Hey guys I normally follow Custom PC as absolute gospel when doing a new build and value their opinions very highly. I am putting together a new PC and will be following their guide for the performance PC: Silverstone FT02B Case Gigabyte GA-Z87 Motherboard Intel Core i5 4670K CPU 8GB Patriot Black Mamba 2,400MHZ RAM Corsair H80i Cooler Geforce GTX 770 GPU XFX Pro Black Edition 750W PSU Plextor M5 Pro 256GB SDD In this build however, there are a few tweaks I want to make make and i am a little unsure as to deviation form their recommendations! As the components they recommned are usually the best available at that range. For the motherboard, I am just not sure about Gigabyte. I have always preferred Asus and would rather go with the Asus Z87 Pro. Is this board as good as the Gigabyte one? WIll it support the 2,400MHZ RAM? I would also like to go for a 500GB SSD drive as opposed to a 250GB one. Speed and performance are essential to me but the 500GB Plextor M5 Pro is a bit pricey (£335). will I get similar performance with the Samsung 500GB 840 EVO Basic? Finally on the graphics card is it worth going for a branded card as opposed top the NVIDIA Stock card? The 2Gb Asus 770 GTX Card looks good: http://www.scan.co.uk/products/2gb-...dr5-gpu-1058mhz-boost-1110mhz-cores-1536-dpor Many thanks for any advice you can give me guys!! M
Not a bad build, however here is my advice. Case, this is a personal preference so make sure you have a look around at some others, the FT02B is a nice case but it is fairly expensive (I'm usually an expensive case kinda guy), have a look around at a few on Scan, there are nice cases with better cable management for less money. Motherboard : Its much of a muchness, usually if i have a choice between gigabyte and asus I will chose Asus, however check the warranty on both boards, if the features are the same and the price is similar go for the one with the better warranty, chances are it will perform just as well as the other. Ram : 2400mhz is certainly no slouch H80i cooler - nothing wrong with this, excellent cooler just make sure the case can accommodate the rad. GTX 770 - You hit the nail on the head, where possible try to avoid the stock coolers if aftermarket ones are available, the asus you listed is alright, a few quid more gets you the MSI version though which have been proven time and time again to be excellent. http://www.scan.co.uk/products/2gb-...pu-1098mhz-boost-1150mhz-cores-1536-dport-dvi SSD - Is there any need for the 500GB ? Think ahead, what are you actually going to store on it. Can you get away with a 256GB SSD and then a nice storage drive 1tb, 2tb, 3tb or maybe even 4tb depending on your storage requirements. The 250/256GB ssd's are at a nice price point now which makes them a popular choice. As for brand, samsungs are highly recommended round here, I run a 256GB samsung and its an excellent drive, also used the 128gb versions in a few builds, the newer 840 pro drives are pretty good too. PSU - Whilst there is nothing wrong with that XFX PSU (Seasonic unit IIRC), if for whatever reason it does need returning, XFX returns in the UK ain't the greatest, so my personal recommendation is to avoid the XFX products if possible.
For the RAM - you don't need 2400Mhz stuff - 1600Mhz stuff will perform almost exactly the same and probably for less money.
I've only ever used 1600mhz, but given ram prices are still high I wonder what the difference in price is between 1600-1866-2400.
Thanks for the reply guys! Really detailed as well! In regard to the case the FT02B seems to be the best cooler wise but yeah the cable management and rotaion of compnents is a bit odd. I did like the look of the Corsair Carbide Air 540 Series. Which is a lot cheaper but not sure about the noise level...might be too much! http://www.scan.co.uk/products/cors...se-direct-airflow-path-cooling-for-revolution Other than that i would just be going for looks and to be honest I want good sound reduction and excellent cooling so the FT20B seems perfect...what other cases do you like out of interest? Agree in relation to the motherboard. I still have an Asus P5B Deluxe Wifi with Core 2 Duo and its still running like a racing car after 8 years so will go for the Asus board! The H80i is the one recommended in Custom PC and with case I would reckon it should fit. A lot of pics on the web seem to indicate this. Will look into the MSI GPU! Thanks! SSD - You are probably right. I want my operating system and a few games programmes on it. I was just thinking for future if wanted more games etc but I suppose at that point I could always add a second SSD and put programmes on that as well. I have lots of pre Existing HDD storage that will be brought over to the new build. Interesting with the XFX..the other consideration was the Corasir Professional Series AX760i which is a bit more expensive but certainly just as good as the XFX http://www.scan.co.uk/products/760w...um-92-eff-eps-12v-sli-crossfire-1-x-120mm-atx Thank you again for the help!
Well, for example 8GB of Vengeance Black 1600Mhz on Scan is £65 but the 1866Mhz stuff is £75. Personally I wouldn't spend the extra tenner.
Says mr 1866mhz tactical tracer . Tbh I agree, probably won't notice a difference, BUT EPEEN BE MASSIVE.
The 540 Air is a pretty awesome case too. If you want silence and good cooling you could also look at the Nanoxia Deep Silence 1 and the Fractal Design R4 – both of these are highly recommended and come in at well below the £100 mark. Noise is more to do with your fans and the profile (speeds) they are running at. Most good modern motherboards let you set the profiles to ‘silent’, ‘standard’ and ‘turbo’ so you can test your system out with each of those and decide what the best compromise between cooling and noise is for you personally. The Asus board you’ve chosen will do this. You might also like to invest in a couple of extra fans to supplement those that come with the system. Corsair do some decent ‘silent’ fans that still shift a decent amount of air. I’d also recommend BeQuiets fans – they are extremely well made and pretty quiet to boot. Rememeber though, that both your CPU and GPU are fairly frugal with power, and won’t push out much heat – you could pretty much choose any case on the market and still get decent temps. I’d also recommend you look at lower wattage power supplies. With the setup you are going for I’d be surprised if it pulled more than 400W, even at max load. I’d recommend you save a bit of cash and go for something in the 600W area. I’d also agree with Modd. A 256GB SSD would be a good shout. If you really wanted 500GB of SSD storage, it might be cheaper to buy two 256GB disks separately.
Regarding the SSD. I am thinking of upgrading my 256 GB drive to the 500GB Samsung EVO model you mention. I only keep programs and games on my SSD so they boot up quickly but even with just a few games my 256 GB drive has started to get rather full. The 500 GB Samsung EVO is only £240 on Amazon which I consider to be reasonable and this will allow you to install more of your favourite games on the SSD and leave more space free as a lot of people recommend not using SSDs at full capacity. I know I could uninstall games I don't play so much, but having games installed means I'm more likely to play them than if I have to wait a few hours for them to download and install If you got a second drive that you wanted to install your steam games on in addition to the current drive you would need to use a workaround as steam will save your games to the system drive by default.
Ha ha! You *******! I knew that was in my sig when I was writing that. In fairness though - when I bought them from ebuyer at the start of last year, the 1866Mhz stuff was the same price as the 1600Mhz stuff so it was a no brainer. Errrr nope. Steam now allows you to choose the drive you install games to. I have my library split across two hard drives and an SSD.
I have the FT02B and am really pleased with it. Nice and quiet with plenty of space inside. Got used to the orientation which actually starts to make more sense to the "norm" when you use it. As someone mentioned, Steam does now allow you to install games to other drives. I find that those not needing the SSD speed work well from my storage drive and I reserve my 256Gb SSD for those that will really benefit. I have something like 225 games on Steam and very have to rotate what is installed due to lack of space but of course, they are not all installed at any one point.
