Budget Issues

[CheckMate_001]

Hello,
I recently decided to biuld my own gaming PC. I asked my father for a budget of around £800/$1200 and currently with the specs I have chosen I am on £1000/$1500. I was wondering if anyone could point out any superflous additions that I have included.

I've currently chosen:

CPU
Intel Core i7 3770K (4.3GHz)
£275

CPU Cooler
Cooler mater 212 Plus
£8

Motherboard
Asus P5z77-V LX
£95

RAM
8GB Corsair Vengeance 2x4GB
£40

Case
Zalman Z11 Plus
£50

Power Supply
X-Spice Croon BF 850W
£110

Graphics
GTX 580
£310

Hard Drive
Seagate Barrcuda 7200.12 1TB
£65

Optical Drive
Asus DRW-24B1ST
£15

Operating System
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit (OEM)
£65

Keyboard
Microsoft Comfort Curve 2000
£10

Mouse
Logitech MX 518
£30

Thank you in advanced.

 

[Niklas_13]

If your trying to cut cost, you dont need a 850W PSU and a i5 3570K will do just grate for games....

Try a 550W PSU for a single GPU or if sli is in your plans get a good QL 750W PSU

Also you dont need to OC the CPU anytime soon so you could hold off on the CPU COOLER

 

[blazorthon]

I would not recommend going without the after-market cooler. Ivy gets hot and I don't trust Intel's stock cooler. Even though it can probably keep Ivy far within safe operating temperatures without overclocking, it might get obnoxiously loud.

The i7s for Sandy and Ivy Bridge are no better for gaming than the i5s so unless you will use some highly threaded work (gaming is not highly-threaded and only BF3 MP comes close to being highly threaded if I remember correctly), I don't recommend even considering the i7s over an i5.

Both Ivy Bridge and Nvidia Kepler cards such as the GTX 670 and GTX 680 use fairly little power, so like Niklas_13 said, a single card won't need more than a 550w (although I'd recommend a 600 anyway) and two of them don't need more than a 750w.

 

[geekapproved]

You could save on the mobo, psu and processor.

i5
Asrock z77 extreme 4
550-600w psu

 

[ilikegirls]

I would also agree with the posts above regarding the i5 instead of the i7, and getting even a 650W psu would save a little.

I also agree that ivy bridge runs hot so i would recommend staying with the 212 plus seeing how its cheap and works wonders! I would also look so save a little and find a cheaper optical drive just for a quick and easy save.

other than that you should just do an internet search and see if you can find those cheaper. I dont know what websites you are using or whatnot but compared to US prices those are a little high and usually UK prices are that far off

Hope that helped

 

[Niklas_13]

I would agree that the i5 3570 K would run hotter then say the i5 2500K , but i would have to disagree that you need a after market cooler unless your OCing it!

I dont think Intel would give you a POS cooler thats going to make there CPU burn out or unstable only so they would have to replace it ( Just my Option )

 

[geofelt]

Games rarely use more than 2 or 3 cores, so the extra hyperthreads on the 3770K will go largely unused.
A 3570K is as good as it gets, and will cost 2/3 as much.

For gaming, buy the best graphics card you can afford. It is the real engine of gaming, more so than the cpu. The GTX580 is a fine card, but I can't but think you could do better with a more modern 28nm based card. The GTX660 is due out soon, you might look for that, or even a GTX670.

You really only need a good 600w for the GTX580. 550w for a GTX670. It is not wrong to pverprovision a bit, since the psu will use only the wattage demanded of it.
I am not familiar with the psu brand you listed.
I would be more comfortable with a known good quality brand like Seasonic, Antec, Corsair, XFX, or PC P&C.

Hard drive prices are a bit high now, and SSD prices have dropped. Consider deferring the hard drive, and build with a 120gb SSD instead. It is large enough to hold the os and 6-10 games. Add a hard drive later for expansion later if you need to.

A SSD is much faster and will make your pc feel quick in everyday usage.

Today, I would look to Intel or Samsung for reliability, and expect to pay a bit more for that.

 

[geofelt]

As to a cooler for the 3570K, I would stick with the cm hyper212 or similar.
It is not expensive, as coolers go.
For the novice, it is much easier to mount than the notoriously fussy intel pushpin mounts.
The 120mm fan will keep your cpu cooler, and be quieter.

The 3570k is a very strong cpu, and will spend much of it's time loafing, even with a 4.3 oc. Heat issues arise mostly to those who are pushing the oc high enough to need voltage increases.

 

[blazorthon]

Games rarely use more than 2 or 3 cores, so the extra hyperthreads on the 3770K will go largely unused.
A 3570K is as good as it gets, and will cost 2/3 as much.

For gaming, buy the best graphics card you can afford. It is the real engine of gaming, more so than the cpu. The GTX580 is a fine card, but I can't but think you could do better with a more modern 28nm based card. The GTX660 is due out soon, you might look for that, or even a GTX670.

You really only need a good 600w for the GTX580. 550w for a GTX670. It is not wrong to pverprovision a bit, since the psu will use only the wattage demanded of it.
I am not familiar with the psu brand you listed.
I would be more comfortable with a known good quality brand like Seasonic, Antec, Corsair, XFX, or PC P&C.

Hard drive prices are a bit high now, and SSD prices have dropped. Consider deferring the hard drive, and build with a 120gb SSD instead. It is large enough to hold the os and 6-10 games. Add a hard drive later for expansion later if you need to.

A SSD is much faster and will make your pc feel quick in everyday usage.

Today, I would look to Intel or Samsung for reliability, and expect to pay a bit more for that.

Do not use just a 120GB SSD. A high quality 2TB HDD can be had fairly cheaply and the OP's 1TB is a decent price. A 120GB SSD which would most certainly not hold 6-10 games well. SSDs slow down and degrade exponentially faster as you fill them up to near full capacity and even high-reliability drives such as Intel's SSDs, Samsung 830s, and Crucial M4s are no exception to this degradation. I'd go with the 16 times higher capacity any time.

Or, maybe a similarly price Momentous 750GB SSD/HDD hybrid drive. Good enough capacity and fairly high performance once that cache kicks in. It also doesn't lose data should the NAND flash degrade into uselessness, it simply then functions as a regular hard drive to which you can use the warranty and get it replaced cheaply and without loss of data. No SSD can match reliability like that so long as they still use flash memory in its current forms.