Build Advice Looking for advice on new build

Hi All,

Looking for some advice on a new machine, having not had one proper for about a year now (shock, horror, I know - and yes, I'm going stir crazy over it) Used to have a Core2 Duo Wolfdale 2.8 with a GTX280 and a Benq 24FPW...thing. Award winning screen, now giving someone else good value. Currently getting by with a Dell Precision M4500 Laptop. <Sigh> Anyway:


Budget: Semi-flexible around £1000 - 1200


Main uses of intended build: 1080p FLUID Gaming, (FPS [BFBC2 et al] RPG [ME/DA/Witcher], RTS. I consider myself an enthusiast gamer, with a preference on Single player games with story / involvement / eye candy. Movies (BluRay) - Basically a central entertainment all-in-one hub. No folding / rendering / encoding silliness.


Parts required: All


Previous build information (list details of parts): Got a couple of kettle leads lying around....


Monitor resolution: 1920x1080 (either 23" ie: Dell U2311H, or 37" Panasonic TX-L37DT30, undecided, but both are a seperate budget)


Storage requirements: 1Tb storage, somewhere between 128Gb and 256Gb ssd. 64Gb a tad too small to shunt OS and Steam on - don't mind not having entire library available on demand. Laptop currently has 256Gb, suffices.


will you be overclocking: No (CBA, plus, trying to keep energy consump reasonable...ish)


Any motherboard requirements: Nothing specific, BitTech's suggested Asus P8P67 suffices.


Extra information about desired system: Currently working through the following list:

Intel Core i7-2600K - Is it worth it over i5 2500K?
Asus P8P67
8GB 1,600MHz DDR3
MSI N560GTX-Ti Twin Frozr II/OC - For 1080 max det, would a 580 be better? Anyone know when is next model release due?
XFX Black Edition P1-750B-NLG9 - May drop to 650w, dependent on GPU
Be Quiet! Dark Rock Pro
Fractal Design Define R3
BluRay ROM
1TB Samsung SpinPoint F3
Crucial RealSSD C300 128GB
Asus Xonar DX

Criticism welcome!

Cheers in advance,
Subv3rse

 

Anyone?

Subv3rse

 

Comments in red

 

A 2500k is a better choice for pure gaming. 2mb of l2 cache and hyperthreading aren't worth £80.
Graphic wise look at the 560ti/570/580 benchmarks. You have to judge which price point will achieve "fluid" gameplay with eye candy while not being overly expensive.
A 500W PSU would be fine for this build.
If your not overclocking then you don't even need a custom cooler with sandy bridge.

 

@Dae314,

Thanks for the advice! Bit more background here:

Would like the option to OC, even if I don't plan to yet - I'm intending, as much as possible, to plan for the future without going bleeding edge (read: wallet-crippling).

Therefore, an SLI based mobo would be nice to see me through, should I decide to upgrade in situ at a later date. That said, i'm tempted to delve into SLI now, though I've never bothered before.

Lastly, the reason for those components primarily is for the acoustics, or rather, the preferred lack of. From what I've read the case, the CPU sink etc are all very quiet. I can't get passive (long gone are those days) with the performance I want, and I don't really fancy having an aquarium pump humming next to me all day long. I want something quiet, which actually is primarily the reason for the likes of an SSD...

My old system, beast of a machine as it was at the time, ran in a NZXT.. erm.. forget the model, silver fronted thing that suited a living room / office, but between the fans (not custom), the GTX280, the stock cooler and the Corsair PSU sounded a bit like a street sweeper whenever it ramped up. Grating!

Might well up the GPU though to something a little beefier.

Subv3rse

 

Oh, and apologies in advance for delays, I'm still under 10 post moderation.

 

Okay, been doing a bit of digging since Dae314's suggestion there- the thought hadn't even crossed my mind before - Aim to build with a 560Ti now, but will probably look at adding a 2nd for SLI in a few months. Hmmm.

Probably should stick with the 750w then, but as for the mobo.....

 

if you have the budget, i would go ahead and plump for more power than the gtx560ti. while it's good enough right now, i'm feeling it will be less than adequate sooner. i have one and i can barely manage a steady 40fps on mafia 2 with all the eycandy on full on 1080p. if you know 100% you're not overclocking theres not even a need for the k. just get the standard edition and shift the money to other components.
i'd also pass on the darkrock overkill for a stock freq cpu. something smaller would be adequate.

 

If over-clocking inst essentially necessary then why dont u Look at an AMD and then put more money into a nice and solid Graphics card
SOmething like a Phenom II 1050T would be good

BTW im not AMD or Intel fan i just try to help...
so dont attack me please

 

@Lysol: Therein lies my fear. SLI "might" be an option, but really I'm trying to build a machine now that will handle the likes of Skyrim when it's out without thinking "Damn, I need a new PC! ... Again!"

 

@Jakobfrimmel: Not that I have anything against AMD/ATI - Used to use them back in the day, but something about them doesn't sit right for me at the moment, which is an entirely non-scientific methodology...

 

@Mucgoo: Yeah, I know... have been... undecided, that's my problem Benchmarks show numbers, but that's only half the story; actual experience with them tends to count for more than just the flat out benchmarks though, at least in my past experience. Factoring in noise, min framerate, but real-world "this is noticable" vs "this is a barchart" vs "this costs £100+ and isn't 'really' a benefit" counts for much.

Other games I play: Just Cause 2, King Arthur etc, most are graphical monsters to a fashion. As an example, the likes of "GTA IV".. it, as older games used to do, would state "if you have x-vram, then you should be able to play this at x-res. Problem with GTA was it was so CPU dependent. Problem with older titles I had was that even though I had 1Gb vram, something always bottlenecked, it never "felt" like the card, or the pci bridge, or the cpu could throw the data around fast enough, regardless of how much vram textures could actually load. Does that make sense?

 

lol i almost thought that was a joke until you said dont attack me. A phemon II 1050T is never a good choice unless your really into multi-threaded apps. For gaming even a 965 is better than a 1050 as it overclocks better. By the time you budget for a 965 even a intel 2100 which is a similar cost destroys it in almost every benchmark

 

Woo, finally! Posts are unmoderated now, woohoo! Right, Dae, Lysol, Jokobfrimmel - I'm waiting on moderators to release my previous posts. Haven't ignored your advice!

 

good point im just saying its an option and then hold out till wat bulldozer can do thats what im doing with my rig

 

Hmmmm. With regard to the XFX PSU there is another thread (admittedly about graphics cards) which shows that their build quality isn't great and i'm fairly sure a lot of people would agree that XFX motherboards from the past were rather shocking. I haven't heard anything negative about their power supplies but i'm a very suspicious person and if two types of component can be bad, surely there's a risk of the third being so.

I'd recommend going with someone like Corsair, Enermax, etc. etc. for the PSU. There's more options but i can't think of them right but they're just far more trustworthy for a component which has the ability to kill the rest of your rig in an extreme circumstance.

Hey, i'm paranoid, aren't we

 

@Throbbi: Agreed, took it as an option only due to Bit Tech's own buyers guide, I've otherwise no experience with XFX. That said, I did have a corsair in the past, and having read about the updated corsairs it may well be a better option, at a comparative price.

 

Ok, with a bit more digging, my revised build:


3.3GHz Intel Core i5-2500K
MSI P67A-GD65 B3
8GB 1,600MHz DDR3
2x MSI 560GTX-Ti Twin Frozr II/OC (SLI)
Corsair Enthusiast TX V2 650W
Be Quiet! Dark Rock Pro
Fractal Design Define R3
1TB Samsung SpinPoint F3
Samsung SH-B123L/RSBP 12x BD-ROM & DVDRW
OCZ Technology 120GB Vertex 3 
Asus Xonar DX

Grand total: £1,241.45

Hmm...

Subv3rse

 

560 in SLI for 1920x1080 wow overkill.com

+ id say the PSU is on the weak side for 2x560 MAx power draw is 170W@15amps per card so 340W@30A draw + the rest of the system little close for me as i would think that a fully stressed system would be around the 300W mark maybe.

you will need 4 x PCI-e 6pins the PSU you chose had 2x PCI-e so you would need adapters.

personally if you insist on SLI id go for a 750W

 

Had a feeling that might be a little close, so yeah will swap that out for a 750 then. No major concern cost wise on that aspect.

Yes, SLI "could" be considered overkill... actually almost definitely overkill, but (and i've been doing this long enough to know that what i'm about to say is considered taboo) it also means a certain amount of longevity, and flexibility.

It means that:

a: I could opt to keep my gaming running on max, very fluid without hitching (and unlikely to notice any min frame lag)

b: It means I could (I bloody well hope) have the likes of Skyrim et al running on max det, without having to resort to being a serial upgrader.

c: It means that I can ramp up AA and AF (Not so important for a 23" screen, due to pixel density, but moreso for the likes of the 37" TV under consideration)

d: The option to use nVidia Surround

e: The option to use nVidia 3d (with appropriate screen, and / or said TV)

f: Yes, a straight 580 would probably also suffice, however would limit some of the above options and, whilst absolutely not a necessity on the majority of titles, and a 1920x1080 res, and some would argue a non-visbile difference, the benchmarks of 2x 560Ti does blow away the 580 (in SLI supported titles of course) for not-much-more-at-all investment.

g: From what i've read, these are the quietest cards of the range

h: From past experience, and this is more of an educated guess than anything else, due to the popularity of the Ti range, these will likely have the longest ongoing support.... been stung with that on some of the upper end flagships in the past.

i: Bang for buck ratio, this is the upper-tier SLI sweet-spot, and well, i've never had an SLI rig before. I have that chance now.


Note: I like my options. Some might call it indecisive, heh. Comes with the trade

By all means, shoot me down if i'm incorrect on any of those points - it'll save me cash if i'm wrong. I don't mind being wrong

Subv3rse