Recent content by dustybin8

Personally I haven't built with that board but I have used a fair number of different Gigabyte boards without issue. It has a good feature set so if it's in your budget go for it.

Skylake is slightly faster, uses a more modern chipset and faster ram. Most of this doesn't translate into better gaming performance. The 970 is a decent upgrade if you can't wait for Pascal. You might find the price changes drop the 980 into budget then or just get the 1070 instead.

Nothing wrong with either CPU, if you can afford it go with the i5, it will last you a good while and won't hold back any GPU you pair it to.

DDR4 is needed for skylake and shouldn't be a huge premium over 3. The i3 will give you a better gaming experience, if you have the budget I strongly recommend it over the 860k.

Go with a 1151, you save very little getting the older stuff now there is very little point buying Haswell for a new build. The 750 ti will run a lot of games fine at 1080p, you may well find you have to dial down a lot of settings though. If you want a true 1080p card at the moment then really...

Used cards can be a bargain and a lot of the time its people moving on old parts after upgrades. I sometimes sell old parts on it and I wouldn't put something I knew was faulty on. There will always be scams.

Just a thought, I built an APU system where it would lock or BSOD like crazy when I used the XMP profiles for the RAM. If I manually setup the sticks it worked with no problem. If you're using XMP try disabling it and running both sticks at default (this will probably be 1333 but it's only a...

Google 'why not to buy a corsair CX' there is a pretty reasonable break down of the corsair and why it has no place in a gaming system. It is an office/media PC part. I don't believe its junk I just don't see the point in getting a part that would be the first thing to go if you start over...

Well I can't agree with the logic on the CX PSU. Buy a Z series mobo so you have scope for upgrading but then put a PSU that is barely adequate and won't be if he wants a better GPU in future and over clocks. If he can get the z series, PSU and either the R9 or 960 thats a very fine starting...

Very few games see a huge if any improvement on an i7 while a better GPU will offer more of a boost. If its a pure gaming machine better to go with the i5. A 970 and i5 is a better choice than i7 and 960.

The cheapest H110 is £46 on EBuyer (probably the same on Scan) and the cheapest H170 is £24 more at £70. I will just offer the advice that there are two parts people often cut back on PSU and Motherboard. They aren't often the most exciting part but everything else connects to them and they are...

There is a guide to replacing the PSU in this model but it looks like it uses a proprietary connector in place of a standard 24pin. The PSU looks easy enough to take out at least.

Have you tried reinstalling or updating the Alienware control centre? Their support suggest that as a resolution, it might have installed an update badly or something.

I have a Kaveri and it is fine for light gaming, if you dial back graphics settings and resolution it will play nearly everything pretty well. However think long and hard before you get one because if your intention is to later add a discreet graphics card you will not get the same returns in...