First time fairly inexperienced builder looking for some advice and suggestions

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ThoseOnceLoyal

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Jan 7, 2015
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Evening guys, so i've had my current PC for around 6/7 years which I had built for me back in the day, it's starting to wear a little thin so I thought i'd give building my own a go. I play a variety of games but maxing everything isn't my main concern, value for money (being a newish father!) is important as well as future proofing/ease of upgrading.



Here this is my component list so far, any advice/suggestions would be appreciated!



http://www.amazon.co.uk/registry/wishlist/7KJC5VKKWWT9





Firstly are all of these components compatible?



Is there anything out there that gives a little more bang for my buck?



Also if anyone can recommended the safest and cheapest place to buy Windows 8 that would also be appreciated :)



Thanks in advance
 
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Woody1999

Woody1999

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A great site to use for novice builders, I've found, is www.uk.pcpartpicker.com

It lets you pick components from many different retailers, and makes sure everything is compatible.

I'll try and get your build up for you on there.
 
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Woody1999

Woody1999

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Here we go. I've taken your build, which has a great choice of processor and graphics card, and basically given it the components it needed to be amazing.

http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/mKvHbv

I've swapped your mediocre motherboard with a Gigabyte 970A-UD3P, which will allow much higher overclocking abilities and general longer lifespan. I've also included a cheap but reliable cooler so you can get the most out of your processor. You should be able to manage 4.5-4.7GHz with this setup.

I've replaced your one stick of expensive 8GB RAM with two sticks of 4GB, same speed, same capacity, much lower price.

I've got you a great quality hard drive and good SSD, which will give you enough storage to last the lifetime of your PC.

I've swapped your waaay too expensive power supply with a Corsair CX500, got you a cheaper but still good looking and functional case, and managed to squeeze in a DVD burner.

I hope you like it it's a significant improvement in performance for the same price, and it's all compatible.

Woody
 
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sora

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+1 but what is the reason for the Corsair CX series power supply? They use POOR CAPACITORS. Get a power supply manufactured by XFX or Seasonic.
 
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Woody1999

Woody1999

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I've worked with Corsair PSU's for a while and, to be brutally honest, I see no problems with them. They are reliable and efficient, they have a good range of wattage and they're quite cheap. I'm getting a CX430 for my current build right now. People give Corsairs a lot of stick in my opinion, and the whole issue has been over exaggerated.

Woody
 
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Woody1999

Woody1999

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An FX-6300 is roughly equivalent in performance to an i5-3570K when overclocked to 4.6GHz. I'd take that and overclock it than spend twice the price on a good i5.

Woody
 
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ThoseOnceLoyal

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Much appreciation for all of the help so far.

Some great shouts there Woody, couple of quick questions though.

Is the Graphics Card any different to the one I had one my wishlist? Saying that I can't seem to find the one I had originally on Part Picker.

Also would it be worthwhile going for the 600W Corsair to give me a little bit of room to play with in the future or is it not worth the extra £10ish?

I'll definitely go for the Motherboard/RAM you suggested and it'd be rude not to add in the cooler as well!

Thanks again for all of your effort
 
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mdocod

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The actual cost to overclock an FX-6300 to 4.6ghz is more than you may be realizing here.

1. Running an FX-6300 at 4.6ghz will require a motherboard capable of providing ~200W of clean power to the socket reliably. The motherboard you have selected, is not capable of this. Motherboards that are suitable for this will cost more.
2. An overclocked FX-6300 combined with the lower overall platform efficiancy (AM3+) will add nearly 200W to the power dissipation of the machine compared to a build with a stock clocked haswell on the 1150 socket. This will have to be accounted for in the size of the PSU and will effect implementation costs.
3. Dealing with the thermal dissipation of the overclocked CPU will of course require a decent CPU HSF and more case fans.

Even if you choose some of the highest value ways to deal with these problems, you're going to spend as much or more than it would cost to implement an i5-4590 or similar, which will out-perform the overclocked FX-6300 in any game...

http://pclab.pl/art55318-3.html

Note where the 4.7ghz FX-6300 is relative to the various i5 haswells. Even the entry level 4440 is ~10% faster.

---------

The AM3+ platform is largely a novelty at this point. The only reason to choose the AM3+ platform over the 1150 platform for gaming, is if you find intrinsic value in the whole premise, and have a desire to overclock for the sake of overclocking.

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I don't think it's likely that you'll ever see a stock clocked FX-6300 out-performing the i3 haswell in games, and I don't think it's likely that you'll ever see an overclocked FX-6300 out-performing the i5 haswells in games. Real-time workloads scale better with core performance than core count, and always will.
 
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ThoseOnceLoyal

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I'm open to all suggestions, so in that case do you have a perference for CPU/Motherboard and even GPU for this sort of price range mdocod?

Amazon currently has Intel 1150 i3-4330 Core i3 Box Dual-Core Haswell CPU (3.50GHz, 4MB Cache, 54W, Socket 1150 on promotion for 97.99.
 
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mdocod

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PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-4460 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor (£130.94 @ Aria PC)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-H97M-D3H Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (£64.00 @ Aria PC)
Memory: Patriot Signature 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£43.45 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Crucial MX100 256GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£77.98 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: PowerColor Radeon R9 270X 2GB PCS+ Video Card (£123.19 @ More Computers)
Case: Cooler Master N200 MicroATX Mid Tower Case (£29.77 @ CCL Computers)
Power Supply: Antec TruePower Classic 550W 80+ Gold Certified ATX Power Supply (£56.71 @ More Computers)
Total: £526.04
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-01-09 03:28 GMT+0000

i5 for best value in gaming performance.
great quality gigabyte motherboard with heatsunk VRMs and rich H97 feature-set.
great quality compact case with lots of flexibility. (supports 2.5" and 3.5" drive mounting, long GPUs, USB 3.0 headers, etc)
great quality PSU OEMed by Seasonic and backed by Antec.
Best-in-class SSD

As for the GPU, any modern gaming GPU can play any games at smooth FPS, the difference is in what sort of visual quality settings they can support while doing it. If you can spare to spend more on the GPU, great, if not, it's no big deal as performance does not originate with the GPU (contrary to popular belief).
 
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