a look at the 7950 which can be overclocked to be better than the 670 and atm aria have it for £240

 

[Sleeb]

Yeah go with the 3770k, ram is very cheap these days so theres no harm in going with 12gb, Yeah the 670 is a bang for the buck card, its very good for the price, although you may want to have a look at the 7950 which can be overclocked to be better than the 670 and atm aria have it for £240

Great I'll go with the 3770k and look into the 7950 GFX card, as far as brands go are Nvidia and ATI pretty much the same when it comes to drivers and support?

It seems like RAM only comes in 4 and 8gb sticks so I'd just have to get a singular 4GB stick, I take it that's how you do it

One last thing, I've been looking at reviews for the MSI mobo and apparently the layout of the PCI-E slots means that its a no-go for SLI? To be fair I wasn't really planning only running SLI just yet as it seems like there is no reason to in the near future.

Again many thanks guys

 

[seumasbeathan]

IMO Amd/ati are a little better with drivers but Nvidia are still good, SLI is just for Nvidia cards, by sli did you mean sli or did you just mean 2 cards in general?

 

[Sleeb]

IMO Amd/ati are a little better with drivers but Nvidia are still good, SLI is just for Nvidia cards, by sli did you mean sli or did you just mean 2 cards in general?

The review said SLI but I take it both SLI and Crossfire fit the same?

The mobo seems fine, most reviews seem to say its a solid board.

 

[PetrolHead247]

Here's an 1155 socket build i made up just to see how much i could squeeze out of £1200:

i7 3770K
MSI Z77 GD65 (or 55 if you wish. Gigabyte UD5 is also great)
Asus GTX670 DCUii (Or non-reference AMD 7970)
16GB Corsair Vengeance 1600MHz 1.5V
Corsair H100 + 2x Corsair SP120 Quiet Edition Fans (Stock H100 fans are so loud)
120GB Sandisk Extreme SSD (128GB Samsung 830 is also roughly the same price)
1TB Western Digital Caviar (Green or Blue will do. Seagate Barracuda is also similar price)
Any modular PSU from a good brand, 550W of power should be fine. Silverstone, Corsair and Be Quiet are awesome. The NZXT Hale90 & Enermax units are also good picks
Corsair Carbide 500R (also recommend Fractal Design Arc Midi)

Tried my hand at a 2011 rig too, but found it to be out of budget. The build above is £1200.09
You can defo squeeze a 7970 or 670 in there and a fully modular PSU for sure

 

[seumasbeathan]

The review said SLI but I take it both SLI and Crossfire fit the same?

The mobo seems fine, most reviews seem to say its a solid board.

No, Most boards support crossfire but only some support sli

 

[jamesriley94]

Regarding the Crucials low write and read speeds - that's max speeds at 1024K. Windows can never work at rates that high, and will only go at 4k or 8k, at which speed, the Crucial is actually faster than most of it's competitors. So ignore the listed speeds. they're very good drives, very reliable, and as fast as any other!

 

[Sleeb]

Here's an 1155 socket build i made up just to see how much i could squeeze out of £1200:

i7 3770K
MSI Z77 GD65 (or 55 if you wish. Gigabyte UD5 is also great)
Asus GTX670 DCUii (Or non-reference AMD 7970)
16GB Corsair Vengeance 1600MHz 1.5V
Corsair H100 + 2x Corsair SP120 Quiet Edition Fans (Stock H100 fans are so loud)
120GB Sandisk Extreme SSD (128GB Samsung 830 is also roughly the same price)
1TB Western Digital Caviar (Green or Blue will do. Seagate Barracuda is also similar price)
Any modular PSU from a good brand, 550W of power should be fine. Silverstone, Corsair and Be Quiet are awesome. The NZXT Hale90 & Enermax units are also good picks
Corsair Carbide 500R (also recommend Fractal Design Arc Midi)

Tried my hand at a 2011 rig too, but found it to be out of budget. The build above is £1200.09
You can defo squeeze a 7970 or 670 in there and a fully modular PSU for sure

Wow cheers for this, really helpful

Regarding the G65 mobo, its around £20 more than the G55, is it worth the increase?

The Sandisk is cheaper than the intel 520 series by like £40 (Sale ) I guess its just as reliable? :>

Again many thanks!

 

[PetrolHead247]

Wow cheers for this, really helpful

Regarding the G65 mobo, its around £20 more than the G55, is it worth the increase?

The Sandisk is cheaper than the intel 520 series by like £40 (Sale ) I guess its just as reliable? :>

Again many thanks!

The main differences between the 55 and 65 is that the 65 has 3 more power phases and 2 more Sata3 6Gb/s ports. Both are amazing boards, the extra £20 is your decision whether you want to spend it or not, personally i think it's worth it. £140 is an absolute steal considering how well the GD65 performs, £120 for the 55 is also a steal, both are great

As for the SSD i haven't heard any horror stories at all about the Sandisk Extreme, looks to be a quality SSD. The Samsung 830 is a very reliable drive too and is an amazing performer

 

[VengeanceUK]

in the op i see there was no mention of an optical drive, windows install or keyboard / mouse or monitor in the budget. i assume you already have these / have planned for these?

if so, here's my proposal

yes, slightly over the budget you stated, but the £30 extra spent on the 3770k over the 3570k should make itself felt on photoshop because of the ht on the cores, and the larger hardrive listed is atm the perfect balance between capacity, performance and price out of all the drives i have seen currently on the market (i have 2 in my rig).

also the palit is in my system and i have it perfectly stable, overclocked @ 1262mhz on the core and 1625mhz on the memory, but this is my personal choice on gpu and is interchangable as to your designs ( you could claw back the £30 over budget here potentially if not interested in oc'ing the gpu) but the oc jumped my f@h ppd from 19k to 22k on the gpu lol

 

[Sleeb]

in the op i see there was no mention of an optical drive, windows install or keyboard / mouse or monitor in the budget. i assume you already have these / have planned for these?

if so, here's my proposal

yes, slightly over the budget you stated, but the £30 extra spent on the 3770k over the 3570k should make itself felt on photoshop because of the ht on the cores, and the larger hardrive listed is atm the perfect balance between capacity, performance and price out of all the drives i have seen currently on the market (i have 2 in my rig).

also the palit is in my system and i have it perfectly stable, overclocked @ 1262mhz on the core and 1625mhz on the memory, but this is my personal choice on gpu and is interchangable as to your designs ( you could claw back the £30 over budget here potentially if not interested in oc'ing the gpu) but the oc jumped my f@h ppd from 19k to 22k on the gpu lol

Thanks so much for the suggested build man, funnily enough I'm fairly positive I'm going to be using scan 3xs to build my rig for me, the warranty is a great piece of mind for me Oh and yes I have all the peripherals, OS and such.

like the other suggested build from petrolhead it looks like the collective brain of this site all agree on the same components

The only things that'd i'd probably personally change is the 3TB HDD, even though you say it is overall the best drive, I really don't see myself ever coming close to that amount, a 1TB drive to store everything on is more than enough for me, and I probably shouldn't hit my short-term cash flow too hard for a mega future proof HDD size

I personally wouldnt want to OC my graphics card if it voids any warranties, the Palit is virtualy the same price as the EVGA gtx670 and its like 100mhz stronger which is great though.

Everything else looks fantastic! Although does anyone know what the sound would be like from this machine?