£1200 High end gaming - UK shops

[spanner_razor]

Hey guys,

Am speccing out a new high end system for an article and wanted to get some feedback on a few areas.

Speakers or headset - 5.1
Monitor - 22" seems to be the best if you're not planning to use this as a TV too
PSU + Case - antec 900
GPU - maybe 4870

Was planning a core i7 920 and gigabyte x58 chipset (but that may have to be revised if pricing gets out of hand), 3 gig ram, Logitech g15 keyboard + mx518 mouse Blu-ray combo drive (again can be cut if needed), standard harddrive. This is a first time builders/buyers guide really so overclocking isn't on the table.

Should also point out that the eventual price has to include vista and everything so a complete bundle - preferabl leaving 50 or so quid to give the person the option to have a shop put it together if they're not too savvy.

Input appreciated cheers.

 

[WR2]

£1200 for a full up Core i7 system would be a stretch. That would leave you just £900 for the tower, the other £300 going for peripherals and assembly.

i7-920 CPU £246 (VAT inc)
Akasa Nero AK-967 1366 CPU cooler £25 - Akasa Nero AK-967 review
Asus P6T X58 motherboard £200
3GB Corsair DDR3 1600 RAM £92

CoolerMaster Centurion 590 case £58
Corsair TX650W PSU £80
PowerColor HD4870 1GB £205
WD CaviarBlue 640GB HDD £59
LG 22x DVD Burner SATA £18
Vista Home Premium SP1 64Bit £92

~£1075 (you can already see this is about £175 over budget)

Logitech G11 Gaming Keyboard £42
Logitech G5 Laser Mouse £32
Saitek Cyborg 5.1 Headset £50
Dell S2309W 23" 1920x1080 widescreen LCD £195

~£319 for the peripherals
and £1394 plus the assembly fee for the whole Core i7 system.

To keep the complete system on budget I'd suggest replacing CPU/Cooler/MB/RAM with:
Q8200, Yorkfield C2Q, 2.33 GHz £140
ZEROtherm ZEN FZ120 CPU Cooler £26 - ZEROtherm ZEN review
Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3R P45 motherboard £116
4GB Corsair XM2 DDR2 800 CAS5 RAM £34

With the substitutions you could get the complete system for ~£1147 plus the assembly fee.
Overclocking is actually quite easy and safe but if you're set on a non-OC'ing system choose the Q8300 2.5Ghz or E8500 3.16Ghz CPU and leave out the CPU cooler.

 

[spanner_razor]

Interesting suggestions, I think I did manage to get a i7 system under 1200 but the graphics card ended up being a bit weaker as I had to go for a 512 4870 and it had 1066 ram rather than 1600.
Would there be much speed difference between the 1066 and 1600? And is the 1gb version of the 4870 that much better? The case suggestion seems good. I was also going to go with the retail cooler of the i7 as it seemed adequate without overclocking (though that site seems good for the 920 as you get far cry 2 for like 5 quid or so - compared to ebuyer which has no game but 5 quid cheaper).
At the end of the day, the budget was mine rather than being set, I decided 600 quid for the mid range system (which was an amd 7750 be, 4830, 2 gig ram, 19" screen, and stuff), so I could adjust it by a bit as the future upgrade options of the core i7 platform seems worth it.

 

[spanner_razor]

So I'm going with:

Core i7 920
Gigabyte x58
3gb 1333
Saphire Toxic 1gb 4870
Coolermaster Centurion 590
Corsair 650w
Creative X-Fi Gamer
Creative Inspire T6100
LG Blu-ray/HD-DVD Combo
Windows Vista Home Premium 64
LG 22"
Mx 518
Logitech G15

Had to up the price by 75 quid but I think that's a pretty good high end gaming machine, no?

 

[spanner_razor]

Forgot the harddrive. Difficult decisions to be made on price. I could up the mid-range budget too but then the graphics card would be held back by the cpu and I want to keep the maximum upgrade path that's why I felt AMD was better for a low end machine. Think I'll up it to 700 and and 1400 and go with an intel set up for the lower one.

 

[WR2]

I knew you were interested in a Blu-Ray drive which is why i suggested a 1080 monitor. I figured a future Blu-Ray drive upgrade would be the better path, as it adds little immediate value to a high end gaming system.

Considering the relatively high quality of the stock onboard sound I always suggest testing that out BEFORE springing for a discrete sound card.

Overall I think you've done fairly well spreading your budget around but IMO you're looking at a high mid-range system and not a high end gaming build.

Be sure to let us know how things turn out.

 

[spanner_razor]

The monitor may be a good call, just I find the resolution suffers when not run at native res in certain games. GTA 4 for example is terrible at that, mind you that's got a whole lot of other issues. Worst port ever! I ended up upping the gpu to an oc 216 core 260 but think i'll stay with the monitor as is, if people want the really high def then they could attach it to a tv. It's meant to be a guideline really not a firm and fast system and I'll mention the monitor will display at the lower 720, though I have to say on a screen of that size I think the difference will be negligible.

 

[spanner_razor]

This was the gpu:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/896MB-EVGA-GTX-260-SSC-PCI-E-20-(x16)-2304MHz-GDDR3-55nm-GPU-675MHz-216Cores-2x-DL-DVI-I-HDTV

Plus if you go for that combo then you get Far Cry 2 and Mirror's Edge for free.

 

[WR2]

resolution suffers when not run at native res in certain games.

Even worse than possible resolution problems is the performance hit that some games get when a game is "forced" into running at non-native resolution. Even today not all games have native support for wide screens.

To avoid all those problems you'd want to run a game that didnt support have native 1920x1080 in a supported resolution (1680x1050 for example) and in windowed mode.
Widescreen Gaming Forum has excellent information on widescreen, multiple monitors and surround gaming (TripleHead2Go).