Overclocking Buying a New Gaming PC in the UK

You're are absolutely right!!!... i had the SSD but it got way beyond the budget and as you can see I was determined to put the X4 crossfire cards upthere haha

but if its a gaming rig, games will probably be in the 2TB drive, not to much of a performance hit...

 

hahaha.. Correct.. Lian Li PC-P80B its the way to go with that MOBO.. again as you see I was determined to get those four 5870 upthere and at the end budget wise made some bad decitions

BUT, that case would be 50 punds more expensive, so let me correct this whole thing

GRAPHICS: XFX HD 5870 Graphics Card - £313.69 x4 CrossFire = £1254,76

PROCESSOR: Intel i7 930 CPU - £216.40

CPU COOLER: Titan Fenrir V2 TTC-NK85TZ - £28.78

PSU: Silverstone 1000 W Olympia - £140.98

BOARD: EVGA X58 Classified 4-Way SLI - £348.00

RAM: 6GB (3x2GB) Corsair XMS3 Classic, DDR3 PC3-10666 (1333) - £137.45

CASE: CC800DW - Corsair Obsidian Series 800D - £207.49

OPTIC DRIVE: SH-B083L/RSBP - Samsung Blu-Ray Combo Player - £49.98

SSD:96GB OCZ: £152.73

HDD: 2TB Western Digital WD20EVDS - £105.73

DISPLAY: Dell 27" LCD Monitor - £879.71

TOTAL: £3519,63


AND THAT'S IT hehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe

 

Or, you can try this spec for a lot less cash:



You aren't going to notice the performance difference (it's a slightly slower setup) but it'll use less power, be quieter, has the 30 inch Dell display, and costs a few hundred squids less.

The problem with paissa666's setup is that it is, in the graphics department, overkill. Heck, take the second 5970 off of my build, you'd still have plenty of grunt.

The Olympia isn't the quietest power supply on the market (that isn't to say that it's hugely loud either, it isn't).

If you're overclocking, the 1333MHz memory could be a limitation.

On my build, you could take away the fans and sound card if you wanted to, saving more money. The fans, however, I'd keep. The soundcard, that purely depends on the audio setup you are running, and your personal requirements.

 

I think for £3500, you should look at one of those Mountain Mods cases which can fit two 480mm radiators and has ten expansion slots.

A spec:
Core i7 980X
Asus Rampage III extreme
3 x HD 5870 2Gb
Enermax revolution 85+ 1250W
6Gb Corsair Dominator GT 2000MHz
OCZ Vertex turbo 128Gb
Spinpoint F3 1Tb

Cooling:
2 x XSPC RX480 radiator
EK Supreme HF block
3 x EK FC 5870 Acetal block
EK Rampage III Extreme chipset block
2 x Swiftech MCP 655
2 x EK D5 Pump top
16 x Scythe Gentle Typhoon 1850RPM
2 x EK Spin reservoir

 

I was supposed to say this earlier but it completely crossed my mind.

Why is anyone recommending the i7 980? Six cores are completely overkill for gaming, and for day to day usage I very much doubt that many will require so many cores. Over three cores, you see minimal to no difference in gaming performance, and any performance increase you do see, you'll be seeing at very high frame rates anyway, far beyond what is needed.

Focus on everything else in relation to performance, then if you have enough money left over, start looking at water cooling, provided you are confident enough to do it.

Shocker, your spec runs to near £3500 on the main components alone...water cooling, it'll go to nearly £4000.

 

If £3500 was going to be spent on the most sensible hardware, then it wouldn't be all that extreme for the money. Also, with the 980X overclocking so well, its not a case of the extra cores helping but raw frequency when you can overclock well past 4GHz.

The watercooling does such a system justice, so I included it. I imagine that anyone who is prepared to spend such a large amount of money on a PC could easily save up a bit more to give their PC the 'Wow' factor.

 

Yes, but there is a difference between an "extreme" choice, and one which makes no difference in performance whatsoever. In this case, the OP wants a gaming system; two extra cores is not going to make a difference at all. It's a £550 waste of money here. £550 which could be spent on parts that do increase performance. Besides, what's not extreme about 30 inch displays and high-end dual graphics card setups? Just because the budget is high doesn't mean that the setup doesn't need to be thought about.

I still stand by my previous point, that water cooling should only be considered once that the rest of the components have been chosen. Again, for the same reason as the processor choice; that £550 could be spent on components that make a huge performance difference. However, if silence is the key, of course, water cooling is a great choice.

 

550 quid he could of spent on games!

 

£550 isn't going to change much when the build already has three graphics cards and an SSD. You could buy a decent 24" IPS for the money but, I think even a 30" screen is too much for a £3500 build when it would take a whole £1000 away from the components. You could save money by buying two HD5970s, but quad scaling has never been good, while being crash happy.

Talking about games not needing more than three cores, the whole core i7 range is potentially pointless for gaming with its hyperthreading boosting the total threads to 8. In that vein of thought, we should be sticking with AMD Phenom II X3s in the best case scenarios.

Ultimately, its not a big enough budget to afford big displays and expensive hardware to run them.
I would suggest going with something like 22" eyefinity.

 

If you overclock the 980x, ull find that it can Overclock to 4.4 Ghz maximum on AIR alone.

 

But then, going by that, buying a i7 980X is just as bad as buying a 30 inch display. Quad scaling isn't brilliant, that's true. It's a slightly cheaper option as you stated, I agree completely. Going with three 5870's would be a better option and still fall roughly within his budget, and more than enough than a 30 inch display. Would you rather have a smaller display with a completely overkill graphics setup, or a larger display with more than enough power? Buying a six core processor at £550 extra won't bring a performance boost, but a 30 inch display will potentially bring extra enjoyment to the gaming experience, if you like to play big. It also has that wow-factor you spoke of earlier

Yes, that's fair enough. But taking into account that you won't need more than four cores in real world usage (you really won't), you're paying £550 more for 500Mhz at most. Is it really worth it?

 

Lol I have been a bit bombarded with info

Right this is my thinking so far

Emailed Uberware http://www.uber-ware.co.uk guys
they told me they go for overclocking and give free overclocking covered in their warranty and free delivery/no hidden costs.

Had a look on Cougar, cheap and cheerful. Anyone have experience of them?

Meh wasn't a fan of Scan's website and their systems are disgustingly over priced lol.

At the moment I am thinking of the Godlike, its under budget and the uberware guys responded pretty quick and said for my needs their £1595 PC would be more than good enough, can't argue with a company that would rather save my monies than over spend.

Some people have told me AWD-IT, but their pre-built stuff seemed low-tech. But that was just at a glance. They seem popular on this forum

Any other suggestions?

I would prefer pre-built are people ok with that

 

To be honest I'm going to close this thread as googling shows me you've posted the same thing (exactly the same even including replies) on a number of pc enthusiast forums. It could be you are genuine, but then... you're never going to get someone on forums like these say you are better off buying pre-built. It's not what the majority of us are about. Or, more than likely you are spamming good things about uber-ware...

I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt and not banning you, I'll just close this thread.