~£700 Gaming PC

[samwrocks]

Approximate Purchase Date: This week

Budget Range: Around £700

System Usage from Most to Least Important: Office use, iRacing, other games

Are you buying a monitor: Yes

Parts to Upgrade: Everything except optical drive

Do you need to buy OS: No

Preferred Website(s) for Parts: Amazon, Dabs

Location: Sussex, UK

Parts Preferences: by brand or type: Intel i5 CPU

Overclocking: No

SLI or Crossfire: Maybe

Your Monitor Resolution: Upgrade to 1920x1080

Additional Comments: Looking for best gaming on a budget. Mainly for iRacing, but would like to be able to play other newish games if I want to.

And Most Importantly, Why Are You Upgrading: Replace old laptop.

Here are a list of parts I have tentatively selected:

Intel Core i5 4760
ASRock H87 PRO4 Motherboard
Crucial 8GB 1600MHz CL9 DDR3
Samsung 840 EVO 120GB 2.5 inch Basic SATA Solid State Drive
Seagate ST1000DM003 Barracuda 1TB 3.5 inch Hard Drive
Sapphire 11199-16-20G AMD Radeon HD 7870 Dual-X 2GB GDDR5 Graphics Card
Corsair Builder Series CXM 500W Modular 80 PLUS Bronze Certified ATX/EPS PSU
Zalman Z3 Plus Case
BenQ GL2450HM 24" LED

Total £725

Could anyone please give me any advice on where I could save any money or where it would be worth spending a bit more?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Computer__GUY]

I have a BenQ GL2450HM and although it is a very good monitor which I highly recommend, you can get similar monitors for slightly cheaper. Everything else seems to be good, you could save some money getting a 64GB SSD or not having one at all. Also, you could downgrade your CPU to 4570 potentially saving about £20.

Heres what I suggest:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i5-4670K 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor (£173.82 @ Aria PC)
Motherboard: ASRock Z87 Extreme4 ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (£112.18 @ Amazon UK)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£63.50 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£42.97 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 660 2GB Video Card (£131.59 @ Scan.co.uk)
Case: Zalman Z11 ATX Mid Tower Case (£42.50 @ Ebuyer)
Power Supply: Corsair CX 500W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply (£46.57 @ Amazon UK)
Optical Drive: Lite-On iHAS124-04 DVD/CD Writer (£13.18 @ Scan.co.uk)
Monitor: Hannspree HE225DPB 21.5" Monitor (£89.94 @ CCL Computers)
Total: £716.25
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-01-02 18:11 GMT+0000)

 

[samwrocks]

Thanks for the advice. If I wanted to keep the SSD, where would you suggest making a saving? Although I said I might use SLI or Crossfire, what motherboard would you recommend if I had no plans to in the future?

Thanks.

 

[Computer__GUY]

I recommend the Asrock Z87 Pro3 which comes in at a very reasonable £70. It has everything you'll need including USB 3.0 support and 6Gb/s SATA support. As for savings elsewhere, I don't think that you can save much if not anything.

 

[samwrocks]

Excellent, thanks a lot for your help.