PC gaming specs?

TB Rich

Paid Member
Anyone into gaming? Trying to spec a build but it's got a bit too expensive or I'm just being cheap?

Currently thinking...

CPU: E3-1231v3 (£200)
GPU: Asus R9 290? or a EVGA SSC GTX 960 to save cash (£230 or £170)
SSD: Existing 840 Pro 256GB or buy a new 850 Pro 256GB (£0 or £115)
RAM: 8GB or 16GB?? Either way Corsair Veng LP CL9 (£55 or £105)
MOBO: Asus H97M-Plus (mATX) (£75)
CASE: Thermaltake core v21 (£50)
PSU: Seasonic m12 evo (80+ bronze, 750w, fully modular) (£80)
Screen: Existing Eizo FS2333 (1080p, 23" or 24" iirc) (£0)
OS: Windows 8.1 Pro license for new machine (£46)

But it's got pretty expensive ~£900. Trying to think if I can trim some cost out but these items all seem to represent the best value for the minimal extra they cost over lesser items.

I'm not interested in OC'ing as I want mATX because I have limited space, OC'ing in mATX is probably asking for trouble - but the V21 case is very nice with good airflow etc.
Could save about £45 and use an i5 4690, but I think the fact that E3 is an i7 without GPU is worth the £50. It'll help with encoding etc no end.
I can make a drop from an R9 290 to a GTX 960 (£230 vs £170), I could then run a 550W PSU, save about £100 combined. But the 290 looks like it kinda rapes the 960, £60 well spent? The bigger PSU for £40 seems like a decent investment too?
I'm not looking to change my screen (it's a high quality screen I calibrate with a SpiderPro for photo editing) so 1080p is all I need in res, but I want to play on pretty much max graphics options.

As you can see it's proved kinda hard to take costs out, is about £900 the right price for decent spec machine without going crazy?

This all started because I want to play Project Cars but my steering wheel won't work with a PS4, and I don't really want a wheel set up in the lounge anyway!! But I also want to play sims like Assetto Corsa and stuff like Arma 3, H1Z1 which I can't on a PS4. Well H1Z1 you will but I'm not sure how that will play on a controller!

If I buy a PS4 though it'll be about £350 and a new wheel like a Thrustmaster T300RS is £270. So that's £620!!
 
From my limited experience I'd say its about right price wise, I usually build mine on a budget of around £800 and then try not to go too far over, usually can get away without having to mess around again for about 5 years, though tbf my last graphics card only lasted me about 3 and a half years, id definitely go for the 16gb ram and do get the 64bit version of windows or it will ignore all your ram over 4gb (and when win 10 comes out you'll get the free upgrade anyway)

For the graphics, out of the 2 id go for the 290, but its a personal choice really as there seems very little in it, though with your choice of small form factor you may well be better off getting the 960 as it runs cooler, theres a good review of the 2 here http://gpuboss.com/gpus/Radeon-R9-290-vs-GeForce-GTX-960
 
There is a cheaper way you can do it Rich. I was very much into computing, building gaming computers by myself, overclocking etc, not any more though, not enough time. However my current machine eats everything I put into it and some more. The hardware was bought more than a year ago though so I bet it is now considered to be outdated. That being the case, and for the usage you are looking, you'd better be better off buying second hand parts from ebay and build it.

My spec is.

CPU i5 3570 overclocked at 4.4ghz with normal cooling. 22nm architecture, quad core, 6mb cache. This cpu is still expensive if you are looking to buy it new but you can get this dead cheap second hand!

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Intel-Cor...682?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_3&hash=item4ae73265e2

Motherboard is Gigabyte with Z77 chipset, the model is D3H. Loads of ports and configurations possible with the Z77, no need to splash cash on super expensive mobos, it's all about the chipset.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/GIGABYTE-...576?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_3&hash=item19fe10b2a8

8gb memory is more than enough, don't go 16gb because it's simply not needed. I've got mine running at 1600Mhz at 11, 11, 11, 28 latencies.

The one you posted above is just perfect.

My gpu is the nvidia GTX 670 2gb, when I bought it it was brand new and super expensive (as they do) however it is seriously powerful for the HD resolution I'm using it. Every single game I threw on it was on maxed out settings. No problems at all, in fact I'm looking to buy another one now because they are so cheap and run an SLI configuration. Trust me, you won't need more than that. Of course if you are thinking of running multiple screens and silly resolutions you'd need some more processing power..

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/eVGA-GeFo...162?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_3&hash=item4637a68eea


I also invested on SSDs and I've never regretted that. I'm running 0 raid on OS (2 stripe SSDs 80gb each) and 2 normal 1gb ones on 1 RAID (mirror configuration) to make sure that I won't lose anything should a hard drive goes tits up. You have to remember that the slowest component is the hard drive and the difference the SSD RAID made was unreal. The games load in no time, the pc boots in 15 seconds (maybe less) and shuts straight away. No noise as an added bonus:wink: Quality thing to do when building a machine. Unfortunately these are still expensive but it's well worth the investment.

EDIT. Btw the above rig scores 7.7 out of the maximum 7.9 on Windows rating. CPU gets the 7.7 and memory gets the 7.8. The rest get 7.9.
 
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From my limited experience I'd say its about right price wise, I usually build mine on a budget of around £800 and then try not to go too far over, usually can get away without having to mess around again for about 5 years, though tbf my last graphics card only lasted me about 3 and a half years, id definitely go for the 16gb ram and do get the 64bit version of windows or it will ignore all your ram over 4gb (and when win 10 comes out you'll get the free upgrade anyway)

For the graphics, out of the 2 id go for the 290, but its a personal choice really as there seems very little in it, though with your choice of small form factor you may well be better off getting the 960 as it runs cooler, theres a good review of the 2 here http://gpuboss.com/gpus/Radeon-R9-290-vs-GeForce-GTX-960

Yeah its a good point and one I keep going back to, the 960 runs alot cooler and costs alot less to run. I 'think' it'll be fine for max/ultra at 1080p, that and the PSU could save me £100.... decisions!

There is a cheapest way you can do it Rich. I was very much into computing, building gaming computers by myself, overclocking etc, not any more though, not enough time. However my current machine eats everything I put into it and some more. The hardware was bought more than a year ago though so I bet it is now considered to be outdated. That being the case, and for the usage you are looking, you'd better be better off buying second hand parts from ebay and build it.

My spec is.

CPU i5 3570 overclocked at 4.4ghz with normal cooling. 22nm architecture, quad core, 6mb cache. This cpu is still expensive if you are looking to buy it new but you can get this dead cheap second hand!

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Intel-Cor...682?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_3&hash=item4ae73265e2

Motherboard is Gigabyte with Z77 chipset, the model is D3H. Loads of ports and configurations possible with the Z77, no need to splash cash on super expensive mobos, it's all about the chipset.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/GIGABYTE-...576?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_3&hash=item19fe10b2a8

8gb memory is more than enough, don't go 16gb because it's simply not needed. I've got mine running at 1600Mhz at 11, 11, 11, 28 latencies.

The one you posted above is just perfect.

My gpu is the nvidia GTX 670 2gb, when I bought it it was brand new and super expensive (as they do) however it is seriously powerful for the HD resolution I'm using it. Every single game I threw on it was on maxed out settings. No problems at all, in fact I'm looking to buy another one now because they are so cheap and run an SLI configuration. Trust me, you won't need more than that. Of course if you are thinking of running multiple screens and silly resolutions you'd need some more processing power..

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/eVGA-GeFo...162?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_3&hash=item4637a68eea


I also invested on SSDs and I've never regretted that. I'm running 0 raid on OS (2 stripe SSDs 80gb each) and 2 normal 1gb ones on 1 RAID (mirror configuration) to make sure that I won't lose anything should a hard drive goes tits up. You have to remember that the slowest component is the hard drive and the difference the SSD RAID made was unreal. The games load in no time, the pc boots in 15 seconds (maybe less) and shuts straight away. No noise as an added bonus:wink: Quality thing to do when building a machine. Unfortunately these are still expensive but it's well worth the investment.

I don't want 2nd hand because every 2nd hand computing item bar 1 has caused me intermittent BSOD's! I have no trust for 99% of people!! And I have 100% no trust if you work in the automotive industry now!!
I don't want to mess with OC'ing either, I want as console like experience I can get in terms of build and forget. I used to OC back in the P2/P3 era and tbh it was fine when you have the time but I'm much too old and lazy now :smile:

Storage isn't a problem (it's my job so shouldn't be lol!), my data is stored on a mirrored NAS and then backed up from there to another portable drive. I'm probably going to sort some cloud storage out and rsync to there too from the NAS so I have offsite, also means I don't have to remember to take my drive from it's hiding place and plug it in, I'm lazy remember!
I design storage and cloud platforms for the leading MSP's so I should really tap them up for 1 or 2TB free :wink:!
 
My spec

g1 sniper motherboard
32gb of ddr3 dominator ram.
intel i7 over clocked to 4.3 GHz
2 x gtx Titan in sli
seagate ssd
seagate 1TB hardrive
corsair ax1200 modular power supply
Fully watercooled with bits power fittings and ek blocks

yeah it's a bit of a gaming beast :lol:

my advice would be match all your parts so you don't bottleneck your system. Like similar to a car, you can't make it powerful without updating everything else.
 
If that's the case then yes, around £900 is a price for a very good and future proof gaming computer:smile:

Cheers, I'm just being a cheap skate then, I though I could do it for about £500 when I casually looked at the CPU and GPU costs - it's all the other things that added up to way more than "ah yeah maybe another £100 on bits"! Flipping PSU is the biggest shock, last time I bought a PC a PSU was like £20 and about 300W!!

My spec

g1 sniper motherboard
32gb of ddr3 dominator ram.
intel i7 over clocked to 4.3 GHz
2 x gtx Titan in sli
seagate ssd
seagate 1TB hardrive
corsair ax1200 modular power supply
Fully watercooled with bits power fittings and ek blocks

yeah it's a bit of a gaming beast :lol:

my advice would be match all your parts so you don't bottleneck your system. Like similar to a car, you can't make it powerful without updating everything else.

Man that's pretty beast mode indeed! Do you think the bit's I've mentioned look well suited? I think so personally?
 
Yeah looks good to me. Depends what games you want to run, some games are very going dependant and some like battlefield are more CPU dependent. I'd recommend getting 16gb if you are running a lot of program's at one time.
 
Typically run just a single thing at a time, either photo editing or games or surfing.

Other advantage with building a PC for games for me is I can give my my kids my laptop for school work and basic games, and my xbox 360 my son can have and he won't be constantly playing it downstairs shouting at his mates over live!!
I'll then keep my PS3 for Blu-rays and NOW TV in the lounge on the main screen for myself.

I feel some 'Man Maths' can easily workout a way of making this PC 'free' or at least very cheap! :smiley:
 
You should be good with 8gb to keep costs down.

The only thing with man maths is that sometimes is you can get a bit carried away like I did. I built the PC below a while back and in the end spend about £400 in fittings and waterblocks a alone :lol: so to keep costs down just keep it air cooled.

IMG_8381_zpsf0c696d9.jpg
 
Looks bad ass mate, but £400 on WC bits!! ouch. I'm still not sure pumping water around an electrical system powered by a 750W/60A PSU etc seems like the best thing to do! Any reports of dead people out there :lol:
 
None yet :lol: is a bit risky if you cool with water, I cool mine with isopropyl alcohol so wouldn't do anything if it leaked
 
I paid ~£800 recently for a gtx970 rig. At work at the minute but will post up full specs asap.
 
Nice, that's a good price on a 970 potentially. The 970 is a great card esp when you consider how cool and efficiently it runs vs AMD stuff.
 
Just dropped a Titan-x into my rig, absolute monster of a card! But to max everything on my 4k monitor I will probably need another one soon :scared:
 
I've just got my first gaming pc and i really impressed with it.
The spec;

GPU geforce gtx 960 ssc
CPU intel i5 4460
MOB gigabyte z9dp-d3
CPU cooled be quiet
RAM kingston hyperx fury 8gb
CASE nzxt s340

the gtx 960 ssc is a brilliant card if you're sticking with 1080p, maxes every game ive had out with good fps.
plus i feel NVIDA is a must have for a card as there seems to be a lot of perks.
 

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