Nixy's sample builds

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Notes upfront:

• Prices for products are not kept up-to-date 100%. Prices are bound to change.
  
• Different retailers offer products for other prices. These sample builds will be using the British overclockers.co.uk website for price references.
  
  
• These builds are without Operating System(OS), a case, and any other peripherals you might need/want to replace.
  
• These builds are by no means something you must follow. Individual parts may be swapped out, based on personal preference and/or retailer availability in your region.

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Budget Gamer - £550
^{The basic, budget, gaming rig. Consists of low/mid-end hardware to give you a cheap, but enjoyable, gaming experience.}

Spoiler:

Noob (with Attitude) - £800
^{A better gamers build. Includes a much better processor and a juicier graphics card than the budget rig.}

Spoiler:

Internet warrior - £1000
^{The same as above, but with a larger budget for a better graphics card.}

Spoiler:

Haxx0r - £1200
^{A proper gamers build. Consists of mid/high-end components and a Solid State Drive.}

Spoiler:

1337 Haxx0r - £1337
^{Same as above, but with the GTX 680 for extra l33tness.}

Spoiler:

Pro Gamer - £1500
^{Where the real fun is at. High-end components for a high definition gaming experience.}

Spoiler:

Xtreme Gamer - £2500
^{Or you can go batshit crazy, and get something like this!}

Spoiler:

Reserved &

Don't forget your going to need a nice monitor like mine!

so that will cost you an extra 150 at least.

- Samsung SyncMaster SA350 24" LED -

That depends on what you already have. Some people already have a good monitor and don't need a new one. It's the same reason I did not include a mouse, keyboard, speakers/headset etc. People usually already have those things, and are just looking to upgrade their rig.

The prices do all have £100-150 extra/spare on their budget, for things like a case and some other bits and bobs. I do not like recommending cases to people because it's one of those things that really depends on personal taste.

I like cases such as the one I now have (duh), the Corsair 650D. Nothing too flashy, but still cool looking. But I know plenty of people that prefer flashy cases with lots of brightly coloured LEDs.

out of interest nixy how is the 650D??

I have an Antec 900 with akasa venom fans instead of the OEM ones and don't know wether to upgrade it when I upgrade my pc in september time

My brother is buying a PC in two months and I was going to convince him to get an SSD (I don't have one, yet) with at least 30GB. Would it be better to buy more SSD memory and a small HDD? Obviously the overall amount of memory would go down, but would the increase in performance be worth the cost? Also, how much money should be invested in RAM?

i'll put it this way, my win7 install is 26.6Gb, so I would say 60Gb is a minimum for SSD

Klutz93 wrote:My brother is buying a PC in two months and I was going to convince him to get an SSD (I don't have one, yet) with at least 30GB. Would it be better to buy more SSD memory and a small HDD? Obviously the overall amount of memory would go down, but would the increase in performance be worth the cost? Also, how much money should be invested in RAM?

Yes, yes and yes. I just upgraded from a intel 80Gb SSD to a 128Gb 6gb/s Samsung drive for only £89 UKP. Also have a 500gb data drive. The 80Gb drive cost me £179 2 years ago. so price have dropped alot. Well worth it compared to the speed of a normal drive.



http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-146-SA



Just gone down by another £5

120GB SSD and OS + a couple regularly played games and its nearly full. BF2+PR, ARMA2 CO + mods, BF3 fills it up pretty much. 120GB have come down a lot recently and are WELL worth it

As for RAM, i have 6GB and i've never hit the limit. 8GB is way more than enough for current gen stuff. You'll see the greatest performance increase from an SSD in my opinion.

isn't RAM imortant with some game architecture more than others and isn't RAM speed worth considering as well ? i have 533Mhz RAM and i've long held a feeling that it's my bottleneck when running Bf2:PR ?

any opinion ?

Delta,
the case itself is great. It has an integrated fancontroller for up to 4 fans (low-med-high regulator), plenty of room for all your equipment, including large CPU heatsinks, and is quite versatile when it comes to cable management.

The only thing you might want to consider is to replace the two stock 200mm fans for something else. There is a little issue when it comes to resonance of those fans and the mesh they are close to. My case doesn't seem to have this issue -that much-, but it is still present, seeing as I still have the stock fans.

Speed,
if you're interested in a good read this article covers it pretty good.

Basically, for gaming, it does not matter so much with DDR3.

You can measure the difference between 533Mhz (rated 1066) and 800Mhz (rated 1600Mhz), but you will not really notice it when playing a game. For other tasks it is (a bit) more valuable.

As it stands with RAM (and in particular RAM usage) right now, most (read: virtually all) games and applications are written with a 32 bit memory address register. This means they are physically limited to using 4GB of RAM.

You can have a 64 bit Operating System, which can handle 64 bit applications, but you will still run your games which are written with 32 bits.
Conslusion: Your games and applications cannot use more than the physical 4GB limit they are facing, and this is only if they are Large Address Aware (LAA). Most older 32 bit executables are not LAA, and are prohibited from accessing more than 2GB RAM, because most older computers did not even have this amount of RAM in the first place.

This is exactly the reason why people are having CTD's in games (though it's not the only reason, of course). The executables are 32 bits and not LAA. Yet we're still running it on high end computers, with high resolution monitors. In the end, the game needs more than 2GB of RAM but cannot access it: Poof, game crashes to desktop.

This is one of the subjects I am going to write some stuff about tonight, so stay tuned.

well i am currently and for the forseeable future will be using a corsair H60 so large heatsink isn't really much of a problem, the only problems I can forsee is that the antec 900 won't take large cards and that the large 200mm fan on top of the antec 900 is letting loads of dust and crap fall into my pc, however, a 650D is like £150 and not really much bigger, what size fans can you put in instead of the 200mm ones - will 2x140mm or 120mm fit??

(btw feel free to delete/edit and condense any of my comments once the discussion is over)

Front is 200mm 'only', but with a bit of fiddling I think you can manage to fit 2x120/140. Just put the screws through the mesh instead of the pre-made holes.

Top 200mm has the right sockets for 2x120 or 2x140 though.

And I'm fitting a GTX680 without any issues. You can even remove one of the 3slot harddisk brackets if you're short on space.. but you'll probably have a graphics card the size of an aircraft carrier if it doesn't fit in the regular spot

The case itself has two large dustfilters. One in front and one at the bottom for the PSU fan. Both can be easily removed and vacuumed/washed without any issues. They use a click and slide system and they work really well. The top fan however does not have a filter. But that can be easily improvised with stockings or something, if the case is not in plain sight (its under my desk).

ah right sounds like i might have to take a closer look, been looing at the 650D, the NZXT Phantom or keeping my Antec 900II.

With the fitting GFX card thats more to do with my 900II as I have enough trouble fitting an old Radeon 4870 1GB into it, let alone anything bigger, that plus the fact that to remove my 3xHDD involves unscrewing 26 screws or to clean the dust filters only 20 screws

Yeah, the HD 4870 is about 9.5 inches. Newer cards are starting to get longer than 10..

I've not removed the harddisk bay here, but it's supposed to be a click system as well. Very solid though.

bit of crossover tech for you guys,

http://www.mig-welding.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=17104

very good thread about filtering of low pressure fans with some very good and cheap remedies.

(also a brilliant forum, generally very friendly, in fact an example of how people should behave on the internet !!)

that said i'm not sure you should be too worried about household dust covering surface mount components.

its not the dust its the dog hairs, buscuits and crisps

simple solution, stop eating biscuits and crisps over the dog !!

haha, I have my PC to the side of the desk otherwise my legs dont fit under it, but inevitably when I'm gaming food sometimes misses my mouth as I try and shovel it in before i get shot/crash

shame on you for trying to blame dog !!!

This is the inside of the case, Delta. Could be cleaner, but meh.

As you can see, there's plenty of room between my graphics card and the harddisk trays (about 2 inches). Also plenty of room for the big ass heatsink



That is the screw the second harddisk bay is attached with. Easy thumbscrew access!

Double cpu heatsink????


I have 2 antec1200's cable managed and it runs smoooth.as.a dime airflow wise

Got my gaming rig above desk in the clean air and the video editing/mrs's machine is under rhe desk. Geta regular clean out every 3 weeks at least

yeah that looks pretty sweet, my current HDD bays are attached to the front fans and so I have to take the whole thing out of the front of my case to even access my hard drives so loads of thumbscrews which i just cba with anymore, especially if i am building a new rig.

to be fair nayt I have a push/pull H60 which blocks off just as much space if you take the coolant pipes into account. And I was looking at the 1200 but they are just 1) too big and 2) still have to same 200mm top fan with no dust (biscuit and crisp) cover.

Naytdawg wrote:Double cpu heatsink????


I have 2 antec1200's cable managed and it runs smoooth.as.a dime airflow wise

Got my gaming rig above desk in the clean air and the video editing/mrs's machine is under rhe desk. Geta regular clean out every 3 weeks at least

It's the Noctua NH-D14, which is in the more expensive builds. It's 1 heatsink for 1 CPU. It's just split in half so you can fit a fan in between. It works like a charm, really. It's quiet as hell and cools like the Arctic. 3.5Ghz (stock) when idling is ~25 degrees. When running games it goes towards the 35-40. Shame about the price in the UK though. It's about 20 pounds cheaper over here.

Noice!

I got asaka venom on push/pull avg 40c

What would be the best CPU for a new gaming PC?

depends if you have money issue or not^^ I would probably go for I5 maybe I7 (I have no experience in intel) seems to be good s**t

The i7 is a hex-core, right? I thought most games can only use two cores, while some newer games can use four. The CPU has to fit into a $1000 rig.

The i5 3570k (or the previous version the i5 2500k) are the best performing gaming CPU's at this moment. They are quadcores, only the i7 Sandy Bridge Extreme's (like the one in the 2500 pound build) are hexacores.

So, what needs to be included in the $1000 rig? Is it also a monitor/windows/mouse/keyboard/etc, or is it really just the rig itself?

Some things you need to consider:
Which components can you take from your previous computer? In most cases you can just grab your old harddisk, format it and stick it in the new machine. That way you can free up budget for a small SSD (example).

With PSU's you need to be a bit careful. They are the beating heart of your computer, and thus need to be of proper quality. A lot of manufacturers of PSU's put spike-performance levels on the box, saying they can do 800W! In reality, you should be happy if it can do 550W under regular circumstances, if you got a cheaper brand PSU. The brands I really trust, myself, to be very solid choices are:

Seasonic (best manufacturer, period)
Corsair (uses re-branded Seasonic PSU's)
XFX Pro Series (uses re-branded Seasonic PSU's, but only the Pro Series)
Be Quiet! (second best)
Antec EarthWatts (only the EarthWatts series)

Not saying all other ones are bad, these are just better and don't tell lies on the box.

I presume you're buying the thing in Germany, if it's for yourself? Or is it the rig for your brother? In either case, send me a link of the shop you'd like to order from, so I can guestimate the price a bit better.

Thanks for the quick reply. The PC is for my brother and will be built from scratch, so he'll need Windows, keyboard, mouse. I don't think that a gaming mouse or keyboard will be a priority. He already has a monitor, so that won't be an issue. He's probably going to order from iBuyPower since that is what I used. I'm not sure if he wants to build it at home, although he could save quite a bit of money.

The reason for ordering a pre-built stems from two issues: the first being the cost of shipping from the states for individual parts. Buying from a German store is not possible thanks to the weak strength of the USD. Second is that being part of the military community means that we get specials from certain companies that aren't open to the rest of the customers; iBuyPower is one of them.

On a side note, I am curious about your recommended PSU watt value. Mine is 850W because I thought I was going to OC my CPU and GFX card, but I chickened out. Is 850 necessary, or would 650 be more realistic for someone who won't OC?

650 is realistic even for someone that wants to OC. It all depends on your graphics card(s), though.

I used to run a steeply overclocked Core2Duo E8400 (stock 3.0Ghz) at 4.25Ghz for 4 years in a row, with an overclocked GTX260 next to it (ran at pretty much GTX280 speeds), on a 500W Antec EarthWatts PSU. Other bits included were 2 harddisks, 5 case fans and 2 strips of high voltage ram (also for OC, which turned out to be a waste of money ). Never had power issues, up to the point where the high voltage required for the processor turned out to be lethal (CPU died). But after 4 years of service, I can't complain.

I'll have a look at what I can get for under 900 USD excluding shipping. That leaves some headroom for a mouse, keyboard, shipping and what not. That is also excluding the discounts they might offer you, though. So you might be able to get a bit more for your money than this.

Update:

I'm not sure if those prices at iBuyPower are somewhat standard for hardware in the US (I don't think so), but damn they are high.

Also, they won't allow you to configure a system with a proper graphics card without also opting for a 750W PSU. Smells like rip-off to me. Anyway, I got family business to attend to. I'll be back later tonight.

Good news!

AMD is dropping prices on the;
HD7970 ~$20
HD7950 ~$50
HD7870 ~$50

This means the 7950 is now a valid choice to pick instead of the GTX670, if you'd prefer an AMD card to the nVidia one. Or if you'd like one of the cheaper builds to have a juicier card, of course.

What is your opinion on AMD vs. Nvidia?

I'm fairly neutral towards both companies, to be honest.

Nvidia has had the upper hand for the past few years when you're measuring raw performance, but AMD has always had better price/performance ratios. Sadly, the only exception to this is the HD7000 series, which are relatively expensive for their power. They try to rectify this now by dropping prices, but seeing as the cards have been there for almost a year (sept. 2011), the damage is already done I think.

The GTX680 has smashed all the HD7000 cards time and again, with the exception of 2560*1440/1600 (or higher) resolution gaming, where it performs slightly less. Why is this? Because the standard GTX680 is shipped with 2GB of VRAM, and the HD7870 and up are shipped with a standard of 3GB VRAM, which helps a lot on these higher resolutions. Now if you look slightly further than this, and realize that the card Nvidia launched as the GTX680 was actually meant to be the GTX660 medium-range card.. AMD has really lost the battle this time, especially for the prices they are asking for their cards (before the price drop, they were about equal to Nvidia prices, for less performance).