Hi, so my first thread did seem to be ignored; maybe it was a little too wordy. I'll have another go: Budget: £820 (£700+£120 for monitor) Main uses of intended build: Gaming mainly - I'd like to see it keeping up with modern games at high settings now and medium-low settings 2-3 years down the line. Parts required: Monitor - the best 20"/22" for under £120 CPU - i5-750 seems to be good, but would an i3 suit my needs? I could then upgrade the gfx card with the extra money. Motherboard - Gigabyte GA-H55M-UD2 is recommended on the hardware buyers guide. Open to suggestions if this is not very suitable. Memory - 4GB Corsair 1600MHz DDR3 RAM PSU - 500W OCZ ModXStream Pro is recommended on the hardware buyers guide, but I've read in another forum post that OCZ PSU's are not that good. Alternatives? Cooler - Gelid Tranquillo or Titan Fenrir? Graphics card - undecided between HD 5770 or 5850. I would need to downgrade something else to get a 5850 in my budget so I'm not sure it's worth it? Can I get an opinion on the ASUS HD 5770 CuCore? Good/bad/mediocre? Case - I had thought about the Antec 300 due to cost effectiveness. Again, I'm open to suggestions. Storage - 500GB would be ample and I've heard good things about the Samsung Spinpoint. DVD drive - What manufacturer is recommended here? Storage requirements: 500GB would be ample and I've heard good things about the Samsung Spinpoint. Will you be overclocking: yes Thanks
I built a build on a very similar budget a few months ago, so this is my opinion: CPU - I'd definitely go for the i5-750 over an i3. The extra two cores will really help in gaming, and will help you take advantage of games being developed to take more advantage of them. Motherboard - Good mobo choice, nothing wrong with that IMO. Memory - Got the same memory myself, good stuff. PSU - Personally I've not owned one, and I'm sure the OCZ would be fine (heard mixed reviews personally, but never had first hand experience) ... but I tend to go for Corsair when it comes to PSU, simply because I've never heard a serious bad word against them (and mine has never had so much as a blip). Corsair products do cost a little bit more than OCZ though, so that's a call you'll have to make. Cooler - Considering you're overclocking, I'd go with the Fenrir over the Tranquillo. GPU - If you can find a way to get the 5850 into your budget, then go for it ... it's definitely a big step up. But I build a machine on a £600 budget a few months ago, and I couldn't find a way to get a GPU that expensive in there. A 5770 is a fine card, and will suit the build well balance wise. Case - Antec 300 is good. My build has been well suited by the cheaper Coolermaster Elite 330, but I've not pushed it very far with overclocking yet. Storage - 500gb Spinpoint F3 is a great choice. DVD - I think DVD drives are generally all the same, tbh. I've got an LG in my build, heard that Samsung are quite good too, but not much difference.
The 5770 will not stand the test of time in 2-3 years time. Its irrelevant to me as I upgrade my graphics cards every 18 months roughly, but if your looking for a card to last, a budget card is not a good idea.
Thanks for the replies. If I were to decide upon the 5850, which brand is the best one? I'm looking at a sea of different 1GB 5850s with different prices and really not sure which is best. Could I get a monitor recommendation too, by any chance?
its up to personal preference to a large extent. XFX in my opinion are one of the best but my last card (5870) was an ASUS as XFX were out of stock and they are great too. For the monitor I would advise scowering ebay, second hand monitors (or new monitors) are pretty cheap there. I managed to get a dell Ultrasharp 24 inch monitor (normally £550 from dell) for £250 because it had a scratch on the base. Brand new but because of this scratch it got sold on cheap and I got it. In origional packing and everything
As far as your 5850 problem, i'd recommend the asus direct cu, as it uses similar direct heat pipe to top end cpu coolers, so cools well. Also in some reviews it overclocks like a beast and can trump a 5870. I would agree with looking on ebay, if you get lucky can get some real bargains, also if you go with a well known brand shouldn't have any problems, i've got a few lg's in my house had for 7 years still great.
change the mobo to the Gigabyte P55M-UD2 you chose the H55 which is much better suited to a i3 CPU with onboard GPU to get the most out of it and it doesnt overclock as well as a P55 board if your going with i5 or i7
Bit-tech's recommended the same as adam_bagpuss. If you are going for a i5 750 you are better off with a p55 board than the H55. What's the resolution you want to game at?
As you're on a budget, get the cheapest 5850 you can. It really doesn't matter which one you get, and certainly don't bother paying more for an overclocked one. For the monitor, at that sort of price range they'll all be pretty basic TN panels so will barely differ in terms of quality. Just get the biggest/highest resolution one you can within your budget, and don't bother paying more for one that offers a 2ms response time. The main thing to look out for with budget monitors is to make sure they have DVI inputs, as that's something you'll definitely want. I also second Adam's recommendation of changing the motherboard to the P55 instead of the H55.
I just had a long discussion with my housemate and came to the conclusion that the 5850 is too much money for the benefit I'll get from it - I will probably be able to play new games in 2-3 years time on the 5770, just at much reduced settings/resolution. Is there any strong argument to oppose this line of thinking? With regard to the cooler - I've had a think about things and I will only be doing a very small overclock if/when I try it (never done it before) so would I be better off going with a less expensive cooler?
Well the 5850 has a lot more grunt than the 5770, as the 5700 series is half of the 5800 series. Also the 5850 should last a lot longer due to its extra power, so whereas the 5770 can handle todays games, it will strugle on the more demanding games, this will be less noticable on the 5850. The asus one i mentioned was £234 http://www.aria.co.uk/SuperSpecials...R5+PCI-Express+Graphics+Card+?productId=40177 Also if you lower the screen resolution the game starts to become more CPU dependant. With regards to your CPU cooler, the cooler the components run, the longer they'll last, also it will be very very quiet, so it is worth paying that bit more.
The 5770 is a good card, it's not a bad choice at all. You can always replace it with another mid-range card two years down the line if it isn't keeping up with the latest games, for a total cost of around the same price a 5850 would be to buy today. Buying high-end hardware for the sake of the best performance or "futureproofing" is an expensive game, and best left to those with the money to do so. If you decide you don't want the Tranquillo or Fenrir, I would just stick with the stock Intel cooler. It'll be able to cope with a very mild overclock, maybe something like 3.2GHz at most, but if you're not going to be pushing a high overclock from day one or going for a quieter system you'll see little benefit from getting an aftermarket heatsink. A CPU running at 50 degrees will last longer than a CPU running at 100 degrees, but that's not the difference we're talking about here, and it will still be well within safe limits. Intel would supply a beefier cooler with their CPUs if they needed it, as it is they cope just fine with a CPU at stock speeds. Obviously overclocking is a different matter, because you're running it outside of rated specs.
Ok, thanks a lot, this is really helpful. A couple things now spring to mind: Overclocking: How much of a benefit would overclocking my CPU be for gaming? Or would I be better off doing a GPU and/or RAM overclock? If I wouldn't benefit greatly from a CPU overclock then maybe I'll stick to the stock cooler. PSU: I'd rather be safe than sorry on this, so is the Corsair line of products really a much better purchase over OCZ or another brand? If so, then is 400W sufficient or should I dish out on 550W?
Looks good. For £10 extra you could have the Cooler Master Gladiator 600 Case, which has more drive bays and they are tool-less. Just a thought. Also, the G600 has a hole for mounting the CPU cooler backplate so you don't have to remove the motherboard, which may be handy if you upgrade in the future. The Corsair CX400W is a good budget PSU, but I think for overclocking and components like a 5770 or 5850 you want a bit more juice...
Overclocking: CPU speed does have a big impact on FPS of games (modern ones anyway), you may see an extra 10FPS added to your minimum which can make this difference between 20FPS(not playable) to 30FPS (fine and dandy). completely dependant on the game though as some love the CPU others dont tax it too much. GPU overclocking and RAM: personally im not a big fan of overclocking the GPU as performance gain usually isnt big but with ATI 5x00 they have a lot of headroom so may provide you with a boost when you need it. As for RAM overclocking IMO waste of time as it provides little real world benfit to games and most general applicaitons. PSU: for this get a big brand such as corsair, coolermaster, be quiet, seasonic and you will be fine. OCZ models are recommended on here so you have no issue with them. Id grab a 500W one and that will be good for all your needs.
Following on from CPU dependency, check this article out - http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/core-i3-gaming,2588.html It seems that average frames/second is not affected much by the CPU at resolutions of 1920X1200 and above. If you go lower than that, the CPU might have an effect. Unfortunately this article doesn't state minimum framerates which are also quite important for a good experience. But from what I can say from my experience is that some games ,which use the CPU for heavy physics computations(like crysis and the recent Battlefield 2), do get a boost from an overclocked CPU. Your CPU choice can also be affected by the type of GPU you use. If you are going to use a 5770 you will not be able to game comfortably at 1920X1200 and above. Therefore you will be using lower resolutions at which games tend to become CPU dependent as well. If you going only for a mild overclock, the stock cooler should be fine. If you ever feel the need for a better one, you can always buy a tranquillo or fenrir later on. Just in case you wanna save even more money, you will find that for the same wattage,non-modular supplies are cheaper than modular ones.
if you go stock cooler i wouldnt overclock the CPU past 3Ghz really as it would get pretty toasty under load. for £30 the titan fenrir will be quieter and allowing you to overclock to 4Ghz if you wish. now £30 for an extra 1.34ghz or 50%ish increase in speed is not to be sniffed at for that price. The stock cooler is exactly as the name suggests STOCK and is really really not designed for overclocking or to be honest effective at cooling.
to be honest it would vary chip to chip. ive hd my i7 920 @ 4ghz for about a year now and its still hammering along. i take the lifespan thing with a pinch of salt as ive overlcoked almost every chip ive had back from the old athlon barton core days to now and ill tell you something not one of them failed. hell i had my trusty opteron 144@1.6ghz overclocked to 2.7Ghz for 3 years and it never even threw a wobbly. my bros CPU the E2160@1.6Ghz is still overclocked to 3.2Ghz and hes had that 3-4 years.
It's very hard to say for sure, but if you have decent cooling, then it won't affect it dramatically. You very rarely hear of CPUs dying, even after they've been overclocked. CPUs are generally supposed to last at least 10 years or so of reasonably heavy usage, and you could take perhaps a year or two off that if you overclock it (i.e. long after you've already replaced it with something much faster).
