Build Advice £700 gaming build (with TV as display)

I'm a bit warey with refurbed AIO coolers, its worth spending that bit extra for a new one, or a decent air cooler.

I would advise at least a quad core for any new gaming system build now, although it has been proven BF4 runs the same on an i5 with two cores locked, just seems more future proof.

Nothing wrong with the BeQuiet units, I have used them in a few builds and never experienced a problem. However there have been reports of quality issues with the bequiet units, maybe worth having a read on.

Ram - A man thats on the same page as me, I always recommend the LP ram where possible (although i have had 3 sets DOA from Scan in the last 12 months, but against the amount that is produced/sold thats nothing, and Scan replaced straight away). It ensures 100% cpu cooler compatibility in the future if you ever decide to populate all 4 memory slots and run a big air cooler.

 

i3 is dual core with hyperthreading, that CPU has more power than my HTPC which is running an a10 and this runs most games that you would sit at a sofa and play with controller acceptably and as mentioned having the z87 chipset there are plenty of options.

You can see in this small review on BT here

It can be significantly more powerful than the AMD chips, yes it will fall on CPU intensive games sims like total war etc, not typically the type of game you sit on the couch for but as you can see in the above the i3 is still competitive with AMD FX chip.

For all the shouts about many cores etc over the years gaming still hasn't really caught up, favouring 2 at most, down the line with a z87 a better chip could be sourced, but it's not likely needed at a past gaming event I popped a 680 in with a 1.9Ghz X2 3600 for someone who couldn't bring their own machine, 2 days of gaming and no complaints re performance, more so comments on not realizing so much could be done with so little.

You could drop the SSD and go for an i5 if you were concerned and do the SDD at a later date, with intels SRT you can add at any time.

 

I agree, the i3 is a great chip, we could probably do with knowing intended games.

 

What's with all the autism in this thread?

OP it'd be best if you went away and considered your options, then presented your selection for criticism. On the off-chance that you don't want to do that, here's my philosophy:

1. Motherboards and CPUs should not be upgraded. Therefore get a good CPU and mobo. Essentially that means i5-4670K and a ~£100 motherboard of any manufacturer. All the mobos come from Taiwan and they're all good. AMD is power-hungry and not as powerful, sadly; while you pay a premium for Intel it will remain effective for much longer, and a K series can be substantially overclocked with ease (case in point, my 2500K has been stable at 4.0GHz with no extra power allocation since I bought it).

2. Get a 256GB SSD. It's worth it, even if the price does keep dropping, because no one wants to have to faff around with upgrading their OS drive if it can be avoided. Get the largest secondary drive you can afford.

3. GPUs are all good, but there's a distinct case of diminishing returns the higher up you go. Whilst a 290 or 780 will give you 3-4 years of maxed settings, they're out of your budget. They're also the easiest element of your system to upgrade, so you can plan to upgrade that in three years time. Aim to spend ~£200 and you'll get a great card that will max out any game on the market for a year or two at least.

4. Power supply: thanks to recent developments in power efficiency, you no longer need a 600W PSU as a bare minimum. 500W should see you quite comfortably imo, but make sure you don't buy some £30 tat.

5. Case: you're on a budget, so this is something you'll have to spend some time looking into because there's a wide range of quality in the £50-100 section of the market. It's also a pretty personal thing - some want cooling, some want quietness, some want case windows, others want something small and sleek.

 

/thread.

Well, sort of, yes the AMD's are power hungry, and they do run hotter..however they are also cheaper, and with the cheaper gaming rigs they can prove to be a solid choice.

It all comes down to budget really, the 250GB ssd's might not fall into budget unfortunately.

 

I'm using a 630W one in my new build (I wish I'd bought the 530W instead now but couldn't be assed to send it back), I'm not that experienced in PSU's but seems fine and is really silent in my define R4 case.

+1 with you on the LP RAM.

 

Thanks for all the replies people, its all appreciated.

With regard to games. I'm a fan of FPS (Battlefield, COD etc) and also like Skyrim type of RPGs.

I guess one concern is future proofing, I would ideally like a system that will cope well with games without any upgrading for about 3 years. I know that's a big ask at this budget , or is it even possible at this price?

I'd also like the case to be fairly small (but without impacting on cooling in case I decide to OC anything in the future) as it'll be being moved to and from the TV to game when the missus and kids are asleep!

 

Subsidiary to my first lot of advice is this:

Work out your fixed costs - case, RAM, PSU, SSD, HDD, motherboard. Then divvy the remaining budget out between the CPU and GPU. You'll have to make compromises, but that's the nature of a £700 build.

Assuming you don't completely bork your build, you should have a relatively future proof system. Some future games might not run at the absolute max settings, but most will. As you don't seem to like CPU-heavy games like Civ, X3, Total War, you could probably put a bit more emphasis on the GPU.

 

Maybe pricey but its got rave reviews:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/frac...erformance-case-with-usb-30-w-o-psu-(std-atx)

 

So in a case that small will cooling be an issue?

Also if I was to budget £200-£250(Max) for a GPU what would I be looking at?

 

Not really sure how you will play fps games with mouse and keyboard on a tv screen as monitor but each there own i guess.

As others have said blowing your budget on a 290 is crazy.

770 ( £239 or 280x boost ( £251 )) are both in budget each to your own on that front.

If you go intel and use up that budget then you would be looking at the 270x which is about £140.

I3 would do a similar job the AMDs FX Range just depends on the game your playing. And the type of gaming you intend to play.

Differences in bf3 / bf4 are tiny and at 1080p are not really there as gpu takes over more than the cpu. In Rome 2 for example niether cpu is really good enough for 1080p at any settings passed medium.

 

Personally I think you can't go wrong with an fx6300 - new console generation will hopefully push its usefulness and I don't trust hyper threading to save the day if more cores does become more important. Should make sure you are on Windows 8 though for fx range. If mantle is any good then the r280x will pay extra dividends.

Else I'd by going incremental. Buy fastest CPU quad I could and then later add a 280x or the 770 and perhaps stretch to r290 or 780 and be happy for, probably the entire console lifespan at 1080p

 

Thing is you don't need the fastest CPU. AMD are doing everything in their power to make that so (Mantle, HSA etc). That's why they're not doing a Piledriver refresh because there's just no point.

They could quite easily drop the price of their 5ghz Centurion to say £160, rebadge it a 8400 let's say and sell it. Those with the itch would upgrade. But they're not bothering, and that speaks volumes. In fact, when last asked they said that Piledriver *was* their high end CPU and they had no plans to refresh or replace it any time soon.

 

It would be easier to go with an AMD build because it would allow more for a GPU. Its just that because the whole Intel vs AMD seems to divide people so much its difficult to know what the best choice is!

 

Easy way to look at it.

AMD good for any build that does not rely on a fast single thread up to a point. ( basically none strategy/ mmos)

Intel CPUs from around the 4670k upwards can end up a lot quicker than any AMD chip they make. The lower range are popular in builds designed for stratagy games and mmo games due to the fast single thread.

For example it your a massive bf 3 fan dif between the CPUs is nil nothing nada in multiplayer 64 anyway. In single player there may be differences enough why you would play it is another matter. Then it's just what fits your budget. Anything north of about £900 and its crazy not to build intel.

If on the other hand your a hardcore starcraft2 nut then its intel every day. The game is basically run on 2 threads total you can have 16 threads and it still only uses 2.

And you must use windows 8.1 with AMD CPUs if you wish to get best performance out of them there's 15-20% extra to be had in certain applications.

 

If you want performance you go Intel - but you need to go large, I can't see the point of buying an i3... i5 at least; real quad or go home.

If you want value go AMD - but make sure you are windows 8. Be prepared, some old games may not like the fx CPU. Not sure what Skyrim thinks of it either...

Yeah, it's a divisive topic to say the least.

 

I wasn't planning on windows 8 to be honest!

I might have a look and see if dropping the SSD, and stretching the budget another £50 will allow me enough for an i5 and a decent GPU. I know an SSD is nice but I can always add one in later.

I'd rather go for Intel if it gets me more performance, even if it means stretching a little more.

If anyone fancies speccing an Intel build with a small case and a budget of £750, feel free!

 

Both the Haswell i3 and i5 have the same core setup, 2 cores 4 logical, i3 has less cache (assuming you buy the right i5, Intel don't make it easy) and no turbo, real quad is i7 with 8 logical. Or have I got that wrong?

EDIT- Ah I see they do have actual quads, blimey the naming scheme is nuts between mobile and desktop, they sound the same.

 

Yes you have. The 4670k is 4 core 4 thread