It's that time of year again, the time when the gradually nicer weather is making people realise something, that it must be avoided like the plague and spend every waking hour gaming. So a friend asks for a PC built by me with the £625ish budget mentioned in the title. He already has a screen and keyboard but his mouse got a little broke (read sat on) so he needs a new mouse and the tower. He has a 1080p monitor and wants to play every game under the sun, literally.. I've put together a build from Scan but forgot to save the basket... It was; CPU: Intel Core i5 3470 GPU: MSI Radeon HD7870 2GB Motherboard: MSI Z77A-G41 Case: Fractal Design Define R3 * PSU: Corsair CXM 500W RAM: Corsair Vengeance LP 2x4GB HDD: 1TB Seagate Barracuda 7200rpm 64mb cache Cooling: Arctic Freezer 7 Pro Mouse: Not too sure, probably a Logitech G400 if it's in stock. Operating System: Sorted already Does this build look alright? I want to squeeze the maximum price/performance out of his budget. Also, delivery isn't a problem since we live rather close to Scan so we'll buy the parts in store. *The case is more like a £65 placeholder, he'll probably pick his own on the day.
The 3470 is not overclockable so a Z77 motherboard is of no use. An H77 or B75 board could save some money. Alternatively, maybe you can fit a 3570K in the budget? I'd also avoid cheap MSI boards -- they don't have any kind of voltage settings for instance. The Freezer 7 is getting a bit old now and I think there are better alternatives available. An SSD provides a nice performance boost, but it might be out of budget.
