Hi all, Looking at giving my current rig a beef up (in sig). I game less and less but still dabble and then do your usual browse and watch films etc. Price is flexible but I'm looking for best bang for buck. Pretty much settled on: Intel Core i5 3570K 8GB 1,600MHz DDR3 Samsung 830 256GB SSD I'm hoping my Corsair 520W PSU should be transferable? Graphics I'm a little lost with after reading all the reviews but my monitor is 1920x1080. I guess around the £250 mark which should be healthy enough? As for motherboards, I see all these £150 boards like the "Asus MAXIMUS V GENE" but if I just need a bare-bones board with one NIC, no wireless, no sound (I have an Asus Xonar D2X) etc. Will I see a massive performance difference between them? I was looking at these two but don't want to bottleneck my system: Gigabyte GA-Z77-D3H Asus P8Z77-V LX Advice on the mobo and graphics would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Tom
CPU, SSD and PSU are fine. RAM is fine as well, just remember to get a 1.5V set, and also consider low-profile to avoid issues with CPU coolers. I have a Gigabyte GA-Z77-D3H and I can recommend it. No issues whatsoever when overclocking to 4.5GHz. You won't see a performance difference between a cheap and expensive motherboard because there's not much that affects performance on a motherboard.
